The Brownings, Their Life and Art

Portrait of Robert Barrett Browning
(“Penini”), as a Child.
Painted at Siena, by Hamilton Wild, 1859.

On the façade of the palace two stately entrances open upon the broad flight of marble steps that lead down to the water, and on the architraves are carved river-gods. In the spacious court was placed his own statue of “Dryope.” Ascending one marble flight of the grand escalier, one entered a lofty apartment whose noble proportions and richness of effect were most impressive. The floor, of red marble, in its rich, Byzantine hue, harmonized with a richly painted ceiling, which was one celebrated in Venetian art. From this vast salon opened, through richly carved doors, a series of rooms, each made vital with the portraits, sketches, busts, and other memorials of the poets. There were Story’s busts of Browning and of his wife; there was Robert Barrett Browning’s bust of his father,—one of the most remarkable among portrait busts in contemporary art; the portraits of Robert and Elizabeth Browning painted by Gordigiani of Rome, about 1855; a lovely pastel of Mrs. Browning when she was a child, representing her as standing in a garden, holding up her apron filled with flowers; there was her little writing-desk, and other intimate personal mementoes about. The immense array of presentation copies from other authors to the poets made an interesting library of themselves, as did the various translations of their own poems into many languages. There was a portrait of Browning painted when a young man, with a troubadour cloak falling over his shoulders; and a most interesting portrait of Milsand, painted by Barrett Browning, as a gift to his father.

There was also a picture of himself as a lad, the “Penini” of Siena days, mounted on his pony, and painted by Hamilton Wild (a Boston artist), in that most picturesque of hill-towns, during one of those summers that the Brownings and the Storys had passed in the haunts of Santa Caterina.

By Mrs. Browning’s little writing tablet was placed the last manuscript she had ever written; and on a table lay a German translation of “Aurora Leigh,” with an inscription of presentation to Browning.

From one of these salons, looking out on the Grand Canal, is an alcove, formerly used as the private chapel of the Rezzonico. It was all white and gold, with a Venetian window draped in the palest green plush, while on either side were placed tall vases encrusted with green. In this alcove Mr. Barrett Browning had caused to be inscribed, in golden letters, surrounded with traceries and arabesques in gold, a copy of the inscription that was composed by the poet, Tommaseo, and placed by the city of Florence on the wall of Casa Guidi, near the grand portal:

qui scrisse e mori
ELISABETTA BARRETT BROWNING
che in cuore di donna conciliava
scienza di dotto e spirito di poeta
e fece del suo verso aureo anello
fra italia e inghilterra
pone questo memoria
firenze grata
1861.

On the first floor was the room in which the poet wrote when the guest of his son in the palace; a sala empaneled with the most exquisite decorated alabaster, panels of which also formed the doors, and opening from this was his sleeping-room, also beautifully decorated.

In one splendid sala, with rich mural decorations, and floor of black Italian marble, were many choice works of art, rare souvenirs, pictures of special claim to interest, wonderful tapestries, and almost, indeed, an embarras de richesse of beauty.

In 1906 Robert Barrett Browning sold the Rezzonico; and now, beside his casa and studios in Asolo, he has one of the old Medici villas, near Florence,—“La Torre all’ Antella,” with a lofty tower, from which the view is one of the most commanding and fascinating in all Tuscany. The panorama includes all Florence, with her domes and campanile and towers; and the Fiesolean hills, with the old town picturesquely revealed among the trees and against the background of sky, and with numerous other villages and hamlets, and a mountain panorama of changing color always before the eye. Mr. Browning is one of the choicest of spirits, with all that culture and beauty of spiritual life that characterized his parents. He is a great linguist, and is one of the most interesting of men. No one knew his father, in that wonderful inner way, as did his son. He was twelve years old at the time of his mother’s death, and from that period he was the almost constant companion of his father, until Browning’s death, twenty-eight years later. Robert Barrett Browning has also purchased the massive Casa Guidi, thus fitly becoming the owner of the palace in which he was born, and that is forever enshrined in literary history and poetic romance. It is, also, one of those poetic sequences of life, that Casa Guidi and Palazzo Peruzzi, near each other, in the Via Maggiore in Florence, are respectively owned by Mr. Browning and the Marchesa Peruzzi di’ Medici, under which stately title Mr. Story’s daughter Edith, the childhood friend and companion of “Penini,” is now known.

After the return to London of Browning and his sister Sarianna, from St. Moritz, his constant letters to Mrs. Bronson again take up the story of a poet’s days.

In the early winter he thus writes to his cherished friend—the date being December 4, 1887:

On the death of Lord Houghton, Mr. Browning had been prevailed upon to accept the office of Foreign Correspondent to the Royal Academy; he was much beloved by the Academicians, many of whom were among his familiar friends, and that his son was an artist endeared to him all art.

To Mrs. Bronson Browning once remarked: “Do you know, dear friend, if the thing were possible, I would renounce all personal ambition and would destroy every line I ever wrote, if by so doing I could see fame and honors heaped on my Robert’s head.” Mrs. Bronson’s comment on this was that in his son he saw the image of his wife, whom he adored,—“literally adored,” she added.

At the Academy banquets Browning was always an honored guest, and his nomination by the President to the post of Foreign Correspondent was promptly ratified by the Council.

On the removal to DeVere Gardens, Mr. Browning took great pleasure in the arrangement of his home. His father’s library of six thousand books was now unpacked, and, for the first time, he had space for them; many of the beautiful old carvings, chests, cabinets, bookcases, that he had brought from Florence, could in the new home be placed to advantage. The visitor, to-day, to Mr. Barrett Browning’s Florentine villa will see many of these rich and elaborate furnishings, and the younger Browning will point out an immense sofa (that resembles a catafalque), with amused recollection of having once seen his father and Ruskin sitting side by side on it, “their feet dangling.” From Venice the poet had brought home, first and last, many curious and beautiful things,—a silver lamp, old sconces from churches, and many things of which he speaks in his letters to Mrs. Bronson.

The initial poem in “Asolando,” entitled “Rosny,” was written at the opening of the year 1888, and it was soon followed by “Beatrice Signorini” and “Flute-Music.” In February he writes to George Murray Smith, his publisher, of his impulse to revise “Pauline,” which had lain untouched for fifty years,—an impulse to “correct the most obvious faults ... letting the thoughts, such as they are, remain exactly as at first.” It seems that the portrait, too, that is to accompany the volume does not quite please him, and he suggests slight changes. “Were Pen here,” he says, “he could manage it all in a moment.”

This confidence was not undeserved. Richly gifted in many directions, a true child of the gods, Robert Barrett Browning has an almost marvelous gift in portraiture. He seems to be the diviner, the seer, as well as the artist, when transferring to canvas a face that interests him. The portrait of Milsand, to which allusion has before been made, and that of his father, painted in his Oxford robes, with “the old yellow book in his hand,” which is in Balliol, are signal illustrations of his power in portraying almost the very mental processes of thought and feeling and kindling imagination,—all that goes to make up the creative life of art.

He is fairly a connoisseur in literature, as well as in his own specialties of painting and sculpture; and the poetry of the elder Browning has no more critically appreciative reader than his son. Some volume of his father’s is always at hand in his traveling; and he, like all Browning-lovers, can never open any volume of Robert Browning’s without finding revealed to him new vistas of thought, renewed aspiration and resolve for all noble living, and infinite suggestiveness of spiritual achievement.

CHAPTER XII

In the winter of 1887-1888 Mr. Browning wrote “Rosny,” which follows the “Prologue” in “Asolando,” and soon after the “Beatrice Signorini” and “Flute Music.” He also completely revised his poems for the new edition which his publishers were issuing in monthly volumes, the works completed in July. “Parleyings,” which had appeared in 1887, had, gloriously or perilously as may be, apparently taken all the provinces of learning, if not all the kingdoms of earth, for its own; for its themes ranged over Philosophy, Politics, Love, and Art, as well as Alchemy, and one knows not what; but its power and vigor reveal that there had been no fading of the divine fire. The poet made a few minor changes in “The Inn Album,” but with that exception he agreed with his friend and publisher, that no further alterations of any importance were required. Mr. Browning’s relations with his publishers were always harmonious and mutually gratifying. Such a relation is, to any author, certainly not the least among the factors of his happiness or of his power of work, and to Browning, George Murray Smith was his highly prized friend and counselor, as well as publisher, whose generous courtesies and admirable judgment had more than once even served him in ways quite outside those of literature.

In the late summer of 1888 Browning and his sister fared forth for Primiero, to join the Barrett Brownings, with whom the poet concurred in regarding this little hill-town as one of the most beautiful of places, his favorite Asolo always excepted. “Primiero is far more beautiful than Gressoney, far more than Saint-Pierre de Chartreuse,” he wrote to a friend: “with the magnificence of the mountains that, morning and evening, are literally transmuted to gold.” In letters or conversation, as well as in his verse, Browning’s love of color was always in evidence. “He dazzles us with scarlet, and crimson, and rubies, and the poppy’s ‘red effrontery,’” said an English critic; “with topaz, amethyst, and the glory of gold, and makes the sonnet ache with the luster of blue.” When, in the haunting imagery of memory pictures, after leaving Florence, he reverted to the gardens of Isa Blagden, on Bellosguardo, the vision before him was of “the herbs in red flower, and the butterflies on the wall under the olive trees.” For Browning was the poet of every thrill and intensity of life—the poet and prophet of the dawn, not of the dark; the herald who announced the force of the positive truth and ultimate greatness; never the interpreter of the mere negations of life. The splendor of color particularly appealed to him, thrilling every nerve; and when driving with Mrs. Bronson in Asolo he would beg that the coachman would hasten, if there were fear of missing the sunset pageant from the loggia of “La Mura.” In “Pippa Passes,” how he painted the splendor of sunrise pouring into her chamber, and in numberless other of his poems is this fascination of color for him revealed.

Portrait of Robert Browning in 1865.
Painted by George Frederick Watts, R.A.
In the possession of the National Portrait Gallery, London.

Under the date of August, 1888, the poet writes to Mrs. Bronson:

The succeeding letter, written from Albergo Gille, Primiero, tells the story of a rather trying journey, what with the heat and his indisposition, but on finding himself bestowed at Primiero he is “absolutely well again,” and anticipating his Venice: “what a Venice it would be,” he says, “if I went elsewhere than to the beloved friend who calls me so kindly!” And he adds:

Towards the end of September they joined in Venice the “beloved friend,” whose genius for friendship only made each sojourn with her more beautiful than the preceding, if that which was perfect could receive an added degree. “It was curious to see,” wrote Mrs. Bronson, “how on each of his arrivals in Venice he took up his life precisely as he had left it.” Browning and his sister frequently went on Sundays to the Waldensian chapel, where in this autumn there was a preacher of great eloquence. Every morning, after their early coffee, the poet was off for a brisk walk, and after returning he busied himself with his letters and newspapers, his mail always containing more or less letters from strangers and admirers, some of whom solicited autographs, which, so far as possible, he always granted. Mrs. Bronson has somewhere noted that when asked, viva voce, for an autograph, he would look puzzled, and say “I don’t like to always write the same verse, but I can only remember one,” and he would then proceed to copy “All that I know of a certain star,” which, however it “dartles red and blue,” he knew nothing of save that it had “opened its soul” to him. Arthur Rogers, delivering the Bohlen lectures for 1909, compared Browning with Isaiah, in his lecture on “Poetry and Prophecy,” and he instanced this “star” which “opened its soul” to the poet, as attesting that Browning, like Isaiah, could do no more than search depths of life.

The Palazzo Giustiniani-Recanti was a fitting haunt for a poet. Casa Alvisi, adjoining, in which Mrs. Bronson lived, looked out, as has been noted, on Santa Maria della Salute, which was on the opposite side of the Grand Canal; but the Giustiniani palace, dating to the fifteenth century, had its outlook through Gothic windows to the south, on a court and garden of romantic loveliness. The perfect tact of their hostess left the poet and his sister entirely free to come and go as they pleased, and at midday they took their déjeuner together, ordering by preference Italian dishes, as rissotto, macaroni, and fruits, especially figs and grapes. They enjoyed these tête-à-tête repasts, talking and laughing all the while, and then, about three every afternoon they joined Mrs. Bronson and her daughter for the gondola trip. The hostess records that the poet’s invariable response to the question as to where they should go would be: “Anywhere, all is beautiful, only let it be toward the Lido.” While both the poet and his sister were scrupulously prompt in returning all calls of ceremony, they were glad to evade formal visits so far as possible; and the absolute freedom with which their hostess surrounded them was grateful beyond words. “The thought deeply impressed me,” said Mrs. Bronson, “that one who had lifted so many souls above the mere necessity for living in a troublesome world deserved from those permitted to approach him their best efforts to brighten his personal life.... The little studies for his comfort, the small cares entailed upon me during the too brief days and weeks when his precious life was partly entrusted to my care, might seem to count for little in an existence far removed from that of an ordinary man; yet, as a fact, he was glad and grateful for the smallest attention. He was appreciative of all things. He never regarded gratitude as a burden, as less generous minds are apt to do,” continued Mrs. Bronson.

Mrs. Arthur Bronson
From a painting by Ellen Montalba, in Asolo

In the possession of Edittá, Contessa Rucellai (née Bronson),
Palazzo Rucellai, Florence.

One of his greatest enjoyments in Venice was to wander with Edith Bronson through the Venetian calli. “Edith is the best cicerone in the world,” he would remark; “she knows everything and teaches me all she knows. There never was such a guide.” The young girl indeed knew her Venice as a devotee knows his illuminated missal, and her lovely vivacity and sweetness must have invested her presence with the same charm that is felt to-day in the Contessa Rucellai, in her Florentine palace, for Miss Bronson, it may be said en passant, became the wife of one of the most eminent Italian nobles, the Rucellai holding peculiar claim to distinction even among the princely houses of Florence.

From these gondola excursions they always returned about five, and sometimes the poet would join the group around Mrs. Bronson’s tea-table, conversing with equal facility in French, German, or Italian, and to their delight would say, “Edith, dear, you may give me a cup of tea.” But as a rule he considered this beverage as too unhygienic at that hour, and whenever with an “Excuse me, please,” he sought his own apartments, he was never questioned for his reasons. “It was enough that he wished it,” said his hostess. He and Miss Browning always appeared promptly for dinner, which was at half-past seven in Casa Alvisi. The poet was scrupulous about his evening dress; and Miss Browning, Mrs. Bronson relates, was habitually clad “in rich gowns of a somber tint, with quaint, antique jewels, and each day with a different French cap of daintiest make.”

The evenings seem to have been idyllic. Browning would often read aloud, and he loved to improvise on an old spinnet standing in a dim recess in one of the salons. The great Venetian families were usually in villeggiatura at the time when Browning was in Venice, so that he met comparatively few of them; it was this freedom from social obligations that contributed so much to the restful character of his sojourns, and enabled him to give himself up to that ineffable enchantment of Venice. He made a few friends, however, among Mrs. Bronson’s brilliant circle, and one of the notable figures among these was the old Russian noble and diplomat, Prince Gagarin, who, born in Rome, had been educated in his own country, and had represented Russia at the courts of Athens, Constantinople, and Turin. Mrs. Bronson has told the story of one evening when the poet and the old diplomat indulged in a mutual tournament of music; “first one would sing, and then the other,” Browning recalling folk-songs of Russia which he had caught up in his visit to that country fifty years before.

Another of Mrs. Bronson’s inner circle, which included the Principessa Montenegro, the mother of Queen Elena, and other notable figures, was the Contessa Marcello, whom both the poet and his sister greatly liked; and one radiant day they all accepted an invitation to visit the Contessa at her villa at Mogliano, a short railway trip from Venice. The poet seemed to much enjoy the brief journey, and at the station was the Contessa with her landau, in which Mrs. Bronson, the poet, and his sister were seated, while Miss Bronson rode one of the ponies on which some of the young people had come down to greet the guests. After luncheon the Contessa, with her young daughter, the Contessina, led their guests out in the grounds to a pergola where coffee was served, and which commanded a vista of a magnificent avenue of copper beeches, whose great branches met and interlaced overhead. The Contessa was the favorite lady of honor at the court of Queen Margherita, and she interested Mr. Browning very much by speaking of her beloved royal mistress, and showing him some of the handwriting of the Queen, which he thought characteristically graceful and forcible. The Contessina and Miss Bronson, with others of the younger people, seated themselves in rustic chairs to listen to every word from the poet; and a Venetian sculptor, who was there, concealed himself in the shrubbery and made a sketch of Browning. The Contessina, who, like all the young Italian girls of high breeding and culture, kept an album of foreign poetry, brought hers, and pleadingly asked Mr. Browning if he would write in it for her. As usual, for the reasons already given, he (perforce) wrote “My Star,” and when the girl looked at it she exclaimed that it was one of her old favorites, and showed him where she had already copied it into the book.

At the station, when they drove down again to take the returning train, one of the young literati of Italy was there, and the Contessa introduced him to Browning, saying that the young man had already achieved distinction in letters. Mr. Browning talked with him most cordially, and after they were on their way he said that the young writer “seemed to be a youth of promise, and that he hoped he should meet him again.” But when they did hear of him again it was as the lecturer of a series of talks on Zola, “which, as may be supposed,” notes Mrs. Bronson, “the poet expressed no desire to attend.” The marvelous days of that unearthly loveliness of Venice in the early autumn flew by, and Mrs. Bronson’s guest returned to DeVere Gardens. To his hostess the poet wrote, under date of DeVere Gardens, December 15, 1888:

These letters to Mrs. Bronson reveal Browning the man as do no other records in literature. The consciousness of being perfectly understood, and the realization of the delicacy and beauty of the character of Mrs. Bronson made this choice companionship one of the greatest joys in Browning’s life. It may, perhaps, as well be interpolated here that a large package of the fascinating letters from Robert Browning to Mrs. Bronson, from which these extracts are made, were placed at the disposal of the writer of this volume by the generous kindness of Mrs. Bronson’s daughter, the Contessa Rucellai, and with the slight exception of a few paragraphs used by Mrs. Bronson herself (in two charming papers that she wrote on Browning), they have never before been drawn upon for publication.

Under the date of January 4, 1889, the poet writes to Mrs. Bronson:

To Miss Edith Bronson the poet wrote, as follows:

The next letter reveals anew Browning’s always thoughtful courtesy in bespeaking kindness for mutual friends, as he writes:

Miss Edith Bronson,
(now Contessa Rucellai)
From a Water-Color by Passini, Venice, 1883.

In almost every life that is strongly individualized those who look back after it has passed from visible sight cannot but recognize how rhythmic are the sequences that have characterized its last months on earth. If the person in question had actually known the day on which he should be called away, he would hardly have done other than he did. It is as if the spirit had some prescience, not realized by the ordinary consciousness, but still controlling its conduct of the last time allotted here. With this last year of Robert Browning’s life, this unseen leading is especially obvious. In the spring he had revised his poetic work; he had passed Commemoration week at Oxford, as he loved to do; he had passed much of the time with his friend, the Master of Balliol, and among his last expressions on leaving Oxford was “Jowett knows how I love him.” He was also in Cambridge, and Edmund Gosse has charmingly recalled the way in which he dwelt, retrospectively, on his old Italian days.

In June, also, he paid his usual visit to Lord Albemarle (the last survivor of those who fought at Waterloo), and in that month he wrote to Professor Knight, who was about to exchange the Chair of Philosophy at the University of Glasgow for that of Literature at St. Andrews, saying: “It is the right order; Philosophy first, and Poetry, which is its highest outcome, afterward, and much harm has been done by reversing the usual process.”

The letters to Mrs. Bronson tell much of the story of these days. In one, dated June 10, 1899, he gives this reminiscence of Asolo:

To the forthcoming collection, entitled “Asolando,” the group of poems dedicated to Mrs. Bronson, the poet alludes as follows:

The poet’s love for Asolo is revealed in the following letter to Mrs. Bronson:

To Tennyson for his eightieth birthday Mr. Browning writes:

To this letter Lord Tennyson replied: