So, take and use Thy work,
Amend what flaws may lurk,
What strain o' the stuff, what warpings past the aim:
My times be in Thy hand!
Perfect the cup as planned!
Let age approve of youth, and death complete the same.
--_Rabbi Ben Ezra_
[Illustration: ROBERT BROWNING]
If there ever lived a poet to whom the best minds pour out libations, it
is Robert Browning. We think of him as dwelling on high Olympus; we read
his lines by the light of dim candles; we quote him in sonorous monotone
at twilight when soft-sounding organ-chants come to us mellow and sweet.
Browning's poems form a lover's litany to that elect few who hold that the
true mating of a man and a woman is the marriage of the mind. And thrice
blest was Browning, in that Fate allowed him to live his philosophy--to
work his poetry up into life, and then again to transmute life and love
into art. Fate was kind: success came his way so slowly that he was never
subjected to the fierce, dazzling searchlight of publicity; his
recognition in youth was limited to a few obscure friends and neighbors.
And when distance divided him from these, they forgot him; so there seems
a hiatus in his history, when for a score of years literary England dimly
remembered some one by the name of Browning, but could not just place him.
About the year Eighteen Hundred Sixty-eight the author of "Sordello" was
induced to appear at an evening of "Uncut Leaves" at the house of a
nobleman at the West End, London. James Russell Lowell was present and
was congratulated by a lady, sitting next to him, on the fact that
Browning was an American.
"But only by adoption!" answered the gracious Lowell.
"Yes," said the lady; "I believe his father was an Englishman, so you
Americans can not have all the credit; but surely he shows the Negro or
Indian blood of his mother. Very clever, isn't he?--so very clever!"
Browning's swarthy complexion, and the fine poise of the man--the entire
absence of "nerves," as often shown in the savage--seemed to carry out the
idea that his was a peculiar pedigree. In his youth, when his hair was as
black as the raven's wing and coarse as a horse-tail, and his complexion
mahogany, the report that he was a Creole found ready credence. And so did
this gossip of mixed parentage follow him that Mrs. Sutherland Orr, in her
biography, takes an entire chapter to prove that in Robert Browning's
veins there flowed neither Indian nor Negro blood.
Doctor Furnivall, however, explains that Browning's grandmother on his
father's side came from the West Indies, that nothing is known of her
family history, and that she was a Creole.
And beyond this, the fact is stated that Robert Browning was quite pleased
when he used to be taken for a Jew--a conclusion made plausible by his
complexion, hair and features.
In its dead-serious, hero-worshiping attitude, the life of Robert
Browning by Mrs. Orr deserves to rank with Weems' "Life of Washington." It
is the brief of an attorney for the defense. "Little-Willie" anecdotes
appear on every page.
And thus do we behold the tendency to make Browning something more than a
man--and, therefore, something less.
Possibly women are given to this sort of thing more than men--I am not
sure. But this I know, every young woman regards her lover as a distinct
and peculiar personage, different from all others--as if this were a
virtue--the only one of his kind. Later, if Fate is kind, she learns that
her own experience is not unique. We all easily fit into a type, and each
is but a representative of his class.
Robert Browning sprang from a line of clerks and small merchants; but as
indemnity for the lack of a family 'scutcheon, we are told that his uncle,
Reuben Browning, was a sure-enough poet. For once in an idle hour he threw
off a little thing for an inscription to be placed on a presentation
ink-bottle, and Disraeli seeing it, declared, "Nothing like this has ever
before been written!"
Beyond doubt, Disraeli made the statement--it bears his earmark. It will
be remembered that the Earl of Beaconsfield had a stock form for
acknowledging receipt of the many books sent to him by aspiring authors.
It ran something like this: "The Earl of Beaconsfield begs to thank the
gifted author of----for a copy of his book, and gives the hearty assurance
that he will waste no time in reading the volume."
And further, the fact is set forth with unction that Robert Browning was
entrusted with a latchkey early in life, and that he always gave his
mother a good-night kiss. He gave her the good-night kiss willy-nilly. If
she had retired when he came home, he used the trusty latchkey and went to
her room to imprint on her lips the good-night kiss. He did this, the
biographer would have us believe, to convince the good mother that his
breath was what it should be; and he awakened her so she would know the
hour was seasonable.
In many manufactories there is an electric apparatus wherewith every
employee registers when he arrives, by turning a key or pushing a button.
Robert Browning always fearlessly registered as soon as he got home--this
according to Mrs. Orr.
Unfortunately, or otherwise, there is a little scattered information which
makes us believe that Robert Browning's mother was not so fearful of her
son's conduct, nor suspicious as to his breath, as to lie awake nights and
keep tab on his hours. The world has never denied that Robert Browning was
entrusted with a latchkey, and it cares little if occasionally, early in
life, he fumbled for the keyhole. And my conception of his character is
such that, when in the few instances Aurora, rosy goddess of the morn,
marked his homecoming with chrome-red in the eastern sky, he did not
search the sleeping-rooms for his mother to apprise her of the hour.
In one place Mrs. Orr avers, in a voice hushed with emotion, that Browning
carefully read all of Johnson's Dictionary "as a fit preparation for a
literary career." Without any attempt to deny that the perusal of a
dictionary is "fit preparation for a literary career," I yet fear me that
the learned biographer, in a warm anxiety to prove the man exceeding
studious and very virtuous, has tipped a bit to t' other side.
She has apotheosized her subject--and in an attempt to portray him as a
peculiar person, set apart, has well-nigh given us a being without hands,
feet, eyes, ears, organs, dimensions, passions.
But after a careful study of the data, various visits to the places where
he lived in England, trips to Casa Guidi, views from Casa Guidi windows, a
journey to Palazzo Rezzonico at Venice, where he died, and many a pious
pilgrimage to Poets' Corner, in Westminster Abbey, where he sleeps, I am
constrained to believe that Robert Browning was made from the same kind of
clay as the rest of us. He was human--he was splendidly human.
* * * * *
Browning's father was a bank-clerk; and Robert Browning, the Third, author
of "Paracelsus," could have secured his father's place in the Bank of
England, if he had had ambitions. And the fact that he had not was a
source of silent sorrow to the father, even to the day of his death, in
Eighteen Hundred Sixty-six.
Robert Browning, the grandfather, entered the Bank as an errand-boy, and
rose by slow stages to Principal of the Stock-Room. He served the Bank
full half a century, and saved from his salary a goodly competence. This
money, tightly and rightly invested, passed to his son. The son never
secured the complete favor of his employers that the father had known, but
he added to his weekly stipend by what a writer terms, "legitimate
perquisites." This, being literally interpreted, means that he purchased
paper, pens and sealing-wax for the use of the Bank, and charged the goods
in at his own price, doubtless with the consent of his superior, with whom
he divided profits. He could have parodied the remark of Fletcher of
Saltoun and said, "Let me supply the perquisite-requisites and I care not
who makes the laws." So he grew rich--moderately rich--and lived simply
and comfortably up at Camberwell, with only one besetting dissipation: he
was a book-collector and had learned more Greek than Robert the Third was
to acquire. He searched bookstalls on the way to the City in the morning,
and lay in wait for First Editions on the way home at night. When he had
a holiday, he went in search of a book. He sneaked books into the house,
and declared to his admonishing wife the next week that he had always
owned 'em, or that they were presented to him. The funds his father had
left him, his salary and "the perquisites," made a goodly income, but he
always complained of poverty. He was secretly hoarding sums so as to
secure certain books.
The shelves grew until they reached the ceiling, and then bookcases
invaded the dining-room. The collector didn't trust his wife with the
household purchasing; no bank-clerk ever does--and all the pennies were
needed for books. The good wife, having nothing else to do, grew anemic,
had neuralgia and lapsed into a Shut-in, wearing a pale-blue wrapper and
reclining on a couch, around which were piled--mountain-high--books.
The pale invalid used to imagine that the great cases were swaying and
dancing a minuet, and she fully expected the tomes would all come
a-toppling down and smother her--and she didn't care much if they would;
but they never did. She was the mother of two children--the boy Robert,
born the year after her marriage; and in a little over another year a
daughter came, and this closed the family record.
The invalid mother was a woman of fine feeling and much poetic insight.
She didn't talk as much about books as her husband did, but I think she
knew the good ones better. The mother and son moused in books together,
and Mrs. Orr is surely right in her suggestion that this love of mother
and son took upon itself the nature of a passion.
The love of Robert Browning for Elizabeth Barrett was a revival and a
renewal, in many ways, of the condition of tenderness and sympathy that
existed between Browning and his mother. There certainly was a strange and
marked resemblance in the characters of Elizabeth Barrett and the mother
of Robert Browning; and to many this fully accounts for the instant
affection that Browning felt toward the occupant of the "darkened room,"
when first they met.
The book-collector took much pride in his boy, and used to take him on
book-hunting excursions, and sometimes to the Bank, on which occasions he
would tell the Beef-Eaters how this was Robert Browning, the Third, and
that all three of the R.B.'s were loyal servants of the Bank. And the
Beef-Eaters would rest their staves on the stone floor, and smile
Fifteenth-Century grimaces at the boy from under their cocked hats.
Robert the Third was a healthy, rollicking lad, with power plus, and a
deal of destructiveness in his nature. But destructiveness in a youngster
is only energy not yet properly directed, just as dirt is useful matter in
the wrong place.
To keep the boy out of mischief, he was sent to a sort of kindergarten,
kept by a spinster around the corner. The spinster devoted rather more
attention to the Browning boy than to her other pupils--she had to, to
keep him out of mischief--and soon the boy was quite the head scholar.
And they tell us that he was so much more clever than any of the other
scholars that, to appease the rising jealousy of the parents of the other
pupils, the diplomatic spinster requested that the boy be removed from her
school--all this according to the earnest biographer. The facts are that
the boy had so much energy and restless ambition; was so full of brimming
curiosity, mischief and imagination--introducing turtles, bats and mice on
various occasions--that he led the whole school a merry chase and wore the
nerves of the ancient maiden to a frazzle.
He had to go.
After this he studied at home with his mother. His father laid out a
schedule, and it was lived up to, for about a week.
Then a private tutor was tried, but soon this plan was abandoned, and a
system of reading, best described as "natural selection," was followed.
The boy was fourteen, and his sister was twelve, past. These are the ages
when children often experience a change of heart, as all "revivalists"
know. Robert Browning was swinging off towards atheism. He grew
melancholy, irritable and wrote stanzas of sentimental verse. He showed
this verse, high-sounding, stilted, bold and bilious, to his mother and
then to his father, and finally to Lizzie Flower.
A word about Lizzie Flower: She was nine years older than Robert Browning;
and she had a mind that was gracious and full of high aspiration. She
loved books, art, music, and all harmony made its appeal to her--and not
in vain. She wrote verses and, very sensibly, kept them locked in her
workbox; and then she painted in water-colors and worked in worsted. A
thoroughly good woman, she was far above the average in character, with a
half-minor key in her voice and a tinge of the heartbroken in her
composition, caused no one just knew how. Probably a certain young curate
at Saint Margaret's could have thrown light on this point; but he married,
took on a double chin, moved away to a fat living and never told.
No woman is ever wise or good until destiny has subdued her by grinding
her fondest hopes into the dust.
Lizzie Flower was wise and good.
She gave singing lessons to the Browning children. She taught Master
Robert Browning to draw.
She read to him some of her verses that were in the sewing-table drawer.
And her sister, Sarah Flower, two years older, afterwards Sarah Flower
Adams, read aloud to them a hymn she had just written, called, "Nearer, My
God, to Thee."
Then soon Master Robert showed the Flower girls some of the verses he had
written.
Robert liked Lizzie Flower first-rate, and told his mother so. A young
woman never cares anything for an unlicked cub, nine years younger than
herself, unless Fate has played pitch and toss with her heart's true love.
And then, the tendrils of the affections being ruthlessly lacerated and
uprooted, they cling to the first object that presents itself.
Lizzie Flower was a wallflower. That is to say, she had early in life rid
herself of the admiration of the many, by refusing to supply an unlimited
amount of small talk. In feature she was as plain as George Eliot. A boy
is plastic, and even a modest wallflower can woo him; but a man, for her,
inspires awe--with him she takes no liberties. And the wallflower woos the
youth unwittingly, thinking the while she is only using her influence the
better to instruct him.
It is fortunate for a boy escaping adolescence to be educated and loved
(the words are synonymous) by a good woman. Indeed, the youngster who has
not violently loved a woman old enough to be his mother has dropped
something out of his life that he will have to go back and pick up in
another incarnation.
I said Robert liked Lizzie Flower first-rate; and she declared that he was
the brightest and most receptive pupil she had ever had.
He was seventeen--she was twenty-six. They read Shelley, Keats and Byron
aloud, and together passed through the "Byronic Period." They became
violently atheistic, and at the same time decidedly religious: things that
seem paradoxical, but are not. They adopted a vegetable diet and for two
years they eschewed meat. They worshiped in the woods, feeling that the
groves were God's first temples; and sitting at the gnarled roots of some
great oak, they would read aloud, by turn, from "Queen Mab."
On one such excursion out across Hampstead Heath they lost their copy of
"Shelley" in the leaves, and a wit has told us that it sprouted, and as a
result--the flower and fruit--we have Browning's poem of "Pauline." And
this must be so, for Robert and Miss Flower (he always called her "Miss
Flower," but she called him "Robert") made many an excursion, in search of
the book, yet they never found it.
Robert now being eighteen, a man grown--not large, but very strong and
wiry--his father made arrangements for him to take a minor clerkship in
the Bank. But the boy rebelled--he was going to be an artist, or a poet,
or something like that.
The father argued that a man could be a poet and still work in a bank--the
salary was handy; and there was no money in poetry. In fact, he himself
was a poet, as his father had been before him. To be a bank-clerk and at
the same time a poet--what nobler ambition!
The young man was still stubborn. He was feeling discontented with his
environment: he was cramped, cabined, cribbed, confined. He wanted to get
out of the world of petty plodding and away from the silly round of
conventions, out into the world of art--or else of barbarism--he didn't
care which.
The latter way opened first, and a bit of wordy warfare with his father on
the subject of idleness sent him off to a gipsy camp at Epsom Downs. How
long he lived with the vagabonds we do not know, but his swarthy skin, and
his skill as a boxer and wrestler, recommended him to the ragged gentry,
and they received him as a brother.
It is probable that a week of pure vagabondia cured him of the idea that
civilization is a disease, for he came back home, made a bonfire of his
attire, and after a vigorous tubbing, was clothed in his right mind.
Groggy studies in French under a private tutor followed, and then came a
term as special student in Greek at London University.
To be nearer the school, he took lodgings in Gower Street; but within a
week a slight rough-house incident occurred that crippled most of the
furniture in his room and deprived the stair-rail of its spindles. R.
Browning, the Second, bank-clerk, paid the damages, and R. Browning, the
Third, aged twenty, came back home, formally notifying all parties
concerned that he had chosen a career--it was Poetry. He would woo the
Divine Goddess, no matter who opposed. There, now!
His mother was delighted; his father gave reluctant consent, declaring
that any course in life was better than vacillation; and Miss Flower, who
probably had sown the dragon's teeth, assumed a look of surprise, but gave
it as her opinion that Robert Browning would yet be Poet Laureate of
England.
* * * * *
Robert Browning awoke one morning with a start--it was the morning of his
thirtieth birthday. One's thirtieth birthday and one's seventieth are days
that press their message home with iron hand. With his seventieth
milestone past, a man feels that his work is done, and dim voices call to
him from across the Unseen. His work is done, and so illy, compared with
what he had wished and expected! But the impressions made upon his heart
by the day are no deeper than those his thirtieth birthday inspires. At
thirty, youth, with all it palliates and excuses, is gone forever. The
time for mere fooling is past; the young avoid you, or else look up to you
as a Nestor and tempt you to grow reminiscent. You are a man and must give
an account of yourself.
Out of the stillness came a Voice to Robert Browning saying, "What hast
thou done with the talent I gave thee?"
What had he done? It seemed to him at the moment as if he had done
nothing. He arose and looked into the mirror. A few gray hairs were mixed
in his beard; there were crow's feet on his forehead; and the first joyous
flush of youth had gone from his face forever. He was a bachelor, inwardly
at war with his environment, but making a bold front with his tuppence
worth of philosophy to conceal the unrest within.
A bachelor of thirty, strong in limb, clear in brain and yet a dependent!
No one but himself to support, and couldn't even do that! Gadzooks! Fie
upon all poetry and a plague upon this dumb, dense, shopkeeping,
beer-drinking nation upon which the sun never sets!
The father of Robert Browning had done everything a father could. He had
supplied board and books, and given his son an allowance of a pound a week
for ten years. He had sent him on a journey to Italy, and published
several volumes of the young man's verse at his own expense. And these
books were piled high in the garret, save a few that had been bought by
charitable friends or given away.
Robert Browning was not discouraged--oh no, not that!--only the world
seemed to stretch out in a dull, monotonous gray, where once it was green,
the color of hope, and all decked with flowers.
The little literary world of London knew Browning and respected him. He
was earnest and sincere and his personality carried weight. His face was
not handsome, but his manner was one of poise and purpose; and to come
within his aura and look into his calm eyes was to respect the man and
make obeisance to the intellect that you felt lay behind.
A few editors had gone out of their way to "discover" him to the world,
but their lavish reviews fell flat. Buyers would not buy--no one seemed to
want the wares of Robert Browning. He was hard to read, difficult,
obscure--or else there wasn't anything in it at all--they didn't know
which.
Fox, editor of the "Repository," had met Browning at the Flowers' and
liked him. He tried to make his verse go, but couldn't. Yet he did what he
could and insisted that Browning should go with him to the "Sunday
evenings" at Barry Cornwall's. There Browning met Leigh Hunt, Monckton
Milnes and Dickens. Then there were dinner-parties at Sergeant Talfourd's,
where he got acquainted with Wordsworth, Walter Savage Landor and
Macready.
Macready impressed him greatly and he impressed Macready. He gave the
actor a copy of "Paracelsus" (one of the pile in the garret) and Macready
suggested he write a play. "Strafford" was the result, and we know it was
stillborn, and caused a very frosty feeling to exist for many a year
between the author and the actor. When a play fails, the author blames the
actor and the actor damns the author. These men were human. Of course
Browning's kinsmen all considered him a failure, and when the father paid
over the weekly allowance he often rubbed it in a bit. Lizzie Flower had
modified her prophecy as to the Laureateship, but was still loyal. They
had tiffed occasionally, and broken off the friendship, and once I believe
returned letters. To marry was out of the question--he couldn't support
himself--and besides that, they were old, demnition old; he was past
thirty and she was forty--Gramercy!
They tiffed.
Then they made up.
In the meantime Browning had formed a friendship, very firm and frank, but
strictly Platonic, of course, for Fanny Haworth. Miss Haworth had seen
more of the world than Miss Flower--she was an artist, a writer, and moved
in the best society. Browning and Miss Haworth wrote letters to each other
for a while most every day, and he called on her every Wednesday and
Saturday evening.
Miss Haworth bought and gave away many copies of "Pauline," "Sordello" and
"Paracelsus"; and informed her friends that "Pippa Passes" and "Two in a
Gondola" were great quality.
About this time we find Edward Moxon, the publisher (who married the
adopted daughter of Charles and Mary Lamb), saying to Browning: "Your
verse is all right, Browning, but a book of it is too much: people are
appalled; they can not digest it. And when it goes into a magazine it is
lost in the mass. Now just let me get out your work in little monthly
instalments, in booklet form, and I think it will go."
Browning jumped at the idea.
The booklets were gotten out in paper covers and offered at a moderate
price.
They sold, and sold well. The literary elite bought them by the dozen to
give away.
People began to talk about Browning--he was getting a foothold. His
royalties now amounted to as much as the weekly allowance from his father,
and Pater was talking of cutting off the stipend entirely. Finances being
easy, Browning thought it a good time to take another look at Italy. Some
of the best things he had written had been inspired by Venice and
Asolo--he would go again. And so he engaged passage on a sailing-ship for
Naples.
* * * * *
Shortly after Browning's return to London, in Eighteen Hundred Forty-four,
he dined at Sergeant Talfourd's. After the dinner a well-dressed and
sprightly old gentleman introduced himself and begged that Browning would
inscribe a copy of "Bells and Pomegranates," that he had gotten specially
bound. There is an ancient myth about writers being harassed by
autograph-fiends and all that; but the simple fact is, nothing so warms
the cockles of an author's heart as to be asked for his autograph. Of
course Browning graciously complied with the gentleman's request, and in
order that he might insert the owner's name in the inscription, asked:
"What name, please?"