Complete Works of Elizabeth Barrett Browning

by Elizabeth Barrett Browning

  A little later Arnould wrote again:

  “Browning and his wife are still in Florence, and stay there till the summer; he is bringing out another edition of his poems (except ‘Sordello’), Chapman and Hall being his publishers, Moxon having declined. He writes always most affectionately, and never forgets kind inquiries about and kind messages to you.”

  Allured by resplendent tales of Fano, the Brownings made a trip to that seaside hamlet, but found it uninhabitable in the late summer heat. A statue in the Piazza commemorated the ancient Fanum Fortunæ of tradition, and in the cathedral of San Fortunato were frescoes by Domenichino, and in the chiesa of Sant’ Agostino was the celebrated painting of Sant’ Angelo Custode, by Guercino, which suggested to Browning his poem “The Guardian Angel.” The tender constancy of Browning’s friendship for Alfred Domett is in evidence in this poem, and the beauty of his reference to his wife, —

  “My angel with me, too,...”

  lingers with the reader.

  In no poem of his entire work has Browning given so complete a revelation of his own inner life as in this memorable lyric. The picture, dim as is the light in which it is seen, is one of the most impressive of all Guercino’s works. In the little church of San Paterniano is a “Marriage of the Virgin,” by Guercino, and in the Palazzo del Municipio of Fano is Guercino’s “Betrothal of the Virgin,” and the “David” of Domenichino.

  The Brownings while in Fano made the excursion to the summit of Monte Giove, an hour’s drive from the Piazza, where was the old monastery and a wonderful view of the Adriatic, and of the panorama of the Apennines. “We fled from Fano after three days,” wrote Mrs. Browning, “and finding ourselves cheated out of our dream of summer coolness, we resolved on substituting for it what the Italians call ‘un bel giro.’ So we went to Ancona ... where we stayed a week, living on fish and cold water.” They found Ancona “a straggling sea city, holding up against the brown rocks, and elbowing out the purple tides,” and Mrs. Browning felt an inclination to visit it again when they might find a little air and shadow. They went on to Loreto, and then to Ravenna, where in the early dawn of a summer morning they stood by the tomb of Dante, deeply touched by the inscription. All through this journey they had “wonderful visions of beauty and glory.” Returning to Florence, to their terraces, orange trees, and divine sunsets, one of their earliest visitors in Casa Guidi was Father Prout, who had chanced to be standing on the dock at Livorno when they first landed in Italy, from the journey from France, and who now appeared in Florence on his way to Rome. Mr. Browning had fallen ill after their trip to Fano, and Father Prout prescribed for him “port wine and eggs,” which régime, combined with the racy conversation of the genial priest, seemed efficacious.

  In the meantime Mrs. Browning stood with her husband by the tomb of Michael Angelo in Santa Croce; she saw the Venus, the “divine Raphaels.” The Peruzzi chapel had then recently been restored — some exquisite frescoes by Giotto being among the successful restorations. The “mountainous marble masses” of the Duomo, “tessellated marbles climbing into the sky, self-crowned with that prodigy of marble domes,” struck Mrs. Browning as the wonder of all architecture.

  The political conditions of Italy began to enlist her interest. In June of 1846 Pio Nono had ascended the Papal throne, preceded by a reputation for a liberal policy, and it was even hoped that he would not oppose the formation of a United Italy. The papal and the temporal government was still one, but Pius IX was a statesman as well as a churchman. England had especially commissioned Lord Minto to advocate reform, and the enthusiasts for Italian liberty received him with acclaim. The disasters of 1848 were still in the unrevealed future, and a new spirit was stirring all over the Italian kingdom. Piedmont was looked to with hope; and the Grand Duke of Tuscany had instituted a National Guard, as the first step toward popular government. The great topic of the day was the new hope of Italy. In Florence the streets and piazzas were vocal with praises of the Grand Duke. On one night that Browning went to the opera the tumult grew intense, and the Duke was escorted back to Palazzo Pitti with thousands of wax torchlights and a blaze of glory and cries of “Eviva! Eviva!” Browning, however, distrusted Pio Nono, thinking him weak, and events proved that his opinion was justified.

  The winter of 1847-1848 was passed by the Brownings in Casa Guidi. “I wish you could see what rooms we have,” wrote Mrs. Browning to her husband’s sister, Sarianna: “what ceilings, what height and breadth, what a double terrace for orange trees; how cool, how likely to be warm, how perfect every way!”

  The poets were constantly engaged in their work. Mrs. Browning began her long poem, “Casa Guidi Windows,” and many of Browning’s lyrics that appeared in the collection called “Men and Women” were written at this period. They passed much time in the galleries and churches. They drove in the beautiful environs of Florence. The pictures, history, and legends entered into their lives to serve in later days as poetic material. In the brief twilight of winter days they often strolled into the old gray church of San Felice, on which their windows looked out, where Browning would gratify his passion for music by evolving from the throbbing keys of the organ some faint Toccata of Galuppi’s, while his wife smiled and listened, and the tide of Florentine life flowed by in the streets outside. Casa Guidi is almost opposite the Palazzo Pitti, so that Mrs. Browning had easy access to her beloved Madonnas in the Pitti gallery, which to her husband, also, was so unfailing a resource.

  One of Mrs. Browning’s American admirers, and one of the reviewers of her poems, George Stillman Hillard, visited Florence that winter, and passed more than one evening in Casa Guidi with the Brownings. Of Mrs. Browning he wrote:

  “Mrs. Browning is in many respects the correlative of her husband.... I have never seen a human frame which seemed so nearly a transparent veil for a celestial and immortal spirit. She is a soul of fire enclosed in a shell of pearl.... Nor is she more remarkable for genius and learning than for sweetness of temper, tenderness of heart, depth of feeling, and purity of spirit.... A union so complete as theirs — in which the mind has nothing to crave, nor the heart to sigh for — is cordial to behold and cheering to remember.”

  Of all Italy Mr. Hillard perhaps best loved Florence, finding there an indescribable charm, “a blending of present beauty and traditional interest; but then Florence is alive,” he added, “and not enslaved.” It was probably Hillard who suggested to William Wetmore Story that he should meet Browning. At all events this meeting took place, initiating the friendship that endured “forty years, without a break,” and that was one of the choicest social companionships.

  The spring of 1849 brought new joy to Casa Guidi, for on March 9 was born their son, who was christened Robert Wiedemann Barrett, the middle name (which in his manhood he dropped) being the maiden name of the poet’s mother. The passion of both husband and wife for poetry was now quite equaled by that for parental duties, which they “caught up,” said Mrs. Browning, “with a kind of rapture.” Mr. Browning would walk the terraces where orange trees and oleanders blossomed, with the infant in his arms, and in the summer, when they visited Spezzia, and the haunt of Shelley at Lurici, they wandered five miles into the mountains, the baby with them, on horseback and donkey-back. The child grew rounder and rosier; and Mrs. Browning was able to climb hills and help her husband to lose himself in the forests.

  The death of Browning’s mother immediately after the birth of his son was a great sadness to the poet, and one fully shared by his wife, who wrote to Miss Browning: “I grieve with you, as well as for you; for though I never saw her face, I loved that pure and tender spirit.... Robert and I dwell on the hope that you and your father will come to us at once.... If Florence is too far off, is there any other place where we could meet and arrange for the future?”

  The Brownings went for the summer to Bagni di Lucca, after the little détour on the Mediterranean coast, where they lingered in the white marble mountains of Carrara. In Lucca they passed long summer hours in the bea
utiful Duomo, which had been consecrated by Pope Alexander II in the eleventh century. The beauty and the solitude charmed the poets; the little Penini was the “most popular of babies,” and when Wilson carried the child out in the sunshine the Italians would crowd around him and exclaim, “Che bel bambino!” They had given him the pet Italian name “Penini,” which always persisted. The Austrians had then taken possession of Florence, and Leopoldo, “L’intrepido,” as the Italians asserted, remained quietly in the Palazzo Pitti. Browning, writing to Mrs. Jameson, says there is little for his wife to tell, “for she is not likely to encroach upon my story which I could tell of her entirely angel nature, as divine a heart as God ever made.” The poet with his wife and Wilson and the baby made almost daily excursions into the forests and mountains, up precipitous fays and over headlong ravines; dining “with the goats,” while the baby “lay on a shawl, rolling and laughing.” The contrast of this mountain-climbing Mrs. Browning, with her husband and child, and the Miss Barrett of three or four years before, lying on a sofa in a darkened room, is rather impressive. The picture of one day is suggested by Mrs. Browning’s description in a letter to Miss Mitford, where she writes:

  “... I have performed a great exploit, ridden on a donkey five miles deep into the mountains, to an almost inaccessible volcanic ground not far from the stars. Robert on horseback, Wilson and the nurse with baby, on other donkeys; guides, of course. We set off at eight in the morning and returned at six p. m., after dining on the mountain pinnacle.... The scenery, sublime and wonderful,... innumerable mountains bound faintly with the gray sea, and not a human habitation.”

  Monument To Dante, in the Piazza di Santa Croce.

  Stefano Ricci.

  “....The architect and hewer

  Did pile the empty marbles as thy tomb.”

  Casa Guidi Windows.

  It was during this villeggiatura that Mrs. Browning, one morning after their breakfast, with shy sweetness, tucked the pages of the “Sonnets” into her husband’s pocket and swiftly vanished. Robert Barrett Browning, who, as already noted, gave the history of this poetic interlude viva voce, has also recorded it in writing, as follows:

  What earthly vocabulary can offer fit words in which to speak of celestial beauty? How these exquisite “Sonnets” tell the story of that romance of Genius and Love, — from the woman’s first thrill of interest in the poetry of an unknown poet, to the hour when he, “the princely giver,” brought to her “the gold and purple” of his heart

  “For such as I to take or leave withal,”

  and she questions

  “Can it be right to give what I can give?”

  with the fear that her delicacy of health should make such gifts

  “Be counted with the ungenerous.”

  But she thinks of how he “was in the world a year ago,” and thus she drinks

  “Of life’s great cup of wonder! Wonderful,

  Never to feel thee thrill the day or night

  With personal act or speech, —

  ······

  ... Atheists are as dull,

  Who cannot guess God’s presence out of sight.”

  And the questioning, —

  “How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.

  I love thee to the depth and breadth and height

  My soul can reach,...

  ... I love thee with the breath,

  Smiles, tears, of all my life! — and, if God choose,

  I shall but love thee better after death.”

  Returning to Florence in October, Browning soon began the preparation for his poem, “Christmas Eve and Easter Day,” and Mrs. Browning arranged for a new one-volume edition of her poems, to include “The Seraphim,” and the poems that had appeared in the same volume, and also the poems appearing in 1844, many of them revised.

  Marchesa d’Ossoli, whom the Brownings had heretofore known as Margaret Fuller, surprised them by appearing in Florence with her husband and child, the private marriage having taken place some two years before. The Greenoughs, the Storys, and Mr. and Mrs. Christopher Pearse Cranch were all in Florence, and were all habitués of Casa Guidi. Mr. Cranch, poet, painter, and musician, was the kindly friend of Longfellow and of Lowell in their Cambridge homes, and the Greenoughs and Storys were also of the Cambridge circle. To friends at home the Marchesa wrote of going to the opera with the Greenoughs, and that she saw the Brownings often, “and I love and admire them more and more,” she continued. “Mr. Browning enriches every hour passed with him, and he is a most true, cordial, and noble man.”

  The Florentine days have left their picturings: Mr. Story opens a studio, and while he is modeling, Mrs. Story reads to him from Monckton Milnes’s Life of Keats, which Mr. Browning loaned them. Mrs. Story drives to Casa Guidi to carry Mrs. Browning her copy of “Jane Eyre,” and Mrs. Greenough takes both Mrs. Story and Mrs. Browning to drive in the Cascine. Two American painters, Frank Boott and Frank Heath, are in Florence, and are more or less caught up in the Casa Guidi life; and the coterie all go to Mrs. Trollope’s to see fancy costumes arranged for a ball to be given at Sir George Hamilton’s. In one of the three villas on Bellosguardo Miss Isa Blagden was now domiciled. For more than a quarter of a century Miss Blagden was a central figure in English society in Florence. She became Mrs. Browning’s nearest and most intimate friend, and she was the ardently prized friend of the Trollopes also, and of Miss Frances Power Cobbe, who shared her villa during one spring when Florence was in her most radiant beauty. “Isa was a very bright, warm-hearted, clever little woman,” said Thomas Adolphus Trollope of her; “who knew everybody, and was, I think, more universally beloved among us than any other individual.” Miss Blagden had written one or two novels, of little claim, however, and after her death a small volume of her poems was published, but all these had no more than the mere succès d’estime, as apparently the pen was with her, as with Margaret Fuller, a non-conductor; but as a choice spirit, of the most beautiful and engaging qualities of companionship, “Isa,” as she was always caressingly called, is still held in memory. Madame Pasquale Villari, the wife of the great historian and the biographer of Machiavelli and of Savonarola, well remembers Miss Blagden, who died, indeed, in her arms in the summer of 1872.

  The intimate friendship between Mrs. Browning and Miss Blagden was initiated in the early months of the residence of the Brownings in Florence; but it was in this winter of 1849-1850 that they began to see each other so constantly. The poems of Matthew Arnold were published that winter, among which Mrs. Browning especially liked “The Deserted Merman” and “The Sick King of Bokkara,” and about this time the authorship of “Jane Eyre” was revealed, and Charlotte Brontë discovered under the nom-de-plume of Currer Bell.

  During the time that Mrs. Browning had passed at Torquay, before her marriage, she had met Theodosia Garrow, whose family were on intimate terms with Mr. Kenyon. Miss Barrett and Miss Garrow became friends, and when they met again it was in Florence, Miss Garrow having become the wife of Thomas Adolphus Trollope. Hiram Powers in these days was domiciled in the Via dei Serragli, in close proximity to Casa Guidi, and he frequently dropped in to have his morning coffee with the Brownings.

  The Palazzo Vecchio, Florence.

  Landor had been for some years in his villa on the Fiesolean slope, not far from Maiano, where Leigh Hunt had wandered, dreaming of Boccaccio. Two scenes of the “Decameron” were laid in this region, and the deep ravine at the foot of one of the neighboring hills was the original of the “Valley of the Ladies.” Not far away had been the house of Machiavelli; and nestling among the blue hills was the little white village of Settignano, where Michael Angelo was born. Leigh Hunt had been on terms of the most cordial intimacy with Landor, whom he described as “living among his paintings and hospitalities”; and Landor had also been visited by Emerson, and by Lord and Lady Blessington, by Nathaniel Parker Willis (introduced by Lady Blessington), by Greenough, Francis and Julius Hare, and by that universal friend of every one, Mr. Kenyon, all b
efore the arrival of the Brownings in Florence. Landor had, however, been again in England for several years, where Browning and Miss Barrett had both met and admired him, as has been recorded.

  The Florence on which the Brownings had entered differed little from the Florence of to-day. The Palazzo Pitti, within a stone’s throw of Casa Guidi, stood in the same cyclopean massiveness as now; the piazza and church of San Miniato, cypress-shaded, rose from the sweep of the hills, and the miraculous crucifix of San Giovanni Gualberto was then, as now, an object of pilgrimage. The wonder of the Italian sunsets, that “perished silently of their own glory,” burned away over the far hills, and the strange, lofty tower of the Palazzo Vecchio caught the lingering rays. Beyond the Porta Romana, not far from Casa Guidi, was the road to the Val d’Emo, where the Certosa crowns an eminence. The stroll along the Arno at sunset was a favorite one with the poets, and in late afternoons they often climbed the slope to the Boboli Gardens for the view over Florence and the Val d’Arno. Nor did they ever tire of lingering in the Piazza della Signoria, before the marvelous palace with its medieval tower, and standing before the colossal fountain of Neptune, just behind the spot that is commemorated by a tablet in the pavement marking the martyrdom of Savonarola. The great equestrian statue of Cosimo I always engaged their attention in this historic piazza, which for four centuries had been the center of the political life of the Florentines. All these places, the churches, monuments, palaces, and the art of Florence, were fairly mirrored in the minds of the wedded poets, impressing their imagination with the fidelity of an image falling on a sensitized plate. To them, as to all who love and enter into the ineffable beauty of the City of Lilies, it was an atmosphere of enchantment.