With the flower-tide of spring in 1849 came a new happiness to the two
poets: the son who was born on the 9th of March. The boy was called
Robert Wiedemann Barrett, the second name, in remembrance of Browning's
much-loved mother, having been substituted for the "Sarianna" wherewith
the child, if a girl, was to have been christened. Thereafter their "own
young Florentine" was an endless joy and pride to both: and he was
doubly loved by his father for his having brought a renewal of life to
her who bore him.
That autumn they went to the country, to the neighbourhood of
Vallombrosa, and then to the Bagni di Lucca. There they wandered content
in chestnut-forests, and gathered grapes at the vintage.
Early in the year Browning's "Poetical Works" were published in two
volumes. Some of the most beautiful of his shorter poems are to be found
therein. What a new note is struck throughout, what range of subject
there is! Among them all, are there any more treasurable than two of the
simplest, "Home Thoughts from Abroad" and "Night and Morning"?
"Oh, to be in England
Now that April's there,
And whoever wakes in England
Sees, some morning, unaware,
That the lowest boughs and the brushwood sheaf
Round the elm-tree bole are in tiny leaf,
While the chaffinch sings on the orchard bough
In England--now!
And after April, when May follows,
And the whitethroat builds, and all the swallows!
Hark, where my blossomed pear-tree in the hedge
Leans to the field and scatters on the clover
Blossoms and dewdrops--at the bent spray's edge--
That's the wise thrush; he sings each song twice over,
Lest you should think he never could recapture
The first fine careless rapture!"
A more significant note is struck in "Meeting at Night" and "Parting at
Morning."
MEETING.
I.
The grey sea and the long black land;
And the yellow half-moon large and low;
And the startled little waves that leap
In fiery ringlets from their sleep,
As I gain the cove with pushing prow,
And quench its speed i' the slushy sand.
II.
Then a mile of warm sea-scented beach;
Three fields to cross till a farm appears;
A tap at the pane, the quick sharp scratch
And blue spurt of a lighted match,
And a voice lass loud, through its joys and fears,
Than the two hearts beating each to each!
PARTING.
Round the cape of a sudden came the sea,
And the sun looked over the mountain's rim:
And straight was a path of gold for him,
And the need of a world of men for me.
The following winter, when they were again at their Florentine home,
Browning wrote his "Christmas Eve and Easter Day," that remarkable
_apologia_ for Christianity, and close-reasoned presentation of the
religious thought of the time. It is, however, for this reason that it
is so widely known and admired: for it is ever easier to attract readers
by dogma than by beauty, by intellectual argument than by the seduction
of art. Coincidently, Mrs. Browning wrote the first portion of "Casa
Guidi Windows."
In the spring of 1850 husband and wife spent a short stay in Rome. I
have been told that the poem entitled 'Two in the Campagna' was as
actually personal as the already quoted "Guardian Angel." But I do not
think stress should be laid on this and kindred localisations. Exact or
not, they have no literary value. To the poet, the dramatic poet above
all, locality and actuality of experience are, so to say, merely
fortunate coigns of outlook, for the winged genius to temporally
inhabit. To the imaginative mind, truth is not simply actuality. As for
'Two in the Campagna': it is too universally true to be merely personal.
There is a gulf which not the profoundest search can fathom, which not
the strongest-winged love can overreach: the gulf of individuality. It
is those who have loved most deeply who recognise most acutely this
always pathetic and often terrifying isolation of the soul. None save
the weak can believe in the absolute union of two spirits. If this were
demonstratable, immortality would be a palpable fiction. The moment
individuality can lapse to fusion, that moment the tide has ebbed, the
wind has fallen, the dream has been dreamed. So long as the soul
remains inviolate amid all shock of time and change, so long is it
immortal. No man, no poet assuredly, could love as Browning loved, and
fail to be aware, often with vague anger and bitterness, no doubt, of
this insuperable isolation even when spirit seemed to leap to spirit, in
the touch of a kiss, in the evanishing sigh of some one or other
exquisite moment. The poem tells us how the lovers, straying hand in
hand one May day across the Campagna, sat down among the seeding
grasses, content at first in the idle watching of a spider spinning her
gossamer threads from yellowing fennel to other vagrant weeds. All
around them
"The champaign with its endless fleece
Of feathery grasses everywhere!
Silence and passion, joy and peace,
An everlasting wash of air-- ...
"Such life here, through such length of hours,
Such miracles performed in play,
Such primal naked forms of flowers,
Such letting nature have her way." ...
Let us too be unashamed of soul, the poet-lover says, even as earth lies
bare to heaven. Nothing is to be overlooked. But all in vain: in vain "I
drink my fill at your soul's springs."
"Just when I seemed about to learn!
Where is the thread now? off again!
The old trick! Only I discern--
Infinite passion, and the pain
Of finite hearts that yearn."
It was during this visit to Rome that both were gratified by the
proposal in the leading English literary weekly, that the
Poet-Laureateship, vacant by the death of Wordsworth, should be
conferred upon Mrs. Browning: though both rejoiced when they learned
that the honour had devolved upon one whom each so ardently admired as
Alfred Tennyson. In 1851 a visit was paid to England, not one very much
looked forward to by Mrs. Browning, who had never had cause to yearn for
her old home in Wimpole Street, and who could anticipate no
reconciliation with her father, who had persistently refused even to
open her letters to him, and had forbidden the mention of her name in
his home circle.
Bayard Taylor, in his travel-sketches published under the title "At Home
and Abroad," has put on record how he called upon the Brownings one
afternoon in September, at their rooms in Devonshire Street, and found
them on the eve of their return to Italy.
In his cheerful alertness, self-possession, and genial suavity Browning
impressed him as an American rather than as an Englishman, though there
can be no question but that no more thorough Englishman than the poet
ever lived. It is a mistake, of course, to speak of him as a typical
Englishman: for typical he was not, except in a very exclusive sense.
Bayard Taylor describes him in reportorial fashion as being apparently
about seven-and-thirty (a fairly close guess), with his dark hair
already streaked with grey about the temples: with a fair complexion,
just tinged with faintest olive: eyes large, clear, and grey, and nose
strong and well-cut, mouth full and rather broad, and chin pointed,
though not prominent: about the medium height, strong in the shoulders,
but slender at the waist, with movements expressive of a combination of
vigour and elasticity. With due allowance for the passage of
five-and-thirty years, this description would not be inaccurate of
Browning the septuagenarian.
They did not return direct to Italy after all, but wintered in Paris
with Robert Browning the elder, who had retired to a small house in a
street leading off the Champs Élysées. The pension he drew from the Bank
of England was a small one, but, with what he otherwise had, was
sufficient for him to live in comfort. The old gentleman's health was
superb to the last, for he died in 1866 without ever having known a
day's illness.
Spring came out and found them still in Paris, Mrs. Browning
enthusiastic about Napoleon III. and interested in spiritualism: her
husband serenely sceptical concerning both. In the summer they again
went to London: but they appear to have seen more of Kenyon and other
intimate friends than to have led a busy social life. Kenyon's
friendship and good company never ceased to have a charm for both poets.
Mrs. Browning loved him almost as a brother: her husband told Bayard
Taylor, on the day when that good poet and charming man called upon
them, and after another visitor had departed--a man with a large rosy
face and rotund body, as Taylor describes him--"there goes one of the
most splendid men living--a man so noble in his friendship, so lavish in
his hospitality, so large-hearted and benevolent, that he deserves to be
known all over the world as Kenyon the Magnificent."
In the early autumn a sudden move towards Italy was again made, and
after a few weeks in Paris and on the way the Brownings found
themselves at home once more in Casa Guidi.
But before this, probably indeed before they had left Paris for London,
Mr. Moxon had published the now notorious Shelley forgeries. These were
twenty-five spurious letters, but so cleverly manufactured that they at
first deceived many people. In the preceding November Browning had been
asked to write an introduction to them. This he had gladly agreed to do,
eager as he was for a suitable opportunity of expressing his admiration
for Shelley. When the letters reached him, he found that, genuine or
not, though he never suspected they were forgeries, they contained
nothing of particular import, nothing that afforded a just basis for
what he had intended to say. Pledged as he was, however, to write
something for Mr. Moxon's edition of the Letters, he set about the
composition of an Essay, of a general as much as of an individual
nature. This he wrote in Paris, and finished by the beginning of
December. It dealt with the objective and subjective poet; on the
relation of the latter's life to his work; and upon Shelley in the light
of his nature, art, and character. Apart from the circumstance that it
is the only independent prose writing of any length from Browning's pen,
this is an exceptionally able and interesting production.
Dr. Furnivall deserves general gratitude for his obtaining the author's
leave to re-issue it, and for having published it as one of the papers
of the Browning Society. As that enthusiastic student and good friend of
the poet says in his "foretalk" to the reprint, the essay is noteworthy,
not merely as a signal service to Shelley's fame and memory, but for
Browning's statement of his own aim in his own work, both as objective
and subjective poet. The same clear-sightedness and impartial sympathy,
which are such distinguishing characteristics of his dramatic studies of
human thought and emotion, are obvious in Browning's Shelley essay. "It
would be idle to enquire," he writes, "of these two kinds of poetic
faculty in operation, which is the higher or even rarer endowment. If
the subjective might seem to be the ultimate requirement of every age,
the objective in the strictest state must still retain its original
value. For it is with this world, as starting-point and basis alike,
that we shall always have to concern ourselves; the world is not to be
learned and thrown aside, but reverted to and reclaimed."
Of its critical subtlety--the more remarkable as by a poet-critic who
revered Shelley the poet and loved and believed in Shelley the man--the
best example, perhaps, is in those passages where he alludes to the
charge against the poet's moral nature--"charges which, if substantiated
to their wide breadth, would materially disturb, I do not deny, our
reception and enjoyment of his works, however wonderful the artistic
qualities of these. For we are not sufficiently supplied with instances
of genius of his order to be able to pronounce certainly how many of its
constituent parts have been tasked and strained to the production of a
given lie, and how high and pure a mood of the creative mind may be
dramatically simulated as the poet's habitual and exclusive one."
The large charity, the liberal human sympathy, the keen critical acumen
of this essay, make one wish that the author had spared us a "Sludge
the Medium" or a "Pacchiarotto," or even a "Prince Hohenstiel-Schwangau,"
and given us more of such honourable work in "the other harmony."
Glad as the Brownings were to be home again at Casa Guidi, they could
not enjoy the midsummer heats of Florence, and so went to the Baths of
Lucca. It was a delight for them to ramble among the chestnut-woods of
the high Tuscan forests, and to go among the grape-vines where the
sunburnt vintagers were busy. Once Browning paid a visit to that remote
hill-stream and waterfall, high up in a precipitous glen, where, more
than three-score years earlier, Shelley had been wont to amuse himself
by sitting naked on a rock in the sunlight, reading _Herodotus_ while
he cooled, and then plunging into the deep pool beneath him--to emerge,
further up stream, and then climb through the spray of the waterfall
till he was like a glittering human wraith in the middle of a dissolving
rainbow.
Those Tuscan forests, that high crown of Lucca, must always have special
associations for lovers of poetry. Here Shelley lived, rapt in his
beautiful dreams, and translated the _Symposium_ so that his wife
might share something of his delight in Plato. Here, ten years later, Heine
sneered, and laughed and wept, and sneered again--drank tea with "la
belle Irlandaise," flirted with Francesca "la ballerina," and wrote
alternately with a feathered quill from the breast of a nightingale and
with a lancet steeped in aquafortis: and here, a quarter of a century
afterward, Robert and Elizabeth Browning also laughed and wept and
"joyed i' the sun," dreamed many dreams, and touched chords of beauty
whose vibration has become incorporated with the larger rhythm of all
that is high and enduring in our literature.
On returning to Florence (Browning with the MS. of the greater part of
his splendid fragmentary tragedy, "In a Balcony," composed mainly while
walking alone through the forest glades), Mrs. Browning found that the
chill breath of the _tramontana_ was affecting her lungs, so a move
was made to Rome, for the passing of the winter (1853-4). In the spring
their little boy, their beloved "Pen,"[22] became ill with malaria. This
delayed their return to Florence till well on in the summer. During this
stay in Rome Mrs. Browning rapidly proceeded with "Aurora Leigh," and
Browning wrote several of his "Men and Women," including the exquisite
'Love among the Ruins,' with its novel metrical music; 'Fra Lippo
Lippi,' where the painter, already immortalised by Landor, has his third
warrant of perpetuity; the 'Epistle of Karshish' (in part);
'Memorabilia' (composed on the Campagna); 'Saul,' a portion of which had
been written and published ten years previously, that noble and lofty
utterance, with its trumpet-like note of the regnant spirit; the
concluding part of "In a Balcony;" and 'Holy Cross Day'--besides,
probably, one or two others. In the late spring (April 27th) also, he
wrote the short dactylic lyric, 'Ben Karshook's Wisdom.' This little
poem was given to a friend for appearance in one of the then popular
_Keepsakes_--literally given, for Browning never contributed to
magazines. The very few exceptions to this rule were the result of a
kindliness stronger than scruple: as when (1844), at request of Lord
Houghton (then Mr. Monckton Milnes), he sent 'Tokay,' the 'Flower's
Name,' and 'Sibrandus Schafnaburgensis,' to "help in making up some
magazine numbers for poor Hood, then at the point of death from
hemorrhage of the lungs, occasioned by the enlargement of the heart,
which had been brought on by the wearing excitement of ceaseless and
excessive literary toil." As 'Ben Karshook's Wisdom,' though it has been
reprinted in several quarters, will not be found in any volume of
Browning's works, and was omitted from "Men and Women" by accident, and
from further collections by forgetfulness, it may be fitly quoted here.
Karshook, it may be added, is the Hebraic word for a thistle.
[Footnote 22: So-called, it is asserted, from his childish effort to
pronounce a difficult name (Wiedemann). But despite the good authority
for this statement, it is impossible not to credit rather the
explanation given by Nathaniel Hawthorne, who, moreover, affords the
practically definite proof that the boy was at first, as a term of
endearment, called "Pennini," which was later abbreviated to "Pen." The
cognomen, Hawthorne states, was a diminutive of "Apennino," which was
bestowed upon the boy in babyhood because he was very small, there being
a statue in Florence of colossal size called "Apennino."]
I.
"'Would a man 'scape the rod'?--
Rabbi Ben Karshook saith,
'See that he turns to God
The day before his death.'
'Ay, could a man inquire
When it shall come!' I say.
The Rabbi's eye shoots fire--
'Then let him turn to-day!'
II.
Quoth a young Sadducee,--
'Reader of many rolls,
Is it so certain we
Have, as they tell us, souls?'--
'Son, there is no reply!'
The Rabbi bit his beard:
'Certain, a soul have _I_--
_We_ may have none,' he sneer'd.
Thus Karshook, the Hiram's Hammer,
The Right-Hand Temple column,
Taught babes their grace in grammar,
And struck the simple, solemn."
It was in this year (1855) that "Men and Women" was published. It is
difficult to understand how a collection comprising poems such as "Love
among the Ruins," "Evelyn Hope," "Fra Lippo Lippi," "A Toccata of
Galuppi's," "Any Wife to any Husband," "Master Hugues of Saxe-Gotha,"
"Andrea del Sarto," "In a Balcony," "Saul," "A Grammarian's Funeral," to
mention only ten now almost universally known, did not at once obtain a
national popularity for the author. But lovers of literature were simply
enthralled: and the two volumes had a welcome from them which was
perhaps all the more ardent because of their disproportionate numbers.
Ears alert to novel poetic music must have thrilled to the new strain
which sounded first--"Love among the Ruins," with its Millet-like
opening--
"Where the quiet-coloured end of evening smiles,
Miles and miles
On the solitary pastures where our sheep
Half asleep
Tinkle homeward through the twilight, stray or stop
As they crop--
Was the site once of a city great and gay ..."
Soon after the return to Florence, which, hot as it was, was preferable
in July to Rome, Mrs. Browning wrote to her frequent correspondent Miss
Mitford, and mentioned that about four thousand lines of "Aurora Leigh"
had been written. She added a significant passage: that her husband had
not seen a single line of it up to that time--significant, as one of the
several indications that the union of Browning and his wife was indeed a
marriage of true minds, wherein nothing of the common bane of
matrimonial life found existence. Moreover, both were artists, and,
therefore, too full of respect for themselves and their art to bring in
any way the undue influence of each other into play.
By the spring of 1856, however, the first six "books" were concluded:
and these, at once with humility and pride, Mrs. Browning placed in her
husband's hands. The remaining three books were written, in the summer,
in John Kenyon's London house.
It was her best, her fullest answer to the beautiful dedicatory poem,
"One Word More," wherewith her husband, a few months earlier, sent forth
his "Men and Women," to be for ever associated with "E.B.B."
I.
"There they are, my fifty men and women
Naming me the fifty poems finished!
Take them, Love, the book and me together:
Where the heart lies, let the brain lie also.
XVIII.
This I say of me, but think of you, Love!
This to you--yourself my moon of poets!
Ah, but that's the world's side, there's the wonder,
Thus they see you, praise you, think they know you!
There, in turn I stand with them and praise you--
Out of my own self, I dare to phrase it.
But the best is when I glide from out them,
Cross a step or two of dubious twilight,
Come out on the other side, the novel
Silent silver lights and darks undreamed of,
Where I hush and bless myself with silence."
The transference from Florence to London was made in May. In the summer
"Aurora Leigh" was published, and met with an almost unparalleled
success: even Landor, most exigent of critics, declared that he was
"half drunk with it," that it had an imagination germane to that of
Shakspere, and so forth.
The poem was dedicated to Kenyon, and on their homeward way the
Brownings were startled and shocked to hear of his sudden death. By the
time they had arrived at Casa Guidi again they learned that their good
friend had not forgotten them in the disposition of his large fortune.
To Browning he bequeathed six thousand, to Mrs. Browning four thousand
guineas. This loss was followed early in the ensuing year (1857) by the
death of Mr. Barrett, steadfast to the last in his refusal of
reconciliation with his daughter.
Winters and summers passed happily in Italy--with one period of feverish
anxiety, when the little boy lay for six weeks dangerously ill, nursed
day and night by his father and mother alternately--with pleasant
occasionings, as the companionship for a season of Nathaniel Hawthorne
and his family, or of weeks spent at Siena with valued and lifelong
friends, W.W. Story, the poet-sculptor, and his wife.
So early as 1858 Mrs. Hawthorne believed she saw the heralds of death in
Mrs. Browning's excessive pallor and the hectic flush upon the cheeks,
in her extreme fragility and weakness, and in her catching, fluttering
breath. Even the motion of a visitor's fan perturbed her. But "her soul
was mighty, and a great love kept her on earth a season longer. She was
a seraph in her flaming worship of heart." "She lives so ardently," adds
Mrs. Hawthorne, "that her delicate earthly vesture must soon be burnt up
and destroyed by her soul of pure fire."
Yet, notwithstanding, she still sailed the seas of life, like one of
those fragile argonauts in their shells of foam and rainbow-mist which
will withstand the rude surge of winds and waves. But slowly, gradually,
the spirit was o'erfretting its tenement. With the waning of her
strength came back the old passionate longing for rest, for quiescence
from that "excitement from within," which had been almost over vehement
for her in the calm days of her unmarried life.
It is significant that at this time Browning's genius was relatively
dormant. Its wings were resting for the long-sustained flight of "The
Ring and the Book," and for earlier and shorter though not less royal
aerial journeyings. But also, no doubt, the prolonged comparatively
unproductive period of eight or nine years (1855-1864), between the
publication of "Men and Women" and "Dramatis Personæ," was due in some
measure to the poet's incessant and anxious care for his wife, to the
deep sorrow of witnessing her slow but visible passing away, and to the
profound grief occasioned by her death. However, barrenness of
imaginative creative activity can be only very relatively affirmed, even
of so long a period, of years wherein were written such memorable and
treasurable poems as 'James Lee's Wife,' among Browning's writings what
'Maud' is among Lord Tennyson's; 'Gold Hair: a Legend of Pornic;' 'Dis
Aliter Visum;' 'Abt Vogler,' the most notable production of its kind in
the language; 'A Death in the Desert,' that singular and impressive
study; 'Caliban upon Setebos,' in its strange potency of interest and
stranger poetic note, absolutely unique; 'Youth and Art;' 'Apparent
Failure;' 'Prospice,' that noble lyrical defiance of death; and the
supremely lofty and significant series of weighty stanzas, 'Rabbi Ben
Ezra,' the most quintessential of all the distinctively psychical
monologues which Browning has written. It seems to me that if these two
poems only, "Prospice" and "Rabbi Ben Ezra," were to survive to the day
of Macaulay's New Zealander, the contemporaries of that meditative
traveller would have sufficient to enable them to understand the great
fame of the poet of "dim ancestral days," as the more acute among them
could discern something of the real Shelley, though time had preserved
but the three lines--
"Yet now despair itself is mild,
Even as the winds and waters are;
I could lie down like a tired child" ...
something of the real Catullus, through the mists of remote antiquity,
if there had not perished the single passionate cry--
"Lesbia illa,
Illa Lesbia, quam Catullus unam
Plus quam se, atque suos amavit omnes!"
At the beginning of July (1858), the Brownings left Florence for the
summer and autumn, and by easy stages travelled to Normandy. Here the
invalid benefited considerably at first: and here, I may add, Browning
wrote his 'Legend of Pornic,' 'Gold-Hair.' This poem of twenty-seven
five-line stanzas (which differs only from that in more recent
"Collected Works," and "Selections," in its lack of the three stanzas
now numbered xxi., xxii., and xxiii.) was printed for limited private
circulation, though primarily for the purpose of securing American
copyright. Browning several times printed single poems thus, and for the
same reasons--that is, either for transatlantic copyright, or when the
verses were not likely to be included in any volume for a prolonged
period. These leaflets or half-sheetlets of 'Gold Hair' and 'Prospice,'
of 'Cleon' and 'The Statue and the Bust'--together with the "Two Poems
by Elizabeth Barrett and Robert Browning," published, for benefit of a
charity, in 1854--are among the rarest "finds" for the collector, and
are literally worth a good deal more than their weight in gold.
In the tumultuous year of 1859 all Italy was in a ferment. No patriot
among the Nationalists was more ardent in her hopes than the delicate,
too fragile, dying poetess, whose flame of life burned anew with the
great hopes that animated her for her adopted country. Well indeed did
she deserve, among the lines which the poet Tommaseo wrote and the
Florence municipality caused to be engraved in gold upon a white marble
slab, to be placed upon Casa Guidi, the words _fece del suo verso aureo
anello fra Italia e Inghilterra_--"who of her Verse made a golden link
connecting England and Italy."
The victories of Solferino and San Martino made the bitterness of the
disgraceful Treaty of Villafranca the more hard to bear. Even had we not
Mr. Story's evidence, it would be a natural conclusion that this
disastrous ending to the high hopes of the Italian patriots accelerated
Mrs. Browning's death. The withdrawal of hope is often worse in its
physical effects than any direct bodily ill.
It was a miserable summer for both husband and wife, for more private
sorrows also pressed upon them. Not even the sweet autumnal winds
blowing upon Siena wafted away the shadow that had settled upon the
invalid: nor was there medicine for her in the air of Rome, where the
winter was spent. A temporary relief, however, was afforded by the more
genial climate, and in the spring of 1860 she was able, with Browning's
help, to see her Italian patriotic poems through the press. It goes
without saying that these "Poems before Congress" had a grudging
reception from the critics, because they dared to hint that all was not
roseate-hued in England. The true patriots are those who love despite
blemishes, not those who cherish the blemishes along with the virtues.
To hint at a flaw is "not to be an Englishman."
The autumn brought a new sadness in the death of Miss Arabella
Barrett--a dearly loved sister, the "Arabel" of so many affectionate
letters. Once more a winter in Rome proved temporally restorative. But
at last the day came when she wrote her last poem--"North and South," a
gracious welcome to Hans Christian Andersen on the occasion of his
first visit to the Eternal City.
Early in June of 1861 the Brownings were once more at Casa Guidi. But
soon after their return the invalid caught a chill. For a few days she
hovered like a tired bird--though her friends saw only the seemingly
unquenchable light in the starry eyes, and did not anticipate the
silence that was soon to be.
By the evening of the 28th day of the month she was in sore peril of
failing breath. All night her husband sat by her, holding her hand. Two
hours before dawn she realised that her last breath would ere long fall
upon his tear-wet face. Then, as a friend has told us, she passed into a
state of ecstasy: yet not so rapt therein but that she could whisper
many words of hope, even of joy. With the first light of the new day,
she leaned against her lover. Awhile she lay thus in silence, and then,
softly sighing "_It is beautiful!_" passed like the windy fragrance of
a flower.