Notwithstanding some illness, Mrs. Browning completed four thousand lines of "Aurora Leigh" before the new year of 1855, in which were expressed all her largest philosophic thought, and her deepest insight into the problems of life. Fogazzaro, whose recent death has deprived Italy of her greatest literary inspirer since Carducci, said of "Aurora Leigh" that he wished the youth of Italy might study this great poem,--"those who desire poetic fame that they might gain a high conception of poetry; the weak, in that they might find stimulus for strength; the sad and discouraged, in that they might find comfort and encouragement." It was this eminent Italian novelist and Senator (the King of Italy naming a man as Senator, not in the least because of any political reasons, but to confer on him the honor of recognition of his genius in Literature, Science, or Art, and a very inconvenient, however highly prized, honor he often finds it),--Senator Antonio Fogazzaro, who contributed, to an Italian biography[7] of the Brownings by f.a.n.n.y Zampini, Contessa Salazar, an "Introduction" which is a notable piece of critical appreciation of the wedded poets from the Italian standpoint. The Senator records himself as believing that few poets can be read "with so much intellectual pleasure and spiritual good; for if the works of Robert and Elizabeth Browning surprise us by the vigorous originality of their thought," he continues, "they also show us a rare and salutary spectacle,--two souls as great in their moral character as in their poetic imagination. "Aurora Leigh" I esteem Mrs. Browning"s masterpiece.... The ideal poet is a prophet, inspired by G.o.d to proclaim eternal truth...."
The student of Italian literature will find a number of critical appreciations of the Brownings, written within the past forty or fifty years, some of which offer no little interest. "Every man has two countries, his own and Italy," and the land they had made their own in love and devotion returned this devotion in measure overflowing.
Robert and Elizabeth Browning would have been great,--even immortally great, as man and woman, if they had not been great poets. They both lived, in a simple, natural way, the essential life of the spirit, the life of scholarship and n.o.ble culture, of the profound significance of thought, of creative energy, of wide interest in all the important movements of the day, and of beautiful and sincere friendships.
"O life, O poetry, Which means life in life,"
wrote Mrs. Browning.
The character of Mrs. Browning has been so often portrayed as that of some abnormal being, half-nervous invalid, half-angel, as if she were a special creation of nature with no particular relation to the great active world of men and women, that it is quite time to do away with the category of nonsense and literary hallucination. One does not become less than woman by being more. Mrs. Browning fulfilled every sweetest relation in life as daughter, sister, friend, wife, and mother; and her life was not the less normal in that it was one of exceptional power and exaltation.
She saw in Art the most potent factor for high service, and she held that it existed for Love"s sake, for the sake of human co-operation with the purposes of G.o.d.
CHAPTER VIII
1855-1861
"Inward evermore To outward,--so in life, and so in art Which still is life."
"... I love thee with the breath, Smiles, tears, of all my life!--and, if G.o.d choose, I shall but love thee better after death."
LONDON LIFE--AN INTERLUDE IN PARIS--"AURORA LEIGH"--FLORENTINE DAYS--"MEN AND WOMEN"--THE HAWTHORNES--"THE OLD YELLOW BOOK"--A SUMMER IN NORMANDY--THE ETERNAL CITY--THE STORYS AND OTHER FRIENDS--LILIES OF FLORENCE--"IT IS BEAUTIFUL!"
The Florentine winter is by no means an uninterrupted dream of sunshine and roses; the tramontana sweeps down from the encircling Apennines, with its peculiarly piercing cold that penetrates the entire system with the unerring precision of the Roentgen ray; torrents of icy rains fall; and the purple hills, on whose crest St. Domenico met St. Benedict, are shrouded in clouds and mist. All the loveliness of Florence seems to be utterly effaced, till one questions if it existed except as a mirage; but when the storm ceases, and the sun shines again, there is an instantaneous transformation. In a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, the spell of enchantment resumes its sway over the Flower Town, and all is forgiven and forgotten.
The winter of 1855 was bitterly cold, and by January the Brownings fairly barricaded themselves in two rooms which could best be heated, and in these fires were kept up by day as well as night. In April, however, the divine days came again, and the green hillslope from the Palazzo Pitti to the Boboli Gardens was gay with flowers. Mr. Browning gave four hours every day to dictating his poems to a friend who was transcribing them for him. Mrs. Browning had completed some seven thousand lines of "Aurora Leigh," but not one of these had yet been copied for publication. Various hindrances beset them, but finally in June they left for England, their most important impedimenta being sixteen thousand lines of poetry, almost equally divided between them, comprising his ma.n.u.script for "Men and Women," and hers for "Aurora Leigh," complete, save for the last three books. The change was by no means unalloyed joy. To give up, even temporarily, their "dream-life of Florence," leaving the old tapestries and pre-Giotto pictures, for London lodgings, was not exhilarating; but after a week in Paris they found themselves in an apartment in No. 13 Dorset Street, Manchester Square, where they remained until October, every hour filled with engagements or work. Proof-sheets were coming in at all hours; likewise friends, with the usual contingent of the "devastators of a day," and all that fatigue and interruption and turmoil that lies in wait for the pilgrim returning to his former home, beset and entangled them. Mrs. Browning"s youngest brother, Alfred Barrett, was married that summer to his cousin Lizzie, the "pretty cousin" to whom allusion has already been made as the original of Mrs. Browning"s poem, "A Portrait."
They were married in Paris at the English Emba.s.sy, and pa.s.sed the summer on the Continent. Mrs. Browning"s sister Henrietta (Mrs. Surtees Cook) was unable to come up to London, so that the hoped-for pleasure of seeing this brother and sister was denied her; but Miss Arabel Barrett was close at hand in the Wimpole Street home, and the sisters were much together. Mr.
Barrett had never changed his mental att.i.tude regarding the marriage of his daughter Elizabeth, nor that of any of his children, and while this was a constant and never-forgotten grief with Mrs. Browning, there seems no necessity for prolonged allusion to it. The matter can only be relegated to the realms of non-comprehension as the idiosyncrasy of an otherwise good man, of intelligence and much n.o.bility of nature.
The Brownings were invited to Knebworth, to visit Lord Lytton, but they were unable to avail themselves of the pleasure because of proof-sheets and contingent demands which only writers with books in press can understand. Proof-sheets are unquestionably endowed with some super-human power of volition, and invariably arrive at the psychological moment when, if their author were being married or buried, the ceremony would have to be postponed until they were corrected. But the poets were not without pleasant interludes, either; as when Tennyson came from the Isle of Wight to London for three or four days, two of which he pa.s.sed with the Brownings. He "dined, smoked, and opened his heart" to them; and concluded this memorable visit at the witching hour of half-past two in the morning, after reading "Maud" aloud the evening before from the proof-sheets. The date of this event is established by an inscription affixed to the back of a pen-and-ink sketch of Tennyson, made on that night by Dante Gabriel Rossetti, and which is now in the possession of Robert Barrett Browning.
This inscription, written by Robert Browning, reads: "Tennyson read his poem "Maud" to E. B. B., R. B., Arabel, and Rossetti, on the evening of Sept. 27th, 1855, at 13, Dorset Street. Rossetti made this sketch of Tennyson, as he sat, reading, on one end of the sofa, E. B. B. being on the other end." And this is signed, "R. B. March 6th, 1874 ... 19, Warwick Crescent." As the date is Mrs. Browning"s birthday, it is easy to realize how, in that March of 1874, he was recalling tender and beloved memories.
On the drawing itself Mrs. Browning had, at the time of the reading, copied the first two lines of "Maud." Tennyson replied to a question from William Sharp, who in 1882 wrote to the Laureate to ask about this night, that he had "not the slightest recollection" of Rossetti"s presence; but the inscription on the picture establishes the fact. William Michael Rossetti was also one of the group, and a record that he made quite supports the fact of Tennyson"s unconsciousness of his brother"s presence, for he says: "So far as I remember the Poet-Laureate neither saw what my brother was doing nor knew of it afterward." And as if every one of this gifted group present that night left on record some impression, Dante Gabriel Rossetti has noted that, after Tennyson"s reading, Browning read his "Fra Lippo Lippi," and "with as much sprightly variation as there was in Tennyson of sustained continuity." In a letter to Allingham, Rossetti also alluded to this night, and infused a mild reproach to Mrs. Browning in that her attention was diverted by "two not very exciting ladies"; and in a letter to Mrs. Tennyson, Mrs. Browning speaks of being "interrupted by some women friends whom I loved, but yet could not help wishing a little further just then, that I might sit in the smoke, and listen to the talk," after the reading. So, from putting together, mosaic fashion, all the allusions made by the cloud of witnesses, the reader constructs a rather accurate picture of that night of the G.o.ds. Mrs. Browning, who "was born to poet-uses," like the suitor of her own "Lady Geraldine," was in a rapture of pleasure that evening, and of "Maud" she wrote: "The close is magnificent, full of power, and there are beautiful, thrilling lines all through. If I had a heart to spare, the Laureate would have won mine."
Tennyson"s voice she found "like an organ, music rather than speech," and she was "captivated" by his _navete_, as he stopped every now and then to say, "There"s a wonderful touch!" Mrs. Browning writes to Mrs. Tennyson of "the deep pleasure we had in Mr. Tennyson"s visit to us." She adds:
"He didn"t come back, as he said he would, to teach me the "Brook"
(which I persist, nevertheless, in fancying I understand a little), but he did so much and left such a voice (both him "and a voice!") crying out "Maud" to us, and helping the effect of the poem by the personality, that it"s an increase of joy and life to us ever."
[Ill.u.s.tration: THE CORONATION OF THE VIRGIN, FILIPPO LIPPI.
IN THE ACCADEMIA DI BELLE ARTI, FLORENCE.
"_Ringed by a bowery, flowery angel-brood,_ _Lilies and vestments and white faces...._"
Fra Lippo Lippi]
Deciding to pa.s.s the ensuing winter in Paris, the Brownings found themselves anxious to make the change, that they might feel settled for the time, as she needed entire freedom from demands that she might proceed with her "Aurora Leigh." He had conceived the idea of revising and recasting "Sordello." They pa.s.sed an evening with Ruskin, however, and presented "young Leighton" to him. They met Carlyle at Forster"s, finding him "in great force"--of denunciations. They met Kinglake, and were at the Proctors, and of the young poet, Anne Adelaide Proctor, Mrs. Browning says, "How I like Adelaide"s face!" Mrs. Sartoris and Mrs. Kemble were briefly in London, and Kenyon, the beloved friend, vanished to the Isle of Wight. To Penini"s great delight, Wilson, the maid, married a Florentine, one Ferdinando Romagnoli, who captivated the boy by his talk of Florence, and Penini caught up his pretty Italian enthusiasms, and discoursed of Florentine skies, and the glories of the Cascine, to any one whom he could waylay.
In Paris they first established themselves in the Rue de Grenelle, in the old Faubourg San Germain, a location they soon exchanged for a more comfortable apartment in the Rue de Colisee, just off the Champs elysees.
Here they renewed their intercourse with Lady Elgin (now an invalid) and with her daughter, Lady Augusta Bruce, Madame Mohl, and with other friends. Mrs. Browning was absorbed in her great poem, which she was able to complete, however, only after their return to London the next June, and never did an important literary work proceed with less visible craft. She lay on her sofa, half supported by cushions, writing with pencil on little sc.r.a.ps of paper, which she would slip under the pillows if any chance visitor came in. "Elizabeth is lying on the sofa, writing like a spirit,"
Browning wrote to Harriet Hosmer. To Mrs. Browning Ruskin wrote, praising her husband"s poems, which gratified her deeply, and she replied, in part, that when he wrote to praise her poems, of course she had to bear it. "I couldn"t turn around and say, "Well, and why don"t you praise him, who is worth twenty of me?" One"s forced," she continued, "to be rather decent and modest for one"s husband as well as for one"s self, even if it"s harder. I couldn"t pull at your coat to read "Pippa Pa.s.ses," for instance.... But you have put him on your shelf, so we have both taken courage to send you his new volumes, "Men and Women,"... that you may accept them as a sign of the esteem and admiration of both of us." Mrs.
Browning considered these poems beyond any of his previous work, save "Paracelsus," but there is no visible record left of what she must have felt regarding that tender and exquisite dedication to her, that "One Word More ... To E. B. B.," which must have been to her
"The heart"s sweet Scripture to be read at night."
These lines are, indeed, a fitting companion-piece to her "Sonnets from the Portuguese." For all these poems, his "fifty men and women," were for her,--his "moon of poets."
"There they are, my fifty men and women Naming me the fifty poems finished!
Take them, Love, the book and me together; Where the heart lies, let the brain lie also.
I shall never, in the years remaining, Paint you pictures, no, nor carve you statues, Make you music that should all-express me;
Verse and nothing else have I to give you.
Other heights in other lives, G.o.d willing; All the gifts from all the heights, your own, Love!"
So he wrote to his "one angel,--borne, see, on my bosom!" For her alone were the
"Silent, silver lights and darks undreamed of,"
and while there was one side to face the world with, he thanked G.o.d that there was another,--
"One to show a woman when he loves her!"
It was Rossetti, however, who was the true interpreter of Browning to Ruskin,--for if it requires a G.o.d to recognize a G.o.d, so likewise in poetic recognitions. To Rossetti the poems comprised in "Men and Women"
were the "elixir of life." The moving drama of Browning"s poetry fascinated him. Some years before he had chanced upon "Pauline" in the British Museum, and being unable to procure the book, had copied every line of it. The "high seriousness" which Aristotle claims to be one of the high virtues of poetry, impressed Rossetti in Browning. What a drama of the soul universal was revealed in that "fifty men and women"! What art, what music, coming down the ages, from Italy, from Germany, and what pictures from dim frescoes, and long-forgotten paintings hid in niche and cloister, were interpreted in these poems! How one follows "poor brother Lippo" in his escapade:
"... I could not paint all night-- Ouf! I leaned out of window for fresh air.
There came a hurry of feet and little feet, A sweep of lute-strings, laughs, and whifts of song,-- _Flower o" the broom,_ _Take away love, and our earth is a tomb!_ _Flower o" the quince,_ _I let Lisa go, and what good in life since?_"
And in "Andrea del Sarto" what pa.s.sionate pathos of an ideal missed!
"But all the play, the insight and the stretch-- Out of me, out of me! And wherefore out?
Had you enjoined them on me, given me soul, We might have risen to Rafael, I and you!
Had you ... but brought a mind!
Some women do so. Had the mouth there urged "G.o.d and the glory! never care for gain.
The present by the future, what is that?