to hope, or even imagine, the possession of such things as one saw in
toyshops. I had a bunch of keys to play with, as long as I was capable
only of pleasure in what glittered and jingled, as I grew older I had
a cart and a ball, and when I was five or six years old, two boxes of
well-cut wooden bricks. With these modest, but I still think, entirely
sufficient possessions, and being always summarily whipped if I cried,
did not do as I was bid, or tumbled on the stairs, I soon attained
serene and secure methods of life and motion, and could pass my days
contentedly in tracing the squares and comparing the colors of my
carpet; examining the knots in the wood of the floor or counting the
bricks in the opposite houses; with rapturous intervals of excitement
during the filling of the water-cart, through its leathern pipe, from
the dripping iron post at the pavement edge; or the still more
admirable proceedings of the turncock, when he turned and turned till
a fountain sprang up in the middle of the street. But the carpet, and
what patterns I could find in bed-covers, dresses, or wall papers to
be examined, were my chief resources, and my attention to the
particulars in these was soon so accurate, that when at three and a
half I was taken to have my portrait painted by Mr. Northcote, I had
not been ten minutes alone with him before I asked him why there were
holes in his carpet."
[Illustration: ROBERT BROWNING
From the portrait by Field Talfourd]
XXVIII
THE MARRIAGE OF THE BROWNINGS
When Wordsworth heard of the marriage of Robert Browning to Elizabeth
Barrett, he is reported to have said, "So Robert Browning and Miss
Barrett have gone off together. I hope they understand each
other--nobody else would." When Wordsworth said this he was an old man
and like most old men unable to appreciate the new. Compared with the
simplicity of much of Wordsworth's poetry a poem like _A Death in the
Desert_ might seem unintelligible; but surely the same objection
cannot be urged against the poetry of Mrs. Browning.
The marriage of Robert Browning to Miss Barrett is the one dramatic
event in his quiet life. To one who has read his passionate and at
times fiery, unconventional poetry, the runaway, unconventional
marriage is not unaccountable, but altogether consistent. The manner
of it was thus:
In her youth Miss Barrett became an invalid through an injury to her
spine, an accident occurring while she was fixing the saddle of her
riding horse. As she grew older she was confined to her room. To move
from a bed to a sofa seemed a perilous adventure requiring a family
discussion. Her father was a strange unaccountable man, selfish and
obstinate, and passionately jealous of the affection of his children.
In the meantime Miss Barrett had written poetry that attracted the
attention of a kindred spirit. Robert Browning in 1845 wrote to her
saying that he had once nearly met her and that his sensations then
were those of one who had come to the outside of a chapel of marvelous
illumination and found the door barred against him. A little later he
suggested that he would like to call on her. This commonplace and
altogether natural suggestion threw the invalid into a state of
tremulous disapproval. With robust insistence Robert replied, "If my
truest heart's wishes avail, you shall laugh at east winds yet as I
do." Miss Barrett replied, "There is nothing to see in me nor to hear
in me. I never learned to talk as you do in London, although I can
admire that brightness of carved speech in Mr. Kenyon and others. If
my poetry is worth anything to any eye, it is the flower of me. I have
lived most and been most happy in it, and so it has all my colors. The
rest of me is nothing but a root fit for the ground and dark." A reply
such as this would be construed by any gentleman as a challenge. The
substance of Browning's reply was, "I will call at two on Tuesday."
On May 20, 1845, they met. In September, 1846, Miss Barrett walked
quietly out of her father's house, was married in a church, and
afterwards returned to her father's house as though nothing had
happened. Between the marriage and the elopement Robert Browning did
not call at the Barrett house on Wimpole Street. One of his
biographers says that this absence was due to an inability of
Browning to ask the maid at the door for Miss Barrett when there no
longer was a Miss Barrett whom he wished to see.
In passing judgment upon the elopement of this remarkable couple one
must remember that they were no longer giddy and rash youth. Browning
was thirty-four and the romantic Juliet was three years older. Again
it must be remembered that the objecting father was a most
unreasonable and selfish man. The climax of his selfishness was
reached when in opposition to the advice of the physicians Mr. Barrett
refused to allow his daughter to go to Italy. "In the summer of 1846,"
writes Mr. Chesterton, "Elizabeth Barrett was still living under the
great family convention which provided her with nothing but an elegant
deathbed, forbidden to move, forbidden to see proper daylight,
forbidden to see a friend lest the shock should destroy her suddenly.
A year or two later, in Italy, as Mrs. Browning, she was being dragged
up hill in a wine hamper, toiling up the crests of mountains at four
o'clock in the morning, riding for five miles on to what she calls 'an
inaccessible volcanic ground not far from the stars.'"
Miss Mitford, the literary gossip of the period, writes a letter to
Charles Bonar, in which she gives expression to an opinion concerning
Browning's poetry which is not dissimilar to the one we quoted from
Wordsworth. Miss Mitford was an intimate friend of Elizabeth Barrett:
"The great news of the season is the marriage of my beloved friend
Elizabeth Barrett to Robert Browning. I have seen him once only, many
years ago. He is, I hear from all quarters, a man of immense
attainment and great conversational power. As a poet I think him
overrated.... Those things on which his reputation rests, _Paracelsus_
and _Bells and Pomegranates_, are to me as so many riddles."
In a later letter she writes to the same correspondent: "I at Miss
Barrett's wedding! Ah, dearest Mr. Bonar, it was a runaway match.
Never was I so much astonished. He prevailed on her to meet him at
church with only the two necessary witnesses. They went to Paris.
There they stayed a week. Happening to meet with Mrs. Jameson, she
joined them in their journey to Pisa; and accordingly they traveled by
diligence, by Rhone boat,--anyhow,--to Marseilles, thence took
shipping to Leghorn, and then settled themselves at Pisa for six
months. She says she is very happy. God grant it continue! I felt just
exactly as if I had heard that Dr. Chambers had given her over when I
got the letter announcing her marriage, and found that she was about
to cross to France. I never had an idea of her reaching Pisa alive.
She took her own maid and her (dog) Flush. I saw Mr. Browning once.
Many of his friends and mine, William Harness, John Kenyon, and Henry
Chorley, speak very highly of him. I suppose he is an accomplished
man, and if he makes his angelic wife happy, I shall of course learn
to like him."
The runaway match proved to be a most happy one. This is in disproof
of the common thought that a poet is of so sensitive and irritable a
disposition that no woman should expect a calm life with a poet. But
in this case we have two distinguished poets joining hands. They
lived in great happiness, nor was this peace and harmony purchased at
the price of servitude and humility of the one. Each respected the
other. Their romantic passion was based on a spiritual affinity. The
love letters of the Brownings may have some degree of obscurity, but
it should be said that the obscurity is one of expression, not the
obscurity of misunderstanding in the sense in which some of the
Carlyle letters are obscure. The list of literary men whose marriages
have proved unhappy is not so long and distinguished as is commonly
supposed. Milton, Landor, Coleridge, Shelley, Byron, and Ruskin are
conspicuous examples of men who made shipwreck of marriage, but in
contrast shine forth the names of Browning, Tennyson, Wordsworth, and
Shakspere, for there is no evidence against the belief that
Shakspere's marriage was a happy one; then add to these the American
names, Longfellow, Lowell, Emerson, Hawthorne, and Holmes, and the
list is still incomplete.
In verse Mrs. Browning has most exquisitely expressed the power of
love to transform the gloom of her sick-room into the wholesome
sunshine of life,--
I saw in gradual vision through my tears,
The sweet, sad years, the melancholy years,
Those of my own life, who by turn had flung
A shadow across me. Straightway I was 'ware,
So weeping, how a mystic shape did move
Behind me, and drew me backward by the hair;
And a voice said in mastery, while I strove,
"Guess now who holds thee?"--"Death!" I said. But, there,
The silver answer rang. "Not Death, but Love."
XXIX
ROBERT BROWNING
Shortly after Browning's death a young man published his recollections
of the poet in an English magazine. The extracts from that article
will help one to appreciate the kindliness of the great poet.
"My first meeting with Browning came about in this wise. I was sitting
in the studio of a famous sculptor, who, kindly forgetful of my
provincial rawness, was entertaining me with anecdotes of his great
contemporaries; amongst them, Browning. To name him was to undo the
flood-gates of my young enthusiasm. Would my sculptor friend help me
to meet the poet, whose teaching had been my only dogma? 'Oh,' said my
friend, 'that's easy. Write to him--he is the most amiable fellow in
the world--and tell him about yourself, and tell him how much you want
to know him. Say, if you like, that you are a friend of mine.' The
advice seemed simple but useless. I felt that not even the portfolio
of unpublished poems which the imaginative eye might have beheld
palpable under my arm could so fortify my modesty. But my friend
assured me that Browning would not be offended, so, after waiting some
weeks for my crescent courage, I wrote....
"I was taken up to his study and shown in. The first thing that struck
me was that he had built up a barrier of books around his table,
perhaps because he feared a too practical enthusiasm. Huge heaps of
books lay on the floor, the chairs, the table, and at first I thought
the room otherwise unoccupied. But suddenly a dapper little figure
emerged from a huge armchair by the fire, and stepped briskly across
the room. For a moment I was bewildered. The poet's face was familiar
in photographs, but I had somehow imagined him a tall, gaunt man. I
recovered myself to find him standing before me, holding both my hands
and saying, 'Now this is really very kind of you, to come so far just
to see an old man like me.' Then he dragged up a companion chair and
forced me into it, standing for some moments by my side, with his hand
on my shoulder. Then he sat down and said, 'Well, tell me all about
yourself. Have you not brought some of your poems to show me?' Of
course I had not. I wanted to see him and talk of his work. But for a
while he would not let me do so. 'We'll talk about me later, if you
like, though I'm rather tired of the subject,' he said, and proceeded
to question me pretty closely about my aim and work. Then he sat and
thought awhile, then came across to me and said, 'Do you know that I
was nearly fifty before I made any money out of my writings? That's
the truth, and you will understand my reluctance to advise any one to
embark on such a cruel career. But--if you really mean to go in for
it--I would do anything I could to shorten your time of waiting. So
you must just send me some of your work, that I may give you my candid
opinion, if you think it's worth having. And now come and see my
books.'
... "We went down to lunch, and I was introduced to the poet's sister,
who is, I was instantly ready to aver, the most charming little lady
in the world. I don't remember much of the talk at lunch--except that
it turned on Ruskin and his art views, with which latter, it seemed to
me, Browning had not much sympathy. He told me two anecdotes designed
to prove Ruskin's technical inaccuracy; one relating to Michael
Angelo, the other to Browning's own exquisite poem, _Andrea del
Sarto_. 'But never mind,' said Browning, 'he writes like an angel.'
"Lunch was finished, and my host apologized for having to turn me out,
as he was obliged to attend some 'preposterous meeting,' he said. I
was standing in the hall, saying good-by, when suddenly he turned and
ran up-stairs. Presently he returned, bringing with him a copy of his
wife's poems. 'Will you take this as a record of what I hope is only
the first of many meetings?' he said. 'I can't find any of my own in
that muddle upstairs, but I would rather you would have this than any
of mine.' Yes, I took it, as proud as a boy could be who receives such
an honor from his chief idol; prouder than I shall ever be again as I
read the inscription: 'With the best wishes and regards of Robert
Browning.' And I went away after he had made me promise--as though it
were a thing I might be unwilling to do--to let him know when I should
be next in town.
... "I called again at the beautiful house in De Vere Gardens. The
poet had just come in, he told me, from a meeting of the committee
for the memorial to Matthew Arnold, and he was evidently very
depressed by the sad thoughts which had come upon him of his 'dear old
friend, Mat.' 'I have been thinking all the way home,' he said, 'of
his hardships. He told me once, when I asked him why he had written no
poetry lately, that he could not afford to do it; but that, when he
had saved enough, he intended to give up all other work, and go back
to poetry. I wonder if he has gone back to it _now_.' Here Browning's
voice shook, and he was altogether more deeply moved than I had ever
seen him. 'It's very hard, isn't it?' he went on, 'that a useless
fellow like me should have been able to give up all his life to
it--for, as I think I told you, my father helped me to publish my
early books--while a splendid poet like Arnold actually could not
afford to write the poetry we wanted of him.'
... "The last visit I paid to Browning was short enough, but since it
_was_ the last, and was marked by one of the most graceful acts ever
done to me, I may record it as the conclusion of these memories. He
had written inviting me to call soon, but without naming a day or
hour. 'If I should happen to be engaged,' he had said, 'I know that
your kindness will understand and forgive me.' So I called on the
first morning when I was free for an hour. He came across the room
with his accustomed heartiness of voice and hand. 'But, my dear boy,
why did you come to-day? In ten minutes I have an important business
appointment which I _must_ keep.' The ten minutes went all too soon,
and I took my hat to go. He was profuse, but plainly sincere, in his
apologies for turning me out, and made me promise to come again at a
specified hour. I had hardly left the door, when I heard the scurry of
footsteps and his voice calling me. I turned and saw him, hatless, at
the foot of the steps. 'One moment,' he cried; 'I can't let you go
till you tell me again that you are not offended, and I shan't believe
_that_ till you promise once again to come. Now, promise'--holding
both my hands. Of course I promised, wondering how many smaller men
would have shown the same courtesy. For some reason on my part, which
I now forget, that appointment was never kept, and I saw him no more.
"As I stood in Poet's Corner that bitter day of last January, and saw
him put to rest, I could not but think of him as I had seen him last,
with the sunlight on his white hair, and I felt his warm hands, and
heard his kindly voice saying, 'Now, promise!' and I could but think
of that meeting as a tryst not broken, but deferred. And as I thought
again of that life, so rich, so vivid, so complete; of that strong
soul which looked ever forth, and saw promise of clear awaking to
something nobler than the sweetest dream, I knew that here, at least,
was one to whom death could do no wrong."
--Adapted from _Littell's Living Age_.
[Illustration: ALFRED TENNYSON
From a photograph from life]
XXX
KNIGHT'S REMINISCENCE OF TENNYSON
William Knight, a celebrated Scotch professor and the great expounder
of the life and poetry of Wordsworth, in 1890 spent two days with
Tennyson at Farringford. In an English magazine he has published his
reminiscence of that visit. After relating the feelings of respect and
the reverential sentiment with which he approached the place he says:
"In the avenue leading to the house, the spreading trees just opening
into leaf, with spring flowers around and beneath--yellow cowslips and
blue forget-me-nots--and the song of birds in the branches overhead,
seemed a fitting prelude to all that followed. Shortly after I was
seated in the ante-room, the poet's son appeared, and, as his father
was engaged, he said, 'Come and see my mother.' We went into the
drawing-room, where the old lady was reclining on a couch. Immediately
the lines beginning 'Such age, how beautiful' came into mind. No one
could ever forget his first sight of Lady Tennyson, her graciousness,
and the radiant though fragile beauty of old age. Both her eye and her
voice had an inexpressible charm. She inquired with much interest for
the widow of one of my colleagues at the University, who used formerly
to live in the island, close to Farringford, and whose family were
friends as well as near neighbors. Soon afterwards Tennyson entered,
and almost at once proposed that we should go out of doors. After a
short stroll on the lawn under the cedars, we went into the 'careless
ordered garden,' walked round it, and then sat down in the small
summer-house. It is a quaint rectangular garden, sloping to the west,
where nature and art blend happily,--orchard trees, and old-fashioned
flower-beds, with stately pines around, giving to it a sense of
perfect rest. This garden is truly a 'haunt of ancient peace.' Left
there alone with the bard for some time, I felt that I sat in the
presence of one of the Kings of Men. His aged look impressed me. There
was the keen eagle eye, and, although the glow of youth was gone, the
strength of age was in its place. The lines in his face were like the
furrows in the stem of a wrinkled oak-tree, but his whole bearing
disclosed a latent strength and nobility, a reserve of power, combined
with a most courteous grace of manner. I was also struck by the
neglige air of the man, so different from that of Browning or Arnold
or Lowell....
"We talked much of the sonnet. He thought the best in the language
were Milton's, Shakspere's, and Wordsworth's; after these three those
by his own brother Charles. He said, 'I at least like my brother's
next to those by the "three immortals."' ...
"He had no great liking, he said, for arranging the poets in a
hierarchy. He found so much that surpassed him in different ways in
all the great ones; but he thought that Homer, AEschylus, Sophocles,
Virgil, Dante, Shakspere, and Goethe,--these seven,--were the
greatest of the great, up to the year 1800. They are not all equal in
rank, and even in the work of that heptarchy of genius, there were
trivial things to be found....
"Just at this stage of our talk Mrs. Hallam Tennyson, Mrs. Douglas
Freshfield, and her daughter came up the garden-walk to the
summer-house. Miss Freshfield wore a hat on which was an artificial
flower, a lilac-branch. It at once caught Tennyson's eye. There was a
lilac-tree in bloom close at hand, and he said, 'What is that you are
wearing? It's a flowery lie, it's a speaking mendacity.' He asked how
she could wear such a thing in the month of May! We rose from the
bower, and all went down the garden-walk to see the fig-tree at the
foot of it, and sundry other things at the western entrance-door,
where Miss Kate Greenaway was painting. We returned along a twisting
alley under the rich green foliage of elms and ilexes....
"Listening to the wind in the trees and the sound of running
water--although it was the very tiniest of rillets--led us away from
philosophy, and he talked of Sir Walter Scott, characterizing him as
the greatest novelist of all time. He said, 'What a gift it was that
Scotland gave to the world in him. And your Burns! He is supreme
amongst your poets.' He praised Lockhart's _Life of Scott_, as one of
the finest of biographies; and my happening to mention an anecdote of
Scott from that book led to our spending the greater part of the rest
of our walk in the telling of stories. Tennyson was an admirable
storyteller. He asked me for some good Scotch anecdotes, and I gave
him some, but he was able to cap each of them with a better one of
his own--all of which he told with arch humor and simplicity.
"He then told some anecdotes of a visit to Scotland. After he had left
an inn in the island of Skye, the landlord was asked, 'Did he know who
had been staying in his house? It was the poet Tennyson.' He replied,
'Lor', to think o' that! and sure I thoucht he was a shentleman!' Near
Stirling the same remark was made to the keeper of the hotel where he
had stayed. 'Do you ken who you had wi' you t' other night?' 'Naa, but
he was a pleesant shentleman.' 'It was Tennyson, the poet.' 'An' what
may _he_ be?' 'Oh, he is the writer o' verses such as you see i' the
papers.' 'Noo, to think o' that, jest a pooblic writer, an' I gied him
ma best bedroom!' Of Mrs. Tennyson, however, the landlord remarked,
'Oh, but _she_ was an angel!'
"I have said that the conversational power of Tennyson struck me quite
as much as his poetry had done for forty years. To explain this I must
compare it with that of some of his contemporaries. It was not like
the meteoric flashes and fireworks of Carlyle's talk, which sometimes
dazzled as much as it instructed, and it had not that torrent-rush in
which Carlyle so often indulged. It was far more restrained. It had
neither the continuousness nor the range of Browning's many-sided
conversation, nor did it possess the charm of the ethereal
visionariness of Newman's. It lacked the fullness and consummate sweep
of Mr. Buskin's talk, and it had neither the historic range and
brilliance of Dean Stanley's, nor the fascinating subtlety--the
elevation and the depth combined--of that of the late F.D. Maurice.
_But_ it was clear as crystal, and calm as well as clear. It was terse
and exact, precise and luminous. Not a word was wasted and every
phrase was suggestive. Tennyson did not monopolize conversation. He
wished to know what other people thought, and therefore to hear them
state it, that he might understand their position and ideas. But in
all his talk on great problems, he at once got to their essence,
sounding their depths with ease, or, to change the illustration, he
seized the kernel, and let the shell and fragments alone. There was a
wonderful simplicity allied to his clear vision and his strength. He
was more child-like than the majority of his contemporaries, and along
with this there was--what I have already mentioned--_a great reserve
of power_. His appreciation of other workers belonging to his time was
remarkable. Neither he nor Browning disparaged their contemporaries,
as Carlyle so often did, when he spotted their weaknesses, and put
them in the pillory. From first to last, Tennyson seemed to look
sympathetically on all good works, and he had a special veneration for
the strong silent thinkers and workers.
"Tennyson appreciated the work of Darwin and Spencer far more than
Carlyle did, and many of the ideas and conclusions of modern science
are to be found in his poetry. Nevertheless he knew the limitation of
science, and he held that it was the noble office of poetry,
philosophy, and religion combined to supplement and finally to
transcend it."
XXXI
EMERSON ON CARLYLE AND TENNYSON
On Christmas day, 1832, Emerson sailed out of Boston harbor to pay a
visit to Europe. His health needed a change of work and scene. His
wife had died, he had separated from his congregation, he manifestly
was in need of some recreation, and so his friends had advised him to
take a trip abroad. On the 2d of February he landed at Malta. From
there he traveled through Italy and finally entered England, ready to
make the acquaintance of English celebrities whom he had long admired.