My very old friend, Colonel Grant--General Grant many years before
he died--used to say that if he wished without changing his place
himself, to see the greatest possible number of his friends and
acquaintances, he should stand perpetually at the foot of the column
in the Place Vendôme. But it seems to me that at least as advantageous
a post of observation for the purpose would be the foot of Giotto's
tower in Florence! Who in these days lives and dies without going to
Florence; and who goes to Florence without going to gaze on the most
perfectly beautiful tower that human hands ever raised?
Let me tell (quite parenthetically) a really good story of that
matchless building, which yet however will hardly be appreciated at
its full value by those who have never yet seen it. When the Austrian
troops were occupying Florence, one of the white-coated officers had
planted himself in the Piazza in front of the tower, and was gazing at
it earnestly, lost in admiration of its perfect beauty. "_Si svita,
signore_," said a little street urchin, coming up behind him--"It
_unscrews_, sir!" As much as to say, "Wouldn't you like just to take
it off bodily and carry it away?" But, as I said, to apprehend the
aptitude of the _gamin's_ sneer, one must have oneself looked on the
absolute perfection of proportion and harmony of its every part, which
really does suggest the idea that the whole might be lifted bodily in
one piece from its place on the soil Whether the Austrian had the
wit to answer "You are blundering, boy! you are taking me for a
Frenchman," I don't know!
But I was saying, when the mention of the celebrated tower led me into
telling, before I forgot it, the above story, that Florence was of all
the cities of Europe, that in which one might be likely to see
the greatest number of old, and make the greatest number of new
acquaintances. I lived there for more than thirty years, and the
number of persons, chiefly English, American, and Italian, whom I knew
during that period is astonishing. The number of them was of course
all the greater from the fact that the society, at least so far as
English and Americans were concerned, was to a very great degree a
floating one. They come back to my memory, when I think of those
times, like a long procession of ghosts! Most of them, I suppose,
_are_ ghosts by this time. They pass away out of one's ken, and are
lost!
Some, thank Heaven, are _not_ lost; and some though lost, will never
pass out of ken! If I were writing only for myself, I should like to
send my memory roving among all that crowd of phantoms, catch them one
after another as they dodge about half eluding one when just on
the point of recovering them, and, fixing them in memory's camera,
photograph them one after another. But I cannot hope that such a
gallery would be as interesting to the reader as it certainly would to
me. And I must content myself with recording my recollections of those
among them in whom the world may be supposed to take an interest.
Theodosia Garrow, when living with her parents at "The Braddons," at
Torquay, had known Elizabeth Barrett. The latter was very much of an
invalid at the time; so much so, as I think I have gathered from my
wife's talk about those times, as to have prevented her from being a
visitor to "The Braddons." But Theodosia was, I take it, to be very
frequently found by the side of the sofa to which her friend was more
or less confined. I fancy that Mr. Kenyon, who was an old friend
and family connection of Elizabeth Barrett's family, and was also
intimately acquainted with the Garrows and with Theodosia, must have
been the first means of bringing the girls together. There were
assuredly _very_ few young women in England at that day to whom
Theodosia Garrow in social intercourse would have had to look _up_,
as to one on a higher intellectual level than her own. But Elizabeth
Barrett was one of them. I am not talking of _acquirements_. Nor was
my wife thinking of such when she used to speak of the poetess as she
had known her at that time. I am talking, as my wife used to talk,
of pure native intellectual power. And I consider it to have been no
small indication of the capacity of my wife's intelligence, that she
so clearly and appreciatingly recognised and measured the distance
between her friend's intellect and her own. But this appreciation on
the one side was in nowise incompatible with a large and generous
amount of admiration on the other. And many a talk in long subsequent
years left with me the impression of the high estimation which the
gifted poetess had formed of the value of her highly, but not so
exceptionally, gifted admirer.
Of course this old friendship paved the way for a new one when the
Brownings came to live in Florence. I flatter myself that that would
in any case have found some _raison d'être_. But the pleasure of the
two girls--girls no more in any sense--in meeting again quickened
the growth of an intimacy which might otherwise have been slower in
ripening.
To say that amid all that frivolous, gay, giddy, and, it must be
owned, for the most part very unintellectual society (in the pleasures
and pursuits of which, to speak honestly, I took, well pleased, my
full share), my visits to Casa Guidi were valued by me as choice
morsels of my existence, is to say not half enough. I was conscious
even then of coming away from those visits a better man, with higher
views and aims. And pray, reader, understand that any such effect was
not produced by any talk or look or word of the nature of preaching,
or anything approaching to it, but simply by the perception and
appreciation of what Elizabeth Barrett Browning was; of the immaculate
purity of every thought that passed through her pellucid mind, and the
indefeasible nobility of her every idea, sentiment, and opinion. I
hope my reader is not so much the slave of conventional phraseology as
to imagine that I use the word "purity" in the above sentence in its
restricted and one may say technical, sense. I mean the purity of the
upper spiritual atmosphere in which she habitually dwelt; the absolute
disseverance of her moral as well as her intellectual nature from all
those lower thoughts as well as lower passions which smirch the human
soul. In mind and heart she was _white_--stainless. That is what I
mean by purity.
Her most intimate friend at Florence was a Miss Isabella Blagden, who
lived for many years at Bellosguardo, in a villa commanding a lovely
view over Florence and the valley of the Arno from the southern side,
looking across it therefore to Fiesole and its villa-and-cypress-covered
slopes. Whether the close friendship between Mrs. Browning and Isa
Blagden (we all called her Isa always) was first formed in Florence, or
had its commencement at an earlier date, I do not know. But Isa was also
the intimate and very specially highly-valued friend of my wife and
myself. And this also contributed to our common friendship. Isa was
(yes, as usual, "was," alas, though she was very much my junior) a very
bright, very warm-hearted, very clever little woman, who knew everybody,
and was, I think, more universally beloved than any other individual
among us. A little volume of her poems was published after her untimely
death. They are not such as could take by storm the careless ears of the
world, which knows nothing about her, and must, I suppose, be admitted
to be marked by that mediocrity which neither gods nor men can tolerate.
But it is impossible to read the little volume without perceiving how
choice a spirit the authoress must have been, and understanding how it
came to pass that she was especially honoured by the close and warm
attachment of Mrs. Browning. I have scores of letters signed "Isa," or
rather Sibylline leaves scrawled in the vilest handwriting on all sorts
of abnormal fragments of paper, and despatched in headlong haste,
generally concerning some little projected festivity at Bellosguardo,
and advising me of the expected presence of some stranger whom she
thought I should like to meet. Very many of such of these fragmentary
scribblings, as were written before the Brownings left Florence, contain
some word or reference to her beloved "Ba," for such was the pet name
used between them, with what meaning or origin I know not.
Dear Isa's death was to me an especially sad one, because I thought,
and think, that she need not have died. She lived alone with a couple
of old servants, and though she was rich in troops of friends, and
there were one or two near her during the day or two of her illness,
they did not seem to have managed matters wisely. Our Isa was
extremely obstinate about calling in medical advice. It could not be
done at a moment's notice, for a message had to be sent and a doctor
to come from Florence. And this was not done till the second day of
her illness. And I had good reason for thinking that, had she been
properly attended to on the first day, her life might have been saved.
She would not let her friends send for the doctor, and the friends
were unable to make her do so. Unhappily, I was absent for a few days
at Siena, and returned to be met by the intelligence that she was
dead. It seemed the more sad in that I knew that if I had been there
I could have made her call a doctor before it was too late. Browning
could also have done so; but it was after the death of Mrs. Browning
and his departure from Florence.
How great her sorrow was for the death of her friend, Browning knew,
doubtless, but nobody else, I think, in the world save myself.
I have now before me one of her little scraps of letters, in which she
encloses one from Mrs. Browning which is of the highest interest. The
history and genesis of it is as follows. Shortly after the publication
of the well-known and exquisite little poem on the god Pan in the
_Cornhill Magazine_, my brother Anthony wrote me a letter venturing to
criticise it, in which he says: "The lines are very beautiful, and the
working out of the idea is delicious. But I am inclined to think that
she is illustrating an allegory by a thought, rather than a thought
by an allegory. The idea of the god destroying the reed in making the
instrument has, I imagine, given her occasion to declare that in the
sublimation of the poet the man is lost for the ordinary purposes of
man's life. It has been thus instead of being the reverse; and I can
hardly believe that she herself believes in the doctrine which her
fancy has led her to illustrate. A man that can be a poet is so much
the more a man in becoming such, and is the more fitted for a man's
best work. Nothing is destroyed, and in preparing the instrument for
the touch of the musician the gods do nothing for which they need
weep. The idea however is beautiful, and it is beautifully worked."
Then follows some verbal criticism which need not be transcribed.
Going on to the seventh stanza he says, "In the third line of it, she
loses her antithesis. She must spoil her man, as well as make a poet
out of him--spoil him as the reed is spoilt. Should we not read the
lines thus:--
"'Yet one half beast is the great god Pan
Or he would not have laughed by the river.
Making a poet he mars a man;
The true gods sigh,' &c."?
In justice to my brother's memory I must say that this was not
written to me with any such presumptuous idea as that of offering his
criticism to the poetess. But I showed the letter to Isa Blagden, and
at her request left it with her. A day or two later, she writes to me:
"Dear friend,--I send you back your criticism and Mrs. B.'s rejoinder.
She _made_ me show it to her, and she wishes you to see her answer."
Miss Blagden's words would seem to imply that she thought the
criticism mine. And if she did, Mrs. Browning was doubtless led to
suppose so too. Yet I think this could hardly have been the case.
Of course my only object in writing all this here is to give the
reader the great treat of seeing Mrs. Browning's "rejoinder." It is
very highly interesting:--
* * * * *
"DEAREST ISA,--Very gentle my critic is; I am glad I got him out of
you. But tell dear Mr. Trollope he is wrong nevertheless" [here it
certainly seems that she supposed the criticism to be mine]; "and
that my 'thought' was really and decidedly _anterior_ [_sic_] to my
'allegory.' Moreover, it is my thought still. I meant to say that the
poetic organisation implies certain disadvantages; for instance an
exaggerated general susceptibility, ...[1] which may be shut up,
kept out of the way in every-day life, and must be (or the man is
'_marred_' indeed, made a Rousseau or a Byron of), but which is
necessarily, for all that, cultivated in the very cultivation of art
itself. There is an inward reflection and refraction of the heats
of life ...[1] doubling pains and pleasures, doubling therefore the
motives (passions) of life. I have said something of this in A.L.
[_Aurora Leigh_]. Also there is a passion for essential truth (as
apprehended) and a necessity for speaking it out at all risks,
inconvenient to personal peace. Add to this and much else the loss of
the sweet unconscious cool privacy among the 'reeds' ...[1] which I
for one care so much for--the loss of the privilege of being glad or
sorry, ill or well, without a 'notice.' That may have its glory to
certain minds. But most people would be glad to 'stir their tea in
silence' when they are grave, and even to talk nonsense (much too
frivolously) when they are merry, without its running the round of the
newspapers in two worlds perhaps. You know I don't _invent_, Isa. In
fact, I am sorely tempted to send Mr. Trollope a letter I had this
morning, as an illustration of my view, and a reply to his criticism.
Only this letter among many begins with too many fair speeches. Still
it seems written by somebody in earnest and with a liking for me. Its
main object is to complain of the cowardly morality in _Pan_. Then a
stroke on the poems before Congress. The writer has heard that I 'had
been to Paris, was _fêted_ by the Emperor, and had had my head turned
by Imperial flatteries,' in consequence of which I had taken to
'praise and flatter the tyrant, and try to help his selfish ambition.'
Well! one should laugh and be wise. But somehow one doesn't laugh. A
letter beginning, 'You are a great teacher of truth,' and ending, 'You
are a dishonest wretch,' makes you cold somehow, and ill disposed
towards the satisfactions of literary distinction. Yes! and be sure,
Isa, that the 'true gods sigh,' and have reason to sigh, for the cost
and pain of it; sigh only ... don't haggle over the cost; don't grudge
a crazia, but.... sigh, sigh ... while they pay honestly.
"On the other hand, there's much light talking and congratulation,
excellent returns to the pocket from the poem in the _Cornhill_;
pleasant praise from dear Mr. Trollope.... with all drawbacks: a good
opinion from Isa worth its gold--and Pan laughs.
"But he is a beast up to the waist; yes, Mr. Trollope, a beast. He is
not a true god.
"And I am neither god nor beast, if you please--only a
"BA."
* * * * *
[Footnote 1: These dots do not indicate any hiatus. They exist in the
MS. as here given.]
It seems that she certainly imagined me to be the critic; but must
have been subsequently undeceived. I will not venture to say a word on
the question of the marring or making of a man which results from the
creation of a poet; but if my brother had known Mrs. Browning as well
as I knew her, he would not have written that he could "hardly believe
that she herself believes in the doctrine that her fancy has led her
to illustrate." At all events, the divine afflatus had not so marred
the absolutely single-minded truthfulness of the woman in her as
to make it possible that she should, for the sake of illustrating,
however appositely, any fancy however brilliant, put forth a
"doctrine" as believing in it, which she did not believe. It may seem
that this is a foolish making of a mountain out of a molehill; but she
would not have felt it to be so. She had so high a conception of the
poet's office and responsibilities that nothing would have induced her
to play at believing for literary purposes any position, or fancy, or
imagination, which she did not in her heart of hearts accept.
There was one subject upon which both my wife and I disagreed in
opinion with Mrs. Browning; and it was a subject which sat very near
her heart, and was much occupying all minds at that time--the phases
of Italy's struggle for independence, and especially the part which
the Emperor Napoleon the Third was taking in that struggle, and his
conduct towards Italy. We were all equally "Italianissimi," as the
phrase went then; all equally desirous that Italy should accomplish
the union of her _disjecta membra_, throw off the yoke of the bad
governments which had oppressed her, make herself a nation, and do
well as such. But we differed widely as to the ultimate utility, the
probable results, and, above all, as to the motives of the Emperor's
conduct. Mrs. Browning believed in him and trusted him. We did
neither. Hence the following interesting and curious letter, written
to my wife at Florence by Mrs. Browning, who was passing the summer at
Siena. Mrs. Browning felt very warmly upon this subject--so indeed did
my wife, differing from her _toto coelo_ upon it. But the difference
not only never caused the slightest suspension of cordial feeling
between them, but never caused either of them to doubt for a moment
that the other was with equal sincerity and equal ardour anxious for
the same end. The letter was written, as only the postmark shows, on
September 26th, 1859, and was as follows:--
* * * * *
"MY DEAR MRS. TROLLOPE,--I feel doubly ungrateful to you ... for the
music (one of the proofs of your multiform faculty) and for your kind
and welcome letter, which I have delayed to thank you for. My body
lags so behind my soul always, and especially of late, that you must
consider my disadvantages in whatever fault is committed by me trying
to forgive it.
"Certainly we differ in our estimate of the Italian situation, while
loving and desiring for Italy up to the same height and with the same
heart.
"For me I persist in looking to _facts_ rather than to words official
or unofficial, and in repeating that, 'whereas we were bound, now we
are free.'
"'I think, therefore, I am.' _Cogito, ergo sum_, was, you know, an old
formula. Italy thinks (aloud) at Florence and Bologna; therefore she
_is_. And how did that happen? Could it have happened last year,
with the Austrians at Bologna, and ready (at a sign) to precipitate
themselves into Tuscany? Could it have happened previous to the French
intervention? And could it happen _now_ if France used the power she
has in Italy _against_ Italy? Why is it that the _Times_ newspaper,
which declared ... first that the elections were to be prevented
by France, and next that they were to be tampered with ... is not
justified before our eyes? I appeal to your sober judgment ... if
indeed the Emperor Napoleon _desires the restoration of the Dukes!!_
Is he not all the more admirable for being loyal and holding his hand
off while he has fifty thousand men ready to 'protect' us all and
prevent the exercise of the people's sovereignty? And he a despot (so
called) and accustomed to carry out his desires. Instead of which
Tuscans and Romagnoli, Parma and Modena, have had every opportunity
allowed them to combine, carry their elections, and express their
full minds in assemblies, till the case becomes so complicated and
strengthened that her enemies for the most part despair.
"The qualities shown by the Italians--the calm, the dignity, the
intelligence, the constancy ... I am as far from not understanding
the weight of these virtues as from not admiring them. But the
_opportunity_ for exercising them comes from the Emperor Napoleon, and
it is good and just for us all to remember this while we admire the
most.
"So at least I think; and the Italian official bodies have always
admitted it, though individuals seem to me to be too much
influenced by the suspicions and calumnies thrown out by foreign
journals--English, Prussian, Austrian, and others--which traduce the
Emperor's motives in diplomacy, as they traduced them in the war. A
prejudice in the eye is as fatal to sight as mote and beam together.
And there are things abroad _worse_ than any prejudices--yes, worse!
"It is a fact that the Emperor used his influence with England to
get the Tuscan vote accepted by the English Government. Whatever
wickedness he meant by _that_ the gods know; and English statesmen
suspect ... (or suspected a very short short time ago); but the deed
itself is not wicked, and you and I shall not be severe on it whatever
bad motive may be imputable.
"So much more I could write ... about Villafranca, but I won't. The
Emperor, great man as he is, could not precisely anticipate the
high qualities given proof of in the late development of Italian
nationality. He made the best terms he could, having had his hand
forced. In consequence of this treaty he has carried out his
engagement to Austria in certain official forms, knowing well that the
free will and choice of the Italians are hindered by none of them;
and knowing besides that every apparent coldness and reserve of his
towards the peninsula removes a jealousy from England, and instigates
her to a more liberal and human bearing than formerly.
"Forgive me for all these words. I am much better, but still not as
strong as I was before my attack; only getting strength, I hope.
"Miss Blagden and Miss Field are staying still with us, and are gone
to Siena to-day to see certain pictures (which has helped to expose
you to this attack). We talk of returning to Florence by the first of
October, or soon after, in spite of the revival of fine weather. Mr.
Landor is surprisingly improved by the good air here and the repose of
mind; walks two miles, and writes alcaics and pentameters on most days
... on his domestic circumstances, and ... I am sorry to say ... Louis
Napoleon. But I tell him that I mean him to write an ode on my side of
the question before we have done.
"I honour you and your husband for the good work you have both done on
behalf of this great cause. But his book[1] we only know yet by the
extracts in the _Athenaeum_, which brings us your excellent articles.
May I not thank you for them? And when does Mr. Trollope come back?"
[from a flying visit to England]. "We hope not to miss him out of
Florence long.
[Footnote 1: _Tuscany in_ 1849 _and_ 1859.]
"Peni's love to Bice.[1] He has been very happy here, galloping
through the lanes on a pony the colour of his curls. Then he helps to
work in the vineyards and to keep the sheep, having made close friends
with the _contadini_ to whom he reads and explains Dall' Ongaro's
poems with great applause. By the way, the poet paid us a visit
lately, and we liked him much.
[Footnote 1: Browning's boy and my girl.]
"And let me tell _Bice's mother_ another story of Penini. He keeps a
journal, be it whispered; I ventured to peep through the leaves the
other morning, and came to the following notice: 'This is the happiest
day of my _hole (sic)_ life, because dearest Vittorio Emanuele is
really _nostro re!_'
"There's a true Italian for you! But his weak point is spelling.
"Believe me, with my husband's regards,
"Ever truly and affectionately yours,
"ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING."
* * * * *
It may possibly enter into the mind of some one of those who never
enjoyed the privilege of knowing Mrs. Browning the woman, to couple
together the stupidly calumnious insinuations to which she refers in
the first letter I have given, with the admiration she expresses for
the third Napoleon in the second letter. I differed from her wholly in
her estimate of the man, and in her views of his policy with regard to
Italy. And many an argument have I had with her on the subject. And my
opinions respecting it were all the more distasteful to her because
they concerned the character of the man himself as well as his policy
as a ruler. And those talks and arguments have left me probably the
only man alive, save one, who knows with such certainty as I know it,
and can assert as I can, the absolute absurdity and impossibility of
the idea that she, being what she was, could have been bribed by any
amount of Imperial or other flattery, not only to profess opinions
which she did not veritably hold--this touches her moral nature,
perhaps the most pellucidly truthful of any I ever knew--but to hold
opinions which she would not have otherwise held. This touches her
intellectual nature, which was as incapable of being mystified or
modified by any suggestion of vanity, self-love, or gratified pride,
as the most judicial-minded judge who ever sat on the bench. Her
intellectual view on the matter _was_, I thought, mystified and
modified by the intensity of her love for the Italian cause, and of
her hatred for the evils from which she was watching the Italians
struggling to liberate themselves.
I heard, probably from herself, of whispered calumnies, such as those
she refers to in the first of the two letters given. She despised them
then, as those who loved and valued her did, though the sensitive
womanly gentleness of her nature made it a pain to her that any
fellow-creature, however ignorant and far away from her, should so
think of her. And my disgust at a secret attempt to stab has impelled
me to say what I _know_ on the subject. But I really think that not
only those who knew her as she lived In the flesh, but the tens of
thousands who know her as she lives in her written words, cannot but
feel my vindication superfluous.
The above long and specially interesting letter is written in very
small characters on ten pages of extremely small duodecimo note-paper,
as is also the other letter by the same writer given above. Mrs.
Browning's handwriting shows ever and anon an odd tendency to form
each letter of a word separately--a circumstance which I mention for
the sake of remarking that old Huntingford, the Bishop of Hereford, in
my young days, between whom and Mrs. Browning there was one thing in
common, namely, a love for and familiarity with Greek studies, used to
write in the same manner.
The Dall' Ongaro here spoken of was an old friend of ours--of my
wife's, if I remember right--before our marriage. He was a Venetian,
or rather to speak accurately, I believe, a Dalmatian by birth, but
all his culture and sympathies were Venetian. He had in his early
youth been destined for the priesthood, but like many another had been
driven by the feelings and sympathies engendered by Italy's political
struggles to abandon the tonsure for the sake of joining the "patriot"
cause. His muse was of the drawing-room school and calibre. But
he wrote very many charming little poems breathing the warmest
aspirations of the somewhat extreme _gauche_ of that day, especially
some _stornelli_ after the Tuscan fashion, which met with a very wide
and warm acceptance. I remember one extremely happy, the _refrain_
of which still runs in my head. It is written on the newly-adopted
Italian tricolour flag. After characterising each colour separately in
a couplet, he ends:--
"_E il rosso, il bianco, e il verde,
È un terno che si giuoca, e non si perde_."
The phrase is borrowed from the language of the lottery. "And the
red, and the white, and the green, are a threefold combination" [I
am obliged to be horribly prosaic in order to make the allusion
intelligible to non-Italian ears!] "on which we may play and be sure
not to lose!"
I am tempted to give here another of Mrs. Browning's letters to my
first wife, partly by the persuasion that any letter of hers must be
a matter of interest to a very large portion of English readers, and
partly for the sake of the generously appreciative criticism of one of
my brother's books, which I also always considered to be one of his
best. I must add that Mrs. Browning's one bit of censure coincides as
perfectly with my own judgment. The letter as usual is dateless,
but must have been written very shortly after the publication of my
brother's novel called _The Three Clerks_.
"My dear Mrs. Trollope,--I return _The Three Clerks_ with our true
thanks and appreciation. We both quite agree with you in considering
it the best of the three clever novels before the public. My husband,
who can seldom get a novel to hold him, has been held by all three,
and by this the strongest. Also it has qualities which the others gave
no sign of. For instance, I was wrung to tears by the third volume.
What a thoroughly _man's_ book it is! I much admire it, only wishing
away, with a vehemence which proves the veracity of my general
admiration, the contributions to the _Daily Delight_--may I dare to
say it?
"I do hope you are better. For myself, I have not suffered more than
was absolutely necessary in the late unusual weather.
"I heard with concern that Mrs. Trollope" [my mother] "has been less
well than usual. But who can wonder, with such cold?
"Most truly yours,
"Elizabeth Barrett Browning.
"_Casa Guidi, Wednesday._"
Here is also one other little memorial, written not by "Elizabeth
Barrett Browning," but by "Elizabeth Barrett." It is interesting
on more than one account. It bears no date, save "Beacon Terrace
[Torquay], Thursday," But it evidently marks the beginning of
acquaintanceship between the two exceptionally, though not equally
gifted girls--Elizabeth Barrett and Theodosia Garrow. It is written on
a sheet of the very small duodecimo note paper which she was wont to
use many years subsequently, but in far more delicate and elegant
characters than she used, when much pen-work had produced its usual
deteriorating effect on her caligraphy.
* * * * *
"I cannot return the _Book of Beauty_" [Lady Blessington's annual] "to
Miss Garrow without thanking her for allowing me to read in it sooner
than I should otherwise have done, those contributions of her own
which help to justify its title, and which are indeed sweet and
touching verses.
"It is among the vexations brought upon me by my illness, that I still
remain personally unacquainted with Miss Garrow, though seeming to
myself to know her through those who actually do so. And I should
venture to hope that it might be a vexation the first to leave me, if
a visit to an invalid condemned to the _peine forte et dure_ of being
very silent, notwithstanding her womanhood, were a less gloomy thing.
At any rate I am encouraged to thank Miss Fisher and Miss Garrow
for their visits of repeated inquiry, and their other very kind
attentions, by these written words, rather than by a message. For I am
sure that wherever kindness _can_ come thankfulness _may_, and that
whatever intrusion my note can be guilty of, it is excusable by the
fact of my being Miss Garrow's
"Sincerely obliged,
"E. BARRETT."
* * * * *
Could anything be more charmingly girlish, or more prettily worded!
The diminutive little note seems to have been preserved, an almost
solitary survival of the memorials of the days to which it belongs.
It must doubtless have been followed by sundry others, but was, I
suppose, specially treasured as having been the first step towards a
friendship which was already highly valued.
Of course, in the recollections of an Englishman living during those
years in Florence, Robert Browning must necessarily stand out in high
relief, and in the foremost line. But very obviously this is neither
the time nor the place, nor is my dose of presumption sufficient for
any attempt at a delineation of the man. To speak of the poet, since
I write for Englishmen, would be very superfluous. It may be readily
imagined that the "tag-rag and bobtail" of the men who mainly
constituted that very pleasant but not very intellectual society, were
not likely to be such as Mr. Browning would readily make intimates
of. And I think I see in memory's magic glass that the men used to be
rather afraid of him. Not that I ever saw him rough or uncourteous
with the most exasperating fool that ever rubbed a man's nervous
system the wrong way; but there was a quiet, lurking smile which,
supported by very few words, used to seem to have the singular
property of making the utterers of platitudes and the mistakers of
_non-sequiturs_ for _sequiturs_, uncomfortably aware of the nature of
their words within a very few minutes after they had uttered them. I
may say, however, that I believe that in any dispute on any sort of
subject between any two men in the place, if it had been proposed to
submit the matter in dispute for adjudication to Mr. Browning, the
proposal would have been jumped at with a greater readiness of
_consensus_ than in the case of any other man there.