Produced by C. Aldarondo, T. Vergon, R. Prince and the Distributed Proofreaders
[Illustration: ROBERT BROWNING]
ROBERT BROWNING: HOW TO KNOW HIM
By WILLIAM LYON PHELPS, M.A., PH.D. Lampton Professor of English
Literature at Yale
WITH PORTRAIT
TO JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY WITH SINCERE AFFECTION AND RESPECT
PREFACE
In this volume I have attempted to give an account of Browning's
life and an estimation of his character: to set forth, with
sufficient illustration from his poems, his theory of poetry, his
aim and method: to make clear some of the leading ideas in his work:
to show his fondness for paradox: to exhibit the nature and basis of
his optimism. I have given in complete form over fifty of his poems,
each one preceded by my interpretation of its meaning and
significance.
W. L. P.
[Illistration: Seven Gables, Lake Huron]
CONTENTS
CHAPTER
I THE MAN
II BROWNING'S THEORY OF POETRY
III LYRICS
IV DRAMATIC LYRICS
V DRAMATIC MONOLOGUES
VI POEMS OF PARADOX
VII BROWNING'S OPTIMISM
INDEX
LIST OF POEMS
ABT VOGLER
ANDREA DEL SARTO
APPARENT FAILURE
BAD DREAMS
BISHOP ORDERS HIS TOMB, THE
CALIBAN UPON SETEBOS
CAVALIER TUNES
"CHILDE ROLAND TO THE DARK TOWER CAME"
CONFESSIONS
COUNT GISMOND
CRISTINA
EPILOGUE TO ASOLANDO
EPILOGUE TO FEFINE AT THE FAIR
EPISTLE (AN) CONTAINING THE STRANGE MEDICAL EXPERIENCE OF KARSHISH
EVELYN HOPE
EYES CALM BESIDE THEE
FACE, A
GLOVE, THE
GRAMMARIAN'S FUNERAL, A
GUARDIAN-ANGEL, THE
HOME-THOUGHTS, FROM ABROAD
HOME-THOUGHTS, FROM THE SEA
HOW IT STRIKES A CONTEMPORARY
"HOW THEY BROUGHT THE GOOD NEWS FROM GHENT TO AIX"
JAMES LEE'S WIFE (two stanzas from)
JOHANNES AGRICOLA IN MEDITATION
LABORATORY, THE
LAST RIDE TOGETHER, THE
LOST LEADER, THE
LOST MISTRESS, THE
LOVE AMONG THE RUINS
MEETING AT NIGHT
MY LAST DUCHESS
MY STAR
NEVER THE TIME AND THE PLACE
ONE WAY OF LOVE
ONE WORD MORE
OVER THE SEA OUR GALLEYS WENT
PARTING AT MORNING
PORPHYRIA'S LOVER
PROLOGUE TO ASOLANDO
PROLOGUE TO JOCOSERIA
PROLOGUE TO LA SAISIAZ
PROLOGUE TO PACCHIAROTTO
PROLOGUE TO THE TWO POETS OF CROISIC
PROSPICE
RABBI BEN EZRA
REPHAN
RESPECTABILITY
SAUL
SIBRANDUS SCHAFNABURGENSIS
SOLILOQUY OF THE SPANISH CLOISTER
SONG FROM A BLOT IN THE 'SCUTCHEON
SONGS FROM PARACELSUS
SONGS FROM PIPPA PASSES
STATUE (THE) AND THE BUST
SUMMUM BONUM
"TRANSCENDENTALISM"
UP AT A VILLA--DOWN IN THE CITY
WHICH?
BROWNING
I
THE MAN
If we enter this world from some other state of existence, it seems
certain that in the obscure pre-natal country, the power of free
choice--so stormily debated by philosophers and theologians
here--does not exist. Millions of earth's infants are handicapped at
the start by having parents who lack health, money, brains, and
character; and in many cases the environment is no better than the
ancestry. "God plants us where we grow," said Pompilia, and we can
not save the rose by placing it on the tree-top. Robert Browning,
who was perhaps the happiest man in the nineteenth century, was
particularly fortunate in his advent. Of the entire population of
the planet in the year of grace 1812, he could hardly have selected
a better father and mother than were chosen for him; and the place
of his birth was just what it should have been, the biggest town on
earth. All his life long he was emphatically a city man, dwelling in
London, Florence, Paris, and Venice, never remaining long in rural
surroundings.
Browning was born on May 7, 1812, in Southampton Street, Camberwell,
London, a suburb on the southern side of the river. One hundred years
later, as I traversed the length of this street, it looked squalid
in the rain, and is indeed sufficiently unlovely. But in 1812 it was
a good residential locality, and not far away were fresh woods and
pastures.... The good health of Browning's father may be inferred
from the fact that he lived to be eighty-four, "without a day's
illness;" he was a practical, successful business man, an official
in the Bank of England. His love of literature and the arts is
proved by the fact that he practised them constantly for the pure
joy of the working; he wrote reams and reams of verse, without
publishing a line. He had extraordinary facility in composition,
being able to write poetry even faster than his son. Rossetti said
that he had "a real genius for drawing." He owned a large and
valuable library, filled with curiosities of literature. Robert was
brought up among books, even in earliest youth turning over many a
quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore. His latest biographers
have shown the powerful and permanent effects on his poetry of this
early reading.
Browning's father--while not a rich man--had sufficient income to
give his son every possible advantage in physical and intellectual
training, and to enable him to live without earning a cent; after
Robert grew up, he was absolutely free to devote his entire time and
energy to writing poetry, which, even to the day of his death, did
not yield a livelihood. The young poet was free from care, free from
responsibility, and able from childhood to old age to bring out the
best that was in him. A curious and exact parallel is found in the
case of the great pessimist, Schopenhauer, who never ceased to be
grateful to his father for making his whole life-work possible. In
his later years, Browning wrote: "It would have been quite
unpardonable in any case not to have done my best. My dear father
put me in a condition most favourable for the best work I was
capable of. When I think of the many authors who had to fight their
way through all sorts of difficulties I have no reason to be proud
of my achievements."
Browning's mother, whom he loved with passionate adoration, was a
healthy and sensible woman; better than all these gifts, she was
deeply religious, with sincere and unaffected piety. She was a
Dissenter, a Congregationalist, and brought up Robert in the nurture
and admonition of the Lord, herself a noble example of her teachings.
This evangelical training had an incalculably strong influence on
the spirit of Browning's poetry. She loved music ardently, and when
Robert was a boy, used to play the piano to him in the twilight. He
always said that he got his devotion to music from her.
In these days, when there is such a strong reaction everywhere
against the elective system in education, it is interesting to
remember that Browning's education was simply the elective system
pushed to its last possibility. It is perhaps safe to say that no
learned man in modern times ever had so little of school and college.
His education depended absolutely and exclusively on his inclinations;
he was encouraged to study anything he wished. His father granted
him perfect liberty, never sent him to any "institution of learning,"
and allowed him to do exactly as he chose, simply providing
competent private instruction in whatever subject the youth
expressed any interest. Thus he learned Greek, Latin, the modern
languages, music (harmony and counterpoint, as well as piano and
organ), chemistry (a private laboratory was fitted up in the house),
history and art. Now every one knows that; so far as definite
acquisition of knowledge is concerned, our schools and colleges-at
least in America--leave much to be desired; our boys and girls study
the classics for years without being able to read a page at sight;
and the modern languages show a similarly meagre harvest. If one
wishes positive and practical results one must employ a private tutor,
or work alone in secret. The great advantages of our schools and
colleges--except in so far as they inspire intellectual
curiosity--are not primarily of a scholarly nature; their strength
lies in other directions. The result of Browning's education was
that at the age of twenty he knew more than most college graduates
ever know; and his knowledge was at his full command. His favorite
reading on the train, for example, was a Greek play; one of the
reasons why his poetry sometimes seems so pedantic is simply because
he never realised how ignorant most of us really are. I suppose he
did not believe that men could pass years in school and university
training and know so little. Yet the truth is, that most boys,
brought up as Browning was, would be utterly unfitted for the active
duties and struggles of life, and indeed for the amenities of social
intercourse. With ninety-nine out of a hundred, such an education,
so far as it made for either happiness or efficiency, would be a
failure. But Browning was the hundredth man. He was profoundly
learned without pedantry and without conceit; and he was primarily a
social being,
His physical training was not neglected. The boy had expert private
instruction in fencing, boxing, and riding. He was at ease on the
back of a spirited horse. He was particularly fond of dancing, which
later aroused the wonder of Elizabeth Barrett, who found it
difficult to imagine the author of _Paracelsus_ dancing the polka.
In 1833 appeared Browning's first poem, _Pauline_, which had been
completed before he was twenty-one years old. His aunt, Mrs.
Silverthorne, gave him one hundred and fifty dollars, which paid the
expenses of publication. Not a single copy was sold, and the unbound
sheets came home to roost. The commercial worth of _Pauline_ was
exactly zero; today it is said that only five copies exist. One was
sold recently for two thousand four hundred dollars.
In 1834 Browning visited Russia, going by steamer to Rotterdam, and
then driving fifteen hundred miles with horses. Although he was in
Russia about three months, and at the most sensitive time of life,
the country made surprisingly little impression upon him, or at
least upon his poetry. The dramatic idyl, _Ivan Ivànovitch_, is
practically the only literary result of this journey. It was the
south, and not the north, that was to be the inspiration of Browning.
He published his second poem, _Paracelsus_, in 1835. Although this
attracted no general attention, and had no sale, it was
enthusiastically reviewed by John Forster, who declared that its
author was a man of genius. The most fortunate result of its
appearance was that it brought Browning within the pale of literary
society, and gave him the friendship of some of the leading men in
London. The great actor Macready was charmed with the poem, and
young Browning haunted Macready's dressing-room at the theatre for
years; but their friendship ceased in 1843 when _A Blot in the
'Scutcheon_ was acted. Browning wrote four plays for Macready, two
of which were accepted.
Although Browning late in life remarked in a casual conversation
that he had visited Italy in 1834, he must have been mistaken, for
it is impossible to find any record of such a journey. To the best
of our knowledge, he first saw the land of his inspiration in 1838,
sailing from London on April 13th, passing through the Straits of
Gibraltar on the twenty-ninth, and reaching Trieste on May 30th. On
the first of June he entered Venice. It was on a walking-trip that
he first saw the village of Asolo, about thirty miles to the
northeast of Venice. Little did he then realise how closely his name
would be forever associated with this tiny town. The scenes of
_Pippa Passes_ he located there: the last summer of his life, in
1889, was spent in Asolo, his last volume he named in memory of the
village; and on the one hundredth anniversary of his birth, the
street where he lived and wrote in 1889 was formally named Via
Roberto Browning. His son, Robert Barrett Browning, lived to see
this event, and died at Asolo on July 8, 1912.
The long and obscure poem _Sordello_ was published in 1840; and then
for thirty years Browning produced poetry of the highest order:
poetry that shows scarcely any obscurity, and that in lyric and
dramatic power has given its author a fixed place among the greatest
names in English literature.
The story of the marriage and married life of Elizabeth Barrett and
Robert Browning is one of the greatest love stories in the world's
history; their love-letters reveal a drama of noble passion that
excels in beauty and intensity the universally popular examples of
Heloise and Abelard, Aucassin and Nicolette, Paul and Virginia.
There was a mysterious bond between them long before the personal
acquaintance: each admired the other's poetry. Miss Barrett had a
picture of Browning in her sickroom, and declared that the adverse
criticism constantly directed against his verse hurt her like a lash
across her own back. In a new volume of poems, she made a
complimentary reference to his work, and in January, 1845, he wrote
her a letter properly beginning with the two words, "I love." It was
her verses that he loved, and said so. In May he saw her and
illustrated his own doctrine by falling in love with her at first
sight. She was in her fortieth year, and an invalid; but if any one
is surprised at the passion she aroused in the handsome young poet,
six years her junior, one has only to read her letters. She was a
charming woman, feminine from her soul to her finger-tips, the
incarnation of _das Ewigweibliche_. Her intimate friends were mostly
what were then known as strong-minded women--I suppose to-day they
would seem like timid, shy violets. She was modest, gentle, winsome,
irresistible: profoundly learned, with the eager heart of a child.
Wimpole Street in London, "the long, unlovely street," as Tennyson
calls it, is holy ground to the lover of literature: for at Number
67 lived Arthur Henry Hallam, and diagonally opposite, at Number 50,
lived Elizabeth Barrett. This street--utterly commonplace in
appearance--is forever associated with the names of our two great
Victorian poets: and the association with Tennyson is Death: with
Browning, Love.
Not only was Elizabeth believed to be a hopeless invalid, but her
father had forbidden any of his children to marry. He was a
religious man, whose motto in his own household was apparently
"Thou shalt have no other gods before me." He had the particular
kind of piety that is most offensive to ordinary humanity. He gave
his children, for whom he had a stern and savage passion, everything
except what they wanted. He had an insane jealousy of any possible
lover, and there is no doubt that he would have preferred to attend
the funeral of any one of his children rather than a marriage. But
Browning's triumphant love knew no obstacles, and he persuaded
Elizabeth Barrett to run away with him. They were married in
September, 1846, and shortly after left for Italy. Her father refused
to see either of them in subsequent years, and returned his
daughter's letters unopened. Is there any cause in nature for these
hard hearts?
Browning's faith wrought a miracle. Instead of dying on the journey
to Italy, Mrs. Browning got well, and the two lived together in
unclouded happiness for fifteen years, until 1861, when she died in
his arms. Not a scrap of writing passed between them from the day of
her marriage to the day of her death: for they were never separated.
She said that all a woman needed to be perfectly happy was three
things--Life, Love, Italy--and she had all three.
The relations between Elizabeth Barrett and Robert Browning had all
the wonder and beauty of a mediaeval romance, with the notable
addition of being historically true. The familiar story of a damosel
imprisoned in a gloomy dungeon, guarded by a cruel dragon--and then,
when all her hope had vanished, rescued by the sudden appearance of
the brilliant knight, who carried her away from her dull prison to a
land of sunshine and happiness--this became the literal experience
of Elizabeth Barrett. Her love for her husband was the passionate
love of a woman for a man, glorified by adoration for the champion
who had miraculously transformed her life from the depths of despair
to the topmost heights of joy. He came, "pouring heaven into this
shut house of life." She expressed the daily surprise of her
happiness in her Sonnets, which one day she put shyly into his hands:
I thought once how Theocritus had sung
Of the sweet years, the dear and wished-for years,
Who each one in a gracious hand appears
To bear a gift for mortals, old or young:
And, as I mused it in his antique tongue,
I saw, in gradual vision through my tears,
The sweet, sad years, the melancholy years,
Those of my own life, who by turns 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."
My own Beloved, who hast lifted me
From this drear flat of earth where I was thrown,
And in betwixt the languid ringlets, blown
A life-breath, till the forehead hopefully
Shines out again, as all the angels see,
Before thy saving kiss! My own, my own,
Who camest to me when the world was gone,
And I who looked for only God, found _thee_!
I find thee: I am safe, and strong, and glad.
As one who stands in dewless asphodel
Looks backward on the tedious time he had
In the upper life ... so I, with bosom-swell,
Make witness here between the good and bad,
That Love, as strong as Death, retrieves as well.
Browning replied to this wonderful tribute by appending to the fifty
poems published in 1855 his _One Word More_. He wrote this in a
metre different from any he had ever used, for he meant the poem to
be unique in his works, a personal expression of his love. He
remarked that Rafael wrote sonnets, that Dante painted a picture,
each man going outside the sphere of his genius to please the woman
he loved, to give her something entirely apart from his gifts to the
world. He wished that he could do something other than poetry for his
wife, and in the next life he believed that it would be possible.
But here God had given him only one gift--verse: he must therefore
present her with a specimen of the only art he could command; but it
should be utterly unlike all his other poems, for they were dramatic;
here just once, and for one woman only, he would step out from
behind the scenes, and address her directly in his own person.
Of course Browning could have modelled a statue, or written a piece
of music for Elizabeth, for in both of these arts he had attained
moderate proficiency: but he wished not only to make a gift just for
her, but to give it to her in public, with the whole world regarding;
therefore it must be of his best.
He calls her his _moon_ of poets. He reminds her how a few days ago,
they had seen the crescent moon in Florence, how they had seen it
nightly waxing until it lamped the facade of San Miniato, while the
nightingales, in ecstasy among the cypress trees, gave full-throated
applause. Then they had travelled together to London, and now saw
the same dispirited moon, saving up her silver parsimoniously, sink
in gibbous meanness behind the chimney-tops.
The notable thing about the moon is that whereas the earth, during
one revolution about the sun, turns on its own axis three hundred
and sixty-five times, the shy moon takes exactly the same length of
time to turn around as she takes to circle once around the earth.
For this reason, earth's inhabitants have never seen but one side of
the moon, and never will. Elizabeth Browning is _his_ moon, because
she shows the other side to him alone. The radiant splendor of her
poetry fills the whole earth with light; but to her husband she
shows the other side, the loving, domestic woman, the unspeakably
precious and intimate associate of his daily life. The world thinks
it knows her; but it has seen only one side; it knows nothing of the
marvellous depth and purity of her real nature.
ONE WORD MORE
TO E.B.B. 1855
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.
II
Rafael made a century of sonnets,
Made and wrote them in a certain volume
Dinted with the silver-pointed pencil
Else he only used to draw Madonnas:
These, the world might view--but one, the volume.
Who that one, you ask? Your heart instructs you.
Did she live and love it all her life-time?
Did she drop, his lady of the sonnets,
Die, and let it drop beside her pillow
Where it lay in place of Rafael's glory,
Rafael's cheek so duteous and so loving--
Cheek, the world was wont to hail a painter's,
Rafael's cheek, her love had turned a poet's?
III
You and I would rather read that volume,
(Taken to his beating bosom by it)
Lean and list the bosom-beats of Rafael,
Would we not? than wonder at Madonnas--
Her, San Sisto names, and Her, Foligno,
Her, that visits Florence in a vision,
Her, that's left with lilies in the Louvre--
Seen by us and all the world in circle.
IV
You and I will never read that volume.
Guido Reni, like his own eye's apple
Guarded long the treasure-book and loved it
Guido Reni dying, all Bologna
Cried, and the world cried too, "Ours, the treasure!"
Suddenly, as rare things will, it vanished.
V
Dante once prepared to paint an angel:
Whom to please? You whisper "Beatrice."
While he mused and traced it and retraced it,
(Peradventure with a pen corroded
Still by drops of that hot ink he dipped for,
When, his left-hand i' the hair o' the wicked,
Back he held the brow and pricked its stigma,
Bit into the live man's flesh for parchment,
Loosed him, laughed to see the writing rankle,
Let the wretch go festering through Florence)--
Dante, who loved well because he hated,
Hated wickedness that hinders loving,
Dante standing, studying his angel,--
In there broke the folk of his Inferno.
Says he--"Certain people of importance"
(Such he gave his daily dreadful line to)
"Entered and would seize, forsooth, the poet."
Says the poet-"Then I stopped my painting."
VI
You and I would rather see that angel,
Painted by the tenderness of Dante,
Would we not?--than read a fresh Inferno.
VII
You and I will never see that picture.
While he mused on love and Beatrice,
While he softened o'er his outlined angel,
In they broke, those "people of importance":
We and Bice bear the loss for ever.
VIII
What of Rafael's sonnets, Dante's picture?
This: no artist lives and loves, that longs not
Once, and only once, and for one only,
(Ah, the prize!) to find his love a language
Fit and fair and simple and sufficient--
Using nature that's an art to others,
Not, this one time, art that's turned his nature.
Ay, of all the artists living, loving,
None but would forego his proper dowry,--
Does he paint? he fain would write a poem,--
Does he write? he fain would paint a picture,
Put to proof art alien to the artist's,
Once, and only once, and for one only,
So to be the man and leave the artist,
Gain the man's joy, miss the artist's sorrow.
IX
Wherefore? Heaven's gift takes earth's abatement!
He who smites the rock and spreads the water,
Bidding drink and live a crowd beneath him,
Even he, the minute makes immortal,
Proves, perchance, but mortal in the minute,
Desecrates, belike, the deed in doing.
While he smites, how can he but remember,
So he smote before, in such a peril,
When they stood and mocked--"Shall smiting help us?"
When they drank and sneered--"A stroke is easy!"
When they wiped their mouths and went their journey,
Throwing him for thanks--"But drought was pleasant."
Thus old memories mar the actual triumph;
Thus the doing savours of disrelish;
Thus achievement lacks a gracious somewhat;
O'er-importuned brows becloud the mandate,
Carelessness or consciousness--the gesture.
For he bears an ancient wrong about him,
Sees and knows again those phalanxed faces,
Hears, yet one time more, the 'customed prelude--
"How shouldst thou, of all men, smite, and save us?"
Guesses what is like to prove the sequel--
"Egypt's flesh-pots--nay, the drought was better."
X
Oh, the crowd must have emphatic warrant!
Theirs, the Sinai-forehead's cloven brilliance,
Right-arm's rod-sweep, tongue's imperial fiat.
Never dares the man put off the prophet.
XI
Did he love one face from out the thousands,
(Were she Jethro's daughter, white and wifely,
Were she but the Æthiopian bondslave,)
He would envy yon dumb patient camel,
Keeping a reserve of scanty water
Meant to save his own life in the desert;
Ready in the desert to deliver
(Kneeling down to let his breast be opened)
Hoard and life together for his mistress.
XII
I shall never, in the years remaining,
Paint you pictures, no, nor carve you statues,
Make you music that should all-express me;
So it seems: I stand on my attainment.
This of verse alone, one life allows me;
Verse and nothing else have I to give you.
Other heights in other lives, God willing:
All the gifts from all the heights, your own, Love!
XIII
Yet a semblance of resource avails us--
Shade so finely touched, love's sense must seize it.
Take these lines, look lovingly and nearly,
Lines I write the first time and the last time.
He who works in fresco, steals a hair-brush,
Curbs the liberal hand, subservient proudly,
Cramps his spirit, crowds its all in little,
Makes a strange art of an art familiar,
Fills his lady's missal-marge with flowerets.
He who blows thro' bronze, may breathe thro' silver,
Fitly serenade a slumbrous princess.
He who writes, may write for once as I do.
XIV
Love, you saw me gather men and women,
Live or dead or fashioned by my fancy,
Enter each and all, and use their service,
Speak from every mouth,--the speech, a poem.
Hardly shall I tell my joys and sorrows,
Hopes and fears, belief and disbelieving:
I am mine and yours--the rest be all men's,
Karshish, Cleon, Norbert and the fifty.
Let me speak this once in my true person,
Not as Lippo, Roland or Andrea,
Though the fruit of speech be just this sentence:
Pray you, look on these my men and women,
Take and keep my fifty poems finished;
Where my heart lies, let my brain lie also!
Poor the speech; be how I speak, for all things.
XV
Not but that you know me! Lo, the moon's self!
Here in London, yonder late in Florence,
Still we find her face, the thrice-transfigured.
Curving on a sky imbrued with colour,
Drifted over Fiesole by twilight,
Came she, our new crescent of a hair's-breadth.
Full she flared it, lamping Samminiato,
Rounder 'twixt the cypresses and rounder,
Perfect till the nightingales applauded.
Now, a piece of her old self, impoverished,
Hard to greet, she traverses the houseroofs,
Hurries with unhandsome thrift of silver,
Goes dispiritedly, glad to finish.
XVI
What, there's nothing in the moon noteworthy?
Nay: for if that moon could love a mortal,
Use, to charm him (so to fit a fancy),
All her magic ('tis the old sweet mythos)
She would turn a new side to her mortal,
Side unseen of herdsman, huntsman, steersman--
Blank to Zoroaster on his terrace,
Blind to Galileo on his turret,
Dumb to Homer, dumb to Keats--him, even!
Think, the wonder of the moonstruck mortal--
When she turns round, comes again in heaven,
Opens out anew for worse or better!
Proves she like some portent of an iceberg
Swimming full upon the ship it founders,
Hungry with huge teeth of splintered crystals?
Proves she as the paved work of a sapphire
Seen by Moses when he climbed the mountain?
Moses, Aaron, Nadab and Abihu
Climbed and saw the very God, the Highest,
Stand upon the paved work of a sapphire.
Like the bodied heaven in his clearness
Shone the stone, the sapphire of that paved work,
When they ate and drank and saw God also!
XVII
What were seen? None knows, none ever shall know.
Only this is sure--the sight were other,
Not the moon's same side, born late in Florence,
Dying now impoverished here in London.
God be thanked, the meanest of his creatures
Boasts two soul-sides, one to face the world with,
One to show a woman when he loves her!
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.
XIX
Oh, their Rafael of the dear Madonnas,
Oh, their Dante of the dread Inferno,
Wrote one song--and in my brain I sing it,
Drew one angel--borne, see, on my bosom!
R. B.
The Brownings travelled a good deal: they visited many places in
Italy, Venice, Ancona, Fano, Siena, and spent several winters in Rome.
The winter of 1851-52 was passed at Paris, where on the third of
January Browning wrote one of his most notable poems, _Childe Roland
to the Dark Tower Came_. One memorable evening at London in 1855
there were gathered together in an upper room Mr. and Mrs. Browning,
Mr. and Mrs. Tennyson, Dante and William Rossetti. Tennyson had just
published _Maud_ and Browning the two volumes called _Men and Women_.
Each poet was invited to read from his new work. Tennyson, with one
leg curled under him on the sofa, chanted _Maud_, the tears running
down his cheeks; and then Browning read in a conversational manner
his characteristic poem, _Fra Lippo Lippi_. Rossetti made a
pen-and-ink sketch of the Laureate while he was intoning. On one of
the journeys made by the Brownings from London to Paris they were
accompanied by Thomas Carlyle, who wrote a vivid and charming
account of the transit. The poet was the practical member of the
party: the "brave Browning" struggled with the baggage, and the
customs, and the train arrangements; while the Scot philosopher
smoked infinite tobacco.
The best account of the domestic life of the Brownings at Casa Guidi
in Florence was written by Nathaniel Hawthorne, and published in his
_Italian Note-Books_. On a June evening, Mr. and Mrs. Browning,
William Cullen Bryant, and Nathaniel Hawthorne ate strawberries and
talked spiritualism. Hawthorne and Browning stood on the little
balcony overlooking the street, and heard the priests chanting in
the church of San Felice, the chant heard only in June, which
Browning was to hear again on the night of the June day when he
found the old yellow book. Both chant and terrace were to be
immortalised in Browning's epic. Hawthorne said that Browning had an
elfin wife and an elf child. "I wonder whether he will ever grow up,
whether it is desirable that he should." Like all visitors at Casa
Guidi, the American was impressed by the extraordinary sweetness,
gentleness, and charity of Elizabeth Browning, and by the energy,
vivacity, and conversational powers of her husband. Hawthorne said
he seemed to be in all parts of the room at once.
Mr. Barrett Browning told me in 1904 that he remembered his mother,
Elizabeth Barrett Browning, as clearly as though he had seen her
yesterday. He was eleven years old at the time of her death. He
would have it that her ill health had been greatly exaggerated. She
was an invalid, but did not give the impression of being one. She
was able to do many things, and had considerable power of endurance.
One day in Florence she walked from her home out through the Porta
Romana, clear up on the heights, and back to Casa Guidi. "That was
pretty good, wasn't it?" said he. She was of course the idol of the
household, and everything revolved about her. She was "intensely
loved" by all her friends. Her father was a "very peculiar man." The
son's account of her health differs radically from that written by
the mother of E. C. Stedman, who said that Mrs. Browning was kept
alive only by opium, which she had to take daily. This writer added,
however, that in spite of Mrs. Browning's wretched health, she had
never heard her speak ill of any one, though she talked with her
many times.
After the death of his wife, Browning never saw Florence again. He
lived in London, and after a few years was constantly seen in society,
Tennyson, who hated society, said that Browning would die in a dress
suit. His real fame did not begin until the year 1864, with the
publication of _Dramatis Personæ_. During the first thirty years of
his career, from the publication of _Pauline_ in 1833 to the
appearance of _Dramatis Personæ_, he received always tribute from
the few, and neglect, seasoned with ridicule, from the many. _Pauline,
Paracelsus, Pippa Passes, A Blot in the 'Scutcheon, Christmas-Eve,
Men and Women_--each of these volumes was greeted enthusiastically
by men and women whose own literary fame is permanent. But the world
knew him not. How utterly obscure he was may be seen by the fact
that so late as 1860, when the publisher's statement came in for
_Men and Women_, it appeared that during the preceding six months
not a single copy had been sold! The best was yet to be. _The
Dramatis Personæ_ was the first of his books to go into a genuine
second edition. Then four years later came _The Ring and the Book_,
which a contemporary review pronounced to be the "most precious and
profound spiritual treasure which England has received since the
days of Shakespeare."
Fame, which had shunned him for thirty years, came to him in
extraordinary measure during the last part of his life: another
exact parallel between him and the great pessimist Schopenhauer. It
was naturally sweet, its sweetness lessened only by the thought that
his wife had not lived to see it. Each had always believed in the
superiority of the other: and the only cloud in Mrs. Browning's mind
was the (to her) incomprehensible neglect of her husband by the
public. At the time of the marriage, it was commonly said that a
young literary man had eloped with a great poetess: during their
married life, her books went invariably into many editions, while
his did not sell at all. And even to the last day of Browning's
earthly existence, her poems far outsold his, to his unspeakable
delight. "The demand for my poems is nothing like so large," he
wrote cheerfully, in correcting a contrary opinion that had been
printed. Even so late as 1885, I found this passage in an account of
Mrs. Browning's life, published that year, It appears that "she was
married in 1846 to Robert Browning, who was also a poet and dramatic
writer of some note, though his fame seems to have been almost
totally eclipsed by the superior endowments of his gifted wife." This
reminds us of the time when Mr. and Mrs. Schumann were presented to
a Scandinavian King: Mrs. Schumann played on the piano, and His
Majesty, turning graciously to the silent husband, enquired
"Are you also musical?"
The last summer of Browning's life, the summer of 1889, was passed
at Asolo: in the autumn he moved into his beautiful house in Venice,
the Palazzo Rezzonico, which had the finest situation of all
Venetian residences, built at an angle in the Grand Canal. Although
seventy-seven years old, he was apparently as vigorous as ever: no
change had taken place in his appearance, manner or habits. One day
he caught a bad cold walking on the Lido in a bitter wind; and with
his usual vehement energy declined to take any proper care of his
throat. Instead of staying in, he set out for long tramps with
friends, constantly talking in the raw autumn air. In order to prove
to his son that nothing was the matter with him, he ran rapidly up
three flights of stairs, the son vainly trying to restrain him.
Nothing is more characteristic of the youthful folly of aged folk
than their impatient resentment of proffered hygienic advice. When
we are children, we reject with scorn the suggestions of our parents;
when we are old, we reject with equal scorn the advice of our
children. Man is apparently an animal more fit to give advice than
to take it. Browning's impulsive rashness proved fatal. Bronchitis
with heart trouble finally sent him to bed, though on the last
afternoon of his life he rose and walked about the room. During the
last few days he told many good stories and talked with his
accustomed eagerness. He died at ten o'clock in the evening of the
twelfth of December, 1889, A few moments before his death came a
cablegram from London announcing that his last volume of poems had
been published that day, and that the evening papers were speaking
in high terms of its contents. "That is very gratifying," said he.
Browning's life was healthy, comfortable, and happy. With the
exception of frequent headaches in his earlier years, he never knew
sickness or physical distress. His son said that he had never seen
him in bed in the daytime until the last illness. He had a truly
wonderful digestion; it was his firm belief that one should eat only
what one really enjoyed, desire being the infallible sign that the
food was healthful. "My father was a man of _bonne fourchette_" said
Barrett Browning to me; "he was not very fond of meat, but liked all
kinds of Italian dishes, especially with rich sauces. He always ate
freely of rich and delicate things. He could make a whole meal off
mayonnaise." It is pleasant to remember that Emerson, the other
great optimist of the century, used to eat pie for breakfast. Unlike
Carlyle and Tennyson, who smoked constantly, Browning never used
tobacco; he drank wine with his meals, but sparingly, and never more
than one kind of wine at a dinner. While physically robust, fond of
riding and walking, never using a cab or public conveyance if he
could help it, he was like most first-class literary men in caring
nothing whatever for competitive sports. He did not learn to swim
until late in life; his son taught him at Pornic, in Brittany. He
was venturesome for a man well on in years, swimming far out with
boyish delight, as he has himself described it in the _Prologue to
Fifine at the Fair_.
Browning's eyes were peculiar, one having a long focus, the other
very short. He had the unusual accomplishment (try it and prove) of
closing either eye without "squinching," and without any apparent
effort, though sometimes on the street in strong sunshine his face
would be a bit distorted. He did all his reading and writing with
one eye, closing the long one as he sat down at his desk. He never
wore glasses, and was proud of his microscopic eye. He often wrote
minutely, to show off his powers. When he left the house to go for a
walk, he shut the short eye and opened the long one, with which he
could see an immense distance. He never suffered with any pain in
his eyes except once, when a boy, he was trying to be a vegetarian
in imitation of his youthful idol, Shelley.
Contrary to the oft-repeated statement, Browning was not a really
fine pianist. As a very young man, he used to play several
instruments, and once he had been able to play all of Beethoven's
sonatas on the piano. In later life he became ambitious to improve
his skill with this instrument, and had much trouble, for his
fingers were clumsy and stiff. He therefore used to rise at six, and
practise finger-exercises for an hour!
He loved first-class music ardently, had a profound knowledge of it,
and was a good judge. If the performance was fine, he would express
his praise with the utmost enthusiasm; but bad work caused him acute
pain. Sometimes at a concert he would put his fingers in his ears,
his suffering being apparently uncontrollable.
The salient feature of his character was his boyish vivacity and
enthusiasm. If he looked out of the window and saw a friend coming
along the street to call, he would often rush out and embrace him.
In conversation he was extraordinarily eager and impulsive, with a
great flow of talk on an enormous range of subjects. If he liked
anything, he spoke of it in the heartiest manner, laughing aloud
with delight. He was very generous in his appreciation and praise of
other men's work, being beautifully free from that jealousy which is
one of the besetting sins of artists. He always tried to see what
was good. Occasionally he was enraged at reading a particularly
hostile criticism of himself, but on the whole he stood abuse
very well, and had abundant opportunity to exercise the gift of
patience. A great admirer of Tennyson's poetry and of Tennyson's
character--they were dear and intimate friends--he never liked the
stock comparison. "Tennyson and I are totally unlike," he used to say.
No letter from one rival to another was ever more beautiful than the
letter Browning wrote to Tennyson on the occasion of the Laureate's
eightieth birthday:
"My DEAR TENNYSON--To-morrow is your birthday--indeed, a memorable
one. Let me say I associate myself with the universal pride of our
country in your glory, and in its hope that for many and many a year
we may have your very self among us--secure that your poetry will be
a wonder and delight to all those appointed to come after. And for
my own part, let me further say, I have loved you dearly. May God
bless you and yours.
"At no moment from first to last of my acquaintance with your works,
or friendship with yourself, have I had any other feeling, expressed
or kept silent, than this which an opportunity allows me to
utter--that I am and ever shall be, my dear Tennyson, admiringly and
affectionately yours,
"ROBERT BROWNING."
What I have said of Browning's impulsiveness is borne out not only
by the universal testimony of those who knew him well, but
particularly by a letter of Mrs. Browning to Mrs. Jameson. The
manuscript of this letter was bought in London by an American, and
went down with the _Titanic_ in 1912. An extract from it appeared in
a bookseller's catalogue--"You must learn Robert--he is made of
moods--chequered like a chess-board; and the colour goes for too
much--till you learn to treat it as a game."
No man--little or great--was ever more free from pose. His appearance,
in clothes and in hair, was studiously normal. No one in his later
years would ever have guessed that he was a poet, either in seeing
him on the street, or in meeting him at dinner. He was interested in
multitudinous things, but never spoke of poetry--either in general
or in his own particular--if he could avoid doing so. The fact that
strangers who were presented to him and talked with him did not
guess that he was _the_ Mr. Browning, gave rise to numberless
humorous situations.
Perhaps the best thing that can be said of his personal character is
the truthful statement that he stood in the finest manner two
searching tests of manhood--long neglect and sudden popularity, The
long years of oblivion, during which he was producing much of his
best work, made him neither angry nor sour, though he must have
suffered deeply. On the other hand, when his fame reached prodigious
proportions, he was neither conceited nor affected. He thoroughly
believed in himself, and in his work; and he cared more about it
than he did for its reception.
The crushing grief that came to him in the death of his wife he bore
with that Christian resignation of which we hear more often than
perhaps we see in experience. For Browning was a Christian, not only
in faith but in conduct; it was the mainspring of his art and of his
life. There are so many writers whose lives show so painful a
contrast with the ideal tone of their written work, that it is
refreshing and inspiring to be so certain of Browning; to know that
the author of the poems which thrill us was as great in character as
he was in genius.
II
BROWNING'S THEORY OF POETRY
With one exception, the economic law of supply and demand governs
the production of literature exactly as it determines the price of
wheat. For many years the Novel has been the chief channel of
literary expression, the dominant literary form: in the days of
Queen Elizabeth, the Drama was supreme. During the early part of the
eighteenth century, theological poetry enjoyed a great vogue; Pope's
_Essay on Man_ circulated with the rapidity of a modern detective
story. Consider the history of the English sonnet. This form of
verse was exceedingly popular in 1600, By 1660 it had vanished, and
remained obsolete for nearly a hundred years; about the middle of
the eighteenth century it was revived by Thomas Edwards and others;
in the nineteenth century it became fashionable, and still holds its
place, as one may see by opening current magazines. Why is it that
writers put their ideas on God, Nature, and Woman in the form of a
drama in 1600, and in the form of a novel in 1900? Why is it that an
inspired man should make poems of exactly fourteen lines in 1580 and
in 1880, and not do it in 1680? If we do not attempt an ultimate
metaphysical analysis, the answer is clear. The bookseller supplies
the public, the publisher supplies the bookseller, the author
supplies the publisher. A bookseller has in his window what the
people want, and the publisher furnishes material in response to the
same desire; just as a farmer plants in his fields some foodstuffs
for which there is a sharp demand. Authors are compelled to write
for the market, whether they like it or not, otherwise their work
can not appear in print. The reason why the modern novel, with all
its shortcomings, is the mirror of ideas on every conceivable topic
in religious, educational, economic, and sociological thought, is
because the vast majority of writers are at this moment compelled by
the market to put their reflections into the form of novels, just as
Marlowe and Chapman were forced to write plays. With one exception,
the law of supply and demand determines the metrical shape of the
poet's frenzy, and the prose mould of the philosopher's ideas.
The exception is so rare that it establishes the rule. The exception
is Genius--next to radium the scarcest article on earth. And even
Genius often follows the market--it takes the prevailing literary
fashion, and adapts itself to the form in vogue in a more excellent
way. Such genius--the Genius for Adaptation--never has to wait long
for recognition, simply because it supplies a keen popular demand.
Such a genius was Shakespeare: such a genius was Pope: such a genius
was Scott: such a genius was Byron: such a genius was Tennyson. But
the true exception to the great economic law is seen in the Man of
Original Genius, who cares not at all for the fashion except perhaps
to destroy it. This man is outside the law of supply and demand,
because he supplies no demand, and there exists no demand for him.
He therefore has to create the demand as well as the supply. Such a
man in Music was Wagner: such a man in Drama was Ibsen: such a man
in Poetry was Browning.
These three men were fortunate in all reaching the age of seventy,
for had they died midway in their careers, even after accomplishing
much of their best work, they would have died in obscurity. They had
to wait long for recognition, because nobody was looking for them,
nobody wanted them. There was no demand for Wagner's music--but
there is now, and he made it. There was no demand for plays like
those of Ibsen; and there was not the slightest demand for poetry
like _Pauline_ and the _Dramatic Lyrics_. The reason why the public
does not immediately recognise the greatness of a work of original
genius, is because the public at first--if it notices the thing at
all--apprehends not its greatness, but its strangeness. It is so
unlike the thing the public is seeking, that it seems grotesque or
absurd--many indeed declare that it is exactly the opposite of what
it professes to be. Thus, many insisted that Ibsen's so-called
dramas were not really plays: they were merely conversations on
serious and unpleasant themes. In like manner, the critics said that
Wagner, whatever he composed, did not compose music; for instead of
making melodies, he made harsh and discordant sounds. For eighty
years, many men of learning and culture have been loudly proclaiming
that Browning, whatever he was, was not a poet; he was ingenious, he
was thoughtful, a philosopher, if you like, but surely no poet. When
_The Ring and the Book_ was published, a thoroughly respectable
British critic wrote, "Music does not exist for him any more than
for the deaf." On the other hand, the accomplished poet, musician,
and critic, Sidney Lanier, remarked: