Both are busily engaged in writing, he on a volume of lyrics, and she on a tale or novel in verse."
This "tale" must have been "Aurora Leigh." The wives of the poet and the sculptor held hilarious intercourse while going back and forth between each other"s houses on donkey-back, with an enjoyment hardly eclipsed by that of Penini himself, whose prayer that G.o.d would let him ride on "dontey-back" was so aboundingly granted that the child might well believe in the lavishness of divine mercies. Browning and Story walked beside and obediently held the reins of their wives" steeds, that no mishap might occur. How the picture of these Arcadian days, in those vast leafy solitudes, peopled only by G.o.ds and muses, the attendant "elementals" of these choice spirits, flashes out through more than the half century that has pa.s.sed since those days of their joyous intercourse. There was a night when Story went alone to take tea with the Brownings, staying till nearly midnight, and Browning accompanied him home in the mystic moonlight. Mrs.
Browning, who apparently shared her little son"s predilections for the donkey as a means of transportation, would go for a morning ride, Browning walking beside her as slowly as possible, to keep pace with the donkey"s degree of speed.
Into this Arcady came, by some untraced dispensation of the G.o.ds, a French master of recitations, who had taught Rachel, and had otherwise allied himself with the great. M. Alexandre brought his welcome with him, in his delightful recitations from the poets. Mr. Lytton, having accepted Mrs.
Browning"s invitation given to him on his Bellosguardo terrace, now appeared; and the Storys and the Brownings organized a _festa_, in true Italian spirit, in an excursion they should all make to Prato Fiort.i.to.
Prato Fiort.i.to is six miles from Bagni di Lucca, perpendicularly up and down, "but such a vision of divine scenery," said Mrs. Browning. High among the mountains, Bagni di Lucca is yet surrounded by higher peaks of the Apennines. The journey to Prato Fiort.i.to is like going up and down a wall, the only path for the donkeys being in the beds of the torrents that cut their way down in the spring.
Here, after "glorious climbing," in which Mrs. Browning distinguished herself no less than the others, they arrived at the little old church, set amid majestic limestone mountains and embowered in purple shade. Here they feasted, Penini overcome with delight, and on shawls spread under the great chestnut trees Mrs. Browning and Mrs. Story were made luxuriously comfortable, while they all talked and read, M. Alexandre reciting from the French dramatists, and Lytton reading from his "Clytemnestra." The luncheon was adorned by a ma.s.s of wild strawberries, picked on the spot, by Browning, Story, Lytton, and Alexandre, while the ladies co-operated in the industry at this honestly earned feast by a.s.sisting to hull the berries. The bottle of cream and package of sugar tucked away in the picnic basket added all that heart could desire to this ambrosial luncheon. Mrs. Story, whom Mrs. Browning described as "a sympathetic, graceful woman, fresh and innocent in face and thought," was a most agreeable companion; and she and Mrs. Browning frequently exchanged feminine gossip over basins of strawberries and milk in each other"s houses, for strawberries abounded in these hills. "If a tree is felled in the forests," said Mrs. Browning, "strawberries spring up just as mushrooms might, and the peasants sell them for just nothing."
One night when the Brownings were having tea with the Storys, the talk turned on Hawthorne. Story, of course, knew the great romancer, whom the Brownings had not then met and about whom they were curious. "Hawthorne is a man who talks with a pen," said Story; "he does not open socially to his intimate friends any more than he does to strangers. It isn"t his way to converse." Mrs. Browning had then just been reading the "Blithedale Romance," in which she had sought unavailingly, it seems, for some more personal clue to the inner life of its author.
On a brilliant August day the Brownings and the Storys fared forth on a grand excursion on donkey-back, to Benabbia, a hilltown, perched on one of the peaks. Above it on the rocks is a colossal cross, traced by some thunder-bolt of the G.o.ds, cut in the solid stone. From this excursion they all returned after dark, in terror of their lives lest the donkeys slip down the sheer precipices; but the scenery was "exquisite, past all beauty." Mrs. Browning was spell-bound with its marvelous sublimity, as they looked around "on the world of innumerable mountains bound faintly with the gray sea, and not a human habitation."
Mrs. Browning was then reading the poems of Coventry Patmore, just published, of which Browning had read the ma.n.u.script in London in the previous year. The poems of Alexander Smith had also appeared at this time, and in him Mrs. Browning found "an opulence of imagery," but a defect as to the intellectual part of poetry. With her characteristic tolerance, she instanced his youth in plea of this defect, and said that his images were "flowers thrown to him by the G.o.ds, G.o.ds beautiful and fragrant, but having no root either in Etna or Olympus." Enamored, as ever, of novels, she was also reading "Vilette," which she thought a strong story, though lacking charm, and Mrs. Gaskell"s "Ruth," which pleased her greatly.
With no dread of death, Mrs. Browning had a horror of the "rust of age,"
the touch of age "which is the thickening of the mortal mask between souls. Why talk of age," she would say, "when we are all young in soul and heart?... Be sure that it"s highly moral to be young as long as possible.
Women who dress "suitably to their years" (that is, as hideously as possible) are a disgrace to their s.e.x, aren"t they now?" she would laughingly declare.
This summer in the Apennines at Bagni di Lucca had been a fruitful one to Browning in his poetic work. It became one of constant development, and, as Edmund Gosse points out, "of clarification and increasing selection."
He had already written many of his finest lyrics, "Any Wife to Any Husband," "The Guardian Angel," and "Saul"; and in these and succeeding months he produced that miracle of beauty, the poem called "The Flight of the d.u.c.h.ess"; and "A Grammarian"s Funeral," "The Statue and the Bust,"
"Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came," "Fra Lippo Lippi," and "Andrea del Sarto." To Milsand, Browning wrote that he was at work on lyrics "with more music and painting than before."
The idyllic summer among the grand chestnut trees came to an end, as summers always do, and October found the Brownings again in Casa Guidi, though preparing to pa.s.s the winter in Rome. Verdi had just completed his opera of "Trovatore," which was performed at the Pergola in Florence, and the poets found it "very pa.s.sionate and dramatic."
In November they fared forth for Rome, "an exquisite journey of eight days," chronicled Mrs. Browning, "seeing the great monastery and triple church of a.s.sisi, and that wonderful pa.s.sion of waters at Terni."
It was the picturesque Rome of the popes that still remained in that winter, and the Eternal City was aglow with splendid festivals and processions and with artistic interest. The Brownings caught something of its spirit, even as they came within view of the colossal dome of St.
Peter"s, and they entered the city in the highest spirits, "Robert and Penini singing," related Mrs. Browning, "actually, for the child was radiant and flushed with the continual change of air and scene." The Storys had engaged an apartment for them, and they found "lighted fires and lamps," and all comfort.
[Ill.u.s.tration: THE CLASPED HANDS OF ROBERT AND ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING
Cast in bronze from the model taken by Harriet Hosmer in Rome, 1853.
The original is in the possession of the author.]
That winter of 1853-1854 still stands out in the Roman panorama as one of exceptional brilliancy. There was a galaxy of artists,--Story, who had already won fame on two continents; William Page, who believed he had discovered the secret of t.i.tian"s coloring; Crawford, and "young Leighton," as Mrs. Browning called the future president of the Royal Academy; Gibson, and his brilliant pupil, Harriet Hosmer; Fisher, who painted a portrait of Browning, and also of Penini, for his own use to exhibit in London. It was during this winter that Miss Hosmer took the cast of the "Clasped Hands" of the Brownings, which was put into bronze, and which must always remain a work of the most tender interest. Mrs.
Browning was very fond of "Hatty," as she called her, and in a letter to her Isa she described a pretty scene when Lady Marian Alford, the daughter of the Duke of Northampton, knelt before the girl sculptor and placed on her finger a ring of diamonds surrounding a ruby. Browning"s early friend, M. de Ripert-Monclar, to whom he had dedicated his "Paracelsus," and Lockhart, were also in Rome; and Leighton was completing his great canvas of Cimabue"s Madonna carried in procession through the streets of Florence.
The Brownings were domiciled in the Bocca di Leone, while the Storys were in the Piazza di Spagna; Thackeray and his two daughters were close at hand, in and out at the Brownings", with his "talk of glittering dust swept out of salons." There were Hans Christian Andersen, and f.a.n.n.y Kemble, with her sister, Mrs. Sartoris, and Lady Oswald, a sister of Lord Elgin. Thackeray"s daughter, Miss Anne Thackeray (now Lady Ritchie), still finds vivid her girlish memory of Mrs. Browning,--"a slight figure in a thin black gown and the unpretentious implements of her magic," by her sofa, on a little table. Lady Ritchie turns back to her diary of that winter to find in it another of her early impressions of Mrs. Browning, "in soft, falling flounces of black silk, with her heavy curls drooping, and a thin gold chain around her neck." This chain held a tiny locket of crystal set in coils of gold, which she had worn from childhood, not at all as an ornament, but as a little souvenir. On her death Mr. Browning put into it some of her hair, and gave the treasured relic to Kate Field, from whom it came later into the possession of the writer of this book.
Lady Ritchie recalls one memorable evening that season in the salon of Mrs. Sartoris, when the guests a.s.sembled in the lofty Roman drawing-room, full of "flowers and light, of comfort and color." She recalls how the swinging lamps were lighted, shedding a soft glow; how the grand piano stood open, and there was music, and "tables piled with books," and flowers everywhere. The hostess was in a pearl satin gown with flowing train, and sat by a round table reading aloud from poems of Mr. Browning, when the poet himself was announced, "and as she read, in her wonderful muse-like way, he walked in." All the lively company were half laughing and half protesting, and Mrs. Kemble, with her regal air, called him to her side, to submit to him some disputed point, which he evaded. Mrs.
Sartoris had a story, with which she amused her guests, of a luncheon with the Brownings, somewhere in Italy, where, when she rose to go, and remarked how delightful it had been, and the other guests joined in their expressions of enjoyment, Mr. Browning impulsively exclaimed: "Come back and sup with us, do!" And Mrs. Browning, with the dismay of the housewife, cried: "Oh, Robert, there is no supper, nothing but the remains of the pie." To which the poet rejoined: "Then come back and finish the pie."
Mrs. Browning was deeply attached to f.a.n.n.y Kemble. She describes her, at this time, as "looking magnificent, with her black hair and radiant smile.
A very n.o.ble creature, indeed," added Mrs. Browning; "somewhat unelastic, attached to the old modes of thought and convention, but n.o.ble in qualities and defects.... Mrs. Sartoris is genial and generous ... and her house has the best society in Rome, and exquisite music, of course."
Mrs. Browning often joined her husband in excursions to galleries, villas, and ruins; and when in the Sistine Chapel, on a memorable festival, they heard "the wrong Miserere," she yet found it "very fine, right or wrong, and overcoming in its pathos." M. Goltz, the Austrian Minister, was an acquaintance whom the Brownings found "witty and agreeable," and Mrs. Browning called the city "a palimpsest Rome," with its records written all over the antique.
The sorrow of the Storys over the death of a little son shadowed Mrs.
Browning, and she feared for her own Penini, but as the winter went on she joyfully wrote of him that he "had not dropped a single rose-leaf from his cheeks," and with her sweet tenderness of motherly love she adds that he is "a poetical child, really, and in the best sense. He is full of sweetness and vivacity together, of imagination and grace," and she pictures his "blue, far-reaching eyes, and the innocent face framed in golden ringlets." Mrs. Kemble came to them two or three times a week, and they had long talks, "we three together," records Mrs. Browning. Mr. Page occupied the apartment just over that of the Brownings, and they saw much of him. "His portrait of Miss Cushman is a miracle," exclaimed Mrs.
Browning. Page begged to paint a portrait of the poet, of which Mrs.
Browning said that he "painted a picture of Robert like an Italian, and then presented it to me like a prince." The coloring was Venetian, and the picture was at first considered remarkable, but its color has entirely vanished now, so that it seems its painter was not successful in surprising the secret of t.i.tian. In the spring of 1910 Mr. Barrett Browning showed this picture to some friends in his villa near Florence, and its thick, opaque surface hardly retained even a suggestion of color.
Not the least of Mrs. Browning"s enjoyment of that winter was the pleasure that Rome gave to her little son. "Penini is overwhelmed with attentions and gifts of all kinds," she wrote, and she described a children"s party given for him by Mrs. Page, who decorated the table with a huge cake, bearing "Penini" in sugar letters, where he sat at the head and did the honors. Browning all this time was writing, although the social allurements made sad havoc on his time. They wandered under the great ilex trees of the Pincio, and gazed at the Monte Mario pine. Then, as now, every one drove in that circular route on the Pincian hill, where carriages meet each other in pa.s.sing every five minutes. With the Storys and other friends they often went for long drives and frequent picnics on the wonderful Campagna, that vast green sea that surrounds Rome, the Campagna Mystica. On one day Mr. Browning met "Hatty" Hosmer on the Spanish Steps, and said to her: "Next Sat.u.r.day Ba and I are going to Albano on a picnic till Monday, and you and Leighton are to go with us."
"Why this extravagance?" laughingly questioned Miss Hosmer. "On account of a cheque, a _buona grazia_, that Ticknor and Fields of Boston have sent--one they were not in the least obliged to send," replied the poet.
In those days there was no international copyright, but Mr. Browning"s Boston publishers needed no legal constraint to act with ideal honor. So on the appointed morning, a _partie carre_ of artists--two poets, one sculptor, one painter--drove gayly through the Porta San Giovanni, on that road to Albano, with its wonderful views of the Claudian aqueducts in the distance, through whose arches the blue sky is bluer, and beyond which are the violet-hued Alban hills. Then, as now, the road led by the Casa dei Spirite, with its haunting a.s.sociations, and its strange mural decorations of specters and wraiths. Past that overhanging cliff, with its tragic legend, they drove, encountering the long procession of wine carts, with their tinkling bells, and the dogs guarding the sleeping padrones. Pa.s.sing the night in Albano, the next day they mounted donkeys for their excursion into the Alban hills, past lonely monasteries, up the heights of Rocca di Papa, where the traveler comes on the ancient camping-ground of Hannibal, and where they see the padres and acolytes sunning themselves on the slopes of Monte Cavo; on again, to the rocky terraces from which one looks down on Alba Longa and the depths of Lago di Nemi, beneath whose waters is still supposed to be the barque of Caligula, and across the expanse of the green Campagna to where aeneas landed.
[Ill.u.s.tration: THE CAMPAGNA AND RUINS OF THE CLAUDIAN AQUEDUCTS, ROME.
"_There, branching from the brickwork"s cleft,_ _Some old tomb"s ruin...._"
Two in the Campagna. ]
Miss Hosmer is the authority on this poetic pilgrimage, and she related that they all talked of art, of the difficulties of art,--those encountered by the poet, the sculptor, and the painter,--each regarding his own medium of expression as the most difficult. Mrs. Browning"s "Hatty" had bestowed in her bag a volume of Mr. Browning"s, and on the homeward journey from Albano to Rome he read aloud to them his "Saul." At the half-way house on the Campagna, the Torre di Mezza, they paused, to gaze at the "weird watcher of the Roman Campagna," the monument to Apuleia, whose ruins are said to have a.s.sumed her features.
Nothing in all the cla.s.sic atmosphere of Rome, filled with the most impressive a.s.sociations of its mighty past, appealed more strongly to the Brownings than the glorious Campagna, with its apparently infinite open s.p.a.ce, brilliant with myriads of flowers, and the vast billowing slopes that break like green waves against the purple hills, in their changeful panorama of clouds and mists and snow-crowned heights dazzling under a glowing sun.
Fascinating as this winter in Rome had been to them, rich in friendships and in art, the Brownings were yet glad to return to their Florence with the May days, to give diligence and devotion to their poetic work, which nowhere proceeded so felicitously as in Casa Guidi.
Browning was now definitely engaged on the poems that were to make up the "Men and Women." Mrs. Browning was equally absorbed in "Aurora Leigh."
Each morning after their Arcadian repast of coffee and fruit, he went to his study, and she to the _salotto_, whose windows opened on the terrace looking out on old gray San Felice where she always wrote, to devote themselves to serious work. "Aurora Leigh" proceeded rapidly some mornings, and again its progress would remind her of the web of Penelope.
During this summer Browning completed "In a Balcony," and wrote the "Holy Cross Day," the "Epistle of Karnish," and "Ben Karshook"s Wisdom." Like his wife, Browning held poetry to be above all other earthly interests; he was a poet by nature and by grace, and his vast range of scholarship, his "British-Museum-Library memory," and his artistic feeling and taste, all conserved to this one end. But poetry to him was not outside, but inclusive of the very fullest human life. Mrs. Browning"s lines,
"... No perfect artist is developed here From any imperfect woman,..."
embodied his convictions as well, for man and woman alike. He had that royal gift of life in its fullness, an almost boundless capacity of enjoyment, and to him life meant the completest development and exercise of all its powers.
The Brownings found their Florentine circle all in evidence. Mr. Lytton, a favorite and familiar visitor at Casa Guidi; Frederick Tennyson (and perhaps his "forty fiddlers" as well), and the Trollopes, Isa Blagden, and various wandering minstrels. They pa.s.sed evenings with Mr. Lytton in his villa, and would walk home "to the song of nightingales by starlight and firefly light." To Mrs. Browning Florence looked more beautiful than ever after Rome. "I love the very stones of it," she said. Limitations of finance kept them in Florence all that summer. "A ship was to have brought us in something, and brought us in nothing," she explained to a friend in England, "and the nothing had a discount, beside." But she took comfort in the fact that Penini was quite as well and almost as rosy as ever, despite the intense heat; and the starlight and the song of the nightingales were not without consolation. A letter from Milsand ("one of the n.o.blest and most intellectual men," says Mrs. Browning of him) came, and they were interested in his arraignment of the paralysis of imagination in literature. In September she hears from Miss Mitford of her failing health, and tenderly writes: "May the divine love in the face of our Lord Jesus Christ shine upon you day and night, with His ineffable tenderness."
Mrs. Browning"s religious feeling was always of that perfect reliance on the Divine Love that is the practical support of life. "For my own part,"
she continues, "I have been long convinced that what we call death is a mere incident in life.... I believe that the body of flesh is a mere husk that drops off at death, while the spiritual body emerges in glorious resurrection at once. Swedenborg says some people do not immediately realize that they have pa.s.sed death, which seems to me highly probable. It is curious that Frederick Denison Maurice takes this precise view of the resurrection, with apparent unconsciousness of what Swedenborg has stated, and that I, too, long before I had ever read Swedenborg, or had even heard the name of Maurice, came to the same conclusion.... I believe in an active, human life, beyond death, as before it, an uninterrupted life."
Mrs. Browning would have found herself in harmony with that spiritual genius, Dr. William James, who said: "And if our needs outrun the visible universe, why may not that be a sign that the invisible universe is there?
Often our faith in an uncertified result is the only thing that makes the result come true." Faith is the divine vision, and no one ever more absolutely realized this truth than Elizabeth Browning.
"Ah, blessed vision! blood of G.o.d!
My spirit beats her mortal bars, As down dark tides the glory slides, And star-like mingles with the stars."
At another time Mrs. Browning remarked that she should fear for a revealed religion incapable of expansion, according to the needs of man; while Dr.
James has said, "Believe what is in the line of your needs." Many similarities of expression reveal to how wonderful a degree Mrs. Browning had intuitively grasped phases of truth that became the recognized philosophy of a succeeding generation, and which were stamped by the brilliant and profound genius of William James, the greatest psychologist of the nineteenth century. "What comes from G.o.d has life in it," said Mrs.
Browning, "and certainly from the growth of all living things, spiritual growth cannot be excepted."
The summer pa.s.sed "among our own nightingales and fireflies," playfully said Mrs. Browning, and in the autumn Mrs. Sartoris stopped to see them, on her way to Rome, "singing pa.s.sionately and talking eloquently."