Complete Works of Elizabeth Barrett Browning

by Elizabeth Barrett Browning

  “He showed me many of Mrs. Browning’s books — nearly all of them 24mo editions — said she couldn’t hold big books — English, French, Italian, Latin, and Greek books; a Hebrew Bible which had belonged to a distinguished English bishop, whose name I’ve forgotten. ‘Did Mrs. Browning read Hebrew?’ I asked. ‘Oh, yes,’ he replied, and added with a sigh, ‘she was a wonderful woman.’”

  Church of San Lorenzo, Florence

  “June was the month, Lorenzo named the Square.”

  The Ring and the Book.

  The succeeding summer found the Corsons again in London, and the following invitation from Browning particularly pleased them in its assurance that “nobody else” would be present.

  Dear Professor Corson, — Could Mrs. Corson and yourself do my sister and me the great pleasure of taking luncheon with us — and nobody else — next Tuesday (27th) at one o’clock?

  Believe me, dear Professor Corson,

  Yours Truly Ever, —

  Robert Browning.

  On Browning’s return to England in 1861, after his wife’s death, he had entered into a most brilliant and congenial social life. Thackeray died soon after his return; but there were Carlyle, Ruskin, Jowett, Millais, Rossetti, Proctor, Matthew Arnold, Woolner, Leighton, Tennyson (whose companionship, as we have seen, was one of his keenest enjoyments), and his publisher, George Murray Smith, of the head of the house of Smith, Elder, and Company, who was one of his chosen friends. Carlyle died in 1881, but many of this group well outlived Browning. On New Year’s Day of 1884 Miss Browning wrote to Mrs. Bronson:

  The very first word I write this year is to you, dearest friend, wishing you every good gift the earth below, and Heaven above, can offer. If Robert does not write his own share in these kind feelings, it is only because we have mutually agreed that we shall come more constantly before you if we keep our letters apart.

  ... You cannot think how incessantly we dwell on the memories of the pleasant past. We are in Casa Alvisi in spirit daily, and I picture to myself all that is going on in the well-loved rooms. I hope Edith works at her guitar. She will find that it will repay the trouble.

  Give our kindest love to her, and take yourself our loving hearts.

  God bless you this year.

  Ever Yours Affectionately,

  Sarianna Browning.

  In a letter to Mrs. Bronson Browning alludes to the purchase of the new house in DeVere Gardens:

  “... I am really in treaty — not too deeply in it for extrication at need — with the land-owner who proposes to build me the house I want, — freehold, if you please! so that it can be Pen’s after me; my notion is to contract just what Sarianna and I require now, leaving it in the said Pen’s power to add and alter according to future advisability.”

  Portions of other letters from Browning to Mrs. Bronson are as follows. The first refers to the little daughter of Princess Mélanie Metternich.

  “First and worst of all, dear friend, how truly grieved I am to hear of the sad end of the poor little girl I remember so well. Do you remember how she, with her sister, walked before us on our way homeward from the Piazza on nearly our last evening? And how prettily she asked me at her own house to write in her Birthday Book! All this sudden extinction of light in the gay Ca’ Bembo, where I saw the silks bespread before your knowledge and my ignorance!

  “It is needless to say how much I pity the Princess, and her kindly husband, too, and I am sorry, very sorry, for you also, Dear Friend of mine, well knowing how you must have suffered in degree.”

  Mrs. Bronson had a talent for the writing of drawing-room comedies, and to one of these the poet alludes:

  “Dear Friend, — I kept your Comedietta by me a whole week that I might taste of it again and again; how clever it is, who can know better than I, who furnished the bare framework which your Virginia creeper has over-flourished so charmingly? It is all capitally done; quite as much elaborated as the little conception was worth; but its great value to me is the proof it really gives what really good work you might do on a larger scale....

  “... I dined last evening at John Murray’s, in the room where used to meet Byron, Scott, Moore, all those famous men of old, whose portraits still adorn the walls. Murray told me he well remembered Byron and his ways; could still in fancy see him and Scott, and also hear them, as they stamped heavily (lame as both were) down the somewhat narrow stairs. Sociability may well come to the relief of people who cannot amuse themselves at home, for the weather, mild, and too mild, is gray, sunless and spiritless, altogether. To-day it rains, a rare occurrence....”

  One of the very pleasant interludes in Mr. Browning’s life came about this time in the receipt of a letter from Professor Masson of the University of Edinburgh, inviting the poet to be his guest the week of the coming Tercentenary celebration of the University. It had been decided to confer on Mr. Browning an Honorary Degree, but by some misadventure the official letter announcing this had not reached him, and in reply to Professor Masson he wrote that he had not received “the invitation to Edinburgh which occasions this particularly kind one,” which he thankfully acknowledged, “but I should find it difficult if not impossible to leave London in April,” he continues, “as my son will then be with me; but had I seen my way in so doing it would delight me, indeed, could I spend the days in question with you and Mrs. Masson.” He added that if ever he was privileged “to see the as famous as beautiful City again,” he should call on the Massons the first thing of all, and he desired thanks to Mrs. Masson “for associating her goodness with yours.”

  Apparently another letter appears from Professor Masson, but still Browning does not receive the official invitation of the University. “Should it follow,” he writes, “I will acknowledge the distinction as gratefully as I have done already when it was conferred by Oxford and Cambridge.” The Massons also invited Mr. Browning to bring his son with him, and he responded:

  “... So, my dear Professor Masson, I provisionally accept your hospitality with thankfulness, and that of Mrs. Masson. For my son, who is away, I can only say that he shall be informed of your goodness, and I fully believe will be delighted to avail himself of it.... As to the ‘vagueness or intelligibility’ of your note, I can assure you that one thing was intelligible enough, — that you wished to help me most kindly and pleasantly to witness an extremely interesting ceremony, and I have written to my son and his answer you shall hear as soon as possible.... By the way, ought I to attend in the Oxford D.C.L. gown, — at any preliminary entertainment, for instance.”

  The next letter tells its own story.

  19, Warwick Crescent, W.

  March 25th, 1884.

  My Dear Professor Masson, — Nothing can be kinder than all your proposed arrangements. My son arrived two days ago, and, unfortunately, is obliged to return to Paris next week in order to finish work begun there — and he will be detained too long to allow of the visit which he would otherwise delight in paying you and for the invitation to which he desires me to offer you and Mrs. Masson his grateful acknowledgments, being well aware of what a privilege he is forced to deprive himself.... I shall bring the Oxford D.C.L. gown and provide myself with a Hood in Edinburgh.

  So, with repeated thanks for all your goodness, and looking forward with much pleasure to the approaching festivities, and even more in the opportunity to converse, believe me, my dear Professor Masson,

  Yours Very Sincerely,

  Robert Browning.

  Miss Rosaline Masson, the Professor’s daughter, has described how Browning sat before the fire the evening of his arrival, in an armchair, his hands resting on it, while he spoke with sympathetic pride of his son’s work, and told how the son, who had studied so much abroad, had once announced to Millais his intention of going to Egypt to paint, and that Millais had replied that he would not give up his months in the highlands of Scotland for any years in Egypt.

  The Massons had as their guests for this great commemoration the Count and Countess Aurelio Saffi,
the Count bringing with him his gorgeous Bologna gown, in which he had the resplendence of a figure in a stained glass window.

  The week was a most enjoyable one to Mr. Browning. Receptions and dinners made up a round of festivity, and when he was asked by his hostess if he objected to all the adulation he received, he replied: “Object to it? No; I have waited forty years for it and now — I like it.”

  After his return to London he sent to Mrs. Masson two manuscripts of Mrs. Browning’s, her translations of “Psyche and Pan” and of “Psyche Propitiating Ceres,” and to Professor Masson a letter from Leigh Hunt to himself, which the Professor had wished to copy, — the original which he sent being written on sheets of different colors held together with colored embroidery.

  Browning wrote to his host that he had read with delight his two lectures on Carlyle, and that “the goodness of that memorable week” was never long out of his mind.

  The letters written to Mrs. Bronson offer almost a panoramic picture of his life over all these closing years. Alluding to a studio that he had taken for the temporary accommodation of his son’s pictures and busts, Mr. Browning resumes:

  ... Pen’s statues and busts are in bronze now, and his large “Idyl,” three landscapes, and whatsoever else, to arrive soon. Were you only here to see! Well, you can bear with the talking about them you shall undergo, for we two understand each other, don’t we? I know I am ever yours and your own Edith’s affectionately,

  Robert Browning.

  In the late summer Browning and his sister were the guests of Mrs. Bloomfield Moore, in her villa at St. Moritz, from which Mr. Browning thus writes to Mrs. Bronson:

  Villa Berry, St. Moritz, Ober Engadine.

  Sept. 6, ‘84.

  Yes, dearest friend, your pretty wreath came this morning, and opposite this table shall it hang till I leave the house, be it withered or no, and at present it is fresh. Now, thank you for what? For everything, your love, and thoughts, and regrets, too. Do not we, too, regret that Italy is closed to us; but the comfort out of the vexation is that you will, will you not, cross to London from Paris, and so we shall see you for all the multiplied hindrances. Now how do you suppose it is faring with us? We are alone. Our hostess was summoned to America last week, to her extreme regret, and after a hot business of telegraphing and being telegraphed to, left last Wednesday. She had taken this comfortable villa till the middle of December, and would not hear of our quitting it, and, all things considered, we had little inclination to do so, for you were from home, and what would be the good of lingering out this month elsewhere, the air and influences happening to suit us extremely. So our plan is to stay out Sept. here, and be content with at most two months’ absence, instead of the four we utterly enjoyed last year. Mrs. Moore was altogether as kind and considerate as possible, and has made every possible provision for our comfort after her departure. We are quite alone. Friends are in the place, but we only get glimpses of them. The place is emptying fast, the pensions shut up, the walks on the mountain-side are wholly our own. Two days ago the snow fell thickly, and what a sight were the mountains next morning in a glowing sun! These changes I expect will diversify the whole month, and inside this warm, pleasant room Sarianna and I read, and don’t require “the devil to find some missing ill for idle hands to do.” You have much more to enjoy with all that good music thrown in, and I am glad for you. We get books and papers enough, and I am correcting proofs of the poem I was too negligent about in London. Many distractions stood in the way of that. After all, we have attained the main object of our journey, the complete re-establishment of Sarianna’s health, who walks twice a day, just as of old. I am cheered, too, by letters from Robert, the last of which comes just now.

  He was anxious that his statue of “Dryope” should be seen at the Brussels exhibition, a triennial one, and important from the concurrence of the best foreign artists; but the “Grosvenor,” where it was shown, did not close till the first week in August, while the Brussels Gallery was closed to (entrance of) works on the 25th of July. Robert sent his photographs with a petition for a “delai,” only exceptionally granted; the committee conceded it unanimously, and have given it a place where it stands by itself, and is capitally seen. He went to see it, and so did the King and Queen, to whom he would have been presented, had he not been in morning dress. (The father of Robert to the mother of Edith.) You know very well how interested and delighted I shall be to read your German translations if you send them; do!

  Again, from this invigorating mountain village Browning writes to his Venetian friend and hostess in Casa Alvisi:

  Villa Berry, St. Moritz, Engadine, S.

  Sept. 23, ‘84.

  For first thing, dearest friend, I am glad to know that my letter with the poems reached you before your departure. I had some fear that you might miss it. It is like your goodness to care so much about what amounts to so little. I did what I could to be of use by amending; I could have done more to the purpose if the poems were original; but I know your translations were faithful, as they should be. When you write out of your own dear head let me see, and try hard to improve it, never so little. I well remember the whole book of verses you let me read at Venice; I could not well have helped you there. And now for a sorrow after the gladness; we do not pass through Paris this time, but take the direct and more convenient route by Amiens and Calais. Last year we wanted, or needed, to see Pen, who was at his Paris studio; but now he is still in Dinard. I do not know when he means to leave; if he finds you at Paris it will be a delight for him to see you....

  Well, yes, the king’s behavior has been admirable; what a chance the poor Pope has thrown away in not preceding him! If the “Prisoner of the Vatican” had quietly walked out of his confinement, with a Cross before him, and an attendant on each side, and passed on to Naples and the hospitals “braving all danger in imitation of his Master,” I verily believe there might have happened a revolution. Such events from much less causes being frequent enough. Where is the “wisdom of the serpent”?

  Dearest friend, my sister writes, all love to Edith, all love to you, from your ever affectionate

  Robert Browning.

  On their return to London the letters to Mrs. Bronson again resume the story of this interesting life:

  “... I have got rid of my last proof-sheets, and all of a sudden it occurs to me to ask — now that alteration is impossible, I suppose — whether I have offended in just dating the last poem from the place where I wrote it — the Giustiniani? The first poem was dated at the inn, and the last seemed to belong to the beloved place where it was penned, as I wanted to remember, or be remembered, rather. Have I done wrong? (I hear at this moment my sister actually singing in the next room, — so completely is she re-established in health.) By letters we find that the admirable weather at St. Moritz was continued up to the end of the last week; here the weather is fine, and finer than usual, but the sparkle is off the wine, the wonderful freshness of St. Moritz does not incline one to dance rather than walk.

  “I am in absolute peace and quietude, and so thoroughly prepared to enjoy your coming, — if that may be....”

  The next letter speaks of American friends:

  19, Warwick Crescent, W.

  Oct. 14, ‘84.

  Dearest Friend, — I waited a little before replying to your letter, wanting to be sure when I could say that Pen would be in Paris; he proposed to go there yesterday, and you will certainly have a visit from him as soon as he can manage to do what I know he desires very much.

  Here are your verses which I try to be as severe about as possible, with no success, at all, worth speaking of! You will take my corrections (infinitesimal, this time) for what they are worth, and continue to send me what you write, will you not?

  I was surprised two days ago by a note from Mr. Lowell, inviting me and my sister to meet the Storys at dinner to-morrow, they being his guests during a short stay in London; and yesterday afternoon they called on my sister, both the Storys and Mr. Lowell
; the former are flourishing, and go in a few days to Rome. Where they have passed the summer, we were not told. Last evening at a dinner given by Sidney Colvin, I met Mr. James, who showed great interest in hearing how you were, and how much nearer you were likely to be. On the other hand, there will be a sad visitor to Venice presently, Professor Huxley, in a deplorable state of health, from over-work. I hate to speak of what is only too present with me, — your own health, — I trust you have got rid of that cough, (all dreadful things go with a cough in my memory.)...

  ... My book, which you kindly inquire about, is out of my hands and in print, but the publishing, the when and how, concerns the publisher. I do not expect to see the completed thing for another month.

  Yes, I felt so lovingly to the Giustinian-Reconnati that I could not bear cutting the link allowed by the Place and Date that were appended to the Ms., and you permit, so all is well, if you remember me as ever affectionately yours,

  Robert Browning.

  Under date of October 23, 1884, Browning says in one letter:

  “I saw Huxley’s brother-in-law, Sir Robert Collier, last evening, at Dr. Granville’s, and inquired about the stay in Venice. It will be a very short one as he has to return almost immediately for the marriage of his daughter Rachel; I can hardly think he will re-return, the ceremony at an end, yet he may; and in that case he shall be informed of your goodness to himward, in apostolically appropriate language. He is a thoroughly admirable person in all but his inconsiderateness in this waste of a precious life. I duly told the Storys how much you wanted to see them, and they probably have seen you by this time. Mrs. Story meant to rest at Paris, and forego the Amiens route. She has been unwell, but I thought her appearance very satisfactory. I dined with them last week at Mr. Lowell’s, and called there on Sunday. I met Henry James the other day, and surprised as well as inspirited him by the news that you were so near, and, as I believed, so soon to be nearer. Now write to me, tell me all you are about to do; how is dear Edith?...