Close of Mrs Browning's Life
When _Men and Women_ was published in the autumn of 1855 the Brownings
were again in Paris. An impulsive friend had taken an apartment for them
in the Rue de Grenelle, facing east, and in all that concerned comfort
splendidly mendacious. After some weeks of misery and illness Mrs
Browning was conveyed to less glittering but more hospitable rooms in
the Rue du Colisée by a desperate husband--"That darling Robert carried
me into the carriage, swathed past possible breathing, over face and
respirator in woollen shawls. No, he wouldn't set me down even to walk
up the fiacre steps, but shoved me in upside down in a struggling
bundle."[70] Happily the winter was of a miraculous mildness. Mrs
Browning worked _Aurora Leigh_ in "a sort of _furia_," and Browning set
himself to the task--a fruitless one as it proved--of rehandling and
revising _Sordello_: "I lately gave time and pains," he afterwards told
Milsand in his published dedication of the poem, "to turn my work into
what the many might,--instead of what the few must--like: but after all
I imagined another thing at first, and therefore leave as I find
it"--proud but warrantable words. Some of his leisure was given to
vigorous and not unsuccessful efforts in drawing. At the theatre he saw
Ristori as Medea and admired her, but with qualifications. At Monckton
Milnes's dinner-table he met Mignet and Cavour, and George Sand crowned
with an ivy-wreath and "looking like herself." Mrs Browning records with
pleasure that her husband's hostility to the French government had
waned; at least he admitted that he was sick of the Opposition.
In May 1856 tidings from London of the illness of Kenyon caused him
serious anxiety; he would gladly have hastened to attend upon so true
and dear a friend, but this Kenyon would not permit. A month later he
and Mrs Browning were in occupation of Kenyon's house in Devonshire
Place, which he had lent to them for the summer, but the invalid had
sought for restoration of his health in the Isle of Wight. On the day
that Mr Barrett heard of his daughter's arrival he ordered his family
away from London. Mrs Browning once more wrote to him, but the letter
received no answer. "Mama," said little Pen earnestly, "if you've been
very, very naughty I advise you to go into the room and say,'_Papa, I'll
be dood_.'" But the situation, as Mrs Browning sadly confesses, was
hopeless. Some companionship with her sister Arabel and her brothers was
gained by a swift departure from London in August for Ventnor whither
the Wimpole Street household, leaving its master behind, had been
banished, and there "a happy sorrowful two weeks" were spent. At Cowes a
grief awaited Browning and his wife, for they found Kenyon kind as ever
but grievously broken in health and depressed in spirits. A short visit
to Mrs Browning's married sister at Taunton closed the summer and autumn
in England. Before the end of October they were on their way to
Florence. "The Brownings are long gone back now," wrote Dante Rossetti
in December, "and with them one of my delights--an evening resort where
I never felt unhappy. How large a part of the real world, I wonder, are
those two small people?--taking meanwhile so little room in any railway
carriage and hardly needing a double bed at the inn."
The great event of the autumn for the Brownings and for the lovers of
English poetry was the publication of _Aurora Leigh_. Its popularity was
instantaneous; within a fortnight a second edition was called for; there
was no time to alter even a comma. "That golden-hearted Robert," writes
Mrs Browning, "is in ecstasies about it--far more than if it all related
to a book of his own." The volume was dedicated to John Kenyon; but
before the year was at an end Kenyon was dead. Since the birth of their
son he had enlarged the somewhat slender incomings of his friends by the
annual gift of one hundred pounds, "in order," says the editor of Mrs
Browning's Letters, "that they might be more free to follow their art
for its own sake only." By his will he placed them for the future above
all possibility of straitened means. To Browning he left 6,500 _l_., to
Mrs Browning 4,500 _l_. "These," adds Mr F.G. Kenyon, "were the largest
legacies in a very generous will--the fitting end to a life passed in
acts of generosity and kindness to those in need." The gain to the
Brownings was shadowed by a sense of loss. "Christmas came," says Mrs
Browning, "like a cloud." For the length of three winter months she did
not stir out of doors. Then arrived spring and sunshine, carnival time
and universal madness in Florence, with streets "one gigantic
pantomime." Penini begged importunately for a domino, and could not be
refused; and Penini's father and mother were for once drawn into the
vortex of Italian gaiety. When at the great opera ball a little figure
in mask and domino was struck on the shoulder with the salutation "Bella
mascherina!" it was Mrs Browning who received the stroke, with her
husband, also in domino, by her side. The absence of real coarseness in
the midst of so much seeming license, and the perfect social equality
gave her a gratifying impression of her Florentines.
In April it was summer weather; the drives of former days in the Cascine
and to Bellosguardo, where a warm-hearted friend, Miss Isa Blagden,
occupied a villa, were resumed. An American authoress of wider fame
since her book of 1852 than even the authoress of _Aurora Leigh_, Mrs
Beecher Stowe, was in Florence, and somewhat to their surprise she
charmed both Browning and his wife by her simplicity and earnestness,
her gentle voice and refinement of manner--"never," says Mrs Browning,
"did lioness roar more softly." All pointed to renewed happiness; but
before April was over pain of a kind that had a peculiar sting left Mrs
Browning for a time incapable of any other feeling. Her father was dead,
and no word of affection had been uttered at the last; if there was
water in the rock it never welled forth. The kindly meant effort of a
relative to reopen friendly communications between Mr Barrett and his
daughters, not many months previously, had for its only result the
declaration that they had disgraced the family.[71] At first Mrs
Browning was crushed and could shed no tear; she remained for many days
in a state of miserable prostration; it was two months before she could
write a letter to anyone outside the circle of her nearest kinsfolk.
Once more the July heat in Florence--"a composition of Gehenna and
Paradise"--drove the Brownings to the Baths of Lucca. Miss Blagden
followed them, and also young Lytton came, ailing, it was thought, from
exposure to the sun. His indisposition soon grew serious and declared
itself as a gastric fever. For eight nights Isa Blagden sat by his
bedside as nurse; for eight other nights Browning took her place. His
own health remained vigorous. Each morning he bathed in a rapid mountain
stream; each evening and morning he rode a mountain pony; and in due
time he had the happiness of seeing the patient, although still weak and
hollow cheeked, convalescent and beginning to think of "poems and apple
puddings," as Mrs Browning declares, "in a manner other than celestial."
It had been a summer, she said in September, full of blots, vexations,
anxieties. Three days after these words were written a new and grave
anxiety troubled her and her husband, for their son, who had been
looking like a rose--"like a rose possessed by a fairy" is his mother's
description--was attacked in the same way as Lytton. "Don't be unhappy
for _me_" said Pen; "think it's a poor little boy in the street, and be
just only a little sorry, and not unhappy at all." Within less than a
fortnight he was well enough to have "agonising visions of beefsteak
pies and buttered toast seen in _mirage_"; but his mother mourned for
the rosy cheeks and round fat little shoulders, and confessed that she
herself was worn out in body and soul.
The winter at Florence was the coldest for many years; the edges of the
Arno were frozen; and in the spring of 1858 Mrs Browning felt that her
powers of resistance, weakened by a year of troubles and anxieties, had
fallen low. Browning himself was in vigorous health. When he called in
June on Hawthorne he looked younger and even handsomer than he had
looked two years previously, and his gray hairs seemed fewer. "He
talked," Hawthorne goes on, "a wonderful quantity in a little time."
That evening the Hawthornes spent at Casa Guidi. Mrs Browning is
described by the American novelist as if she were one of the singular
creatures of his own imagination--no earthly woman but one of the elfin
race, yet sweetly disposed towards human beings; a wonder of charm in
littleness; with a shrill yet sweet tenuity of voice; "there is not such
another figure in the world; and her black ringlets cluster into her
neck, and make her face look whiter by their sable perfection." Browning
himself was "very efficient in keeping up conversation with everybody,
and seemed to be in all parts of the room and in every group at the same
moment; a most vivid and quick-thoughted person--logical and
common-sensible, as, I presume, poets generally are in their daily
talk." "His conversation," says Hawthorne, speaking of a visit to Miss
Blagden at Bellosguardo, "has the effervescent aroma which you cannot
catch even if you get the very words that seem to be imbued with it....
His nonsense is of very genuine and excellent quality, the true babble
and effervescence of a bright and powerful mind; and he lets it play
among his friends with the faith and simplicity of a child."
When summer came it was decided to join Browning's father and sister in
Paris, and accompany them to some French seaside resort, where Mrs
Browning could have the benefit of a course of warm salt-water baths. To
her the sea was a terror, but railway-travelling was repose, and
Browning suggested on the way from Marseilles to Paris that they might
"ride, ride together, for ever ride" during the remainder of their lives
in a first-class carriage with for-ever renewed supplies of French
novels and _Galignanis_. They reached Paris on the elder Mr Browning's
birthday, and found him radiant at the meeting with his son and
grandson, looking, indeed, ten years younger than when they had last
seen his face. Paris, Mrs Browning declares, was her "weakness," Italy
her "passion"; Florence itself was her "chimney-corner," where she
"could sulk and be happy." The life of the brilliant city, which
"murmurs so of the fountain of intellectual youth for ever and ever,"
quickened her heart-beats; its new architectural splendours told of the
magnificence in design and in its accomplishment of her hero the
Emperor. And here she and her husband met their helpful friend of former
days, Father Prout, and they were both grieved and cheered by the sight
of Lady Elgin, a paralytic, in her garden-chair, not able to articulate
a word, but bright and gracious as ever, "the eloquent soul full and
radiant, alive to both worlds." The happiness in presence of such a
victory of the spirit was greater than the pain.
Having failed to find agreeable quarters at Etretat, where Browning in a
"fine phrenzy" had hired a wholly unsuitable house with a potato-patch
for view, and escaped from his bad bargain, a loser of some francs, at
his wife's entreaty, they settled for a short time at Havre--"detestable
place," Mrs Browning calls it--in a house close to the sea and
surrounded by a garden. On a bench by the shore Mrs Browning could sit
and win back a little strength in the bright August air. The stay at
Havre, depressing to Browning's spirits, was for some eight weeks. In
October they were again in Paris, where Mrs Browning's sister, Arabel,
was their companion. The year was far advanced and a visit to England
was not in contemplation. Towards the middle of the month they were once
more in motion, journeying by slow stages to Florence. A day was spent
at Chambéry "for the sake of les Charmettes and Rousseau." When Casa
Guidi was at length reached, it was only a halting-place on the way to
Rome. Winter had suddenly rushed in and buried all Italy in snow; but
when they started for Rome in a carriage kindly lent by their American
friends, the Eckleys, it was again like summer. The adventures of the
way were chiefly of a negative kind--occasioned by precipices over which
they were not thrown, and banditti who never came in sight; but in a
quarrel between oxen-drivers, one of whom attacked the other with a
knife, Browning with characteristic energy dashed between them to the
terror of the rest of the party; his garments were the only serious
sufferers from his zeal as mediator.
The apartment engaged at Rome was that of the earlier visit of 1853-54,
in the Via Bocca di Leone, "rooms swimming all day in sunshine." On
Christmas morning Mrs Browning was able to accompany her husband to St
Peter's to hear the silver trumpets. But January froze the fountains,
and the north wind blew with force. Mrs Browning had just completed a
careful revision _of Aurora Leigh_, and now she could rest, enjoy the
sunshine streaming through their six windows, or give herself up to the
excitement of Italian politics as seen through the newspapers in the
opening of a most eventful year. "Robert and I," she wrote on the eve of
the declaration of war between Austria and Victor Emmanuel, "have been
of one mind lately on these things, which comforts me much." She had
also the satisfaction of health enjoyed at least by proxy, for her
husband had never been more full of vigour and the spirit of enjoyment.
In the freezing days of January he was out of his bed at six o'clock,
and away for a brisk morning walk with Mr Eckley. The loaf at breakfast
diminished "by Gargantuan slices." Into the social life of Rome he threw
himself with ardour. For a fortnight immediately after Christmas he was
out every night, sometimes with double and treble engagements.
"Dissipations," says Mrs Browning, "decidedly agree with Robert, there's
no denying that, though he's horribly hypocritical, and 'prefers an
evening with me at home.'" He gathered various coloured fragments of
life from the outer world and brought them home to brighten her hours of
imprisonment.
When they returned to Florence in May the Grand Duke had withdrawn, the
city was occupied by French troops, and there was unusual animation in
the streets. Browning shared to some extent in his wife's alienation
from the policy of England, and believed, but with less than her
enthusiastic confidence, in the good intentions towards Italy of the
French Emperor. He subscribed his ten scudi a month to the Italian
war-fund, and rewarded Pen for diligence in his lessons with half a paul
a day, which the boy might give as his own contribution to the cause of
Italian independence. The French and the Italian tricolour flags,
displayed by Pen, adorned the terrace. In June the sun beat upon
Florence with unusual fierceness, but it was a month of battles, and
with bulletins of the war arriving twice a day they could not bear to
remove to any quiet retreat at a distance from the centre. It was not
curiosity that detained them but the passion for Italy, the joy in
generous effort and great deeds. In the rebound, as Mrs Browning
expresses it, from high-strung hopes and fears for Italy they found
themselves drawn to the theatre, where Salvini gave his wonderful
impersonation of Othello and his Hamlet, "very great in both, Robert
thought," so commented Mrs Browning, "as well as I."[72] The strain of
excitement was indeed excessive for Mrs Browning's failing physical
strength; there was in it something almost febrile. Yet the fact is
noteworthy that the romantic figures secured much less of her interest
than the men of prudent statesmanship. She esteemed Cavour highly; she
wholly distrusted Mazzini. She justified Louis Napoleon in concessions
which she regarded as an unavoidable part of diplomacy directed to ends
which could not be immediately attained. Garibaldi was a "hero," but
somewhat alarming in his heroisms--a "grand child," "not a man of much
brain." After the victories of Magenta and Solferino came what seemed to
many the great betrayal of Villafranca. For a day the busts and
portraits of the French Emperor suddenly disappeared from the
shop-windows of Florence, and even Mrs Browning would not let her boy
wear his Napoleon medal. But the busts returned to their places, and Mrs
Browning's faith in Napoleon sprang up anew; it was not he who was the
criminal; the selfish powers of Europe had "forced his hand" and
"truncated his great intentions." She rejoiced in the magnificent
spectacle of dignity and calm presented by the people of Italy. And yet
her fall from the clouds to earth on the announcement of peace with
Austria was a shattering experience. Sleep left her, or if she slept her
dreams were affected by "inscrutable articles of peace and endless
provisional governments." Night after night her husband watched beside
her, and in the day he not only gave his boy the accustomed two hours'
lesson on the piano, but replaced the boy's mother as teacher of those
miscellaneous lessons, which had been her educational province. "Robert
has been perfect to me," expressed Mrs Browning's feelings in a word.
Another anxiety gave Browning an opportunity which he turned to account
in a way that renders honour and gratitude his due from all lovers of
English letters. At a great old age Landor, who resided with his family
at Fiesole, still retained his violent and intractable temper; in his
home there was much to excite his leonine wrath and sense of
intolerable wrong. Three times he had quitted his villa, with vows never
to return to it, and three times he had been led back. When for a fourth
time--like a feeble yet majestic Lear--one hot summer day, toward noon,
he flung himself, or was flung, out of doors with only a few pauls in
his pocket, it was to Casa Guidi that he made his way broken-hearted,
yet breathing forth wrath.[73] Browning had often said, as his wife
tells her sister-in-law, that he owed more as a writer to Landor than to
any other contemporary.[74] He resolved to set things right, if
possible; and if not, to make the best of a case that could not be
entirely amended. A visit to the villa assured him that reconciliation
was out of the question. He provided for Landor's immediate wants;
communicated with Landor's brothers in England, who were prompt in
arranging for a regular allowance to be administered by Browning; became
the old man's guide and guardian; soothed his wounded spirit, although,
according to Mrs Browning, not often happy when he attempted
compliments, with generous words and ready quotations from Landor's own
writings; and finally settled him in Florence under the care of Mrs
Browning's faithful maid Wilson, who watched over him during the
remainder of his life.[75] To his incredulous wife Browning spoke of
Landor's sweetness and gentleness, nor was he wrong in ascribing these
qualities to the old lion. She admitted that he had generous impulses,
but feared that her husband would before long become, like other friends
of Landor, the object of some enraged suspicion. "Nothing coheres in
him," she writes, "either in his opinions, or, I fear, affections." But
Landor, whose courtesy and refinement she acknowledges, had also a heart
that was capable of loyal love and gratitude. After the first burst of
rage against the Fiesole household had spent itself, he beguiled the
time in perpetuating his indignations in an innocent and classical
form--that of Latin alcaics directed against one private and one public
foe--his wife and the Emperor Louis Napoleon.[76]
Lander's affairs threatened to detain the Brownings in Florence longer
than they desired, now that peace had come and it was not indispensable
to run out of doors twice a day in order to inspect the bulletins. But
after three weeks of very exhausting illness, Mrs Browning needed change
of air. As soon as her strength allowed, she was lifted into a carriage
and they journeyed, as in the year 1850, to the neighbourhood of Siena.
She reached the villa which had been engaged by Story's aid, with the
sense of "a peculiar frailty of being." Though confined to the house,
the fresher air by day and the night winds gradually revived her
strength and spirits. The silence and repose were "heavenly things" to
her: the "pretty dimpled ground covered by low vineyards" rested her
eyes and her mind; and for excitements, instead of reports of
battle-fields there were slow-fading scarlet sunsets over purple hills.
A kind Prussian physician, Gresonowsky, who had attended Mrs Browning in
Florence, and who entered sympathetically into her political feelings,
followed her uninvited to Siena and gave her the benefit of his care,
declining all recompense. The good friends from America, the Storys,
were not far off, and Landor, after a visit to Story, was placed in
occupation of rooms not a stone's-cast from their villa. With Pen it was
a time of rejoicing, for his father had bought the boy a Sardinian pony
of the colour of his curls, and he was to be seen galloping through the
lanes "like Puck," to use Browning's comparison, on a dragon-fly's
back.[77]
The gipsy instinct, the desire of wandering, had greatly declined with
both husband and wife since the earlier days in Italy. Yet when they
returned to Casa Guidi it was only for six weeks. Even at the close of
the visit to Siena Mrs Browning had recovered but a slender modicum of
strength; she did not dare to enter the cathedral, for there were steps
to climb. At Florence she felt her old vitality return and her spirits
rose. But the climate of Rome was considered by Dr Gresonowsky more
suitable for winter, and towards the close of November they took their
departure, flying from the Florentine tramontana. The carriage was
furnished with novels of Balzac, and Pen's pony was of the party. The
rooms taken in the Via del Tritone were bright and sunny; but a rash
visit to the jeweller Castellani, to see and touch the swords presented
by Roman citizens to Napoleon III. and Victor Emmanuel, threw back Mrs
Browning into all her former troubles of a delicate chest and left her
"as weak as a rag." Tidings of the death of Lady Elgin seemed to tell
only of a peaceful release from a period of imprisonment in the body,
but the loss of Mrs Jameson was a painful blow. Rome at a time of grave
political apprehensions was almost empty of foreigners; but among the
few Americans who had courage to stay were the sculptor Gibson and
Theodore Parker--now near the close of his life--whose _tête-à-têtes_
were eloquent of beliefs and disbeliefs. As the spring advanced the
authoress of "The Mill on the Floss" was reported to be now and again
visible in Rome, "with her elective affinity," as Mrs Browning puts it,
"on the Corso walking, or in the Vatican musing. Always together." A
grand-daughter of Lord Byron--"very quiet and very intense"--was among
the visitors at the Via del Tritone, and Lady Marion Alford, "very eager
about literature and art and Robert," for all which eagernesses Mrs
Browning felt bound to care for her. The artists Burne-Jones and Prinsep
had made Browning's acquaintance at Siena; Prinsep now introduced him to
some of the by-ways of popular life in Rome. Together they witnessed the
rivalry of two improvisatori poetic gamecocks, whose efforts were
stimulated by the announcement that a great poet from England was
present; together they listened to the forbidden Hymn to Garibaldi
played in Gigi's _osteria_, witnessed the dignified blindness of the
Papal gendarmes to the offence, while Gigi liberally plied them with
drink; and together, to relieve the host of all fear of more
revolutionary airs, they took carriages with their musicians and drove
to see the Coliseum by moonlight.[78]
The project of a joint volume of poems on the Italian question by
Browning and his wife, which had made considerable progress towards
realisation, had been dropped after Villafranca, when Browning destroyed
his poem; but Mrs Browning had advanced alone and was now revising
proofs of her slender contribution to the poetry of politics, _Poems
before Congress._ She wrote them, she says, simply to deliver her
soul--"to get the relief to my conscience and heart, which comes from a
pent-up word spoken or a tear shed." She can hardly have anticipated
that they would be popular in England; but she was not prepared for one
poem which denounced American slavery being misinterpreted into a curse
pronounced upon England. "Robert was _furious_" against the offending
Review, she says; "I never saw him so enraged about a criticism;" but
by-and-by he "didn't care a straw." His wife, on the other hand, was
more deeply pained by the blindness and deafness of the British public
towards her husband's genius; nobody "except a small knot of
pre-Rafaelite men" did him justice; his publisher's returns were a proof
of this not to be gainsaid--not one copy of his poems had for six months
been sold, while in America he was already a power. For the poetry of
political enthusiasm he had certainly no vocation. When Savoy was
surrendered to France Mrs Browning suffered some pain lest her Emperor's
generosity might seem compromised. Browning admitted that the
liberation of Italy was a great action, adding cynically of his future
Prince Hohenstiel-Schwangau, "But he has taken eighteen-pence for it,
which is a pity." During the winter he wrote much. "Robert deserves no
reproaches," his wife tells her friend Miss Haworth in May, "for he has
been writing a good deal this winter--working at a long poem, which I
have not seen a line of, and producing short lyrics which I have seen,
and may declare worthy of him." Mr F.G. Kenyon conjectures that the long
poem is not unlikely to have been _Mr Sludge the Medium_, for Home's
performances, as he says, were at this time rampant.[79] As hitherto,
both husband and wife showed their poems each to the other only when the
poems were complete; thus like a pair of hardy friends they maintained
their independence. Even when they read, there was no reading aloud; Mrs
Browning was indefatigable in her passion for books; her husband, with
muscular energy impatient for action, found it impossible to read for
long at a single sitting.
On June 4th 1860 they left Rome, travelling by vettura through Orvieto
and Chiusi to their home in Florence.[80] The journey fatigued Mrs
Browning, but on arriving they had the happiness of finding Landor well;
he looked not less than magnificent, displaying "the most beautiful
sea-foam of a beard ... all in a curl and white bubblement of beauty."
Wilson had the old man under happy control; only once had he thrown his
dinner out of the window; that he should be at odds with all the world
was inevitable, and that all the world should be in the wrong was
exhilarating and restorative. The plans for the summer were identical
with those of the preceding year; the same "great lonely villa" near
Siena was occupied again; the same "deep soothing silence" lapped to
rest Mrs Browning's spirits; Landor, her "adopted son"--a son of
eighty-six years old--was hard by as he had been last summer. The
neighbourhood of Miss Blagden was this year an added pleasure. "The
little eager lady," as Henry James describes her, "with gentle, gay
black eyes," had seen much, read much, written already a little (with
more to follow), but better than all else were her generous heart and
her helpful hand. The season was one of unusual coolness for Italy.
Pen's pony, as before, flashed through the lanes and along the roads.
Browning had returned from Rome in robust health, and looking stouter in
person than six months previously. Now, while a tenant of the Villa
Alberti, he spent his energies in long rides, sometimes rides of three
or four continuous hours. On returning from such careers on horseback
little inclination, although he had his solitary room in which to work,
remained for the pursuit of poetry.
The departure for Rome was early--about September; in the Via Felice
rooms were found. A new and great sorrow had fallen upon Mrs
Browning--her sister Henrietta, Mrs Surtees Cook, was dead, leaving
behind her three young children. Mrs Browning could not shed tears nor
speak of her grief: she felt tired and beaten by the pain; and tried to
persuade herself that for one who believed the invisible world to be so
near, such pain was but a weakness. Her husband was able to do little,
but he shared in his degree in the sense of loss, and protected her from
the intrusion of untimely visitors. Sir John Bowring was admitted
because he presented a letter of introduction and had intimate relations
with the French Emperor; his ridicule of the volunteer movement in
England, with its cry of "Riflemen, form!" was grateful to Mrs
Browning's political feelings. French troops were now in Rome; their
purpose was somewhat ambiguous; but Pen had fraternised with the
officers on the Pincio, had learnedly discussed Chopin and Stephen
Heller with them, had been assured that they did not mean to fight for
the Holy Father, and had invited "ever so many of them" to come and see
mamma--an invitation which they were too discreet to accept. Mrs
Browning's excitement about public affairs had somewhat abated; yet she
watched with deep interest the earlier stages of the great struggle in
America; and she did not falter in her hopes for Italy; by intrigues and
smuggling the newspapers which she wished to see were obtained through
the courteous French generals. But her spirits were languid; "I gather
myself up by fits and starts," she confesses, "and then fall back."
Apart from his anxieties for his wife's health and the unfailing
pleasure in his boy, whom a French or Italian abbé now instructed,
Browning was wholly absorbed in one new interest. He had long been an
accomplished musician; in Paris he had devoted himself to drawing; now
his passion was for modelling in clay, and the work proceeded under the
direction and in the studio of his friend, the sculptor Story. His
previous studies in anatomy stood him in good stead; he made remarkable
progress, and six hours a day passed as if in an enchantment. He ceased
even to read; "nothing but clay does he care for," says Mrs Browning
smilingly, "poor lost soul." The union of intellectual energy with
physical effort in such work gave him the complete satisfaction for
which he craved. His wife "grudged a little," she says, the time stolen
from his special art of poetry; but she saw that his health and spirits
gained from his happy occupation. Of late, he had laboured irregularly
at verse; fits of active effort were followed by long intervals during
which production seemed impossible. And some vent was necessary for the
force coiled up within him; if this were not to be obtained, he wore
himself out with a nervous impatience--"beating his dear head," as Mrs
Browning describes it, "against the wall, simply because he sees a fly
there, magnified by his own two eyes almost indefinitely into some
Saurian monster." Now he was well and even exultant--"nothing ever," he
declared, "made him so happy before." Of advancing years--Browning was
now nearly forty-nine--the only symptoms were that he had lost his
youthful slightness of figure, and that his beard and hair were somewhat
blanched by time. "The women," his wife wrote to his sister, "adore him
everywhere far too much for decency," and to herself he seemed
"infinitely handsomer and more attractive" than when, sixteen years
previously, she had first seen him. On the whole therefore she was well
pleased with his new passion for clay, and could wish for him loads of
the plastic stuff in which to riot. Afterwards, in his days of sorrow
in London, when he compared the colour of his life to that of a
snow-cloud, it seemed to him as if one minute of these months at Rome
would yield him gold enough to make the brightness of a year; he longed
for the smell of the wet clay in Story's studio, where the songs of the
birds, and the bleat of a goat coming through the little door to the
left, were heard.[81]
While hoping and planning for the future, his wife was not unaware of
her own decline. "For the first time," she writes about December, "I
have had pain in looking into Penini's face lately--which you will
understand." And a little earlier: "I wish to live just as long as, and
no longer than to grow in the soul." The winter was mild, though snow
had fallen once; a spell of colder weather was reserved for the month of
May. They thought of meeting Browning's father and sister in some
picturesque part of the forest of Fontainebleau, or, if that should
prove unsuitable, perhaps at Trouville. Mrs Browning, who had formerly
enjoyed the stir of life in Paris, now shrank from its noise and bustle.
Her wish would be to creep into a cave for the whole year. At eight
o'clock each evening she left her sitting-room and sofa, and was in bed.
Yet she trusted that when she could venture again into the open air she
would be more capable of enduring the friction of the world. In May she
felt stronger, and saw visitors, among whom was Hans Andersen, "very
earnest, very simple, very childlike."[82] A little later she was cast
down by the death of Cavour--"that great soul which meditated and made
Italy"; she could hardly trust herself to utter his name. It was evident
to Browning that the journey to France could not be undertaken without
serious risk. They had reached Casa Guidi, and there for the present she
must take her rest.
The end came swiftly, gently. A bronchial attack, attended with no more
than the usual discomfort, found her with diminished power of
resistance. Browning had forebodings of evil, though there seemed to be
no special cause to warrant his apprehension. On the last evening--June
28, 1861--she herself had no anticipation of what was at hand, and
talked of their summer plans. When she slept, her slumber was heavy and
disturbed. At four in the morning her husband was alarmed and sent to
summon the doctor; but she assured him that his fears were exaggerated.
Then inestimable words were spoken which lived forever in his heart. And
so "smilingly, happily, with a face like a girl's," resting her head
upon her husband's cheek, she passed away.[83]
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 70: Letters of E.B.B. (To Mrs Jameson), ii. 221.]
[Footnote 71: F.G. Kenyon. _Letters of E.B.B._, ii. 263.]
[Footnote 72: "Browning was intimately acquainted," writes Miss Anna
Swanwick, "with Salvini." What especially lived in Browning's memory as
transcending everything else he had witnessed on the stage was Salvini's
impersonation of the blind Oedipus, and in particular one incident: a
hand is laid on the blind man's shoulder, which he supposes the hand of
one of his sons; he discovers it to be the hand of Antigone; the sudden
transition from a look of fiery hate to one of ineffable tenderness was
unsurpassable in its mastery of dramatic expression. (Condensed from
"Anna Swanwick, a Memoir and Recollections," 1903, pp. 132, 133.)]
[Footnote 73: Story says that Landor "was turned out of doors by his
wife and children." He had conveyed the villa to his wife. It is Story
who compares Landor to King Lear. "Conversations in a Studio," p. 436.]
[Footnote 74: Letters of E.B.B., ii. 354.]
[Footnote 75: When Browning at Rome was invited to dine with the Prince
of Wales (March 1859) by the desire of Queen Victoria, Mrs Browning told
him to "eschew compliments," of his infelicity in uttering which she
gives amusing examples. _Letters of E.B.B_., ii. 309, 310.]
[Footnote 76: On Browning's action in the affairs of Landor see
Forster's _Life of Landor_, and the letters of Browning in vol. ii. of
Henry James's _Life of Story_ (pp. 6-11).]
[Footnote 77: See, for this residence at Siena, an interesting letter of
Story to C. Eliot Norton in Henry James's _W.W. Story_, vol. ii. pp. 14,
15.]
[Footnote 78: Condensed from information given by Prinsep to Mrs Orr,
_Life and Letters of R.B._, pp. 234-37.]
[Footnote 79: _Letters of E.B.B._, ii. 388, note. Mr Kenyon suggests _A
Death in the Desert_ as at least possibly meant. _The Ring and the Book_
"certainly had not yet been begun."]
[Footnote 80: Halting at Siena, whence Browning wrote an account of the
journey to Story: Henry James's _W.W. Story_, ii. pp. 50-52.]
[Footnote 81: H. James's _W.W. Story_, vol. ii. pp. 111, 113.]
[Footnote 82: Henry James tells of a children's party at the Palazzo
Barberini, Rome, of several years earlier, when Hans Andersen read "The
Ugly Duckling," and Browning, "The Pied Piper"; which led to "a grand
march through the spacious Barberini apartment, with Story doing his
best on a flute in default of bagpipes." _W.W. Story_, vol. i.p. 286.]
[Footnote 83: The circumstances of Mrs Browning's death are described as
above, but with somewhat fuller detail, in a letter of Browning to Miss
Haworth, July 20, 1861, first printed by Mrs Orr. Many details of
interest will be found in a long letter of Story, Henry James's _W.W.
Story_, vol. ii. pp. 61-68: "She talked with him and jested and gave
expression to her love in the tenderest words; then, feeling sleepy, and
he supporting her in his arms, she fell into a doze. In a few minutes,
suddenly, her head dropped forward. He thought she had fainted, but she
had gone for ever." A painful account of the funeral service, "blundered
through by a fat English parson," is given by Story.]