The succeeding summer found the Corsons again in London, and the following invitation from Browning particularly pleased them in its a.s.surance that "n.o.body else" would be present.
DEAR PROFESSOR CORSON,--Could Mrs. Corson and yourself do my sister and me the great pleasure of taking luncheon with us--and n.o.body else--next Tuesday (27th) at one o"clock?
Believe me, dear Professor Corson,
Yours Truly Ever,--
ROBERT BROWNING.
On Browning"s return to England in 1861, after his wife"s death, he had entered into a most brilliant and congenial social life. Thackeray died soon after his return; but there were Carlyle, Ruskin, Jowett, Millais, Rossetti, Proctor, Matthew Arnold, Woolner, Leighton, Tennyson (whose companionship, as we have seen, was one of his keenest enjoyments), and his publisher, George Murray Smith, of the head of the house of Smith, Elder, and Company, who was one of his chosen friends. Carlyle died in 1881, but many of this group well outlived Browning. On New Year"s Day of 1884 Miss Browning wrote to Mrs. Bronson:
The very first word I write this year is to you, dearest friend, wishing you every good gift the earth below, and Heaven above, can offer. If Robert does not write his own share in these kind feelings, it is only because we have mutually agreed that we shall come more constantly before you if we keep our letters apart.
... You cannot think how incessantly we dwell on the memories of the pleasant past. We are in Casa Alvisi in spirit daily, and I picture to myself all that is going on in the well-loved rooms. I hope Edith works at her guitar. She will find that it will repay the trouble.
Give our kindest love to her, and take yourself our loving hearts.
G.o.d bless you this year.
Ever Yours Affectionately,
SARIANNA BROWNING.
In a letter to Mrs. Bronson Browning alludes to the purchase of the new house in DeVere Gardens:
"... I am really in treaty--not too deeply _in_ it for extrication at need--with the land-owner who proposes to build me the house I want,--freehold, if you please! so that it can be Pen"s after me; my notion is to contract just what Sarianna and I require now, leaving it in the said Pen"s power to add and alter according to future advisability."
Portions of other letters from Browning to Mrs. Bronson are as follows.
The first refers to the little daughter of Princess Melanie Metternich.
"First and worst of all, dear friend, how truly grieved I am to hear of the sad end of the poor little girl I remember so well. Do you remember how she, with her sister, walked before us on our way homeward from the Piazza on nearly our last evening? And how prettily she asked me at her own house to write in her Birthday Book! All this sudden extinction of light in the gay Ca" Bembo, where I saw the silks bespread before your knowledge and my ignorance!
"It is needless to say how much I pity the Princess, and her kindly husband, too, and I am sorry, very sorry, for you also, Dear Friend of mine, well knowing how you must have suffered in degree."
Mrs. Bronson had a talent for the writing of drawing-room comedies, and to one of these the poet alludes:
"DEAR FRIEND,--I kept your Comedietta by me a whole week that I might taste of it again and again; how clever it is, who can know better than I, who furnished the bare framework which your Virginia creeper has over-flourished so charmingly? It is all capitally done; quite as much elaborated as the little conception was worth; but its great value to me is the proof it really gives what really good work you might do on a larger scale....
"... I dined last evening at John Murray"s, in the room where used to meet Byron, Scott, Moore, all those famous men of old, whose portraits still adorn the walls. Murray told me he well remembered Byron and his ways; could still in fancy see him and Scott, and also hear them, as they stamped heavily (lame as both were) down the somewhat narrow stairs. Sociability may well come to the relief of people who cannot amuse themselves at home, for the weather, mild, and too mild, is gray, sunless and spiritless, altogether. To-day it rains, a rare occurrence...."
One of the very pleasant interludes in Mr. Browning"s life came about this time in the receipt of a letter from Professor Ma.s.son of the University of Edinburgh, inviting the poet to be his guest the week of the coming Tercentenary celebration of the University. It had been decided to confer on Mr. Browning an Honorary Degree, but by some misadventure the official letter announcing this had not reached him, and in reply to Professor Ma.s.son he wrote that he had not received "the invitation to Edinburgh which occasions this particularly kind one," which he thankfully acknowledged, "but I should find it difficult if not impossible to leave London in April," he continues, "as my son will then be with me; but had I seen my way in so doing it would delight me, indeed, could I spend the days in question with you and Mrs. Ma.s.son." He added that if ever he was privileged "to see the as famous as beautiful City again," he should call on the Ma.s.sons the first thing of all, and he desired thanks to Mrs.
Ma.s.son "for a.s.sociating her goodness with yours."
Apparently another letter appears from Professor Ma.s.son, but still Browning does not receive the official invitation of the University.
"Should it follow," he writes, "I will acknowledge the distinction as gratefully as I have done already when it was conferred by Oxford and Cambridge." The Ma.s.sons also invited Mr. Browning to bring his son with him, and he responded:
"... So, my dear Professor Ma.s.son, I provisionally accept your hospitality with thankfulness, and that of Mrs. Ma.s.son. For my son, who is away, I can only say that he shall be informed of your goodness, and I fully believe will be delighted to avail himself of it.... As to the "vagueness or intelligibility" of your note, I can a.s.sure you that one thing was intelligible enough,--that you wished to help me most kindly and pleasantly to witness an extremely interesting ceremony, and I have written to my son and his answer you shall hear as soon as possible.... By the way, ought I to attend in the Oxford D.C.L. gown,--at any preliminary entertainment, for instance."
The next letter tells its own story.
19, WARWICK CRESCENT, W.
March 25th, 1884.
MY DEAR PROFESSOR Ma.s.sON,--Nothing can be kinder than all your proposed arrangements. My son arrived two days ago, and, unfortunately, is obliged to return to Paris next week in order to finish work begun there--and he will be detained too long to allow of the visit which he would otherwise delight in paying you and for the invitation to which he desires me to offer you and Mrs. Ma.s.son his grateful acknowledgments, being well aware of what a privilege he is forced to deprive himself.... I shall bring the Oxford D.C.L. gown and provide myself with a Hood in Edinburgh.
So, with repeated thanks for all your goodness, and looking forward with much pleasure to the approaching festivities, and even more in the opportunity to converse, believe me, my dear Professor Ma.s.son,
Yours Very Sincerely,
ROBERT BROWNING.
Miss Rosaline Ma.s.son, the Professor"s daughter, has described how Browning sat before the fire the evening of his arrival, in an armchair, his hands resting on it, while he spoke with sympathetic pride of his son"s work, and told how the son, who had studied so much abroad, had once announced to Millais his intention of going to Egypt to paint, and that Millais had replied that he would not give up his months in the highlands of Scotland for any years in Egypt.
The Ma.s.sons had as their guests for this great commemoration the Count and Countess Aurelio Saffi, the Count bringing with him his gorgeous Bologna gown, in which he had the resplendence of a figure in a stained gla.s.s window.
The week was a most enjoyable one to Mr. Browning. Receptions and dinners made up a round of festivity, and when he was asked by his hostess if he objected to all the adulation he received, he replied: "Object to it? No; I have waited forty years for it and now--I like it."
After his return to London he sent to Mrs. Ma.s.son two ma.n.u.scripts of Mrs.
Browning"s, her translations of "Psyche and Pan" and of "Psyche Propitiating Ceres," and to Professor Ma.s.son a letter from Leigh Hunt to himself, which the Professor had wished to copy,--the original which he sent being written on sheets of different colors held together with colored embroidery.
Browning wrote to his host that he had read with delight his two lectures on Carlyle, and that "the goodness of that memorable week" was never long out of his mind.
The letters written to Mrs. Bronson offer almost a panoramic picture of his life over all these closing years. Alluding to a studio that he had taken for the temporary accommodation of his son"s pictures and busts, Mr.
Browning resumes:
... Pen"s statues and busts are in bronze now, and his large "Idyl,"
three landscapes, and whatsoever else, to arrive soon. Were you only here to see! Well, you can bear with the talking about them you shall undergo, for we two understand each other, don"t we? I know I am ever yours and your own Edith"s affectionately,
ROBERT BROWNING.
In the late summer Browning and his sister were the guests of Mrs.
Bloomfield Moore, in her villa at St. Moritz, from which Mr. Browning thus writes to Mrs. Bronson:
VILLA BERRY, ST. MORITZ, OBER ENGADINE.
Sept. 6, "84.
Yes, dearest friend, your pretty wreath came this morning, and opposite this table shall it hang till I leave the house, be it withered or no, and at present it is fresh. Now, thank you for what?