life, who impressed me as having in their characters elements of real
_greatness_; not being merely clever or gifted, but large-souled. When I
knew him he was a fallen Statesman, an almost forgotten Author, a
General on the shelf, a Prime Minister reduced to living in a single
room at an hotel, without a secretary or even a valet; yet he was the
cheeriest Italian I ever knew. His spirits never seemed to falter. He
was the life of our table every day, and I used to hear him singing
continually over his watercolour drawing in his room adjoining mine at
the _Gran’ Bretagna_, on the dull Lung-Arno of Pisa. The fate of Italy,
which still hung in suspense, was, however, ever near his heart. One day
it was talked over at the _table d’hôte_, and D’ Azeglio looked grave,
and said: “We speak of this man and the other; but it is GOD who is
making Italy!” It was so unusual a sentiment for an Italian gentleman to
utter, that it impressed the listeners almost with awe. Another day,
talking of Thackeray and the ugliness of his school of novelists, he
observed: “It is all right to seek to express Truth. But why do these
people always seem to think _qu’il n’y a rien de vrai excepté le laid_?”
The reason,—I might have replied,—is, that it is extremely difficult to
depict Beauty, and extremely easy to create Ugliness! Beauty means
Proportion, Refinement, Elevation, Simplicity. How much harder it is to
convey _these_ truly, than Disproportion, Coarseness, Baseness,
Duplicity? Since D’ Azeglio spoke we have gone on creating Ugliness and
calling it Truth, till M. Zola has originated a literature in honour of
LE LAID, and given us books like _L’Assommoir_ in which it is perfected,
almost as Beauty was of old in a statue of Praxiteles or in the Dresden
Madonna.
One day that M. d’ Azeglio was doing me the honour of paying me a visit
in my room, he narrated to me the following singular little bit of
history. It seems that when he was Premier of Sardinia and Lord John
Russell of England, the latter sent him through Lord Minto a distinct
message,—“that he might safely undertake a certain line of policy,
since, if a given contingency arose, England would afford him armed
support.” The contingency did occur; but Lord Russell was unable to give
the armed support which he had promised; “and this,” said D’ Azeglio,
“caused my _fiasco_.” He resigned office, and, I think, then retired
from public life; but some years later, being in England, he was invited
to Windsor. There he happened to be laid up with a cold, and Lord
Russell and Lord Minto, who were also guests at the castle, paid him a
visit in his apartments. “Then,” said D’ Azeglio, “I turned on them
both, and challenged them to say whether Lord Minto had not conveyed
that message to me from Lord Russell, and whether he had not failed to
keep his engagement? They did not attempt to deny that it was so.” D’
Azeglio (I understood him to say) had himself sent the Sardinian
contingent to fight with our troops and the French in the Crimea, for
the express and sole purpose of making Europe recognise that there was a
_Question d’Italie_; (or possibly he spoke of this being the motive of
the Minister who did so). Another remark which this charming old man
made has remained very clearly on my memory for a reason to be presently
explained. He observed, laughing: “People seem to think that Ministers
have indefinite time at their disposal, but they have only 24 hours like
other men, and they must eat and sleep and rest like the remainder of
the human race. When I was Premier I calculated that dividing the
subjects which demanded attention and the time I had to bestow on them,
there were just _three minutes and a-half_ on an average for ordinary
subjects, and _eight_ minutes for important ones! And if that be so in a
little State like Piedmont, what must it be in the case of a Prime
Minister of England? I cannot think how mortal man can bear the office!”
Many years afterwards I told this to an English Statesman, and he
replied—with rather startling _gaieté de cœur_, considering the
responsibilities for Irish murders then resting on his shoulders:—“Quite
true, it is all a scuffle and a scramble from morning to night. If you
had seen me two hours ago you would have found me listening to a very
important dispatch read to me by one of my secretaries while I was
dictating another, equally important; to another. All a scuffle and a
scramble from morning to night!” Count Usedom told me that at one time
he had been Minister of War in Prussia, and that he knew a great battle
was imminent next day, the Prussian army having just come up with the
enemy. He lay awake all night reflecting on the horrors of the ensuing
fight; remembering that he had the power to telegraph to the General in
command to stop it, and longing with all his soul to do so, but knowing
that the act would be treachery to his country. Of this sort of anxiety
I strongly suspect some statesmen have never felt a twinge.
It was at Florence in 1860 that I met Theodore Parker for the first
time. After the letters of deep sympathy and agreement on religious
matters which had passed between us, it was a strange turn of fate which
brought him to die in Florence, and me to stand beside his death-bed and
his grave. The world has, as is natural, passed on over the road which
he did much to open, and his name is scarcely known to the younger
generation; but looking back at his work and at his books again after
thirty years, and when early enthusiasm has given place to the calm
judgment of age, I still feel that Theodore Parker was a very great
religious teacher and Confessor,—as Albert Reville wrote of him: “_Cet
homme fût un Prophète_.” That is, he received the truths of what he
called “Absolute Religion” at first hand in his own faithful soul, and
spoke them out, fearless of consequences, with unequalled
straightforwardness. He was not subtle-minded. He did not at all see
obliquely round corners, as men like Cardinal Newman always seem to have
done; nor estimate the limitations which his broad statements sometimes
required. It would have been scarcely possible to have been both the man
he was, and also a fine critic and metaphysician. But his was a clear,
trumpet voice, to which many a freed and rejoicing spirit responded; and
if he founded no sect or school, he did better. He infused into the
religious life of England and America an element, hardly present before,
of natural confidence in the absolute goodness of God independent of
theologies. No man did more than he to awaken the Protestant nations
from the hideous nightmare of an Eternal Hell, which within my own
recollection, hovered over the piety of England. As he was wont himself
to say, laughingly, he had “knocked the bottom out of hell!”
I will copy here some Notes of my only interviews with this honoured
friend and teacher, to whom I owed so much:
“28th April. Saw Mr. Parker for the first time. He was lying in bed
with his back to the light. Mrs. Parker brought me into the room. He
took my hand tenderly and said in a low, hurried voice, holding it:
‘After all our wishes to meet, Miss Cobbe, how strange it is we should
meet _thus_.’ I pressed his hand and he turned his eyes, which were
trembling painfully and evidently seeing nothing, towards me and said,
‘You must not think you have seen _me_. This is not _me_, only the
wreck of the man I was.’ Then, after a pause he added: ‘Those who love
me most can only wish me a quick passage to the other world. Of course
I am not _afraid_ to die (he smiled as he spoke) but there was so much
to be done!’ I said: ‘You have given your life to God and His truth as
truly as any martyr of old.’ He replied: ‘I do not know; I had great
powers committed to me, I have but half used them.’ I gave him a
nosegay of roses and lily-of-the-valley. He smiled and touched the
lily-of-the-valley, saying it was the sweetest of all flowers. I
begged him, if his lodgings were not all he desired, to come to villa
Brichieri” [a villa on Bellosguardo, which I then shared with Miss
Blagden], “but he said he was most comfortable where he was. Then his
mind wandered a little about a bad dream which haunted him, and I left
him.”
“April 29th. I was told on arriving that Mr. Parker had spoken very
tenderly of my visit of the day before, but had said, ‘I must not see
her often. It makes my heart swell too high. But you (to his wife)
must see her every day. Remember there is but one Miss Cobbe in the
world.’ Afterwards he told Dr. Appleton that he wanted him to get an
inkstand for me as a last gift. [This inkstand I have used ever
since.] He received me very kindly, but almost at once his mind
wandered, and he spoke of ‘going home immediately.’ He asked what day
of the week it was? I said: ‘This is the blessed day; it is Sunday.’
‘Ah yes!’ he said, ‘It is a blessed day when one has got over the
superstition of it. I will try to go to you to-morrow.’ (Of course
this was utterly out of the question.) Then he looked at the lily of
Florence which I had brought, and told him how I had got it down from
one of the old walls for him, and he smiled the same sweet smile as
yesterday, and touched the beautiful blue Iris, and soon seemed to
sleep.”
I called after this every day, generally twice a day, at the Pension
Molini where he lay; but rarely could interchange a word. Parker’s
friend, Dr. Appleton of Boston, who was faithfully attending him, sent
for another friend, Prof. Desor, and they and the three ladies of the
party nursed him, of course, devotedly. On the 10th May I saw him lying
breathing quietly, while life ebbed gently. I returned to Bellosguardo
and at eight o’clock in the evening Prof. Desor and Dr. Appleton came up
to tell me he had passed peacefully away.
Parker had, long before his death, desired that the first eleven verses
of the Sermon on the Mount should be read at his funeral. Whether he
intended that they should form the only service was not known; but Desor
and Appleton arranged that so it should be, and that they should be read
by Rev. W. Cunningham, an American Unitarian clergyman who was
fortunately at the time living near us on Bellosguardo, and who was a
man of much feeling and dignity of aspect. The funeral took place on
Sunday, the 13th May, at the beautiful old Campo Santo Inglese, outside
the walls of Florence, which contains the dust of Mrs. Browning, of
Arthur Hugh Clough, and many others dear to English memories. It was the
first funeral I had ever attended. The coffin when I arrived, was
already lying in the mortuary chapel. My companions placed a wreath of
laurels on it, and I added a large bunch of the lily-of-the-valley which
he had loved. Then eight Italian pall-bearers took up the coffin and
carried it on a side-walk to the grave. When it had been lowered with
some difficulty to the last resting-place, my notes say:—
“Dr. Appleton then handed a Bible to Mr. Cunningham. I was standing
close to him and heard his voice falter. He read like a man who felt
all the holy words he said, and those sacred Blessings came with
unspeakable rest to my heart. Then Desor, who had been pale as death,
threw in one handful of clay.... The burial ground is exquisitely
lovely, a very wilderness of flowers and perfume. Only a few cypresses
give it grandeur, not gloom. All Florence was decorated with flags in
honour of the anniversary of Piedmontese Constitution. We said to one
another: ‘It is a festival for us also—the solemn feast of an
Ascension.’”
Of course I visited this grave when I returned to Florence several years
afterwards. The cypresses had grown large and dark and somewhat shadowed
it. I had the violets, &c., renewed upon it more than once, but I heard
later that it had become somewhat dilapidated, and I was glad to join a
subscription got up by an American gentleman to erect a new tombstone. I
hope it has been done, as he would have desired, with simplicity. I
shall never see that grave again.
Two or three years later I edited all the twelve vols. of Parker’s Works
for Messrs. Trübner, and wrote a somewhat lengthy Preface for them;
afterwards reprinted as a separate pamphlet entitled the _Religious
Demands of the Age_. Three Biographies of Parker have appeared; the
shortest, published in England by Rev. Peter Dean, being in my opinion
the best. The letters which I received from Parker in the years before I
saw him are all printed by my permission in Mr. Weiss’ _Life_, and
therefore will not be reproduced here.
That venerable old man, Rev. John J. Tayler, writing to me a few years
later, summed up Parker’s character I think as justly as did Mr. Jowett
in calling him a “religious Titan.”
“I read lately with much pleasure your Preface to the forthcoming
edition of Theodore Parker’s works. I agree cordially with your
estimate of his character. His virtues were of the highest type of the
hero and the martyr. His faults, such as they were, were such as are
incident to every ardent and earnest soul fighting against wickedness
and hypocrisy; faults which colder and more worldly natures easily
avoid, faults which he shared with some of the best and noblest of our
race—a Milton, a Luther, and a Paul. When freedom and justice have
achieved some conquests yet to come, his memory will be cherished with
deeper reverence and affection than it is, except by a small number,
now.
“I remain, dear Miss Cobbe, very truly yours,
“J. J. TAYLER.”
At the time of Parker’s death I was sharing the apartment of my clever
and charming friend, Isa Blagden, in Villa Brichieri on Bellosguardo. It
was a delightful house with a small _podere_ off the road, and with a
broad balcony (accommodating any number of chairs) opening from the airy
drawing-room, and commanding a splendid view of Florence backed by
Fiesole and the Apennines. On the balcony, and in our drawing-rooms,
assembled regularly every week and often on other occasions, an
interesting and varied company. We were both of us poor, but in those
days poverty in Florence permitted us to rent 14 well-furnished rooms in
a charming villa, and to keep a maid and a man-servant. The latter
bought our meals every morning in Florence, cooked and served them;
being always clean and respectably dressed. He swept our floors and he
opened our doors and announced our company and served our ices and tea
with uniform quietness and success. A treasure, indeed, was good old
Ansano! Also we were able to engage an open carriage with a pair of
horses to do our shopping and pay our visits in Florence as often as we
needed. And what does the reader think it cost us to live like this,
fire and candles and food for four included? In those halcyon days under
the old _régime_, it was precisely £20 a month! We divided everything
exactly and it never exceeded £10 apiece.
Among our most frequent visitors was Mr. Browning. Mrs. Browning was
never able to drive so far, but her warm friendship for Miss Blagden was
heartily shared by her husband and we saw a great deal of him. Always
full of spirits, full of interest in everything from politics to
hedge-flowers, cordial and utterly unaffected, he was at all times a
charming member of society; but I confess that in those days I had no
adequate sense of his greatness as a poet. I could not read his poetry,
though he had not then written his most difficult pieces, and his
conversation was so playful and light that it never occurred to me that
I was wasting precious time chatting frivolously with him when I might
have been gaining high thoughts and instruction. There was always a
ripple of laughter round the sofa where he used to seat himself,
generally beside some lady of the company, towards whom, in his
eagerness, he would push nearer and nearer till she frequently rose to
avoid falling off at the end! When we drove out in parties he would
discuss every tree and weed, and get excited about the difference
between eglantine and eglatere (if there be any), and between either of
them and honeysuckle. He and Isa were always wrangling in an
affectionate way over some book or music; (he was a fine performer
himself on the piano), and one night when I had left Villa Brichieri and
was living at Villa Niccolini at least half-a-mile off, the air, being
in some singular condition of sonority, carried their voices between the
walls of the two villas so clearly across to me that I actually heard
some of the words of their quarrel, and closed my window lest I should
be an eavesdropper. I believe it was about Spirit-rapping they were
fighting, for which, and the professors of the art, Browning had a
horror. I have seen him stamping on the floor in a frenzy of rage at the
way some believers and mediums were deceiving Mrs. Browning.
Thirty years afterwards, the last time I ever had the privilege of
talking with Robert Browning (it was in Surrey House in London), I
referred to these old days and to our friend, long laid in that Campo
Santo at Florence. His voice fell and softened, and he said: “Ah, poor,
_dear_ Isa!” with deep feeling.
At that time I do not think that any one, certainly no one of the
society which surrounded him, thought of Mr. Browning as a great poet,
or as an equal one to his wife, whose _Aurora Leigh_ was then a new
book. The utter unselfishness and generosity wherewith he gloried in his
wife’s fame,—bringing us up constantly good reviews of her poems and
eagerly recounting how many editions had been called for,—perhaps helped
to blind us, stupid that we were! to his own claims. Never, certainly
did the proverb about the “_irritabile genus_” of Poets prove less true.
All through his life, even when the world had found him out, and
societies existed for what Mr. Frederic Harrison might justly have
called a “culte” of Browning, if not a “latria,” he remained the same
absolutely unaffected, unassuming, genial English gentleman.
Of Mrs. Browning I never saw much. Sundry visits we paid to each other
missed, and when I did find her at home in Casa Guidi we did not fall on
congenial themes. I was bubbling over with enthusiasm for her poetry,
but had not the audacity to express my admiration, (which, in truth, had
been my special reason for visiting Florence;) and she entangled me in
erudite discussions about Tuscan and Bolognese schools of painting,
concerning which I knew little and, perhaps, cared less. But I am glad I
looked into the splendid eyes which _lived_ like coals, in her pain-worn
face, and revealed the soul which Robert Browning trusted to meet again
on the threshold of eternity.[18] Was there ever such a testimony as
their _perfect_ marriage,—living on as it did in the survivor’s heart
for a quarter of a century,—to the possibility of the eternal union of
Genius and Love?
I received in later years from Mr. Browning several letters which I may
as well insert in this place.
“19, Warwick Crescent, W.,
“December 28th, 1874.
“Dear Miss Cobbe,
“I return the Petition, for the one good reason, that I have just
signed its fellow forwarded to me by Mr. Leslie Stephen. You have
heard ‘I take an equal interest with yourself in the effort to
suppress Vivisection.’ I dare not so honour my mere wishes and prayers
as to put them for a moment beside your noble acts, but this I know, I
would rather submit to the worst of deaths, so far as pain goes, than
have a single dog or cat tortured on the pretence of sparing me a
twinge or two. I return the paper, because I shall be probably shut up
here for the next week or two, and prevented from seeing my friends,
whoever would refuse to sign would certainly not be of the number.”
“Ever truly and gratefully yours,
“ROBERT BROWNING.”
“19, Warwick Crescent, W.,
“July 3rd, 1881.
“Dear Miss Cobbe,
“I wish I were not irretrievably engaged on Monday afternoon, twice
over, as it prevents me from accepting your invitation. By all I hear,
Mr. Bishop’s performance must be instructive to those who need it, and
amusing to everybody.[19]
“Thank you very much,
“Ever truly yours,
“ROBERT BROWNING.”
“19, Warwick Crescent, W.,
“October 22nd, 1882,
“Dear Miss Cobbe,
“It is about a week ago since I had to write to the new Editor of the
‘Fortnightly,’ Mr. Escott—and assure him that I was so tied and bound
by old promises ‘to give something to this and that Magazine if I gave
at all’—that it became impossible I could oblige anybody in even so
trifling a matter. It comes of making rash resolutions—but, once made,
there is no escape from the consequence—though I rarely have felt this
so much of a hardship as now when I am forced to leave a request of
yours uncomplied with. For the rest, I shall indeed rejoice if that
abominable and stupid cruelty of pigeon-shooting is put a stop to. The
other detestable practice, Vivisection, strikes deeper root, I fear;
but God bless whoever tugs at it!
“Ever yours most truly,
“ROBERT BROWNING.”
Another of our most frequent visitors at Villa Brichieri was Mr. T.
Adolphus Trollope, author of the _Girlhood of Catherine de’ Medici_, “_A
Decade of Italian Women_” and other books. Though not so successful an
author as his brilliant brother Anthony, he was an interesting man, whom
we much liked. One day he came up and pressed us to go back with him and
pay a visit to a guest at his Villino Trollope in the Piazza Maria
Antonia,—a lovely house he had built, with a broad verandah behind it,
opening on a garden of cypresses and oranges backed by the old
crenelated and Iris-decked walls of Florence. He had, he told us, a most
interesting person staying with him and Mrs. Trollope;—Mrs. Lewes—who
had written _Adam Bede_, and was then writing _Romola_. Miss Blagden
alone went with him, and was enchanted, like all the world, with George
Eliot.
Mr. Trollope told me many curious facts concerning Italian society
which, from his long residence, he knew more intimately than almost any
other foreigner. He described the marriage settlement of a nobleman
which had actually passed through his hands, wherein the intending
husband, with wondrous foresight and precaution, deliberately named
three or four gentlemen, amongst whom his future wife might choose her
_cavaliere servente_!
We had several other _habitués_ at our villas; Dall’ Ongaro, a poet and
ex-priest; Romanelli, the sculptor; and Miss Linda White, now Madame
Villari, the charming authoress and hostess of a brilliant _salon_, wife
of the eminent historian who was recently Minister of Education.
Perhaps the most interesting of our visitors, after Mr. Browning, was
Mrs. Beecher Stowe. She impressed me much, and the criticisms I have
read of her “_Sunny Memories_” and other books have failed to diminish
my admiration for her. She was one of the few women, I suppose, who have
actually _felt_ Fame, as heroes do who receive national Triumphs; and
she seemed to be as simple and unpretentious, as little elated as it was
possible to be. She had even a trick of looking down as if she had been
stared out of countenance; but this was perhaps a part of that singular
habit which most Evangelicals of her class exhibited thirty years ago,
of shyness in society and inability to converse except with the person
seated next them in company. It was the verification after eighteen
centuries of the old heathen taunt against the Christians, recorded in
the dialogues of Minucius Felix, “_In publicam muta, in angulis
garrula!_” I have recorded elsewhere Mrs. Stowe’s remark when I spoke
with grief of the end of Theodore Parker’s work. “Do you think,” she
said, suddenly looking up at me with flashing eyes, “that Theodore
Parker has no work to do for God _now_?” I must not repeat again her
interesting conversation as we sat on our balcony watching the sun go
down over the Val d’ Arno. After much serious talk as to the nearness of
the next life, Mrs. Stowe narrated a saying of her boy on which, (as I
told her), a good heterodox sermon _in my sense_ might be preached. She
taught the child that Anger was sinful, whereupon he asked: “Then why,
Mama, does the Bible say so often that God was angry?” She replied
motherlike: “You will understand it when you are older.” The boy
pondered seriously for awhile and then burst out: “O Mama, I have found
it out! God is angry, _because God is not a Christian_!”