"O gift of God! O perfect day!"--
the Easy Chair went with Mr. and Mrs. Browning to Vallombrosa, and the
one incident most clearly remembered is that of Browning's seating
himself at the organ in the chapel, and playing--some Gregorian chant,
perhaps, or hymn of Pergolesi's. It was enough to the enchanted eyes
of his young companion that they saw him who was already a great
English poet sitting at the organ where the young Milton had sat, and
touching the very keys which Milton's hand had pressed.
It was midsummer in Italy, but the high, narrow streets of Florence
hold a protecting shade over the lingering pilgrim, and from such
companionship as that of the Via della Scala even Venice long wooed in
vain. But at last, reluctantly, although the fascinating way lay
through Bologna and Ferrara, the journey began towards Venice; and in
that city, so early and always dear to Browning, whose romantic life
and story most deeply touched and stirred his imagination, and in
which he lately died, the Easy Chair received from the poet a glimpse
of his earliest impressions.
Writing from Casa Guidi, in Florence, on the 9th of August, 1847--Casa
Guidi, upon which a tablet records that there Elizabeth Barrett and
Robert Browning lived, and "Casa Guidi Windows," "Sonnets from the
Portuguese," and "Aurora Leigh" were written--Browning says:
"The people of the house there [Via della Scala] told us honestly
on the morning of your departure that they could only receive us
for a single month, at the expiration of which were to begin
certain whitewashings and repaintings. We continued our quest,
therefore, and at last found out this cool, airy apartment,
which we shall occupy for another month or six weeks, whatever
be our subsequent plans, for Rome, or for the Venice you
describe....
"I spent a month of entire delight there some eight years ago,
and tho' nothing I have since seen has effaced the impressions
of my visit, yet your fresher feelings _bring out_ whatever
looks faint or dubious in them, as a gentle sponging might
revive the gone glory of some old picture. (You must know I
have seen an exquisite copy of a Giorgione, the original of
which--so I was told--grew only visible and intelligible when
thus wetted.) I am glad the railroad and gas-lighting do Venice
no more wrong, and that you find all the old strange quietness,
and--ought I to be glad of this, too?--depopulation; for of
late years we have heard a great deal of the returning life and
prosperity of the place; and Mr. Valery, I observe, retracts
his earlier bodements of a speedy extinction of what little
glimmer of light he still saw.
"As for me, I remember that the accounts of the depreciation of
the value of houses, coupled with the indifference of the
inhabitants of them, were enough to set one dreaming (in one's
gondola!) of getting to be as rich as Rothschild, buying all
Venice, turning out everybody, and ensconcing one's self in the
Doge's palace, among the dropping gold ornaments and flakes of
what was lustrous color in Titian's or Tintoret's time, waiting
for the proper consummation of all things and the sea's advent.
"But do you really find the air so light and pure in this by
right mephitic time of August, with those close _calles_,
pestilential lagunes, etc., etc., and all that our informants
frighten us with? Should a winter in Venice prove no more
formidable in its way than it seems a summer does, why, we may
have cause to regret our determination to give up our original
plans. I am sure your kindness will tell us, should it be
enabled, any good news of the winter and spring climate--if
weak lungs may brave it with impunity."....
To this letter of Browning's, written in his young manhood--he was
then thirty-five--about the Venice which always charmed him, may be
well added the words of the Lady of Mura, written only a few weeks
before the poet's death. Asolo is a sequestered town, which Browning
said that he discovered, and in which he fell under the glamour of
very Italy. In the prologue to his last volume, written in September
before the letter that follows, the poet says:
"How many a year, my Asolo,
Since--one step just from sea to land--
I found you, loved, yet feared you so--
For natural objects seemed to stand
Palpably fire-clothed!"
The letter says:
"I have bought in ancient Asolo a narrow, tall tower, into which
in the last century (very early) a house was built, and this
curious place I have selected for villeggiatura when the
scirocco is too strong in Venice for health or comfort. It was
here that Browning fifty years ago was inspired to write
'Sordello' and 'Pippa Passes,' so to me it has that charm added
to many others. It is such a rough and out-of-the-way little
place that you may only know it by name. There is no hotel, no
railway, no factory, no sign of modern civilization. It is on a
hill, which has an ancient ruined fortress at the top, and was
an old Roman settlement, with the usual Roman _mise en scene_,
baths, amphitheatre, etc., in the days of Pliny, who somewhere
mentions it.
"Near my tower, which is built in the ancient wall of the
mediaeval town, is the tower of Caterina Cornaro, and one sees
from most of my windows, so high are they, the whole Marca
Trevigiana, with its tragic and dramatic associations of the
early Middle Ages; the Eccelini, the Azzi, the incessant wars
in which towns were treated by the tyrants like shuttlecocks in
the game of battledoor.
"Browning and his sister have been here for the last six weeks,
and you may fancy how intensely the poet enjoys revisiting
after so many years the scenes of his youthful inspirations. He
was only twenty-five or six when he first discovered Asolo....
Few young people are so gay and cheerful as he and his dear old
sister."....
It is a pleasant last glimpse of Browning at Asolo, where the
master-spell of Italy first touched his genius, and whither at the end
he came--"_asolare_, to disport in the open air, amuse one's self at
random"--at heart and in temper of the same unquenched and
unquenchable vitality as on that summer day long ago when he sat where
Milton had sat, and pressed, as Milton had pressed, the keys of the
organ at Vallombrosa.
"Ah, did you once see Shelley plain?
And did he stop and speak to you?
And did you speak to him again?--
How strange it seems and new!"