Robert Browning
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72
"Browning was intimately acquainted," writes Miss Anna Swanwick, "with Salvini." What especially lived in Browning's memory as transcending everything else he had witnessed on the stage was Salvini's impersonation of the blind Oedipus, and in particular one incident: a hand is laid on the blind man's shoulder, which he supposes the hand of one of his sons; he discovers it to be the hand of Antigone; the sudden transition from a look of fiery hate to one of ineffable tenderness was unsurpassable in its mastery of dramatic expression. (Condensed from "Anna Swanwick, a Memoir and Recollections," 1903, pp. 132, 133.)
73
Story says that Landor "was turned out of doors by his wife and children." He had conveyed the villa to his wife. It is Story who compares Landor to King Lear. "Conversations in a Studio," p. 436.
74
Letters of E.B.B., ii. 354.
75
When Browning at Rome was invited to dine with the Prince of Wales (March 1859) by the desire of Queen Victoria, Mrs Browning told him to "eschew compliments," of his infelicity in uttering which she gives amusing examples. Letters of E.B.B., ii. 309, 310.
76
On Browning's action in the affairs of Landor see Forster's Life of Landor, and the letters of Browning in vol. ii. of Henry James's Life of Story (pp. 6-11).
77
See, for this residence at Siena, an interesting letter of Story to C. Eliot Norton in Henry James's W.W. Story, vol. ii. pp. 14, 15.
78
Condensed from information given by Prinsep to Mrs Orr, Life and Letters of R.B., pp. 234-37.
79
Letters of E.B.B., ii. 388, note. Mr Kenyon suggests A Death in the Desert as at least possibly meant. The Ring and the Book "certainly had not yet been begun."
80
Halting at Siena, whence Browning wrote an account of the journey to Story: Henry James's W.W. Story, ii. pp. 50-52.
81
H. James's W.W. Story, vol. ii. pp. 111, 113.
82
Henry James tells of a children's party at the Palazzo Barberini, Rome, of several years earlier, when Hans Andersen read "The Ugly Duckling," and Browning, "The Pied Piper"; which led to "a grand march through the spacious Barberini apartment, with Story doing his best on a flute in default of bagpipes." W.W. Story, vol. i.p. 286.
83
The circumstances of Mrs Browning's death are described as above, but with somewhat fuller detail, in a letter of Browning to Miss Haworth, July 20, 1861, first printed by Mrs Orr. Many details of interest will be found in a long letter of Story, Henry James's W.W. Story, vol. ii. pp. 61-68: "She talked with him and jested and gave expression to her love in the tenderest words; then, feeling sleepy, and he supporting her in his arms, she fell into a doze. In a few minutes, suddenly, her head dropped forward. He thought she had fainted, but she had gone for ever." A painful account of the funeral service, "blundered through by a fat English parson," is given by Story.
84
Letter to Story in Henry James's "W.W. Story," vol. ii. p. 91 and p. 97.
85
H. James's "W.W. Story," vol. ii. p. 100.
86
"Rossetti Papers," p. 302.
87
In 1863 Browning gave time and pains to revising his friend Story's Roba di Roma.
88
In 1864 Browning again "braved the awful Biarritz" and stayed at Cambo. On this occasion he visted Fontarabia. An interesting letter from Cambo, undated as to time, is printed in Henry James's "W.W. Story," vol. ii. pp. 153-156. The year—1864—may be ascertained by comparing it with a letter addressed to F.T. Palgrave, given in Palgrave's Life, the date of this letter being Oct. 19, 1864. Browning in the letter to Story speaks of "the last two years in the dear rough Ste.-Marie."
89
Was the poem Gold Hair? If three stanzas were added to the first draft before the poem appeared in The Atlantic Monthly the number of lines would have been 120. Stanzas 21, 22 and 23 were added in the Dramatis Personae version.
90
Aristophanes' Apology (spoken of Euripides).
91
Compare with Epilogue: Third Speaker the lines from A Death in the Desert:
Then stand before that fact, that Life and Death,Stay there at gaze, till it dispart, dispread,As though a star should open out, all sides,Grow the world on you, as it is my world.92
Statements by Mrs Orr with respect to Browning's relations to Christianity will be found on p. 319 and p. 373 of her Life of Browning. She regarded "La Saisiaz" as conclusive proof of his "heterodox attitude." Robert Buchanan, in the Epistle dedicatory to "The Outcast," alleges that he questioned Browning as to whether he were a Christian, and that Browning "thundered No!" The statement embodied in my text above is substantially not mine but Browning's own. See on Ferishtah's Fancies in chapter xvi.
93
Letter to Miss Blagden, Feb. 24, 1870, given by Mrs Orr, p. 287.
94
Vivid descriptions of Le Croisic at an earlier date may be found in one of Balzac's short stories.
95
Life of Jowett by Evelyn Abbott and Lewis Campbell, i. 400, 401.
96
A repeated invitation in 1877 was also declined. In 1875 Browning was nominated by the Independent Club to the office of Lord Rector of Glasgow University.
97
Such a book would naturally attract Browning, who, like his father, had an interest in celebrated criminal cases. In his Memories (p. 338), Kegan Paul records his surprise at a dinner-party where the conversation turned on murder, to find Browning acquainted "to the minutest detail" with every cause célèbre of that kind within living memory.
98
An Artist's Reminiscences, by R. Lehmann (1894), p. 224.
99
Rossetti Papers, p. 302.
100
So the story was told by Dante Rossetti, as recorded by Mrs Gilchrist; she says that she believed the story was told of himself by Carlyle.
101
The passage specially referred to is in Caponsacchi's monologue, II. 936-973, beginning with "Thought? nay, sirs, what shall follow was not thought."
102
I have used here some passages already printed in my Studies in Literature.
103
Was this a "baffled visit," as described by Mr Henry James in his "Life of Story" (ii. 197), when the hostess was absent, and the guests housed in an inn?
104
Letter quoted by Mrs Orr, p. 288.
105
The attitude is reproduced in a photograph from which a woodcut is given in Mme. Blanc's article "A French Friend of Browning."
106
"Records of Tennyson, Ruskin and Browning," by Annie Ritchie, pp. 291, 292.
107
"A Bibliography of the Writings of Robert Browning," by T.J. Wise, pp. 157, 158.
108
Aristophanes' Apology is connected with these poems by its character as a casuistical self-defence of the chief speaker.
109
North's "Plutarch," 1579, p. 599.
110
"Les Deux Masques," ii. 281.
111
A comment of Paul de Saint-Victor on the silence of the recovered Alkestis deserves to be quoted: "Hercule apprend à Admète qu'il lui est interdit d'entendre sa voix avant qu'elle soit purifiée de sa consécration aux Divinités infernales. J'aime mieux voir dans cette réserve un scrupule religieux du poète laissant à la morte sa dignité d'Ombre. Alceste a été nitiée aux profonds mystères de la mort; elle a vu l'invisible, elle a entendu l'ineffable; toute parole sortie de ses lèvres serait une divulgation sacrilège. Ce silence mystérieux la spiritualise et la rattache par un dernier lien au monde éternel."
112
See Morley's "Life of Gladstone," vol. iii. p. 417.
113
Pages 46, 47 of the first edition.
114
Pages 58-60.
115
It may here be noted that Dante Rossetti in a morbid mood supposed that certain passages of Fifine were directed against himself; and so ceased his friendship with Browning.
116
Fanny Kemble also derived from the story of Lord De Ros the subject of her "English Tragedy."
117
Some sentences in what follows are taken from a notice of the volume which I wrote on its appearance for The Academy.
118
See Browning's letter to Mr Kingsland in "Robert Browning" by W. G. Kingsland (1890), pp. 32, 33.
119
Some parts of what follows on La Saisiaz have already appeared in print in a forgotten article of mine on that poem.
120
"An Artist's Reminiscences," by R. Lehmann (1894), p. 231.
121
Thus he declaimed to Robert Buchanan against Walt Whitman's writings, with which, according to Buchanan, he had little acquaintance.
122
"Autobiography of a Journalist," ii. 210.
123
From the first of three valuable articles by Mr Rossetti in The Magazine of Art (1890) on "Portraits of Robert Browning."
124
Robert Browning, "Personalia," by Edmund Gosse, pp. 81, 82.
125
Vol. ii. pp. 88, 89.
126
Anna Swanwick, "A Memoir by Mary L. Bruce," pp. 130, 131. To Dr Furnivall he often spoke of Mrs Browning.
127
From Mrs Bronson's article in The Century Magazine, "Browning in Venice."
128
Related more fully in Mrs Bronson's article "Browning in Asolo" in The Century Magazine.
129
Mrs Bronson's "Browning in Venice" in The Century Magazine.
130
To Dr Furnivall, Sept. 28, 1884.
131
Some notices of Browning in Wales occur in Sir T. Martin's "Life of Lady Martin."
132
Letter to Dr Furnivall, August 29, 1881.
133
To Dr Furnivall, Sept. 7, 1885.
134
To Dr Furnivall, August 21, 1887.
135
See for fuller details the letter in Mrs Orr's Life of Browning, pp. 407, 408.
136
So described by Mrs Bronson.
137
To Dr Furnivall, Oct. 11, 1881.
138
Quoted by Mrs Bronson.
139
Mrs Orr, "Life of Browning," p. 400.
140
Mrs Bronson records this.
141
Mr Gosse: "Dictionary of National Biography," Supplement, i. 317.
142
Of the mother in this poem, a writer in the "Browning Society's Papers," Miss E.D. West, said justly: "There is discernible in her no soul which could be cleansed from guilt by any purgatorial process.... Her fault had not been moral, had not been sin, to be punished by pain inflicted on the soul; it was merely the uncounteracted primary instinct of self-preservation, and as such it is fitliest dealt with by the simple depriving her, without further penalty, of the very life which she had secured for herself at so horrible a cost."
143
The story of the melon-seller was related by a correspondent of The Times in 1846, and is told by Browning in a letter to Miss Barrett of Aug. 6 of that year. Thus subjects of verse rose up in his memory after many years.
144
Mrs Orr gives the dates of composition of several of the Asolando poems. Rosny, Beatrice Signorini and Flute-Music were written in the winter of 1887-1888. Two or three of the Bad Dreams are, with less confidence, assigned to the same date. The Ponte dell' Angelo "was imagined during the next autumn in Venice" (see Mrs Bronson's article "Browning in Venice"). "White Witchcraft had been suggested in the same summer (1888) by a letter from a friend in the Channel Islands which spoke of the number of toads to be seen there." The Cardinal and the Dog, written with the Pied Piper for Macready's son, is a poem of early date. Mrs Bronson in her article "Browning in Asolo" (Century Magazine, April 1900) relates the origin at Asolo 1889 of The Lady and the Painter.
145
Mrs Orr, Life, p. 414.
146
W.M. Rossetti, Portraits of Browning, i., Magazine of Art, 1890, p. 182. Mr Rossetti's words refer to an earlier period.
147
"The Nation," vol. 1., where reminiscences by Moncure Conway may also be found.
148
"My father died without pain or suffering other than that of weakness or weariness"—so Mr R. Barrett Browning wrote to Mrs Bloomfield-Moore. "His death was what death ought to be, but rarely is—so said the doctor." (Quoted in an article on Browning by Mrs Bloomfield-Moore in Lippincott's Magazine—Jan.—June 1890, p. 690.)
149
A grave in the Abbey was at the same time offered for the body of Browning's wife; the removal of her body from Florence would have been against both the wishes of Browning and of the people of Florence. It was therefore declined by Mr R. Barrett Browning. See his letter in Mrs Bloomfield-Moore's article in Lippincott's Magazine, vol. xiv.
150
E.D. West in the first of two papers, "Browning as a Preacher," in The Dark Blue Magazine. Browning esteemed these papers highly and in what follows I appropriate, with some modifications, a passage from the first of them. The writer has consented to the use here made of the passage, and has contributed a passage towards the close.