1833-1841
"... I press God's lamp
Close to my breast; its splendor, soon or late,
Will pierce the gloom; I shall emerge one day."
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.
From Camberwell to St. Petersburg was somewhat of a transition. This was
Mr. Browning's initial excursion into a wider world of realities, as
distinguished from that mirage which rises in the world of dreams and
mental nebulae. "To know the universe itself as a road,--as many roads," is
the way in which the beckoning future prefigures itself to the artist
temperament.
"All around him Patmos lies
Who hath spirit-gifted eyes."
The eyes thus touched with the chrism of poetic art see the invisible
which is peopled with forms unseen to others, and which offers a panorama
of living drama. It is the poet who overhears the "talk of the gods," and
when he shall report
"Some random word they say,"
he becomes
"... the fated man of men
Whom the ages must obey."
This was the undreamed destiny hovering over the young poet, luring him on
like a guiding cloud which became a pillar of fire by night.
Among his London friends was the Chevalier George de Benkhausen, the
Russian Consul-General, who, being suddenly summoned to Russia on some
secret mission of state, invited Browning to accompany him. Browning went
"nominally in the character of secretary," Mrs. Orr says, and they fared
forth on March 1, by steamer to Rotterdam, and then journeyed more than
fifteen hundred miles by diligence, drawn by relays of galloping horses.
The expedition was to Browning a rich mine of poetic material. The
experience sank into the subconsciousness as seed to await fruition. In
his "Ivan Ivanovitch," where is seen
"This highway broad and straight e'en from the Neva's mouth
To Moscow's gates of gold,"
and in which the unending pine forests rising from the snow-covered ground
are so vividly pictured; and in "Colombe's Birthday," where is seen the
region of the heroine,--
"Castle Ravestein--
That sleeps out trustfully its extreme age
On the Meuse' quiet bank, where she lived queen
Over the water-buds,..."
and the place
"... when he hid his child
Among the river-flowers at Ravestein,"
it can be seen how all this country impressed his imagination. Professor
Hall Griffin finds in the fifth book of "Sordello" an unmistakable
description of the most famous and oldest portrait of Charlemagne, which
hangs in the Council Hall of the Rath-haus, in Aix, which Mr. Browning saw
on this trip. During these three months he saw something of Russian
society, and on the breaking up of the ice in the Neva in spring,
witnessed the annual ceremony of the Czar's drinking the first glass of
water from it. Much of the gorgeous, barbaric splendor of Russian fairs
and booths, "with droshkies and fish-pies" on the one hand, and stately
palaces on the other, haunted him, and reflected themselves in several of
his poems. Especially did the Russian music and strains of folk-song
linger in his memory for all the after years.
On his return from Russia Browning had some fancy for entering on a
diplomatic career, and was momentarily disappointed at not receiving an
appointment to Persia, which he had in mind; fortunately for him and for
the world he was held to the orbit of his poetic gift. Diplomacy has an
abundance of recruits without devastating poetic genius to furnish them.
The winter of 1834 found him deeply absorbed in "Paracelsus." This poem is
dedicated to the Marquis Amedee de Ripert-Monclar, who was a great friend
of Browning at this time. The Marquis was four years his senior; he was in
England as a private agent for the Duchesse de Berri and the Royalist
party in France to the English government. The subject of the poem is said
to have been suggested by the Marquis, although the fact that all this
medieval lore had been familiar to Browning from his earliest childhood
must be accounted the pre-determining factor in its creation. William
Sharp quotes Browning as having once said of his father: "The old
gentleman's brain was a storehouse of literary and philosophical
antiquities. He was completely versed in medieval legend, and seemed to
have known Paracelsus, Faustus, and even Talmudic personages, personally,"
and his son assimilated unconsciously this entire atmosphere.
Both "Paracelsus" and "Sordello" seem to spring, as by natural poetic
evolution, from "Pauline"; all three of these poems are, in varying
degree, a drama of the soul's progress. They all suggest, and
"Paracelsus," especially, in a great degree embodies, the Hegelian
philosophy; yet Mr. Barrett Browning expresses his rather positive
conviction that his father never read Hegel at any period of his life. Dr.
Corson regarded these early poems of Browning as of peculiar value in
showing his attitude toward things. "We see in what direction the poet has
set his face," said Dr. Corson, "what his philosophy of life is, what
soul-life means with him, what regeneration means, what edification means
in its deepest sense of building up within us the spiritual temple." Dr.
Corson further illuminated this attitude of the poet by pointing out that
he emphasized the approach to perfection as something that cannot be
brought out through what is born and resides in the brain; but it must be
by "the attracting power of magnetic personalities, the ultimate, absolute
personality being the God-man, Christ. The human soul is regarded in
Browning's poetry," continued Dr. Corson, "as a complexly organized,
individualized, divine force, destined to gravitate toward the Infinite.
How is this force with its numberless checks and counter-checks, its
centripetal and centrifugal tendencies, best determined in its necessarily
oblique way? How much earthly ballast must it carry to keep it
sufficiently steady, and how little, that it may not be weighed down with
materialistic heaviness?" Incredibly enough, in the revelations of the
retrospective view, "Paracelsus" made little impression on the literary
critics of the day; the _Athenaeum_ devoting to it less space even than to
"the anonymous Pauline," while the "Philip van Artevelde" of Henry Taylor
(now hardly remembered) received fifteen columns of tribute, in which the
critic confided to the public his enthusiastic estimate of that
production. Neither _Blackwood's_, the _Quarterly_, nor the _Edinburgh_
even mentioned "Paracelsus"; the _Athenaeum_ admitted that it had talent,
but admonished the poet that "Writers would do well to remember that
though it is not difficult to imitate the mysticism and vagueness of
Shelley, we love him--not because of these characteristics, but in spite
of them." The one gleam of consolation to the young poet in all this
general neglect or unfavorable comment was that of a three-column article
from the pen of John Forster in the _Examiner_, then conducted by Leigh
Hunt, and on whose staff were Sergeant Talfourd and Proctor (Barry
Cornwall) beside Forster, who was then a rising young journalist of
twenty-three, only one month the senior of Browning. But Forster spoke
with no uncertain note; rather, with authority, and in this critique he
said:
"Since the publication of 'Philip van Artevelde' we have met with no
such evidences of poetical genius ... and we may safely predict for
its author a brilliant career, if he continues true to the present
promise of his genius."
The immediate effect of the publication of "Paracelsus" was of a social
rather than of a literary character, for something in it seemed magnetic
to the life of the day, and the young poet found himself welcomed by a
brilliant literary circle. He met Wordsworth and Walter Savage Landor,
Dickens, Monckton Milnes (later Lord Houghton), Proctor (Barry Cornwall),
Horne, Sergeant Talfourd, Leigh Hunt, and others. Hunt was then domiciled
in Cheyne Row, in close proximity to the Carlyles, with whom Browning had
already formed a friendship.
Rev. William Johnson Fox, one of Browning's earliest friends, was at this
time living at Craven Hill, Bayswater, and on an evening when Macready had
dined with him, Browning came in. This evening (November 27, 1835) is
noted in Macready's diary, and after speaking of Mr. Fox as an "original
and profound thinker," he adds:
"Mr. Robert Browning, the author of 'Paracelsus,' came in after
dinner; I was very much pleased to meet him. His face is full of
intelligence.... I took Mr. Browning on, and requested to be allowed
to improve my acquaintance with him. He expressed himself warmly, as
gratified by the proposal, wished to send me his book. We exchanged
cards, and parted."
Later (under date of December 7), Mr. Macready records:
"Read 'Paracelsus,' a work of great daring, starred with poetry of
thought, feeling, diction, but occasionally obscure. The writer can
scarcely fail to be a leading spirit of the time."
On New Year's Eve Mr. Macready invited a little house party, among whom
were Forster and Browning. "Mr. Browning was very popular with the whole
party," writes Mr. Macready in his journal; "his simple and enthusiastic
manner engaged attention and won golden opinions from all present; he
looks and speaks more like a youthful poet than any man I ever saw."
Browning's personal appearance, "slim, and dark, and very handsome," as
Mary Cowden Clarke said, is pictured by many of his friends of that time.
"As a young man," writes William Sharp, "he seems to have had a certain
ivory delicacy of coloring ... and he appeared taller than he really was,
partly because of his rare grace of movement, and partly from a
characteristic high poise of the head when listening intently to music or
conversation.... His hair was so beautiful in its heavy sculpturesque
waves as to attract frequent notice. Another, and more subtle personal
charm, was his voice, then with a rare, flute-like tone, clear, sweet, and
resonant."
Macready was not only a notable figure on the stage at this period, but he
was also (what every great actor must be) a man of thought, intense
sensibility, and wide culture. Soon after Macready had appeared in
Talfourd's "Ion" (the _premiere_ being on the playwright's birthday),
Talfourd gave a supper at his house, at which Browning for the first time
met Wordsworth and Landor. Macready himself sat between these two
illustrious poets, with Browning opposite to him. The guests included
Ellen Tree, Miss Mitford, and Forster. Macready, recording this night in
his diary, writes of "Wordsworth who pinned me." Landor, it seems, talked
of constructing drama, and said he "had not the faculty," that he "could
only set persons to talking; all the rest was chance." But an ever
remembered moment came for the young poet when the host proposed a toast
to the author of "Paracelsus," and Wordsworth, rising, said: "I am proud
to drink to your health, Mr. Browning," and Landor bowed with his
inimitable, courteous grace, raising his glass to his lips. For some
years, whenever Wordsworth visited London, Forster invited Browning to
meet him. The younger poet was never an enthusiast in his mild friendship
for the elder, although in after years (1875) he replied to a question by
Rev. A. B. Grosart, the editor of Wordsworth's works, that while in hasty
youth he did "presume to use the great and venerated personality of
Wordsworth as a sort of painter's model," he intended in "The Lost Leader"
no portrait of the entire man. While Wordsworth's political attitude did
not please the young disciple of Shelley, for Landor he conceived the most
profound admiration and sympathetic affection. It was a striking sequel to
this youthful attraction that in Landor's desolate old age it should be
Browning who tenderly cared for him, and surrounded his last days with
unfailing comfort and solicitude.
At this memorable supper, just as Browning was about to take his leave,
Macready laid his hand on the young man's shoulder, saying earnestly:
"Write a play for me, and keep me from going to America." The thought
appealed to the poet, who replied: "Shall it be historical and English?
What do you say to 'Strafford' for a subject?" Forster was then bringing
out his biography of Strafford, on which Browning had assisted, so that
the theme had already engaged his imagination. A few days after the supper
Macready records in his diary receiving a note from Browning and adds:
"What can I say upon it? It was a tribute which remunerated me for the
annoyances and cares of years; it was one of the very highest, may I not
say the highest, honor I have through life received."
A certain temperamental sympathy between the two men is evident, though
Macready sounded no such fathomless depths as lay, however unsuspected, in
Browning; but Macready gives many indications of poetic sympathies, as,
for instance, when he records in his diary how he had been looking through
Coleridge's translation of Wallenstein, "abounding with noble passages and
beautiful scenes," to see if it would lend itself to stage representation.
On November 19 of this autumn Macready notes in his journal that Browning
came that night to bring his tragedy of "Strafford," of which the fourth
act was incomplete. "I requested him to write in the plot of what was
deficient," says Macready, and drove to the Garrick Club while Browning
wrote out this story. Later, there was a morning call from Browning, who
gave him an interesting old print of Richard, from some tapestry, and they
talked of "La Valliere." All the time we get glimpses of an interesting
circle: Bulwer and Forster call, and they discuss Cromwell; Bulwer's play
of "Virginius" is in rehearsal; Macready acts Cardinal Wolsey; there is a
dinner at Lady Blessington's, where are met Lord Canterbury, Count
D'Orsay, Bulwer, Trelawney, and Proctor; there is a call on Miss
Martineau, and meetings with Thackeray and Dickens; Kenyon appears in the
intersecting circles; Marston (the father of the blind poet) writes his
play, "The Patrician's Daughter"; Mr. Longfellow, "a Professor at one of
the U. S. Universities," appears on the scene, and there is a dinner at
which "Mr. and Mrs. N. P. Willis sat next to Longfellow." On a night when
Browning came with some alterations for "Strafford," a stranger called,
"saying he was a Greek, a great lover of the drama; I introduced Browning
to him as a great tragic poet," records Macready, "and the youth wrote
down his name, telling us he was setting off for Athens directly."
The rehearsals of "Strafford" came on, but Macready seems already to have
had misgivings. "In Shakespeare," he writes, "the great poet has only
introduced such events as act on the individuals concerned; but in
Browning's play we have a long scene of passion--upon what? A plan
destroyed, a parliament dissolved...." It is easy to see how Browningesque
this was; for to the poet no events of the objective life were so real and
significant as those of the purely mental drama of thought, feeling, and
purpose. The rehearsals were, however, gratifying to the author, it seems,
for Macready records in his diary (that recurs like the chorus in a Greek
tragedy) that he was happy "with the extreme delight Browning testified at
the rehearsal of my part, which he said to him was a full recompense for
having written the play, as he had seen his utmost hopes of character
perfectly embodied." The play was performed at the Covent Garden Theater
on the night of May 3, 1837.
Both Edmund Gosse and William Sharp deny that Browning's plays failed on
the stage; at all events, with each attempt there were untoward
circumstances which alone would have contributed to or even doomed a play
to a short tenure.
In 1886 "Strafford" was produced in London under the auspices of the
Browning Society, and the real power of the play surprised as well as
deeply impressed the audiences who saw it. But "Pauline," "Paracelsus,"
and "Strafford" all have a peculiar element of reminiscent importance, if
it may be so termed, in that they were the forerunners, the indications of
the great work to come.
There is no dramatic poem of Browning's that has not passages of superb
acting effects, as well as psychological fascinations for the thinker; and
the future years were to touch him with new power to produce work whose
dramatic power lives in imperishable significance. "Strafford" had a run
of only five nights at this first time of its production; Macready
received and accepted an offer to go to America, and other things
happened. Browning became absorbed in his "Sordello," and suddenly, on
Good Friday of 1838, he sailed for Venice, "intending to finish my poem
among the scenes it describes," he wrote to John Robertson, who had been
introduced to Browning by Miss Martineau. On a sailing ship, bound for
Trieste, the poet found himself the only passenger. It was on this voyage,
while between Gibraltar and Naples, that he wrote "How They Brought the
Good News from Ghent to Aix." It was written on deck, penciled on the
fly-leaf of Bartoli's _De' Simboli trasportati al Morale_. When Dr. Corson
first visited Browning in 1881, in his London home in Warwick Crescent,
Browning showed his guest this identical copy of the book, with the
penciled poem on the fly-leaves, of which Dr. Corson said, in a private
letter to a friend:
"One book in the library I was particularly interested in,--Bartoli's
_Simboli_, or, rather, in what the poet had written in pencil on its
fly-leaves, front and back, namely, 'How they brought the good news
from Ghent to Aix.'"
Dr. Corson added that he had been so often asked as to what this "good
news" was, that he put the question to Mr. Browning, who replied:
"'I don't remember whether I had in my mind any in particular, when I
wrote the poem'; and then, after a pause," continued Dr. Corson, "he
said, with a dash of expression characteristic of him, 'Of course,
very important news were carried between those two cities during that
period.'"
In Mrs. Orr's biography of Browning she quotes a long letter written by
him to Miss Haworth, in the late summer of 1838, after his return from
this Italian trip, in which he says:
"You will see 'Sordello' in a trice, if the fagging fit holds. I did
not write six lines while absent (except a scene in a play, jotted
down as we sailed through the straits of Gibraltar), but I did hammer
out some four, two of which are addressed to you,... I saw the most
gorgeous and lavish sunset in the world.... I went to Trieste, then to
Venice, then through Treviso, and Bassano to the mountains, delicious
Asolo, all my places and castles you will see. Then to Vicenza, Padua,
and Venice again. Then to Verona, Trent, Innspruck (the Tyrol),
Munich, Salzburg, Frankfort and Mayence; down the Rhine to Cologne,
then to Aix-le-Chapelle, Liege, and Antwerp; then home.... I saw very
few Italians, 'to know,' that is. Those I did see I liked...."
It is related that the captain of the ship became so much attached to
Browning that he offered him a free passage to Constantinople; and that
his friendly attraction to his youthful passenger was such that on
returning to England he brought to the poet's sister a gift of six bottles
of attar of roses. The poems of "Pippa Passes" and "In a Gondola" may be
directly traced to this visit, and Browning seemed so invigorated by it
that his imagination was aflame with a multitude of ideas at once.
Meanwhile "Paracelsus" was winning increasing appreciation. The poet did
not escape the usual sweeping conclusion generally put forth regarding any
unusual work, that the author has made extensive studies for it,--as if
ideas and imagination drew their inspiration from the outer world, and
were solely to be appraised, as to their results, by the capacity for
cramming. So much cramming, so much genius! He who thus mistakes
inspiration for industry certainly proves how very remote is his mind from
the former. With this marvelous work by a young man of twenty-three the
usual literary legends were set afloat, like thistledown in the air, which
seem to have floated and alighted everywhere, and which now, more than
seventy-five years later, are apparently still floating and alighting on
the pens of various writers, to the effect that "Paracelsus" is the result
of "vast research among contemporary records," till the poem added another
to the Seven Labors of Hercules. As a matter of fact, and as has already
been noted, Browning had merely browsed about his father's library.
Dr. Berdoe points out that the real "Paracelsus" cannot be understood
without considerable excursions into the occult sciences, and he is quite
right as to the illumination these provide, in proportionate degree as
they are acquired by the reader; as a matter of course they enlarge his
horizon, and offer him clues to unsuspected labyrinths; and so fine and
complete is Dr. Berdoe's own commentary on "Paracelsus" that it might not
unduly be held as supplementary to the reader's entire enjoyment of the
poem. Dr. Berdoe notes that the Bishop of Spanheim, who was the instructor
of Paracelsus, defined "divine magic," as another name for alchemy, "and
lays down the great doctrine of all medieval occultism, as of all modern
theosophy,--of a soul-power equally operative in the material and the
immaterial, in nature and in the consciousness of man." The sympathetic
reader of Browning's "Paracelsus" will realize, however, that the drama he
presents is spiritual, rather than occult. It is not the search for the
possible mysteries, or achievements of the crucible. It is the adventure
of the soul, not the penetration into the secrets of unknown elementals.
In the autumn of 1835 the Browning family removed from Camberwell to
Hatcham. They bestowed themselves in a spacious, delightful old house,
with "long, low rooms," wherein the household gods, inclusive of the six
thousand books of the elder Browning's treasured library, found abundant
accommodation; and the outlook on the Surrey hills gratified them all.
During these years we catch a few glimpses of the poet's only sister,
Sarianna, who was two years younger than her brother, and quite as fond of
listening to the conversation of an uncle, William Shergold Browning, who
had removed to Paris. Here he was connected with the Rothschild banking
house, and had achieved some distinction as the author of a "History of
the Huguenots." He also wrote two historical novels, entitled "Hoel Mar en
Morven" and "Provost of Paris," and compiled one of those harmless volumes
entitled "Leisure Hours." It was this uncle who had brought about the
introduction of his nephew and Marquis Amedee de Ripert-Monclar, whose
uncle, the Marquis de Fortia, a member of the Institut, was a special
friend of William Shergold Browning. In later years a grandson of the
Paris Browning, after graduating at Lincoln College, became Crown
prosecutor in New South Wales. He is known as Robert Jardine Browning, and
he was on terms of intimacy with his cousins, Robert and Sarianna, whom he
often visited.
[Illustration: ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING
_From a drawing made by Field Talfourd, in Rome, 1855_]
The family friendship with Carlyle was a source of great pleasure to Mrs.
Browning, the poet's mother, and there is on record a night when Carlyle
and his brother dined with the Brownings at Hatcham. Another family friend
and habitue was the Rev. Archer Gurney, who at a later time became
Chaplain to the British Embassy in Paris. Mr. Gurney was a writer of poems
and plays, lyrics and dramatic verse, and a volume of his work entitled
"Fra Cipollo and Other Poems" was published, from which Browning drew his
motto for "Colombe's Birthday." Mr. Gurney was deeply interested in
young Browning's poetry, and there is a nebulous trace of his having
something to do with the publication of "Bells and Pomegranates." Another
friend of the poet was Christopher Dowson, who married the sister of
Alfred Domett; at their homes, Albion Terrace, and their summer cottage in
Epping Forest, Browning was a frequent visitor. Dowson died early; but
Field Talfourd (a brother of the author of "Ion" and the artist who made
those crayon portraits of Browning and his wife, in the winter of 1859, in
Rome), Joseph Arnould, and Alfred Domett, with one or two other young men,
comprised the poet's more intimate circle at this time. Arnould and Domett
were both studying for the Bar; Arnould had gained the Newdigate in 1834,
and had won great applause by his recital (in the Sheldonian Theater) of
his "Hospice of St. Bernard." Later he was offered the editorship of the
_Daily News_, founded by Forster and Dickens, but he kept true to his
legal studies and in time became the Judge of the High Court at Bombay,
and was knighted by the Crown.
There was a dinner given by Macready at which Browning, Carlyle, and Miss
Martineau were guests, and later a dinner at the Carlyles' where Browning
met a son of Burns "who sang some of his father's songs." To a friend
Browning wrote: "I dined with dear Carlyle and his wife (catch me calling
people 'dear' in a hurry) yesterday. I don't know any people like them."
Browning passed a day with Miss Martineau at Ascot, and again visited her
in Elstree, where she was staying with the Macreadys. She greatly admired
"Paracelsus," and spoke of her first acquaintance with his poetry as a
"wonderful event." He dined with her at her home in Westminster, and there
met John Robertson, the assistant editor of the _Westminster Review_, to
which Miss Martineau was a valued contributor. Henry Chorley, a musical
critic of the day, was another guest that night, and soon after Browning
dined with him "in his bachellor abode," the other guests being Arnould,
Domett, and Bryan Proctor; later, at a musicale given by Chorley, Browning
met Charlotte Cushman and Adelaide Kemble. Chorley drew around him the
best musicians of the time: Mendelssohn, Moscheles, Liszt, David, and
other great composers were often rendered in his chambers. Proctor was
then living in Harley Street, and his house was a center for the literary
folk of the day.
George Eliot speaks of the indifference with which we gaze at our
unintroduced neighbor, "while Destiny stands by, sarcastic, with our
_dramatis personae_ folded in her hands." It was such an hour of destiny as
this when, at a dinner given by Sergeant Talfourd, at his home (No. 56) in
Russell Square, Browning first met John Kenyon. Our great events mostly
come to us like gods in disguise, and this evening was no exception.
Unknown and undreamed of, the young poet had come to one of those partings
of the ways which are only recognized in the perspective of time.
Browning's life had been curiously free from any romance beyond that with
the muses. The one woman with whom he had seemed most intimate, Miss Fanny
Haworth, was eleven years his senior, and their intercourse, both
conversationally and in letters, had been as impersonal as literature
itself. She was a writer of stories and verse, and had celebrated her
young friend in two sonnets. This friendship was one of literary
attractions alone, and the poet had apparently devoted all his romance to
poetry rather than demanded it in life. But now, golden doors were to
open.
At this dinner at Mr. Talfourd's, John Kenyon came over to the poet, after
they had left the dining-room, and inquired if he were not the son of his
old school-fellow, Robert Browning. Finding this surmise to be true, he
became greatly attached to him. Mr. Kenyon had lost his wife some time
previously; he had no children, and he was a prominent and favorite figure
in London society. Southey said of Kenyon that he was "one of the best and
pleasantest of men, whom every one likes better the longer he is known,"
and Kenyon, declaring that Browning "deserved to be a poet, being one in
heart and life," offered to him his "best and most precious gift,"--that
of an introduction to his second cousin, Elizabeth Barrett.
This was the first intimation of Destiny, but the meeting was still to
remain in the future. "Sordello" was published in 1840,--"a colossal
derelict on the ocean of poetry," as William Sharp terms it. The
impenetrable nature of the intricacies of the work has been the theme of
many anecdotes. Tennyson declared that there were only two lines in
it--the opening and the closing ones--which he understood, and "they are
both lies," he feelingly added. Douglas Jerrold tackled it when he was
just recovering from an illness, and despairingly set down his inability
to comprehend it to the probability that his mind was impaired by disease;
and thrusting the book into the hands of his wife he entreated her to read
it at once. He watched her breathlessly, and when she exclaimed, "I don't
know what this means; it is gibberish," Jerrold exclaimed, "Thank God, I
am not an idiot."
Still another edifying testimony to the general inability to understand
"Sordello" is given by a French critic, Odysse Barot, who quotes a passage
where the poet says, "God gave man two faculties," and adds, "I wish while
He was about it (_pendant qu'il etait en train_) God had supplied
another--namely, the power of understanding Mr. Browning."
Mrs. Carlyle declared that she read "Sordello" attentively twice, but was
unable to discover whether the title referred to "a man, a city, or a
tree"; yet most readers of this poem will be able to recognize that
Sordello was a singer of the thirteenth century, whose fame suddenly
lures him from the safety of solitude to the perils of society in Mantua,
after which "immersion in worldliness" he again seeks seclusion, and
partially recovers himself. The _motif_ of the poem recalls the truth
expressed in the lines:
"Who loves the music of the spheres
And lives on earth, must close his ears
To many voices that he hears."
Suddenly a dazzling political career opens before Sordello; he is
discovered to be--not a nameless minstrel, but the son of the great
Ghibelline chief, Salinguerra; more marvelous still, he is loved by Palma,
in her youthful beauty and fascination; and the crucial question comes, as
in some form it must come to every life, whether he shall choose all the
kingdoms of power and glory, or that kingdom which is not of earth, and
cometh not with observation.
It is easy to realize how such a problem would appeal to Robert Browning.
Notwithstanding the traditional "obscurity" of "Sordello," it offers to
the thoughtful reader a field of richest and most entrancing suggestion.
To Alfred Domett, under date of May 22, 1842, Browning writes:[1]
"... I cannot well say nothing of my constant thoughts of you, most
pleasant remembrances of you, earnest desires for you. I have a notion
you will come back some bright morning a dozen years hence and find me
just gone--to heaven, or Timbuctoo! I give way to this fancy, for it
lets me write what, I dare say, I have written niggardly enough, of my
real love for you, better love than I had supposed I was fit for.... I
have read your poems; you can do anything, and I should think would do
much. I will if I live. At present, if I stand on head or heels I
don't know; what men require I know as little; and of what they are in
possession I know not.... With this I send you your 'Sordello.' I
suppose, I am sure, indeed, that the translation from Dante, on the
fly-leaf, is your own...."
In another letter to Alfred Domett, Browning thus refers to Tennyson:
"... But how good when good he is! That noble 'Locksley Hall!'"
Browning had already become enamored of Italy; and Mrs. Bridell-Fox,
writing to William Sharp, speaks of meeting the poet after his return, and
thus describes the impression he made upon her:[2]
"I remember him as looking in often in the evenings, having just
returned from his first visit to Venice. I cannot tell the date for
certain. He was full of enthusiasm for that Queen of Cities. He used
to illustrate his glowing descriptions of its beauties, the palaces,
the sunsets, the moonrises, by a most original kind of etching. Taking
up a bit of stray notepaper, he would hold it over a lighted candle,
moving the paper about gently till it was cloudily smoked over, and
then utilizing the darker smears for clouds, shadows, water, or what
not, would etch with a dry pen the forms of lights on cloud and
palace, on bridge or gondola, on the vague and dreamy surface he had
produced. My own passionate longing to see Venice dates from those
delightful, well-remembered evenings of my childhood."
This visit of the young poet to Italy forged the link of that golden chain
which was to unite all his future with that land of art and song which
held for him such wonderful Sibylline leaves of the yet undreamed-of
chapters of his life.