Complete Works of Elizabeth Barrett Browning

by Elizabeth Barrett Browning

  The Brownings were invited to Knebworth, to visit Lord Lytton, but they were unable to avail themselves of the pleasure because of proof-sheets and contingent demands which only writers with books in press can understand. Proof-sheets are unquestionably endowed with some super-human power of volition, and invariably arrive at the psychological moment when, if their author were being married or buried, the ceremony would have to be postponed until they were corrected. But the poets were not without pleasant interludes, either; as when Tennyson came from the Isle of Wight to London for three or four days, two of which he passed with the Brownings. He “dined, smoked, and opened his heart” to them; and concluded this memorable visit at the witching hour of half-past two in the morning, after reading “Maud” aloud the evening before from the proof-sheets. The date of this event is established by an inscription affixed to the back of a pen-and-ink sketch of Tennyson, made on that night by Dante Gabriel Rossetti, and which is now in the possession of Robert Barrett Browning. This inscription, written by Robert Browning, reads: “Tennyson read his poem ‘Maud’ to E. B. B., R. B., Arabel, and Rossetti, on the evening of Sept. 27th, 1855, at 13, Dorset Street. Rossetti made this sketch of Tennyson, as he sat, reading, on one end of the sofa, E. B. B. being on the other end.” And this is signed, “R. B. March 6th, 1874 ... 19, Warwick Crescent.” As the date is Mrs. Browning’s birthday, it is easy to realize how, in that March of 1874, he was recalling tender and beloved memories. On the drawing itself Mrs. Browning had, at the time of the reading, copied the first two lines of “Maud.” Tennyson replied to a question from William Sharp, who in 1882 wrote to the Laureate to ask about this night, that he had “not the slightest recollection” of Rossetti’s presence; but the inscription on the picture establishes the fact. William Michael Rossetti was also one of the group, and a record that he made quite supports the fact of Tennyson’s unconsciousness of his brother’s presence, for he says: “So far as I remember the Poet-Laureate neither saw what my brother was doing nor knew of it afterward.” And as if every one of this gifted group present that night left on record some impression, Dante Gabriel Rossetti has noted that, after Tennyson’s reading, Browning read his “Fra Lippo Lippi,” and “with as much sprightly variation as there was in Tennyson of sustained continuity.” In a letter to Allingham, Rossetti also alluded to this night, and infused a mild reproach to Mrs. Browning in that her attention was diverted by “two not very exciting ladies”; and in a letter to Mrs. Tennyson, Mrs. Browning speaks of being “interrupted by some women friends whom I loved, but yet could not help wishing a little further just then, that I might sit in the smoke, and listen to the talk,” after the reading. So, from putting together, mosaic fashion, all the allusions made by the cloud of witnesses, the reader constructs a rather accurate picture of that night of the gods. Mrs. Browning, who “was born to poet-uses,” like the suitor of her own “Lady Geraldine,” was in a rapture of pleasure that evening, and of “Maud” she wrote: “The close is magnificent, full of power, and there are beautiful, thrilling lines all through. If I had a heart to spare, the Laureate would have won mine.” Tennyson’s voice she found “like an organ, music rather than speech,” and she was “captivated” by his naïveté, as he stopped every now and then to say, “There’s a wonderful touch!” Mrs. Browning writes to Mrs. Tennyson of “the deep pleasure we had in Mr. Tennyson’s visit to us.” She adds:

  “He didn’t come back, as he said he would, to teach me the ‘Brook’ (which I persist, nevertheless, in fancying I understand a little), but he did so much and left such a voice (both him ‘and a voice!’) crying out ‘Maud’ to us, and helping the effect of the poem by the personality, that it’s an increase of joy and life to us ever.”

  The Coronation of the Virgin, Filippo Lippi.

  in the accademia di belle arti, florence.

  “Ringed by a bowery, flowery angel-brood,

  Lilies and vestments and white faces....”

  Fra Lippo Lippi

  Deciding to pass the ensuing winter in Paris, the Brownings found themselves anxious to make the change, that they might feel settled for the time, as she needed entire freedom from demands that she might proceed with her “Aurora Leigh.” He had conceived the idea of revising and recasting “Sordello.” They passed an evening with Ruskin, however, and presented “young Leighton” to him. They met Carlyle at Forster’s, finding him “in great force” — of denunciations. They met Kinglake, and were at the Proctors, and of the young poet, Anne Adelaide Proctor, Mrs. Browning says, “How I like Adelaide’s face!” Mrs. Sartoris and Mrs. Kemble were briefly in London, and Kenyon, the beloved friend, vanished to the Isle of Wight. To Penini’s great delight, Wilson, the maid, married a Florentine, one Ferdinando Romagnoli, who captivated the boy by his talk of Florence, and Penini caught up his pretty Italian enthusiasms, and discoursed of Florentine skies, and the glories of the Cascine, to any one whom he could waylay.

  In Paris they first established themselves in the Rue de Grenelle, in the old Faubourg San Germain, a location they soon exchanged for a more comfortable apartment in the Rue de Colisée, just off the Champs Élysées. Here they renewed their intercourse with Lady Elgin (now an invalid) and with her daughter, Lady Augusta Bruce, Madame Mohl, and with other friends. Mrs. Browning was absorbed in her great poem, which she was able to complete, however, only after their return to London the next June, and never did an important literary work proceed with less visible craft. She lay on her sofa, half supported by cushions, writing with pencil on little scraps of paper, which she would slip under the pillows if any chance visitor came in. “Elizabeth is lying on the sofa, writing like a spirit,” Browning wrote to Harriet Hosmer. To Mrs. Browning Ruskin wrote, praising her husband’s poems, which gratified her deeply, and she replied, in part, that when he wrote to praise her poems, of course she had to bear it. “I couldn’t turn around and say, ‘Well, and why don’t you praise him, who is worth twenty of me?’ One’s forced,” she continued, “to be rather decent and modest for one’s husband as well as for one’s self, even if it’s harder. I couldn’t pull at your coat to read ‘Pippa Passes,’ for instance.... But you have put him on your shelf, so we have both taken courage to send you his new volumes, ‘Men and Women,’... that you may accept them as a sign of the esteem and admiration of both of us.” Mrs. Browning considered these poems beyond any of his previous work, save “Paracelsus,” but there is no visible record left of what she must have felt regarding that tender and exquisite dedication to her, that “One Word More ... To E. B. B.,” which must have been to her

  “The heart’s sweet Scripture to be read at night.”

  These lines are, indeed, a fitting companion-piece to her “Sonnets from the Portuguese.” For all these poems, his “fifty men and women,” were for her, — his “moon of poets.”

  “There they are, my fifty men and women

  Naming me the fifty poems finished!

  Take them, Love, the book and me together;

  Where the heart lies, let the brain lie also.

  ······

  I shall never, in the years remaining,

  Paint you pictures, no, nor carve you statues,

  Make you music that should all-express me;

  ······

  Verse and nothing else have I to give you.

  Other heights in other lives, God willing;

  All the gifts from all the heights, your own, Love!”

  So he wrote to his “one angel, — borne, see, on my bosom!” For her alone were the

  “Silent, silver lights and darks undreamed of,”

  and while there was one side to face the world with, he thanked God that there was another, —

  “One to show a woman when he loves her!”

  It was Rossetti, however, who was the true interpreter of Browning to Ruskin, — for if it requires a god to recognize a god, so likewise in poetic recognitions. To Rossetti the poems comprised in “Men and Women” were the “elixir of life.” The moving dram
a of Browning’s poetry fascinated him. Some years before he had chanced upon “Pauline” in the British Museum, and being unable to procure the book, had copied every line of it. The “high seriousness” which Aristotle claims to be one of the high virtues of poetry, impressed Rossetti in Browning. What a drama of the soul universal was revealed in that “fifty men and women”! What art, what music, coming down the ages, from Italy, from Germany, and what pictures from dim frescoes, and long-forgotten paintings hid in niche and cloister, were interpreted in these poems! How one follows “poor brother Lippo” in his escapade:

  “... I could not paint all night —

  Ouf! I leaned out of window for fresh air.

  There came a hurry of feet and little feet,

  A sweep of lute-strings, laughs, and whifts of song, —

  Flower o’ the broom,

  Take away love, and our earth is a tomb!

  Flower o’ the quince,

  I let Lisa go, and what good in life since?”

  And in “Andrea del Sarto” what passionate pathos of an ideal missed!

  “But all the play, the insight and the stretch —

  Out of me, out of me! And wherefore out?

  Had you enjoined them on me, given me soul,

  We might have risen to Rafael, I and you!

  ······

  Had you ... but brought a mind!

  Some women do so. Had the mouth there urged

  ‘God and the glory! never care for gain.

  The present by the future, what is that?

  Live for fame, side by side with Agnolo!

  Rafael is waiting; up to God, all three!’

  I might have done it for you....”

  And that exquisite idyl of “the love of wedded souls” in “By the Fire-side.” It requires no diviner to discover from whose image he drew the line,

  “My perfect wife, my Leonor.”

  How Browning’s art fused poetic truth and poetic beauty in all these poems, vital with keen and shrewd observation, deep with significance, and pervaded by the perpetual recognition of a higher range of achievements than are realized on earth.

  “A man’s grasp should exceed his reach,

  Or what’s a heaven for?”

  In all these poems can be traced the magic of Italy and happiness. (Are the two more than half synonymous?) The perfect sympathy, the delicate divination and intuitive comprehension with which Browning was surrounded by his wife, were the supreme source of the stimulus and development of his powers as a poet.

  Andrea del Sarto. Portrait of the Artist and His Wife.

  in the Pitti Gallery, Florence.

  “You turn your face, but does it bring your heart?”

  Andrea del Sarto.

  The Parisian winter was full of movement and interest. No twentieth-century prophet had then arisen to instruct the populace how to live on twenty-four hours a day, but the Brownings captured what time they could rescue from the devouring elements, rose early, breakfasted at nine, and gave the next hour and a half to Penini’s lessons,— “the darling, idle, distracted child,” who was “blossoming like a rose” all this time; who “learned everything by magnetism,” and, however “idle,” was still able in seven weeks to read French “quite surprisingly.” Mrs. Browning had already finished and transcribed some six thousand lines (making five books) of “Aurora Leigh “; but she planned at least two more books to complete the poem, which must needs be ready by June; and when, by the author’s calendar, it is February, by some necromancy June is apt to come in the next morning. The Brownings made it an invariable rule to receive no visitors till after four, but the days had still a trick of vanishing like the fleet angel who departs before he leaves his blessing. At all events, the last days of May came before “Aurora Leigh” was completed, and its author half despairingly realized that two weeks more were needed for the transcription of her little slips to the pages ready for the press.

  Meantime Browning had occupied himself for a time in an attempt to revise “Sordello,” an effort soon abandoned, as he saw that, for good or ill, the work must stand as first written.

  Madame Mohl’s “evenings” continued to attract Browning, where he met a most congenial and brilliant circle, and while his wife was unable to accompany him to these mild festivities, she insisted that he should avail himself of these opportunities for intercourse with French society. With Lady Monson he went to see Ristori in “Medea,” finding her great, but not, in his impression, surpassing Rachel. Monckton Milnes comes over to Paris, and a Frenchman of letters gives a dinner for him, at which Browning meets George Sand and Cavour.

  The success of “Men and Women” was by this time assured. Browning stood in the full light of recognition on both sides the ocean. For America — or rather, perhaps, one should say, Boston, for American recognition focused in Boston (which was then, at all events, incontestably the center of all “sweetness and light”) — discerned the greatness of Robert Browning as swiftly as any transatlantic dwellers on the watch-tower.

  Rossetti, who from the days that he copied “Pauline” in the British Museum Library, not knowing the author, was an ardent admirer of Browning, found himself in Paris, and he and Browning passed long mornings in the Louvre. The painter declared that Browning’s knowledge of early Italian art was beyond that of any one whom he had met, Ruskin not excepted.

  Ruskin was a standard of artistic measurement in those days to a degree hardly conceivable now; not that much of his judgment does not stand the test of time, but that authoritative criticism has so many embodiments. Mrs. Browning, to whom Ruskin was one of the nearest of her circle, considered him a critic who was half a poet as well, and her clear insight discerned what is now universally recognized, that he was “encumbered by a burning imagination.” She told him that he was apt to light up any object he looked upon, “just as we, when we carried torches into the Vatican, were not clear as to how much we brought to that wonderful Demosthenes, folding the marble round him in its thousand folds,” and questioned as to where was the dividing line between the sculptor and the torch-bearer. This fairly clairvoyant insight of Mrs. Browning into character, the ability to discern defects as well as virtues where she loved, and to love where she discerned defects, is still further illustrated by a letter of hers to Ruskin on the death of Miss Mitford. “But no, her ‘judgment’ was not ‘unerring,’” wrote Mrs. Browning. “She was too intensely sympathetic not to err often ... if she loved a person it was enough.... And yet ... her judgment could be fine and discriminating, especially upon subjects connected with life and society and manners.”

  Again, to a friend who had met a great bereavement she also wrote in these Paris days:

  “We get knowledge in losing what we hoped for, and liberty by losing what we love. This world is a fragment, or, rather, a segment, and it will be rounded presently. Not to doubt that is the greatest blessing it gives now. The common impression of death is as false as it is absurd. A mere change of circumstances, — what more? And how near these spirits are, how conscious of us, how full of active energy, of tender reminiscence and interest in us? Who shall dare to doubt? For myself, I do not doubt at all.”

  In that latest collection of Browning’s poems, no one excited more discussion at the time than “The Statue and the Bust.” There being then no Browning Societies to authoritatively decide the poet’s real meaning on any disputed point, the controversy assumed formidable proportions. Did Browning mean this poem to be an apologia for illegal love? was asked with bated breath.

  The statue of Fernandino di Medici, in the Piazza dell’ Annunziata, in Florence, — that magnificent equestrian group by Giovanni da Bologna, — is one of the first monuments that the visitor who has a fancy for tracing out poetic legends fares forth to see. As an example of plastic art, alone, it is well worth a pilgrimage; but as touched by the magic of the poet’s art, it is magnetic with life. Dating back to 1608, it was left for Robert Browning to invest it with immortality.

  �
��There’s a palace in Florence, the world knows well

  And a statue watches it from the square.”

  In the poem Mr. Browning alludes to the cornice, “where now is the empty shrine”; but his son believes that there never was any bust in this niche, the bust being simply the poet’s creation. The statue of the Grand Duke is remarkable enough to inspire any story; and the Florentine noble may well take pride in the manner that “John of Douay” has presented him, if he still “contrives” to see it, and still “laughs in his tomb” at the perpetual pilgrimage that is made to the scene of the legend, as well as to the royal Villa Petraja, also immortalized in Browning’s poem.

  June came, the closing books of “Aurora Leigh” had been written, and under the roof of her dear friend and cousin, Kenyon, who had begged the Brownings to accept the loan of his house in Devonshire Place, the last pages were transcribed, and the dedication made to the generous friend who was the appointed good angel of their lives. They were saddened by Kenyon’s illness, which imprisoned him for that summer on the Isle of Wight, and after seeing “Aurora Leigh” through the press, they passed a little time with him at Cowes, and also visited Mrs. Browning’s sister Henrietta (Mrs. Surtees Cook), before setting out for Italy. No one in London missed them more than Dante Gabriel Rossetti. “With them has gone one of my delights,” he said; “an evening resort where I never felt unhappy.”

  Equestrian Statue of Ferdinando de’ medici,

  by Giovanni da Bologna.

  in the piazza dell’ annunziata, florence.

  “There’s a palace in Florence the world knows well,

  And a statue watches it from the square.”

  The Ring and the Book.

  The success of “Aurora Leigh” was immediate, a second edition being called for within a fortnight, and edition after edition followed. This work, of which, twelve years before, she had a dim foreshadowing, as of a novel in verse, has the twofold interest of a great dramatic poem and of a philosophic commentary on art and life. To estimate it only as a social treatise is to recognize but one element in its kaleidoscopic interest. Yet the narrative, it must be confessed, is fantastic and unreal. When the conception of the work first dawned upon her, she said she preferred making her story to choosing that of any legend, for the theme; but the plot is its one defect, and is only saved from being a serious defect by the richness and splendor of thought with which it is invested. The poem is to some degree a spiritual autobiography; its narrative part having no foundation in reality, but on this foundation she has recorded her highest convictions on the philosophy of life. Love, Art, Ethics, the Christianity of Christ, — all are here, in this almost inexhaustible mine of intellectual and spiritual wealth. It is a poem peculiarly calculated to kindle and inspire. What a passage is this: