Life and Letters of Robert Browning
by Mrs. Sutherland Orr · English · Gutenberg #655 · 689,507 chars · public domain (US)
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Title: Life and Letters of Robert Browning
Author: Mrs. Sutherland Orr
Robert Browning
Release date: January 21, 2006 [eBook #655]
Language: English
Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/655
Credits: Produced by Alan Light and David Widger
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK LIFE AND LETTERS OF ROBERT BROWNING ***
Produced by Alan Light and David Widger
LIFE AND LETTERS OF ROBERT BROWNING
by Mrs. Sutherland Orr
Second Edition
Preface
Such letters of Mr. Browning's as appear, whole or in part, in the
present volume have been in most cases given to me by the persons to
whom they were addressed, or copied by Miss Browning from the originals
under her care; but I owe to the daughter of the Rev. W. J. Fox--Mrs.
Bridell Fox--those written to her father and to Miss Flower; the two
interesting extracts from her father's correspondence with herself and
Mr. Browning's note to Mr. Robertson.
For my general material I have been largely indebted to Miss Browning.
Her memory was the only existing record of her brother's boyhood and
youth. It has been to me an unfailing as well as always accessible
authority for that subsequent period of his life which I could only know
in disconnected facts or his own fragmentary reminiscences. It is less
true, indeed, to say that she has greatly helped me in writing this
short biography than that without her help it could never have been
undertaken.
I thank my friends Mrs. R. Courtenay Bell and Miss Hickey for their
invaluable assistance in preparing the book for, and carrying it through
the press; and I acknowledge with real gratitude the advantages derived
by it from Mr. Dykes Campbell's large literary experience in his very
careful final revision of the proofs.
A. Orr. April 22, 1891.
Contents
Chapter 1 Origin of the Browning Family--Robert Browning's
Grandfather--His position and Character--His first and second
Marriage--Unkindness towards his eldest Son, Robert Browning's
Father--Alleged Infusion of West Indian Blood through Robert Browning's
Grandmother--Existing Evidence against it--The Grandmother's Portrait.
Chapter 2 Robert Browning's Father--His Position in Life--Comparison
between him and his Son--Tenderness towards his Son--Outline of his
Habits and Character--His Death--Significant Newspaper Paragraph--Letter
of Mr. Locker--Lampson--Robert Browning's Mother--Her Character and
Antecedents--Their Influence upon her Son--Nervous Delicacy imparted to
both her Children--Its special Evidences in her Son.
Chapter 3 1812-1826 Birth of Robert Browning--His Childhood
and Schooldays--Restless Temperament--Brilliant Mental
Endowments--Incidental Peculiarities--Strong Religious
Feeling--Passionate Attachment to his Mother; Grief at first
Separation--Fondness for Animals--Experiences of School Life--Extensive
Reading--Early Attempts in Verse--Letter from his Father concerning
them--Spurious Poems in Circulation--'Incondita'--Mr. Fox--Miss Flower.
Chapter 4 1826-1833 First Impressions of Keats and Shelley--Prolonged
Influence of Shelley--Details of Home Education--Its Effects--Youthful
Restlessness--Counteracting Love of Home--Early Friendships: Alfred
Domett, Joseph Arnould, the Silverthornes--Choice of Poetry as a
Profession--Alternative Suggestions; mistaken Rumours concerning
them--Interest in Art--Love of good Theatrical Performances--Talent for
Acting--Final Preparation for Literary Life.
Chapter 5 1833-1835 'Pauline'--Letters to Mr. Fox--Publication of the
Poem; chief Biographical and Literary Characteristics--Mr. Fox's Review
in the 'Monthly Repository'; other Notices--Russian Journey--Desired
diplomatic Appointment--Minor Poems; first Sonnet; their Mode of
Appearance--'The Trifler'--M. de Ripert-Monclar--'Paracelsus'--Letters
to Mr. Fox concerning it; its Publication--Incidental Origin of
'Paracelsus'; its inspiring Motive; its Relation to 'Pauline'--Mr. Fox's
Review of it in the 'Monthly Repository'--Article in the 'Examiner' by
John Forster.
Chapter 6 1835-1838 Removal to Hatcham; some Particulars--Renewed
Intercourse with the second Family of Robert Browning's
Grandfather--Reuben Browning--William Shergold Browning--Visitors
at Hatcham--Thomas Carlyle--Social Life--New Friends and
Acquaintance--Introduction to Macready--New Year's Eve at Elm
Place--Introduction to John Forster--Miss Fanny Haworth--Miss
Martineau--Serjeant Talfourd--The 'Ion' Supper--'Strafford'--Relations
with Macready--Performance of 'Strafford'--Letters concerning it
from Mr. Browning and Miss Flower--Personal Glimpses of Robert
Browning--Rival Forms of Dramatic Inspiration--Relation of 'Strafford'
to 'Sordello'--Mr. Robertson and the 'Westminster Review'.
Chapter 7 1838-1841 First Italian Journey--Letters to Miss Haworth--Mr.
John Kenyon--'Sordello'--Letter to Miss Flower--'Pippa Passes'--'Bells
and Pomegranates'.
Chapter 8 1841-1844 'A Blot in the 'Scutcheon'--Letters to Mr.
Frank Hill; Lady Martin--Charles Dickens--Other Dramas and Minor
Poems--Letters to Miss Lee; Miss Haworth; Miss Flower--Second Italian
Journey; Naples--E. J. Trelawney--Stendhal.
Chapter 9 1844-1849 Introduction to Miss Barrett--Engagement--Motives
for Secrecy--Marriage--Journey to Italy--Extract of Letter from
Mr. Fox--Mrs. Browning's Letters to Miss Mitford--Life at
Pisa--Vallombrosa--Florence; Mr. Powers; Miss Boyle--Proposed British
Mission to the Vatican--Father Prout--Palazzo Guidi--Fano; Ancona--'A
Blot in the 'Scutcheon' at Sadler's Wells.
Chapter 10 1849-1852 Death of Mr. Browning's Mother--Birth of his
Son--Mrs. Browning's Letters continued--Baths of Lucca--Florence
again--Venice--Margaret Fuller Ossoli--Visit to England--Winter in
Paris--Carlyle--George Sand--Alfred de Musset.
Chapter 11 1852-1855 M. Joseph Milsand--His close Friendship with
Mr. Browning; Mrs. Browning's Impression of him--New Edition of
Mr. Browning's Poems--'Christmas Eve and Easter Day'--'Essay' on
Shelley--Summer in London--Dante Gabriel Rossetti--Florence; secluded
Life--Letters from Mr. and Mrs. Browning--'Colombe's Birthday'--Baths of
Lucca--Mrs. Browning's Letters--Winter in Rome--Mr. and Mrs. Story--Mrs.
Sartoris--Mrs. Fanny Kemble--Summer in London--Tennyson--Ruskin.
Chapter 12 1855-1858 'Men and Women'--'Karshook'--'Two in the
Campagna'--Winter in Paris; Lady Elgin--'Aurora Leigh'--Death of
Mr. Kenyon and Mr. Barrett--Penini--Mrs. Browning's Letters to Miss
Browning--The Florentine Carnival--Baths of Lucca--Spiritualism--Mr.
Kirkup; Count Ginnasi--Letter from Mr. Browning to Mr. Fox--Havre.
Chapter 13 1858-1861 Mrs. Browning's Illness--Siena--Letter from Mr.
Browning to Mr. Leighton--Mrs. Browning's Letters continued--Walter
Savage Landor--Winter in Rome--Mr. Val Prinsep--Friends in Rome: Mr. and
Mrs. Cartwright--Multiplying Social Relations--Massimo d'Azeglio--Siena
again--Illness and Death of Mrs. Browning's Sister--Mr. Browning's
Occupations--Madame du Quaire--Mrs. Browning's last Illness and Death.
Chapter 14 1861-1863 Miss Blagden--Letters from Mr. Browning to
Miss Haworth and Mr. Leighton--His Feeling in regard to Funeral
Ceremonies--Establishment in London--Plan of Life--Letter to Madame
du Quaire--Miss Arabel Barrett--Biarritz--Letters to Miss
Blagden--Conception of 'The Ring and the Book'--Biographical
Indiscretion--New Edition of his Works--Mr. and Mrs. Procter.
Chapter 15 1863-1869 Pornic--'James Lee's Wife'--Meeting at Mr. F.
Palgrave's--Letters to Miss Blagden--His own Estimate of his Work--His
Father's Illness and Death; Miss Browning--Le Croisic--Academic
Honours; Letter to the Master of Balliol--Death of Miss
Barrett--Audierne--Uniform Edition of his Works--His rising
Fame--'Dramatis Personae'--'The Ring and the Book'; Character of
Pompilia.
Chapter 16 1869-1873 Lord Dufferin; Helen's Tower--Scotland; Visit to
Lady Ashburton--Letters to Miss Blagden--St.-Aubin; The Franco-Prussian
War--'Herve Riel'--Letter to Mr. G. M. Smith--'Balaustion's Adventure';
'Prince Hohenstiel--Schwangau'--'Fifine at the Fair'--Mistaken Theories
of Mr. Browning's Work--St.-Aubin; 'Red Cotton Nightcap Country'.
Chapter 17 1873-1878 London Life--Love of Music--Miss
Egerton-Smith--Periodical Nervous Exhaustion--Mers; 'Aristophanes'
Apology'--'Agamemnon'--'The Inn Album'--'Pacchiarotto and other
Poems'--Visits to Oxford and Cambridge--Letters to Mrs. Fitz-Gerald--St.
Andrews; Letter from Professor Knight--In the Savoyard
Mountains--Death of Miss Egerton-Smith--'La Saisiaz'; 'The Two Poets of
Croisic'--Selections from his Works.
Chapter 18 1878-1884 He revisits Italy; Asolo; Letters to Mrs.
Fitz-Gerald--Venice--Favourite Alpine Retreats--Mrs. Arthur
Bronson--Life in Venice--A Tragedy at Saint-Pierre--Mr.
Cholmondeley--Mr. Browning's Patriotic Feeling; Extract from Letter
to Mrs. Charles Skirrow--'Dramatic Idyls'--'Jocoseria'--'Ferishtah's
Fancies'.
Chapter 19 1881-1887 The Browning Society; Mr. Furnivall; Miss E.
H. Hickey--His Attitude towards the Society; Letter to Mrs.
Fitz-Gerald--Mr. Thaxter, Mrs. Celia Thaxter--Letter to Miss Hickey;
'Strafford'--Shakspere and Wordsworth Societies--Letters to Professor
Knight--Appreciation in Italy; Professor Nencioni--The Goldoni
Sonnet--Mr. Barrett Browning; Palazzo Manzoni--Letters to Mrs. Charles
Skirrow--Mrs. Bloomfield Moore--Llangollen; Sir Theodore and Lady
Martin--Loss of old Friends--Foreign Correspondent of the Royal
Academy--'Parleyings with certain People of Importance in their Day'.
Chapter 20 Constancy to Habit--Optimism--Belief in Providence--Political
Opinions--His Friendships--Reverence for Genius--Attitude towards
his Public--Attitude towards his Work--Habits of Work--His
Reading--Conversational Powers--Impulsiveness and Reserve--Nervous
Peculiarities--His Benevolence--His Attitude towards Women.
Chapter 21 1887-1889 Marriage of Mr. Barrett Browning--Removal to De
Vere Gardens--Symptoms of failing Strength--New Poems; New Edition
of his Works--Letters to Mr. George Bainton, Mr. Smith, and Lady
Martin--Primiero and Venice--Letters to Miss Keep--The last Year in
London--Asolo--Letters to Mrs. Fitz-Gerald, Mrs. Skirrow, and Mr. G. M.
Smith.
Chapter 22 1889 Proposed Purchase of Land at Asolo--Venice--Letter
to Mr. G. Moulton-Barrett--Lines in the 'Athenaeum'--Letter to Miss
Keep--Illness--Death--Funeral Ceremonial at Venice--Publication of
'Asolando'--Interment in Poets' Corner.
Conclusion
Index
Portrait of Robert Browning (1889) Mr. Browning's Study in De Vere
Gardens
LIFE AND LETTERS OF ROBERT BROWNING
Chapter 1
Origin of the Browning Family--Robert Browning's Grandfather--His
position and Character--His first and second Marriage--Unkindness
towards his eldest Son, Robert Browning's Father--Alleged Infusion
of West Indian Blood through Robert Browning's Grandmother--Existing
Evidence against it--The Grandmother's Portrait.
A belief was current in Mr. Browning's lifetime that he had Jewish blood
in his veins. It received outward support from certain accidents of his
life, from his known interest in the Hebrew language and literature,
from his friendship for various members of the Jewish community in
London. It might well have yielded to the fact of his never claiming the
kinship, which could not have existed without his knowledge, and which,
if he had known it, he would, by reason of these very sympathies, have
been the last person to disavow. The results of more recent and more
systematic inquiry have shown the belief to be unfounded.
Our poet sprang, on the father's side, from an obscure or, as family
tradition asserts, a decayed branch, of an Anglo-Saxon stock settled,
at an early period of our history, in the south, and probably also
south-west, of England. A line of Brownings owned the manors of
Melbury-Sampford and Melbury-Osmond, in north-west Dorsetshire; their
last representative disappeared--or was believed to do so--in the time
of Henry VII., their manors passing into the hands of the Earls of
Ilchester, who still hold them.* The name occurs after 1542 in different
parts of the country: in two cases with the affix of 'esquire', in two
also, though not in both coincidently, within twenty miles of Pentridge,
where the first distinct traces of the poet's family appear. Its cradle,
as he called it, was Woodyates, in the parish of Pentridge, on the
Wiltshire confines of Dorsetshire; and there his ancestors, of the third
and fourth generations, held, as we understand, a modest but independent
social position.
* I am indebted for these facts, as well as for some others
referring to, or supplied by, Mr. Browning's uncles,
to some notes made for the Browning Society by Dr. Furnivall.
This fragment of history, if we may so call it, accords better with our
impression of Mr. Browning's genius than could any pedigree which more
palpably connected him with the 'knightly' and 'squirely' families whose
name he bore. It supplies the strong roots of English national life
to which we instinctively refer it. Both the vivid originality of that
genius and its healthy assimilative power stamp it as, in some sense,
the product of virgin soil; and although the varied elements which
entered into its growth were racial as well as cultural, and inherited
as well as absorbed, the evidence of its strong natural or physical
basis remains undisturbed.
Mr. Browning, for his own part, maintained a neutral attitude in the
matter. He neither claimed nor disclaimed the more remote genealogical
past which had presented itself as a certainty to some older members of
his family. He preserved the old framed coat-of-arms handed down to him
from his grandfather; and used, without misgiving as to his right to do
so, a signet-ring engraved from it, the gift of a favourite uncle, in
years gone by. But, so long as he was young, he had no reason to think
about his ancestors; and, when he was old, he had no reason to care
about them; he knew himself to be, in every possible case, the most
important fact in his family history.
Roi ne suis, ni Prince aussi,
Suis le seigneur de Conti,
he wrote, a few years back, to a friend who had incidentally questioned
him about it.
Our immediate knowledge of the family begins with Mr. Browning's
grandfather, also a Robert Browning, who obtained through Lord
Shaftesbury's influence a clerkship in the Bank of England, and entered
on it when barely twenty, in 1769. He served fifty years, and rose to
the position of Principal of the Bank Stock Office, then an important
one, and which brought him into contact with the leading financiers
of the day. He became also a lieutenant in the Honourable Artillery
Company, and took part in the defence of the Bank in the Gordon Riots
of 1789. He was an able, energetic, and worldly man: an Englishman, very
much of the provincial type; his literary tastes being limited to the
Bible and 'Tom Jones', both of which he is said to have read through
once a year. He possessed a handsome person and, probably, a vigorous
constitution, since he lived to the age of eighty-four, though
frequently tormented by gout; a circumstance which may help to account
for his not having seen much of his grandchildren, the poet and his
sister; we are indeed told that he particularly dreaded the lively boy's
vicinity to his afflicted foot. He married, in 1778, Margaret, daughter
of a Mr. Tittle by his marriage with Miss Seymour; and who was born
in the West Indies and had inherited property there. They had three
children: Robert, the poet's father; a daughter, who lived an uneventful
life and plays no part in the family history; and another son who died
an infant. The Creole mother died also when her eldest boy was only
seven years old, and passed out of his memory in all but an indistinct
impression of having seen her lying in her coffin. Five years later the
widower married a Miss Smith, who gave him a large family.
This second marriage of Mr. Browning's was a critical event in the life
of his eldest son; it gave him, to all appearance, two step-parents
instead of one. There could have been little sympathy between his father
and himself, for no two persons were ever more unlike, but there was yet
another cause for the systematic unkindness under which the lad grew
up. Mr. Browning fell, as a hard man easily does, greatly under the
influence of his second wife, and this influence was made by her
to subserve the interests of a more than natural jealousy of her
predecessor. An early instance of this was her banishing the dead lady's
portrait to a garret, on the plea that her husband did not need two
wives. The son could be no burden upon her because he had a little
income, derived from his mother's brother; but this, probably, only
heightened her ill-will towards him. When he was old enough to go to a
University, and very desirous of going--when, moreover, he offered to
do so at his own cost--she induced his father to forbid it, because,
she urged, they could not afford to send their other sons to college. An
earlier ambition of his had been to become an artist; but when he showed
his first completed picture to his father, the latter turned away and
refused to look at it. He gave himself the finishing stroke in the
parental eyes, by throwing up a lucrative employment which he had held
for a short time on his mother's West Indian property, in disgust at the
system of slave labour which was still in force there; and he paid for
this unpractical conduct as soon as he was of age, by the compulsory
reimbursement of all the expenses which his father, up to that date, had
incurred for him; and by the loss of his mother's fortune, which, at the
time of her marriage, had not been settled upon her. It was probably
in despair of doing anything better, that, soon after this, in his
twenty-second year, he also became a clerk in the Bank of England. He
married and settled in Camberwell, in 1811; his son and daughter were
born, respectively, in 1812 and 1814. He became a widower in 1849; and
when, four years later, he had completed his term of service at the
Bank, he went with his daughter to Paris, where they resided until his
death in 1866.
Dr. Furnivall has originated a theory, and maintains it as a conviction,
that Mr. Browning's grandmother was more than a Creole in the strict
sense of the term, that of a person born of white parents in the West
Indies, and that an unmistakable dash of dark blood passed from her to
her son and grandson. Such an occurrence was, on the face of it, not
impossible, and would be absolutely unimportant to my mind, and, I think
I may add, to that of Mr. Browning's sister and son. The poet and his
father were what we know them, and if negro blood had any part in their
composition, it was no worse for them, and so much the better for the
negro. But many persons among us are very averse to the idea of such
a cross; I believe its assertion, in the present case, to be entirely
mistaken; I prefer, therefore, touching on the facts alleged in favour
of it, to passing them over in a silence which might be taken to mean
indifference, but might also be interpreted into assent.
We are told that Mr. Browning was so dark in early life, that a nephew
who saw him in Paris, in 1837, mistook him for an Italian. He neither
had nor could have had a nephew; and he was not out of England at the
time specified. It is said that when Mr. Browning senior was residing on
his mother's sugar plantation at St. Kitt's, his appearance was held
to justify his being placed in church among the coloured members of the
congregation. We are assured in the strongest terms that the story has
no foundation, and this by a gentleman whose authority in all matters
concerning the Browning family Dr. Furnivall has otherwise accepted
as conclusive. If the anecdote were true it would be a singular
circumstance that Mr. Browning senior was always fond of drawing negro
heads, and thus obviously disclaimed any unpleasant association with
them.
I do not know the exact physical indications by which a dark strain is
perceived; but if they are to be sought in the colouring of eyes, hair,
and skin, they have been conspicuously absent in the two persons who in
the present case are supposed to have borne them. The poet's father had
light blue eyes and, I am assured by those who knew him best, a clear,
ruddy complexion. His appearance induced strangers passing him in the
Paris streets to remark, 'C'est un Anglais!' The absolute whiteness
of Miss Browning's skin was modified in her brother by a sallow tinge
sufficiently explained by frequent disturbance of the liver; but it
never affected the clearness of his large blue-grey eyes; and his hair,
which grew dark as he approached manhood, though it never became black,
is spoken of, by everyone who remembers him in childhood and youth,
as golden. It is no less worthy of note that the daughter of his early
friend Mr. Fox, who grew up in the little social circle to which he
belonged, never even heard of the dark cross now imputed to him; and a
lady who made his acquaintance during his twenty-fourth year, wrote a
sonnet upon him, beginning with these words:
Thy brow is calm, young Poet--pale and clear
As a moonlighted statue.
The suggestion of Italian characteristics in the Poet's face may serve,
however, to introduce a curious fact, which can have no bearing on the
main lines of his descent, but holds collateral possibilities concerning
it. His mother's name Wiedemann or Wiedeman appears in a merely
contracted form as that of one of the oldest families naturalized in
Venice. It became united by marriage with the Rezzonico; and, by a
strange coincidence, the last of these who occupied the palace now owned
by Mr. Barrett Browning was a Widman-Rezzonico. The present Contessa
Widman has lately restored her own palace, which was falling into ruin.
That portrait of the first Mrs. Browning, which gave so much umbrage
to her husband's second wife, has hung for many years in her grandson's
dining-room, and is well known to all his friends. It represents a
stately woman with an unmistakably fair skin; and if the face or hair
betrays any indication of possible dark blood, it is imperceptible to
the general observer, and must be of too slight and fugitive a nature
to enter into the discussion. A long curl touches one shoulder. One
hand rests upon a copy of Thomson's 'Seasons', which was held to be
the proper study and recreation of cultivated women in those days. The
picture was painted by Wright of Derby.
A brother of this lady was an adventurous traveller, and was said to
have penetrated farther into the interior of Africa than any other
European of his time. His violent death will be found recorded in a
singular experience of the poet's middle life.
Chapter 2
Robert Browning's Father--His Position in Life--Comparison between
him and his Son--Tenderness towards his Son--Outline of his Habits and
Character--His Death--Significant Newspaper Paragraph--Letter of
Mr. Locker-Lampson--Robert Browning's Mother--Her Character and
Antecedents--Their Influence upon her Son--Nervous Delicacy imparted to
both her Children--Its special Evidences in her Son.
It was almost a matter of course that Robert Browning's father should be
disinclined for bank work. We are told, and can easily imagine, that he
was not so good an official as the grandfather; we know that he did not
rise so high, nor draw so large a salary. But he made the best of
his position for his family's sake, and it was at that time both more
important and more lucrative than such appointments have since become.
Its emoluments could be increased by many honourable means not covered
by the regular salary. The working-day was short, and every additional
hour's service well paid. To be enrolled on the night-watch was also
very remunerative; there were enormous perquisites in pens, paper, and
sealing-wax.* Mr. Browning availed himself of these opportunities of
adding to his income, and was thus enabled, with the help of his private
means, to gratify his scholarly and artistic tastes, and give his
children the benefit of a very liberal education--the one distinct ideal
of success in life which such a nature as his could form. Constituted as
he was, he probably suffered very little through the paternal unkindness
which had forced him into an uncongenial career. Its only palpable
result was to make him a more anxiously indulgent parent when his own
time came.
* I have been told that, far from becoming careless in the
use of these things from his practically unbounded command
of them, he developed for them an almost superstitious
reverence. He could never endure to see a scrap of writing-
paper wasted.
Many circumstances conspired to secure to the coming poet a happier
childhood and youth than his father had had. His path was to be smoothed
not only by natural affection and conscientious care, but by literary
and artistic sympathy. The second Mr. Browning differed, in certain
respects, as much from the third as from the first. There were,
nevertheless, strong points in which, if he did not resemble, he at
least distinctly foreshadowed him; and the genius of the one would lack
some possible explanation if we did not recognize in great measure its
organized material in the other. Much, indeed, that was genius in the
son existed as talent in the father. The moral nature of the younger
man diverged from that of the older, though retaining strong points of
similarity; but the mental equipments of the two differed far less
in themselves than in the different uses to which temperament and
circumstances trained them.
The most salient intellectual characteristic of Mr. Browning senior was
his passion for reading. In his daughter's words, 'he read in season,
and out of season;' and he not only read, but remembered. As a
schoolboy, he knew by heart the first book of the 'Iliad', and all
the odes of Horace; and it shows how deeply the classical part of his
training must have entered into him, that he was wont, in later life, to
soothe his little boy to sleep by humming to him an ode of Anacreon. It
was one of his amusements at school to organize Homeric combats among
the boys, in which the fighting was carried on in the manner of the
Greeks and Trojans, and he and his friend Kenyon would arm themselves
with swords and shields, and hack at each other lustily, exciting
themselves to battle by insulting speeches derived from the Homeric
text.*
* This anecdote is partly quoted from Mrs. Andrew Crosse,
who has introduced it into her article 'John Kenyon and his
Friends',
'Temple Bar', April 1890. She herself received it from Mr.
Dykes Campbell.
Mr. Browning had also an extraordinary power of versifying, and taught
his son from babyhood the words he wished him to remember, by joining
them to a grotesque rhyme; the child learned all his Latin declensions
in this way. His love of art had been proved by his desire to adopt it
as a profession; his talent for it was evidenced by the life and power
of the sketches, often caricatures, which fell from his pen or pencil as
easily as written words. Mr. Barrett Browning remembers gaining a very
early elementary knowledge of anatomy from comic illustrated rhymes
(now in the possession of their old friend, Mrs. Fraser Corkran) through
which his grandfather impressed upon him the names and position of the
principal bones of the human body.
Even more remarkable than his delight in reading was the manner in
which Mr. Browning read. He carried into it all the preciseness of the
scholar. It was his habit when he bought a book--which was generally
an old one allowing of this addition--to have some pages of blank paper
bound into it. These he filled with notes, chronological tables, or such
other supplementary matter as would enhance the interest, or assist the
mastering, of its contents; all written in a clear and firm though by
no means formal handwriting. More than one book thus treated by him
has passed through my hands, leaving in me, it need hardly be said,
a stronger impression of the owner's intellectual quality than the
acquisition by him of the finest library could have conveyed. One of the
experiences which disgusted him with St. Kitt's was the frustration
by its authorities of an attempt he was making to teach a negro boy
to read, and the understanding that all such educative action was
prohibited.
In his faculties and attainments, as in his pleasures and appreciations,
he showed the simplicity and genuineness of a child. He was not only
ready to amuse, he could always identify himself with children, his
love for whom never failed him in even his latest years. His more than
childlike indifference to pecuniary advantages had been shown in early
life. He gave another proof of it after his wife's death, when he
declined a proposal, made to him by the Bank of England, to assist in
founding one of its branch establishments in Liverpool. He never indeed,
personally, cared for money, except as a means of acquiring old, i.e.
rare books, for which he had, as an acquaintance declared, the scent
of a hound and the snap of a bulldog. His eagerness to possess such
treasures was only matched by the generosity with which he parted with
them; and his daughter well remembers the feeling of angry suspicion
with which she and her brother noted the periodical arrival of a certain
visitor who would be closeted with their father for hours, and steal
away before the supper time, when the family would meet, with some
precious parcel of books or prints under his arm.
It is almost superfluous to say that he was indifferent to creature
comforts. Miss Browning was convinced that, if on any occasion she had
said to him, 'There will be no dinner to-day,' he would only have
looked up from his book to reply, 'All right, my dear, it is of no
consequence.' In his bank-clerk days, when he sometimes dined in Town,
he left one restaurant with which he was not otherwise dissatisfied,
because the waiter always gave him the trouble of specifying what he
would have to eat. A hundred times that trouble would not have deterred
him from a kindly act. Of his goodness of heart, indeed, many distinct
instances might be given; but even this scanty outline of his life has
rendered them superfluous.
Mr. Browning enjoyed splendid physical health. His early love of reading
had not precluded a wholesome enjoyment of athletic sports; and he was,
as a boy, the fastest runner and best base-ball player in his school. He
died, like his father, at eighty-four (or rather, within a few days of
eighty-five), but, unlike him, he had never been ill; a French friend
exclaimed when all was over, 'Il n'a jamais ete vieux.' His faculties
were so unclouded up to the last moment that he could watch himself
dying, and speculate on the nature of the change which was befalling
him. 'What do you think death is, Robert?' he said to his son; 'is it
a fainting, or is it a pang?' A notice of his decease appeared in an
American newspaper. It was written by an unknown hand, and bears a stamp
of genuineness which renders the greater part of it worth quoting.
'He was not only a ruddy, active man, with fine hair, that retained its
strength and brownness to the last, but he had a courageous spirit and a
remarkably intelligent mind. He was a man of the finest culture, and was
often, and never vainly, consulted by his son Robert concerning the more
recondite facts relating to the old characters, whose bones that poet
liked so well to disturb. His knowledge of old French, Spanish, and
Italian literature was wonderful. The old man went smiling and peaceful
to his long rest, preserving his faculties to the last, insomuch that
the physician, astonished at his continued calmness and good humour,
turned to his daughter, and said in a low voice, "Does this gentleman
know that he is dying?" The daughter said in a voice which the father
could hear, "He knows it;" and the old man said with a quiet smile,
"Death is no enemy in my eyes." His last words were spoken to his son
Robert, who was fanning him, "I fear I am wearying you, dear."'
Four years later one of his English acquaintances in Paris, Mr.
Frederick Locker, now Mr. Locker-Lampson, wrote to Robert Browning as
follows:
Dec. 26, 1870.
My dear Browning,--I have always thought that you or Miss Browning, or
some other capable person, should draw up a sketch of your excellent
father so that, hereafter, it might be known what an interesting man he
was.
I used often to meet you in Paris, at Lady Elgin's. She had a genuine
taste for poetry, and she liked being read to, and I remember you gave
her a copy of Keats' poems, and you used often to read his poetry to
her. Lady Elgin died in 1860, and I think it was in that year that Lady
Charlotte and I saw the most of Mr. Browning.* He was then quite an
elderly man, if years could make him so, but he had so much vivacity of
manner, and such simplicity and freshness of mind, that it was difficult
to think him old.
* Mr. Locker was then married to Lady Charlotte Bruce, Lady
Elgin's daughter.
I remember, he and your sister lived in an apartment in the Rue de
Grenelle, St. Germain, in quite a simple fashion, much in the way that
most people live in Paris, and in the way that all sensible people would
wish to live all over the world.
Your father and I had at least one taste and affection in common. He
liked hunting the old bookstalls on the 'quais', and he had a great
love and admiration for Hogarth; and he possessed several of Hogarth's
engravings, some in rare and early states of the plate; and he would
relate with glee the circumstances under which he had picked them up,
and at so small a price too! However, he had none of the 'petit-maitre'
weakness of the ordinary collector, which is so common, and which I own
to!--such as an infatuation for tall copies, and wide margins.
I remember your father was fond of drawing in a rough and ready fashion;
he had plenty of talent, I should think not very great cultivation; but
quite enough to serve his purpose, and to amuse his friends. He had a
thoroughly lively and _healthy_ interest in your poetry, and he showed me
some of your boyish attempts at versification.
Taking your dear father altogether, I quite believe him to have been one
of those men--interesting men--whom the world never hears of. Perhaps he
was shy--at any rate he was much less known than he ought to have been;
and now, perhaps, he only remains in the recollection of his family,
and of one or two superior people (like myself!) who were capable of
appreciating him. My dear Browning, I really hope you will draw up a
slight sketch of your father before it is too late. Yours, Frederick
Locker.
The judgments thus expressed twenty years ago are cordially re-stated
in the letter in which Mr. Locker-Lampson authorizes me to publish them.
The desired memoir was never written; but the few details which I have
given of the older Mr. Browning's life and character may perhaps stand
for it.
With regard to the 'strict dissent' with which her parents have been
taxed, Miss Browning writes to me: 'My father was born and educated in
the Church of England, and, for many years before his death, lived in
her communion. He became a Dissenter in middle life, and my mother, born
and brought up in the Kirk of Scotland, became one also; but they could
not be called bigoted, since we always in the evening attended the
preaching of the Rev. Henry Melvill* (afterwards Canon of St. Paul's),
whose sermons Robert much admired.'**
* At Camden Chapel, Camberwell.
** Mr. Browning was much interested, in later years, in
hearing Canon, perhaps then already Archdeacon, Farrar extol
his eloquence and ask whether he had known him. Mr. Ruskin
also spoke of him with admiration.
Little need be said about the poet's mother. She was spoken of by
Carlyle as 'the true type of a Scottish gentlewoman.' Mr. Kenyon
declared that such as she had no need to go to heaven, because they made
it wherever they were. But her character was all resumed in her son's
words, spoken with the tremulous emotion which so often accompanied his
allusion to those he had loved and lost: 'She was a divine woman.' She
was Scotch on the maternal side, and her kindly, gentle, but distinctly
evangelical Christianity must have been derived from that source. Her
father, William Wiedemann, a ship-owner, was a Hamburg German settled
in Dundee, and has been described by Mr. Browning as an accomplished
draughtsman and musician. She herself had nothing of the artist about
her, though we hear of her sometimes playing the piano; in all her
goodness and sweetness she seems to have been somewhat matter-of-fact.
But there is abundant indirect evidence of Mr. Browning's love of
music having come to him through her, and we are certainly justified in
holding the Scottish-German descent as accountable, in great measure
at least, for the metaphysical quality so early apparent in the poet's
mind, and of which we find no evidence in that of his father. His strong
religious instincts must have been derived from both parents, though
most anxiously fostered by his mother.
There is yet another point on which Mrs. Browning must have influenced
the life and destinies of her son, that of physical health, or, at
least, nervous constitution. She was a delicate woman, very anaemic
during her later years, and a martyr to neuralgia, which was perhaps a
symptom of this condition. The acute ailment reproduced itself in
her daughter in spite of an otherwise vigorous constitution. With the
brother, the inheritance of suffering was not less surely present, if
more difficult to trace. We have been accustomed to speaking of him as a
brilliantly healthy man; he was healthy, even strong, in many essential
respects. Until past the age of seventy he could take long walks without
fatigue, and endure an amount of social and general physical strain
which would have tried many younger men. He carried on until the last a
large, if not always serious, correspondence, and only within the latest
months, perhaps weeks of his life, did his letters even suggest that
physical brain-power was failing him. He had, within the limits which
his death has assigned to it, a considerable recuperative power. His
consciousness of health was vivid, so long as he was well; and it was
only towards the end that the faith in his probable length of days
occasionally deserted him. But he died of no acute disease, more than
seven years younger than his father, having long carried with him
external marks of age from which his father remained exempt. Till
towards the age of forty he suffered from attacks of sore-throat, not
frequent, but of an angry kind. He was constantly troubled by imperfect
action of the liver, though no doctor pronounced the evil serious. I
have spoken of this in reference to his complexion. During the last
twenty years, if not for longer, he rarely spent a winter without a
suffocating cold and cough; within the last five, asthmatic symptoms
established themselves; and when he sank under what was perhaps his
first real attack of bronchitis it was not because the attack was very
severe, but because the heart was exhausted. The circumstances of his
death recalled that of his mother; and we might carry the sad analogy
still farther in his increasing pallor, and the slow and not strong
pulse which always characterized him. This would perhaps be a mistake.
It is difficult to reconcile any idea of bloodlessness with the bounding
vitality of his younger body and mind. Any symptom of organic disease
could scarcely, in his case, have been overlooked. But so much is
certain: he was conscious of what he called a nervousness of nature
which neither father nor grandfather could have bequeathed to him. He
imputed to this, or, in other words, to an undue physical sensitiveness
to mental causes of irritation, his proneness to deranged liver, and
the asthmatic conditions which he believed, rightly or wrongly, to be
produced by it. He was perhaps mistaken in some of his inferences, but
he was not mistaken in the fact. He had the pleasures as well as the
pains of this nervous temperament; its quick response to every congenial
stimulus of physical atmosphere, and human contact. It heightened the
enjoyment, perhaps exaggerated the consciousness of his physical powers.
It also certainly in his later years led him to overdraw them. Many
persons have believed that he could not live without society; a
prolonged seclusion from it would, for obvious reasons, have been
unsuited to him. But the excited gaiety which to the last he carried
into every social gathering was often primarily the result of a moral
and physical effort which his temperament prompted, but his strength
could not always justify. Nature avenged herself in recurrent periods of
exhaustion, long before the closing stage had set in.
I shall subsequently have occasion to trace this nervous impressibility
through various aspects and relations of his life; all I now seek to
show is that this healthiest of poets and most real of men was not
compounded of elements of pure health, and perhaps never could have been
so. It might sound grotesque to say that only a delicate woman could
have been the mother of Robert Browning. The fact remains that of such
a one, and no other, he was born; and we may imagine, without being
fanciful, that his father's placid intellectual powers required for
their transmutation into poetic genius just this infusion of a vital
element not only charged with other racial and individual qualities, but
physically and morally more nearly allied to pain. Perhaps, even for his
happiness as a man, we could not have wished it otherwise.
Chapter 3
1812-1826
Birth of Robert Browning--His Childhood and Schooldays--Restless
Temperament--Brilliant Mental Endowments--Incidental
Peculiarities--Strong Religious Feeling--Passionate Attachment to his
Mother; Grief at first Separation--Fondness for Animals--Experiences of
School Life--Extensive Reading--Early Attempts in Verse--Letter from his
Father concerning them--Spurious Poems in Circulation--'Incondita'--Mr.
Fox--Miss Flower.
Robert Browning was born, as has been often repeated, at Camberwell, on
May 7, 1812, soon after a great comet had disappeared from the sky.
He was a handsome, vigorous, fearless child, and soon developed an
unresting activity and a fiery temper. He clamoured for occupation from
the moment he could speak. His mother could only keep him quiet when
once he had emerged from infancy by telling him stories--doubtless
Bible stories--while holding him on her knee. His energies were of
course destructive till they had found their proper outlet; but we do
not hear of his ever having destroyed anything for the mere sake of
doing so. His first recorded piece of mischief was putting a handsome
Brussels lace veil of his mother's into the fire; but the motive, which
he was just old enough to lisp out, was also his excuse: 'A pitty baze
[pretty blaze], mamma.' Imagination soon came to his rescue. It has
often been told how he extemporized verse aloud while walking round and
round the dining-room table supporting himself by his hands, when he was
still so small that his head was scarcely above it. He remembered having
entertained his mother in the very first walk he was considered old
enough to take with her, by a fantastic account of his possessions in
houses, &c., of which the topographical details elicited from her the
remark, 'Why, sir, you are quite a geographer.' And though this kind of
romancing is common enough among intelligent children, it distinguishes
itself in this case by the strong impression which the incident had left
on his own mind. It seems to have been a first real flight of dramatic
fancy, confusing his identity for the time being.
The power of inventing did not, however, interfere with his readiness to
learn, and the facility with which he acquired whatever knowledge came
in his way had, on one occasion, inconvenient results. A lady of reduced
fortunes kept a small elementary school for boys, a stone's-throw from
his home; and he was sent to it as a day boarder at so tender an age
that his parents, it is supposed, had no object in view but to get
rid of his turbulent activity for an hour or two every morning and
afternoon. Nevertheless, his proficiency in reading and spelling was
soon so much ahead of that of the biggest boy, that complaints broke
out among the mammas, who were sure there was not fair play. Mrs.----was
neglecting her other pupils for the sake of 'bringing on Master
Browning;' and the poor lady found it necessary to discourage Master
Browning's attendance lest she should lose the remainder of her flock.
This, at least, was the story as he himself remembered it. According to
Miss Browning his instructress did not yield without a parting shot.
She retorted on the discontented parents that, if she could give their
children 'Master Browning's intellect', she would have no difficulty
in satisfying them. After this came the interlude of home-teaching, in
which all his elementary knowledge must have been gained. As an older
child he was placed with two Misses Ready, who prepared boys for
entering their brother's (the Rev. Thomas Ready's) school; and in due
time he passed into the latter, where he remained up to the age of
fourteen.
He seems in those early days to have had few playmates beyond his
sister, two years younger than himself, and whom his irrepressible
spirit must sometimes have frightened or repelled. Nor do we hear
anything of childish loves; and though an entry appeared in his diary
one Sunday in about the seventh or eighth year of his age, 'married two
wives this morning,' it only referred to a vague imaginary appropriation
of two girls whom he had just seen in church, and whose charm probably
lay in their being much bigger than he. He was, however, capable of a
self-conscious shyness in the presence of even a little girl; and his
sense of certain proprieties was extraordinarily keen. He told a friend
that on one occasion, when the merest child, he had edged his way by the
wall from one point of his bedroom to another, because he was not fully
clothed, and his reflection in the glass could otherwise have been seen
through the partly open door.*
* Another anecdote, of a very different kind, belongs to an
earlier period, and to that category of pure naughtiness
which could not fail to be sometimes represented in the
conduct of so gifted a child. An old lady who visited his
mother, and was characterized in the family as 'Aunt Betsy',
had irritated him by pronouncing the word 'lovers' with the
contemptuous jerk which the typical old maid is sometimes
apt to impart to it, when once the question had arisen why a
certain 'Lovers' Walk' was so called. He was too nearly a
baby to imagine what a 'lover' was; he supposed the name
denoted a trade or occupation. But his human sympathy
resented Aunt Betsy's manner as an affront; and he
determined, after probably repeated provocation, to show her
something worse than a 'lover', whatever this might be. So
one night he slipped out of bed, exchanged his nightgown for
what he considered the appropriate undress of a devil,
completed this by a paper tail, and the ugliest face he
could make, and rushed into the drawing-room, where the old
lady and his mother were drinking tea. He was snatched up
and carried away before he had had time to judge the effect
of his apparition; but he did not think, looking back upon
the circumstances in later life, that Aunt Betsy had
deserved quite so ill of her fellow-creatures as he then
believed.
His imaginative emotions were largely absorbed by religion. The early
Biblical training had had its effect, and he was, to use his own words,
'passionately religious' in those nursery years; but during them and
many succeeding ones, his mother filled his heart. He loved her so much,
he has been heard to say, that even as a grown man he could not sit
by her otherwise than with an arm round her waist. It is difficult to
measure the influence which this feeling may have exercised on his later
life; it led, even now, to a strange and touching little incident
which had in it the incipient poet no less than the loving child. His
attendance at Miss Ready's school only kept him from home from Monday
till Saturday of every week; but when called upon to confront his first
five days of banishment he felt sure that he would not survive them. A
leaden cistern belonging to the school had in, or outside it, the raised
image of a face. He chose the cistern for his place of burial, and
converted the face into his epitaph by passing his hand over and over it
to a continuous chant of: 'In memory of unhappy Browning'--the ceremony
being renewed in his spare moments, till the acute stage of the feeling
had passed away.
The fondness for animals for which through life he was noted, was
conspicuous in his very earliest days. His urgent demand for 'something
to do' would constantly include 'something to be caught' for him: 'they
were to catch him an eft;' 'they were to catch him a frog.' He would
refuse to take his medicine unless bribed by the gift of a speckled frog
from among the strawberries; and the maternal parasol, hovering above
the strawberry bed during the search for this object of his desires,
remained a standing picture in his remembrance. But the love of the
uncommon was already asserting itself; and one of his very juvenile
projects was a collection of rare creatures, the first contribution to
which was a couple of lady-birds, picked up one winter's day on a wall
and immediately consigned to a box lined with cotton-wool, and labelled,
'Animals found surviving in the depths of a severe winter.' Nor did
curiosity in this case weaken the power of sympathy. His passion for
birds and beasts was the counterpart of his father's love of children,
only displaying itself before the age at which child-love naturally
appears. His mother used to read Croxall's Fables to his little sister
and him. The story contained in them of a lion who was kicked to death
by an ass affected him so painfully that he could no longer endure the
sight of the book; and as he dared not destroy it, he buried it between
the stuffing and the woodwork of an old dining-room chair, where it
stood for lost, at all events for the time being. When first he heard
the adventures of the parrot who insisted on leaving his cage, and who
enjoyed himself for a little while and then died of hunger and cold,
he--and his sister with him--cried so bitterly that it was found
necessary to invent a different ending, according to which the parrot
was rescued just in time and brought back to his cage to live peacefully
in it ever after.
As a boy, he kept owls and monkeys, magpies and hedgehogs, an eagle,
and even a couple of large snakes, constantly bringing home the more
portable creatures in his pockets, and transferring them to his mother
for immediate care. I have heard him speak admiringly of the skilful
tenderness with which she took into her lap a lacerated cat, washed
and sewed up its ghastly wound, and nursed it back to health. The great
intimacy with the life and habits of animals which reveals itself in his
works is readily explained by these facts.
Mr. Ready's establishment was chosen for him as the best in the
neighbourhood; and both there and under the preparatory training of that
gentleman's sisters, the young Robert was well and kindly cared for. The
Misses Ready especially concerned themselves with the spiritual welfare
of their pupils. The periodical hair-brushings were accompanied by the
singing, and fell naturally into the measure, of Watts's hymns; and Mr.
Browning has given his friends some very hearty laughs by illustrating
with voice and gesture the ferocious emphasis with which the brush would
swoop down in the accentuated syllables of the following lines:
Lord, 'tis a pleasant thing to stand
In gardens planted by Thy hand.
. . . . .
Fools never raise their thoughts so high,
Like 'brutes' they live, like _brutes_ they die.
He even compelled his mother to laugh at it, though it was sorely
against her nature to lend herself to any burlesquing of piously
intended things.* He had become a bigger boy since the episode of the
cistern, and had probably in some degree outgrown the intense piety of
his earlier childhood. This little incident seems to prove it. On the
whole, however, his religious instincts did not need strengthening,
though his sense of humour might get the better of them for a moment;
and of secular instruction he seems to have received as little from the
one set of teachers as from the other. I do not suppose that the mental
training at Mr. Ready's was more shallow or more mechanical than that
of most other schools of his own or, indeed, of a much later period; but
the brilliant abilities of Robert Browning inspired him with a certain
contempt for it, as also for the average schoolboy intelligence to
which it was apparently adapted. It must be for this reason that, as he
himself declared, he never gained a prize, although these rewards were
showered in such profusion that the only difficulty was to avoid
them; and if he did not make friends at school (for this also has been
somewhere observed),** it can only be explained in the same way. He
was at an intolerant age, and if his schoolfellows struck him as more
backward or more stupid than they need be, he is not likely to have
taken pains to conceal the impression. It is difficult, at all events,
to think of him as unsociable, and his talents certainly had their
amusing side. Miss Browning tells me that he made his schoolfellows
act plays, some of which he had written for them; and he delighted his
friends, not long ago, by mimicking his own solemn appearance on some
breaking-up or commemorative day, when, according to programme, 'Master
Browning' ascended a platform in the presence of assembled parents and
friends, and, in best jacket, white gloves, and carefully curled hair,
with a circular bow to the company and the then prescribed waving
of alternate arms, delivered a high-flown rhymed address of his own
composition.
* In spite of this ludicrous association Mr. Browning always
recognized great merit in Watts's hymns, and still more in
Dr. Watts himself, who had devoted to this comparatively
humble work intellectual powers competent to far higher
things.
** It was in no case literally true. William, afterwards
Sir William, Channel was leaving Mr. Ready when Browning
went to him; but a friendly acquaintance began, and was
afterwards continued, between the two boys; and a closer
friendship, formed with a younger brother Frank, was only
interrupted by his death. Another school friend or
acquaintance recalled himself as such to the poet's memory
some ten or twelve years ago. A man who has reached the age
at which his boyhood becomes of interest to the world may
even have survived many such relations.
And during the busy idleness of his schooldays, or, at all events, in
the holidays in which he rested from it, he was learning, as perhaps
only those do learn whose real education is derived from home. His
father's house was, Miss Browning tells me, literally crammed with
books; and, she adds, 'it was in this way that Robert became very early
familiar with subjects generally unknown to boys.' He read omnivorously,
though certainly not without guidance. One of the books he best and
earliest loved was 'Quarles' Emblemes', which his father possessed in
a seventeenth century edition, and which contains one or two very
tentative specimens of his early handwriting. Its quaint, powerful lines
and still quainter illustrations combined the marvellous with what he
believed to be true; and he seemed specially identified with its world
of religious fancies by the fact that the soul in it was always depicted
as a child. On its more general grounds his reading was at once largely
literary and very historical; and it was in this direction that the
paternal influence was most strongly revealed. 'Quarles' Emblemes'
was only one of the large collection of old books which Mr. Browning
possessed; and the young Robert learnt to know each favourite author in
the dress as well as the language which carried with it the life of his
period. The first edition of 'Robinson Crusoe'; the first edition of
Milton's works, bought for him by his father; a treatise on astrology
published twenty years after the introduction of printing; the original
pamphlet 'Killing no Murder' (1559), which Carlyle borrowed for his
'Life of Cromwell'; an equally early copy of Bernard Mandeville's
'Bees'; very ancient Bibles--are some of the instances which occur to
me. Among more modern publications, 'Walpole's Letters' were familiar to
him in boyhood, as well as the 'Letters of Junius' and all the works of
Voltaire.
Ancient poets and poetry also played their necessary part in the mental
culture superintended by Robert Browning's father: we can indeed imagine
no case in which they would not have found their way into the boy's
life. Latin poets and Greek dramatists came to him in their due time,
though his special delight in the Greek language only developed itself
later. But his loving, lifelong familiarity with the Elizabethan school,
and indeed with the whole range of English poetry, seems to point to
a more constant study of our national literature. Byron was his chief
master in those early poetic days. He never ceased to honour him as the
one poet who combined a constructive imagination with the more technical
qualities of his art; and the result of this period of aesthetic
training was a volume of short poems produced, we are told, when he was
only twelve, in which the Byronic influence was predominant.
The young author gave his work the title of 'Incondita', which conveyed
a certain idea of deprecation. He was, nevertheless, very anxious to see
it in print; and his father and mother, poetry-lovers of the old
school, also found in it sufficient merit to justify its publication.
No publisher, however, could be found; and we can easily believe that
he soon afterwards destroyed the little manuscript, in some mingled
reaction of disappointment and disgust. But his mother, meanwhile, had
shown it to an acquaintance of hers, Miss Flower, who herself admired
its contents so much as to make a copy of them for the inspection of her
friend, the well-known Unitarian minister, Mr. W. J. Fox. The copy was
transmitted to Mr. Browning after Mr. Fox's death by his daughter, Mrs.
Bridell-Fox; and this, if no other, was in existence in 1871, when, at
his urgent request, that lady also returned to him a fragment of verse
contained in a letter from Miss Sarah Flower. Nor was it till much later
that a friend, who had earnestly begged for a sight of it, definitely
heard of its destruction. The fragment, which doubtless shared the same
fate, was, I am told, a direct imitation of Coleridge's 'Fire, Famine,
and Slaughter'.
These poems were not Mr. Browning's first. It would be impossible to
believe them such when we remember that he composed verses long before
he could write; and a curious proof of the opposite fact has recently
appeared. Two letters of the elder Mr. Browning have found their way
into the market, and have been bought respectively by Mr. Dykes Campbell
and Sir F. Leighton. I give the more important of them. It was addressed
to Mr. Thomas Powell:
Dear Sir,--I hope the enclosed may be acceptable as curiosities. They
were written by Robert when quite a child. I once had nearly a hundred
of them. But he has destroyed all that ever came in his way, having a
great aversion to the practice of many biographers in recording every
trifling incident that falls in their way. He has not the slightest
suspicion that any of his very juvenile performances are in existence.
I have several of the originals by me. They are all extemporaneous
productions, nor has any one a single alteration. There was one amongst
them 'On Bonaparte'--remarkably beautiful--and had I not seen it in
his own handwriting I never would have believed it to have been the
production of a child. It is destroyed. Pardon my troubling you with
these specimens, and requesting you never to mention it, as Robert
would be very much hurt. I remain, dear sir, Your obedient servant, R.
Browning. Bank: March 11, 1843.
The letter was accompanied by a sheet of verses which have been sold
and resold, doubtless in perfect good faith, as being those to which the
writer alludes. But Miss Browning has recognized them as her father's
own impromptu epigrams, well remembered in the family, together with
the occasion on which they were written. The substitution may, from the
first, have been accidental.
We cannot think of all these vanished first-fruits of Mr. Browning's
genius without a sense of loss, all the greater perhaps that there can
have been little in them to prefigure its later forms. Their faults seem
to have lain in the direction of too great splendour of language and too
little wealth of thought; and Mr. Fox, who had read 'Incondita' and been
struck by its promise, confessed afterwards to Mr. Browning that he had
feared these tendencies as his future snare. But the imitative first
note of a young poet's voice may hold a rapture of inspiration which
his most original later utterances will never convey. It is the child
Sordello, singing against the lark.
Not even the poet's sister ever saw 'Incondita'. It was the only one of
his finished productions which Miss Browning did not read, or even
help him to write out. She was then too young to be taken into his
confidence. Its writing, however, had one important result. It procured
for the boy-poet a preliminary introduction to the valuable literary
patron and friend Mr. Fox was subsequently to be. It also supplies the
first substantial record of an acquaintance which made a considerable
impression on his personal life.
The Miss Flower, of whom mention has been made, was one of two sisters,
both sufficiently noted for their artistic gifts to have found a place
in the new Dictionary of National Biography. The elder, Eliza or Lizzie,
was a musical composer; the younger, best known as Sarah Flower Adams,
a writer of sacred verse. Her songs and hymns, including the well-known
'Nearer, my God, to Thee', were often set to music by her sister.* They
sang, I am told, delightfully together, and often without accompaniment,
their voices perfectly harmonizing with each other. Both were, in their
different ways, very attractive; both interesting, not only from their
talents, but from their attachment to each other, and the delicacy which
shortened their lives. They died of consumption, the elder in 1846, at
the age of forty-three; the younger a year later. They became acquainted
with Mrs. Browning through a common friend, Miss Sturtevant; and the
young Robert conceived a warm admiration for Miss Flower's talents,
and a boyish love for herself. She was nine years his senior; her own
affections became probably engaged, and, as time advanced, his feeling
seems to have subsided into one of warm and very loyal friendship. We
hear, indeed, of his falling in love, as he was emerging from his teens,
with a handsome girl who was on a visit at his father's house. But the
fancy died out 'for want of root.' The admiration, even tenderness, for
Miss Flower had so deep a 'root' that he never in latest life mentioned
her name with indifference. In a letter to Mr. Dykes Campbell, in 1881,
he spoke of her as 'a very remarkable person.' If, in spite of his
denials, any woman inspired 'Pauline', it can have been no other than
she. He began writing to her at twelve or thirteen, probably on the
occasion of her expressed sympathy with his first distinct effort at
authorship; and what he afterwards called 'the few utterly insignificant
scraps of letters and verse' which formed his part of the correspondence
were preserved by her as long as she lived. But he recovered and
destroyed them after his return to England, with all the other
reminiscences of those early years. Some notes, however, are extant,
dated respectively, 1841, 1842, and 1845, and will be given in their due
place.
* She also wrote a dramatic poem in five acts, entitled
'Vivia Perpetua', referred to by Mrs. Jameson in her 'Sacred
and Legendary Art', and by Leigh Hunt, when he spoke of her
in 'Blue-Stocking Revels', as 'Mrs. Adams, rare mistress of
thought and of tears.'
Mr. Fox was a friend of Miss Flower's father (Benjamin Flower, known as
editor of the 'Cambridge Intelligencer'), and, at his death, in 1829,
became co-executor to his will, and a kind of guardian to his daughters,
then both unmarried, and motherless from their infancy. Eliza's
principal work was a collection of hymns and anthems, originally
composed for Mr. Fox's chapel, where she had assumed the entire
management of the choral part of the service. Her abilities were not
confined to music; she possessed, I am told, an instinctive taste and
judgment in literary matters which caused her opinion to be much valued
by literary men. But Mr. Browning's genuine appreciation of her musical
genius was probably the strongest permanent bond between them. We shall
hear of this in his own words.
Chapter 4
1826-1833
First Impressions of Keats and Shelley--Prolonged Influence
of Shelley--Details of Home Education--Its Effects--Youthful
Restlessness--Counteracting Love of Home--Early Friendships: Alfred
Domett, Joseph Arnould, the Silverthornes--Choice of Poetry as a
Profession--Alternative Suggestions; mistaken Rumours concerning
them--Interest in Art--Love of good Theatrical Performances--Talent for
Acting--Final Preparation for Literary Life.
At the period at which we have arrived, which is that of his leaving
school and completing his fourteenth year, another and a significant
influence was dawning on Robert Browning's life--the influence of the
poet Shelley. Mr. Sharp writes,* and I could only state the facts
in similar words, 'Passing a bookstall one day, he saw, in a box
of second-hand volumes, a little book advertised as "Mr. Shelley's
Atheistical Poem: very scarce."' . . . 'From vague remarks in reply to
his inquiries, and from one or two casual allusions, he learned that
there really was a poet called Shelley; that he had written several
volumes; that he was dead.' . . . 'He begged his mother to procure him
Shelley's works, a request not easily complied with, for the excellent
reason that not one of the local booksellers had even heard of the
poet's name. Ultimately, however, Mrs. Browning learned that what she
sought was procurable at the Olliers', in Vere Street, London.'
* 'Life of Browning', pp. 30, 31.
Mrs. Browning went to Messrs. Ollier, and brought back 'most of
Shelley's writings, all in their first edition, with the exception of
"The Cenci".' She brought also three volumes of the still less known
John Keats, on being assured that one who liked Shelley's works would
like these also.
Keats and Shelley must always remain connected in this epoch of
Mr. Browning's poetic growth. They indeed came to him as the two
nightingales which, he told some friends, sang together in the May-night
which closed this eventful day: one in the laburnum in his father's
garden, the other in a copper beech which stood on adjoining
ground--with the difference indeed, that he must often have listened
to the feathered singers before, while the two new human voices sounded
from what were to him, as to so many later hearers, unknown heights and
depths of the imaginative world. Their utterance was, to such a spirit
as his, the last, as in a certain sense the first, word of what
poetry can say; and no one who has ever heard him read the 'Ode to a
Nightingale', and repeat in the same subdued tones, as if continuing
his own thoughts, some line from 'Epipsychidion', can doubt that they
retained a lasting and almost equal place in his poet's heart. But the
two cannot be regarded as equals in their relation to his life, and it
would be a great mistake to impute to either any important influence
upon his genius. We may catch some fleeting echoes of Keats's melody
in 'Pippa Passes'; it is almost a commonplace that some measure
of Shelleyan fancy is recognizable in 'Pauline'. But the poetic
individuality of Robert Browning was stronger than any circumstance
through which it could be fed. It would have found nourishment in desert
air. With his first accepted work he threw off what was foreign to
his poetic nature, to be thenceforward his own never-to-be-subdued and
never-to-be-mistaken self. If Shelley became, and long remained for him,
the greatest poet of his age--of almost any age--it was not because he
held him greatest in the poetic art, but because in his case, beyond
all others, he believed its exercise to have been prompted by the truest
spiritual inspiration.
It is difficult to trace the process by which this conviction formed
itself in the boy's mind; still more to account for the strong personal
tenderness which accompanied it. The facts can have been scarcely known
which were to present Shelley to his imagination as a maligned and
persecuted man. It is hard to judge how far such human qualities as we
now read into his work, could be apparent to one who only approached him
through it. But the extra-human note in Shelley's genius irresistibly
suggested to the Browning of fourteen, as it still did to the Browning
of forty, the presence of a lofty spirit, one dwelling in the communion
of higher things. There was often a deep sadness in his utterance; the
consecration of an early death was upon him. And so the worship rooted
itself and grew. It was to find its lyrical expression in 'Pauline'; its
rational and, from the writer's point of view, philosophic justification
in the prose essay on Shelley, published eighteen years afterwards.
It may appear inconsistent with the nature of this influence that
it began by appealing to him in a subversive form. The Shelley whom
Browning first loved was the Shelley of 'Queen Mab', the Shelley who
would have remodelled the whole system of religious belief, as of human
duty and rights; and the earliest result of the new development was
that he became a professing atheist, and, for two years, a practising
vegetarian. He returned to his natural diet when he found his eyesight
becoming weak. The atheism cured itself; we do not exactly know when or
how. What we do know is, that it was with him a passing state of moral
or imaginative rebellion, and not one of rational doubt. His mind was
not so constituted that such doubt could fasten itself upon it; nor
did he ever in after-life speak of this period of negation except as
an access of boyish folly, with which his maturer self could have no
concern. The return to religious belief did not shake his faith in his
new prophet. It only made him willing to admit that he had misread him.
This Shelley period of Robert Browning's life--that which intervened
between 'Incondita' and 'Pauline'--remained, nevertheless, one of
rebellion and unrest, to which many circumstances may have contributed
besides the influence of the one mind. It had been decided that he was
to complete, or at all events continue, his education at home; and,
knowing the elder Mr. Browning as we do, we cannot doubt that the best
reasons, of kindness or expediency, led to his so deciding. It was none
the less, probably, a mistake, for the time being. The conditions of
home life were the more favourable for the young poet's imaginative
growth; but there can rarely have been a boy whose moral and mental
health had more to gain by the combined discipline and freedom of a
public school. His home training was made to include everything which
in those days went to the production of an accomplished gentleman, and
a great deal therefore that was physically good. He learned music,
singing, dancing, riding, boxing, and fencing, and excelled in the
more active of these pursuits. The study of music was also serious, and
carried on under two masters. Mr. John Relfe, author of a valuable work
on counterpoint, was his instructor in thorough-bass; Mr. Abel, a pupil
of Moscheles, in execution. He wrote music for songs which he himself
sang; among them Donne's 'Go and catch a falling star'; Hood's 'I will
not have the mad Clytie'; Peacock's 'The mountain sheep are sweeter';
and his settings, all of which he subsequently destroyed, were, I am
told, very spirited. His education seems otherwise to have been purely
literary. For two years, from the age of fourteen to that of sixteen,
he studied with a French tutor, who, whether this was intended or not,
imparted to him very little but a good knowledge of the French language
and literature. In his eighteenth year he attended, for a term or two,
a Greek class at the London University. His classical and other
reading was probably continued. But we hear nothing in the programme of
mathematics, or logic--of any, in short, of those subjects which train,
even coerce, the thinking powers, and which were doubly requisite for
a nature in which the creative imagination was predominant over all the
other mental faculties, great as these other faculties were. And, even
as poet, he suffered from this omission: since the involutions and
overlappings of thought and phrase, which occur in his earlier and again
in his latest works, must have been partly due to his never learning to
follow the processes of more normally constituted minds. It would be
a great error to suppose that they ever arose from the absence of a
meaning clearly felt, if not always clearly thought out, by himself. He
was storing his memory and enriching his mind; but precisely in so
doing he was nourishing the consciousness of a very vivid and urgent
personality; and, under the restrictions inseparable from the life of a
home-bred youth, it was becoming a burden to him. What outlet he found
in verse we do not know, because nothing survives of what he may then
have written. It is possible that the fate of his early poems, and,
still more, the change of ideals, retarded the definite impulse towards
poetic production. It would be a relief to him to sketch out and
elaborate the plan of his future work--his great mental portrait gallery
of typical men and women; and he was doing so during at least the later
years which preceded the birth of 'Pauline'. But even this must have
been the result of some protracted travail with himself; because it was
only the inward sense of very varied possibilities of existence which
could have impelled him towards this kind of creation. No character he
ever produced was merely a figment of the brain.
It was natural, therefore, that during this time of growth he should
have been, not only more restless, but less amiable than at any other.
The always impatient temper assumed a quality of aggressiveness. He
behaved as a youth will who knows himself to be clever, and believes
that he is not appreciated, because the crude or paradoxical forms which
his cleverness assumes do not recommend it to his elders' minds. He
set the judgments of those about him at defiance, and gratuitously
proclaimed himself everything that he was, and some things that he was
not. All this subdued itself as time advanced, and the coming man in him
could throw off the wayward child. It was all so natural that it might
well be forgotten. But it distressed his mother, the one being in the
world whom he entirely loved; and deserves remembering in the tender
sorrow with which he himself remembered it. He was always ready to
say that he had been worth little in his young days; indeed, his
self-depreciation covered the greater part of his life. This was,
perhaps, one reason of the difficulty of inducing him to dwell upon
his past. 'I am better now,' he has said more than once, when its
reminiscences have been invoked.
One tender little bond maintained itself between his mother and himself
so long as he lived under the paternal roof; it was his rule never to go
to bed without giving her a good-night kiss. If he was out so late that
he had to admit himself with a latch-key, he nevertheless went to her
in her room. Nor did he submit to this as a necessary restraint; for,
except on the occasions of his going abroad, it is scarcely on record
that he ever willingly spent a night away from home. It may not stand
for much, or it may stand to the credit of his restlessness, that,
when he had been placed with some gentleman in Gower Street, for the
convenience of attending the University lectures, or for the sake of
preparing for them, he broke through the arrangement at the end of a
week; but even an agreeable visit had no power to detain him beyond a
few days.
This home-loving quality was in curious contrast to the natural
bohemianism of youthful genius, and the inclination to wildness which
asserted itself in his boyish days. It became the more striking as he
entered upon the age at which no reasonable amount of freedom can
have been denied to him. Something, perhaps, must be allowed for the
pecuniary dependence which forbade his forming any expensive habits of
amusement; but he also claims the credit of having been unable to accept
any low-life pleasures in place of them. I do not know how the idea can
have arisen that he willingly sought his experience in the society
of 'gipsies and tramps'. I remember nothing in his works which even
suggests such association; and it is certain that a few hours spent at a
fair would at all times have exhausted his capability of enduring it.
In the most audacious imaginings of his later life, in the most
undisciplined acts of his early youth, were always present curious
delicacies and reserves. There was always latent in him the real
goodness of heart which would not allow him to trifle consciously with
other lives. Work must also have been his safeguard when the habit of it
had been acquired, and when imagination, once his master, had learned to
serve him.
One tangible cause of his youthful restlessness has been implied in the
foregoing remarks, but deserves stating in his sister's words: 'The
fact was, poor boy, he had outgrown his social surroundings. They were
absolutely good, but they were narrow; it could not be otherwise; he
chafed under them.' He was not, however, quite without congenial society
even before the turning-point in his outward existence which was reached
in the publication of 'Pauline'; and one long friendly acquaintance,
together with one lasting friendship, had their roots in these early
Camberwell days. The families of Joseph Arnould and Alfred Domett
both lived at Camberwell. These two young men were bred to the legal
profession, and the former, afterwards Sir Joseph Arnould, became
a judge in Bombay. But the father of Alfred Domett had been one of
Nelson's captains, and the roving sailor spirit was apparent in his
son; for he had scarcely been called to the Bar when he started for New
Zealand on the instance of a cousin who had preceded him, but who was
drowned in the course of a day's surveying before he could arrive. He
became a member of the New Zealand Parliament, and ultimately, for a
short time, of its Cabinet; only returning to England after an absence
of thirty years. This Mr. Domett seems to have been a very modest man,
besides a devoted friend of Robert Browning's, and on occasion a warm
defender of his works. When he read the apostrophe to 'Alfred, dear
friend,' in the 'Guardian Angel', he had reached the last line before it
occurred to him that the person invoked could be he. I do not think that
this poem, and that directly addressed to him under the pseudonym of
'Waring', were the only ones inspired by the affectionate remembrance
which he had left in their author's mind.
Among his boy companions were also the three Silverthornes, his
neighbours at Camberwell, and cousins on the maternal side. They appear
to have been wild youths, and had certainly no part in his intellectual
or literary life; but the group is interesting to his biographer.
The three brothers were all gifted musicians; having also, probably,
received this endowment from their mother's father. Mr. Browning
conceived a great affection for the eldest, and on the whole most
talented of the cousins; and when he had died--young, as they all
did--he wrote 'May and Death' in remembrance of him. The name of
'Charles' stands there for the old, familiar 'Jim', so often uttered by
him in half-pitying, and all-affectionate allusion, in his later years.
Mrs. Silverthorne was the aunt who paid for the printing of 'Pauline'.
It was at about the time of his short attendance at University College
that the choice of poetry as his future profession was formally made. It
was a foregone conclusion in the young Robert's mind; and little less
in that of his father, who took too sympathetic an interest in his son's
life not to have seen in what direction his desires were tending. He
must, it is true, at some time or other, have played with the thought of
becoming an artist; but the thought can never have represented a wish.
If he had entertained such a one, it would have met not only with no
opposition on his father's part, but with a very ready assent, nor
does the question ever seem to have been seriously mooted in the family
councils. It would be strange, perhaps, if it had. Mr. Browning became
very early familiar with the names of the great painters, and also
learned something about their work; for the Dulwich Gallery was within a
pleasant walk of his home, and his father constantly took him there. He
retained through life a deep interest in art and artists, and became a
very familiar figure in one or two London studios. Some drawings made
by him from the nude, in Italy, and for which he had prepared himself by
assiduous copying of casts and study of human anatomy, had, I believe,
great merit. But painting was one of the subjects in which he never
received instruction, though he modelled, under the direction of his
friend Mr. Story; and a letter of his own will presently show that, in
his youth at least, he never credited himself with exceptional artistic
power. That he might have become an artist, and perhaps a great one,
is difficult to doubt, in the face of his brilliant general ability and
special gifts. The power to do a thing is, however, distinct from the
impulse to do it, and proved so in the present case.
More importance may be given to an idea of his father's that he should
qualify himself for the Bar. It would naturally coincide with the
widening of the social horizon which his University College classes
supplied; it was possibly suggested by the fact that the closest friends
he had already made, and others whom he was perhaps now making, were
barristers. But this also remained an idea. He might have been placed in
the Bank of England, where the virtual offer of an appointment had been
made to him through his father; but the elder Browning spontaneously
rejected this, as unworthy of his son's powers. He had never, he said,
liked bank work himself, and could not, therefore, impose it on him.
We have still to notice another, and a more mistaken view of the
possibilities of Mr. Browning's life. It has been recently stated,
doubtless on the authority of some words of his own, that the Church was
a profession to which he once felt himself drawn. But an admission of
this kind could only refer to that period of his childhood when natural
impulse, combined with his mother's teaching and guidance, frequently
caused his fancy and his feelings to assume a religious form. From the
time when he was a free agent he ceased to be even a regular churchgoer,
though religion became more, rather than less, an integral part of his
inner life; and his alleged fondness for a variety of preachers meant
really that he only listened to those who, from personal association
or conspicuous merit, were interesting to him. I have mentioned Canon
Melvill as one of these; the Rev. Thomas Jones was, as will be
seen, another. In Venice he constantly, with his sister, joined the
congregation of an Italian minister of the little Vaudois church there.*
* Mr. Browning's memory recalled a first and last effort at
preaching, inspired by one of his very earliest visits to a
place of worship. He extemporized a surplice or gown,
climbed into an arm-chair by way of pulpit, and held forth
so vehemently that his scarcely more than baby sister was
frightened and began to cry; whereupon he turned to an
imaginary presence, and said, with all the sternness which
the occasion required, 'Pew-opener, remove that child.'
It would be far less surprising if we were told, on sufficient
authority, that he had been disturbed by hankerings for the stage. He
was a passionate admirer of good acting, and would walk from London to
Richmond and back again to see Edmund Kean when he was performing there.
We know how Macready impressed him, though the finer genius of Kean
became very apparent to his retrospective judgment of the two; and it
was impossible to see or hear him, as even an old man, in some momentary
personation of one of Shakespeare's characters, above all of Richard
III., and not feel that a great actor had been lost in him.
So few professions were thought open to gentlemen in Robert Browning's
eighteenth year, that his father's acquiescence in that which he had
chosen might seem a matter scarcely less of necessity than of kindness.
But we must seek the kindness not only in this first, almost inevitable,
assent to his son's becoming a writer, but in the subsequent unfailing
readiness to support him in his literary career. 'Paracelsus',
'Sordello', and the whole of 'Bells and Pomegranates' were published at
his father's expense, and, incredible as it appears, brought no return
to him. This was vividly present to Mr. Browning's mind in what Mrs.
Kemble so justly defines as those 'remembering days' which are the
natural prelude to the forgetting ones. He declared, in the course of
these, to a friend, that for it alone he owed more to his father than to
anyone else in the world. Words to this effect, spoken in conversation
with his sister, have since, as it was right they should, found their
way into print. The more justly will the world interpret any incidental
admission he may ever have made, of intellectual disagreement between
that father and himself.
When the die was cast, and young Browning was definitely to adopt
literature as his profession, he qualified himself for it by reading and
digesting the whole of Johnson's Dictionary. We cannot be surprised to
hear this of one who displayed so great a mastery of words, and so deep
a knowledge of the capacities of the English language.
Chapter 5
1833-1835
'Pauline'--Letters to Mr. Fox--Publication of the Poem; chief
Biographical and Literary Characteristics--Mr. Fox's Review in the
'Monthly Repository'; other Notices--Russian Journey--Desired diplomatic
Appointment--Minor Poems; first Sonnet; their Mode of Appearance--'The
Trifler'--M. de Ripert-Monclar--'Paracelsus'--Letters to Mr. Fox
concerning it; its Publication--Incidental Origin of 'Paracelsus'; its
inspiring Motive; its Relation to 'Pauline'--Mr. Fox's Review of it in
the 'Monthly Repository'--Article in the 'Examiner' by John Forster.
Before Mr. Browning had half completed his twenty-first year he had
written 'Pauline, a Fragment of a Confession'. His sister was in the
secret, but this time his parents were not. This is why his aunt,
hearing that 'Robert' had 'written a poem,' volunteered the sum
requisite for its publication. Even this first instalment of success did
not inspire much hope in the family mind, and Miss Browning made pencil
copies of her favourite passages for the event, which seemed only too
possible, of her never seeing the whole poem again. It was, however,
accepted by Saunders and Otley, and appeared anonymously in 1833.
Meanwhile the young author had bethought himself of his early
sympathizer, Mr. Fox, and he wrote to him as follows (the letter is
undated):
Dear Sir,--Perhaps by the aid of the subjoined initials and a little
reflection, you may recollect an oddish sort of boy, who had the honour
of being introduced to you at Hackney some years back--at that time
a sayer of verse and a doer of it, and whose doings you had a little
previously commended after a fashion--(whether in earnest or not God
knows): that individual it is who takes the liberty of addressing one
whose slight commendation then, was more thought of than all the gun
drum and trumpet of praise would be now, and to submit to you a free and
easy sort of thing which he wrote some months ago 'on one leg' and which
comes out this week--having either heard or dreamed that you contribute
to the 'Westminster'.
Should it be found too insignificant for cutting up, I shall no less
remain, Dear sir, Your most obedient servant, R. B.
I have forgotten the main thing--which is to beg you not to spoil
a loophole I have kept for backing out of the thing if necessary,
'sympathy of dear friends,' &c. &c., none of whom know anything about
it.
Monday Morning; Rev.--Fox.
The answer was clearly encouraging, and Mr. Browning wrote again:
Dear Sir,--In consequence of your kind permission I send, or will send,
a dozen copies of 'Pauline' and (to mitigate the infliction) Shelley's
Poem--on account of what you mentioned this morning. It will perhaps
be as well that you let me know their safe arrival by a line to R. B.
junior, Hanover Cottage, Southampton Street, Camberwell. You must not
think me too encroaching, if I make the getting back 'Rosalind and
Helen' an excuse for calling on you some evening--the said 'R. and
H.' has, I observe, been well thumbed and sedulously marked by an
acquaintance of mine, but I have not time to rub out his labour of love.
I am, dear sir, Yours very really, R. Browning. Camberwell: 2 o'clock.
At the left-hand corner of the first page of this note is written: 'The
parcel--a "Pauline" parcel--is come. I send one as a witness.'
On the inner page is written:
'Impromptu on hearing a sermon by the Rev. T. R.--pronounced "heavy"--
'A _heavy_ sermon!--sure the error's great, For not a word Tom uttered
_had its weight_.'
A third letter, also undated, but post-marked March 29, 1833, refers
probably to the promise or announcement of a favourable notice. A fourth
conveys Mr. Browning's thanks for the notice itself:
My dear Sir,--I have just received your letter, which I am desirous of
acknowledging before any further mark of your kindness reaches me;--I
can only offer you my simple thanks--but they are of the sort that one
can give only once or twice in a life: all things considered, I think
you are almost repaid, if you imagine what I must feel--and it will have
been worth while to have made a fool of myself, only to have obtained a
'case' which leaves my fine fellow Mandeville at a dead lock.
As for the book--I hope ere long to better it, and to deserve your
goodness.
In the meantime I shall not forget the extent to which I am, dear sir,
Your most obliged and obedient servant R. B. S. & O.'s, Conduit St.,
Thursday m-g.
I must intrude on your attention, my dear sir, once more than I had
intended--but a notice like the one I have read will have its effect at
all hazards.
I can only say that I am very proud to feel as grateful as I do, and
not altogether hopeless of justifying, by effort at least, your most
generous 'coming forward'. Hazlitt wrote his essays, as he somewhere
tells us, mainly to send them to some one in the country who had 'always
prophesied he would be something'!--I shall never write a line without
thinking of the source of my first praise, be assured. I am, dear sir,
Yours most truly and obliged, Robert Browning. March 31, 1833.
Mr. Fox was then editor of a periodical called the 'Monthly Repository',
which, as his daughter, Mrs. Bridell-Fox, writes in her graceful
article on Robert Browning, in the 'Argosy' for February 1890, he was
endeavouring to raise from its original denominational character into
a first-class literary and political journal. The articles comprised in
the volume for 1833 are certainly full of interest and variety, at once
more popular and more solid than those prescribed by the present fashion
of monthly magazines. He reviewed 'Pauline' favourably in its April
number--that is, as soon as it had appeared; and the young poet thus
received from him an introduction to what should have been, though it
probably was not, a large circle of intelligent readers.
The poem was characterized by its author, five years later, in a
fantastic note appended to a copy of it, as 'the only remaining crab
of the shapely Tree of Life in my Fool's Paradise.' This name is ill
bestowed upon a work which, however wild a fruit of Mr. Browning's
genius, contains, in its many lines of exquisite fancy and deep pathos,
so much that is rich and sweet. It had also, to discard metaphor,
its faults of exaggeration and confusion; and it is of these that Mr.
Browning was probably thinking when he wrote his more serious apologetic
preface to its reprint in 1868. But these faults were partly due to his
conception of the character which he had tried to depict; and partly to
the inherent difficulty of depicting one so complex, in a succession
of mental and moral states, irrespectively of the conditions of time,
place, and circumstance which were involved in them. Only a very
powerful imagination could have inspired such an attempt. A still more
conspicuous effort of creative genius reveals itself at its close. The
moment chosen for the 'Confession' has been that of a supreme moral or
physical crisis. The exhaustion attendant on this is directly expressed
by the person who makes it, and may also be recognized in the vivid, yet
confusing, intensity of the reminiscences of which it consists. But
we are left in complete doubt as to whether the crisis is that of
approaching death or incipient convalescence, or which character it
bears in the sufferer's mind; and the language used in the closing pages
is such as to suggest, without the slightest break in poetic continuity,
alternately the one conclusion and the other. This was intended by
Browning to assist his anonymity; and when the writer in 'Tait's
Magazine' spoke of the poem as a piece of pure bewilderment, he
expressed the natural judgment of the Philistine, while proving himself
such. If the notice by J. S. Mill, which this criticism excluded, was
indeed--as Mr. Browning always believed--much more sympathetic, I can
only record my astonishment; for there never was a large and cultivated
intelligence one can imagine less in harmony than his with the poetic
excesses, or even the poetic qualities, of 'Pauline'. But this is a
digression.
Mr. Fox, though an accomplished critic, made very light of the artistic
blemishes of the work. His admiration for it was as generous as it was
genuine; and, having recognized in it the hand of a rising poet, it was
more congenial to him to hail that poet's advent than to register his
shortcomings.
'The poem,' he says, 'though evidently a hasty and imperfect sketch, has
truth and life in it, which gave us the thrill, and laid hold of us with
the power, the sensation of which has never yet failed us as a test of
genius.'
But it had also, in his mind, a distinguishing characteristic, which
raised it above the sphere of merely artistic criticism. The article
continues:
'We have never read anything more purely confessional. The whole
composition is of the spirit, spiritual. The scenery is in the chambers
of thought; the agencies are powers and passions; the events are
transitions from one state of spiritual existence to another.'
And we learn from the context that he accepted this confessional and
introspective quality as an expression of the highest emotional life--of
the essence, therefore, of religion. On this point the sincerest
admirers of the poem may find themselves at issue with Mr. Fox. Its
sentiment is warmly religious; it is always, in a certain sense,
spiritual; but its intellectual activities are exercised on entirely
temporal ground, and this fact would generally be admitted as the
negation of spirituality in the religious sense of the word. No
difference, however, of opinion as to his judgment of 'Pauline' can
lessen our appreciation of Mr. Fox's encouraging kindness to its author.
No one who loved Mr. Browning in himself, or in his work, can read the
last lines of this review without a throb of affectionate gratitude
for the sympathy so ungrudgingly, and--as he wrote during his latest
years--so opportunely given:
'In recognizing a poet we cannot stand upon trifles nor fret ourselves
about such matters [as a few blemishes]. Time enough for that
afterwards, when larger works come before us. Archimedes in the bath had
many particulars to settle about specific gravities and Hiero's crown,
but he first gave a glorious leap and shouted 'Eureka!''
Many persons have discovered Mr. Browning since he has been known to
fame. One only discovered him in his obscurity.
Next to that of Mr. Fox stands the name of John Forster among the first
spontaneous appreciators of Mr. Browning's genius; and his admiration
was, in its own way, the more valuable for the circumstances which
precluded in it all possible, even unconscious, bias of personal
interest or sympathy. But this belongs to a somewhat later period of our
history.
I am dwelling at some length on this first experience of Mr. Browning's
literary career, because the confidence which it gave him determined its
immediate future, if not its ultimate course--because, also, the poem
itself is more important to the understanding of his mind than perhaps
any other of his isolated works. It was the earliest of his dramatic
creations; it was therefore inevitably the most instinct with himself;
and we may regard the 'Confession' as to a great extent his own, without
for an instant ignoring the imaginative element which necessarily and
certainly entered into it. At one moment, indeed, his utterance is so
emphatic that we should feel it to be direct, even if we did not know it
to be true. The passage beginning, 'I am made up of an intensest life,'
conveys something more than the writer's actual psychological state. The
feverish desire of life became gradually modified into a more or less
active intellectual and imaginative curiosity; but the sense of
an individual, self-centred, and, as it presented itself to him,
unconditioned existence, survived all the teachings of experience, and
often indeed unconsciously imposed itself upon them.
I have already alluded to that other and more pathetic fragment of
distinct autobiography which is to be found in the invocation to the
'Sun-treader'. Mr. Fox, who has quoted great part of it, justly declares
that 'the fervency, the remembrance, the half-regret mingling with
its exultation, are as true as its leading image is beautiful.' The
'exultation' is in the triumph of Shelley's rising fame; the regret, for
the lost privilege of worshipping in solitary tenderness at an obscure
shrine. The double mood would have been characteristic of any period of
Mr. Browning's life.
The artistic influence of Shelley is also discernible in the natural
imagery of the poem, which reflects a fitful and emotional fancy instead
of the direct poetic vision of the author's later work.
'Pauline' received another and graceful tribute two months later than
the review. In an article of the 'Monthly Repository', and in the course
of a description of some luxuriant wood-scenery, the following passage
occurs:
'Shelley and Tennyson are the best books for this place. . . . They are
natives of this soil; literally so; and if planted would grow as surely
as a crowbar in Kentucky sprouts tenpenny nails. 'Probatum est.' Last
autumn L----dropped a poem of Shelley's down there in the wood,* amongst
the thick, damp, rotting leaves, and this spring some one found a
delicate exotic-looking plant, growing wild on the very spot, with
'Pauline' hanging from its slender stalk. Unripe fruit it may be, but of
pleasant flavour and promise, and a mellower produce, it may be hoped,
will follow.'
* Mr. Browning's copy of 'Rosalind and Helen', which he had lent
to Miss Flower, and which she lost in this wood on a picnic.
This and a bald though well-meant notice in the 'Athenaeum'
exhaust its literary history for this period.*
* Not quite, it appears. Since I wrote the above words,
Mr. Dykes Campbell has kindly copied for me the following extract
from the 'Literary Gazette' of March 23, 1833:
'Pauline: a Fragment of a Confession', pp. 71. London, 1833.
Saunders and Otley.
'Somewhat mystical, somewhat poetical, somewhat sensual,
and not a little unintelligible,--this is a dreamy volume,
without an object, and unfit for publication.'
The anonymity of the poem was not long preserved; there was no reason
why it should be. But 'Pauline' was, from the first, little known or
discussed beyond the immediate circle of the poet's friends; and when,
twenty years later, Dante Gabriel Rossetti unexpectedly came upon it
in the library of the British Museum, he could only surmise that it had
been written by the author of 'Paracelsus'.
The only recorded event of the next two years was Mr. Browning's
visit to Russia, which took place in the winter of 1833-4. The Russian
consul-general, Mr. Benckhausen, had taken a great liking to him, and
being sent to St. Petersburg on some special mission, proposed that
he should accompany him, nominally in the character of secretary.
The letters written to his sister during this, as during every other
absence, were full of graphic description, and would have been a mine
of interest for the student of his imaginative life. They are,
unfortunately, all destroyed, and we have only scattered reminiscences
of what they had to tell; but we know how strangely he was impressed
by some of the circumstances of the journey: above all, by the endless
monotony of snow-covered pine-forest, through which he and his companion
rushed for days and nights at the speed of six post-horses, without
seeming to move from one spot. He enjoyed the society of St. Petersburg,
and was fortunate enough, before his return, to witness the breaking-up
of the ice on the Neva, and see the Czar perform the yearly ceremony
of drinking the first glass of water from it. He was absent about three
months.
The one active career which would have recommended itself to him in his
earlier youth was diplomacy; it was that which he subsequently desired
for his son. He would indeed not have been averse to any post of
activity and responsibility not unsuited to the training of a gentleman.
Soon after his return from Russia he applied for appointment on a
mission which was to be despatched to Persia; and the careless wording
of the answer which his application received made him think for a moment
that it had been granted. He was much disappointed when he learned,
through an interview with the 'chief', that the place was otherwise
filled.
In 1834 he began a little series of contributions to the 'Monthly
Repository', extending into 1835-6, and consisting of five poems. The
earliest of these was a sonnet, not contained in any edition of Mr.
Browning's works, and which, I believe, first reappeared in Mr. Gosse's
article in the 'Century Magazine', December 1881; now part of his
'Personalia'. The second, beginning 'A king lived long ago', was to be
published, with alterations and additions, as one of 'Pippa's' songs.
'Porphyria's Lover' and 'Johannes Agricola in Meditation' were reprinted
together in 'Bells and Pomegranates' under the heading of 'Madhouse
Cells'. The fifth consisted of the Lines beginning 'Still ailing, Wind?
wilt be appeased or no?' afterwards introduced into the sixth section of
'James Lee's Wife'. The sonnet is not very striking, though hints of the
poet's future psychological subtlety are not wanting in it; but his most
essential dramatic quality reveals itself in the last three poems.
This winter of 1834-5 witnessed the birth, perhaps also the extinction,
of an amateur periodical, established by some of Mr. Browning's friends;
foremost among these the young Dowsons, afterwards connected with Alfred
Domett. The magazine was called the 'Trifler', and published in monthly
numbers of about ten pages each. It collapsed from lack of pocket-money
on the part of the editors; but Mr. Browning had written for it one
letter, February 1833, signed with his usual initial Z, and entitled
'Some strictures on a late article in the 'Trifler'.' This boyish
production sparkles with fun, while affecting the lengthy quaintnesses
of some obsolete modes of speech. The article which it attacks was 'A
Dissertation on Debt and Debtors', where the subject was, I imagine,
treated in the orthodox way: and he expends all his paradox in showing
that indebtedness is a necessary condition of human life, and all his
sophistry in confusing it with the abstract sense of obligation. It is,
perhaps, scarcely fair to call attention to such a mere argumentative
and literary freak; but there is something so comical in a defence of
debt, however transparent, proceeding from a man to whom never in his
life a bill can have been sent in twice, and who would always have
preferred ready-money payment to receiving a bill at all, that I may be
forgiven for quoting some passages from it.
For to be man is to be a debtor:--hinting but slightly at the grand and
primeval debt implied in the idea of a creation, as matter too hard
for ears like thine, (for saith not Luther, What hath a cow to do with
nutmegs?) I must, nevertheless, remind thee that all moralists
have concurred in considering this our mortal sojourn as indeed an
uninterrupted state of debt, and the world our dwelling-place as
represented by nothing so aptly as by an inn, wherein those who lodge
most commodiously have in perspective a proportionate score to reduce,*
and those who fare least delicately, but an insignificant shot to
discharge--or, as the tuneful Quarles well phraseth it--
He's most in _debt_ who lingers out the day,
Who dies betimes has less and less to pay.
So far, therefore, from these sagacious ethics holding that
Debt cramps the energies of the soul, &c.
as thou pratest, 'tis plain that they have willed on the very outset
to inculcate this truth on the mind of every man,--no barren and
inconsequential dogma, but an effectual, ever influencing and productive
rule of life,--that he is born a debtor, lives a debtor--aye, friend,
and when thou diest, will not some judicious bystander,--no recreant as
thou to the bonds of nature, but a good borrower and true--remark, as
did his grandsire before him on like occasions, that thou hast 'paid the
_debt_ of nature'? Ha! I have thee 'beyond the rules', as one (a bailiff)
may say!
* Miss Hickey, on reading this passage, has called my
attention to the fact that the sentiment which it parodies
is identical with that expressed in these words of
'Prospice',
. . . in a minute pay glad life's arrears
Of pain, darkness, and cold.
Such performances supplied a distraction to the more serious work of
writing 'Paracelsus', which was to be concluded in March 1835, and which
occupied the foregoing winter months. We do not know to what extent Mr.
Browning had remained in communication with Mr. Fox; but the following
letters show that the friend of 'Pauline' gave ready and efficient help
in the strangely difficult task of securing a publisher for the new
poem.
The first is dated April 2, 1835.
Dear Sir,--I beg to acknowledge the receipt of your
letter:--Sardanapalus 'could not go on multiplying kingdoms'--nor I
protestations--but I thank you very much.
You will oblige me indeed by forwarding the introduction to Moxon. I
merely suggested him in particular, on account of his good name and
fame among author-folk, besides he has himself written--as the Americans
say--'more poetry 'an you can shake a stick at.' So I hope we shall come
to terms.
I also hope my poem will turn out not utterly unworthy your kind
interest, and more deserving your favour than anything of mine you have
as yet seen; indeed I all along proposed to myself such an endeavour,
for it will never do for one so distinguished by past praise to prove
nobody after all--'nous verrons'. I am, dear sir, Yours most truly and
obliged Robt. Browning.
On April 16 he wrote again as follows:
Dear Sir,
Your communication gladdened the cockles of my heart. I lost no time
in presenting myself to Moxon, but no sooner was Mr. Clarke's letter
perused than the Moxonian visage loured exceedingly thereat--the
Moxonian accent grew dolorous thereupon:--'Artevelde' has not paid
expenses by about thirty odd pounds. Tennyson's poetry is 'popular at
Cambridge', and yet of 800 copies which were printed of his last,
some 300 only have gone off: Mr. M. hardly knows whether he shall ever
venture again, &c. &c., and in short begs to decline even inspecting,
&c. &c.
I called on Saunders and Otley at once, and, marvel of marvels, do
really think there is some chance of our coming to decent terms--I shall
know at the beginning of next week, but am not over-sanguine.
You will 'sarve me out'? two words to that; being the man you are, you
must need very little telling from me, of the real feeling I have of
your criticism's worth, and if I have had no more of it, surely I
am hardly to blame, who have in more than one instance bored you
sufficiently: but not a particle of your article has been rejected or
neglected by your observant humble servant, and very proud shall I be
if my new work bear in it the marks of the influence under which it was
undertaken--and if I prove not a fit compeer of the potter in Horace
who anticipated an amphora and produced a porridge-pot. I purposely
keep back the subject until you see my conception of its
capabilities--otherwise you would be planning a vase fit to give the
go-by to Evander's best crockery, which my cantharus would cut but a
sorry figure beside--hardly up to the ansa.
But such as it is, it is very earnest and suggestive--and likely I hope
to do good; and though I am rather scared at the thought of a _fresh eye_
going over its 4,000 lines--discovering blemishes of all sorts which
my one wit cannot avail to detect, fools treated as sages, obscure
passages, slipshod verses, and much that worse is,--yet on the whole
I am not much afraid of the issue, and I would give something to be
allowed to read it some morning to you--for every rap o' the knuckles I
should get a clap o' the back, I know.
I have another affair on hand, rather of a more popular nature, I
conceive, but not so decisive and explicit on a point or two--so I
decide on trying the question with this:--I really shall _need_ your
notice, on this account; I shall affix my name and stick my arms akimbo;
there are a few precious bold bits here and there, and the drift and
scope are awfully radical--I am 'off' for ever with the other side, but
must by all means be 'on' with yours--a position once gained, worthier
works shall follow--therefore a certain writer* who meditated a notice
(it matters not laudatory or otherwise) on 'Pauline' in the 'Examiner',
must be benignant or supercilious as he shall choose, but in no case an
idle spectator of my first appearance on any stage (having previously
only dabbled in private theatricals) and bawl 'Hats off!' 'Down in
front!' &c., as soon as I get to the proscenium; and he may depend that
tho' my 'Now is the winter of our discontent' be rather awkward, yet
there shall be occasional outbreaks of good stuff--that I shall warm as
I get on, and finally wish 'Richmond at the bottom of the seas,' &c. in
the best style imaginable.
* Mr. John Stuart Mill.
Excuse all this swagger, I know you will, and
(The signature has been cut off; evidently for an autograph.)
Mr. Effingham Wilson was induced to publish the poem, but more, we
understand, on the ground of radical sympathies in Mr. Fox and the
author than on that of its intrinsic worth.
The title-page of 'Paracelsus' introduces us to one of the warmest
friendships of Mr. Browning's life. Count de Ripert-Monclar was a young
French Royalist, one of those who had accompanied the Duchesse de Berri
on her Chouan expedition, and was then, for a few years, spending his
summers in England; ostensibly for his pleasure, really--as he
confessed to the Browning family--in the character of private agent of
communication between the royal exiles and their friends in France. He
was four years older than the poet, and of intellectual tastes which
created an immediate bond of union between them. In the course of one of
their conversations, he suggested the life of Paracelsus as a possible
subject for a poem; but on second thoughts pronounced it unsuitable,
because it gave no room for the introduction of love: about which, he
added, every young man of their age thought he had something quite new
to say. Mr. Browning decided, after the necessary study, that he would
write a poem on Paracelsus, but treating him in his own way. It was
dedicated, in fulfilment of a promise, to the friend to whom its
inspiration had been due.
The Count's visits to England entirely ceased, and the two friends
did not meet for twenty years. Then, one day, in a street in Rome, Mr.
Browning heard a voice behind him crying, 'Robert!' He turned, and
there was 'Amedee'. Both were, by that time, married; the Count--then, I
believe, Marquis--to an English lady, Miss Jerningham. Mrs. Browning, to
whom of course he was introduced, liked him very much.*
* A minor result of the intimacy was that Mr. Browning
became member, in 1835, of the Institut Historique, and in
1836 of the Societe Francaise de Statistique Universelle, to
both of which learned bodies his friend belonged.
Mr. Browning did treat Paracelsus in his own way; and in so doing
produced a character--at all events a history--which, according
to recent judgments, approached far nearer to the reality than any
conception which had until then been formed of it. He had carefully
collected all the known facts of the great discoverer's life, and
interpreted them with a sympathy which was no less an intuition of their
truth than a reflection of his own genius upon them. We are enabled
in some measure to judge of this by a paper entitled 'Paracelsus, the
Reformer of Medicine', written by Dr. Edward Berdoe for the Browning
Society, and read at its October meeting in 1888; and in the difficulty
which exists for most of us of verifying the historical data of
Mr. Browning's poem, it becomes a valuable guide to, as well as an
interesting comment upon it.
Dr. Berdoe reminds us that we cannot understand the real Paracelsus
without reference to the occult sciences so largely cultivated in his
day, as also to the mental atmosphere which produced them; and he quotes
in illustration a passage from the writings of that Bishop of Spanheim
who was the instructor of Paracelsus, and who appears as such in the
poem. The passage is a definition of divine magic, which is apparently
another term for alchemy; and lays down the great doctrine of all
mediaeval occultism, as of all modern theosophy--of a soul-power equally
operative in the material and the immaterial, in nature and in the
consciousness of man.
The same clue will guide us, as no other can, through what is apparently
conflicting in the aims and methods, anomalous in the moral experience,
of the Paracelsus of the poem. His feverish pursuit, among the things of
Nature, of an ultimate of knowledge, not contained, even in fragments,
in her isolated truths; the sense of failure which haunts his most
valuable attainments; his tampering with the lower or diabolic magic,
when the divine has failed; the ascetic exaltation in which he begins
his career; the sudden awakening to the spiritual sterility which has
been consequent on it; all these find their place, if not always their
counterpart, in the real life.
The language of Mr. Browning's Paracelsus, his attitude towards himself
and the world, are not, however, quite consonant with the alleged facts.
They are more appropriate to an ardent explorer of the world of abstract
thought than to a mystical scientist pursuing the secret of existence.
He preserves, in all his mental vicissitudes, a loftiness of tone and a
unity of intention, difficult to connect, even in fancy, with the real
man, in whom the inherited superstitions and the prognostics of true
science must often have clashed with each other. Dr. Berdoe's picture
of the 'Reformer' drawn more directly from history, conveys this double
impression. Mr. Browning has rendered him more simple by, as it were,
recasting him in the atmosphere of a more modern time, and of his own
intellectual life. This poem still, therefore, belongs to the same group
as 'Pauline', though, as an effort of dramatic creation, superior to it.
We find the Poet with still less of dramatic disguise in the deathbed
revelation which forms so beautiful a close to the story. It supplies a
fitter comment to the errors of the dramatic Paracelsus, than to those
of the historical, whether or not its utterance was within the compass
of historical probability, as Dr. Berdoe believes. In any case it was
the direct product of Mr. Browning's mind, and expressed what was to
be his permanent conviction. It might then have been an echo of German
pantheistic philosophies. From the point of view of science--of modern
science at least--it was prophetic; although the prophecy of one for
whom evolution could never mean less or more than a divine creation
operating on this progressive plan.
The more striking, perhaps, for its personal quality are the evidences
of imaginative sympathy, even direct human insight, in which the poem
abounds. Festus is, indeed, an essentially human creature: the
man--it might have been the woman--of unambitious intellect and large
intelligence of the heart, in whom so many among us have found comfort
and help. We often feel, in reading 'Pauline', that the poet in it was
older than the man. The impression is more strongly and more definitely
conveyed by this second work, which has none of the intellectual
crudeness of 'Pauline', though it still belongs to an early phase of the
author's intellectual life. Not only its mental, but its moral maturity,
seems so much in advance of his uncompleted twenty-third year.
To the first edition of 'Paracelsus' was affixed a preface, now long
discarded, but which acquires fresh interest in a retrospect of the
author's completed work; for it lays down the constant principle
of dramatic creation by which that work was to be inspired. It also
anticipates probable criticism of the artistic form which on this, and
so many subsequent occasions, he selected for it.
'I am anxious that the reader should not, at the very outset--mistaking
my performance for one of a class with which it has nothing in
common--judge it by principles on which it was never moulded, and
subject it to a standard to which it was never meant to conform. I
therefore anticipate his discovery, that it is an attempt, probably more
novel than happy, to reverse the method usually adopted by writers whose
aim it is to set forth any phenomenon of the mind or the passions,
by the operation of persons and events; and that, instead of having
recourse to an external machinery of incidents to create and evolve the
crisis I desire to produce, I have ventured to display somewhat minutely
the mood itself in its rise and progress, and have suffered the agency
by which it is influenced and determined, to be generally discernible
in its effects alone, and subordinate throughout, if not altogether
excluded: and this for a reason. I have endeavoured to write a poem, not
a drama: the canons of the drama are well known, and I cannot but think
that, inasmuch as they have immediate regard to stage representation,
the peculiar advantages they hold out are really such only so long as
the purpose for which they were at first instituted is kept in view. I
do not very well understand what is called a Dramatic Poem, wherein all
those restrictions only submitted to on account of compensating good
in the original scheme are scrupulously retained, as though for some
special fitness in themselves--and all new facilities placed at an
author's disposal by the vehicle he selects, as pertinaciously rejected.
. . .'
Mr. Fox reviewed this also in the 'Monthly Repository'. The article
might be obtained through the kindness of Mrs. Bridell-Fox; but it will
be sufficient for my purpose to refer to its closing paragraph, as given
by her in the 'Argosy' of February 1890. It was a final expression of
what the writer regarded as the fitting intellectual attitude towards a
rising poet, whose aims and methods lay so far beyond the range of
the conventional rules of poetry. The great event in the history of
'Paracelsus' was John Forster's article on it in the 'Examiner'. Mr.
Forster had recently come to town. He could barely have heard Mr.
Browning's name, and, as he afterwards told him, was perplexed in
reading the poem by the question of whether its author was an old or a
young man; but he knew that a writer in the 'Athenaeum' had called it
rubbish, and he had taken it up as a probable subject for a piece of
slashing criticism. What he did write can scarcely be defined as praise.
It was the simple, ungrudging admission of the unequivocal power, as
well as brilliant promise, which he recognized in the work. This
mutual experience was the introduction to a long and, certainly on Mr.
Browning's part, a sincere friendship.
Chapter 6
1835-1838
Removal to Hatcham; some Particulars--Renewed Intercourse with the
second Family of Robert Browning's Grandfather--Reuben Browning--William
Shergold Browning--Visitors at Hatcham--Thomas Carlyle--Social Life--New
Friends and Acquaintance--Introduction to Macready--New Year's Eve
at Elm Place--Introduction to John Forster--Miss Fanny Haworth--Miss
Martineau--Serjeant Talfourd--The 'Ion' Supper--'Strafford'--Relations
with Macready--Performance of 'Strafford'--Letters concerning it
from Mr. Browning and Miss Flower--Personal Glimpses of Robert
Browning--Rival Forms of Dramatic Inspiration--Relation of 'Strafford'
to 'Sordello'--Mr. Robertson and the 'Westminster Review'.
It was soon after this time, though the exact date cannot be recalled,
that the Browning family moved from Camberwell to Hatcham. Some such
change had long been in contemplation, for their house was now too
small; and the finding one more suitable, in the latter place, had
decided the question. The new home possessed great attractions. The
long, low rooms of its upper storey supplied abundant accommodation for
the elder Mr. Browning's six thousand books. Mrs. Browning was suffering
greatly from her chronic ailment, neuralgia; and the large garden,
opening on to the Surrey hills, promised her all the benefits of country
air. There were a coach-house and stable, which, by a curious,
probably old-fashioned, arrangement, formed part of the house, and were
accessible from it. Here the 'good horse', York, was eventually put up;
and near this, in the garden, the poet soon had another though humbler
friend in the person of a toad, which became so much attached to him
that it would follow him as he walked. He visited it daily, where it
burrowed under a white rose tree, announcing himself by a pinch of
gravel dropped into its hole; and the creature would crawl forth, allow
its head to be gently tickled, and reward the act with that loving
glance of the soft full eyes which Mr. Browning has recalled in one of
the poems of 'Asolando'.
This change of residence brought the grandfather's second family, for
the first time, into close as well as friendly contact with the first.
Mr. Browning had always remained on outwardly friendly terms with
his stepmother; and both he and his children were rewarded for this
forbearance by the cordial relations which grew up between themselves
and two of her sons. But in the earlier days they lived too far apart
for frequent meeting. The old Mrs. Browning was now a widow, and,
in order to be near her relations, she also came to Hatcham, and
established herself there in close neighbourhood to them. She had then
with her only a son and a daughter, those known to the poet's friends
as Uncle Reuben and Aunt Jemima; respectively nine years, and one year,
older than he. 'Aunt Jemima' married not long afterwards, and is chiefly
remembered as having been very amiable, and, in early youth, to use
her nephew's words, 'as beautiful as the day;' but kindly, merry
'Uncle Reuben', then clerk in the Rothschilds' London bank,* became a
conspicuous member of the family circle. This does not mean that the
poet was ever indebted to him for pecuniary help; and it is desirable
that this should be understood, since it has been confidently asserted
that he was so. So long as he was dependent at all, he depended
exclusively on his father. Even the use of his uncle's horse, which
might have been accepted as a friendly concession on Mr. Reuben's part,
did not really represent one. The animal stood, as I have said, in Mr.
Browning's stable, and it was groomed by his gardener. The promise of
these conveniences had induced Reuben Browning to buy a horse instead of
continuing to hire one. He could only ride it on a few days of the week,
and it was rather a gain than a loss to him that so good a horseman as
his nephew should exercise it during the interval.
* This uncle's name, and his business relations with the
great Jewish firm, have contributed to the mistaken theory
of the poet's descent.
Uncle Reuben was not a great appreciator of poetry--at all events of
his nephew's; and an irreverent remark on 'Sordello', imputed to a more
eminent contemporary, proceeded, under cover of a friend's name, from
him. But he had his share of mental endowments. We are told that he was
a good linguist, and that he wrote on finance under an assumed name. He
was also, apparently, an accomplished classic. Lord Beaconsfield is said
to have declared that the inscription on a silver inkstand, presented to
the daughter of Lionel Rothschild on her marriage, by the clerks at New
Court, 'was the most appropriate thing he had ever come across;' and
that whoever had selected it must be one of the first Latin scholars of
the day. It was Mr. Reuben Browning.
Another favourite uncle was William Shergold Browning, though less
intimate with his nephew and niece than he would have become if he had
not married while they were still children, and settled in Paris, where
his father's interest had placed him in the Rothschild house. He is
known by his 'History of the Huguenots', a work, we are told, 'full of
research, with a reference to contemporary literature for almost every
occurrence mentioned or referred to.' He also wrote the 'Provost of
Paris', and 'Hoel Morven', historical novels, and 'Leisure Hours', a
collection of miscellanies; and was a contributor for some years to
the 'Gentleman's Magazine'. It was chiefly from this uncle that Miss
Browning and her brother heard the now often-repeated stories of their
probable ancestors, Micaiah Browning, who distinguished himself at the
siege of Derry, and that commander of the ship 'Holy Ghost' who conveyed
Henry V. to France before the battle of Agincourt, and received the
coat-of-arms, with its emblematic waves, in reward for his service.
Robert Browning was also indebted to him for the acquaintance of M. de
Ripert-Monclar; for he was on friendly terms with the uncle of the young
count, the Marquis de Fortia, a learned man and member of the Institut,
and gave a letter of introduction--actually, I believe, to his brother
Reuben--at the Marquis's request.*
* A grandson of William Shergold, Robert Jardine Browning,
graduated at Lincoln College, was called to the Bar, and is
now Crown Prosecutor in New South Wales; where his name
first gave rise to a report that he was Mr. Browning's son,
while the announcement of his marriage was, for a moment,
connected with Mr. Browning himself. He was also intimate
with the poet and his sister, who liked him very much.
The friendly relations with Carlyle, which resulted in his high estimate
of the poet's mother, also began at Hatcham. On one occasion he took
his brother, the doctor, with him to dine there. An earlier and much
attached friend of the family was Captain Pritchard, cousin to the noted
physician Dr. Blundell. He enabled the young Robert, whom he knew from
the age of sixteen, to attend some of Dr. Blundell's lectures; and this
aroused in him a considerable interest in the sciences connected with
medicine, though, as I shall have occasion to show, no knowledge of
either disease or its treatment ever seems to have penetrated into his
life. A Captain Lloyd is indirectly associated with 'The Flight of the
Duchess'. That poem was not completed according to its original plan;
and it was the always welcome occurrence of a visit from this gentleman
which arrested its completion. Mr. Browning vividly remembered how the
click of the garden gate, and the sight of the familiar figure advancing
towards the house, had broken in upon his work and dispelled its first
inspiration.
The appearance of 'Paracelsus' did not give the young poet his just
place in popular judgment and public esteem. A generation was to pass
before this was conceded to him. But it compelled his recognition by the
leading or rising literary men of the day; and a fuller and more varied
social life now opened before him. The names of Serjeant Talfourd,
Horne, Leigh Hunt, Barry Cornwall (Procter), Monckton Milnes (Lord
Houghton), Eliot Warburton, Dickens, Wordsworth, and Walter Savage
Landor, represent, with that of Forster, some of the acquaintances made,
or the friendships begun, at this period. Prominent among the friends
that were to be, was also Archer Gurney, well known in later life as the
Rev. Archer Gurney, and chaplain to the British embassy in Paris.
His sympathies were at present largely absorbed by politics. He was
contesting the representation of some county, on the Conservative side;
but he took a very vivid interest in Mr. Browning's poems; and this
perhaps fixes the beginning of the intimacy at a somewhat later date;
since a pretty story by which it was illustrated connects itself with
the publication of 'Bells and Pomegranates'. He himself wrote dramas and
poems. Sir John, afterwards Lord, Hanmer was also much attracted by the
young poet, who spent a pleasant week with him at Bettisfield Park. He
was the author of a volume entitled 'Fra Cipollo and other Poems', from
which the motto of 'Colombe's Birthday' was subsequently taken.
The friends, old and new, met in the informal manner of those days, at
afternoon dinners, or later suppers, at the houses of Mr. Fox, Serjeant
Talfourd, and, as we shall see, Mr. Macready; and Mr. Fox's daughter,
then only a little girl, but intelligent and observant for her years,
well remembers the pleasant gatherings at which she was allowed to
assist, when first performances of plays, or first readings of plays and
poems, had brought some of the younger and more ardent spirits together.
Miss Flower, also, takes her place in the literary group. Her sister had
married in 1834, and left her free to live for her own pursuits and her
own friends; and Mr. Browning must have seen more of her then than was
possible in his boyish days.
None, however, of these intimacies were, at the time, so important to
him as that formed with the great actor Macready. They were introduced
to each other by Mr. Fox early in the winter of 1835-6; the meeting is
thus chronicled in Macready's diary, November 27.*
* 'Macready's Reminiscences', edited by Sir Frederick Pollock;
1875.
'Went from chambers to dine with Rev. William Fox, Bayswater. . . . Mr.
Robert Browning, the author of 'Paracelsus', came in after dinner; I was
very much pleased to meet him. His face is full of intelligence. . . .
I took Mr. Browning on, and requested to be allowed to improve my
acquaintance with him. He expressed himself warmly, as gratified by the
proposal, wished to send me his book; we exchanged cards and parted.'
On December 7 he writes:
'Read 'Paracelsus', a work of great daring, starred with poetry of
thought, feeling, and diction, but occasionally obscure; the writer can
scarcely fail to be a leading spirit of his time. . . .'
He invited Mr. Browning to his country house, Elm Place, Elstree, for
the last evening of the year; and again refers to him under date of
December 31.
'. . . Our other guests were Miss Henney, Forster, Cattermole, Browning,
and Mr. Munro. Mr. Browning was very popular with the whole party; his
simple and enthusiastic manner engaged attention, and won opinions from
all present; he looks and speaks more like a youthful poet than any man
I ever saw.'
This New-Year's-Eve visit brought Browning and Forster together for the
first time. The journey to Elstree was then performed by coach, and the
two young men met at the 'Blue Posts', where, with one or more of Mr.
Macready's other guests, they waited for the coach to start. They eyed
each other with interest, both being striking in their way, and
neither knowing who the other was. When the introduction took place at
Macready's house, Mr. Forster supplemented it by saying: 'Did you see a
little notice of you I wrote in the 'Examiner'?' The two names will
now be constantly associated in Macready's diary, which, except for
Mr. Browning's own casual utterances, is almost our only record of his
literary and social life during the next two years.
It was at Elm Place that Mr. Browning first met Miss Euphrasia Fanny
Haworth, then a neighbour of Mr. Macready, residing with her mother at
Barham Lodge. Miss Haworth was still a young woman, but her love and
talent for art and literature made her a fitting member of the genial
circle to which Mr. Browning belonged; and she and the poet soon became
fast friends. Her first name appears as 'Eyebright' in 'Sordello'. His
letters to her, returned after her death by her brother, Mr. Frederick
Haworth, supply valuable records of his experiences and of his feelings
at one very interesting, and one deeply sorrowful, period of his
history. She was a thoroughly kindly, as well as gifted woman, and much
appreciated by those of the poet's friends who knew her as a resident in
London during her last years. A portrait which she took of him in 1874
is considered by some persons very good.
At about this time also, and probably through Miss Haworth, he became
acquainted with Miss Martineau.
Soon after his introduction to Macready, if not before, Mr. Browning
became busy with the thought of writing for the stage. The diary has
this entry for February 16, 1836:
'Forster and Browning called, and talked over the plot of a tragedy,
which Browning had begun to think of: the subject, Narses. He said that
I had _bit_ him by my performance of Othello, and I told him I hoped I
should make the blood come. It would indeed be some recompense for the
miseries, the humiliations, the heart-sickening disgusts which I have
endured in my profession, if, by its exercise, I had awakened a spirit
of poetry whose influence would elevate, ennoble, and adorn our degraded
drama. May it be!'
But Narses was abandoned, and the more serious inspiration and more
definite motive were to come later. They connect themselves with one
of the pleasant social occurrences which must have lived in the young
poet's memory. On May 26 'Ion' had been performed for the first time and
with great success, Mr. Macready sustaining the principal part; and the
great actor and a number of their common friends had met at supper at
Serjeant Talfourd's house to celebrate the occasion. The party included
Wordsworth and Landor, both of whom Mr. Browning then met for the first
time. Toasts flew right and left. Mr. Browning's health was proposed
by Serjeant Talfourd as that of the youngest poet of England, and
Wordsworth responded to the appeal with very kindly courtesy. The
conversation afterwards turned upon plays, and Macready, who had ignored
a half-joking question of Miss Mitford, whether, if she wrote one, he
would act in it, overtook Browning as they were leaving the house, and
said, 'Write a play, Browning, and keep me from going to America.' The
reply was, 'Shall it be historical and English; what do you say to a
drama on Strafford?'
This ready response on the poet's part showed that Strafford, as a
dramatic subject, had been occupying his thoughts. The subject was in
the air, because Forster was then bringing out a life of that statesman,
with others belonging to the same period. It was more than in the air,
so far as Browning was concerned, because his friend had been disabled,
either through sickness or sorrow, from finishing this volume by the
appointed time, and he, as well he might, had largely helped him in its
completion. It was, however, not till August 3 that Macready wrote in
his diary:
'Forster told me that Browning had fixed on Strafford for the subject of
a tragedy; he could not have hit upon one that I could have more readily
concurred in.'
A previous entry of May 30, the occasion of which is only implied, shows
with how high an estimate of Mr. Browning's intellectual importance
Macready's professional relations to him began.
'Arriving at chambers, I found a note from Browning. What can I say upon
it? It was a tribute which remunerated me for the annoyances and cares
of years: it was one of the very highest, may I not say the highest,
honour I have through life received.'
The estimate maintained itself in reference to the value of Mr.
Browning's work, since he wrote on March 13, 1837:
'Read before dinner a few pages of 'Paracelsus', which raises my wonder
the more I read it. . . . Looked over two plays, which it was not
possible to read, hardly as I tried. . . . Read some scenes in
'Strafford', which restore one to the world of sense and feeling once
again.'
But as the day of the performance drew near, he became at once more
anxious and more critical. An entry of April 28 comments somewhat
sharply on the dramatic faults of 'Strafford', besides declaring the
writer's belief that the only chance for it is in the acting, which, 'by
possibility, might carry it to the end without disapprobation,' though
he dares not hope without opposition. It is quite conceivable that his
first complete study of the play, and first rehearsal of it, brought to
light deficiencies which had previously escaped him; but so complete
a change of sentiment points also to private causes of uneasiness and
irritation; and, perhaps, to the knowledge that its being saved by
collective good acting was out of the question.
'Strafford' was performed at Covent Garden Theatre on May 1. Mr.
Browning wrote to Mr. Fox after one of the last rehearsals:
May Day, Lincoln's Inn Fields.
Dear Sir,--All my endeavours to procure a copy before this morning have
been fruitless. I send the first book of the first bundle. _Pray_ look
over it--the alterations to-night will be considerable. The complexion
of the piece is, I grieve to say, 'perfect gallows' just now--our _King_,
Mr. Dale, being . . . but you'll see him, and, I fear, not much applaud.
Your unworthy son, in things literary, Robert Browning.
P.S. (in pencil).--A most unnecessary desire, but urged on me by Messrs.
Longman: no notice on Str. in to-night's True Sun,* lest the other
papers be jealous!!!
* Mr. Fox reviewed 'Strafford' in the 'True Sun'.
A second letter, undated, but evidently written a day or two later,
refers to the promised notice, which had then appeared.
Tuesday Night.
No words can express my feelings: I happen to be much annoyed and
unwell--but your most generous notice has almost made 'my soul well and
happy now.'
I thank you, my most kind, most constant friend, from my heart for your
goodness--which is brave enough, just now. I am ever and increasingly
yours, Robert Browning.
You will be glad to see me on the earliest occasion, will you not? I
shall certainly come.
A letter from Miss Flower to Miss Sarah Fox (sister to the Rev. William
Fox), at Norwich, contains the following passage, which evidently
continues a chapter of London news:
'Then 'Strafford'; were you not pleased to hear of the success of one
you must, I think, remember a very little boy, years ago. If not, you
have often heard us speak of Robert Browning: and it is a great deal to
have accomplished a successful tragedy, although he seems a good deal
annoyed at the go of things behind the scenes, and declares he will
never write a play again, as long as he lives. You have no idea of
the ignorance and obstinacy of the whole set, with here and there an
exception; think of his having to write out the meaning of the word
'impeachment', as some of them thought it meant 'poaching'.'
On the first night, indeed, the fate of 'Strafford' hung in the balance;
it was saved by Macready and Miss Helen Faucit. After this they must
have been better supported, as it was received on the second night
with enthusiasm by a full house. The catastrophe came after the fifth
performance, with the desertion of the actor who had sustained the
part of Pym. We cannot now judge whether, even under favourable
circumstances, the play would have had as long a run as was intended;
but the casting vote in favour of this view is given by the conduct of
Mr. Osbaldistone, the manager, when it was submitted to him. The diary
says, March 30, that he caught at it with avidity, and agreed to produce
it without delay. The terms he offered to the author must also have been
considered favourable in those days.
The play was published in April by Longman, this time not at the
author's expense; but it brought no return either to him or to his
publisher. It was dedicated 'in all affectionate admiration' to William
C. Macready.
We gain some personal glimpses of the Browning of 1835-6; one especially
through Mrs. Bridell-Fox, who thus describes her first meeting with him:
'I remember . . . when Mr. Browning entered the drawing-room, with a
quick light step; and on hearing from me that my father was out, and
in fact that nobody was at home but myself, he said: "It's my birthday
to-day; I'll wait till they come in," and sitting down to the piano,
he added: "If it won't disturb you, I'll play till they do." And as he
turned to the instrument, the bells of some neighbouring church suddenly
burst out with a frantic merry peal. It seemed, to my childish fancy, as
if in response to the remark that it was his birthday. He was then slim
and dark, and very handsome; and--may I hint it--just a trifle of a
dandy, addicted to lemon-coloured kid-gloves and such things: quite "the
glass of fashion and the mould of form." But full of ambition, eager for
success, eager for fame, and, what's more, determined to conquer fame
and to achieve success.'
I do not think his memory ever taxed him with foppishness, though he may
have had the innocent personal vanity of an attractive young man at his
first period of much seeing and being seen; but all we know of him
at that time bears out the impression Mrs. Fox conveys, of a joyous,
artless confidence in himself and in life, easily depressed, but quickly
reasserting itself; and in which the eagerness for new experiences
had freed itself from the rebellious impatience of boyish days. The
self-confidence had its touches of flippancy and conceit; but on this
side it must have been constantly counteracted by his gratitude for
kindness, and by his enthusiastic appreciation of the merits of other
men. His powers of feeling, indeed, greatly expended themselves in this
way. He was very attractive to women and, as we have seen, warmly loved
by very various types of men; but, except in its poetic sense, his
emotional nature was by no means then in the ascendant: a fact difficult
to realize when we remember the passion of his childhood's love for
mother and home, and the new and deep capabilities of affection to be
developed in future days. The poet's soul in him was feeling its wings;
the realities of life had not yet begun to weight them.
We see him again at the 'Ion' supper, in the grace and modesty with
which he received the honours then adjudged to him. The testimony has
been said to come from Miss Mitford, but may easily have been supplied
by Miss Haworth, who was also present on this occasion.
Mr. Browning's impulse towards play-writing had not, as we have seen,
begun with 'Strafford'. It was still very far from being exhausted. And
though he had struck out for himself another line of dramatic activity,
his love for the higher theatrical life, and the legitimate inducements
of the more lucrative and not necessarily less noble form of
composition, might ultimately in some degree have prevailed with him if
circumstances had been such as to educate his theatrical capabilities,
and to reward them. His first acted drama was, however, an interlude to
the production of the important group of poems which was to be completed
by 'Sordello'; and he alludes to this later work in an also discarded
preface to 'Strafford', as one on which he had for some time been
engaged. He even characterizes the Tragedy as an attempt 'to freshen
a jaded mind by diverting it to the healthy natures of a grand epoch.'
'Sordello' again occupied him during the remainder of 1837 and the
beginning of 1838; and by the spring of this year he must have been
thankful to vary the scene and mode of his labours by means of a first
visit to Italy. He announces his impending journey, with its immediate
plan and purpose, in the following note:
To John Robertson, Esq.
Good Friday, 1838.
Dear Sir,--I was not fortunate enough to find you the day before
yesterday--and must tell you very hurriedly that I sail this morning
for Venice--intending to finish my poem among the scenes it describes.
I shall have your good wishes I know. Believe me, in return, Dear sir,
Yours faithfully and obliged, Robert Browning.
Mr. John Robertson had influence with the 'Westminster Review', either
as editor, or member of its staff. He had been introduced to Mr.
Browning by Miss Martineau; and, being a great admirer of 'Paracelsus',
had promised careful attention for 'Sordello'; but, when the time
approached, he made conditions of early reading, &c., which Mr. Browning
thought so unfair towards other magazines that he refused to fulfil
them. He lost his review, and the goodwill of its intending writer; and
even Miss Martineau was ever afterwards cooler towards him, though his
attitude in the matter had been in some degree prompted by a chivalrous
partisanship for her.
Chapter 7
1838-1841
First Italian Journey--Letters to Miss Haworth--Mr. John
Kenyon--'Sordello'--Letter to Miss Flower--'Pippa Passes'--'Bells and
Pomegranates'.
Mr. Browning sailed from London with Captain Davidson of the 'Norham
Castle', a merchant vessel bound for Trieste, on which he found himself
the only passenger. A striking experience of the voyage, and some
characteristic personal details, are given in the following letter to
Miss Haworth. It is dated 1838, and was probably written before that
year's summer had closed.
Tuesday Evening.
Dear Miss Haworth,--Do look at a fuchsia in full bloom and notice the
clear little honey-drop depending from every flower. I have just found
it out to my no small satisfaction,--a bee's breakfast. I only answer
for the long-blossomed sort, though,--indeed, for this plant in my room.
Taste and be Titania; you can, that is. All this while I forget that you
will perhaps never guess the good of the discovery: I have, you are to
know, such a love for flowers and leaves--some leaves--that I every
now and then, in an impatience at being able to possess myself of them
thoroughly, to see them quite, satiate myself with their scent,--bite
them to bits--so there will be some sense in that. How I remember the
flowers--even grasses--of places I have seen! Some one flower or weed, I
should say, that gets some strangehow connected with them.
Snowdrops and Tilsit in Prussia go together; cowslips and Windsor Park,
for instance; flowering palm and some place or other in Holland.
Now to answer what can be answered in the letter I was happy to receive
last week. I am quite well. I did not expect you would write,--for none
of your written reasons, however. You will see 'Sordello' in a trice, if
the fagging fit holds. I did not write six lines while absent (except
a scene in a play, jotted down as we sailed thro' the Straits of
Gibraltar)--but I did hammer out some four, two of which are addressed
to you, two to the Queen*--the whole to go in Book III--perhaps. I
called you 'Eyebright'--meaning a simple and sad sort of translation
of "Euphrasia" into my own language: folks would know who Euphrasia, or
Fanny, was--and I should not know Ianthe or Clemanthe. Not that there is
anything in them to care for, good or bad. Shall I say 'Eyebright'?
* I know no lines directly addressed to the Queen.
I was disappointed in one thing, Canova.
What companions should I have?
The story of the ship must have reached you 'with a difference' as
Ophelia says; my sister told it to a Mr. Dow, who delivered it to
Forster, I suppose, who furnished Macready with it, who made it over
&c., &c., &c.--As short as I can tell, this way it happened: the captain
woke me one bright Sunday morning to say there was a ship floating keel
uppermost half a mile off; they lowered a boat, made ropes fast to some
floating canvas, and towed her towards our vessel. Both met halfway, and
the little air that had risen an hour or two before, sank at once. Our
men made the wreck fast in high glee at having 'new trousers out of the
sails,' and quite sure she was a French boat, broken from her moorings
at Algiers, close by. Ropes were next hove (hang this sea-talk!) round
her stanchions, and after a quarter of an hour's pushing at the capstan,
the vessel righted suddenly, one dead body floating out; five more were
in the forecastle, and had probably been there a month under a blazing
African sun--don't imagine the wretched state of things. They were,
these six, the 'watch below'--(I give you the result of the day's
observation)--the rest, some eight or ten, had been washed overboard at
first. One or two were Algerines, the rest Spaniards. The vessel was a
smuggler bound for Gibraltar; there were two stupidly disproportionate
guns, taking up the whole deck, which was convex and--nay, look you!
(a rough pen-and-ink sketch of the different parts of the wreck is here
introduced) these are the gun-rings, and the black square the place
where the bodies lay. (All the 'bulwarks' or sides of the top, carried
away by the waves.) Well, the sailors covered up the hatchway, broke up
the aft-deck, hauled up tobacco and cigars, such heaps of them, and
then bale after bale of prints and chintz, don't you call it, till the
captain was half-frightened--he would get at the ship's papers, he said;
so these poor fellows were pulled up, piecemeal, and pitched into the
sea, the very sailors calling to each other to 'cover the faces',--no
papers of importance were found, however, but fifteen swords, powder
and ball enough for a dozen such boats, and bundles of cotton, &c., that
would have taken a day to get out, but the captain vowed that after five
o'clock she should be cut adrift: accordingly she was cast loose, not a
third of her cargo having been touched; and you hardly can conceive the
strange sight when the battered hulk turned round, actually, and
looked at us, and then reeled off, like a mutilated creature from some
scoundrel French surgeon's lecture-table, into the most gorgeous and
lavish sunset in the world: there; only thank me for not taking you at
your word, and giving you the whole 'story'.--'What I did?' I went to
Trieste, then Venice--then through Treviso and Bassano to the mountains,
delicious Asolo, all my places and castles, you will see. Then to
Vicenza, Padua, and Venice again. Then to Verona, Trent, Innspruck (the
Tyrol), Munich, Salzburg in Franconia, Frankfort and Mayence; down the
Rhine to Cologne, then to Aix-la-Chapelle, Liege and Antwerp--then home.
Shall you come to town, anywhere near town, soon? I shall be off again
as soon as my book is out, whenever that will be.
I never read that book of Miss Martineau's, so can't understand what
you mean. Macready is looking well; I just saw him the other day for a
minute after the play; his Kitely was Kitely--superb from his flat cap
down to his shining shoes. I saw very few Italians, 'to know', that is.
Those I did see I liked. Your friend Pepoli has been lecturing here, has
he not?
I shall be vexed if you don't write soon, a long Elstree letter. What
are you doing, writing--drawing? Ever yours truly R. B. To Miss Haworth,
Barham Lodge, Elstree.
Miss Browning's account of this experience, supplied from memory of her
brother's letters and conversations, contains some vivid supplementary
details. The drifting away of the wreck put probably no effective
distance between it and the ship; hence the necessity of 'sailing away'
from it.
'Of the dead pirates, one had his hands clasped as if praying; another,
a severe gash in his head. The captain burnt disinfectants and blew
gunpowder, before venturing on board, but even then, he, a powerful man,
turned very sick with the smell and sight. They stayed one whole day
by the side, but the sailors, in spite of orders, began to plunder the
cigars, &c. The captain said privately to Robert, "I cannot restrain my
men, and they will bring the plague into our ship, so I mean quietly in
the night to sail away." Robert took two cutlasses and a dagger; they
were of the coarsest workmanship, intended for use. At the end of one of
the sheaths was a heavy bullet, so that it could be used as a sling.
The day after, to their great relief, a heavy rain fell and cleansed the
ship. Captain Davidson reported the sight of the wreck and its condition
as soon as he arrived at Trieste.'
Miss Browning also relates that the weather was stormy in the Bay of
Biscay, and for the first fortnight her brother suffered terribly. The
captain supported him on to the deck as they passed through the Straits
of Gibraltar, that he might not lose the sight. He recovered, as we
know, sufficiently to write 'How they brought the Good News from Ghent
to Aix'; but we can imagine in what revulsion of feeling towards firm
land and healthy motion this dream of a headlong gallop was born in
him. The poem was pencilled on the cover of Bartoli's "De' Simboli
trasportati al Morale", a favourite book and constant companion of his;
and, in spite of perfect effacement as far as the sense goes, the pencil
dints are still visible. The little poem 'Home Thoughts from the Sea'
was written at the same time, and in the same manner.
By the time they reached Trieste, the captain, a rough north-countryman,
had become so attached to Mr. Browning that he offered him a free
passage to Constantinople; and after they had parted, carefully
preserved, by way of remembrance, a pair of very old gloves worn by him
on deck. Mr. Browning might, on such an occasion, have dispensed with
gloves altogether; but it was one of his peculiarities that he could
never endure to be out of doors with uncovered hands. The captain also
showed his friendly feeling on his return to England by bringing to Miss
Browning, whom he had heard of through her brother, a present of six
bottles of attar of roses.
The inspirations of Asolo and Venice appear in 'Pippa Passes' and 'In
a Gondola'; but the latter poem showed, to Mr. Browning's subsequent
vexation, that Venice had been imperfectly seen; and the magnetism which
Asolo was to exercise upon him, only fully asserted itself at a much
later time.
A second letter to Miss Haworth is undated, but may have been written at
any period of this or the ensuing year.
I have received, a couple of weeks since, a present--an album large and
gaping, and as Cibber's Richard says of the 'fair Elizabeth': 'My
heart is empty--she shall fill it'--so say I (impudently?) of my grand
trouble-table, which holds a sketch or two by my fine fellow Monclar,
one lithograph--his own face of faces,--'all the rest was amethyst.' F.
H. everywhere! not a soul beside 'in the chrystal silence there,' and
it locks, this album; now, don't shower drawings on M., who has so many
advantages over me as it is: or at least don't bid _me_ of all others say
what he is to have.
The 'Master' is somebody you don't know, W. J. Fox, a magnificent and
poetical nature, who used to write in reviews when I was a boy, and
to whom my verses, a bookful, written at the ripe age of twelve and
thirteen, were shown: which verses he praised not a little; which praise
comforted me not a little. Then I lost sight of him for years and
years; then I published _anonymously_ a little poem--which he, to my
inexpressible delight, praised and expounded in a gallant article in a
magazine of which he was the editor; then I found him out again; he got
a publisher for 'Paracelsus' (I read it to him in manuscript) and is in
short 'my literary father'. Pretty nearly the same thing did he for
Miss Martineau, as she has said somewhere. God knows I forget what the
'talk', table-talk was about--I think she must have told you the results
of the whole day we spent tete-a-tete at Ascot, and that day's, the
dinner-day's morning at Elstree and St. Albans. She is to give me advice
about my worldly concerns, and not before I need it!
I cannot say or sing the pleasure your way of writing gives me--do go
on, and tell me all sorts of things, 'the story' for a beginning; but
your moralisings on 'your age' and the rest, are--now what _are_ they?
not to be reasoned on, disputed, laughed at, grieved about: they are
'Fanny's crotchets'. I thank thee, Jew (lia), for teaching me that word.
I don't know that I shall leave town for a month: my friend Monclar
looks piteous when I talk of such an event. I can't bear to leave him;
he is to take my portrait to-day (a famous one he _has_ taken!) and very
like he engages it shall be. I am going to town for the purpose. . . .
Now, then, do something for me, and see if I'll ask Miss M----to help
you! I am going to begin the finishing 'Sordello'--and to begin thinking
a Tragedy (an Historical one, so I shall want heaps of criticisms on
'Strafford') and I want to have _another_ tragedy in prospect, I write
best so provided: I had chosen a splendid subject for it, when I learned
that a magazine for next, this, month, will have a scene founded on my
story; vulgarizing or doing no good to it: and I accordingly throw it
up. I want a subject of the most wild and passionate love, to contrast
with the one I mean to have ready in a short time. I have many
half-conceptions, floating fancies: give me your notion of a thorough
self-devotement, self-forgetting; should it be a woman who loves thus,
or a man? What circumstances will best draw out, set forth this feeling?
. . .
The tragedies in question were to be 'King Victor and King Charles', and
'The Return of the Druses'.
This letter affords a curious insight into Mr. Browning's mode of work;
it is also very significant of the small place which love had hitherto
occupied in his life. It was evident, from his appeal to Miss Haworth's
'notion' on the subject, that he had as yet no experience, even
imaginary, of a genuine passion, whether in woman or man. The experience
was still distant from him in point of time. In circumstance he was
nearer to it than he knew; for it was in 1839 that he became acquainted
with Mr. Kenyon.
When dining one day at Serjeant Talfourd's, he was accosted by a
pleasant elderly man, who, having, we conclude, heard who he was, asked
leave to address to him a few questions: 'Was his father's name Robert?
had he gone to school at the Rev. Mr. Bell's at Cheshunt, and was he
still alive?' On receiving affirmative answers, he went on to say that
Mr. Browning and he had been great chums at school, and though they had
lost sight of each other in after-life, he had never forgotten his
old playmate, but even alluded to him in a little book which he had
published a few years before.*
* The volume is entitled 'Rhymed Plea for Tolerance' (1833),
and contains a reference to Mr. Kenyon's schooldays,
and to the classic fights which Mr. Browning had instituted.
The next morning the poet asked his father if he remembered a
schoolfellow named John Kenyon. He replied, 'Certainly! This is his
face,' and sketched a boy's head, in which his son at once recognized
that of the grown man. The acquaintance was renewed, and Mr. Kenyon
proved ever afterwards a warm friend. Mr. Browning wrote of him, in a
letter to Professor Knight of St. Andrews, Jan. 10, 1884: 'He was one
of the best of human beings, with a general sympathy for excellence
of every kind. He enjoyed the friendship of Wordsworth, of Southey, of
Landor, and, in later days, was intimate with most of my contemporaries
of eminence.' It was at Mr. Kenyon's house that the poet saw most of
Wordsworth, who always stayed there when he came to town.
In 1840 'Sordello' appeared. It was, relatively to its length, by far
the slowest in preparation of Mr. Browning's poems. This seemed, indeed,
a condition of its peculiar character. It had lain much deeper in the
author's mind than the various slighter works which were thrown off in
the course of its inception. We know from the preface to 'Strafford'
that it must have been begun soon after 'Paracelsus'. Its plan may have
belonged to a still earlier date; for it connects itself with 'Pauline'
as the history of a poetic soul; with both the earlier poems, as the
manifestation of the self-conscious spiritual ambitions which were
involved in that history. This first imaginative mood was also
outgrowing itself in the very act of self-expression; for the tragedies
written before the conclusion of 'Sordello' impress us as the product of
a different mental state--as the work of a more balanced imagination and
a more mature mind.
It would be interesting to learn how Mr. Browning's typical poet became
embodied in this mediaeval form: whether the half-mythical character
of the real Sordello presented him as a fitting subject for imaginative
psychological treatment, or whether the circumstances among which he
moved seemed the best adapted to the development of the intended type.
The inspiration may have come through the study of Dante, and his
testimony to the creative influence of Sordello on their mother-tongue.
That period of Italian history must also have assumed, if it did not
already possess, a great charm for Mr. Browning's fancy, since he
studied no less than thirty works upon it, which were to contribute
little more to his dramatic picture than what he calls 'decoration', or
'background'. But the one guide which he has given us to the reading of
the poem is his assertion that its historical circumstance is only to
be regarded as background; and the extent to which he identified himself
with the figure of Sordello has been proved by his continued belief that
its prominence was throughout maintained. He could still declare,
so late as 1863, in his preface to the reprint of the work, that his
'stress' in writing it had lain 'on the incidents in the development of
a soul, little else' being to his mind 'worth study'. I cannot therefore
help thinking that recent investigations of the life and character of
the actual poet, however in themselves praiseworthy and interesting,
have been often in some degree a mistake; because, directly or
indirectly, they referred Mr. Browning's Sordello to an historical
reality, which his author had grasped, as far as was then possible, but
to which he was never intended to conform.
Sordello's story does exhibit the development of a soul; or rather,
the sudden awakening of a self-regarding nature to the claims of other
men--the sudden, though slowly prepared, expansion of the narrower into
the larger self, the selfish into the sympathetic existence; and this
takes place in accordance with Mr. Browning's here expressed belief that
poetry is the appointed vehicle for all lasting truths; that the true
poet must be their exponent. The work is thus obviously, in point of
moral utterance, an advance on 'Pauline'. Its metaphysics are,
also, more distinctly formulated than those of either 'Pauline' or
'Paracelsus'; and the frequent use of the term Will in its metaphysical
sense so strongly points to German associations that it is difficult to
realize their absence, then and always, from Mr. Browning's mind. But
he was emphatic in his assurance that he knew neither the German
philosophers nor their reflection in Coleridge, who would have seemed a
likely medium between them and him. Miss Martineau once said to him
that he had no need to study German thought, since his mind was German
enough--by which she possibly meant too German--already.
The poem also impresses us by a Gothic richness of detail,* the
picturesque counterpart of its intricacy of thought, and, perhaps for
this very reason, never so fully displayed in any subsequent work. Mr.
Browning's genuinely modest attitude towards it could not preclude
the consciousness of the many imaginative beauties which its unpopular
character had served to conceal; and he was glad to find, some years
ago, that 'Sordello' was represented in a collection of descriptive
passages which a friend of his was proposing to make. 'There is a great
deal of that in it,' he said, 'and it has always been overlooked.'
* The term Gothic has been applied to Mr. Browning's work, I
believe, by Mr. James Thomson, in writing of 'The Ring and
the Book', and I do not like to use it without saying so.
But it is one of those which must have spontaneously
suggested themselves to many other of Mr. Browning's
readers.
It was unfortunate that new difficulties of style should have added
themselves on this occasion to those of subject and treatment; and the
reason of it is not generally known. Mr. John Sterling had made some
comments on the wording of 'Paracelsus'; and Miss Caroline Fox, then
quite a young woman, repeated them, with additions, to Miss Haworth,
who, in her turn, communicated them to Mr. Browning, but without making
quite clear to him the source from which they sprang. He took the
criticism much more seriously than it deserved, and condensed the
language of this his next important publication into what was nearly its
present form.
In leaving 'Sordello' we emerge from the self-conscious stage of Mr.
Browning's imagination, and his work ceases to be autobiographic in the
sense in which, perhaps erroneously, we have hitherto felt it to be.
'Festus' and 'Salinguerra' have already given promise of the world of
'Men and Women' into which he will now conduct us. They will be inspired
by every variety of conscious motive, but never again by the old (real
or imagined) self-centred, self-directing Will. We have, indeed, already
lost the sense of disparity between the man and the poet; for the
Browning of 'Sordello' was growing older, while the defects of the poem
were in many respects those of youth. In 'Pippa Passes', published one
year later, the poet and the man show themselves full-grown. Each has
entered on the inheritance of the other.
Neither the imagination nor the passion of what Mr. Gosse so fitly calls
this 'lyrical masque'* gives much scope for tenderness; but the quality
of humour is displayed in it for the first time; as also a strongly
marked philosophy of life--or more properly, of association--from
which its idea and development are derived. In spite, however, of these
evidences of general maturity, Mr. Browning was still sometimes boyish
in personal intercourse, if we may judge from a letter to Miss Flower
written at about the same time.
* These words, and a subsequent paragraph, are quoted from
Mr. Gosse's 'Personalia'.
Monday night, March 9 (? 1841).
My dear Miss Flower,--I have this moment received your very kind
note--of course, I understand your objections. How else? But they are
somewhat lightened already (confess--nay 'confess' is vile--you will
be rejoiced to holla from the house-top)--will go on, or rather go
off, lightening, and will be--oh, where _will_ they be half a dozen years
hence?
Meantime praise what you can praise, do me all the good you can, you and
Mr. Fox (as if you will not!) for I have a head full of projects--mean
to song-write, play-write forthwith,--and, believe me, dear Miss Flower,
Yours ever faithfully, Robert Browning.
By the way, you speak of 'Pippa'--could we not make some arrangement
about it? The lyrics _want_ your music--five or six in all--how say you?
When these three plays are out I hope to build a huge Ode--but 'all
goeth by God's Will.'
The loyal Alfred Domett now appears on the scene with a satirical poem,
inspired by an impertinent criticism on his friend. I give its first two
verses:
On a Certain Critique on 'Pippa Passes'.
(Query--Passes what?--the critic's comprehension.)
Ho! everyone that by the nose is led,
Automatons of which the world is full,
Ye myriad bodies, each without a head,
That dangle from a critic's brainless skull,
Come, hearken to a deep discovery made,
A mighty truth now wondrously displayed.
A black squat beetle, vigorous for his size,
Pushing tail-first by every road that's wrong
The dung-ball of his dirty thoughts along
His tiny sphere of grovelling sympathies--
Has knocked himself full-butt, with blundering trouble,
Against a mountain he can neither double
Nor ever hope to scale. So like a free,
Pert, self-conceited scarabaeus, he
Takes it into his horny head to swear
There's no such thing as any mountain there.
The writer lived to do better things from a literary point of view; but
these lines have a fine ring of youthful indignation which must have
made them a welcome tribute to friendship.
There seems to have been little respectful criticism of 'Pippa Passes';
it is less surprising that there should have been very little of
'Sordello'. Mr. Browning, it is true, retained a limited number of
earnest appreciators, foremost of whom was the writer of an admirable
notice of these two works, quoted from an 'Eclectic Review' of 1847, in
Dr. Furnivall's 'Bibliography'. I am also told that the series of poems
which was next to appear was enthusiastically greeted by some poets
and painters of the pre-Raphaelite school; but he was now entering on
a period of general neglect, which covered nearly twenty years of his
life, and much that has since become most deservedly popular in his
work.
'Pippa Passes' had appeared as the first instalment of 'Bells and
Pomegranates', the history of which I give in Mr. Gosse's words. This
poem, and the two tragedies, 'King Victor and King Charles' and 'The
Return of the Druses'--first christened 'Mansoor, the Hierophant'--were
lying idle in Mr. Browning's desk. He had not found, perhaps not very
vigorously sought, a publisher for them.
'One day, as the poet was discussing the matter with Mr. Edward Moxon,
the publisher, the latter remarked that at that time he was bringing out
some editions of the old Elizabethan dramatists in a comparatively
cheap form, and that if Mr. Browning would consent to print his poems
as pamphlets, using this cheap type, the expense would be very
inconsiderable. The poet jumped at the idea, and it was agreed that each
poem should form a separate brochure of just one sheet--sixteen pages
in double columns--the entire cost of which should not exceed twelve or
fifteen pounds. In this fashion began the celebrated series of 'Bells
and Pomegranates', eight numbers of which, a perfect treasury of fine
poetry, came out successively between 1841 and 1846. 'Pippa Passes'
led the way, and was priced first at sixpence; then, the sale being
inconsiderable, at a shilling, which greatly encouraged the sale;
and so, slowly, up to half-a-crown, at which the price of each number
finally rested.'
Mr. Browning's hopes and intentions with respect to this series are
announced in the following preface to 'Pippa Passes', of which, in later
editions, only the dedicatory words appear:
'Two or three years ago I wrote a Play, about which the chief matter I
care to recollect at present is, that a Pit-full of good-natured people
applauded it:--ever since, I have been desirous of doing something in
the same way that should better reward their attention. What follows
I mean for the first of a series of Dramatical Pieces, to come out at
intervals, and I amuse myself by fancying that the cheap mode in which
they appear will for once help me to a sort of Pit-audience again.
Of course, such a work must go on no longer than it is liked; and to
provide against a certain and but too possible contingency, let me
hasten to say now--what, if I were sure of success, I would try to say
circumstantially enough at the close--that I dedicate my best intentions
most admiringly to the author of "Ion"--most affectionately to Serjeant
Talfourd.'
A necessary explanation of the general title was reserved for the last
number: and does something towards justifying the popular impression
that Mr. Browning exacted a large measure of literary insight from his
readers.
'Here ends my first series of "Bells and Pomegranates": and I take the
opportunity of explaining, in reply to inquiries, that I only meant
by that title to indicate an endeavour towards something like an
alternation, or mixture, of music with discoursing, sound with sense,
poetry with thought; which looks too ambitious, thus expressed, so the
symbol was preferred. It is little to the purpose, that such is
actually one of the most familiar of the many Rabbinical (and Patristic)
acceptations of the phrase; because I confess that, letting authority
alone, I supposed the bare words, in such juxtaposition, would
sufficiently convey the desired meaning. "Faith and good works" is
another fancy, for instance, and perhaps no easier to arrive at: yet
Giotto placed a pomegranate fruit in the hand of Dante, and Raffaelle
crowned his Theology (in the 'Camera della Segnatura') with blossoms of
the same; as if the Bellari and Vasari would be sure to come after,
and explain that it was merely "simbolo delle buone opere--il qual
Pomogranato fu pero usato nelle vesti del Pontefice appresso gli
Ebrei."'
The Dramas and Poems contained in the eight numbers of 'Bells and
Pomegranates' were:
I. Pippa Passes. 1841.
II. King Victor and King Charles. 1842.
III. Dramatic Lyrics. 1842.
Cavalier Tunes; I. Marching Along; II. Give a Rouse;
III. My Wife Gertrude. ['Boot and Saddle'.]
Italy and France; I. Italy; II. France.
Camp and Cloister; I. Camp (French); II. Cloister (Spanish).
In a Gondola.
Artemis Prologuizes.
Waring; I.; II.
Queen Worship; I. Rudel and The Lady of Tripoli; II. Cristina.
Madhouse Cells; I. [Johannes Agricola.]; II. [Porphyria.]
Through the Metidja to Abd-el-Kadr. 1842.
The Pied Piper of Hamelin; a Child's Story.
IV. The Return of the Druses. A Tragedy, in Five Acts. 1843.
V. A Blot in the 'Scutcheon. A Tragedy, in Three Acts. 1843.
[Second Edition, same year.]
VI. Colombe's Birthday. A Play, in Five Acts. 1844.
VII. Dramatic Romances and Lyrics. 1845.
'How they brought the Good News from Ghent to Aix. (16--.)'
Pictor Ignotus. (Florence, 15--.)
Italy in England.
England in Italy. (Piano di Sorrento.)
The Lost Leader.
The Lost Mistress.
Home Thoughts, from Abroad.
The Tomb at St. Praxed's: (Rome, 15--.)
Garden Fancies; I. The Flower's Name;
II. Sibrandus Schafnaburgensis.
France and Spain; I. The Laboratory (Ancien Regime);
II. Spain--The Confessional.
The Flight of the Duchess.
Earth's Immortalities.
Song. ('Nay but you, who do not love her.')
The Boy and the Angel.
Night and Morning; I. Night; II. Morning.
Claret and Tokay.
Saul. (Part I.)
Time's Revenges.
The Glove. (Peter Ronsard loquitur.)
VIII. and last. Luria; and A Soul's Tragedy. 1846.
This publication has seemed entitled to a detailed notice, because it is
practically extinct, and because its nature and circumstance confer on
it a biographical interest not possessed by any subsequent issue of Mr.
Browning's works. The dramas and poems of which it is composed belong to
that more mature period of the author's life, in which the analysis of
his work ceases to form a necessary part of his history. Some few of
them, however, are significant to it; and this is notably the case with
'A Blot in the 'Scutcheon'.
Chapter 8
1841-1844
'A Blot in the 'Scutcheon'--Letters to Mr. Frank Hill; Lady
Martin--Charles Dickens--Other Dramas and Minor Poems--Letters to Miss
Lee; Miss Haworth; Miss Flower--Second Italian Journey; Naples--E. J.
Trelawney--Stendhal.
'A Blot in the 'Scutcheon' was written for Macready, who meant to
perform the principal part; and we may conclude that the appeal for it
was urgent, since it was composed in the space of four or five days.
Macready's journals must have contained a fuller reference to both the
play and its performance (at Drury Lane, February 1843) than appears in
published form; but considerable irritation had arisen between him and
Mr. Browning, and he possibly wrote something which his editor, Sir
Frederick Pollock, as the friend of both, thought it best to omit. What
occurred on this occasion has been told in some detail by Mr. Gosse, and
would not need repeating if the question were only of re-telling it on
the same authority, in another person's words; but, through the kindness
of Mr. and Mrs. Frank Hill, I am able to give Mr. Browning's direct
statement of the case, as also his expressed judgment upon it. The
statement was made more than forty years later than the events to
which it refers, but will, nevertheless, be best given in its direct
connection with them.
The merits, or demerits, of 'A Blot in the 'Scutcheon' had been freshly
brought under discussion by its performance in London through the action
of the Browning Society, and in Washington by Mr. Laurence Barrett; and
it became the subject of a paragraph in one of the theatrical articles
prepared for the 'Daily News'. Mr. Hill was then editor of the paper,
and when the article came to him for revision, he thought it right
to submit to Mr. Browning the passages devoted to his tragedy, which
embodied some then prevailing, but, he strongly suspected, erroneous
impressions concerning it. The results of this kind and courteous
proceeding appear in the following letter.
19, Warwick Crescent: December 15, 1884.
My dear Mr. Hill,--It was kind and considerate of you to suppress the
paragraph which you send me,--and of which the publication would
have been unpleasant for reasons quite other than as regarding my own
work,--which exists to defend or accuse itself. You will judge of the
true reasons when I tell you the facts--so much of them as contradicts
the statements of your critic--who, I suppose, has received a stimulus
from the notice, in an American paper which arrived last week, of
Mr. Laurence Barrett's intention 'shortly to produce the play' in New
York--and subsequently in London: so that 'the failure' of forty-one
years ago might be duly influential at present--or two years hence
perhaps. The 'mere amateurs' are no high game.
Macready received and accepted the play, while he was engaged at the
Haymarket, and retained it for Drury Lane, of which I was ignorant that
he was about to become the manager: he accepted it 'at the instigation'
of nobody,--and Charles Dickens was not in England when he did so: it
was read to him after his return, by Forster--and the glowing letter
which contains his opinion of it, although directed by him to be shown
to myself, was never heard of nor seen by me till printed in Forster's
book some thirty years after. When the Drury Lane season began, Macready
informed me that he should act the play when he had brought out two
others--'The Patrician's Daughter', and 'Plighted Troth': having
done so, he wrote to me that the former had been unsuccessful in
money-drawing, and the latter had 'smashed his arrangements altogether':
but he would still produce my play. I had--in my ignorance of certain
symptoms better understood by Macready's professional acquaintances--I
had no notion that it was a proper thing, in such a case, to 'release
him from his promise'; on the contrary, I should have fancied that such
a proposal was offensive. Soon after, Macready begged that I would call
on him: he said the play had been read to the actors the day before,
'and laughed at from beginning to end': on my speaking my mind about
this, he explained that the reading had been done by the Prompter, a
grotesque person with a red nose and wooden leg, ill at ease in the love
scenes, and that he would himself make amends by reading the play next
morning--which he did, and very adequately--but apprised me that, in
consequence of the state of his mind, harassed by business and various
trouble, the principal character must be taken by Mr. Phelps; and again
I failed to understand,--what Forster subsequently assured me was plain
as the sun at noonday,--that to allow at Macready's Theatre any
other than Macready to play the principal part in a new piece was
suicidal,--and really believed I was meeting his exigencies by accepting
the substitution. At the rehearsal, Macready announced that Mr.
Phelps was ill, and that he himself would read the part: on the third
rehearsal, Mr. Phelps appeared for the first time, and sat in a chair
while Macready more than read, rehearsed the part. The next morning Mr.
Phelps waylaid me at the stage-door to say, with much emotion, that it
never was intended that _he_ should be instrumental in the success of a
new tragedy, and that Macready would play Tresham on the ground that
himself, Phelps, was unable to do so. He added that he could not expect
me to waive such an advantage,--but that, if I were prepared to waive
it, 'he would take ether, sit up all night, and have the words in his
memory by next day.' I bade him follow me to the green-room, and hear
what I decided upon--which was that as Macready had given him the part,
he should keep it: this was on a Thursday; he rehearsed on Friday and
Saturday,--the play being acted the same evening,--_of the fifth day
after the 'reading' by MacReady_. Macready at once wished to reduce the
importance of the 'play',--as he styled it in the bills,--tried to leave
out so much of the text, that I baffled him by getting it printed in
four-and-twenty hours, by Moxon's assistance. He wanted me to call it
'The Sister'!--and I have before me, while I write, the stage-acting
copy, with two lines of his own insertion to avoid the tragical
ending--Tresham was to announce his intention of going into a monastery!
all this, to keep up the belief that Macready, and Macready alone, could
produce a veritable 'tragedy', unproduced before. Not a shilling was
spent on scenery or dresses--and a striking scene which had been used
for the 'Patrician's Daughter', did duty a second time. If your critic
considers this treatment of the play an instance of 'the failure of
powerful and experienced actors' to ensure its success,--I can only say
that my own opinion was shown by at once breaking off a friendship of
many years--a friendship which had a right to be plainly and simply told
that the play I had contributed as a proof of it, would through a change
of circumstances, no longer be to my friend's advantage,--all I could
possibly care for. Only recently, when by the publication of Macready's
journals the extent of his pecuniary embarrassments at that time
was made known, could I in a measure understand his motives for such
conduct--and less than ever understand why he so strangely disguised and
disfigured them. If 'applause' means success, the play thus maimed
and maltreated was successful enough: it 'made way' for Macready's own
Benefit, and the Theatre closed a fortnight after.
Having kept silence for all these years, in spite of repeated
explanations, in the style of your critic's, that the play 'failed in
spite of the best endeavours' &c. I hardly wish to revive a very painful
matter: on the other hand,--as I have said; my play subsists, and is as
open to praise or blame as it was forty-one years ago: is it necessary
to search out what somebody or other,--not improbably a jealous adherent
of Macready, 'the only organizer of theatrical victories', chose to say
on the subject? If the characters are 'abhorrent' and 'inscrutable'--and
the language conformable,--they were so when Dickens pronounced
upon them, and will be so whenever the critic pleases to re-consider
them--which, if he ever has an opportunity of doing, apart from the
printed copy, I can assure you is through no motion of mine. This
particular experience was sufficient: but the Play is out of my power
now; though amateurs and actors may do what they please.
Of course, this being the true story, I should desire that it were told
_thus_ and no otherwise, if it must be told at all: but _not_ as a statement
of mine,--the substance of it has been partly stated already by more
than one qualified person, and if I have been willing to let the poor
matter drop, surely there is no need that it should be gone into now
when Macready and his Athenaeum upholder are no longer able to speak
for themselves: this is just a word to you, dear Mr. Hill, and may be
brought under the notice of your critic if you think proper--but only
for the facts--not as a communication for the public.
Yes, thank you, I am in full health, as you wish--and I wish you and
Mrs. Hill, I assure you, all the good appropriate to the season. My
sister has completely recovered from her illness, and is grateful for
your enquiries.
With best regards to Mrs. Hill, and an apology for this long letter,
which however,--when once induced to write it,--I could not well
shorten,--believe me, Yours truly ever Robert Browning.
I well remember Mr. Browning's telling me how, when he returned to the
green-room, on that critical day, he drove his hat more firmly on to his
head, and said to Macready, 'I beg pardon, sir, but you have given the
part to Mr. Phelps, and I am satisfied that he should act it;' and how
Macready, on hearing this, crushed up the MS., and flung it on to the
ground. He also admitted that his own manner had been provocative; but
he was indignant at what he deemed the unjust treatment which Mr. Phelps
had received. The occasion of the next letter speaks for itself.
December 21, 1884.
My dear Mr. Hill,--Your goodness must extend to letting me have the last
word--one of sincere thanks. You cannot suppose I doubted for a moment
of a good-will which I have had abundant proof of. I only took the
occasion your considerate letter gave me, to tell the simple truth which
my forty years' silence is a sign I would only tell on compulsion. I
never thought your critic had any less generous motive for alluding to
the performance as he did than that which he professes: he doubtless
heard the account of the matter which Macready and his intimates gave
currency to at the time; and which, being confined for a while to their
limited number, I never chose to notice. But of late years I have got to
_read_,--not merely _hear_,--of the play's failure 'which all the efforts
of my friend the great actor could not avert;' and the nonsense of this
untruth gets hard to bear. I told you the principal facts in the letter
I very hastily wrote: I could, had it been worth while, corroborate them
by others in plenty, and refer to the living witnesses--Lady Martin,
Mrs. Stirling, and (I believe) Mr. Anderson: it was solely through the
admirable loyalty of the two former that . . . a play . . . deprived
of every advantage, in the way of scenery, dresses, and
rehearsing--proved--what Macready himself declared it to be--'a complete
success'. _So_ he sent a servant to tell me, 'in case there was a call for
the author at the end of the act'--to which I replied that the author
had been too sick and sorry at the whole treatment of his play to do any
such thing. Such a call there truly _was_, and Mr. Anderson had to come
forward and 'beg the author to come forward if he were in the house--a
circumstance of which he was not aware:' whereat the author laughed at
him from a box just opposite. . . . I would submit to anybody drawing a
conclusion from one or two facts past contradiction, whether that play
could have thoroughly failed which was not only not withdrawn at
once but acted three nights in the same week, and years afterwards,
reproduced at his own theatre, during my absence in Italy, by Mr.
Phelps--the person most completely aware of the untoward circumstances
which stood originally in the way of success. Why not enquire how it
happens that, this second time, there was no doubt of the play's doing
as well as plays ordinarily do? for those were not the days of a 'run'.
. . . . .
. . . This 'last word' has indeed been an Aristophanic one of fifty
syllables: but I have spoken it, relieved myself, and commend all that
concerns me to the approved and valued friend of whom I am proud to
account myself in corresponding friendship, His truly ever Robert
Browning.
Mr. Browning also alludes to Mr. Phelps's acting as not only not having
been detrimental to the play, but having helped to save it, in the
conspiracy of circumstances which seemed to invoke its failure. This was
a mistake, since Macready had been anxious to resume the part, and would
have saved it, to say the least, more thoroughly. It must, however, be
remembered that the irritation which these letters express was due much
less to the nature of the facts recorded in them than to the manner in
which they had been brought before Mr. Browning's mind. Writing on the
subject to Lady Martin in February 1881, he had spoken very temperately
of Macready's treatment of his play, while deprecating the injustice
towards his own friendship which its want of frankness involved: and
many years before this, the touch of a common sorrow had caused the old
feeling, at least momentarily, to well up again. The two met for the
first time after these occurrences when Mr. Browning had returned, a
widower, from Italy. Mr. Macready, too, had recently lost his wife; and
Mr. Browning could only start forward, grasp the hand of his old friend,
and in a voice choked with emotion say, 'O Macready!'
Lady Martin has spoken to me of the poet's attitude on the occasion of
this performance as being full of generous sympathy for those who were
working with him, as well as of the natural anxiety of a young author
for his own success. She also remains convinced that this sympathy led
him rather to over-than to under-rate the support he received. She wrote
concerning it in 'Blackwood's Magazine', March 1881:
'It seems but yesterday that I sat by his [Mr. Elton's] side in the
green-room at the reading of Robert Browning's beautiful drama, 'A Blot
in the 'Scutcheon'. As a rule Mr. Macready always read the new plays.
But owing, I suppose, to some press of business, the task was entrusted
on this occasion to the head prompter,--a clever man in his way, but
wholly unfitted to bring out, or even to understand, Mr. Browning's
meaning. Consequently, the delicate, subtle lines were twisted,
perverted, and sometimes even made ridiculous in his hands. My "cruel
father" [Mr. Elton] was a warm admirer of the poet. He sat writhing and
indignant, and tried by gentle asides to make me see the real meaning of
the verse. But somehow the mischief proved irreparable, for a few of
the actors during the rehearsals chose to continue to misunderstand the
text, and never took the interest in the play which they would have done
had Mr. Macready read it.'
Looking back on the first appearance of his tragedy through the widening
perspectives of nearly forty years, Mr. Browning might well declare as
he did in the letter to Lady Martin to which I have just referred, that
her '_perfect_ behaviour as a woman' and her 'admirable playing as an
actress' had been (or at all events were) to him 'the one gratifying
circumstance connected with it.'
He also felt it a just cause of bitterness that the letter from Charles
Dickens,* which conveyed his almost passionate admiration of 'A Blot in
the 'Scutcheon', and was clearly written to Mr. Forster in order that
it might be seen, was withheld for thirty years from his knowledge, and
that of the public whose judgment it might so largely have influenced.
Nor was this the only time in the poet's life that fairly earned honours
escaped him.
* See Forster's 'Life of Dickens'.
'Colombe's Birthday' was produced in 1853 at the Haymarket;* and
afterwards in the provinces, under the direction of Miss Helen Faucit,
who created the principal part. It was again performed for the Browning
Society in 1885,** and although Miss Alma Murray, as Colombe, was almost
entirely supported by amateurs, the result fully justified Miss
Mary Robinson (now Madame James Darmesteter) in writing immediately
afterwards in the Boston 'Literary World':***
* Also in 1853 or 1854 at Boston.
** It had been played by amateurs, members of the Browning
Society, and their friends, at the house of Mr. Joseph King,
in January 1882.
*** December 12, 1885; quoted in Mr. Arthur Symons'
'Introduction to the Study of Browning'.
'"Colombe's Birthday" is charming on the boards, clearer, more direct in
action, more full of delicate surprises than one imagines it in print.
With a very little cutting it could be made an excellent acting play.'
Mr. Gosse has seen a first edition copy of it marked for acting, and
alludes in his 'Personalia' to the greatly increased knowledge of the
stage which its minute directions displayed. They told also of sad
experience in the sacrifice of the poet which the play-writer so often
exacts: since they included the proviso that unless a very good Valence
could be found, a certain speech of his should be left out. That speech
is very important to the poetic, and not less to the moral, purpose
of the play: the triumph of unworldly affections. It is that in which
Valence defies the platitudes so often launched against rank and power,
and shows that these may be very beautiful things--in which he pleads
for his rival, and against his own heart. He is the better man of
the two, and Colombe has fallen genuinely in love with him. But the
instincts of sovereignty are not outgrown in one day however eventful,
and the young duchess has shown herself amply endowed with them. The
Prince's offer promised much, and it held still more. The time may come
when she will need that crowning memory of her husband's unselfishness
and truth, not to regret what she has done.
'King Victor and King Charles' and 'The Return of the Druses' are both
admitted by competent judges to have good qualifications for the stage;
and Mr. Browning would have preferred seeing one of these acted to
witnessing the revival of 'Strafford' or 'A Blot in the 'Scutcheon',
from neither of which the best amateur performance could remove the
stigma of past, real or reputed, failure; and when once a friend
belonging to the Browning Society told him she had been seriously
occupied with the possibility of producing the Eastern play, he assented
to the idea with a simplicity that was almost touching, 'It _was_ written
for the stage,' he said, 'and has only one scene.' He knew, however,
that the single scene was far from obviating all the difficulties of
the case, and that the Society, with its limited means, did the best it
could.
I seldom hear any allusion to a passage in 'King Victor and King
Charles' which I think more than rivals the famous utterance of Valence,
revealing as it does the same grasp of non-conventional truth, while its
occasion lends itself to a far deeper recognition of the mystery,
the frequent hopeless dilemma of our moral life. It is that in which
Polixena, the wife of Charles, entreats him for _duty's_ sake to retain
the crown, though he will earn, by so doing, neither the credit of a
virtuous deed nor the sure, persistent consciousness of having performed
one.
Four poems of the 'Dramatic Lyrics' had appeared, as I have said, in the
'Monthly Repository'. Six of those included in the 'Dramatic Lyrics and
Romances' were first published in 'Hood's Magazine' from June 1844
to April 1845, a month before Hood's death. These poems were, 'The
Laboratory', 'Claret and Tokay', 'Garden Fancies', 'The Boy and the
Angel', 'The Tomb at St. Praxed's', and 'The Flight of the Duchess'. Mr.
Hood's health had given way under stress of work, and Mr. Browning
with other friends thus came forward to help him. The fact deserves
remembering in connection with his subsequent unbroken rule never to
write for magazines. He might always have made exceptions for friendly
or philanthropic objects; the appearance of 'Herve Riel' in the
'Cornhill Magazine', 1870, indeed proves that it was so. But the offer
of a blank cheque would not have tempted him, for his own sake, to this
concession, as he would have deemed it, of his integrity of literary
purpose.
'In a Gondola' grew out of a single verse extemporized for a picture by
Maclise, in what circumstances we shall hear in the poet's own words.
The first proof of 'Artemis Prologuizes' had the following note:
'I had better say perhaps that the above is nearly all retained of a
tragedy I composed, much against my endeavour, while in bed with a fever
two years ago--it went farther into the story of Hippolytus and Aricia;
but when I got well, putting only thus much down at once, I soon forgot
the remainder.'*
* When Mr. Browning gave me these supplementary details for
the 'Handbook', he spoke as if his illness had interrupted
the work, not preceded its conception. The real fact is, I
think, the more striking.
Mr. Browning wou
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