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THE BROWNINGS
Their Life and Art
[Illustration: ROBERT BROWNING
_From a drawing made by Field Talfourd, in Rome, 1855_]
THE BROWNINGS
Their Life and Art
by
LILIAN WHITING
Author of "The World Beautiful," "Italy
the Magic Land," "The Spiritual
Significance," Etc.
Illustrated
Boston
Little, Brown, and Company
1911
Copyright, 1911,
by Little, Brown, and Company.
All rights reserved
Published, October, 1911
Printers
S. J. Parkhill & Co., Boston, U.S.A.
INSCRIBED TO
ROBERT BARRETT BROWNING
(CAVALIERE DELLA CORONA D'ITALIA)
PAINTER, SCULPTOR, CONNOISSEUR IN ART
WITH ENCHANTING REMEMBRANCES OF HOURS IN "LA TORRE
ALL' ANTELLA" AND THE FAITHFUL REGARDS OF
LILIAN WHITING
FLORENCE, ITALY,
June, 1911
FOREWORD
The present volume was initiated in Florence, and, from its first
inception, invested with the cordial assent and the sympathetic
encouragement of Robert Barrett Browning. One never-to-be-forgotten day,
all ethereal light and loveliness, has left its picture in memory, when,
in company with Mr. Browning and his life-long friend, the Marchesa
Peruzzi di' Medici (_nata_ Story), the writer of this biography strolled
with them under the host's orange trees and among the riotous roses of his
Florentine villa, "La Torre All' Antella," listening to their sparkling
conversation, replete with fascinating reminiscences. To Mr. Browning the
tribute of thanks, whose full scope is known to the Recording Angel alone,
is here offered; and there is the blending of both privilege and duty in
grateful acknowledgements to Messrs. Smith, Elder, & Company for their
courtesy in permitting the somewhat liberal drawing on their published
Letters of both the Brownings, on which reliance had to be based in any
effort to
"Call up the buried Past again,"
and construct the story, from season to season, so far as might be, of
that wonderful interlude of the wedded life of the poets.
Yet any formality of thanks to this house is almost lost sight of in the
rush of memories of that long and mutually-trusting friendship between the
late George Murray Smith, the former head of this firm, and Robert
Browning, a friendship which was one of the choicest treasures in both
their lives.
To The Macmillan Company, the publishers for both the first and the
present Lord Tennyson; To Houghton Mifflin Company; to Messrs. Dodd, Mead,
& Company; to The Cornhill Magazine (to which the writer is indebted for
some data regarding Browning and Professor Masson); to each and all,
acknowledgments are offered for their courtesy which has invested with
added charm a work than which none was ever more completely a labor of
love.
To Edith, Contessa Rucellai (_nata_ Bronson), whose characteristically
lovely kindness placed at the disposal of this volume a number of letters
written by Robert Browning to her mother, Mrs. Arthur Bronson, special
gratitude is offered.
"Poetry," said Mrs. Browning, "is its own exceeding great reward." Any
effort, however remote its results from the ideal that haunted the writer,
to interpret the lives of such transcendent genius and nobleness as those
of Robert and Elizabeth Barrett Browning, must also be its own exceeding
reward in leading to a passion of pursuit of all that is highest and
holiest in the life that now is, and in that which is to come.
LILIAN WHITING
THE BRUNSWICK, BOSTON
Midsummer Days, 1911
CONTENTS
PAGE
CHAPTER I
1812-1833
The Most Exquisite Romance of Modern Life--Ancestry and Youth of
Robert Browning--Love of Music--Formative Influences--The
Fascination of Byron--A Home "Crammed with Books"--The Spell
of Shelley--"Incondita"--Poetic Vocation Definitely
Chosen--"Pauline" 1
CHAPTER II
1806-1832
Childhood and Early Youth of Elizabeth Barrett--Hope End--"Summer
Snow of Apple-Blossoms"--Her Bower of White Roses--"Living
with Visions"--The Malvern Hills--Hugh Stuart Boyd--Love of
Learning--"Juvenilia"--Impassioned Devotion to Poetry 16
CHAPTER III
1833-1841
Browning Visits Russia--"Paracelsus"--Recognition of Wordsworth
and Landor--"Strafford"--First Visit to Italy--Mrs. Carlyle's
Baffled Reading of "Sordello"--Lofty Motif of the Poem--The
Universal Problem of Life--Enthusiasm for Italy--The
Sibylline Leaves Yet to Unfold 26
CHAPTER IV
1833-1841
Elizabeth Barrett's Love for the Greek Poets--Lyrical Work--
Serious Entrance on Professional Literature--Noble Ideal
of Poetry--London Life--Kenyon--First Knowledge of Robert
Browning 44
CHAPTER V
1841-1846
"Bells and Pomegranates"--Arnould and Domett--"A Blot in the
'Scutcheon"--Macready--Second Visit to Italy--Miss Barrett's
Poetic Work--"Colombe's Birthday"--"Lady Geraldine's
Courtship"--"Romances and Lyrics"--Browning's First Letter
to Miss Barrett--The Poets Meet--Letters of Robert Browning
and Elizabeth Barrett--"Loves of the Poets"--Vita Nuova 67
CHAPTER VI
1846-1850
Marriage and Italy--"In That New World"--The Haunts of
Petrarca--The Magic Land--In Pisa--Vallombrosa--"Un Bel
Giro"--Guercino's Angel--Casa Guidi--Birth of Robert Barrett
Browning--Bagni di Lucca--"Sonnets from the Portuguese"--The
Enchantment of Italy 92
CHAPTER VII
1850-1855
"Casa Guidi Windows"--Society in Florence--Marchesa d'Ossoli--
Browning's Poetic Creed--Villeggiatura in Siena--Venice--
Brilliant Life in London--Paris and Milsand--Browning on
Shelley--In Florence--Idyllic Days in Bagni di Lucca--Mrs.
Browning's Spiritual Outlook--Delightful Winter in Rome--A
Poetic Pilgrimage--Harriet Hosmer--Characteristics of Mrs.
Browning 115
CHAPTER VIII
1855-1861
London Life--An Interlude in Paris--"Aurora Leigh"--Florentine
Days--"Men and Women"--The Hawthornes--"The Old Yellow
Book"--A Summer in Normandy--The Eternal City--The Storys and
Other Friends--Lilies of Florence--"It Is Beautiful!" 163
CHAPTER IX
1861-1869
The Completed Cycle--Letters to Friends--Browning's Devotion to
His Son--Warwick Crescent--"Dramatis Personae"--London Life--
Death of the Poet's Father--Sarianna Browning--Oxford Honors
the Poet--Death of Arabel Barrett--Audierne--"The Ring and
the Book" 199
CHAPTER X
1869-1880
In Scotland with the Storys--Browning's Conversation--An Amusing
Incident--With Milsand at St. Aubin's--"The Red Cotton
Night-cap Country"--Robert Barrett Browning's Gift for Art--
Alfred Domett ("Waring")--"Balaustion's Adventure"--Browning
and Tennyson--"Pacchiarotto"--Visits Jowett at Oxford--
Declines Lord Rectorship of St. Andrews--"La Saisiaz"--Italy
Revisited--The Dream of Asolo--"Ivanovitch"--Pride in His
Son's Success--"Dramatic Idylls" 221
CHAPTER XI
1880-1888
"Les Charmettes"--Venetian Days--Dr. Hiram Corson--The Browning
Society--Oxford Honors Browning--Katherine DeKay Bronson--
Honors from Edinburgh--Visit to Professor Masson--Italian
Recognition--Nancioni--The Goldoni Sonnet--At St. Moritz--
In Palazzo Giustiniani--"Ferishtah's Fancies"--Companionship
with His Son--Death of Milsand--Letters to Mrs. Bronson--
DeVere Gardens--Palazzo Rezzonico--Sunsets from the Lido--
Robert Barrett Browning's Gift in Portraiture 238
CHAPTER XII
1888-1889
"Asolando"--Last Days in DeVere Gardens--Letters of Browning and
Tennyson--Venetian Lingerings and Friends--Mrs. Bronson's
Choice Circle--Browning's Letters to Mrs. Bronson--Asolo--
"In Ruby, Emerald, Chrysopras"--Last Meeting of Browning and
Story--In Palazzo Rezzonico--Last Meeting with Dr. Corson--
Honored by Westminster Abbey--A Cross of Violets--Choral
Music to Mrs. Browning's Poem, "The Sleep"--"And with God Be
the Rest!" 269
Index 297
ILLUSTRATIONS
_In Photogravure_
PAGE
Robert Browning _Frontispiece_
From a drawing by Field Talfourd, Rome, 1855
Elizabeth Barrett Browning 39
From a drawing by Field Talfourd, Rome, 1855
_Engravings_
Busts of Robert and Elizabeth Barrett Browning 2
Monument to Michael Angelo, by Vasari 80
Church of Santa Croce, Florence
Old Monastery at Vallombrosa 98
The Guardian Angel, Guercino 103
Church of San Agostino, Fano
Monument to Dante, by Stefano Ricci 108
Piazza di Santa Croce, Florence
Palazzo Vecchio, Florence 113
Statue of Savonarola, by E. Pazzi 116
Sala dei Cinquecento, Palazzo Vecchio, Florence
Fresco of Dante, by Giotto 121
The Bargello, Florence
Cathedral of Santa Maria del Fiore, Florence (known as
the Duomo) 126
The Ponte Vecchio and the Arno, Florence 142
Casa Guidi 146
The Clasped Hands of the Brownings 153
Cast in bronze from the model taken by Harriet Hosmer in
Rome, 1853
The Campagna and Ruins of the Claudian Aqueducts, Rome 156
The Coronation of the Virgin, by Filippo Lippi 166
Accademia di Belle Arti, Florence
Andrea del Sarto. Portrait of the Artist and his Wife 170
Pitti Gallery, Florence
Equestrian Statue of Ferdinando de' Medici, by Giovanni
da Bologna 174
Piazza dell' Annunziata, Florence
Villa Petraja, near Florence 178
Church of San Miniato, near Florence 182
The Palazzo Barberini, Via Quattro Fontane, Rome 188
The English Cemetery, Florence 197
Tomb of Elizabeth Barrett Browning 200
Kate Field 208
From the portrait by Elihu Vedder, Florence, 1860
The Pallazzo Riccardi, Florence 214
Bust of Robert Browning, by his Son 226
Portrait of Robert Browning in 1882, by his Son 242
Church of San Lorenzo, Florence 246
Portrait of Robert Barrett Browning, as a Child, 1859 263
Portrait of Robert Browning, by George Frederick Watts, R.A. 270
Mrs. Arthur Bronson, by Ellen Montalba, in Asolo 274
Miss Edith Bronson, (Comtessa Rucellai) 280
Portrait of Professor Hiram Corson, by J. Colin Forbes, R.A. 290
Palazzo Rezzonico, Venice 294
Engraved Facsimile of a letter from Robert Browning to
Professor Hiram Corson 260
THE BROWNINGS
THEIR LIFE AND ART
CHAPTER I
1812-1833
"Allons! after the Great Companions! and to belong to them!"
"To know the universe itself as a road--as many roads--as
roads for travelling souls."
THE MOST EXQUISITE ROMANCE OF MODERN LIFE--ANCESTRY AND YOUTH OF ROBERT
BROWNING--LOVE OF MUSIC--FORMATIVE INFLUENCES--THE FASCINATION OF
BYRON--A HOME "CRAMMED WITH BOOKS"--THE SPELL OF SHELLEY--
"INCONDITA"--POETIC VOCATION DEFINITELY CHOSEN--"PAULINE."
Such a very page _de Contes_ is the life of the wedded poets, Robert and
Elizabeth Barrett Browning, that it is difficult to realize that this
immortal idyl of Poetry, Genius, and Love was less than fifteen years in
duration, out of his seventy-seven, and her fifty-five years of life. It
is a story that has touched the entire world
"... with mystic gleams,
Like fragments of forgotten dreams,"
this story of beautiful associations and friendships, of artistic
creation, and of the entrance on a wonderful realm of inspiration and
loveliness. At the time of their marriage he was in his thirty-fifth, and
she in her forty-first year, although she is described as looking so
youthful that she was like a girl, in her slender, flower-like grace; and
he lived on for twenty-eight years after
"Clouds and darkness
Fell upon Camelot,"
with the death of his "Lyric Love." The story of the most beautiful
romance that the world has ever known thus falls into three distinctive
periods,--that of the separate life of each up to the time of their
marriage; their married life, with its scenic setting in the enchantment
of Italy; and his life after her withdrawal from earthly scenes. The story
is also of duplex texture; for the outer life, rich in associations,
travel, impressions, is but the visible side of the life of great creative
art. A delightful journey is made, but its record is not limited to the
enjoyment of friends and place; a poem is written whose charm and power
persist through all the years.
[Illustration: BUSTS OF ROBERT AND ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING
Made in 1861 by William Wetmore Story]
No adequate word could be written of the Brownings that did not take
account of this twofold life of the poets. It is almost unprecedented that
the power and resplendence and beauty of the life of art should find, in
the temporal environment, so eminent a correspondence of beauty as it did
with Robert and Elizabeth Browning. Not that they were in any wise exempt
from sorrow and pain; the poet, least of all, would choose to be
translated, even if he might, to some enchanted region remote from all the
mingled experiences of humanity; it is the common lot of destiny, with its
prismatic blending of failure and success, of purpose and achievement, of
hope and defeat, of love and sorrow, out of which the poet draws his song.
He would not choose
"That jar of violet wine set in the air,
That palest rose sweet in the night of life,"
to the exclusion of the common experiences of the day.
"Who never ate his bread in sorrow,
Who never spent the darksome hours
Weeping, and watching for the morrow,
He knows you not, ye unseen Powers."
But to those who, poets or otherwise, see life somewhat in the true
proportion of its lasting relations, events are largely transmuted into
experiences, and are realized in their extended relations. The destiny of
the Brownings led them into constantly picturesque surroundings; and the
force and manliness of his nature, the tender sweetness and playful
loveliness of hers, combined with their vast intellectual range, their
mutual genius for friendships, their devotion to each other and to their
son, their reverence for their art, and their lofty and noble spirituality
of nature,--all united to produce this exquisite and unrivaled romance of
life,--
"A Beauty passing the earth's store."
The rapture of the poet's dream pervaded every experience.
"O Life, O Poetry,
Which means life in life."
The transmutation of each into the other, both Life and Poetry, as
revealed in their lives, is something as exceptional as it is beautiful in
the world's history.
It is only to those who live for something higher than merely personal
ends, that the highest happiness can come; and the aim of these wedded
poets may well be read in the lines from "Aurora Leigh":
"... Beloved, let us love so well,
Our work shall still be better for our love,
And still our love be sweeter for our work,
And both commended, for the sake of each,
By all true workers and true lovers born."
In the ancestry of Robert Browning there was nothing especially
distinctive, although it is representative of the best order of people; of
eminently reputable life, of moderate means, of culture, and of assured
intelligence. It is to the Brownings of Dorsetshire, who were large
manor-owners in the time of Henry VII, that the poet's family is traced.
Robert Browning, the grandfather of the poet, was a clerk in the Bank of
England, a position he obtained through the influence of the Earl of
Shaftesbury. Entering on this work at the age of twenty, he served
honorably for fifty years, and was promoted to the position of the Bank
Stock office, a highly responsible place, that brought him in constant
contact with the leading financiers of the day. Born in 1749, he had
married, in 1778, Margaret Tittle, the inheritor of some property in the
West Indies, where she was born of English parentage. The second Robert,
the father of the poet, was the son of this union. In his early youth he
was sent out to take charge of his mother's property, and his grandson,
Robert Barrett Browning, relates with pardonable pride how he resigned the
post, which was a lucrative one, because he could not tolerate the system
of slave labor prevailing there. By this act he forfeited all the estate
designed for him, and returned to England to face privation and to make
his own way. He, too, became a clerk in the Bank of England, and in 1811,
at the age of thirty, married Sarah Anna Wiedemann, the daughter of a
ship-owner in Dundee. Mr. Wiedemann was a German of Hamburg, who had
married a Scotch lady; and thus, on his maternal side, the poet had
mingled Scotch and German ancestry. The new household established itself
in Southampton Street, Camberwell, and there were born their two children,
Robert, on May 7, 1812, and on January 7, 1814, Sarah Anna, who came to be
known as Sarianna through all her later life.
The poet's father was not only an efficient financier, but he was also a
man of scholarly culture and literary tastes. He was a lover of the
classics, and was said to have known by heart the first book of the Iliad,
and the Odes of Horace. There is a legend that he often soothed his little
son to sleep by humming to him an ode of Anacreon. He wrote verse, he was
a very clever draughtsman, and he was a collector of rare books and
prints. Mr. W. J. Stillman, in his "Autobiography of a Journalist," refers
to the elder Browning, whom he knew in his later years, as "a serene,
untroubled soul,... as gentle as a gentle woman, a man to whom, it seemed
to me, no moral conflict could ever have arisen to cloud his frank
acceptance of life as he found it come to him.... His unworldliness had
not a flaw." In Browning's poem entitled "Development" (in "Asolando") he
gives this picture of his father and of his own childhood:
"My Father was a scholar and knew Greek.
When I was five years old, I asked him once
'What do you read about?'
'The siege of Troy.'
'What is a siege, and what is Troy?'
Whereat
He piled up chairs and tables for a town,
Set me a-top for Priam, called our cat
--Helen, enticed away from home (he said)
By wicked Paris, who couched somewhere close
Under the footstool....
* * * * *
This taught me who was who and what was what;
So far I rightly understood the case
At five years old; a huge delight it proved
And still proves--thanks to that instructor sage
My Father...."
The poet's mother was a true gentlewoman, characterized by fervent
religious feeling, delicacy of perception, and a great love for music. She
was reared in the Scottish kirk, and her husband in the Church of
England, but they both connected themselves after their marriage with an
"Independent" body that held their meetings in York Street, where the
Robert Browning Hall now stands. They were, however, greatly attached to
the Rev. Henry Melvill (later Canon at St. Paul's), whose evening service
they habitually attended. While the poet's mother had little training in
music, she was a natural musician, and was blessed with that keen,
tremulous susceptibility to musical influence that was so marked a trait
in her son. William Sharp pictures a late afternoon, when, playing softly
to herself in the twilight, she was startled to hear a sound in the room.
"Glancing around, she beheld a little white figure distinctly outlined
against an oak bookcase, and could just discern two large wistful eyes
looking earnestly at her. The next moment the child had sprung into her
arms, sobbing passionately at he knew not what, but, as his paroxysm of
emotion subsided, whispering over and over,'Play! Play!'"
The elder Browning was an impassioned lover of medieval legend and story.
He was deeply familiar with Paracelsus, with Faust, and with many of the
Talmudic tales. His library was large and richly stored,--the house,
indeed, "crammed with books," in which the boy browsed about at his own
will. It was the best of all possible educations, this atmosphere of
books. And the wealth of old engravings and prints fascinated the child.
He would sit among these before a glowing fire, while from the adjoining
room floated strains "of a wild Gaelic lament, with its insistent falling
cadences." It is recorded as his mother's chief happiness,--"her hour of
darkness and solitude and music." Of such fabric are poetic impressions
woven. The atmosphere was what Emerson called the "immortal ichor." The
boy was companioned by the "liberating gods." Something mystic and
beautiful beckoned to him, and incantations, unheard by the outer sense,
thronged about him, pervading the air. The lad began to recast in English
verse the Odes of Horace. From his school, on holiday afternoons, he
sought a lonely spot, elm-shaded, where he could dimly discern London in
the distance, with the gleam of sunshine on the golden cross of St.
Paul's,--lying for hours on the grass whence, perchance, he
"Saw distant gates of Eden gleam
And did not dream it was a dream."
Meantime the boy read Junius, Voltaire, Walpole's Letters, the "Emblems"
of Quarles (a book that remained as a haunting influence all his life),
and Mandeville's "Fable of the Bees." The first book of his own purchase
was a copy of Ossian's poems, and his initial effort in literary creation
was in likeness of the picturesque imaginations that appealed with
peculiar fascination to his mind.
"The world of books is still the world," wrote Mrs. Browning in "Aurora
Leigh," and this was the world of Robert Browning's early life. The
genesis of many of his greatest poems can be traced directly to this
atmosphere of books, and their constant use and reference in his
childhood. Literature and life, are, indeed, so absolutely interpenetrated
and so interdependent that they can almost invariably be contemplated as
cause and effect, each reacting upon the other in determining sequences.
By the magic of some spiritual alchemy, reading is transmuted into the
qualities that build up character, and these qualities, in turn, determine
the continued choice of books, so that selection and result perpetuate
themselves, forming an unceasing contribution to the nature of life. If
with these qualities is united the kindling imagination, the gift that
makes its possessor the creative artist, the environment of books and
perpetual reference to them act as a torch that ignites the divine fire.
Browning's early stimulus owes much, not only to the book-loving father,
but to his father's brother, his uncle Reuben Browning, who was a
classical scholar and who took great interest in the boy. Preserved to the
end of the poet's life was a copy of the Odes of Horace, in translation,
given to him as a lad of twelve, with his uncle's autograph inscription on
the fly-leaf. This was the translation made by Christopher Smart, whose
"Song of David" soon became one of the boy's favorites, and it is curious
to trace how, more than sixty years later, Browning embodied Smart in his
"Parleyings with Certain People of Importance in their Day," as one with
whom
"... truth found vent
In words for once with you...."
Browning, with the poet's instant insight, read the essential story of his
boyhood into the lines:
"... Dreaming, blindfold led
By visionary hand, did soul's advance
Precede my body's, gain inheritance
Of fact by fancy...?"
No transcription of the poet's childhood could even suggest the fortunate
influences surrounding him that did not emphasize the rare culture and
original power of his father. The elder Browning was familiar with old
French and with both Spanish and Italian literature. "His wonderful store
of information might really be compared to an inexhaustible mine," said
one who knew him well.
It is easy to see how out of such an atmosphere the future poet drew
unconsciously the power to weave his "magic web" of such poems as the
"Parleyings," "Abt Vogler," "Ferishtah's Fancies," and was lured on into
that realm of marvelous creation out of which sprang his transcendent
masterpiece, "The Ring and the Book."
The elder Browning's impassioned love of books was instanced by the
curious fact that he could go in the dark to his library, and out of many
hundreds of volumes select some particular one to which conversational
reference had incidentally been made regarding some point which he wished
to verify. He haunted all the old book-stalls in London, and knew their
contents better than did their owners.
Books are so intimately associated with the very springs of both character
and achievement that no adequate idea of the formative influences of the
life and poetry of Robert Browning could be gained without familiarity
with this most determining and conspicuous influence of his boyhood. The
book with which a man has lived becomes an essential factor in his growth.
"None of us yet know," said Ruskin, "for none of us have yet been taught
in early youth, what fairy palaces we may build of beautiful thought,
proof against all adversity, bright fancies, satisfied memories, noble
histories, faithful sayings, treasure-houses of precious and restful
thoughts,... houses built without hands for our souls to live in." These
houses for the soul, built in thought, will be transposed into outer form
and semblance.
There is a nebulous but none the less pernicious tradition that great
literature is formidable, and presents itself as a task rather than as a
privilege to the reader. Devotion to the best books has been regarded as
something of a test of mental endurance, for which the recompense, if not
the antidote, must be sought in periods of indulgence in the frivolous and
the sensational. Never was there a more fatal misconception. It is the
inconsequential, the crude, the obtuse, that are dull in literature, as in
life; and stupidity in various languages might well be entitled to rank
among the Seven Deadly Sins of Dante. Even in the greatest literature
there is much that the child may easily learn to appreciate and to love.
"Great the Master
And sweet the Magic"
that opens the golden door of literary stimulus. Books are to the mind as
is food to the body. Emerson declares that the poet is the only teller of
news, and Mrs. Browning pronounced poets as
"The only truth-tellers now left to God."
Familiarity with noble thought and beautiful expression influences the
subconscious nature to an incalculable degree, and leads "the spirit
finely touched" on "to all fine issues."
Browning lived in this stimulating atmosphere. He warmed his hands at the
divine fire; and the fact that all this richness of resource stimulated
rather than stifled him is greatly to the credit of his real power.
Favorable surroundings and circumstances did not serve him as a cushion on
which to go to sleep, but rather as the pedestal on which he might climb
to loftier altitudes. It was no lotus-eating experience into which the lad
was lulled, but the vital activity of the life of creative thought. The
Heavenly Powers are not invariably, even if frequently, sought in sorrow
only, and in the mournful midnight hours. There are natures that grow by
affluence as well as by privation, and that develop their best powers in
sunshine.
"Even in a palace life can be well lived," said Marcus Aurelius. The
spirit formed to dwell in the starry spaces is not allured to the mere
enjoyment of the senses, even when material comfort and intellectual
luxuries may abound. Not that the modest abundance of the elder Browning's
books and pictures could take rank as intellectual luxury. It was
stimulus, not satiety, that these suggested.
Pictures and painters had their part, too, in the unconscious culture that
surrounded the future poet. London in that day afforded little of what
would be called art; the National Gallery was not opened until Browning
was in his young manhood; the Tate and other modern galleries were then
undreamed of. But, to the appropriating temperament, one picture may do
more than a city full of galleries might for another, and to the small
collection of some three or four hundred paintings in the Dulwich Gallery,
Browning was indebted for great enjoyment, and for the art that fostered
his sympathetic appreciation. In after years he referred to his gratitude
for being allowed its privileges when under the age (fourteen) at which
these were supposed to be granted. Small as was the collection, it was
representative of the Italian and Spanish, the French and the Dutch
schools, as well as of the English, and the boy would fix on some one
picture and sit before it for an hour, lost in its suggestion. It was the
more imaginative art that enchained him. In later years, speaking of these
experiences in a letter to Miss Barrett, he wrote of his ecstatic
contemplation of "those two Guidos, the wonderful Rembrandt's 'Jacob's
Vision,' such a Watteau...." An old engraving from Correggio, in his
father's home, was one of the sources of inspiration of Browning's
boyhood. The story fascinated him; he never tired of asking his father to
repeat it, and something of its truth so penetrated into his consciousness
that in later years he had the old print hung in his room that it might be
before him as he wrote. It became to him, perhaps, one of
"the unshaped images that lie
Within my mind's cave."
The profound significance of the picture evidently haunted him, as is made
evident by a passage in "Pauline" that opens:
"But I must never grieve whom wing can waft
Far from such thoughts--as now. Andromeda!
And she is with me; years roll, I shall change,
But change can touch her not--so beautiful
With her fixed eyes...."
Is there gained another glimpse of Browning's boyhood in those lines in
"Pauline"?:
"I am made up of an intensest life,
Of a most clear idea of consciousness
Of self, distinct from all its qualities,
From all affections, passions, feelings, powers."
The various and complex impressions, influences, and shaping factors of
destiny that any biographer discerns in the formative years of his subject
are as indecipherable as a palimpsest, and as little to be classified as
the contents of Pandora's box; nor is it on record that the man himself
can look into his own history and rightly appraise the relative values of
these. Nothing, certainly, could be more remote from the truth than the
reading of autobiographic significance into any stray line a poet may
write; for imagination is frequently more real than reality. Yet many of
the creations of after life may trace their germination to some incident
or impression. William Sharp offers a beautiful and interesting instance
of one of these when he ascribes the entrancing fantasy of "The Flight of
the Duchess" to a suggestion made on the poet's mind as a child on a Guy
Fawkes day, when he followed across the fields a woman singing a strange
song, whose refrain was: "Following the Queen of the Gypsies, O!" The
haunting line took root in his memory and found its inflorescence in that
memorable poem.
It was not conducive to poetic fancy when the lad was placed in the school
of a Mr. Ready, at Peckham, where he solaced himself for the rules and
regulations which he abhorred by writing little plays, and persuading his
school-fellows to act in them with him.
Browning's first excursion into Shelley's poems, brought home to him one
night as a gift from his mother, was in one of the enchanting evenings of
May; where, at the open window by which he sat, there floated in the
melody of two nightingales, one in a laburnum, "heavy with its weight of
gold," and the other in a copper-beech, at the opposite side of the
garden. Such an hour mirrors itself unconsciously in a poet's memory, and
affords, in future years, "such stuff as dreams are made of."
Byron, who, as Mazzini says, "led the genius of Britain on a pilgrimage
throughout all Europe," stamped an impress upon the youthful Browning that
may be traced throughout his entire life. There was something in the
genius of Byron that acted as an enormous force on the nature in response
to it, that transformed nebulous and floating ideals and imaginings into
hope and resolution, that burned away barriers and revealed truth. By its
very nature influence is determined as much by the receiver as by the
inspirer, and if a light is applied to a torch, the torch, too, must be
prepared to ignite, or there will be no blaze.
"A deft musician does the breeze become
Whenever an Aeolian harp it finds;
Hornpipe and hurdygurdy both are dumb
Unto the most musicianly of winds."
The fire of Byron, the spirituality of Shelley, illuminated that world of
drift and dream in which Robert Browning dwelt; and while Shelley, with
his finer spirit, his glorious, impassioned imagination,
"A creature of impetuous breath,"
incited poetic ardors and unmeasured rapture of vision, Byron penetrated
his soul with a certain effective energy that awakened in him creative
power. The spell of Shelley's poetry acted upon Browning as a vision
revealed of beauty and radiance. For Shelley himself, who, as Tennyson
said, "did yet give the world another heart and new pulses," Browning's
feeling was even more intense.
In the analysis of Shelley's poetic nature Browning offers the critical
reader a key to his own. He asserts that it is the presence of the highest
faculty, even though less developed, that gives rank to nature, rather
than a lower faculty more developed. Although it was in later years that
the impression Shelley made upon his boyhood found adequate expression in
his noted essay, the spell reflected itself in "Pauline," and is to be
distinctly traced in many of his poems throughout his entire life. He was
aware from the first of that peculiarly kindling quality in Shelley, the
flash of life in his work:
"He spurreth men, he quickeneth
To splendid strife."
Under the title of "Incondita" was collected a group of the juvenile
verses of Robert Browning, whose special claim to interest is in the
revelation of the impress made upon the youth by Byron and Shelley.
Among the early friends of the youthful poet were Alfred Domett (the
"Waring" of his future poem), and Joseph Arnould, who became a celebrated
judge in India.
With Browning there was never any question about his definite vocation as
a poet. "Pauline" was published in 1833, before he had reached his
twenty-first birthday. Rejected by publishers, it was brought out at the
expense of his aunt, Mrs. Silverthorne; and his father paid for the
publication of "Paracelsus," "Sordello," and for the first eight parts of
"Bells and Pomegranates." On the appearance of "Pauline," it was reviewed
by Rev. William Johnson Fox, as the "work of a poet and a genius." Allan
Cunningham and other reviewers gave encouraging expressions. The design
of "Pauline" is that spiritual drama to which Browning was always
temperamentally drawn. It is supposed to be the confessions and
reminiscences of a dying man, and while it is easy to discern its
crudeness and inconsistencies, there are in it, too, many detached
passages of absolute and permanent value. As this:
"Sun-treader, life and light be thine for ever!
Thou art gone from us; years go by and spring
Gladdens, and the young earth is beautiful,
Yet thy songs come not...."
Mr. Browning certainly gave hostages to poetic art when he produced
"Pauline," in which may be traced the same conceptions of life as those
more fully and clearly presented in "Paracelsus" and "Sordello." It
embodies the conviction which is the very essence and vital center of all
Browning's work--that ultimate success is attained through partial
failures. From first to last Browning regards life as an adventure of the
soul, which sinks, falls, rises, recovers itself, relapses into
faithlessness to its higher powers, yet sees the wrong and aims to
retrieve it; gropes through darkness to light; and though "tried,
troubled, tempted," never yields to alien forces and ignominious failure.
The soul, being divine, must achieve divinity at last. That is the
crystallization of the message of Browning.
The poem "Pauline," lightly as Mr. Browning himself seemed in after life
to regard it, becomes of tremendous importance in the right approach to
the comprehension of his future work. It reveals to us in what manner the
youthful poet discerned "the Gleam." Like Tennyson, he felt "the magic of
Merlin,"--of that spirit of the poetic ideal that bade him follow.
"The Master whisper'd
'Follow The Gleam.'"
And what unguessed sweetness and beauty of life and love awaited the poet
in the unfolding years!