SOME INCIDENTS OF ROBERT BROWNING'S VISITS TO THE STUDIO
I well remember, and it is often a source of infinite enjoyment to me to
recall, many a trifling incident connected with the name of Robert
Browning. He was the kindest and most indulgent of friends, and, as
such, I remember him with gratitude and devotion; and he was the most
honourable and lovable of men, and so it was but natural I should honour
and love him.
What I can record about him is mostly of a personal character, and I
only trust that, if any member of a Browning Society happens to come
across these pages, he will not resent my inability to add more than a
few descriptive touches to what is already known of the poet.
He was well aware that I had never really studied his works, in fact
that I had only read a small portion of them; but he made allowances for
that, as for my other shortcomings. He also knew that when, by dint of
perseverance, I did master some difficult pages of his writing, none
could more warmly appreciate the subtle beauties they contained than his
humble friend.
"Last night I read Bishop Blougram," I told him on one occasion. "I
went as far below the surface as I could get, but I need not tell you I
did not reach the bottom."
"Try again," was all he answered; and when I asked who had been his
models, he said that Cardinal Wiseman was his Bishop, and that Gigadibs
was not sketched from any one particular person. The Cardinal, he told
me, had himself reviewed the poem favourably.
I first met Browning at my cousins the Bensons. They occupied one of
those unique houses in that finest of avenues, Kensington Palace
Gardens. Notwithstanding the name, the houses really have gardens, and
command an unlimited view over the grounds which extend from Kensington
to Hyde Park. Inside the hospitable mansion all that was best in the
world of art and literature would assemble, and men and women of note
felt so much at home there, that they would just lay down their laurel
wreaths and wipe off their war-paint, before they came in, and move
about as if they were ordinary mortals. They ate and drank too, as if
anxious to show their appreciation of Mrs. Benson's table; she certainly
made a point of placing the best of nectar and ambrosia before the gods,
her guests. And the chef saw to it, that the menus should be worded with
due regard to historical truth. I recollect one occasion when he had
introduced "Cotelettes à la Charles Dickens" on the programme.
"You had better change that," said Mrs. Benson, "and put 'à la
Thackeray'; he is dining with us to-night."
"Oh, madam," protested the chef, "surely you don't mean that; everybody
would at once recognise them as 'Cotelettes à la Dickens.'"
Dinner was usually followed by the most perfect music, for the gods
loved to play to one another, and it needed no pressure to induce a
Joachim to open his violin-case, or to lead the pianist of the day
straight to the piano. But on one occasion, I forget why, there was some
difficulty with Madame Schumann; she had certainly not taken one or two
broad hints to the effect that she was wanted. I was, to be sure
erroneously, supposed to be devoid of all shyness, and was therefore
deputed to get her to the piano. I had known her years ago when, as a
girl, she came to Leipsic with her father, and I remember exchanging
knowing winks with my sisters behind old Wieck's back, when he held
forth about his unique and incomparable method of teaching, as
exemplified in his daughters Clara and Marie. He had a queer way of
putting it, but he was certainly not far wrong in his estimate of the
method and its results.
When I asked Madame Schumann whether she was inclined to play, I was
very badly received. She was "particularly disinclined," so I changed
the conversation. But presently--quite by chance to be sure--I mentioned
her husband's "Carnaval." "There is one part," I said, "which I
particularly love: the 'March of the Davidsbündler,' you know. If I
could only hear you play just that page or two!"
"Page or two indeed," she said, boiling over with indignation. "Wenn man
den Carnaval spielt, spielt man ihn ganz!" (If you play the "Carnival,"
you play it from beginning to end.)
And an instant afterwards she was at the piano, throwing her whole soul
into that wonderful piece of tone-painting.
Elizabeth Benson was one of the many gifted members of the Lehmann
family; the two eminent painters Henri and Rudolf Lehmann were her
brothers; so too Frederick, her husband's partner in the well-known firm
of ironmasters, Naylor, Vickers & Co. And he, Mr. Benson, was a shrewd
German-American who had amassed a fortune in business and lived in
perfect style. Being a man of culture and refined tastes, he had a
remarkably well selected library and had surrounded himself with many
choice works of art.
Browning's son--he had but one child--was also a welcome guest at 10
Kensington Palace Gardens. He was equally gifted as a musician and as a
painter, so much so, that for a time he seemed inclined to sit down
between two stools and await events. This caused his father some
anxiety, and it was evidently with a feeling of relief, that he came to
tell me one day, that Pen had got up and made his choice of stools in
favour of the one marked Painting. The decision was due to Millais. Pen
had accompanied him on a visit to Scotland, and whilst Millais was
painting his picture of "Scotch Firs," his young friend made a study of
the same subject, which gave evidence of so much talent that Millais
unhesitatingly advised him to devote himself to art. When Browning came
to tell me of the very satisfactory incident, he asked my advice as to
the best opportunity for study open to him. In those days, very
different from the days we can boast of now, the best advice to give was
that he should go abroad. I suggested Antwerp, and further recommended
my friend Heyermans as the best teacher I knew. My advice was taken, and
it led to so excellent a result that Browning never tired of expressing
his gratitude to me for having found the right man and having put his
son in the right place. Under the guidance of that right man Pen made
rapid progress and soon produced very striking work.
When he began to exhibit, no father could be more anxious about a son's
reputation or prouder of his successes, than was Browning. Praise such
as came from the lips or pens of Leighton, Millais, and other friends,
warmed his heart, confirming, as it did, his belief in Pen's powers. He
could be very sensitive too, when full justice was not done to that son,
as when his statue of Driope was refused at the Royal Academy. Young
Browning, not content with using the brush to give shape to his artistic
conceptions, had taken to the sculptor's tools. These he had learned to
handle when, after a prolonged stay in Antwerp, he went to Paris and
studied sculpture under Rodin, an advantage of which to this day he is
particularly proud. This life-size figure of Driope was the outcome of
much study and thought, and had been so warmly appreciated on all sides,
that it was deemed worthy of being cast in bronze. When it was rejected
at the Royal Academy, Browning was indignant, eloquently indignant, and
well he might be, for the work was a remarkable one, and as it now
stands in the vast Entrance Hall of the Palazzo Rezzonico, many think as
I do, that it can challenge comparison with some of the great
masterpieces in Venice.
I need scarcely say that the adverse verdict of the rulers at Burlington
House did not shake his confidence in Pen or in his first teacher. The
poet's gratitude to the latter was expressed in ever-varying forms. He
writes to him: "I have to repeat--what I never can be tired of
repeating, however inadequately I make my words correspond with my
feelings--how deeply grateful I am to you for your instrumentality in
the success of my son, which I am sure he will have attributed to the
admirable master whose true 'son' in art he is bound to consider
himself." When, some years later, Heyermans settled in London, Browning
never lost an opportunity of smoothing the artist's path among
strangers, in the country which has since become the country of his
adoption.
As I may presently allow myself to speak of some of my pictures which
Browning liked, it may not be inappropriate to record here that there
were others which he disliked. Such were some Japanese subjects, which
my love of the newly imported art had impelled me to paint. At the time
I am speaking of--in the early seventies--the work of the Japanese was
only just coming to the front; there was no shop to display it in all
London or Paris. The first things of the kind I can remember here were
some of those cheap paper fans on sale at a very popular little shop in
the Brompton Road, Harrod's, now developed into one of London's monster
emporiums. In Holland I had previously come across some wonderful
specimens of Japanese painting and weaving, and when I next saw a unique
collection of such work in the Paris Exhibition, my admiration was
fairly kindled into enthusiasm. Shortly afterwards the same exhibits
found their way into the hands of those syrens with the ivory hammer,
known as Christie & Manson's, and on that occasion my savings found
_their_ way into the same hands. I was equally fascinated by Japanese
art at Farmer & Rogers', where I soon made friends with one of their
staff, a promising young connoisseur, Mr. Liberty, the same who now
rules supreme in Regent Street.
Now Browning worshipped--I thought rather exclusively--at the shrine of
old Italian art, and I do not think he ever really appreciated the
Japanese. Certain it is that he disliked the pictures I painted when my
Japano-mania was at its height; notably one entitled "On the Banks of
the Kanagawa," which he condemned, perhaps not without good reason, for
I had never been on the banks of that or any other Jap river, and my
figures, although clad in the beautiful dresses I had bought, were more
or less evolved from my inner consciousness. In fact I would not
hesitate to say that the picture was bad, were I not afraid of being
thought wanting in respect to the august body of Royal Academicians, who
gave it a very excellent place on their walls. As their judgment is
known to be infallible, Browning, for once in the way, must have been
labouring under a misconception.
If so, he but too generously made up for it in later years when, on many
occasions, he showed the greatest interest in my work. He became a
frequent visitor at the studio, and the hours he spent with me are
amongst the happiest in my artistic experience. To him it was a
never-failing source of pleasure to visit his artist friends, and with
more than one of them did he make himself thoroughly at home. He had the
gift of putting everybody at his ease, sometimes exchanging a few
pleasant words with the servant who came to answer the door, sometimes
chatting with the models; he was quite unconventional, and would just as
soon say, "He don't" as "He doesn't." A great friend of his was Jack
Turner, a charming specimen of the London waif, a perfect little angel
in his tenth year, but an angel, as it unfortunately proved, with a
stumble and a fall, in consequence of which he had to do his growing up
in a reformatory, and who asks for the price of a glass of beer when I
meet him now. "Good morning, Mr. Browning." "Thank you, Mr. Browning,"
the little angel would say, for he had quickly realised that the name
had a good sound, and the poet would stroke his curly hair and press the
price of an ounce of sweets into his innocent little hand.
Then there was Laura, a model, who had one of the most sculptural
figures I have ever seen. She had come to me in the regular course of
business to get work, accompanied by another young girl; her features
were not regular, but mobile and expressive, her eyes restless, and her
hair rebellious as it hung in brown wavelets over her forehead. Her
friend was a contrast--the regular blue-eyed maiden, fair-haired and
fair-skinned. I took their names and addresses, putting them down as
head models, for, in answer to my question whether they sat for the
figure, Laura had replied, "No; certainly not." It was the close of the
season, and I had much work to finish before I could leave town. I told
my visitors so, and returned to my easel, but they were evidently
disinclined to go; they looked around as if fascinated by the artistic
surroundings, and after a whispered consultation, they hinted, carefully
veiling their words, that they had no insuperable objection to
unveiling. It was evident that they were fired with lofty ambitions of
"the altogether" kind. (Immortal creation of my friend Du Maurier, that
word, _the altogether_, which lulls suspicion and alarm in the breast of
the Philistine, and checks the blush that would rise to the cheek of the
British matron.) I bluntly told my would-be models that I was working
against time, and that for some months to come I should not be able to
use them, whether in sections or as a whole. But they were not to be
dissuaded, once having made up their minds to qualify for _the
altogether_.
Befittingly coy and shy, Laura's friend emerged from the dressing-room,
the type of the English maiden, the rosebud of sweet seventeen. The milk
of human beauty flowed in her veins, tinting her with creamy whites from
head to foot; one only wanted some dove-coloured greys to model her
forms, till at the extremities one would put in a few touches of pink
madder or of Laque de garance rose dorée. It is a beautiful little type,
"rosed from top to toe in flush of youth." Greuze could paint it, and
others too; but whenever I attempted it, I have found that I was not
good at rendering the girlish forms and the strawberry-and-cream colour.
Very different was Laura. She came into the room as if to the manner
born, freely and easily. She had seemed rather short of stature and
awkward in her movements. Now she was tall and graceful, and so
sculptural in form that at first you would scarcely notice her colour.
You could not render her dull bronze-like tints without mixing your
light-reds with cobalt blue or with real ultramarine at a guinea an
ounce, if you could afford it.
I did not break out into Pygmalionic enthusiasm, but I felt that I must
leave all else and study the line that started from the neck, and went
straight down to the heel, unimpeded by petty details or any of those
non-essentials which just mark the difference between the real in Nature
and the ideal in Art. The next day I began a picture of her which has
since found its way to America. My friend Legros chancing to look in
when she was sitting, so warmly appreciated her that I invited him to
come and make studies from her at my studio occasionally; of those I
have a very beautiful one drawn for his _bas-relief_ "_La Fontaine_,"
which many will remember having seen at one of the early exhibitions in
the Grosvenor Gallery.
Couldn't Browning be indignant when the British matron presumed to
misinterpret the artist's glow of enthusiasm! Doubly indignant, when the
matron took the shape of a patron or the title of a Royal Academician
with a vote on the Council of selection, or a hand on the Hanging
Committee.
"The impropriety lies in the objection," he would say, "and I have put
what I think of it in my Furini."[17]
Browning had a marked predilection for a certain chair in my studio. It
is a cross-breed between what the French call a _crapaud_ and we an
easy-chair. In this he was installed one afternoon, when Laura was
perched on the model-table, artificially supported, as best she could
be, to give me a flying position. I was at work on one of two companion
pictures which, for want of a better title, I had called "The
Cloud-Compeller" and "The Cloud-Dispeller." In the first a deep-toned
figure gathers the rolling clouds together; in the second, a brighter
child of the skies peeps out from behind them.
"You might take some lines from Shelley's 'Cloud' for those pictures,"
suggested Browning.
"Yes--Shelley's Cloud," I answered. "To be sure--Let me see--Oh yes, it
is one of those beautiful poems I know, but can't remember."
"Oh," he began, leaning back in the easy-chair--"Don't you remember?
"'I bring fresh showers for the thirsting flowers
From the seas and the streams;
I bring light shades----'"
And once started, he recited the whole poem. Recited is scarcely the
word. He simply told us all about "The daughter of the earth and the
nursling of the sky," and he conjured up, with the slightest of
emphasis, pictures of "the whirlwinds unfurled, the stars that reel and
swim," and
"That orbed maiden with white fire laden
Whom mortals call the moon."
I went on painting--and listened. Laura kept on flying--and listened.
She was an educated girl, and knew as well as I did that we might
consider ourselves privileged listeners.
Laura had had quite a long spell of work, considering that the office of
a cloud-compeller is not a sinecure, and she was well entitled to a
rest. Browning said something to that effect as he rose to go, and,
adding that she was a brave and conscientious model, he slipped
half-a-crown into her hand. When I laid down my palette to go to the
door with him, the usual little word-squabble had to be gone through. No
argument of mine would ever persuade him that I had a right to see him
to the door, but I often did so, heedless of his protest. On the other
hand, no argument of his could ever persuade me that _he_ was justified
in seeing me to _his_ door, but he always managed to do so, whether I
was persuaded or not. He had stairs to go down and up again; I had not,
so it was most unfair, but that was Browning all over--always afraid to
give trouble, ever ready to take it.
When I got back to the studio, a new picture met my eye. I found Laura
giving vent to her feelings in a wild dance of jubilation, the
half-crown sparkling above her head as she held it up triumphantly with
both hands, whilst clusters of brown hair which had been carefully
pinned up out of the way, for I was painting her back, now cascaded over
her shoulders and down to her waist, suggesting new and original shapes
for fashionable capes or opera-cloaks. When Nature's mantle had once
more been pinned up and a drapery substituted for it, she settled down
in the chair the master had just vacated, and proceeded to discuss the
grave question as to what should be done with the half-crown. She
scorned my suggestion that she should spend it on a pair of gloves, and
then and there decided to have it made into a brooch as a memento of the
memorable afternoon.
The next day I received a letter from Browning indicating the particular
passages from Shelley's poem which he thought would be suitable to my
pictures.
That Laura was a queer girl; it was not till months after her first
visit to me that I chanced to find out she was a good pianist and had a
pretty voice, and only when she had got quite acclimatised in the studio
did I elicit the truth about that first visit. She had always put me off
with the evasive answer that "a friend" had given her my address, but at
last she confided to me that there was no friend in the case.
"We were walking down Sloane Street," she said, "Amy Stewart and I, when
we saw your board up with 'The Studio, Cadogan Gardens' on it. Your dog
was at the gate wagging his tail, and seemed like asking us in. I
patted him, and said to Amy, 'Let's go in for a lark and say we are
models.' And she said, 'Yes; you go first.' So we rang the bell and
asked for the artist. You said you were busy and hadn't much time to
look at us, and you didn't seem to want us--so we stopped." Her father,
I then found out, was a well-to-do builder, much absorbed in his
business. No, she said, in answer to my question, he was not aware that
she was sitting; her mother was, but had never asked for particulars.
Let well alone, I thought, anxious as I was not to lose my model. But
not long afterwards I was much startled by Laura's announcement that the
sittings must henceforth be given up. She was very sorry, but she was
forbidden to come any more.
"What has happened?" I asked in dismay; "your father? your mother?" "Oh
no." "Well, do have it out; nobody else surely has a right to
interfere." "Well, yes," she said; "Father O'Brien has." I saw it all;
she was a good Roman Catholic, and her father confessor had become
alarmed, and had put in his veto. "Is that all?" I broke in, much
relieved. "Well, Laura, you did startle me--thank goodness, it is only a
priest; he of all people couldn't have meant it seriously. He wouldn't
be so ungrateful after all we artists have done for the Church. Think of
the old masters, Laura; you must go to Father O'Brien and remind him of
Raphael and all the saints and Madonnas he painted. Why, to be sure, he
must know that even the divine Raphael could not have given us their
souls without their bodies, and that even he would never have draped
his models till he had made a careful study of those respected bodies.
Oh no, there is nothing to be feared from a good priest; you must go at
once, Laura, and speak to him."
Whether she went or not, and whether, having duly weighed my argument,
Father O'Brien was struck with remorse, I do not know, but certain it is
that Laura came, sat, and helped me conquer the difficulties yet to be
grappled with in two pictures I had begun from her.
* * * * *
I was travelling from the sunny South back to the cheerless North. It
was in January, and I was returning from Italy, where I had spent some
months, to my own home and hearth; back to the chimney that I knew would
smoke, to the pipes that would probably burst, and the blacks that would
certainly fly. Serpentining along the coast of the Riviera, I awoke in
the early morning and peeped through the window just by my side in the
sleeping-car. Farewell to the sea and to the sparkle on the playful
little waves that were gently breaking against the shrub-covered rocks;
farewell to the middle distance and to the distance, and generally to
anything worthy to be termed a horizon. Presently all that will be
replaced by somebody's stone wall opposite my own stone wall, or by a
growler or a Piccadilly lamp-post in a fog. And I shall wear a thick
overcoat out of doors, and sit peacefully installed at my own
writing-table in-doors. And the organ-grinder will come to grind under
my windows, and to remind me of the country I love so well--and he will
keep on grinding till it is time to get up and conduct him to the
nearest police-station.
Then, too, I shall meet my friends, and they will ask me where I have
been, and tell me where they have been; and, one and all, they will want
to know what I am painting for the Royal Academy, and not have the
slightest notion how insulting the question is, particularly if--_il n'y
a que la vérité qui blesse_--I _have_ been painting _for_ the Royal
Academy.
That is what I was thinking as we popped into tunnels and out again into
the bright sunshine. Then--I don't know whether I fell asleep or whether
I kept awake--but I certainly dreamt the most beautiful pictures ever
painted. I could not put them on canvas to save my life, any more than I
could put them on paper; but there they were, just across borderland,
and I saw them with my own eyes, and not as one usually sees them,
cramped by ugly gold mouldings at so much a foot.
There was one creature of extraordinary beauty--a goddess she must have
been--with tresses of molten gold; she had got into a big shell which I
had bought in Naples (they call it _terebra_), and, stretching herself
full length in it, she had fallen asleep. Then other shells I had left
behind in those stalls that line Santa Lucia came up from the deep, and
a little lithe-limbed urchin--I felt sure I had seen him
before--ensconced himself in one of them as in an arm-chair; and
next--such are dreams--two darling little nieces of mine came toddling
along from Tedworth Square, S.W. London, stark naked, and straightway
condensed themselves into one meditative water-baby, that loved the
shells as I did, and cuddled them as I couldn't.
Dreams to be sure--fancies, mocking visions of beauty, not to be
realised, I know it well, but to the artist life would not be worth
living if it were not for the glorious excitement of hunting the
will-o'-the-wisp.
So I began what I called the shell-picture shortly after my return to
London. Browning was in sympathy with my subject, and often came when I
was tackling it. In the afternoons he was a man of leisure, his mornings
being devoted to his own work, which he would take up when he had read
the _Times_ and answered his letters. After luncheon he very rarely
returned to his study. He would go out about two o'clock, perhaps to
walk down to the Athenæum Club, where on Saturdays he was to be seen
very regularly, reading the weekly papers, or he would visit his
friends. Amongst those his artist friends were the most favoured, and
more than one of them, I am sure, would be better qualified than I am to
fill a chapter of reminiscences, headed "Browning at the Studio." He
himself often speaks in his letters of the pleasure it gives him to
associate with them.
"I scribble this," he writes on one occasion, "in case I should be
unable to look in to-morrow afternoon--as I will, if I can, however:
always enjoying, as I do, the sight of creation by another process than
that of the head, with only pen and paper to help. How expeditiously the
brush works!"
And another time he says--
"As for the visits to your studio, be assured they are truly a
delight to me, for the old aspirations come thickly back to memory
when I see you at work as--who knows but I myself might have worked
once? Only it was not to be; but these are consolations--seeing
that I am anyhow
"Yours sympathisingly,
"ROBERT BROWNING."
The aspirations he speaks of he had in former years sought to satisfy.
When living in Florence he had arranged the large corner room on the
first floor of the Casa Guidi as a studio. There he used to make
life-size drawings of the human figure from casts, working on a
specially prepared canvas, which enabled him to rub out his studies and
to replace them by others. He never painted; form had more attraction
for him than colour. When in Rome he worked several hours daily in
Storey's studio, and when he returned to England he intended taking up
modelling seriously. He did indeed begin in Warwick Crescent, but he
eventually abandoned the attempt, carried away by mightier impulses. The
regret that he had not been able to cultivate his taste for the plastic
art, would however often find expression in words.
What he might have done as an artist is a matter of speculation, but he
certainly made a most obliging and excellent sitter, as I can vouch for,
having been one of those who had the privilege of painting him. He sat
for me in 1884, and my portrait has found a permanent place in the
Armour Institute in Chicago.
As my shell-picture advanced, I became ambitious to find a better name
than the one I had given it temporarily, and as usual Browning was
consulted. Isaac Henderson, the novelist of "Agatha Page" fame, happened
to be at the Studio, and between them the matter was at first
facetiously discussed. On this occasion my name had the proud
distinction of drawing from Browning the only pun I ever heard him make.
"Why not call it _more shells_ by _Moschels?_" he said.
Later on he quoted various passages from poems that seemed to fit my
subject, but he felt himself that they were only partially suited to it.
In the evening, recalling our conversation, I wrote to him that, knowing
as I did exactly what I was trying to express on canvas, I felt sure it
would be difficult to find lines quite adaptable to my meaning. "Why
not," I asked, "in default of a real poet, sign an imaginary name,
Grelice di Napoli, for instance?" Grelice was meant for an Italian
version of the name which I had composed when I first met the _Gre_-te
who was to link her name to that of Fe-_lix_. The pseudonym was adopted,
and we are best known to our friends in every part of the world as "The
Grelix."
I suggested then that Grelice di Napoli should have said something of
this kind:--
"And as I walked along those lovely shores, and breathed the air of
balmy climes, I waking dreamt of living forms that wedded
opalescent shells; of peace, and rest, and blissful harmonies."
I was at work the next day when the post brought Browning's answer, and
as I read it I broke into a hearty fit of laughter. _He_ had written
five lines of poetry, and signed them: _Felix Moscheles_. They ran
thus:--
"And as I wandered by the happy shores
And breathed the sunset air of balmy climes,
I waking dreamt of some transcendent shape,
A woman's--framed by opalescent shells,
Peacefully lulled by Nature's harmonies."
A day or two later he came to bring me another version which, he
explained, he thought I should "like better." This was adopted, and the
picture was christened, "The Isle's Enchantress," and described by the
following lines:--
"Wind-wafted from the sunset, o'er the swell
Of summer's slumb'rous sea, herself asleep,
Came shoreward, in her iridescent shell
Cradled, the isle's enchantress. You who keep
A drowsy watch beside her--watch her well!"
The day was approaching when, with other work, I was to show that
"Isle's Enchantress." Picture show-day they call it. Soft-soap day would
be more correct, for every artist expects his friends to give him as
much of flattery as they can find it in their consciences to give. And
as a rule consciences are elastic; a little encouragement from the
artist goes a long way, and, once he satisfies his friends that he is of
an unsuspecting nature, they will lay it on thick in the pleasantest of
ways.
To be sure the day brings its little trials too, but of those another
time.
* * * * *
It had occurred to me that some of the friends I had invited to meet my
Enchantress, might like to have a copy of Browning's lines; so I went
round one evening to 29 De Vere Gardens to ask whether he had any
objection to their being printed.
"None whatever," he said, in answer to my question.
I thanked him and added, "To be sure I want to put your name to them."
"Oh, you can't do that," he said; "they are not mine, they are yours."
"Mine! Why, you know, _I_ couldn't write verse to save my life."
"Ah, but you did; you sent me the substance and put it into blank
verse."
"Blank verse!"--Blank was my astonishment, and I felt like the man in
Molière when he was told he had been speaking prose all his life.
Well, we sat by the fireside in that drawing-room of his and discussed
the matter, and he would have it that I was the author and that he had
only put my idea into shape.
"If I had suggested alterations in your picture," he said, "or if I had
advised you to introduce a coral-reef here and a dolphin there, would
that have justified me in signing _your_ picture?"
"No, perhaps not," I agreed, "but if you had laid on the last coat of
paint, the one the public was to see, you certainly could have done so."
And so the skirmishing went on with varying fortunes, till, by some
happy fluke, I hit upon an argument which settled the matter in my
favour.
"Well," I said, "I can't give you a reason for it--in fact I have never
been able to understand why it is so--but it is an undeniable fact that
the public _will_ make a marked difference between your style and mine,
and if your version is to be adopted, it must stand in your name."
"Very well, then," he said, "have it your own way. I am sure you are
welcome to anything I can do for you."
"Truly kind you are, and truly grateful am I, and plucky too I beg you
to believe, for I don't care a pin if people do say: 'There goes
Moscheles hanging on to the tail of Pegasus!'"
I meant it then, and I mean it to-day. You may laugh if you like, but I
have the best of it; it isn't everybody who can boast of having written
five lines of poetry _together with Robert Browning_.
* * * * *
The picture I have now. It just fits a recess in my dining-room,
measuring about five feet by seven. I daily sit opposite it at meals,
and when I watch the golden rays of the sun as they come pouring through
the garden-window, and steal across the canvas, I see a beautiful
picture which I certainly never painted.
First the light plays on the flowing hair where it dips into the water,
and gives it just the aureate tints I tried in vain to mix; then
steadily creeping on, it illuminates, first the closed eyes and the
parted lips, then the body and the seaweed straggling across it, and
presently it reaches the urchin in the Concha, and would fain make me
imagine that I could paint an iridescent shell and a child of flesh and
blood.
Those are moments of happy delusions and I acknowledge it gratefully,
for it is not vouchsafed to every one to paint his pictures together
with the blessed sun, any more than it is to write his poems together
with Robert Browning, or indeed to sit down daily to a square meal, and
to have before him a canvas into which he can weave pleasant memories of
the Past.
* * * * *
A portrait I was painting of Sir James Ingham, the Bow Street
magistrate, led to the following incident. I was telling my sitter how
great were the difficulties I had to contend with as a host and an
impresario when I had a musical At home at the Studio.
Which of one's talented friends should be asked first? Should Signora
Cantilena come before or after Madame Pianota? Singers to be sure are
entitled to most consideration. They are invariably affected by the
weather, whilst the pianists are only out of practice. If I want la
Signora to sing at about eleven o'clock, I begin asking her to favour us
at a quarter-past ten, allowing her from forty to fifty minutes to get
over the insurmountable difficulties which, just to-day, stand in the
way of her acceding to my request. But then, in the kindness of her
heart, when once she begins, she is inclined to go on till she has
successfully illustrated the wonderful variety of her talent. And there
is Heir Thumpen Krasch, who is waiting all the while to get to the
piano, and when he is there, he is naturally disinclined to play his
best pieces first, and reserves his Monster-Rhapsody on Wagner's
Trilogy, the success of the season, for what I call the after-end. As
for myself, I forget my duties and go into raptures, delighted as I am
to think that my friends sing and play their best in the genial
atmosphere of the Studio. But oh, the other virtuosi who are waiting to
be heard! "_Ote-toi, que je m'y mette_" is the motto of every true
artist, and my friends are all true artists.
"Yes," said Sir James, "those troubles are as old as the hills. Don't
you recollect the lines Horace wrote two thousand years ago?" and he
quoted them.
"Splendid! I wish you would write them down for me; my Latin is rather
rusty, and I should like to remember them."
So he wrote:--
HORACE, 3RD SATIRE.
"Omnibus hoc vitium
Est cantoribus, inter amicos
Ut nunquam inducant
Animum cantare
rogati
Injussi nunquam
desistant."
The same day Browning came in, and seeing the lines, he took up a pen
and wrote without pausing to think--
"All sorts of singers have this common vice:
To sing 'mid friends you have to ask them twice!
If you don't ask them, that's another thing:
Until the judgment-day be sure they'll sing!
--_Impromptu Translation_, July 10, '83."
How rapidly his mind worked I had occasional opportunities of
witnessing. He would let us give him a number of rhymes, perhaps twenty
or thirty, to be embodied in an impromptu poem. This he would read to us
just once, and, as he spoke the last words, he would ruthlessly tear it
up into small fragments and scatter them to the winds. Nothing would
induce him to stay his iconoclastic hand, and on such occasions it only
remained for me to regret that I was not some sensitive plate, some
uncanny Edisonian Poetophone, to preserve the spontaneous creation of
his mind.
"Do you ever listen to Reciters?" my wife asked him one day; "I mean to
Reciters of Browning's poems?"
"Oh, I do the Reciting myself," he said, "when I am amongst a few
sympathetic friends. I will read to you with pleasure. What have you
got?"
The few sympathetic ones were not wanting that Sunday afternoon; I gave
him the volume of "Selections" from his poems, and turning over the
pages he said, "As we are in an artist's studio, I will read 'Andrea del
Sarto.'"
There was not a shadow of declamation in his reading. For the time being
he was just Andrea talking to his wife, the "Faultless Painter" as they
called him, who knew his own faults but had not the strength to battle
with them. It was Andrea himself we were in touch with, his dreamy
sadness that we shared. His yearnings for requited love, his longings
for the unattainable in art, drew us to him, and we would have helped
him had we been able. That sorry business with the King of France was
disgraceful--there was no denying it. He admitted himself that he had
abused the king's friendship and misused his moneys, but surely for such
a man as was Del Sarto, something could be done to settle matters, and
once more to turn his genius to account.
And that Lucretia, his wife! his "serpentining beauty, rounds on
rounds!" Why _will_ she not answer? The right words from her spoken now
might yet make of him the good man and the great artist that a God may
create, but that a woman must consecrate. One just felt as if one could
give her a good shaking, if only to make her break the aggravating
silence she so imperturbably maintains whilst he so pathetically pleads.
As for the cousin, one would have liked to go out and give him a sound
thrashing to stop his whistling once for all.
We were so impressed at the close of his reading that for a moment we
remained hushed in a silence which none of us cared to break. He looked
round at us, anxious lest he should not have brought home his meaning,
and said, "Have I made it clear?"
* * * * *
It is rather a sudden transition from Del Sarto to myself, and from
"sober pleasant Fiesole" in the background, to the Royal Academy in
Piccadilly; but all artists of all times, the little ones as well as the
great ones, have their grievous disappointments, and one place is as
good or as bad as another to crush some of their fondest hopes.
Annually then, towards the end of April, when the judges at Burlington
House had spoken, Browning had his visits of condolence to pay. How
helpful and encouraging he would be, none of as, I am sure, could
forget. I thanked him on one occasion, telling him that I valued his
good opinion more than any other man's, and reminding him of his own
words:--
"And that's no way of holding up the soul,
Which nobler, needs men's praise perhaps, yet knows
One wise man's verdict outweighs all the fools."
The one wise man always found a word of encouragement--
"Beware of despairing thoughts," he answered. "The darkest days, wait
but till to-morrow, will have passed away."
In his ever simple, unassuming way he compared himself to me, recalling
his failures, and telling me how for many years not a poem of his was
read or could boast of a publisher willing to take it, and how now 3500
copies of the new edition of his works had been sold in a month. "To be
sure, one must live long enough," he added, and quoted Philip von
Artevelde's first speech, in which he says so many die before they've
had a chance, and--
"Then comes the man who has the luck to live,
And he's a miracle."
Unvarying kindness too he showed me when, as he put it, I "entrusted him
with a piece of business." Such a piece was my preface to the
Mendelssohn Letters. In this he made six or eight corrections,
suggestions he insisted on calling them, when he brought the paper back
himself that he might explain verbally why he had substituted a word
here and added another there. At the end he had pencilled: "Excellent.
R. B.," and I felt as proud as a peacock and as happy as a schoolboy.
When the book finally came out he was in Italy, and I sent him a copy of
it.
It was characteristic of him that his kind heart prompting him, and his
unlimited powers of expression aiding him, he would, even on the most
trivial occasions, write in the warmest and the most affectionate terms.
So he did when he answered acknowledging the receipt of the book, and
mentioning the photo of a picture which I had painted for A. P.
Rockwell, a dear friend of mine and a great fur-merchant in New York. It
showed a life-size female figure stretched on a tiger-skin and frankly
nude, but for the white Mongolian and other furs thrown around and about
her.
He dates from Casa Alvisi, Canal Grande, Venezia, October, 29, '88, and
after a few introductory sentences, he says:--
"I concluded that on leaving Scotland you would proceed elsewhere than
homewards, and it seemed best to wait till I was sure of finding you.
Even now--I am sorry exceedingly to be still far from sure that this
will go to you safely housed within the old easy reach of De Vere
Gardens--for there shall I live and probably die--not in the Rezzonico,
which is not mine but Pen's: I am staying here only as the guest of a
dearest of friends, Mrs. Bronson, who has cared for the comfort of my
sister and myself this many a year. No; once missing my prize of the
superlatively beautiful Manzoni Palazzo, I have not been tempted to try
a fresh spring unbaulked by rascality. So much for the causes of my
tardiness in thanking you most heartily for the charming Lady of the
Furs: why not give her that title? Everybody here paid the due tribute
to her beauty and your skill. You promised I should witness the
beginning and ending of such another picture--and it is not to be--if
things are as I apprehend. Wherever you go, may all good go with you and
your delightful wife; my two precious friends!
"And now here is a second occasion of sincere thanksgiving. Your letter
arrived yesterday--and I supposed that the gift referred to had been
consigned to the Kensington house: whereas, while I sat preparing the
paper whereon to write, came the very book itself--the dearest of boons
just now. The best way will be to thank you at once, and be certain of
finding plenty more to thank you for when I have read what will interest
me more than anything else I can imagine in the way of biography. Let me
squeeze your hand in spirit, over the many miles, this glorious day--a
sun floods the room from the open window, while an autumnal freshness
makes it more than enjoyable, almost intoxicating. In half-an-hour I
shall be on the Lido--perhaps in a month I may cower by the fireside in
Kensington. Meanwhile and ever, my dear Moscheles, believe me,
gratefully and affectionately yours,
"ROBERT BROWNING."
He was with me one day when a distinguished German officer, Graf D.,
unexpectedly came in. The count was in London to attend some grand
military pageant organised for the benefit of the German Emperor. His
Majesty, on a visit to his royal grandmother, was being entertained with
a right royal show of death-dealing ships and other instruments of
warfare. He seems to have enjoyed it thoroughly, and in return for
attentions shown him, he was graciously pleased to raise the aforesaid
grandmother to the dignity of "Colonel of the First Regiment of
Dragoons, stationed in Berlin." As a specimen of the officers to serve
under her, Graf D. was ordered to London. He told us that he had dined
twice at the royal table, and that he had found the ceremonial on such
occasions rather less exacting than in Germany; the Queen herself was
somewhat reserved, but the rest of the company were pretty free to talk
or to laugh as they liked.
I had questioned him on the subject, recollecting how indignant
Rubinstein was at the hushed silence prevailing in the presence of her
Majesty. He could not and would not stand it, he said, and spoke out as
he would have done elsewhere.
When D. had gone, I told Browning that the count was not only a gallant
soldier, but a man to be held in great esteem, on account of his moral
courage. It was a bold thing for a man in his position to side with the
Jews at a time when the antisemitic movement was at its height. That an
officer and a scion of a noble family should associate with bourgeois of
the Jewish persuasion as he unhesitatingly did, was an unheard-of
thing. No wonder it should be commented upon amongst his brother
officers. Whatever their prejudices may have been, he had once for all
checked their utterance by stating in unmistakable language that he
would tolerate no disparaging remarks on any one of those whose houses
he frequented.
Browning was naturally in sympathy with the count's broader views and
his chivalrous conduct. "Is it possible," he said, "that men should seek
to sever themselves from those who are as _they_ are--all made of mortal
clay!"
When I alluded to the difference in appearance, and especially in
manners, so marked in Germany between the Christians and the Jews of a
certain class, and sought thereby to explain the repugnance these so
often inspire, he said--
"Naturally; their characteristics would become more intensified through
long exclusion from other groups of men; their manners would be unlike
those of others with whom they were not allowed to mix. No wonder if,
hedged in as they were, those peculiarities took offensive shapes. Does
not every development, to become normal, require space? Why, our very
foot, if you restrict and hedge it in, throws out a corn in
self-defence!"
On the 7th of May, it was in 1889, Browning came in after luncheon. "It
is my birthday to-day," he said, "and so I came to sit with you and your
wife for a while, if you'll let me."
I rejoiced, and at once thought of work in his presence, always a source
of double pleasure to me. My wife thought of the pleasure it would give
her to offer him some little present by way of marking the happy day.
"I have been out model-hunting this morning," I told him, "and have
caught the very specimen I wanted for the boy lolling against the door
of the public-house in the 'Drink' picture. I was in luck; for I went to
Victoria Station with the definite purpose of finding a typical
'Cheeky,' and I found him. He is just having a square meal as an
introduction to business, and I am burning to paint him and his cheek.
Will you come in with me and let me start?"
"The very thing I should like to see you do," said Browning, and we
adjourned to the Studio. Little Cheeky, the veriest young vagabond,
uncombed and untamed, cap over ear and cigarette-stump in mouth, was
happily transferred to canvas in an hour or two, and his effigy has ever
since remained with me in memory of the friend who sat by me on that
day. In the meanwhile my wife had bethought herself of a little piece of
antique embroidery framed and under glass, which, but lately, we had
picked up in Rome; that seemed worthy to be offered to Browning, and she
pressed him to accept it, but in vain. Warmly she persisted, firmly he
resisted. At last, and lest he should displease or pain her, he said--
"Well, my dear friend, let us make a compromise. You keep it for me for
a year and give it to me on my next birthday."
We have it still! He was never to see that next birthday!
He died on the 12th of December in the Palazzo Rezzonico in Venice.
When Pen's telegram with the fatal news reached me I was standing by
another deathbed.
On the last day of the year 1889 he was buried in Westminster Abbey. It
had been proposed to transfer the remains of Elizabeth Barrett Browning
from Florence to be laid by the side of her husband, but the idea was
abandoned as not being likely to meet with the approval of the
municipality and the English colony of that city. Browning himself had
never expressed any wish on the subject of his resting-place, further
than mentioning on one occasion the Norwood Cemetery as a fitting place,
and saying that, if he died in Paris, he wished to be buried near his
father.
Shortly after his death I painted a water-colour of his study in De Vere
Gardens. Everything had remained intact. "All here--only our poet's
away," as he says in "Asolando." The empty chair by the writing-table
which bears his initials, the desk which he looked upon as a relic. His
father had used it when a lad, and had taken it with him on his voyage
to the West Indies. The poet possessed it from his earliest boyhood, and
used it all his life; everything he wrote in England, so his sister told
me, was written on that desk. The little dumb keyboard I have already
mentioned in the first of these pages; it had five notes over which he
would mechanically run his fingers. He had a way too of beating a tattoo
on his knee, or he would just for a few seconds mark time, moving his
arm backwards and forwards. Sometimes he would squeeze up his eyes and
look out of the window, or he would take up some little object and
scrutinise it closely, whilst his thoughts were busy elsewhere.
On his table lay a book he had shown me as one he treasured: a little
Greek Bible. On the last leaf was written: "My wife's book and mine."
Pictures by his son hung on the walls; so too a portrait of his wife
when a little girl, by Hayter; one of Hope End, the house in which she
lived, and one of the tomb in the English Cemetery in Florence where she
lies buried. Another reminiscence of her is the low chair to the right
of the table; she at all times liked low seats, and this chair was a
favourite with her.
Among the things on the walls was a pen-and-ink drawing of Tennyson by
Dante Gabriel Rossetti. On the back of it Browning wrote--
"Tennyson read his poem of 'Maud' to E. B. B., R. B., Arabella, and
Rossetti on the evening of September 27, 1855, at 13 Dorset Street,
Manchester Square. Rossetti made this sketch of Tennyson as he sat
reading to E. B. B., who occupied the other end of the sofa.--R.
B., March 6, 1874, 19 Warwick Crescent."
[Greek:
metapiptontos
daimonos]
On the drawing is written in Mrs. Browning's hand--
"I hate the dreadful hollow
Behind the little wood."
The larger bookcase which made up the background for my drawing, he
designed himself. The fine old oak-carvings he had bought many years ago
in Florence, where they had adorned the refectory of some old
monastery; when he got them home, he put them together, with the
assistance of an ordinary carpenter, according to his own design,
chalked out on the carpet, and ever after he took great pride in the
result. The bookcase held to the end of his days the many rare and
beautiful volumes he prized so highly.
Another bookcase he wanted to accommodate piles of books he had brought
from Warwick Crescent when he moved to De Vere Gardens. I suggested a
certain one that had belonged to Sheridan and was now for sale at Joshua
Binns's, then the king of dilapidators. But he preferred a severely
useful piece of furniture in mahogany which we found close to my studio
at Taylor's Depository. Books he would always handle very carefully. He
would never leave a book open or place it face downwards--or, worst of
all in his eyes, deface it by turning the corner of a page. His strong
dislike of the imperfect was characteristic. Anything mended he objected
to, and he would rather a thing he valued were broken outright than
chipped or cracked.
The manuscript of "Aurora Leigh" was a treasure he guarded lovingly. It
had been lost with other things in a trunk forwarded from Italy to
England, but, when search already seemed hopeless, it was found in
Marseilles. I have heard him say, referring to the incident: "She
thought more of Pen's laces and collars than of that book." He wanted to
have the manuscript bound, but could not make up his mind to part with
it even for that purpose. Three times he replaced it on the shelf
before he let it go. It is now in Pen's possession, as is the MS. of
"Asolando," both eventually to be left to Balliol College, Oxford, as
others already bequeathed to that institution.
After his wife's death, Browning took the house in Warwick Crescent,
originally to find a place for the furniture which he had had forwarded
from Florence; the neighbourhood was selected because a sister of Mrs.
Browning's, Arabella Moulton Barrett, lived in Delamere Terrace, but he
strongly disliked the house, and always had a wish finally to settle in
the Kensington district. It was, however, only towards the close of his
life that he left Warwick Crescent and made his home in De Vere Gardens.
Stiff staircases such as he found there he never objected to; in fact,
whether at home or when travelling, he had a marked preference for being
located in one of the upper storeys. So it was on the second floor he
had established his library and study.
His sister, Miss Browning, to whom so frequent reference is made in his
letters as Sarianna, lived with him and ever devoted herself to the task
of securing his comfort and happiness. She would write out his poems and
otherwise make herself useful as his amanuensis; frequent too were the
opportunities the brother and sister took to travel together, and when
abroad, they would enjoy nothing better than a walk of several hours.
The last time I saw him at the Studio, he had come to tell me that he
was shortly leaving for Italy. He spoke with enthusiasm of Asolo,
describing its beauties in glowing colours, and he told me how, some
forty years ago, as a young man, he had reached it when on a walking
tour through the Venetian province.
"How many a year, my Asolo,
Since--one step just from sea to land--
I found you!"
It was the old tower crowning the hills, the Rocca, at that time
tenanted by hawks, that had made the most lasting impression on his
mind. He had been there again in later years with his sister, and now he
was elated at the prospect of once more revisiting it and the
picturesque old city he loved so well. He went, and it was there he
wrote his last work, "Asolando."
Prompted by the desire to ramble over the ground he had so lately
trodden, and to gather what evidence I could of his passage, I went to
Venice and Asolo in the following year, and painted a series of
water-colours (some fourteen or fifteen) in illustration of notes I took
during my stay in these places. Some of those notes may not be out of
place here to complete my sketch of Browning.[18]
* * * * *
A couple of hours' ride by rail took me from Venice to Cornuda, two more
by diligence to my destination. Leaving the plain an excellent road, cut
into the flanks of the hill on which the town is built, soon brought me
to the summit. I had only risen six or seven hundred feet, but a
magnificent view greeted me on all sides. "In clear weather you can see
Venice," the driver told me; but I was anxious to look forward, not
backward, and alighting at the entrance to a narrow street, I walked
along the _Sotto-portici_, formed by a series of quaint thick-set arches
supporting the upper storeys. A few steps brought me to the house in
which, as the tablet on the wall says, had lived the "Somma Poeta."
"What a curious place to select!" was my first thought as I stood at the
door of the old house. I walked up twelve or fifteen hard stone steps,
grasping the banister to guide myself in the dark, and was soon warmly
welcomed by Signora Nina Tabacchi, as, passing through the kitchen, I
was ushered into the sitting-room. "Scrupulously clean and neat," was my
next impression, but how plain! The room was only a piece of the kitchen
partitioned off, a glass door and window separating the two. The thin
cotton curtain might possibly screen the mysteries of the culinary
process from the poet's eye, but his ear must have been caught by
occasional sounds of hacking and chopping, and certainly no kettle could
have boiled, no wood could crackle, or incense arise from that adjacent
hearth without making itself distinctly noticeable. Such was his study
and his drawing-room, a _multum in parvo_ about twelve feet square.
I had ample time to study my surroundings, for I spent some weeks in the
rooms vacated by the poet. The furniture was of the good old
lodging-house type. In the centre of the little sitting-room was a
round pedestal table, half of which was devoted to Browning's papers; on
the other half, luncheon was served for himself and his sister. A
full-length sofa, uncompromisingly hard, took up the greater part of one
wall, and a kind of sideboard stood opposite. On the chiffonnier,
between the two windows, rested the looking-glass, and half-a-dozen
mahogany chairs, cane-bottomed and severe backed, completed the
arrangements. On the flesh-coloured walls hung a series of prints,
illustrating the history of Venice. Doges disporting themselves in most
conventional attitudes, the vanquished kneeling before the victors, gave
one the impression that history involves a great amount of bowing and
scraping. In pleasant contrast with such triumphs were the domestic joys
as depicted by the photographer. Looking up from his papers, Browning's
eye must have rested on that shell-adorned frame which encircled the
usual specimens of family portraits. There were the inevitable aunts and
uncles, the young man pressing into the focus, to meet the clever dog
seated on the table by his side, and a typical presentment of the mother
and child as conceived by the lens.
To Luigi, the landlady's son, Browning was from the first very friendly;
but how this lad, ever on the alert to make himself useful, could have
kept any length of time in his good graces, is a mystery to me. He owns
that on one or two occasions the sturdy master sent him flying, when he
would imprudently insist on opening the door for him, or on lighting him
down the dark staircase.
On his arrival Browning had bought a plain glass inkstand and a few
wooden penholders; they were still there, on a blue-patterned china
plate, just as he had left them. I reverently put them aside, but I
might as well have used them; for just as he would never allow me to
make the slightest fuss of him, the living friend, so he would not have
expected me to stand on ceremony with the inanimate objects that
survived him. A pen was just a pen, as "A flower is just a flower."
Asolo boasted of a theatre, and the performances must have been none of
the worst, for, out of twenty, Browning only missed three. He would sit
in his friend Mrs. Bronson's box, and follow the actors as they told the
story of Hamlet, Othello, or Mary Queen of Scots, or as they played
Goldoni's popular comedies. The performance usually wound up with a
short farce. From that he would escape, leaving Gigi (that is Luigi),
who was his frequent companion, to do the screaming laughter. About
half-past eleven or twelve he got home, and by five or six in the
morning he was up again. His bedroom was about 16 feet by 9, and 10 feet
high. A really good rococo design, speaking of an artistic past,
embossed and picked out in grey, decorated the whitewashed walls.
Rafters brought out the irregularities of the ceiling, and bricks, very
much wrinkled and worn with age, paved the floor. Signora Tabacchi had
offered to procure a carpet, but had met with an energetic refusal.
There was a funny little looking-glass, and a wash-hand stand with a
diminutive basin, and over the glass door a towel was neatly tacked to
insure privacy.
And what in this land of vistas greeted the poet's eye as he opened his
shutters? A blank wall and another set of shutters. They would be opened
presently to be sure when the sun left the neighbour's wall, and then a
flood of light would burst into the centre corridor of his house, and
the reflections from the marble floor would carry the quivering rays
along to another window beyond, through which you caught a lovely
glimpse of the hills on the other side of the valley. In that particular
glimpse Browning delighted. When his son came to Asolo, he was struck,
as I was later, by the uncongenial outlook.
"Wait, Pen, till they open those shutters," Browning had said. Pen
waited and was duly impressed and pleased. It was well so, for had it
been otherwise, his father's pleasure would have been incomplete.
The people of Asolo are of the kindliest nature; simple, peaceful folk,
hard-working and contented. Perched on high in their picturesque
dwellings, they seem raised above at least some of our terrestrial
troubles. They live sheltered by solid masses of mediæval stone, and
surrounded by the gardens they cultivate; the vine is here, there, and
everywhere, zig-zagging along rough stone terraces and gliding down the
slopes, or creeping into the windows. A tangle of massive foliage
springs from one knows not where, large leaves that dwarf all else elbow
their way to the front, and here and there in their midst a big yellow
gourd comfortably rests on a stone cornice or on an artificial prop.
The fig leaves, though certainly overshadowed by their bulky neighbours,
hold their own in the universal struggle for air and space. And
somewhere in the distance is a little graceful figure stretching upward
to train the vine in the way it should go, and right or wrong you
straightway jump to the conclusion, if you are an artist, that that
figure belongs to a beautiful girl.
The children are out of doors; so are the pigs. Whilst the latter always
seem grumbling and dissatisfied, the former are as happy as sunshine and
_polenta_ can make a child. The sight of an approaching stranger
carrying the artist's paraphernalia, at once suggests to a sturdy urchin
the idea that he should rush for a chair, and to the woman at her door,
that she should offer you a hearty welcome. No wonder if some of these
good people were destined to entertain an angel or a poet unawares.
Browning might not have manifested himself as such, but there was
something about him that endeared him to all he met. Faces brightened as
I spoke of him; voices deepened as they answered, "_Ah poveretto!_ how
kind he was--_proprio buono!_ Here he used to sit and chat with us;" or,
"I showed him the way to the Rocca eleven years ago." This last remark
came from the postmaster, who took the deepest interest in everything
concerning Browning. He was very anxious that I should paint a picture
of the post-office, as being the historical place the poet had many a
time visited. "It was over that counter of mine," he said, "that his
last work, the immortal 'Asolando,' was handed. On me he relied to
transmit it with the greatest care, for he assured me he had kept no
copy of it. Yes, it went per book-post, registered and addressed, I well
recollect, to the publisher Mr. Smith, of London, and he was surprised
it should cost so little--only seventy centimes; it weighed 450 grammes,
you see, and so that was the postage."
I may add that the manuscript thus sent, and since returned to the
poet's son, is written in Browning's neatest and distinctest hand. There
are but few corrections or erasures. Of these one has perhaps a special
interest, as applying to the last line he ever published. The "Epilogue"
he first ended thus:--
"'Strive and thrive' cry 'God to speed,
Fight ever there as here.'"
This he changed to--
"'Strive and thrive' cry 'Speed fight-on,
Fare ever there as here.'"
On hearing that the manuscript had safely reached its destination,
Browning's kind thoughts at once reverted to the postmaster, good and
true, and he went to thank him for his share in the transaction.
Little can have changed at the Rocca since Browning visited it. The
stones roll down the narrow path from under your feet, as you ascend
through vineyards and orchards, past stray poultry and groups of
sleeping ducks. In a few minutes you reach the crest of the hill, and
find the old strong-hold, turret-flanked and loopholed, that had for
generations frowned upon the valley below, as was the way of citadels in
the bad old times. Now it is all smiles, garland-wreathed and happy in
its green old age.
During his stay in Asolo Browning and his sister spent much time in the
house of Mrs. Bronson, the Mrs. Arthur Bronson to whom the poet
dedicated his last book of verses, and whom he thanked in his preface
for "yet another experience of the gracious hospitality bestowed on me
for so many years." In the afternoon they would all take long drives
together.
It was on one of these occasions that Browning hit upon the title he
would give his volume of poems. His son suggesting that it should in
some way be connected with the name of Asolo, he bethought himself of
the verb _asolare_. "Have you a good dictionary?" he asked his hostess.
"I feel sure it was Cardinal Bembo who used the word, but I must look it
up." He did, the well-known result being the adoption of the title and
the explanation given in the introductory lines.
At Mrs. Bronson's it was quite understood that he should come and go as
he liked, and that he should consider "La Mura" as much his home as he
would his own house. A spacious loggia had recently been added to the
old building, virtually forming a new room, roofed in, but open to the
air on three sides. Here Browning spent many hours walking up and down
or reading, or he would sit in the arm-chair and "drink in the air," as
he used to say.
From that point of vantage he would watch Nature's ever-varying moods,
and muse over the historical recollections evoked by Caterina Cornaro's
palace and the other old buildings on the hills opposite. Often he would
hurry back to the house, anxious lest he should miss the sunset as
viewed from that loggia.
A constant source of enjoyment to him was an old spinet, marked and
dated, "Ferdinando Ferrari, Ravenna, 1522." Knowing how much pleasure
this little instrument had given him during former stays at her house in
Venice, his hostess had had it brought to Asolo, and, here as there, he
delighted in playing upon it of an evening, simple, restful melodies
that had been familiar to him for years, or quaint scraps of early
German or Italian music.
From the spinet he would go to the books. "What have you got?" he asked
on the first evening of his stay. "What shall I read to you?
Shakespeare? What! You don't mean to say you haven't brought your
Shakespeare! I am shocked."
On this, as on other occasions, he was always most deprecatory when
asked to read something of his own. But the new edition of his works
which he had presented to his friend, being at hand, he would take down
a volume and relate, in his own words, and with his unaffected
intonation, the story of a Paracelsus or a Strafford. And that would
afterwards lead him to speak with ever fresh enthusiasm of the
historical associations connected with such names. In the course of the
exhaustive studies that always preceded the composition of any work of
his, he made himself intimately acquainted with every fact concerning
the lives of those whom he was about to pourtray. Whatever detail
history had preserved he made his own, and what his mind had once
assimilated, his memory ever retained.
The pilgrim to Asolo would naturally look about for some clue to the
poems written there. He would hope to meet with some of the models,
animate or inanimate, that might have suggested one or the other of the
"Facts and Fancies." But, reticent as Browning always was concerning his
work, even with those nearest to him, he has left no trace to guide us.
It was quite exceptional when, one day returning from a drive, he said,
"I've composed a poem since we've been out; it is all in my head, and
when I get home I will write it down."
"What is it about?" very naturally asked his companions.
"No, no, no; that I won't say. You know I never can speak of what I am
writing."
"Ah, but now you have told us so much, you must tell us all," pleaded
Mrs. Bronson; and as she resolutely declared she would not take No for
an answer, he gave way, and said--
"Very well then, I will tell you. It is all about the ladies wearing
birds in their hats. I've put it pretty strong, and I don't know how
they'll take it."
* * * * *
The proof-sheets of his book of poems he had given to Mrs. Bronson. "Did
you understand them all?" he asked. "Did you understand the flute
music? Ah, not quite. Well, some day I'll tell you all about it." But
the day never came! He little knew that he was postponing it for ever;
on the contrary, he was planning pleasant things for the future.
"If I were only ten years younger," he said, "I should like to have a
place here in Asolo. Now the Asilo Infantile; if I could get that, I
would complete it and call it Pippa's tower. It is more for Pen. I may
not enjoy it long; but after all, I do think I am good for another ten
years."
The Asilo Infantile he spoke of was a large unfinished building,
originally intended to do service as a schoolhouse. It stood opposite
the loggia on the ridge of the hills that push forward into the valley.
Pippa and her sister-weavers were often uppermost in the poet's mind,
and he would tell how formerly the girls used to sit at their work in
the doorways all along the _Sotto-portici_ and weave cheerful songs into
their web. Now the trade had gone to Cornuda and elsewhere. He had
visions of what he would like to do for the poor girls thus
dispossessed, should he come to live among them--visions that were in a
great measure to be realised by those who bear his name, and who have
inherited his world-wide sympathies.
Negotiations were opened with the Town Council with the view of
acquiring the building and grounds to be dedicated to Pippa. It was the
first time that municipal property was to be sold, so the matter had
carefully to be considered by those in authority. The negotiations took
their due course; but alas! they came to a close too late. The intending
tenant was never to obtain possession.
The day and hour that a favourable decision was arrived at, was also the
day and hour of the poet's death.
THE END
Printed by BALLANTYNE, HANSON & CO.
Edinburgh & London
FOOTNOTES:
[1] "Life of Moscheles," by his wife. (Hurst & Blackett, 1873.)
[2] "Letters of Felix Mendelssohn to Ignaz and Charlotte Moscheles."
Translated and edited by Felix Moscheles. (Houghton & Mifflin, Boston,
U.S.A.)
[3] It's as good a trade as another, that of making-up pictures.
[4] "Shut up," I growled, "and get to bed, you idiot."
[5] Philistine.
[6] Oh, it's that young man who is upset by the moon; just like Rollo.
[7] Queer dog that.
[8] That's all very well, but he knows what's what.
[9] The Gewandhaus in Leipsic.
[10] Reprinted from "Cosmopolis."
[11] A 1000-franc note.
[12] I should be the loser by it.
[13] 'Tis love that leads us.
[14] We don't care a pin, sir, as long as we can get work.
[15] Betrayed.
[16] The French Tommy Atkins and the country cousin.
[17] "Parleying with certain people."--FRANCIS FURINI.
[18] The following notes formed part of an article published in
_Scribner's Magazine_ in 1891.
End of Project Gutenberg's Fragments of an Autobiography, by Felix Moscheles