It is more than forty years since Margaret Fuller first gave
distinction to the literary notices and reviews of the New York
_Tribune_. Miss Fuller was a woman of extraordinary scholarly
attainments and intellectual independence, the friend of Emerson and
of the "transcendental" leaders, and her critical papers were the best
then published, and were fitly succeeded by those of her scholarly
friend, George Ripley. It was her review in the _Tribune_ of
Browning's early dramas and the "Bells and Pomegranates" that
introduced him to such general knowledge and appreciation among
cultivated readers in this country that it is not less true of
Browning than of Carlyle that he was first better known in America
than at home.
It was but about four years before the publication of Miss Fuller's
paper that the Boston issue of Tennyson's two volumes had delighted
the youth of the time with the consciousness of the appearance of a
new English poet. The eagerness and enthusiasm with which Browning was
welcomed soon after were more limited in extent, but they were even
more ardent, and the devoted zeal of Mr. Levi Thaxter as a Browning
missionary and pioneer forecast the interest from which the Browning
societies of later days have sprung. When Matthew Arnold was told in a
small and remote farming village in New England that there had been a
lecture upon Browning in the town the week before, he stopped in
amazement, and said, "Well, that is the most surprising and
significant fact I have heard in America."
It was in those early days of Browning's fame, and in the studio of
the sculptor Powers, in Florence, that the youthful Easy Chair took up
a visiting-card, and, reading the name Mr. Robert Browning, asked,
with eager earnestness, whether it was Browning the poet. Powers
turned his large, calm, lustrous eyes upon the youth, and answered,
with some surprise at the warmth of the question:
"It is a young Englishman, recently married, who is here with his
wife, an invalid. He often comes to the studio."
"Good Heaven!" exclaimed the youth, "it must be Browning and Elizabeth
Barrett."
Powers, with the half-bewildered air of one suddenly made conscious
that he had been entertaining angels unawares, said, reflectively, "I
think we must have them to tea."
The youth begged to take the card which bore the poet's address, and,
hastening to his room near the Piazza Novella, he wrote a note asking
permission for a young American to call and pay his respects to Mr.
and Mrs. Browning, but wrote it in terms which, however warm, would
yet permit it to be put aside if it seemed impertinent, or if, for any
reason, such a call were not desired. The next morning betimes the
note was despatched, and a half-hour had not passed when there was a
brisk rap at the Easy Chair's door. He opened it, and saw a young man,
who briskly inquired,
"Is Mr. Easy Chair here?"
"That is my name."
"I am Robert Browning."
Browning shook hands heartily with his young American admirer, and
thanked him for his note. The poet was then about thirty-five. His
figure was not large, but compact, erect, and active; the face smooth,
the hair dark; the aspect that of active intelligence, and of a man of
the world. He was in no way eccentric, either in manner or appearance.
He talked freely, with great vivacity, and delightfully, rising and
walking about the room as his talk sparkled on. He heard, with evident
pleasure, but with entire simplicity and manliness, of the American
interest in his works and in those of Mrs. Browning, and the Easy
Chair gave him a copy of Miss Fuller's paper in the _Tribune_.
It was a bright and, to the Easy Chair, a wonderfully happy hour. As
he went, the poet said that Mrs. Browning would certainly expect to
give Mr. Easy Chair a cup of tea in the evening, and with a brisk and
gay good-bye, Browning was gone.
The Easy Chair blithely hied him to the Cafe Done, and ordered of the
flower-girl the most perfect of nosegays, with such fervor that she
smiled, and when she brought the flowers in the afternoon, said, with
sympathy and meaning: "Eccola, signore! per la donna bellissima!"
It was not in the Casa Guidi that the Brownings were then living, but
in an apartment in the Via della Scala, not far from the place or
square most familiar to strangers in Florence--the Piazza Trinita.
Through several rooms the Easy Chair passed, Browning leading the way,
until at the end they entered a smaller room arranged with an air of
English comfort, where, at a table, bending over a tea-urn, sat a
slight lady, her long curls drooping forward. "Here," said Browning,
addressing her with a tender diminutive--"here is Mr. Easy Chair."
And, as the bright eyes but wan face of the lady turned towards him,
and she put out her hand, Mr. Easy Chair recalled the first words of
her verse he had ever known:
"'Onora, Onora!' her mother is calling,
She sits at the lattice, and hears the dew falling,
Drop after drop from the sycamore laden
With dew as with blossom, and calls home the maiden.
'Night cometh, Onora!'"
The most kindly welcome and pleasant chat followed, Browning's gayety
dashing and flashing in, with a sense of profuse and bubbling
vitality, glancing at a hundred topics; and when there was some
allusion to his "Sordello," he asked, quickly, with an amused smile,
"Have you read it?" The Easy Chair pleaded that he had not seen it.
"So much the better. Nobody understands it. Don't read it, except in
the revised form, which is coming." The revised form has come long
ago, and the Easy Chair has read, and probably supposes that he
understands. But Thackeray used to say that he did not read Browning
because he could not comprehend him, adding, ruefully, "I have no head
above my eyes."