Complete Works of Elizabeth Barrett Browning

by Elizabeth Barrett Browning

  “... I can live

  At least my soul’s life, without alms from men,

  And if it be in heaven instead of earth,

  Let heaven look to it, — I am not afraid.”

  A profound occult truth is embodied in the following:

  “Whate’er our state we must have made it first;

  And though the thing displease us, — aye, perhaps,

  Displease us warrantably, never doubt

  That other states, though possible once, and then

  Rejected by the instinct of our lives,

  If then adopted had displeased us more.

  ······

  What we choose may not be good;

  But that we choose it, proves it good for us.”

  No Oriental savant could more forcibly present his doctrine of karma than has Mrs. Browning in these lines. Her recognition of the power of poetry is here expressed:

  “And plant a poet’s word even deep enough

  In any man’s breast, looking presently

  For offshoots, you have done more for the man

  Than if you dressed him in a broadcloth coat,

  And warmed his Sunday pottage at your fire.”

  Poetry was to her as serious a thing as life itself. “There has been no playing at skittles for me in either poetry, or life,” she said; “I never mistook pleasure for the final cause of poetry; nor leisure, for the hour of the poet.”

  In the success of “Aurora Leigh” she was herself surprised. Private letters from strangers filled with the warmest, even if sometimes indiscriminate, praises, rained down upon her, and she found the press “astonishing in its good will.” That her “golden-hearted Robert” was “in ecstasies about it, far more than as if it had been a book of his own,” was apparently her most precious reward. Milsand, who she had fancied would hardly like this poem, wrote a critique of it for the Revue which touched her with its “extraordinary kindness.” He asked and obtained permission to translate it into French, and in a letter to Miss Sarianna Browning she speaks of her happiness that he should thus distinguish the poem.

  Soon after their arrival in Florence came the saddest of news, that of the death of John Kenyon, their beloved friend, whose last thoughtful kindness was to endow them with a legacy insuring to them that freedom from material care which is so indispensable to the best achievements in art. During his life he had given to them one hundred pounds a year, and in his will he left them ten thousand guineas, — the largest of the many legacies that his generous will contained.

  The carnival, always gay in Florence, was exceedingly so that year, and Penini, whose ardor for a blue domino was gratified, and who thought of nothing else for the time being, seemed to communicate his raptures, so that Browning proposed taking a box at the opera ball, and entertaining some invited friends with gallantina and champagne. Suddenly the air grew very mild, and he decided that his wife might and must go; she sent out hastily to buy a mask and domino (he had already a beautiful black silk one, which she later transmuted into a black silk gown for herself), and while her endurance and amusement kept her till two o’clock in the morning, the poet and his friends remained till after four. The Italian carnival, however wild and free it may be (and is), yet never degenerates into rudeness. The inborn delicacy and gentle refinement of the people render this impossible. Yet for the time being there is perfect social equality, and at this ball the Grand Duke and Wilson’s husband, Ferdinando, were on terms of fellowship.

  In the early April of that spring the summer suddenly dawned upon lovely Florence like a transformation scene on a stage. The trees in the Cascine were all a “green mist.” Everywhere was that ethereal enchantment of the Flower City, with her gleaming towers and domes, her encircling purple hills and picturesque streets. And how, indeed, could any one who has watched the loveliness of a Florentine springtime ever escape its haunting spell? The dweller in Italy may see a thousand things to desire, — better public privileges, more facilities for comfort, but the day comes when, if he has learned to love the Italian atmosphere so intensely that all the glories of earth could not begin to compensate for it, he would give every conceivable achievement of modern art and progress for one hour among those purple hills, for one hour with the sunset splendors over the towers, and the olive-crowned heights of Fiesole and Bellosguardo; or to hear again the impassioned strains of street singers ring out in pathetic intensity in the bewildering moonlight. La Bella Firenze, lying dream-enchanted among her amethyst hills, would draw her lover from the wilds of Siberia, for even one of those etherial evenings, when the stars blaze in a splendor over San Miniato, or one rose-crowned morning, when the golden sunshine gilds the tower of the old cathedral on Fiesole.

  In that spring Mrs. Stowe visited Florence, and the Brownings liked her and rejoiced that she had moved the world for good. To Mrs. Jameson Mrs. Browning wrote that “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” was a “sign of the times.” She read Victor Hugo’s “Contemplations,” finding some of the personal poems “overcoming in their pathos”; they went to tea on the terrace at Bellosguardo, in April evenings, gazing over Florence veiled in transparent blue haze in the valley below.

  In this April Mrs. Browning’s father died; she had never ceased to hope for reconciliation, and her sorrow was great, but, as usual, she was gently serene, “not despondingly calm,” she said. Mrs. Jameson again came to Florence, and there were more teas on overhanging terraces, and enjoyments of the divine sunsets.

  In August they went with Miss Blagden, Mr. Lytton, and one or two others to again make villeggiatura at Bagni di Lucca, where Mrs. Browning rose every morning at six to bathe in the rapid little mountain stream, — finding herself strengthened by this heroic practice, — and Penini flourished “like a rose possessed by a fairy.”

  The succeeding winter was passed in Florence, Mrs. Browning instructing her little son in German, and herself reveled in French and German romances. Her rest was always gained in lying on the sofa and reading novels; Browning, who cared little for fiction, found his relaxation in drawing. He taught Penini on the piano, and the boy read French, German, and Italian every day, and played in the open air under the very shadow of the Palazzo Pitti.

  Villa Petraja, near Florence.

  “... Try if Petraja, cool and green.

  Cure last night’s fault with this morning’s flowers.”

  The Statue and the Bust.

  The Hawthornes, who had met the Brownings in London at a breakfast given by Lord Houghton, came up from Rome, and Mrs. Hawthorne declared that the grasp of Browning’s hand “gives a new value to life.” They passed an evening at Casa Guidi, and Mrs. Hawthorne recorded that in the corridor, as they entered, was a little boy who answered in the affirmative as to whether he were “Penini,” and who “looked like a waif of poetry, lovelier still in the bright light of the drawing-room.” Mr. Browning instantly appeared with his cordial welcome, leading them into the salon that looked out on the terrace, filled with growing plants. From San Felice there came the chanting of music, and the flowers, the melody, the stars hanging low in the sky, all ablaze over San Miniato, with the poet and his child, all conspired to entrance the sensitive and poetic Mrs. Hawthorne. Then Mrs. Browning came in, “delicate, like a spirit, the ethereal poet-wife, with a cloud of curls half concealing her face, and with the fairy fingers that gave a warm, human pressure, — a very embodiment of heart and intellect.” Mrs. Hawthorne had brought her a branch of pink roses, which Mrs. Browning pinned on her black velvet gown.

  They were taken into the drawing-room, a lofty, spacious apartment where Gobelin tapestries, richly carved furniture, pictures, and vertu all enchanted Mrs. Hawthorne, and they talked “on no very noteworthy topics,” Hawthorne afterward recorded, though he added that he wondered that the conversation of Browning should be so clear and so much to the purpose, considering that in his poetry one ran “into the high grass of obscure allusion.” The poet Bryant and his daughter were present that evening, a little to the regre
t of Mrs. Hawthorne, and there were tea and strawberries, Mrs. Browning presiding at the tray, and Penini, “graceful as Ganymede,” passing the cake.

  The Brownings left Florence soon after this evening. The summer of 1858 was passed in Normandy, in company with Mr. Browning’s father and his sister Sarianna, all of them occupying together a house on the shore of the Channel, near Havre. They confessed themselves in a heavenly state of mind, equally appreciative of the French people, — manners, cooking, cutlets, and costumes, all regarded with perpetual admiration. Penini, too, was by no means behind in his pretty, childish enthusiasms. He was now nine years of age, reading easily French and German, as well as the two languages, English and Italian — each of which was as much his native tongue as the other — and with much proficiency at the piano. Browning already played duets with his little son, while the happy mother looked smilingly on. Mrs. Browning was one who lived daily her real life. For there is much truth in the Oriental truism that our real life is that which we do not live, — in our present environment, at least. She always gave of her best because she herself dwelt in the perpetual atmosphere of high thought. Full of glancing humor and playfulness of expression, never scorning homely conditions, she yet lived constantly in the realm of nobleness.

  “Poets become such

  By scorning nothing,”

  she has said.

  The following winter found them again in Rome, where Mrs. Browning was much occupied with Italian politics. Her two deepest convictions were faith in the honest purposes of Louis Napoleon, and her enthusiasm for Italian liberty and unity. In her poem, “A Tale of Villafranca,” she expressed her convictions and feelings. One of their nearer friends in Rome was Massimo d’Azeglio, the Prime Minister of Piedmont from 1849 to 1852, one of the purest of Italian patriots, who was full of hope for Italy. The English Minister Plenipotentiary to Rome at that time was Lord Odo Russell, and when the Prince of Wales (later King Edward VII) arrived in Rome, the Minister (later Lord Ampthill) invited (through Colonel Bruce) several gentlemen to meet him, Colonel Bruce said to Browning that he knew it “would gratify the Queen that the Prince should make the acquaintance of Mr. Browning.” Mrs. Browning spoke of “the little prince” in one of her letters to Isa Blagden as “a gentle, refined boy,” and she notes how Massimo d’Azeglio came to see them, and talked nobly, and confesses herself more proud of his visit “than of another personal distinction, though I don’t pretend to have been insensible to that,” she adds, evidently referring to the meeting with the young prince.

  Mrs. Browning’s love for novels seemed to have been inherited by her son, for this winter he was reading an Italian translation of “Monte Cristo” with such enthusiasm as to resolve to devote his life to fiction. “Dear Mama,” he gravely remarked, “for the future I mean to read novels. I shall read all Dumas’s to begin.”

  On their return to Florence in the spring, Mrs. Browning gives William Page a letter of introduction to Ruskin, commending Mr. Page “as a man earnest, simple and noble, who “has not been successful in life, and when I say life I include art, which is life to him. You will recognize in this name Page,” she continues, “the painter of Robert’s portrait which you praised for its Venetian color, and criticised in other respects,” she concluded. And she desires Ruskin to know the “wonder and light and color and space and air” that Page had put into his “Venus Rising from the Sea,” which the Paris salon of that summer had refused on the ground of its nudity, — a scruple that certainly widely differentiates the Salon of 1858 from that of 1911.

  Salvini, even then already recognized as a great artist, was playing in a theater in Florence that spring, and the Brownings saw with great enjoyment and admiration his impersonations of Hamlet and Othello.

  On a glowing June morning Browning was crossing the Piazza San Lorenzo, when the market-folk had all their curious wares of odds and ends spread about on tables. At one of these he chanced on “the square old yellow book” which held the story of the Franceschini tragedy, which the poet’s art transmuted into his greatest poem, “The Ring and the Book.” No other single work of Browning’s can rival this in scope and power. It would seem as if he had, at the moment, almost a prescience of the incalculable value of this crumpled and dilapidated volume; as if he intuitively recognized what he afterward referred to as “the predestination.” On his way homeward he opened the book;

  “... through street and street,

  At the Strozzi, at the Pillar, at the Bridge;

  Till, by the time I stood at home again

  In Casa Guidi by Felice Church,

  ······

  I had mastered the contents, knew the whole truth.”

  In this brief time he had comprehended the entire story of the trial and execution of Count Guido Franceschino, Nobleman of Arezzo, for the murder of his wife, Pompilia, and apparently much of the conception of his great work of future years, “The Ring and the Book,” took possession of him at once. But it was like the seed that must germinate and grow. Little indeed did he dream that in this chance purchase he had been led to the material for the supreme achievement of his art.

  One evening before leaving Florence for Siena, where the Brownings had taken the Villa Alberti for the summer, they had Walter Savage Landor to tea, and also Miss Blagden and Kate Field, then a young girl, studying music in Florence, who was under Miss Blagden’s charge. Just as the tea was placed on the table, Browning turned to his honored guest, and thanked him for his defense of old songs; and opening Landor’s latest book, “Last Fruit,” he read in a clear, vibrant voice from the “Idylls of Theocritus.” The chivalrous deference touched the aged poet. “Ah, you are kind,” said he; “you always find out the best bits in my books.”

  Church Of San Miniato, near Florence.

  “Came she, our new crescent of a hair’s breadth.

  Full she flared it, lamping Samminiato.”

  One Word More.

  The loyal homage rendered by the younger poet, in all the glow of his power, to the “old master,” was lovely to see. As will be recalled, Landor had been one of the first to recognize the genius of Browning when his youthful poem, “Paracelsus,” appeared. Landor had then written to Southey: “God grant that Robert Browning live to be much greater, high as he now stands among most of the living.”

  It was one noon soon after this evening that Landor came to Casa Guidi, desolate and distraught, declaring he had left his villa on the Fiesolean slope never to return, because of his domestic difficulties. The Brownings were about leaving for Siena and Mr. Browning decided to engage an apartment for the venerable poet, when the Storys, who were making villeggiatura in the strange old medieval city, invited Landor to be their guest. The villa where the Storys were domiciled was near the Brownings, and Landor was much in both households. “He made us a long visit,” wrote Mrs. Story, “and was our honored and cherished guest. His courtesy and high breeding never failed him.” Landor would often be seen astir in the early dawn, sitting under the olive trees in the garden, writing Latin verses. To Kate Field, who had become a great favorite with the Brownings, Mr. Browning wrote with some bit of verse of Landor’s:

  Siena, Villa Alberti, July 18.

  Dear Miss Field: — I have only a minute to say that Mr. Landor wrote these really pretty lines in your honor the other day, — you remember on what circumstances they turn. I know somebody who is ready to versify to double the extent at the same cost to you, and do his best, too, and you also know.

  Yours Affectionately Ever,

  R. B.

  The servant waits for this and stops the expansion of soul!

  P. S. ... What do you mean by pretending that we are not the obliged, the grateful people? Your stay had made us so happy, come and make us happy again, says (or would say were she not asleep) my wife, and yours also, —

  R. B.

  Of Landor, while they were in Siena, Mrs. Browning wrote to a friend that Robert always said he owed more to him than any other contemporary, an
d that Landor’s genius insured him the gratitude of all artists. In these idyllic days Mr. Story’s young daughter, Edith, (now the Marchesa Peruzzi di Medici, of Florence,) had a birthday, which the poetic group all united to celebrate. In honor of the occasion Landor not only wrote a Latin poem for the charming girl, but he appeared in a wonderful flowered waistcoat, one that dated back to the days of Lady Blessington, to the amusement of all the group. From Isa Blagden, who remained in her villa on Bellosguardo, came almost daily letters to Mrs. Browning, who constantly gained strength in the life-giving air of Siena, where they looked afar over a panorama of purple hills, with scarlet sunsets flaming in the west, the wind blowing nearly every day, as now. The Cave of the Winds, as celebrated by Virgil, might well have been located in Siena.