The Brownings, Their Life and Art

In 1863, on July 19, a little more than two years after the death of Mrs. Browning, Arabel Barrett had a dream, in which she was speaking with her sister Elizabeth, and asked, “When shall I be with you?” “Dearest, in five years,” was the reply. She told this dream to Mr. Browning, who recorded it at the time. In June of 1868 Miss Barrett died, the time lacking one month only of being the five years. “Only a coincidence, but noticeable,” Mr. Browning wrote to Isa Blagden. But in the larger knowledge that we now have of the nature of life and the phenomena of sleep, that the ethereal body is temporarily released from the physical (sleep being the same as death, save that in the latter the magnetic cord is severed, and the separation is final)—in the light of this larger knowledge it is easy to realize that the two sisters actually met in the ethereal realm, and that the question was asked and answered according to Miss Barrett’s impression. The event was sudden, its immediate cause being rheumatic affection of the heart, and she died in Browning’s arms, as did his wife. Her companionship had been a great comfort to him, and Mr. Gosse notes that for many years after her death he could not bear to pass Delamere Terrace.

The late summer of that year was devoted to traveling from Cannes about the coast, and they finally decided on Audierne for a sojourn. “Sarianna and I have just returned from a four hours’ walk,” he writes to a friend from this place; but here, as everywhere, he was haunted by Florentine memories, and by intense longings for his vanished paradise. To Isa Blagden he wrote:

While at Audierne, Browning put the final touches to the new six-volume edition of his works that was about to appear from the house of Smith, Elder, and Company, on the title-page of which he signs himself as M.A., Honorary Fellow of Balliol College. Mr. Nettleship’s volume of essays on Browning’s poems was published that season, indicating a strong interest in the poet; and another very gratifying experience to him was the interest in his work manifested by the undergraduates of both Oxford and Cambridge. Undoubtedly the pleasant glow of this appreciation stimulated his energy in the great poem on which he was now definitely at work, “The Ring and the Book.” Publishers were making him offers for its publication, “the R. B. who for six months once did not sell a single copy of his poems,” he exclaimed in a letter to a friend, to whom he announced that he should “ask two hundred pounds for the sheets to America, and get it!” with an evident conviction that this was a high price for his work. The increasing recognition of the poet was further indicated by a request from Tauchnitz for the volumes of selections which Browning dedicated to the Laureate in these graceful words: “To Alfred Tennyson. In Poetry—illustrious and consummate; In Friendship—noble and sincere.”

The publication of “The Ring and the Book” was the great literary event of 1869. Two numbers had appeared in the previous autumn, but when offered in its completeness the poem was found to embody the most remarkable interpretation of transfigured human life to be found in all the literature of poetry. The fame of the poet rose to splendor. This work was the inauguration of an epoch, of a period from which his work was to be read, studied, discussed, to a degree that would have been incredible to him, had any Cassandra of previous years lifted the veil of the future. The great reviews united in a very choral pean of praise; the Fortnightly, the Quarterly, the Edinburgh Review, the Revue des Deux Mondes, and others were practically unanimous in their recognition of a work which was at once felt to be the very epitome of the art and life of Robert Browning. The poem is, indeed, a vast treasure into which the poet poured all his searching, relentless analysis of character, and grasp of motive; all his compassion, his sensitive susceptibility to human emotion; all his gift of brilliant movement; all his heroic enthusiasms, and his power of luminous perception. But all this wealth of feeling and thought had been passed through the crucible of his critical creation; it had been fused and recast by the alchemy of genius. He transmuted fact into truth.

“Do you see this Ring?
’T is Rome-work made to match
(By Castellani’s imitative craft)
Etrurian circlets....
······
I fused my live soul and that inert stuff,
Before attempting smithcraft....”

The “square old yellow book” which Browning had chanced upon in the market-place of San Lorenzo, in that June of 1860, was not a volume, but a “lawyer’s file of documents and pamphlets.” In relating how he found the book Browning says, in the poem:

“... I found this book,
Gave a lira for it, eightpence English just,
(Mark the predestination!) when a Hand,
Always above my shoulder, pushed me once,
······
Across a Square in Florence, crammed with booths.”

He stepped out on the narrow terrace, built

“Over the street and opposite the church,
······
Whence came the clear voice of the cloistered ones
Chanting a chant made for midsummer nights—”

and making his own the story.

The Palazzo Riccardi, Florence.
erected by Michelozzo about 1435.

In 1908 Dr. Charles W. Hodell was enabled by the courtesy of Balliol College, to whom Browning left the “Old Yellow Book,” to make a photographic reproduction of the original documents, to which Dr. Hodell added a complete and masterly translation, and a noble essay entitled “On the Making of a Great Poem,” the most marvelous analysis and commentary on “The Ring and the Book” that has ever been produced. The photographed pages of the original documents, the translation, and this essay were published by the Carnegie Institution, in a large volume entitled “The Old Yellow Book.” In his preface Professor Hodell records that he was drawn to the special study of this poem by Professor Hiram Corson, Litt.D., LL.D., to whom he reverently refers as “my Master.” Of “The Ring and the Book” Dr. Hodell says:

In his historic researches Professor Hodell found reason to believe that the Pope, in “The Ring and the Book,” was Stephen VI, and not VII; and writing to Robert Barrett Browning to inquire regarding this point, he received from the poet’s son the following interesting letter, which, by Dr. Hodell’s generous courtesy, is permitted to appear in this book.

A very curious discovery was made in Rome, in the winter of 1900, by Signer Giorgi, the Librarian of the Royal Casanatense Library, in an ancient manuscript account of curious legal trials, among which were those of Beatrice Cenci, of Miguel de Molinos (in 1686), and of the trial and sentence of Guido Franceschini. The fact that taxes credulity in regard to this manuscript, of whose existence, even, no one in modern times had ever dreamed, is that the three points of view, as presented by Browning in the “Half Rome,” “The Other Half Rome,” and “Tertium Quid,” are in accord with those given in this strange document, which for more than a century had lain undisturbed in the archives.

In a little explanation regarding the significance of the closing lines of “The Ring and the Book,” also kindly given by Robert Barrett Browning, it seems that his mother habitually wore a ring of Etruscan gold, wrought by Castellani, with the letters “A. E. I.” on it; and that after her death the poet always wore it on his watch-chain, as does now his son. In the tablet placed on Casa Guidi to the memory of Mrs. Browning (the inscription of which was written by the Italian poet, Tommaseo) the source of the other allusion, of the linking Italy and England, is found. As the reader will recall, the lines run:

“And save the soul! If this intent save mine,—
If the rough ore be rounded to a ring,
Render all duty which good ring should do,
And, failing grace, succeed in guardianship,—
Might mine but lie outside thine, Lyric Love,
Thy rare gold ring of verse (the poet praised)
Linking our England to his Italy!”

Dr. Corson especially notes Browning’s opening invocation to his wife, praying her aid and benediction in the work he has undertaken. “This passage,” says Dr. Corson, “has a remarkable movement, the unobtrusive but distinctly felt alliteration contributing to the effect.”

“O lyric Love, half angel and half bird
And all a wonder and a wild desire,—
Boldest of hearts that ever braved the sun,
Took sanctuary within the holier blue.”

That Browning could never have created the character of Pompilia, save for that all-enfolding influence of the character of his wife, all the greater critics of “The Ring and the Book” agree. To Dr. Corson, Browning said of her:

Of Pompilia Dr. Hodell also says:

Mrs. Orr, too, has written:

Dr. Dowden, Brooke, Corson, Herford, Hodell, Chesterton, and other authoritative critics allude to their recognition of Mrs. Browning in the character of Pompilia; and no reader of this immortal masterpiece of poetic art can ever fail to find his pulses thrilling with those incomparable lines, spoken in her last hour on earth by Pompilia:

“O lover of my life, O soldier-saint,
No work begun shall ever pause for death!
Love will be helpful to me more and more
I’ the coming course, the new path I must tread—
······
Tell him that if I seem without him now,
That’s the world’s insight! Oh, he understands!
······
So let him wait God’s instant men call years;
Meantime hold hard by truth and his great soul,
Do out the duty!...”

In the entire range of Browning’s heroines Pompilia is the most exalted and beautiful character.

CHAPTER X

In the summer of 1869 the Storys, with their daughter, came from Rome and joined Browning with his sister and his son, for a holiday in Scotland. They passed some time at a little inn on Loch Achnault, where Lady Marian Alford also came, and there are still vivid reminiscences of picnic lunches on the heather, and of readings by the poet from “The Ring and the Book.” Chapters from “Rob Roy” also contributed to the enjoyment of evenings when the three ladies of the party—Mrs. Story, Lady Marian, and the lovely young girl, Miss Edith Story—were glad to draw a little nearer to the blazing fire which, even in August, is not infrequently to be desired in Scotland. Lord Dufferin was also a friend of those days, and for the tower he had built at Clandeboye in the memory of his mother, Helen, Countess of Gifford, Browning wrote, soon after, his poem entitled “Helen’s Tower.” Mrs. Orr speaks of this poem as little known, and not included in his published works; but it is now to be found in all the complete editions of Browning. After this Arcadian sojourn Browning and his son, with Miss Browning, were the guests of Lady Ashburton at Loch Luichart Lodge.

For two or three years after the publication of “The Ring and the Book,” Browning wrote little. The demands of friends and of an always enormous correspondence occupied much time; his son was growing into young manhood, and already manifesting his intense love of art, and his gifts as both painter and sculptor.

Browning’s conversation was always fascinating. It was full of glancing allusion, wit, sparkle, and with that constant undertone of significance that may be serious or gay, but which always lingers with a certain impressiveness to haunt the mind of the listener. Dr. Hiram Corson, who may perhaps be regarded as Browning’s greatest interpreter, speaks of one of his visits to the poet, in London, where the conversation turned from Shelley to Shakespeare. “He spoke with regret of the strangely limited reading of the Plays, even by those who believe themselves habitual and devoted readers,” says Dr. Corson.

Mrs. Arthur Bronson, than whom Mr. Browning never had a more sympathetic and all-comprehending friend, said that if she tried to recall Robert Browning’s words it was as though she had talked to a being apart from other men. “My feeling may seem exaggerated,” she smiled, “but it was only natural, when considering my vivid sense of his moral and intellectual greatness. His talk was not abstruse and intricate, like some of his writings. Far from it. As a rule he seemed rather to avoid deep and serious subjects. There was no loss, for everything he chose to say was well said. A familiar story, grave or gay, when clothed with his words, and accentuated by his expressive gestures and the mobility of his countenance, had all the charm of novelty; while a comic anecdote from his lips sparkled with wit, born of his own keen sense of humor. I found in him that most rare combination of a powerful personality united to a nature tenderly sympathetic.”

Another who knew him well perpetrated the mot that “Tennyson hides behind his laurels, and Browning behind the man of the world.” Henry James, whose gift of subtle analysis was never more felicitously revealed than in his expressions about Browning, declared that the poet had two personalities: one, the man of the world, who walked abroad, talked, did his duty; the other, the Poet,—“an inscrutable personage,—who sat at home and knew, as well he might, in what quarters of that sphere to look for suitable company. The poet and the man of the world were disassociated in him as they can rarely elsewhere have been.”

For three or four summers after this sojourn in Scotland the Brownings were at St. Aubin, in Brittany, where they had a cottage “not two steps away” from that of his friend Milsand. In the early mornings Browning would be seen pacing the sands, reading from his little Greek copy of Homer; and in the late afternoons the two friends would stroll on the Normandy beach with their arms around each other’s shoulders. They are described as very different in appearance,—Browning vigorous and buoyant, Milsand nervous, thin, reserved,—but akin in a certain delicate sensitiveness, a swift susceptibility to impressions. Of Browning Milsand said that what he really valued most was his kindness, his simple, open, radiant goodness. “All the chords of sympathy vibrated in his strong voice,” added Milsand. The French critic was very fond of the poet’s son, and in reference to him he once said: “The father has reason to be happy that in walking before he has opened a path for his son, instead of making him stumble.” As has been seen, in Mrs. Browning’s letters, she always shared her husband’s enthusiasm for Milsand, and the latter had said that he felt in her “that shining superiority always concealing itself under her unconscious goodness and lovely simplicity.”

On Sundays at St. Aubin’s, Browning frequently accompanied Milsand to the little chapel of Château-Blagny, for Protestant worshipers. From his cottage Browning could gaze across the bay to the lighthouse at Havre, and he “saw with a thrill” the spot where he once passed a summer with his wife.

Italian recollections sometimes rose before his inner vision. To Isa Blagden, who had gone to Siena, he wrote that he could “see the fig-tree under which Ba sat, reading and writing, poor old Landor’s oak opposite.”

Of Milsand he wrote to a friend: “I never knew or shall know his like among men,” and to Milsand, who had assisted him in some proof-reading, he wrote acknowledging his “invaluable assistance,” and said:

Milsand, writing of Browning in the Revue, revealed his high appreciation of the poet when he said: “Browning suggests a power even greater than his achievement. He speaks like a spirit who is able to do that which to past centuries has been almost impossible.”

It was St. Aubin that furnished Browning with material for his poem, “Red Cotton Night-cap Country,” the title of which was suggested by Miss Thackeray (now Lady Ritchie) who had a cottage there one summer, near those of Browning and Milsand. Browning and his sister occupied one of the most primitive of cottages, but the location was beautiful, perched on the cliff of St. Aubin, and commanded a changeful panorama of sea and sky. “The sitting-room door opened to the garden and the sea beyond—a fresh-swept bare floor, a table, three straw chairs, one book upon the table,—the only book he had with him. The bedrooms were as bare as the sitting-room, but there was a little dumb piano standing in a corner, on which he used to practice in the early morning. Mr. Browning declared they were perfectly satisfied with their little house; that his brains, squeezed as dry as a sponge, were only ready for fresh air.”[12] As all Browning readers will remember, “Red Cotton Night-cap Country” is dedicated to Miss Thackeray.

In the succeeding autumn Browning passed some weeks at Fontainebleau, where he was absorbed in reading Æschylus, and in making an especial study of the great dramatist. It was perhaps at this time that he conceived the idea of translating the Agamemnon, which, he says in his preface, “was commanded of me by my venerated friend Thomas Carlyle, and rewarded it will be if I am permitted to dignify it by the prefatory insertion of his dear and noble name.”

Bust of Robert Browning, by his Son,
Robert Barrett Browning.
In the possession of the sculptor at his villa near Florence.

Before the close of this year Browning had also complied with a request from Tauchnitz to prepare for publication a selection from the poems of Mrs. Browning. This Tauchnitz Edition of Mrs. Browning will always retain its interest as representing her husband’s favorites among her poems. “The Rhyme of the Duchess May,” with its artistic symmetry and exquisite execution, was of course included. This poem may be said to exhibit all Mrs. Browning’s poetic characteristics.

Encouraged by Millais, Robert Barrett Browning had seriously entered on the study of painting, his first master being M. Heyermans in Antwerp. In 1875 Frederick Lehmann had expressed high appreciation of a work of the young artist, the study of a monk absorbed in reading a book,—a picture that he liked so well as subsequently to purchase it. Another picture by Barrett Browning was entitled “The Armorer,” and found a place in the Royal Academy of that year, and was purchased by a Member of Parliament who was also something of a connoisseur in art. In this season was inaugurated the annual “private view” of the paintings of the poet’s son, which were exhibited in a house in Queen’s Gate Gardens and attracted much attention. In his son’s success Browning took great pride and pleasure. On the sale of the picture to the M. P., Browning wrote to Millais:

In 1871 Browning had been appointed Life Governor of the University of London, an honor that he particularly appreciated as indicating the interest of students in his poetry. In the late winter of 1872, after an absence of thirty years, Alfred Domett again appeared. He had vanished

“like a ghost at break of day,”

and like a ghost he returned, calling at once on his friend in Warwick Crescent. A letter from Miss Browning to Domett explains itself:

The old friendship between Browning and Domett was renewed with constant intercourse and interchange of delightful letters. Milsand was in the habit of passing a part of every spring with Browning in his home in Warwick Crescent, and with the arrival of Domett a warm and sincere friendship united all three.

Once, in Scotland, as the guest of Ernest Benzon, when Browning missed part of a visit from Milsand, the poet said: “No words can express the love I have for Milsand, increasingly precious as he is.” The Benzons were at that time in the hills above Loch Tummel, where Jowett was staying, Swinburne also with the Master of Balliol. Had there been a phonograph to register the conversation of such a trio as Jowett, Browning, and Swinburne, its records would be eagerly sought.

A fragmentary record, indeed, remains in a note made by Edwin Harrison, who was with Jowett at this time. In his diary Mr. Harrison recorded:

In “Balaustion’s Adventure” the poet seemed to take captive the popular appreciation of the day, for more than three thousand copies had been sold within the first six months, and his sister told Domett that she regarded it as the most swiftly appreciated poem of all her brother’s works. Certainly it is one of the most alluring of Browning’s works,—this delightful treatment of the interwoven life of mortals and of the immortal gods.

The June of 1872 brought to Browning the sad news of the death of his wife’s dearest friend, Isa Blagden. “A little volume of Isabella Blagden’s poems was published after her death,” writes Thomas Adolphus Trollope. “They are not such as would take the world by storm, but it is impossible to read them without perceiving how choice a spirit their author must have been, and understanding how she was especially honored with the friendship of Mrs. Browning.”[14]

On the publication of “Red Cotton Night-cap Country,” Browning sent a first copy to Tennyson, and the Laureate’s son says of it: “Among the lines which my father liked were

‘Palatial, gloomy chambers for parade,
And passage lengths of lost significance’;

and he praised the simile about the man with his dead comrade in the lighthouse. He wrote to Mr. Browning: ‘My wife has just cut the leaves. I have yet again to thank you, and feel rather ashamed that I have nothing of my own to send you back.’”

An entry in Tennyson’s diary in the following December notes: “Mr. Browning dined with us. He was very affectionate and delightful. It was a great pleasure to hear his words,—that he had not had so happy a time for a long while as since we have been in town.”

Tennyson’s “Queen Mary” was published in 1875, and on receiving a copy from the author Browning wrote expressing thanks for the gift, and even more for “Queen Mary the poem.” He found it “astonishingly fine”; and he adds: “What a joy that such a poem should be, and be yours.” The relations between the two great poets of the Victorian age were always ideally beautiful, in their cordial friendship and their warm mutual appreciation.

In a note dated in the Christmas days of 1876 Browning writes:

The present Lord Tennyson, in his biography of his father, makes many interesting allusions to the friendship and the pleasant intercourse between the poets. “Browning frequently dined with us,” he says, “and the tête-à-tête conversations between him and my father on every imaginable topic were the best talk I have ever heard, so full of repartee, epigram, anecdote, depth, and wisdom, too brilliant to be possible to reproduce. These brother poets were two of the most widely read men of their time, absolutely without a touch of jealousy, and reveling, as it were, in each other’s power.... Browning had a faculty for absurd and abstruse rhymes, and I recall a dinner where Jebb, Miss Thackeray, and Browning were all present, and Browning said he could make a rhyme for every word in the language. We proposed rhinoceros, and without pause he said,

‘O, if you should see a rhinoceros
And a tree be in sight,
Climb quick, for his might
Is a match for the gods,—he can toss Eros.’”

A London friend relates that on one occasion Browning chanced upon a literal translation some one had made from the Norwegian:

“The soul where love abideth not resembles
A house by night, without a fire or torch,”

and remarked how easy it would be to put this into rhyme; and immediately transmuted it into the couplet,

“What seems the soul when love’s outside the porch?
A house by night, without a fire or torch.”

When Browning’s “Inn Album” appeared, and he sent a copy to Tennyson, the Laureate responded:

Tennyson once remarked to his son, Hallam, that he wished he had written Browning’s lines:

“The little more, and how much it is,
The little less, and what worlds away.”

There was an interval of twelve years between the appearance of the “Dramatis Personæ” (in 1864) and the publication of “Pacchiarotto.” In this collection Browning’s amusing play of rhyme is much in evidence. Among Mr. Browning’s most enjoyable experiences were his frequent visits to Oxford and Cambridge, in both of which he was an honored guest. In the spring of 1877 he had an especially delightful stay at Oxford, the pleasure even beginning on the train, “full of men, all my friends,” he wrote of it; and continued: “I was welcomed on arrival by a Fellow who installed me in my rooms—then came the pleasant meeting with Jowett, who at once took me to tea with his other guests, the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Bishop of London, the Dean of Westminster, Lord Airlie, and others.”

There was a banquet and much postprandial eloquence that night, and Browning mentions among the speakers Lord Coleridge, Professor Smith, Mr. Green (on science and literature with a most complimentary appreciation of Browning), and “a more rightly-directed one,” says the poet, “on Arnold, Swinburne, and the old pride of Balliol, Clough, which was cleverly and almost touchingly answered by dear Matthew Arnold.” The Dean of Westminster responded to the toast of “The Fellows and the Scholars,” and the entire affair lasted over six hours. “But the whole thing,” said Browning, “was brilliant, genial, and there was a warmth, earnestness, and refinement about it which I never experienced in any previous public dinner.”

The profound impression that Browning made both by his personality and his poetic work is further attested by his being again chosen Lord Rector of the University of Glasgow. Dr. William Knight, the Professor of Moral Philosophy at St. Andrews, urges Browning’s acceptance of this office, and begs the poet to realize “how the thoughtful youth of Scotland” estimate his work. Professor Knight closes by saying that his own obligations to Browning, “and to the author of ‘Aurora Leigh’ are such that of them silence is golden.” While Mr. Browning was deeply touched by this testimonial of esteem, he still, for the second time, declined the honor.

Many readers and lovers of Robert Browning’s poem “La Saisiaz” little dream of the singular story connected with it. “La Saisiaz” is a chalet above Geneva, high up in the Savoyard mountains, looking down on Geneva and Lake Leman. It is a tall, white house, with a red roof that attracted the lovers of beauty, solitude, and seclusion. Among the few habitués for many years were Robert Browning and his sister, Sarianna, and their friend, Miss Egerton-Smith. It was the bond of music that especially united Browning and this lady, and in London they were apt to frequent concerts together. “La Saisiaz” is surrounded by tall poplar trees, but the balcony from a third-floor window, which was Browning’s room, looked through a space in the trees out on the blue lake, and on this balcony he would draw out his chair and writing desk. Back of the chalet a steep path ran up the mountains, where the three friends often climbed, to enjoy a gorgeous and unrivaled sunset spectacle.

In 1877 they were all there as usual in August, and one evening had planned that the next day they would start early in the morning and pass the day on the mountain, going by carriage, a servant accompanying them carrying the basket of luncheon. In the early evening Browning and Miss Egerton-Smith were out, pacing up and down the “grass-grown path,” and talking of the infinite life which includes death and that which is beyond death. The next morning she did not appear, and Browning and his sister waited for her. They sat out on the terrace after having morning coffee, expecting to see the “tall white figure,” and finally Miss Browning went to her room to ask if she were ill, and she lay dead on the floor. Miss Egerton-Smith was buried in the neighboring cemetery of Collonge, where her grave, over which a wonderful willow tree bends, is still seen—a place of frequent pilgrimage to visitors in this region. Five days after her death Browning made the excursion up the mountain alone,

“But a bitter touched its sweetness, for the thought stung ‘Even so
Both of us had loved and wondered just the same, five days ago!’”

La Salève, the mountain overlooking the Arve and the Rhone Valley, is one of the most wildly picturesque points in all the Alpine region. The chalet of “La Saisiaz” was perched on this mountain spur, about half-way up the mountain, on a shelving terrace, with vast and threatening rocks rising behind. The poem called “La Saisiaz” is one of Browning’s greatest. It is full of mystical questioning and of his positive and radiant assertions of faith; it abounds in vivid and exquisite scenic effects, and it has the personal touches of tenderness. The morning after her death is thus pictured:

“No, the terrace showed no figure, tall, white, leaning through the wreaths,
Tangle-twine of leaf and bloom that intercept the air one breathes.”

Browning and Miss Egerton-Smith had first met in Florence. She was an English lady of means (being part proprietor of the Liverpool Mercury) and of a reserve of temperament which kept her aloof from people in general. With the poet and his sister she was seen in all that cordial sweetness of her nature which her sensitive reserve veiled from strangers.

Italy again! A sapphire sky bending over hills and peaks and terraces swimming in violet shadows; villas, and sudden views, and arching pianterreni, and winding roads between low stone walls hidden in their riotous overgrowth of roses! And the soft air, the tall black cypresses against the sky, the sunsets and the stars, and golden lights, and dear Italian phrases! The trailing ivy vines all in a tangle; the wayside shrine, the vast white monastery perched on an isolated mountain top; the flaming scarlet of the poppies in the grass, the castles and battlements dimly caught on the far horizon,—the poetry, the loveliness, the ineffable beauty of Italy! Seventeen years had passed since that midsummer day when the dear form of his “Lyric Love” had been laid under the Florentine lilies, when Browning, in the spring of 1878, returned to his Italy. What dreams and associations thronged upon him!

“Places are too much,
Or else too little for immortal man,—
······
... thinking how two hands before
Had held up what is left to only one.”

Seventeen years had passed, but Venice, the ethereal city, the mystic dream of sea and sky, was unchanged, and, however unconsciously, the poet was now to initiate another era, another new “state” in his life. He never again went farther south than Venice; he could never see Florence or Rome again, where she had lived beside him; but the dream city now became for him a second and dearer home. With his sister Sarianna, he broke the journey by lingering in a hotel on the summit of the Splügen, where he indulged himself in those long walks which he loved, Miss Browning often accompanying him down the Via Cala Mala, or to the summit where they could look down into Lombardy. Browning was at work on his “Dramatic Idyls,” and not only “Ivan Ivanovitch,” but several others were written on the Splügen. Pausing at Lago di Como, and a day in Verona, they made their way to Asolo, “my very own of all Italian cities,” the poet would say of it. Asolo, which from its rocky hilltop, has an outlook over all Veneto,—over all Italy, it would almost seem, for the towers and domes of Venice are visible on a clear day,—gave its full measure of joy to Browning, and when they descended into Venice they were domiciled in the Palazzo Brandolin-Rota, on the Grand Canal, near the Accademia. In Venice he met a Russian lady whom he consulted about some of the names he was giving to the characters in his “Ivan Ivanovitch.”

The success of his son in the Paris Salon and other exhibitions was a continual happiness to Mr. Browning. Both in Paris and in London the pictures of Barrett Browning were accorded an honorable place “on the line”; he received a medal from the Salon, and there was not wanting, either, that commercial side of success that sustains its theory. The young artist had now seriously entered on sculpture, under Rodin, with much prestige and promise.

The first series of “Dramatic Idyls” was published in the autumn of 1872, closely following “La Saisiaz” and the “Two Poets of Croisic.” The devoted student of Browning could hardly fail to be impressed by one feature of his poetry which, though a prominent one, has received little attention from the critics. This feature is his doctrine of the sub-self, as the source of man’s highest spiritual knowledge. He has given his fullest expression of this belief in his “Paracelsus,” and it appears in “Sordello” (especially in the fifth book), in “A Death in the Desert,” in “Fifine,” and in “Christopher Smart,” and is largely developed in “The Ring and the Book.” Again, in “Beatrice Signorini,” contained in “Asolando,” published only on the day of his death, this theory is again apparent, and these instances are only partial out of the many in which the doctrine is touched or elaborated, showing how vital it was with him from the earliest to the latest period of his work. Another striking quality in Browning is that of the homogeneous spirit of his entire poetic expression. It is the great unity in an equally great variety. It is always clear as to the direction in which Browning is moving, and as to the supreme message of his philosophy of life.

CHAPTER XI

Twenty-five years after Robert Browning had visited the famous haunts of Rousseau with his wife, he again made a little sojourn with his sister in lovely Chambéry, making various excursions in all the picturesque region about, and again visiting “Les Charmettes,” which Miss Browning had not before seen; as before, Browning sat down to the old harpsichord, attempting to play “Rousseau’s Dream,” but only two notes of the antique instrument responded to his touch. Through all the wonderful scenery of the Mont Cenis pass they proceeded to Turin and thence to Venice, where they arrived in the midst of the festivities of the Congress Carnival in September of 1881. The Storys, whom Browning had anticipated meeting in Venice, had gone to Vallombrosa, where their daughter (the Marchesa Peruzzi di’ Medici) had a villa, to which the family retired in summer from their stately old palace in Florence. Mr. Story’s two sons, the painter and the sculptor, both had studios in Venice at this time, and Mr. Browning often strolled into these. Among other friends Browning and his sister visited the Countess Mocenigo, who was ensconced in the same palace that Byron had occupied. She showed her guests through all the rooms with their classic associations, and Browning sat down to the desk at which Byron had written the last canto of “Childe Harold.” To the satisfaction of the Brownings, Venice soon regained her usual quiet,—that wonderful silence broken only by the plash of water against marble steps, and the cries of the gondoliers,—and he resumed his long walks, often accompanied by Miss Browning, exploring every curious haunt and lingering in shops and squares. The poet familiarized himself with the enchanting dream city, as no tours in gondolas alone could ever do. To him Venice came to be dear beyond words, and soon after he made all arrangements to purchase the Palazzo Manzoni, an ancient Venetian palace of the fifteenth century, whose façade was a faint glow of color from its medallions of colored marbles, and whose balconies and arched windows seemed especially designed for a poet’s habitation. But the ancient structure was found to be in a too perilous condition, and Browning, with never-failing regret, resigned the prospect; nor was he ever consoled, it is said, until, some years later, his son became the owner of the noble Palazzo Rezzonico.

Every day the poet saw Venice transformed into new splendor. “To see these divine sunsets is the joy of life,” he would say, as a city, flushed with rose, reflected itself in pale green waters, and the golden sunset filled with liquid light every narrow street and passage, contrasting sharply with the dense black shadows. Browning had a love of the sky that made its glorious panorama one of the delights of his life.

One of the crowning honors of the poet’s life invested these days for him with renewed vitality of interest,—that of the formation of the Browning Society in London for the study and promulgation of his poetic work. This was, indeed, a contrast to the public attitude of thirty years before. Once, in a letter to Mrs. Millais (dated January 7, 1867) he had described himself to her as “the most unpopular poet that ever was.” The Browning Society was due, in its first inception, to Dr. Furnivall and to Miss Emily Hickey, and its founding was entirely without Browning’s knowledge. Although the poet avowed himself as “quite other than a Browningite,” he could not fail to be touched and gratified by such a mark of interest and appreciation.

Dr. Hiram Corson, Professor of Literature at Cornell University, had, however, formed a Browning Club, composed of professors and their wives and many eminent scholars, some four or five years before the formation of the Browning Society in London, and the notable Browning readings which Professor Corson had given continually in many of the large cities and before universities, had been of incalculable aid in making Robert Browning’s poetry known and understood in the United States. As an interpreter of Browning, Dr. Corson stood unrivaled. His aim was to give to his audience the spiritual meaning of the poem read. His rich voice had the choral intonation without which no poem can be vocally interpreted. His reading gave not only the articulated thought, but the spiritual message of the poet. It is hardly too much to say that no one has ever fully realized the dramatic power of Browning who has not listened to the interpretation of Dr. Corson. Of his own part in the creation of the Browning Society in London, Dr. Corson kindly contributed this record: