Elizabeth Barrett Browning and Robert Browning: Interviews and Recollections [1st ed.] 978-0-312-23226-9;978-1-349-62894-0

Table of contents :
Front Matter ....Pages i-xxiv
Front Matter ....Pages 1-1
‘Glimpses Into My Own Literary Character’ (Elizabeth Barrett)....Pages 3-4
Religious Imagination (Elizabeth Barrett)....Pages 4-5
More ‘Glimpses’ (Elizabeth Barrett)....Pages 5-7
‘Happy influences’ (Anne Thackeray Ritchie)....Pages 7-8
‘Dearest Papa would be sorry to think how much he grieved me’ (Elizabeth Barrett)....Pages 8-10
‘My first acquaintance with Elizabeth Barrett’ (Mary Russell Mitford)....Pages 10-11
‘The fatal event which saddened her bloom of youth’ (Mary Russell Mitford)....Pages 11-12
Miss Barrett at Thirty-Five (Mary Russell Mitford)....Pages 12-13
‘The duties belonging to my femineity’ (Elizabeth Barrett)....Pages 14-15
On Poetry I: ‘the object of the intellectual part of me’ (Elizabeth Barrett)....Pages 15-15
On Poetry II: ‘I want to write a new poem of a new class’ (Elizabeth Barrett)....Pages 15-16
On Poetry III: ‘relations … higher than the naked eye of the cold reasoning intellect can discern at all’ (Elizabeth Barrett)....Pages 16-17
‘I look everywhere for grandmothers and see none’ (Elizabeth Barrett)....Pages 17-17
Mr Browning’s Poetry: ‘A palpable power’ (Elizabeth Barrett)....Pages 18-19
‘I was as a man dying who had not read Shakespeare’ (Elizabeth Barrett)....Pages 19-21
‘I was repulsed too often’ (Elizabeth Barrett)....Pages 21-23
Front Matter ....Pages 25-25
Childhood Memories (Alexandra Orr)....Pages 27-30
The Poet’s History (Robert Browning)....Pages 30-31
Music (Robert Sidney)....Pages 32-32
An Unpoetical Nose (Sarah Flower)....Pages 33-33
‘Robert talks immensely’ (Katie Bromley)....Pages 33-34
‘Lemon-coloured kid gloves and such things’ (Eliza Bridell-Fox)....Pages 34-35
‘Long ringlets and no neckcloth’ (Mary Russell Mitford)....Pages 35-35
Browning’s ‘lion-like ruff’ (William Harrison Ainsworth)....Pages 35-36
Browning and Thomas Carlyle (William Allingham)....Pages 36-37
‘Little Paracelsus Browning’ (Thomas Carlyle)....Pages 37-37
Browning and Jane Carlyle (Alexandra Orr)....Pages 38-38
Browning, Macready and Forster I: Strafford (William Charles Macready)....Pages 38-43
Pippa Passes (Alexandra Orr)....Pages 44-44
Browning, Macready and Forster II: The Return of the Druses (William Charles Macready)....Pages 44-45
Browning, Macready and Forster III: A Blot on the ’Scutcheon (William Charles Macready)....Pages 45-47
‘Conversation … as remarkably good as his books’ (Joseph Arnould)....Pages 47-48
Front Matter ....Pages 49-49
Marriage (Elizabeth Barrett Browning)....Pages 51-53
The Journey to Italy (Anna Brownell Jameson)....Pages 53-57
The Brownings, 1847 (George Stillman Hillard)....Pages 57-58
Story’s first impressions of the Brownings (William Wetmore Story)....Pages 59-59
Casa Guidi (Kate Field)....Pages 60-61
Florence (Elizabeth Barrett Browning)....Pages 61-61
Browning and the Anglo-Florentines (Thomas Adolphus Trollope)....Pages 61-62
‘Better than any poem’ (Henriette Corkran)....Pages 62-63
Recollections of Mrs Browning (Eliza Ogilvy)....Pages 63-66
The Brownings: a Child’s View (Henriette Corkran)....Pages 67-69
Browning and his Beard (Elizabeth Barrett Browning)....Pages 69-69
‘A countenance of April shine and shower’ (William Michael Rossetti)....Pages 69-70
A face ‘corresponding with delicate exactness to the tone of her poems’ (William Michael Rossetti)....Pages 70-71
Browning Portraits (William Michael Rossetti)....Pages 71-72
‘I’ll fling you down the stairs’: Browning and Mr Sludge (William Allingham)....Pages 72-73
Tennyson and Browning perform (William Michael Rossetti)....Pages 73-74
‘This generous humility of nature’ (Anne Thackeray Ritchie)....Pages 74-76
Browning at Bellosguardo (Frances Power Cobbe)....Pages 76-78
Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s Conversation (Kate Field)....Pages 78-78
Browning’s ‘celerity, or … immediateness’ (William Michael Rossetti)....Pages 78-79
The Brownings, 1850 (Charles Eliot Norton)....Pages 80-80
‘What Mignon might be in maturity and maternity’ (Sara Coleridge)....Pages 81-81
‘The delight of the encounter’ (Bayard Taylor)....Pages 81-83
‘She talks no commonplaces’ (Ellen Twisleton)....Pages 83-84
‘We mustn’t leave the great Elizabeth alone in such a state’ (Elizabeth Kinney)....Pages 84-86
A Retrograde Step for Women (Elizabeth Barrett Browning)....Pages 86-87
‘Our close, stifling, corrupt system’ (Elizabeth Barrett Browning)....Pages 87-87
‘A noble devotion to and faith in the regeneration of Italy’ (Kate Field)....Pages 87-90
The ‘logical and common-sensible’ poet and the ‘good and kind fairy’ (Nathaniel Hawthorne)....Pages 90-92
Spiritualism: ‘Mrs Browning kept trying to stem his flow of eager, funny talk’ (Sophia Hawthorne)....Pages 92-93
‘The corruption of our society requires not shut doors and windows, but light and air’ (Elizabeth Barrett Browning)....Pages 93-94
‘All poetry being a putting the infinite within the finite’: Men and Women (Robert Browning)....Pages 94-95
Writing Aurora Leigh (Alexandra Orr)....Pages 95-95
With Landor at Siena (Edith Peruzzi de’Medici)....Pages 95-97
Rome in 1853–4: ‘They did not come back with the usual impressions’ (Walter Cassels)....Pages 97-97
Rome in 1859: ‘plenty of distraction, and no Men and Women’ (Elizabeth Barrett Browning)....Pages 97-98
Browning in 1861: ‘the brain stratifies and matures creatively, even in the pauses of the pen’ (Elizabeth Barrett Browning)....Pages 98-100
‘She has genius; I am only a painstaking fellow’ (Alexandra Orr)....Pages 100-101
The Death and Funeral of Elizabeth Barrett Browning (William Wetmore Story)....Pages 101-104
Front Matter ....Pages 105-105
Browning’s Return to London (Henry James)....Pages 107-108
‘No man was ever more free from bardic pose’ (Rudolf Chambers Lehmann)....Pages 108-109
Browning and Forster: ‘I will pitch this bottle of claret at your head’ (Rudolf Chambers Lehmann)....Pages 109-111
Browning’s Conversation in 1872: port, a pun and financial matters (Cornelia Crosse)....Pages 111-111
‘Browning’s talk had not much intellectual resemblance to his poetry’ (Sidney Colvin)....Pages 112-113
Browning at King Lear (Sidney Colvin)....Pages 113-113
‘A constant flow of anecdotes and social allusions’ (W. H. Mallock)....Pages 113-114
Tennyson and Browning (Hallam Tennyson)....Pages 114-116
‘He talks everybody down with his dreadful voice’ (Mary Gladstone)....Pages 116-117
Exerting himself ‘for the amusement of his fellow-guests at a dinner-table’ (Alexandra Orr)....Pages 117-118
The Companionable Sage (Anne Thackeray Ritchie)....Pages 118-119
‘An exception to his broad liberal principles’ (Rudolf Lehmann)....Pages 119-119
‘An enviably happy man’ (William Michael Rossetti)....Pages 119-120
‘On some of the great subjects … he scarcely seemed to have thought at all’ (Robert Buchanan)....Pages 120-122
Browning’s ‘loathing and contempt for poor Walt’ (Robert Buchanan)....Pages 122-122
‘The pretty nothings, the subtle flatteries of the poet’s talk’ (Lilian Aldrich)....Pages 123-123
‘He was a rich banker, he was a perfected butler’ (Julian Hawthorne)....Pages 123-125
Encounters with Browning (Henriette Corkran)....Pages 125-127
Browning at Home (William Grove)....Pages 127-130
‘As far a dandy as a sensible man can be’ (The World)....Pages 130-131
‘Browning and his Lady Admirers’ (An American correspondent)....Pages 131-131
Impromptus and a Reading (Felix Moscheles)....Pages 132-133
At the Desk (Felix Moscheles)....Pages 133-134
‘His skill in fence was very great’ (Frederick James Furnivall)....Pages 134-135
Showing the Old Yellow Book (Hiram Corson)....Pages 136-137
‘I’ve forgotten my own verses’: Browning’s ‘marvellous memory’ and its ‘funny failure’ (George Henry Boughton)....Pages 137-139
‘A wise and reflective man guides himself aright’ (John Churton Collins)....Pages 139-143
Personalia (Edmund Gosse)....Pages 143-147
‘Browning in Venice’ (Katharine de Kay Bronson)....Pages 147-151
‘Browning in Asolo’ (Katharine de Kay Bronson)....Pages 151-158
‘Never say of me that I am dead’ (William Sharp)....Pages 159-159
‘One who never turned his back but marched breast forward’ (Sarianna Browning)....Pages 159-160
Death and Funeral (Alexandra Orr)....Pages 160-164
Back Matter ....Pages 165-173

Citation preview

Elizabeth Barrett Browning and Robert Browning

Also by Martin Garrett * A BROWNING CHRONOLOGY: Elizabeth Barrett Browning and Robert Browning GREECE: A Literary Companion LORD BYRON MASSINGER: The Critical Heritage SIDNEY: The Critical Heritage TRAVELLER'S LITERARY COMPANION TO ITALY

*

From the same publishers

Elizabeth Barrett Browning and Robert Browning Interviews and Recollections Edited by

Martin Garrett

First published in Great Britain 2000 by

MACMILLAN PRESS LTD

Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS and London Companies and representatives throughout the world A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

First published in the United States of America 2000 by

ST. MARTIN'S PRESS, INC.,

Scholarly and Reference Division, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010 ISBN 978-1-349-62896-4 ISBN 978-1-349-62894-0 (eBook) DOI 10.1007/978-1-349-62894-0 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Elizabeth Barrett Browning and Robert Browning : interviews and recollections / edited by Martin Garrett. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. 1. Browning, Elizabeth Barrett, 1806-1861. 2. Browning, Robert, 1812-1889. 3. Browning, Elizabeth Barrett, 1806-1861- Friends and associates. 4. Browning, Robert, 1812-1889- Friends and associates. 5. Poets, English -19th century-Biography. 6. Married people-Great Britain-Biography. I. Garrett, Martin. PR4193 .E45 2000 821'.809-dc21

[B]

99-087395

Introduction, compilation and editorial matter © Martin Garrett 2000 Text © Macmillan Press Ltd 2000 Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 2000 978-0-312-23226-9 All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made without written permission. No paragraph of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted save with written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, or under the terms of any licence permitting limited copying issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency, 90 Tottenham Court Road, London W1P 0LP. Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages. The authors have asserted their rights to be identified as the authors of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. This book is printed on paper suitable for recycling and made from fully managed and sustained forest sources.

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 09 08 07 06 05 04 03 02 01 00

To Helen, Philip and Edmund

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Contents Acknowledgements Abbreviations Introduction

xiii XV

xix

Part 1: Elizabeth Barrett 1806-46

'Glimpses Into My Own Literary Character' Elizabeth Barrett Religious Imagination Elizabeth Barrett More 'Glimpses' Elizabeth Barrett 'Happy influences' Anne Thackeray Ritchie 'Dearest Papa would be sorry to think how much he grieved me' Elizabeth Barrett 'My first acquaintance with Elizabeth Barrett' Mary Russell Mitford 'The fatal event which saddened her bloom of youth' Mary Russell Mit(ord Miss Barrett at Thirty-Five Mary Russell Mit(ord 'The duties belonging to my femineity' Elizabeth Barrett On Poetry I: 'the object of the intellectual part of me' Elizabeth Barrett On Poetry II: 'I want to write a new poem of a new class' Elizabeth Barrett On Poetry III: 'relations ... higher than the naked eye of the cold reasoning intellect can discern at all' Elizabeth Barrett 'I look everywhere for grandmothers and see none' Elizabeth Barrett

3 4 5 7

8 10 11 12

14 15

15

16 17

viii

Contents

Mr Browning's Poetry: 'A palpable power' Elizabeth Barrett 'I was as a man dying who had not read Shakespeare' Elizabeth Barrett 'I was repulsed too often' Elizabeth Barrett

18 19 21

Part II: Robert Browning 1812-46

Childhood Memories Alexandra Orr The Poet's History Robert Browning Music Robert Sidney An Unpoetical Nose Sarah Flower 'Robert talks immensely' Katie Bromley 'Lemon-coloured kid-gloves and such things' Eliza Bridell-Fox 'Long ringlets and no neck-cloth' Mary Russell Mitford Browning's 'lion-like ruff' William Harrison Ainsworth Browning and Thomas Carlyle William Allingham 'Little Paracelsus Browning' Thomas Carlyle Browning and Jane Carlyle Alexandra Orr Browning, Macready and Forster I: Strafford William Charles Macready Pippa Passes Alexandra Orr Browning, Macready and Forster II: The Return of the Druses William Charles Macready Browning, Macready and Forster III: A Blot on the 'Scutcheon William Charles Macready 'Conversation ... as remarkably good as his books' Joseph Arnauld

27

30 32

33 33 34

35 35 36 37

38 38 44 44

45 47

Contents ix

Part III: The Brownings 1846-61

Marriage Elizabeth Barrett Browning The Journey to Italy Anna Brownell Jameson The Brownings, 1847 George Stillman Hillard Story's First Impression of the Brownings William Wetmore Story Casa Guidi Kate Field Florence Elizabeth Barrett Browning Browning and the Anglo-Florentines Thomas Adolphus Trollope 'Better than any poem' Henriette Corkran Recollections of Mrs Browning Eliza Ogilvy The Brownings: a Child's View Henriette Corkran Browning and his Beard Elizabeth Barrett Browning 'A countenance of April shine and shower' William Michael Rossetti 'A face corresponding with delicate exactness to the tone of her poems' William Michael Rossetti Browning Portraits William Michael Rossetti 'I'll fling you down the stairs': Browning and Mr Sludge William Allingham Tennyson and Browning perform William Michael Rossetti 'This generous humility of nature' Anne Thackeray Ritchie Browning at Bellosguardo Frances Power Cobbe Elizabeth Barrett Browning's Conversation Kate Field

51 53 57 59

60 61 61

62 63

67 69 69

70 71 72

73 74

76 78

x Contents

Browning's 'celerity' ... or immediateness' William Michael Rossetti The Brownings, 1850 Charles Eliot Norton 'What Mignon might be in maturity and maternity' Sara Coleridge 'The delight of the encounter' Bayard Taylor 'She talks no commonplaces' Ellen Twisleton 'We mustn't leave the great Elizabeth alone in such a state' Elizabeth Kinney A Retrograde Step for Women Elizabeth Barrett Browning 'Our close, stifling, corrupt system' Elizabeth Barrett Browning 'A noble devotion to and faith in the regeneration of Italy' Kate Field The 'logical and common-sensible' poet and the 'good and kind fairy' Nathaniel Hawthorne Spiritualism: 'Mrs Browning kept trying to stem his flow of eager, funny talk' Sophia Hawthorne 'The corruption of our society requires not shut doors and windows, but light and air' Elizabeth Barrett Browning 'All poetry being a putting the infinite within the finite': Men and Women Robert Browning Writing Aurora Leigh Alexandra Orr With Landor at Siena Edith Peruzzi de' Medici Rome in 1853-4: 'They did not come back with the usual impressions' Walter Cassels Rome in 1859: 'plenty of distraction, and no Men and Women' Elizabeth Barrett Browning Browning in 1861: 'the brain stratifies and matures creatively, even in the pauses of the pen' Elizabeth Barrett Browning

78

80 81 81 83 84

86 87 87

90

92

93

94 95 95

97 97

98

Contents xi

'She has genius; I am only a painstaking fellow' Alexandra Orr The Death and Funeral of Elizabeth Barrett Browning William Wetmore Story

100 101

Part IV: Robert Browning 1861-89 Browning's Return to London Henry James 'No man was ever more free from bardic pose' Rudolf Chambers Lehmann Browning and Forster: 'I will pitch this bottle of claret at your head' Rudolf Chambers Lehmann Browning's Conversation in 1872: port, a pun and financial matters Cornelia Crosse 'Browning's talk had not much intellectual resemblance to his poetry' Sidney Colvin Browning at King Lear Sidney Colvin 'A constant flow of anecdotes and social allusions' W. H. Mallock Tennyson and Browning Hallam Tennyson 'He talks everybody down with his dreadful voice' Mary Gladstone Exerting himself 'for the amusement of his fellow-guests at a dinner-table' Alexandra Orr The Companionable Sage Anne Thackeray Ritchie 'An exception to his broad liberal principles' Rudolf Lehmann 'An enviably happy man' William Michael Rossetti 'On some of the great subjects ... he scarcely seemed to have thought at all' Robert Buchanan Browning's 'loathing and contempt for poor Walt' Robert Buchanan

107 108

109

111

112 113 113 114 116

117 118 119 119

120 122

xii Contents

'The pretty nothings, the subtle flatteries of the poet's talk' Lilian Aldrich 'He was a rich banker, he was a perfected butler' Julian Hawthorne Encounters with Browning Henriette Corkran Browning at Home William Grove 'As far a dandy as a sensible man can be' The World 'Browning and his Lady Admirers' 'An American correspondent' Impromptus and a Reading Felix Moscheles At the Desk Felix Moscheles 'His skill in fence was very great' Frederick James Fumivall Showing the Old Yellow Book Hiram Corson 'I've forgotten my own verses': Browning's 'marvellous memory' and its 'funny failure' George Henry Boughton 'A wise and reflective man guides himself aright' John Churton Collins Personalia Edmund Gosse 'Browning in Venice' Katharine de Kay Bronson 'Browning in Asolo' Katharine de Kay Bronson 'Never say of me that I am dead' William Sharp 'One who never turned his back but marched breast forward' Sarianna Browning Death and Funeral Alexandra Orr

123 123 125 127 130

131 132 133 134

136

13 7 139 143

147 151 159 159 160

Chronology

165

Index

167

Acknowledgements Extracts from the correspondence of Elizabeth Barrett Browning and Robert Browning are included by permission of John Murray (Publishers) Ltd, as are extracts from Julian Hawthorne's Shapes That Pass and Michael Field's Works and Days. I should also like to thank the following: The Browning Collection, Denison Library, Scripps College, for permission to use an extract from Elizabeth Barrett Browning's untitled essay of 4 February 1827. Columbia University for permission to use an extract from Elizabeth Clementine Kinney's MS 'Personal Reminiscences': Edmund Clarence Stedman Papers, Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Columbia University. The Margaret Clapp Library, Wellesley College, for permission to use extracts from Elizabeth Barrett's letters to Mary Russell Mitford of 10 August 1836, 17 July 1841, 20 January and 22 July 1842, 14 February 1843, 30 December 1844, and 18 September 1846 (Copyright, Wellesley College Library, Special Collections). The Trustees of the National Library of Scotland for permission to use Thomas Carlyle's letter of 28 July 1842 to John Sterling (MS 531, no. 51). Methuen and Co. for permission to quote from Mary Gladstone (Mrs Drew): Her Diaries and Letters, ed. Lucy Masterman (1930). The Pierpont Morgan Library, New York for permission to quote from MA 1325, letters from Anna Brownell Jameson to Lady Byron, September-October 1846. Laurence Pollinger Limited and the Lovelace Papers on deposit in the Bodleian Library for permission to print an extract from the typescript of Anna Brownell Jameson's letter to Lady Byron of 27 October 1846.

Robert Browning's letter of 9 August 1837 and Mary Russell Mitford's letter to Charles Boner of 22 February 1847 are held by the Heinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University.

xiii

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Abbreviations Allingham, Diary

BIS Browning and Domett The Brownings to the Tennysons

Checklist

Chronology

Collections

Correspondence

DI

DNB Forster

Griffin and Minchin

William Allingham, A Diary, eds H. Allingham and D. Radford (London, 1907) Browning Institute Studies Robert Browning and Alfred Domett, ed. Frederic G. Kenyon (London, 1906) The Brownings to the Tennysons: Letters from Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Browning to Alfred, Emily, and Hallam Tennyson, 1852-1889, ed. Thomas]. Collins (Waco, TX, 1971) The Brownings' Correspondence: a Checklist, eds Philip Kelley and Ronald Hudson (New York, 1978) Martin Garrett, A Browning Chronology: Elizabeth Barrett and Robert Browning (London 1999) Philip Kelley and Betty A. Coley, The Browning Collections: a Reconstruction with Other Memorabilia (Waco, TX, 1984) The Brownings' Correspondence, eds Philip Kelley, Ronald Hudson and Scott Lewis (Winfield, KS, 1984-) 14 vols so far Dearest Isa: Robert Browning's Letters to Isabella Blagden, ed. Edward C. McAleer (Austin, TX, 1951) The Dictionary of National Biography Margaret Forster, Elizabeth Barrett Browning: a Biography (London, 1988) William Hall Griffin and H. C. Minchin, The Life of Robert Browning (London, 1910)

XV

xvi Abbreviations

Heydon and Kelley

Hudson

HUP

Irvine and Honan

Landis

LEBB

Letters

Longman

LRB

Maynard MTF

OED Orr

Elizabeth Barrett Browning's Letters to Mrs David Ogilvy, eds Peter N. Heydon and Philip Kelley (London, 1974) Browning to his American Friends: Letters Between the Brownings, the Storys, and James Russell Lowell, ed. Gertrude Reese Hudson (London, 1965) Elizabeth Barrett Browning: Hitherto Unpublished Poems and Stories, ed. H. Buxton Forman, 2 vols (Boston, 1914) William Irvine and Park Honan, The Book, the Ring, and the Poet: a Biography of Robert Browning (London, 1975) Letters of the Brownings to George Barrett, eds Paul Landis and Ronald E. Freeman (Urbana, IL, 1958) The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, ed. F. G. Kenyon, 2 vols (London and New York, 1897) The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett 1845-1846, 2 vols (London, 1899) The Poems of Browning, eds John Woolford and Daniel Karlin, (London, 1991-) Letters of Robert Browning Collected by Thomas f. Wise, ed. Thurman L.Hood(London, 1933) John Maynard, Browning's Youth, Cambridge, MA, 1977 More than Friend: the Letters of Robert Browning to Katharine de Kay Bronson, ed. Michael Meredith (Waco, TX, and Winfield, KS, 1985) The Oxford English Dictionary Mrs [Alexandra] Sutherland Orr, Life and Letters of Robert Browning (London, 1891)

Abbreviations xvii

Oxford

Raymond and Sullivan

Ryals

Taplin

Ward

The Poetical Works of Robert Browning, eds Ian Jack and others (Oxford, 1984-) The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning to Mary Russell Mitford, eds Meredith B. Raymond and Mary Rose Sullivan, 3 vols (Waco, TX, 1983) Clyde de L. Ryals, The Life of Robert Browning: a Critical Biography (Cambridge, MA, and Oxford, 1993) Gardner B. Taplin, The Life of Elizabeth Barrett Browning (New Haven, CT, 1957) Maisie Ward, Robert Browning and his World, 2 vols (New York, 1967-9)

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Introduction The portraitist William Artaud, about to paint Elizabeth Barrett and some of her siblings, was much impressed by the twelve-year-old girl who bids fair to be one of those sublimatics of the sex which ... may stand up and fairly defy those imperious and boisterous creatures called men; to produce with all their lofty pretensions one among them of superior spiritual endowments. 1 Some later accounts sound a very different note; for Henriette Corkran, for instance, 'Elizabeth Barrett Browning was certainly the most feminine of women - she loved devotedly' (p. 62). Neither report, probably, would have surprised its subject. As a child Barrett read Mary Wollstonecraft. Later she delights in telling her respectable friend Mary Russell Mitford that she is bad at sewing and other traditional branches of 'femineity' and proclaims her dedication to poetry (p. 14); she distrusts Florence Nightingale's activities in the Crimea as a retrograde step for women - men love 'ladies carrying lint' and 'angelic she's' but 'if they stir an inch as thinkers or artists from the beaten line ... the very same men would curse the very same women and stop there' (p. 86). At the same time she sometimes expresses amusement - symptomatic perhaps of some real anxiety - at her own temerity in straying into the intellectual domain of Artaud's 'boisterous creatures': 'Beth was a poet', she says in a semi-autobiographical piece probably written for a young cousin; 'No woman was ever before such a poet as she would be. As Homer was among men, so would she be among women .... Many persons would be obliged to say that she was a little taller than Homer if anything.' 2 And speaking in her own person she admits that it would not do for Anna Jameson or Harriet Martineau to know that she believes there to be 'a natural inferiority of mind in women ... and that the history of Art and of genius testifies to the fact openly'. 3 She would perhaps have found Corkran's comment on her as a devoted female limiting but not offensive. Neither stereotype, of course, fits exactly and consistently; descriptions of her often involve elements of each and she herself, responding toW. M. Thackeray's rejection of 'Lord Walter's Wife', seems simultaneously to bridle at and to take advantage of xix

xx Introduction

Thackeray's 'kind way of naming my dignities- "Browning's wife and Penini's mother'" (p. 93). For much of Barrett's life she did not appear to be infringing male space. Illness and a preference (whether more her own or her father's) for seclusion long kept her away from society at large. The impressions of the people who did at last meet her from 1846 onwards were conditioned, to a certain extent, by a desire to see how far she still bore the marks of the recluse. (Many no doubt had read Richard 'Hengist' Horne's A New Spirit of the Age (1844) with its erudite and devout Miss Barrett, 'confined entirely to her own apartment, and almost hermetically sealed, in consequence of some extremely delicate state of health ... and often, during many weeks at a time, in darkness almost equal to that of the night'. 4 She disliked this image but might have dispelled it more easily had she not worked so hard to avoid meeting Horne at this period.) In becoming the heroine of a much talked-of love-story 5 had she changed beyond recognition or triumphed in spite of continuing invalidism? Either way, it seemed to some that 'Love, evidently, has saved her life' (Sophia Hawthorne, p. 92). Often visitors did find her frail, ethereal, spiritual,ti possessed of the simple purity of Amelia in Vanity Fair (Eliza Ogilvy, p. 63). The work of such a figure could quite easily be rendered safely feminine, especially since the earlier poems are predominantly lyric, learned or religious. She posed little real threat to male pride except at her most outspokenly and extensively political in such late works as Casa Guidi Windows and Poems Before Congress. And the habitually perceived contrasts or complementarity between Barrett Browning and Browning further reduce the threat. She is still while he charges about, seated quietly in a low chair while he cheerily welcomes visitors. Her voice is weak, low, slender, grasshopper-like (for Nathaniel Hawthorne), shrill if ever she attempts to protest; his strong voice and definite statements run on, overwhelming her almost entirely in Sophia Hawthorne's account (p. 92). 7 Fortunately the frail, pale woman and poet was not the only one known to her contemporaries. Mary Brotherton's report to her fellow Anglo-Florentine Frederick Tennyson rather confirms that image but renders it less uncritically favourable than usual with her suspicion that 'little sweet serious earnest Mrs Browning' has a 'want in her organization of any sense of the laughable'. 8 The young journalist Kate Field, with the advantage of knowing her rather better, registers that although her conversation 'was not characterized by sallies of wit or brilliant repartee', was not the sort of thing that went down well in

Introduction xxi

'society', it was 'leavened with a quiet, graceful humour of her own' (p. 78). Field stresses that such qualities were best appreciated one-toone. Anne Thackeray, who achieved something of the necessary intimacy at an early age, wrote one of the most perceptive accounts. Responding to 'Mrs Browning's motherly advance' and 'peaceful home' she might have described a formulaic female only to be contrasted with the robust Browning. Elements of that are present. But in addition Thackeray probes both her individual appeal and what she shares with her husband: 'that form of greatness which consists in reaching the reality in all things, instead of keeping to the formalities and the affectations of life' (p. 74). Interesting individuality is also sometimes asserted when people discuss her politics or her spiritualism. And in her letters she has much to say about her own preoccupations and about the husband whose nature nobody else, she claims, exactly understands but she who 'is on the inside of him and hears him breathe' (p. 99). Most people who met Robert Browning, of course, could achieve no such degree of intimacy. Some of his principal insights into himself, at least during his marriage, must have been expressed orally - 'he thinks aloud with me', his wife told his sister (p. 99), 'and can't stop himself'. (Probably he continued to think aloud in later years, on some topics, with Sarianna.) Although he was often perceived as cordial, robust, straightforward, the contrast between this manner and that of his verse came increasingly to puzzle and intrigue people. 'The mere act of writing', claimed Sidney Colvin, 'seemed to have a peculiar effect on him, for I have known him manage to be obscure even in a telegram' (p. 112). His letters were much less self-revealing than Barrett's (especially those written in his early chaffing, partly self-mocking, rapidly allusive manner). And inevitably as Browning moved increasingly widely in society through contact with such friends as Thomas Carlyle, John Forster and William Charles Macready, he attracted diverse, even contradictory responses: he is charming, arrogant, 'a trifle of a dandy' but 'determined to conquer fame and to achieve success' (Eliza Bridell-Fox, p. 34), quick-witted, quick to take offence, increasingly 'anecdotical' aoseph Arnauld, p. 47), full of 'ingenuity, vivacity and Cockney gracefulness' (Carlyle, p. 37). As circumstances and perceptions change, he declines dramatically, for Macready, from the archetypal young poet, intelligent, kind-hearted, to 'a very conceited man', 'a very disagreeable and offensively mannered person', ultimately a 'puppy' (pp. 45, 46). Particularly before his marriage, one can apply to this range of impressions Browning's own comment on his portraits: 'Posterity will pronounce me

xxii Introduction

a puzzle in that respect, no two transcripts of my respectable features being alike.' 9 He had dreamed of succeeding under different pseudonyms as poet, composer, playwright, and sometimes at least must have been aware of putting on different masks; much later, in the era of his 'love of London society', 'he rather liked it' when Tennyson 'told him he would die in a white tie'. 10 Fascination or frustration at the divide between the white-tied loudvoiced talker on trivial matters and the prolific, difficult poet becomes, famously, the burden of accounts from the 1860s-80s, when Browning met so very many people. It is almost as if- silencing other speakershe is trapped in, or inventively expanding, one of his own monologues. 'You couldn't get under his guard', said F. T. Furnivall (p. 135). He lived equally, as Henry James put it, on either side of 'the wall that built out the idyll ... of which memory and imagination were virtually composed for him'; only he could pass through the invisible door in the wall, working the lock with a 'golden key - carrying the same about with him in his dinner-waistcoat, yet even in his most splendid expansions showing it, happy man, to none' (pp. 107-8). 11 But others did sometimes find their own key. At the end of his life Browning, sitting unusually still, not gesticulating for once, told Edmund Gosse 'with complete frankness' about 'the desolateness of his early and middle life as a literary man' (p. 144). According to Charles Halle he openly wept when the Grosvenor Gallery initially refused to exhibit a statue by his beloved Pen. 12 Browning's friend the painter Rudolf Lehmann notes that: When in my studio he chanced upon the drawing of his wife (which I had done in Rome for my Album), he gazed at it for a long time, and his eyes filled with tears. . . . Though Browning had successfully mastered a great poet's highstrung nervous temperament, in the long hours of patient sitting or standing for his portrait, subjects would be touched upon such as were not likely to come to the surface within the limits of ordinary conversation, and would when they concerned his tenderest affections, though most exceptionally, make him lose his self-control. This was the case when I accidentally referred to that spirit-rapping scoundrel, Home. 13 Sometimes he would show visitors 'a book or a faded paper' of his wife's 'while the listener would detect a wistful, yearning tenderness in the voice as the poet proceeded to explain whatever object he might be showing you' .14

Introduction xxiii

Many felt, too, that they were encountering the 'real' Browning when he read them his poems (even if sometimes that reality was mediated, paradoxically, through convincing impersonation of Andrea del Sarto or Fra Lippa Lippi). On occasion he even vouchsafed brief glimpses into the process of composition: 'Childe Roland' arriving 'as a kind of dream'; 15 the idea for Pippa coming upon him in a flash as he walked in woods (p. 44); some unfortunately unspecified words to Gosse on how he would shape a particular story into a poem - 'the form it should take, the suppression of what features and the substitution of what others were needful; and finally ... the non-obvious or inverted moral of the whole' (p. 145); a statement elicited by Katharine de Kay Bronson that the twittering of birds has suggested what will be written down as 'The Lady and the Painter' (p. 154). Barrett Browning is also sometimes to be seen at work. Alexandra Orr tells us, for example (presumably on the authority of Robert or Sarianna Browning), that in Paris she worked on Aurora Leigh 'in pencil, on scraps of paper, as she lay on the sofa in her sitting-room ... simply hiding the paper beside her if anyone came in' (p. 95). (There is, however, little detailed material on the long gestation period of the poem.) Much can also be deduced from the Brownings' more general utterances on their poetry and on poetry more broadly; which often help, too, to give a fuller sense of their relationships: Browning struggling with his exasperation as he explains the premise of his work to Ruskin, Barrett adopting suitably different manners in declarations on the subject to Mitford and Sara Coleridge. Some of these utterances are included here beside more earth-bound impressions of her increasingly unfashionable hair-style or his preference for port. Notes References to material included in this volume are followed by their page number. 1 2 3 4 5

Letter to Wager Tayler, 29 March 1818, in Correspondence, i.319. Untitled essay, Correspondence, i.361, from a manuscript at Scripps College. Letter to Robert Browning, 3 July 1845 (Correspondence, x.291). A New Spirit of the Age, 2 vols (London, 1844), ii.134. Exaggerated and apocryphal versions of the story circulated in which love took the heroine from complete debility to equally complete vigour or the hero succeeded in gaining admittance to 50 Wimpole Street only because a drunken servant mistook him for a doctor. (See joseph Arnauld, letter to Alfred Domett, 30 November 1846 (Browning and Domett, pp. 132-6); Moncure D. Conway, Autobiography: Memoirs and Experiences, 2 vols (Boston, 1904), ii.20.)

xxiv Introduction 6 See Daniel Karlin, 'The Brownings' Marriage: Contemporary Representations', Studies in Browning and his Circle, 21 (1993-7), p. 44. 7 Browning's voice was much celebrated, bemoaned and discoursed upon in his later years: seep. 118, n. 1. 8 Letters to Frederick Tennyson, ed. Hugh Schonfield (London, 1930), p. 110 (13 December 1853). 9 Letter to Annie Egerton Smith, October-November 1876 (Checklist, n.d.: 424). 10 Wilfrid Ward, Problems and Persons (London, 1903), p. 201. 11 Some observers, besides, did not see so much of a division between the public and the private Browning. See for instance the responses, in this volume, of William Michael Rossetti or Katharine de Kay Bronson. 12 C.E. Halle, Notes from a Painter's Life (London, 1909), p. 121. The piece (Dryope Fascinated) had already been rejected by the Royal Academy. 13 An Artist's Reminiscences (London, 1894), pp. 228, 229-30. For Home see p. 72-3. 14 William B. Kingsland, Robert Browning: Chief Poet of the Age, 2nd edn (London, 1890), p. 42. 15 Lilian Whiting, The Brownings: Their Life and Art (London, 1911), p. 261.

Part I Elizabeth Barrett 1806-46

'Glimpses Into My Own Literary Character' Elizabeth Barrett In my sixth year 1 for some lines on virtue which I had penned with great care I received from Papa a ten shilling note enclosed in a letter which was addressed to the Poet Laureate of Hope End; 2 I mention this because I received much more pleasure from the word Poet than from the ten shilling note - I did not understand the meaning of the word Laureate, but it being explained to me by my dearest Mama, the idea first presented itself to me of celebrating our birthdays by my verse. 3 'Poet Laureate of Hope End' was too great a title to lose. At eleven I wished to be considered an authoress. Novels were thrown aside. Poetry and Essays were my studies and I felt the most ardent desire to understand the learned languages. 4 To comprehend even the Greek alphabet was delight inexpressible. Under the tuition of Mr. McSwiney 5 I attained that which I so fervently desired. For eight months during this year I never remember having directed my attentions to any other object than the ambition of gaining fame. Literature was the star which in prospect illuminated my future days - it was the spur which prompted me ... the aim ... the very soul of my being - I was determined ... to gain the very pinnacle of excellence and even when this childish and foolishly ambitious idea had fled ... by my own reflections and conviction I yet looked with regret - painful regret to the beacon of that distinguished fame I had sighed for so long- and so ardently! I never felt more real anguish than when I was undeceived on this point. I am not vain naturally and have still less of the pedant in my composition than self conceit but I confess that during these eight months I never felt myself of more consequence and never had a better opinion of my own talents. In short I was in infinite danger of being as vain as I was inexperienced. During this dangerous period I was from home and the fever of a heated imagination was perhaps increased by the intoxicating gaieties of a watering place, Ramsgate where we then were and where I commenced my poem 'The Battle of Marathon', 6 now in print!! When we came home one day after having written a page of poetry which I considered models of beauty I ran down stairs to 3

4 Elizabeth Barrett Browning and Robert Browning

the library to seek Pope's Homer in order to compare them that I might enjoy my OWN SUPERIORITY. I can never think of this instance of the intoxication of vanity without smiling at my childish folly and ridiculous vanity. I brought Homer up in triumph and read first my own Poem and afterwards began to compare. I read fifty lines from the glorious Father of the lyre. It was enough ... I felt the whole extent of my immense and mortifying inferiority 'Glimpses Into My Own Literary Character', 1820-1 (HUP, i.7-8, 10-12; Correspondence, i.350-1) Notes From an early age Barrett read widely and wrote poems, essays, stories and dramatic scenes. She was encouraged in this by both her parents. The close companionship of her brother Edward Moulton-Barrett ('Bro', 1807-40) was another powerful stimulus. In her manuscript essay 'My Character and Bra's Compared', written in February 1821 after he had gone away to school at Charterhouse, she looks back with affection at their years of mutual endeavour and common interests, while contrasting her poetic imagination, passionate feeling, and pursuit of excellence with his more sober and less ambitious nature (Correspondence, i.357-8). 1 Correspondence, i.350 n.8, points out that she was actually nine and that her chronology in this essay is generally suspect. 2 Hope End, near Ledbury, Herefordshire, was the house lived in by the Barretts between 1809 and 1832. 3 Many of these birthday poems have survived. See Collections and the early volumes of Correspondence. 4 On 29 March 1818, when Barrett was newly twelve, the well-known portraitist and painter of biblical scenes William Artaud (c.1760-c.1822) noted with wonder her ability to absorb learned languages, as well as her skill with words, versification and ideas (letter to Wager Tayler, Correspondence, i.319). 5 Daniel McSwiney was Bra's tutor before he went to Charterhouse. 6 The Battle of Marathon, written between 1817 and 1819, was privately printed on her fourteenth birthday, 6 March 1820.

Religious Imagination

Elizabeth Barrett One day I omitted a prayer wholly through forgetfulness but having afterwards remembered the neglect I was so impressed with

Part I: Elizabeth Barrett 1806-46 S

the idea of having offended the God of my salvation that I hardly hoped for pardon. My whole mind was tortured and my prayers that night bespoke the anguish of my heart. It was not the humility of a sinner suing for pardon at the throne of mercy but the violent entreaties extorted by despair from my heart. The next morning I renewed with tenfold ardour my agonising prayers. 'My God, My God, why hast thou forsaken me' I repeated in a tone of anguish. The morning was dark and a dingy mist floated in the mid air when on a sudden a flood of light rushing from the benignant sun through that vale of loneliness beamed on my prostrate form and seemed to smile upon my prayer! My imagination took fire and I believed that my God had forgiven me. I felt as much awe, as much gratitude, as if the Deity himself had vouchsafed to comfort me and receive me again unto his bosom. So great was the strength of my imagination which is now often too powerful for my control. 'Glimpses Into My Own Literary Character', 1820-1 (HUP, i.13-14; Correspondence, i.352)

Notes Barrett says that she was twelve at this time; by thirteen 'My religious enthusiasm had subsided and I took upon myself to advocate the cause of the Church of England!' (HUP, i.lS).

More 'Glimpses' Elizabeth Barrett Perhaps there is too much of sentiment in my disposition and too little rational reflection! I have beheld silently the pure and wide expanse of Ocean. I have remembered the littleness of Man when compared to the Majesty of God and my heart has throbbed almost wildly with a strange and undefined feeling! - I have gazed on the fleeting clouds which rolled their light columns over the dark blue sky and wept while I felt that such was the futility of life. My feelings are acute in the extreme but as nothing is so odious in my eyes as a damsel famed in story for a superabundance of sensibility they are carefully restrained! I have so habituated myself to this sort of continued restraint, that I often appear to my dearest friends to lack common feeling! - I do not blame them!

6 Elizabeth Barrett Browning and Robert Browning

They know me not and I feel a sort of mysterious pleasure in their mistake!It is pleasing to all minds to feel that they are judged harshly- it robs Conscience of half her arrows. I remember when very young - before I had passed the first years of infancy- being told by a servant whom I had offended, 'that I was cold and unfeeling and that every one thought so, whatever they might say' - I heard this declaration with the greatest pretended calmness - though my head perfectly seemed to swim so violent was my indignation, but pride, unconquerable pride, sealed my lips! -I only smiled- a contemptuous smile I meant it to be - and walked away! And yet I was not angry, only astonished - unspeakably astonished! - That whole day my usual calmness sat on my brow - it was remarked that I was more silent than I was accustomed to be! -No! I could not preserve buoyant spirits when the bitterness of death was at my heart! I was young, very young then to govern myself; but I did do it and I gloried in that self command, but when the shades of night descended, when I was left alone to hold solitary converse with my pillow, feelings so long repressed rushed like a cataract to my heart and tears gushed wildly forth! My mind is naturally independent and spurns that subserviency of opinion which is generally considered necessary to feminine softness. But this is a subject on which I must always feel strongly, for I feel within me an almost proud consciousness of independence which prompts me to defend my opinions and to yield them only to conviction!!!!!!! My friends may differ from me: the world may accuse me but this I am determined never to retract!! Better, oh how much better, to be the ridicule of mankind, the scoff of society, than lose that self respect which though this heart were bursting would elevate me above misery - above wretchedness and above abasement!!! These principles are irrevocable! It is not- I feel it is not vanity that dictates them! it is not - I know it is not an encroachment on masculine prerogative but it is a proud sentiment which will never, never allow me to be humbled in my own eyes!!! To be a good linguist is the height of my ambition and I do not believe that I can ever cease desiring to attain this!! The wish appears to be innate and rooted in my very nature!! It is actuated by

Part I: Elizabeth Barrett 1806-46 7

two motives to be sincere. In primo vanity has not a little to do with it!! The second perhaps cannot be so easily defined but whenever I am employed in any literary undertaking which requires much depth of thought and learned reference I cannot help feeling uneasy and imagining that if I were conversant with such languages I might perhaps come to a decision at once on a point which now occupies days in conjecture!! This is tormenting and sometimes agitates me to a painful and almost nervous degree. I well remember three years ago ere I had the advantage of Mr. McSwiney's instruction and having found myself entangled in one of these perplexities, crying very heartily for half an hour because I did not understand Greek!!!It was then I made a secret vow never to pause at undertaking any literary difficulty if convinced of its final utility, but manfully to wade through the waves of learning, stopping my ears against the enchanted voice of the Syren and unmindful of either the rocks of disappointment or the waves of labour. I believe I have resolution enough to abide by the determination, for if life be spent in the steep ascent towards the bright pinnacle of learning it is a life well employed and though it be a life of labour and anxiety yet it is not a monotonous one! There is variety in it at least!!! 'Glimpses Into My Own Literary Character', 1820-1 (HUP, i.21-6; Correspondence, i.354-6)

'Happy influences' Anne Thackeray Ritchie Elizabeth was growing up meanwhile under happy influences. She had brothers and sisters in her home, her life was not all study, she had the best of company, that of happy children, as well as of all bright and natural things. She was fond of riding, she loved her gardens, her woodland playground. As she grew older she used to drive a pony and go further afield. A child of those days flying in terror along one of these steep Herefordshire lanes, perhaps frightened by a cow's horns beyond the hedge, still describes being overtaken by a young girl in a pony carriage with a pale spiritual face and a profusion of dark curls, who suddenly caught her up into safety and drove rapidly away with her. 'Elizabeth Barrett Browning', Dictionary of National Biography, vol. 7 (1886)

8 Elizabeth Barrett Browning and Robert Browning

Notes For Anne Thackeray Ritchie see below, p. 76. Whether or not the incident she recounts actually happened, it goes some way to emphasize Barrett's healthiness until the age of fifteen.

'Dearest Papa would be sorry to think how much he grieved me' Elizabeth Barrett He complained first of my illegibility, then of my obscurity. 'You can never please people [with] this want of explicitness. I told you so in the case of your Essay on Mind.!] He then complained of my involved style and obsolete words. 'Where did this word come from?' 'From Spenser.' 'I wish you had never read Spenser.' 'Your harmony is defective - you who write so much about measure (alluding to my correspondence with Mr. Price 2 ) - I told you by writing on that subject you would destroy your style.' 'The lines you complain of, Papa, were written before I wrote on that subject at all.' He expressed his disapprobation strongly with regard to my conception of Theon's character. 'He is a madman, and the most disagreeable man I ever heard of' When Papa had read three sheets and part of a fourth, in a very hesitating and ridiculing manner, constantly mistaking the words, hardly waiting for my correction, and almost entirely missing the final pause of every line, he gave me my dismissal in words it is good for me to remember. 'There is precisely the same fault here as what you have been condemning in "Almache" 3 - There is no variety! - You ring changes on one idea all through. You might give the character you would entertain us with in a page and a half. The broodings of your hero are the broodings of a madman - and his egotism is insufferable. Lord Byron lets you look into his melancholy mind, but by glimpses only. There never was such a character as Theon's. Neither is your bad conception of a general plan redeemed by your poetry, which has less harmony than any thing you ever wrote. Indeed the whole production is most wretched! I must tell you so -

Part I: Elizabeth Barrett 1806-46 9

and I think it quite lamentable that you should have passed so much time to such an effect. You see the subject is beyond your grasp - and you must be content with what you can reach. I cannot read any more - I would not read over again what I have read for ten pounds - really not for fifty. I advise you to burn the wretched thing.' Thus was I dismissed after months of anxious solitary thought, after months of apprehension mingled with rejoicing expectation. I did not say a word: it was harder to prevent myself from shedding a tear. I took my papers, and when I went to bed, had a marble heaviness of heart. How will this end?It seems to me a little hard that half an hour of patient attention should not be vouchsafed to my half year's patient composition, but I have no business to complain of this. I have received much more gratification from the approbation my writings have met with, than they or I had a right to expect. Mr. Price's friendship has given me more continued happiness than any single circumstance ever did - and I pray for him, as the grateful pray. I have also experienced much mortification at different times about my compositions. They have cost me almost as many tears as smiles- but perhaps tears do me good. I have hardly ever been mortified as I was mortified last night - but perhaps this also will do me good. I was growing a little too exalting in myself, a little too full of myself, and it is right that I should be made apprehensive about myself. Papa's expression 'that my subject was beyond my grasp' lets me see at once how limited he considers my talents. I believe I did not think my talents so limited, and I certainly did not know that he thought so. The knowledge is worth something, but it is very bitter to receive at first. I shall get over this in time, and in the meantime will fag harder than I have yet fagged. I cannot give up completing the poem I was advised to burn, but I shall revise and I hope improve it. How happy I should be now, if I had not shown it to Papa last night! -Now I am disturbed, humbled ... I am even now rather more comfortable from emptying my heart on paper - Dearest Papa would be sorry to think how much he grieved me! Untitled essay, 4 February 1827 (Correspondence, i.358-60)

10 Elizabeth Barrett Browning and Robert Browning

Notes The poem commented on is 'The Development of Genius' (HUP, ii.99-133; see Collections, D730-2). 1 An Essay on Mind, with Other Poems was published in March 1826. 2 Metre was one of the main subjects Barrett debated with the renowned classical scholar Uvedale Price (1747-1828). Their correspondence began with Price's praise for An Essay on Mind; he also encouraged her in her work on 'The Development of Genius'. In March 1827 she sent him 'To Uvedale Price Esqr. on his Birthday'. 3 'Almache' is probably A/mack's; a Novel (1827) by Marianne Spencer Stanhope or Charles White.

'My first acquaintance with Elizabeth Barrett'

Mary Russell Mit(ord My first acquaintance with Elizabeth Barrett commenced about fifteen years ago. 1 She was certainly one of the most interesting persons that I had ever seen. Everybody who then saw her said the same; so that it is not merely the impression of my partiality, or my enthusiasm. Of a slight, delicate figure, with a shower of dark curls falling on either side of a most expressive face, large tender eyes richly fringed by dark eyelashes, a smile like a sunbeam, and such a look of youthfulness, that I had some difficulty persuading a friend, in whose carriage we went together to Chiswick, that the translatress of the 'Prometheus' 2 of Aeschylus, the authoress of the 'Essay on Mind', was old enough to be introduced into company, in technical language was out. Through the kindness of another invaluable friend, 3 to whom I owe many obligations, but none so great as this, I saw much of her during my stay in town. We met so constantly and so familiarly that in spite of the difference of age intimacy ripened into friendship, and after my return into the country, we corresponded freely and frequently, her letters being just what letters ought to be - her own talk put upon paper. Recollections of a Literary Life, 3 vols (London, 1852), i.268 Notes Mitford (1787-1855), well known to Barrett as author of works including Our Village (5 vols, 1824-32), met her on 26 May 1836. She

Part I: Elizabeth Barrett 1806-46 11

found the younger woman shy and unused to society, but likely to benefit, while retaining her natural modesty, if exposed to it (Correspondence, iii.329, 330-1). They corresponded on literature and a wide range of other subjects. The friendship began to cool somewhat on Barrett's part after she met Browning (for Mitford's unflattering view of whom see below, p. 35), but survived even Mitford's revelations about the death of Bro (see next extract). 1 They were introduced by John Kenyon (1784-1856), Barrett's distant cousin and informal literary encourager and critic. He took them to see 'the giraffes and the Diorama' (Correspondence, iii.329). Through Kenyon, Barrett also met William Wordsworth and Walter Savage Landor and, in 1845, was brought into contact with Browning, with whose father he had been at school. After their marriage he provided them with an annual allowance of £100 and guaranteed their financial security following his death with a bequest of £11 000. 2 Prometheus Bound was published in 1833. (A revised version followed in Poems, 1850.) Mitford was much impressed by her friend's ability in Greek, which she read 'as I do French' (Correspondence, iii.329). 3 Kenyon.

'The fatal event which saddened her bloom of youth' Mary Russell Mitford The next year was a painful one to herself and to all who loved her. She broke a blood-vessel upon the lungs which did not heal. If there had been consumption in the family that disease would have intervened. There were no seeds of the fatal English malady in her constitution, and she escaped. Still, however, the vessel did not heal, and after attending her for above a twelvemonth at her father's house in Wimpole Street, Dr. Chambers, on the approach of winter, ordered her to a milder climate. Her eldest brother, a brother in heart and in talent worthy of such a sister, together with other devoted relatives accompanied her to Torquay, and there occurred the fatal event which saddened her bloom of youth, and gave a deeper hue of thought and feeling, especially of devotional feeling, to her poetry. I have so often been asked what could be the shadow that had passed over that young heart, that now that time has softened the first agony it seems to me right that the world should hear the story of an accident in which there was much sorrow, but no blame ...

12 Elizabeth Barrett Browning and Robert Browning

This tragedy nearly killed Elizabeth Barrett. She was utterly prostrated by the horror and the grief, and by a natural but a most unjust feeling that she had been in some sort the cause of this great misery. It was not until the following year that she could be removed in an invalid carriage, and by journeys of twenty miles a day, to her afflicted family and her London home. The house that she occupied at Torquay had been chosen as one of the most sheltered in the place. It stood at the bottom of the cliffs almost close to the sea; and she told me herself that during that whole winter the sound of the waves rang in her ears like the moans of one dying. Still she clung to literature and to Greek; in all probability she would have died without that wholesome diversion to her thoughts. Her medical attendant did not always understand this. To prevent the remonstrances of her friendly physician, Dr. Barry, she caused a small edition of Plato to be so bound as to resemble a novel. He did not know, skilful and kind though he were, that to her such books were not an arduous and painful study, but a consolation and a delight. Recollections of a Literary Life, i.268-71

Notes Mitford's public account of the death of Bra, who drowned with two companions while boating in Tor Bay in july 1840, deeply offended Barrett Browning; even to her husband she preferred to speak as little as possible about her loss. The offence was added to by the use and distortion of the material by Philarete Chasles, lecturing in Paris in March 1852. Nevertheless Mitford was soon forgiven.

Miss Barrett at Thirty-Five

Mary Russell Mitford [Her beauty] proceeded from contrasts - a slight, girlish figure, very delicate, with exquisite hands and feet, a round face, with a most noble forehead, a large mouth, beautifully formed, and full of expression, lips like parted coral, teeth large, regular, and glittering with healthy whiteness, large dark eyes, with such eyelashes, resting on the cheek when cast down; when turned

Part I: Elizabeth Barrett 1806-46 13

upward, touching the flexible and expressive eyebrow; a dark complexion, with cheeks literally as bright as the dark China rose, a profusion of silky, dark curls, and a look of youth and of modesty hardly to be expressed. This, added to the very simple but graceful and costly dress by which all the family are distinguished, is an exact portrait of her some years ago. Now she has totally lost the rich, bright colouring, which certainly made the greater part of her beauty. She is dark and pallid; the hair is almost entirely hidden; the look of youth gone (I think she now looks as much beyond her actual age as, formerly, she looked behind it); nothing remaining but the noble forehead, the matchless eyes, and the fine form of the mouth and teeth - even now their whiteness is healthy. Your dear mama, so well versed in the appearances of sickness, will understand what I mean, and read in it a symptom favourable to our beloved friend's restoration. The expression, too, is completely changed; the sweetness remains, but it is accompanied with more shrewdness, more gaiety, the look not merely of the woman of genius - that she always had - but of the superlatively clever woman. An odd effect of absence from general society, that the talent for conversation should have ripened, and the shyness have disappeared - but so it is. When I first saw her, her talk, delightful as it was, had something too much of the lamp - she spoke too well - and her letters were rather too much like the very best books. Now all that is gone; the fine thoughts come gushing and sparkling like water from a spring, but flow as naturally as water down a hillside, clear, bright, and sparkling in the sunshine. All this, besides its great delightfulness, looks like life, does it not? Even in this weather - very trying to her - she has been translating some hymns of Gregory Nazianzen. 1 Letter to Lucy Olivia Anderdon, 12January 1842, Letters of Mary Russell Mitford, ed. Henry Chorley, 2 vols (London, 1872), i.l80-1; Correspondence, v.380-1 Notes Following her recovery from the serious illness which nearly killed her after Bra's death, Barrett returned to London in September 1841. Mitford was able to visit her at the end of October. 1 'Three Hymns, Translated from the Greek of Gregory Nazianzen' had just been published in The Athenaeum (8 January 1842).

14 Elizabeth Barrett Browning and Robert Browning

'The duties belonging to my femineity' Elizabeth Barrett

As to the cross-stitches - or stitches alas! of any sort, I am ashamed to say how useless and unaccomplished my fingers are in respect to them - and the more ashamed because I feel conscious that people may suspect the fault, of the vanity of a merit- by way of pedantry or the like. So when talk begins of work - German wools, English threads and the rest, I make haste to change the subject or to look on one side and escape the imminent exposure. Oh! you can't think, you can scarcely imagine, my awkwardness when I pretend to work! Such pricking of fingers, and knotting of thread, and sewing backwards in certain evolutions, instead of forwards! - I ought to have been well whipped at six years old, and then - that is, now - I should whip 1 better. As it is, I once knitted an odd garter, and embroidered an odd ruffle, and committed fragments of several collars, and did something mysterious, the name of which operation has past from my head, toward producing the quarter of a purse yes, and made several doll's frocks, and one or two frocks for a poor child of mine adoption - and that is 'the head and front of my attending' 2 to the duties belonging to my femineity. You who are excellent in all things will make an effort to forgive me - but the effort will be necessary. The best excuse for me is- that the occupation was never put to me in the form of a duty. I had nothing to mind or do, needle-ways, for my self or others. And then, my beloved friend, I was always insane about books and poems -poems of my own, I mean, and books of everybody's else- and I read Mary Wollstonecraft when I was thirteen: no, twelve! 3 and, through the whole course of my childhood, I had a steady indignation against Nature who made me a woman, and a determinate resolution to dress up in men's clothes as soon as ever I was free of the nursery, and go into the world 'to seek my fortune'. 'How', was not decided; but I rather leant towards being poor Lord Byron's PAGE. Letter to Mary Russell Mitford, 22 July 1842 (Correspondence, vi.41-2) Notes 1 'To sew over and over, to overcast; to draw into gathers, as by a frill, by a combination of overcast and running stitch' (OED). 2 See Othello, l.iii.80: 'The very head and front of my offending'.

Part I: Elizabeth Barrett 1806-46 15 3

Barrett first read Wollstonecraft's Vindication a( the Rights a( Woman (1792) in 1817 or 1818. In 1821 she wrote, under its influence, her 'Fragment of "An Essay on Woman'".

On Poetry 1: 'the object of the intellectual part of me' Elizabeth Barrett [Y]ou are quite right in telling me not to give up poetry for magazine-writing, or for prose of a higher character. You will be satisfied when you hear me say that I couldn't if I tried. Whatever degree of faculty I have, lies in poetry- still more of my personal happiness lies in it - still more of my love. I cannot remember the time when I did not love it ... with a lying-awake sort of passion at nine years old, and with a more powerful feeling since, which even all my griefs, such as have shaken life, have failed to shake. At this moment I love it more than ever- and am bent more than ever, if possible, to work into light ... not into popularity but into expression ... whatever faculty I have. This is the object of the intellectual part of me -and if I live it shall be done. There will be no bitterness in the process whatever the labour ... because it is not for the sake of popularity, no, nor of a higher kind of fame, but for poetry's own sake - rather, to speak more humbly and accurately, for the sake of my love of it. Love is the safest and most unwearied moving principle in all things - it is an heroic worker. Letter to Mary Russell Mitford, 20 January 1842 (Correspondence, v. 220)

On Poetry II: 'I want to write a new poem of a new class' Elizabeth Barrett A few characters - a simple story- and plenty of room for passion and thought - that is what I want .... [P]eople care for a story there's the truth! And I who care so much for stories, am not to find fault with them. And now tell me, -where is the obstacle to making as interesting a story of a poem as of a prose work- Echo answers where. 1 Conversations and events, why may they not be given as rapidly and passionately and lucidly in verse as in prose - echo answers why. You see nobody is offended by my approach to the

16 Elizabeth Barrett Browning and Robert Browning

conventions of vulgar life in 'Lady Geraldine' 2 - and it gives me courage to go on, and touch this real everyday life of our age, and hold it with my two hands. I want to write a poem of a new class, in a measure - a Don Juan, without the mockery and impurity, -under one aspect, -and having unity, as a work of art, -and admitting of as much philosophical dreaming and digression (which is in fact a characteristic of the age) as I like to use. Might it not be done, even if I could not do it? and I think of trying at any rate. Letter to Mary Russell Mitford, 30 December 1844 (Correspondence, ix.304) Notes Barrett here is beginning to feel her way towards the poem - modern in setting and subject- which will eventually become Aurora Leigh (1856). 1 See Byron, The Bride of Abydos, II.27. 2 'Lady Geraldine's Courtship', in Poems, 1844.

On Poetry III: 'relations ... higher than the naked eye of the cold reasoning intellect can discern at all' Elizabeth Barrett For the rest, to define the true nature of poetry, is as hard and perhaps as impossible, as to put the soul itself into solution: and we are apt to render it harder than it need be by confusing and confounding the motive faculty of the poet with his subject matter, and even with his forms of expression. My intimate persuasion is, that poetry is truth, primitive absolute and universal truth - but less truth in abstraction than in relation - and that above all, it is truth in emotion. Take a flower - ! The botanist will tell you a partialtruth of its petals - the geometrician another partial truth of its diameter- a painter, another partial truth of its form and colour -but the poet will tell you of it (if he can speak) something different from all these, larger than them all, ... something which shall be recognised as truth by all men, and which shall strike into the deep relations of truth, octave upon octave, as far off as the soul can hear music. And if you tell me that philosophical truth has also its relations, I ask you if the relations of poetry are not different and higher, - more infinite and subtle, -finer than the naked eye of the cold reasoning intellect can discern at all. All

Part I: Elizabeth Barrett 1806-46 17

indeed are equally the relations of God's universe - but when the strings lie relaxed in the damp, we call them simply philosophical and when they are tuned up to music, (as the loosest of all may be!) they are poetical. Letter to Sara Coleridge, 16 April1845 (Correspondence, x.167) Notes Coleridge (1802-52), daughter and editor of S. T. Coleridge, was well known as a translator, poet and literary figure. Barrett told her on 19 March 1845 (Correspondence, x.129) that 'I do not like you to speak of poetry as "a diversion", when I take it to be rather a sublimation'.

'I look everywhere for grandmothers and see none' Elizabeth Barrett

England has had many learned women, not merely readers but writers of the learned languages, in Elizabeth's time and afterwardswomen of deeper acquirements than are common now in the greater diffusion of letters: and yet where were the poetesses? The divine breath which seemed to come and go, and, ere it went, filled the land with that crowd of true poets whom we call the old dramatists -why did it never pass, even in the lyrical form, over the lips of a woman? How strange! And can we deny that it was so? I look everywhere for grandmothers and see none. It is not in the filial spirit I am deficient, I do assure you- witness my reverent love of the grandfathers! Letter to Henry Chorley, 7 January 1845 (LEBB, i.231-2; Correspondence, x.14) Notes Barrett is responding to Henry Chorley's discussion of 'Poetesses' in The New Quarterly Review for January 1845, and following on from topics raised in her letter to him of 3 January. There she suggests that 'previous to Joanna Baillie [playwright and poet (1762-1851)], there was no such thing in England as a poetess'; later in the second letter she says that 'poor LEL [Letitia Elizabeth Landon (1802-38)]' 'had the gift, though in certain respects, she dishonored the art'.

18 Elizabeth Barrett Browning and Robert Browning

Mr Browning's Poetry: 'A palpable power' Elizabeth Barrett But have you seen Paracelsus? I am a little discontented even there, and would wish for more harmony and rather more clearness and compression- concentration -besides: but I do think and feel that the pulse of poetry is full and warm and strong in it, and that, -without being likely perhaps to be a popular poem, - it 'bears a charmed life'. There is a palpable power! a height and depth of thought, - and sudden repressed gushings of tenderness which suggest to us a depth beyond, in the affections. I wish you would read it, and agree with me that the author is a poet in the holy sense. And I wish besides that some passages in the poem referring to the divine Being had been softened or removed. They sound to me daringly; and that is not the appropriate daring of genius. I read it [Pippa Passes] three times - in correspondence with Mr Chorley's four - and in testimony both to the genius and the obscurity. Nobody should complain of being forced to read it three or four or ten times. Only they would do it more gratefully if they were not forced. I who am used to mysteries, caught the light at my second reading- but the full glory, not until the third. The conception of the whole is fine, very fine - and there are noble, beautiful things everywhere to be broken up and looked at. That great tragic scene, which you call 'exquisite'- and which pants again with its own powerP Did it strike you that there was an occasional manner, in the portions most strictly dramatic, like Landor's, in Landor's dramas, when Landor writes best 2 ... Yet Mr Browning is no imitator. He asserts himself in his writings, with a strong and deep individuality: and if he does it in Chaldee, why he makes it worth our while to get out our dictionaries! Oh most excellent critic 'in the glass house' After all, what I miss most in Mr Browning, is music. There is a want of harmony, particularly when he is lyrical - and that struck me with a hard hand, while I was in my admiration over his Paracelsus. I always held that Mr Browning was a master in clenched passion, ... concentrated passion ... burning though the metallic fissures of language. 3 Letters to Mary Russell Mitford, 10 August 1836, 17 July 1841, 14 February 1843 (Correspondence, iii.186, v.78-9, vi.325)

Part I: Elizabeth Barrett 1806-46 19

Notes Barrett often discussed Browning's poems with Mitford. (Mitford liked them less than her; for her least sympathetic response to them see p. 35). 1 Probably, as Correspondence suggests, the scene between Ottima and Sebald in Part One. 2 For Walter Savage Landor seep. 96 below. 3 This remark is prompted by Browning's A Blot in the 'Scutcheon (1843) and The Return of the Druses (1843). In 'Lady Geraldine's Courtship' (Poems, 1844) Barrett would soon have her speaker reading from Browning some 'Pomegranate', which, if cut deep down the middle, Shows a heart within blood-tinctured, of a veined humanity. This prompted Browning to write to her for the first time in January 1845. During their courtship she supplied more detailed critical notes (and comments in letters) on the various stages of Dramatic Romances and Lyrics (1845) and Luria and A Soul's Tragedy (1846).

'I was as a man dying who had not read Shakespeare' Elizabeth Barrett You seem to have drunken of the cup of life full, with the sun shining on it. I have lived only inwardly; or with sorrow, for a strong emotion. Before this seclusion of my illness, I was secluded still, and there are few of the youngest women in the world who have not seen more, heard more, known more, of society, than I, who am scarcely to be called young now. I grew up in the country - had no social opportunities, had my heart in books and poetry, and my experience in reveries. My sympathies drooped towards the ground like an untrained honeysuckle - and but for one, 1 in my own house - but of this I cannot speak. It was a lonely life, growing green like the grass around it. Books and dreams were what I lived in - and domestic love only seemed to buzz gently around, like the bees about the grass. And so time passed, and passed - and afterwards, when my illness came and I seemed to stand at the edge of the world with all done, and no prospect (as appeared at one time) of ever passing the threshold of one room again; why then, I turned to thinking with some bitterness (after the greatest sorrow of my life 2 had given me room and time to breathe) that I had stood blind in this temple I was

20 Elizabeth Barrett Browning and Robert Browning

about to leave - that I had seen no Human nature, that my brothers and sisters of the earth were names to me, that I had beheld no great mountain or river, nothing in fact. I was as a man dying who had not read Shakespeare, and it was too late! do you understand? And do you also know what a disadvantage this ignorance is to my art? Why if I live on and yet do not escape from this seclusion, do you not perceive that I labour under signal disadvantages- that I am, in a manner, as a blind poet? Certainly, there is a compensation to a degree. I have had much of the inner life, and from the habit of self-consciousness and selfanalysis, I make great guesses at Human Nature in the main. But how willingly I would as a poet exchange some of this lumbering, ponderous helpless knowledge of books, for some experience of life and man, for some ... I have lived all my chief joys, and indeed nearly all emotions that go warmly by that name and relate to myself personally, in poetry and in poetry alone. 3 Like to write? Of course, of course I do. I seem to live while I write- it is life, for me. Why, what is to live? Not to eat and drink and breathe, - but to feel the life in you down all the fibres of being, passionately and joyfully. And thus, one lives in composition surely - not always - but when the wheel goes round and the procession is uninterrupted. Is it not so with you? 4 oh- it must be so. For the rest, there will be necessarily a reaction; and, in my own particular case, whenever I see a poem of mine in print, or even smoothly transcribed, the reaction is most painful. The pleasure, the sense of power, without which I could not write a line, is gone in a moment; and nothing remains but disappointment and humiliation. I never wrote a poem which you could not persuade me to tear to pieces if you took me at the right moment! I have a seasonable humility, I do assure you. Letter to Robert Browning, 20 March 1845 (Letters, i.43-4; Correspondence, x.l33-4)

Notes Barrett and Browning had been corresponding since 10 January 1845 and would first meet on 20 May. 1 Her brother, 'Bro'. 2 Bro's death in July 1840.

Part I: Elizabeth Barrett 1806-46 21

3 Barrett writes similarly, to Robert Shelton Mackenzie on 2 September 1844, that she has 'lived in her Art from childhood to this day', tasting in it 'her sweetest experiences ... she might almost say her only very sweet experiences, ... of life under the earthly aspect' (Correspondence, ix.154). 4 On 11 March Browning had written to her that 'I have no pleasure in writing myself- none, in the mere act, -though all pleasure in the sense of fulfilling a duty .... I don't know why- my heart sinks whenever I open this desk, and rises when I shut it' (Letters, i.41-2). According to Pen Browning in later years he still seemed to hate writing and liked to get it over with in the morning ('A Talk with Barrett Browning', The Century Magazine, n.s. 63 (1913), p. 419).

'I was repulsed too often' Elizabeth Barrett For him ... he would rather see me dead at his foot than yield the point: and he will say so, and mean it, and persist in the meaning. I believe, I am certain, I have loved him better than the rest of his children ... I have heard the fountain within the rock, and my heart has struggled in towards him through the stones of the rock ... thrust off . . . dropping off ... turning in again and clinging! Knowing what is excellent in him well, loving him as my only parent left, and for himself dearly, notwithstanding that hardness and the miserable 'system' which made him appear harder still, I have loved him and been proud of him for his high qualities, for his courage and fortitude when he bore up so bravely years ago under the worldly reverses which he yet felt acutely 1 - more than you and I could feel them- but the fortitude was admirable. Then came the trials of love - then, I was repulsed too often, ... made to suffer in the suffering of those by my side ... depressed by petty daily sadnesses and terrors, from which it is possible however for an elastic affection to rise again as fast. Yet my friends used to say 'You look broken-spirited'- and it was true. In the midst, came my illness, -and when I was ill he grew gentler and let me draw nearer than ever I had done: and after that great stroke 2 •.• you know ... though that fell in the middle of a storm of emotion and sympathy on my part, which drove clearly against him, God seemed to strike our hearts together by the shock; and I was grateful to him for not saying aloud what I said to myself in my agony, 'If it had not been

22 Elizabeth Barrett Browning and Robert Browning

for you' ... !3 And comparing my self-reproach to what I imagined his self-reproach must certainly be (for if I had loved selfishly, he had not been kind), I felt as if I could love and forgive him for two ... (I knowing that serene generous departed spirit, and seeming left to represent it,) ... and I did love him better than all those left to me to love in the world here. I proved a little my affection for him, by coming to London at the risk of my life rather than diminish the comfort of his home by keeping a part of my family away from him. 4 And afterwards for long and long he spoke to me kindly and gently, and of me affectionately and with too much praise; and God knows that I had as much joy as I imagined myself capable of again, in the sound of his footstep on the stairs, and of his voice when he prayed in this room, - my best hope, as I have told him since, being, to die beneath his eyes. Love is so much to me naturally - it is, to all women! and it was so much to me to feel sure at last that he loved me - to forget all blame - to pull the weeds up from that last illusion of life- and this, till the Pisa-business, which threw me off, far as ever, again- farther than ever[D]o not notice what I have written here. Let it pass. We can alter nothing by ever so many words. After all, he is the victim. He isolates himself - and now and then he feels it ... the cold dead silence all round, which is the effect of an incredible system. If he were not stronger than most men, he could not bear it as he does. With such high qualities too! - so upright and honourable - you would esteem him, you would like him, I think. Letter to Robert Browning, 26 January 1846 (Letters, i.437-9; Correspondence, xii.Zl-3) Notes Barrett's once close relationship with her father reached a low ebb as a result of his negative attitude to the possibility of her going abroad on medical advice and his strong resistance to any of his children marrying. The three who did marry before his death - Elizabeth, Henrietta and Alfred - dared not ask the permission they knew would not be granted and were disinherited. This letter does, to some extent, exaggerate the degree of Edward Barrett's tyranny (see Forster, pp. 165-6) but it is not surprising that Browning's close friend Joseph Arnould believed that the patriarch was 'one of those tyrannical, arbitrary, puritanical rascals who go sleekly about the world, canting Calvinism abroad, and acting despotism at home' (letter to Alfred

Part I: Elizabeth Barrett 1806-46 23

Domett, 30 November 1846, in Browning and Domett, p. 134). Browning must - while he was no doubt more keenly aware of the complexity of Elizabeth Barrett's filial feelings- to some extent have shared Arnauld's view. 1 Financial problems had begun for Edward Barrett in 1824 following a legal decision against him and his brother, and in favour of their cousins the Goodin-Barretts, concerning the ownership of family slaves and property in jamaica. One long-term consequence was the sale of Hope End in 1832. 2 Bra's death. 3 She blamed herself because Bra drowned while staying in Torquay only to provide company for her. 4 In fact her letters at the time show that 'She had longed to come to London for her own sake' (Forster, p. 166).

Part II Robert Browning 1812-46

Childhood Memories Alexandra Orr

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. 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. 1 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 each 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. 27

28 Elizabeth Barrett Browning and Robert Browning

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 [newt]'; '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 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 2 to his little sister3 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 his 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. 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

Part II: Robert Browning 1812-46 29

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. 4 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 Cromwel/; 5 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. (Mrs Sutherland Orr), Life and Letters of Robert Browning (London, 1891),pp. 23-4,26-9,31-2 Notes Orr (1828-1903), author also of A Handbook to the Works of Robert Browning (London, 1885), was one of Browning's most intimate friends during his last twenty years; he visited her regularly on Tuesday and Friday afternoons. She provides the only detailed account of Browning's childhood, for which she is 'largely indebted to Miss Browning' (Life, p. v). For Browning's view of both his parents see his letter to Barrett of 12 june 1846: 'Since I was a child I never looked for the least or greatest thing within the compass of their means to give, but given it was, -not for liberty but it was conceded, nor confidence that it was bestowed'. His father was a 'good, unworldly, kind hearted, religious man, whose powers natural and acquired would have so easily made him a notable man, had he known what vanity or ambition or the love of money or social influence meant ... He was worthy of being Ba's father' (DI, pp. 240-1, 20 june 1866).

30 Elizabeth Barrett Browning and Robert Browning 2 Samuel Croxall's much reprinted Fables of Aesop and Others Newly Done into English with an Application to Each Fable (London, 1722). 3 Sarianna (Sarah Anna) Browning (1814-1903). 4 For this copy of Emblemes, which is now at Balliol College, Oxford, see Collections, A1912 (where the date is given as '1710?'). 5 This anti-Cromwellian pamphlet, perhaps by Edward Sexby, is 'William Allen', Killing noe Murder (1657, 1659- not, as Orr has it, 1559); Collections, A48. Carlyle published Oliver Cromwell's Letters and Speeches in 1845.

The Poet's History Robert Browning

I cannot remember the time when I did not make verses and think verse-making the finest thing in the world: my father still keeps some very early attempts -laughable enough, I dare say. This itch for rhyming had not the least connection with the development of a poetic nature, but was the mere result of the notion that 'a poet' was the grandest of God's creatures; and all poets rhymed. When subsequently real and strong feeling called for utterance, either Drawing or Music seemed a much fitter vehicle than 'verses': and for a long time I resorted to them, chiefly to music. I never, however, ceased holding a Poet's calling in pre-eminent reverence, and in my thirteenth year collected a batch of performances of all sorts and sizes for publication, under the judicious title 'Incondita'. These were submitted by a friend 1 of mine to the Rev. W. ]. Fox, then unknown to me. 2 He praised some of them, prophesied great things of the future, and advised me to consign the present work to the fire. You may suppose how grateful I have been since. Upon this I betook myself to music again and to general study, particularly of Greek Literature for which I have always had a passion: as for music, even now I frequently detect or express feelings in harmonic combinations or melodic amplifications rather than in language. 'Pauline', 3 a poem not forgotten because never remembered, was written in pursuance of a foolish plan, which was suggested to me by witnessing a performance of Kean's at Richmond, (October 22. 1832) 4 - and which contemplated the assumption of I know not how many different individualities and characters in each of which I was to expatiate and take my pleasure: meanwhile the world was never to guess that 'Brown, Smith, Jones, and Robinson' (as our

Part II: Robert Browning 1812-46 31

Spelling-books have it) the respective Authors of such a poem, such an opera, such a comedy, such a speech &c &c were no other than one and the same. The Abortion in question was the 'tentative' of 'the Poet' of the company- who would have been more legitimately 'myself' than most of the others, but I had planned a very delicious and romantic life for him. Only this crab remains of the stately Tree of Life in my fool's Paradise. 5 It was published; praised extremely by Mr Fox to whom it had been conveyed anonymously and made the subject of a long and clever review in his 'Monthly Repository', and lauded not a little in one or two other Journals. Thereupon I got sick of my scheme, destroyed 'Pauline, Part 2', and some other works written in pursuance of it, and set about a genuine work of my own. Then followed 'Paracelsus', with all the circumstances attending which you are acquainted. The success was very much beyond my expectations. 6 Letter to Count Andre Victor Amedee de Ripert Monclar, 9 August 1837 (Correspondence, iii.264-5) Notes 1 The friend was Eliza Flower (1803-46), who had already known Browning for some years and was possibly his music teacher but seems unlikely, as tradition has it, to have inspired the poet's Pauline. (See Maynard, pp. 181-2, 185.) She became a notable composer, especially of hymn tunes. Two poems from 'Incondita' (Latin: 'confused', 'unformed', 'not arranged'), copied by her sister Sarah Flower Adams, survived: 'The Dance of Death' and 'The FirstBorn of Egypt'. 2 Rev. William Johnson Fox (1786-1864) was editor of The Monthly Repository, Unitarian minister of South Place, Finsbury from 1824, and a lecturer and Anti-Corn-Law campaigner. Most of his congregation supported him when other ministers disowned him over his marital troubles in 1834; Eliza Flower 'apparently without sexual intimacy ... supplanted Fox's wife and took over as the mother of his children, his devoted housekeeper, and his amanuensis' (Maynard, p. 182). 3 Pauline: a Fragment of a Confession was published anonymously in 1833. 4 Edmund Kean was playing the title role in Richard III at the King's Theatre, Richmond. 5 Browning first described the 'Brown, Smith, Jones and Robinson' scheme in his notes answering criticisms of Pauline by John Stuart Mill in the copy of the poem sent him by Fox and now in the Victoria and Albert Museum. (See William S. Peterson and Fred L. Standley, 'The J. S. Mill marginalia in Robert Browning's Pauline: a history and transcription', PBSA, 66 (1972), pp. 135-70.) 6 Paracelsus (1835) received a number of good reviews including one by John Forster in The Examiner (6 September 1835) predicting for the poet 'a brilliant career, if he continues true to the present promise of his genius'.

32 Elizabeth Barrett Browning and Robert Browning

Music Robert Sidney There was ... the nearest approach to a frown I ever saw on his face one Sunday morning when, the study windows being open, there suddenly came a hideous cacophony from an adjacent house- the noise of a strepitant piano ill-treated by some invisible player of a hymn-tune. Oddly enough, we had been talking of music, and Browning had been chatting with unusual freeness about his early studies, under Cipriani Potter and 'old John Relfe', as he affectionately called that well-known teacher of early Victorian students. 1 'I was passionately fond of music as a child,' he said, 'and if you had told me in those days that I should be anything but a great composer I should have been horribly annoyed. Oh yes, I went in for the piano, and singing, and the 'cello too. And I went all through the mill of harmony and counterpoint, and the rest. Did I try my hand at composition? Yes, but not very much. No, nothing was ever kept, as far as I remember - and hope. Oh, except one trivial thingthe little barcarole that I wrote for the two children to sing in the last act of "Strafford". It goes like this' - and he broke off to hum it for me. 2 'Some Browning Memories', The Saturday Review (11 May 1912), p. 585 Notes Sidney, a poet, knew Browning in his last years. Browning's musical knowledge is often referred to; according to Sir James Paget 'He had a powerful knowledge of old Italian music; and so great veneration for Bach, that he once recommended Bach's Crucifixus- et sepultus- et resurrexit, as a cure for want of belief' (Memoirs and Letters of Sir James Paget, ed. Stephen Paget (London, 1901), p. 404). 1 (Philip) Cipriani Potter (1792-1871), composer, pianist and conductor who taught at the Academy of Music from 1822, and an enthusiast for Beethoven, whom he met in Vienna in 1818. John Relfe (1763-1837?), composer and writer on musical theory, the 'Great John Relfe/Master of mine, learned, redoubtable' of Browning's parleying 'With Charles Avison', 11. 81-2 (Parleyings with Certain People of Importance in Their Day, 1887). Since he is last recorded in the year of Victoria's accession he was probably not available for 'early Victorian students'. 2 For the music (which sets Italian words by Francesco Redi) see Oxford, ii.13 7.

Part II: Robert Browning 1812-46 33

An U n poetical Nose Sarah Flower

He is very interesting from his great power of conversation and thorough originality, to say nothing of his personal appearance, which would be unexceptionably poetical if Nature had not played him an ugly trick in giving him an ugly nose. Letter to Celina Flower, June 1833, in Richard and Edward Garnett, The Life ofW. f. Fox (London, 1910), p. 193; Correspondence, iii.327 Notes Sarah Flower, from 1834 Sarah Flower Adams (1805-48), was a poet, known for her readings, and sister of Eliza Flower. During the teenage Browning's period of Shelleyan atheism she too, temporarily, had some doubts: 'It was in answering Robert Browning that my mind refused to bring forward argument, turned recreant, and sided with the enemy' (to William Johnson Fox, 23 November 1827, Correspondence, ii.354). The sisters got to know him again after a gap of several years as a result of Fox's interest in Pauline.

'Robert talks immensely' Katie Bromley

Robert Browning was there, rather to Mr. Fox's annoyance as he wanted to have been writing his sermon. Robert talks immensely, and how self-conscious! To me, distressingly so. He read some splendid scenes from Victor Hugo's 'Tribould' and 'Lucretia Borgia' 1 - and some things that overwhelm you, and then when he had finished, instead of dealing with the magnificence of the writing or the powerful interest, he turned your attention to himself and his translating, forcing you to pay him compliments about it, because he kept saying how badly he had done it! 2 But I still hope better things of him if Mr. Fox is his friend, that friendship must raise him above himself. Diary entry for 8 November 1833, in A. M. W. Stirling, The Merry Wives o(Battersea and Gossip of Three Centuries (London, 1956), pp. 121-2

34 Elizabeth Barrett Browning and Robert Browning

Notes Little is known of Bromley except that she was an artist and a great friend of Eliza Flower ('my treasure, my delight- mine, mine'); her view is possibly coloured by jealousy at Browning's place in the affections of Flower and Fox. 1 'Tribould' isLe Roi s'amuse (1832), from the name of the character Triboulet. Lucrece Borgia was published in 1833. 2 Later Bromley claimed that 'To meet this plain-looking boy, to listen to his silvery voice, to marvel at his easy translations from many tongues, became to us a recurring intellectual treat'. She felt- with the advantage of hindsight -that what seemed conceit was the 'innate sense of superiority' of the 'gifted individual' (Stirling, The Merry Wives, p. 122).

'Lemon-coloured kid gloves and such things' Eliza Bridell-Fox Mr Browning entered the little 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 except 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 think it must have been a year or two later, that I remember him as looking in often in the evenings, having just returned from his first visit to Venice. 1 I cannot tell the date for certain. He was full of enthusiasm for that Queen of Cities. He used to illustrate his glowing descriptions of its beauties, the palaces, the sunsets, the moon-rises, by a most original kind of etching. Taking up a bit of stray note-paper, he would hold it over a lighted candle, moving the paper about gently till it was cloudily smoked over, and then utilizing the darker smears for clouds, shadows, water, or what not; would etch with a dry pen the forms of lights on cloud and

Part II: Robert Browning 1812-46 35

palace, on bridge or gondola on the vague and dreamy surface he had produced. The Argosy, 49 Oanuary-June 1890), p. 112 Notes Bridell-Fox (c. 1822-1904) was the daughter of Browning's early encourager Rev. W.]. Fox. 1 Browning was in Venice in June 1838. He reached home in mid-July.

'Long ringlets and no neckcloth' Mary Russell Mitford I saw Mr Browning once 1 and remember thinking how exactly he resembled a girl drest in boy's clothes- and as to his poetry I have just your opinion of it. It is one heap of obscurity confusion and weakness. Let me add to this that many of his friends and mine William Harness, John Kenyon, Henry Chorley speak very highly of him - I suppose he is an accomplished man and if he makes his angelic wife happy I shall of course learn to like him. But he ought not to have persuaded her to take such a step. This of course is quite between ourselves. Do you know him personally? Did you ever see him? I met him once as I told you when he had long ringlets and no neckcloth - and when he seemed to me about the height and size of a boy of twelve years old- Femmelette- is a word made for him. A strange sort of person to carry such a woman as Elizabeth Barrett off her feet. He is a great musician and so forth - But I come back to the conceit of writing book upon book all bad- and being at this point engaged in preparing a new edition of his works -the first edition of each having gone off in the form of waste paper. Letter to Charles Boner, 22 February 1847 (Correspondence, xiv.370) Notes At the supper-party, at Covent Garden Theatre, to celebrate the first night of Thomas Noon Talfourd's tragedy Ion on 26 May 1836.

Browning's 'lion-like ruff' William Harrison Ainsworth I had yesterday, as I anticipated, the pleasure of making your new Poet's acquaintance, and from what I saw of him- I am induced

36 Elizabeth Barrett Browning and Robert Browning

to form a very high opinion of him. He is full of genius. In appearance he might pass for a son of Paganini, 1 and Maclise 2 and I must hide our diminished heads before his super-abundant black locks- while even your whiskers, improved as they are by the salt water, are insignificant compared with his lion-like ruff. But this is absurd - and, as absurdity is the farthest thing removed from Mr Browning, I ought not connect anything of the kind with him. Letter to John Macrone, 27 July 1836 (S. M. Ellis, William Harrison Ainsworth and His Friends (London and New York, 2 vols, 1911), i.290) Notes Ainsworth (1805-82), historical novelist and friend of Dickens. John Macrone was, until his unexpected death in December 1836, Ainsworth's publisher. 1 Nicolo Paganini (1782-1840), the violin virtuoso. 2 Daniel Maclise (1806-70), painter and Dickens intimate.

Browning and Thomas Carlyle

William Allingham March 20 [1881].

Browning.- '[Carlyle's] personality was most attaching. I shall never get over it. 'He first made my acquaintance, not I his. I first saw him at Leigh Hunt's, and very properly sat silent for my part all the time. 1 When he lectured, 2 I subscribed and went, and coming out one day he spoke to me, "How do you do, Mr Browning?" I said I had hardly thought he could recollect me. "0 yes, I recollect you very well will you come and see me? I live down in Chelsea." 'I did call, and he told me afterwards that he had on that occasion conceived an unfavourable opinion of me, because I wore (what was usual then) a green riding-coat of cut-away shape. If he had seen me no more I might have figured in his diary as a kind of sporting-man in aspect. 3 He was always thoroughly kind to me'. William Allingham: a Diary, eds H. Allingham and D. Radford (1907) (Harmondsworth, 1985), pp. 310-11

Part II: Robert Browning 1812-46 37

Notes Carlyle (1795-1881) was one of the most influential thinkers and historians in Victorian Britain. After his second encounter with Browning in 1840 they saw each other frequently. Among the aspects of Carlyle's thought which most influenced Browning are those summarized in Ryals, p. 65 as 'the importance of work; the doctrine of courage, perseverance and endurance; the aim of striving for the highest and best; the salutary effect of failure'. (See Carlyle's letter to Browning of 21 June 1841, Correspondence, v.64-5.)

1

The gathering at the house of Leigh Hunt (1784-1859), poet, journalist and friend and promoter of Keats and Shelley, took place in April 1836. It is rather difficult to imagine Browning, even in the presence of the Sage of Chelsea, remaining 'silent ... all the time'. But according to his friend Arnauld, writing in 1843, he at one time 'hardly [did] justice to himself in society' (below, p. 47). 2 On Heroes, Hero- Worship and the Heroic in History, six lectures delivered in May 1840 (published 1841). 3 Browning had developed this thought further in a letter to Bessie Rayner Belloc (18 March 1881, New Letters, p. 263): 'I might have figured in some corner of a page as a poor scribbling-man with proclivities for the turf and scamphood'.

'Little Paracelsus Browning' Thomas Carlyle

Alcot 1 came to me again the other day; little Paracelsus Browning, a dainty Leigh-Huntish kind of fellow, with much ingenuity, vivacity and Cockney gracefulness, happened to be here; and answered his solemn drawling recommendations of vegetable diet with light Cockney banter and logic; whereupon Alcot, at parting, told me, 'he would never come to me again!' Letter to John Sterling, 28 July 1842, in The Collected Letters of Thomas and Jane Welsh Carlyle, eds Clyde deL. Ryals, Kenneth J. Fielding and others, vol. xiv (Durham, NC, 1987), p. 241 Notes 1 Amos Bronson Alcott (1799-1888), American educationalist, Emerson's friend and fellow Transcendentalist, and father of Louisa May Alcott. Browning found him 'a crazy or sound asleep- not dreaming- American' and professed to be pleased to hear that 'my outrageous laughters have made him ponder seriously of the hopelessness of England - which he would convert to something or other' (Browning and Domett, p. 46).

38 Elizabeth Barrett Browning and Robert Browning

Browning and Jane Carlyle Alexandra Orr He always thought her a hard and unlovable woman, and I believe little liking was lost between them. He told a comical story of how he had once, unintentionally but rather stupidly, annoyed her. She had asked him, as he was standing by her tea-table, to put the kettle back on the fire. He took it out of her hands, but, preoccupied by the conversation he was carrying on, deposited it on the hearth-rug. 1 It was some time before he could be made to see that this was wrong; and he believed Mrs Carlyle never ceased to think that he had a mischievous motive for doing it. Orr, p. 366 n.1 Notes Jane Welsh Carlyle (1801-66), married to Thomas Carlyle in 1826, is now best known for her letters. 1 In Pen Browning's version of the story he had taken up the kettle of his own (absent-minded) accord and 'deposited' it when 'Mrs Carlyle cried shrilly "Put that down!"' (William Lyon Phelps, 'A Talk with Barrett Browning', The Century Magazine, n.s. 63 (1913), p. 420).

Browning, Macready and Forster 1: Strafford William Charles Macready 1835 November 27. Mr Robert Browning, the author of Paracelsus, came in

after dinner; I was very much pleased to meet him. 1 His face is full of intelligence. December 7. 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. December 31. 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.

Part II: Robert Browning 1812-46 39

1836 November 21. Browning called in some anxiety to have my opinion

of his play. I told it frankly, and he was very much pleased, agreeing in my objections, and promising to do everything needful to the play's amendment. He sat very long. 1837 January 23. Browning, with all his kind heart, called and sat a few

minutes. March 19. Read Strafford in the evening, which I fear is too histori-

cal; it is the policy of the man, and its consequence upon him, not the heart, temper, feelings, that work on this policy, which Browning has portrayed- and how admirably. March 20. Forster 2 and Browning arrived - cheerful evening though more of the conversation turned on Dow than I could have wished. Browning related an amusing story of his application to him for an epitaph on his father - to which, when Browning had promised it, he added his mother, her sister, and an infant two years old; and subsequently, on receiving the report of the marble-mason of Barnsley, wished two more lines to be added to the complete epitaph as the stone would hold two more! 3 Forster read the counsel's speech in the Pickwick Papers. March 21. Browning came with me into the study, and with much interruption over the discussion of points and passages, we read through his tragedy of Strafford; I must confess my disappointment at the management of the story- I doubt its interest. Walked out with Browning round the reservoir. After dinner Browning and myself resumed our conversation about Strafford, and I resolved - seeing no other course- to read it again to-night- after tea I did so, but I am by no means sanguine, I lament to say, on its success. March 22. Resumed with Browning the conversation of last night on Strafford; showed the necessity- as far as Mr Osbaldiston 4 was concerned- of his direct declaration, yes or no, as to his ability to give the finished play on Saturday. After some deliberation he decided in the negative, and preferred withholding the play until my Benefit. He seemed to think much of the objections and suggestions I had offered. He left us. March 28. Browning and Forster walked to chambers with me, and we sat discussing the plot of Strafford until two o' clock. March 29. Browning called and brought me the play of Strafford; he looked very unwell, jaded and thought-sick.

40 Elizabeth Barrett Browning and Robert Browning

March 30. I went to the theatre ... and read to Mr Osbaldiston the play of Strafford; he caught at it with avidity, agreed to produce it without delay on his part, and to give the author £12 per night for twenty-five nights ... Browning and Forster came in; I had the pleasure of narrating what had passed ... and of making Browning very happy; I went over the memoranda I had made of corrigenda in his MS.; the suggestion of the children's voices being heard in the pause following the announcement of Strafford's death he was quite enraptured with; he took the book and promised to work hard .... Browning asked me if I would allow him to dedicate the play to me. I told him, of course, how much I should value such an honour, which I had not anticipated or looked for. April 3. Browning and Forster accompanied me to my chambers, drank a bottle of champagne which I found for them, and read the two last acts of Strafford, discussing the alterations in it. Browning left them with me, and took notes of what was yet to do. April 7. Forster and Browning both came to my room - Browning with some of the passages to be supplied - very feebly written. Forster and he had rather a warm altercation- Browning, as I understood him, asserting that no change had been made in the conduct of the play since its first draught, which was not, in my mind, correct. April 8. Browning called, whom I accompanied to the theatre. Read over Strafford to the persons in the green-room, but did not produce the impression I had hoped - it dragged its slow length along .... I fear it will not do. April 12. Forster called, and went twice over the play of Straffordapproving of all the omissions and expressing himself much raised in hope by the alterations. He thought my view of the work quite a clear one, and in the most earnest spirit of devotion set off to find and communicate with Browning on the subject - a fearful rencontre. ... Called at Forster's chambers, whence Browning and he came to mine. There were mutual complaints much temper - sullenness, I should say, on the part of Forster, who was very much out of humour with Browning, who said and did all that man could do to expiate any offence he might have given. Forster (who has behaved most nobly all through the matter of this play - no expression of praise is too high) showed an absence of sense and generosity in his behaviour which I grieved to see. There was a scene. Browning afterwards told me

Part II: Robert Browning 1812-46 41

how much injury he did himself in society by this temper ... Browning assented to all the proposed alterations, and expressed his wish, that coute que coute, the hazard should be made, and the play proceeded with. Bulwer 5 would scarcely have done this, and in playing the great game he has before him he should regard this as a trivial offence, and dismiss it. He left me at a late hour. Apri/14. Calling at Forster's, met Browning, who came upstairs and who produced some scraps of paper with hints and unconnected lines - the full amount of his labour upon the alterations agreed on. It was too bad to trifle in this way, but it was useless to complain; he had wasted his time in striving to improve the fourth act scene, which was ejected from his play as impracticable for any good result. We went all over the play again (!) very carefully, and he resolved to bring the amendments suggested by eleven o' clock this evening. Met Browning at the gate of my chambers; he came upstairs and, after some subjects of general interest, proceeded to that of his tragedy. He had done nothing to it; had been oppressed and incapable of carrying his intentions into action. He wished to withdraw it. I cautioned him against any precipitate step - warned him of the consequences, and at last got him to offer to go and bring Forster, whom I wished to be a party to all this business. He came with Browning, and we turned over all the pros and cons - for acting or not acting the play. They both decided on its performance, Browning to have more time than he had asked for the completion of his alterations. It was fixed to be done. Heaven speed us all! I thank God I felt quite satisfied with my conduct throughout this delicate affair of Browning. April 22. Browning came to breakfast, very pale, and apparently suffering from over-excitement. I think it is unfortunate that without due consideration and time for arranging and digesting his thoughts on a work so difficult as a tragedy, he should have committed himself to the production of one. I should be too glad of any accident that would impede its representation, and give me a fair occasion for withdrawing it; but ... Browning shall not have the power of saying that I have acted otherwise than as a true friend to his feelings. April 27. Went to the rehearsal of Strafford ... Called on Forster with Browning. Browning amused me much by his confidence in the success of the play; he looked at the acting and movement of a subject in which he had a deep interest- ensure that same interest in

42 Elizabeth Barrett Browning and Robert Browning

the audience, and I will ensure its success- but the question is: will the audience be kindled to such an interest? I grieve to think that my experience will not allow me to say yes. May 1. Rehearsed Strafford. Was gratified with the extreme delight Browning testified at the rehearsal of my part, which he said was to him a full recompense for having written the play, inasmuch as he had seen his utmost hopes of character perfectly embodied. He was quite in raptures, I warning him that I did not anticipate success. Parted with Browning with wishes of good fortune to him. Read Strafford in bed, and acted it as well as I could under the nervous sensations that I experienced. Edward and Henry Bulwer, Fitzgerald, Talfourd, Forster, Dow, Browning (who brought his father to shake hands with me), and Jerdan came into my room. 6 May 2. Looked at newspapers, which I was gratified to find lenient and even kind to Browning .... Called on Forster - with whom I found Browning. I told him the play was a grand escape, and that he ought to regard it only as such, a mere step to that fame which his talents must procure him. May 9. Called on Forster, who informed me how much he had been hurt by Browning's expressions of discontent at his criticism, 7 which I myself think only too indulgent ... It is very unreasonable and indeed ungrateful in him ... May 18. Browning- who walked home with me and again evinced an irritable impatience about the reproduction of Strafford- Dow, and Talfourd came into my room. May 22. Called on Forster, who gave me a letter from Browning, at which I was surprised and annoyed; as if I had done nothing for him - having worn down my spirits and strength as I have done he now asks me to study a speech at the end of the second act, and an entire scene which I am to restore in the fourth act. Such a selfish, absurd, and useless imposition to lay on me could scarcely have entered into anyone's imagination. I was at first disgusted by the sickly and fretful over-estimate of his work and was angry; but reflected that he did not know what he required me to do, and had forgotten what I have done; 'so let him pass, a blessing on his head!' 8 I shall not do it. June 28. At Forster's chambers I met Browning - prevented what seemed to be ripening into a quarrel between them ... Browning walked with me to H. Smith's, 9 complaining by the way of Forster's unreasonable expectations; that he (B-) should shake off acquaintances with whom he (F-) had quarrelled .... Forster, walking

Part II: Robert Browning 1812-46 43

towards home with me, complained much and censured severely Browning's behaviour. June 29. Called on Forster, who mentioned some things about Browning that gave me concern. The Diaries of William Charles Macready 1833-1851, ed. William Toynbee, 2 vols (London, 1912), i.264, 265, 267, 361, 374, 380-1, 382, 383, 384, 385-6, 387-8, 389, 390, 392-3, 394, 396, 402 Notes Macready (1793-1873) was the foremost tragic actor of his time. He was manager at Covent Garden in 1837-9 and at Drury Lane in 1841-3. He sought a morally and intellectually 'higher' drama, whence his interest in plays like Strafford, but his main successes outside Shakespeare were in the more theatrically viable works of Sheridan Knowles and Edward Bulwer (Bulwer Lytton). He retired from the stage in 1851. Browning wrote 'The Pied Piper of Hamelin' for Macready's son Willy in 1842. 1 This first meeting took place at the house of Rev. W. ]. Fox. Browning had earlier seen Macready on stage in roles including, in 1830, Hamlet. 2 john Forster (1812-76), journalist and biographer now known chiefly for his life (1872-4) of his friend Charles Dickens, was from the 1830s highly influential in literary circles. Forster's relationship with Browning was close but often stormy. Their friendship began in the wake of his praise for Paracelsus in The Examiner (6 September 1835) and for a time in 1844-5 seemed to have ended following his partly unfavourable review of Colombe's Birthday (The Examiner, 22 june 1844). Forster co-edited the 1863 Browning Selections and Browning dedicated the 1863 edition of Poetical Works to him as the poems' 'promptest and staunchest helper' from the beginning. In the late 1860s and early 1870s there were two more periods of estrangement. (For the cause of the second see below, p. 110.) Fortunately a final reconciliation was achieved at the end of 1875, two months before Forster died. 3 Browning had written, for his friend james Dow, 'Words we might else have been compelled to say ... '. 4 D. W. Osbaldiston was manager of Covent Garden at this time. 5 Edward Bulwer (1803-73), later Bulwer-Lytton and Lord Lytton, wrote three popular plays in 1838-40. 6 Henry Bulwer (1801-72), later Lord Dalling, diplomat; Edward Marlborough Fitzgerald, journalist (not the poet Edward FitzGerald); Thomas Noon Talfourd (1795-1854), judge, MP and playwright, to whom Browning dedicated Pippa Passes (1841); Williamjerdan (1782-1869), journalist, editor of The Literary Gazette. 7 The Examiner, 7 May 1837, pp. 294-5. 8 Wordsworth, 'The Old Cumberland Beggar' (substituting 'so' for 'then'). 9 Henry Smith, an actuary and old friend of Macready who advised him on financial mattters (Diaries, i.30 n.2).

44 Elizabeth Barrett Browning and Robert Browning

Pippa Passes Alexandra Orr

Mr Browning was walking alone in a wood near Dulwich, when the image flashed upon him of some one walking thus alone through life; one apparently too obscure to leave a trace of his or her passage, yet exercising a lasting though unconscious influence at every step of it; and the image shaped itself into the little silkwinder of Asolo, Felippa, or Pippa. (Mrs Sutherland Orr), A Handbook to the Works of Robert Browning (London, 1885), p. 54.

Notes Most of Pippa Passes was probably written in the summer of 1839.

Browning, Macready and Forster II: The Return of the Druses William Charles Macready

1840 August 3. Read Browning's play, and with the deepest concern I yield to the belief that he will never write again - to any purpose. I fear his intellect is not quite clear. I do not know how to write to Browning. August 12. Browning called, and walked out with me on my way to the theatre. As he accompanied me he talked of his play and of Sardella, and I most honestly told him my opinion on both, expressing myself most anxious, as I am, that he should justify the expectations formed of him, but that he could not do so by placing himself in opposition to the world. He wished me to have his play done for nothing. I explained to him that Mr. Webster 1 would not do it; we talked to the Haymarket, and in parting I promised to read it again. August 26. Forster came into my room and Browning, who did not stay long. They did not speak to one another- how bad this is! How little wisdom or generosity it shows!

Part II: Robert Browning 1812-46 45

August 27. Browning came before I had finished my bath, and really wearied me with his obstinate faith in his poem of Sardella, and of his eventual celebrity, and also with his self-opinionated persuasions upon his Return of the Druses. I fear he is for ever gone. He speaks of Mr. Fox (who would have been delighted and proud in the ability to praise him) in a very unkind manner, and imputed motives to him which on the mere surface seem absurd. Looked at the paper. Browning accompanied me to the theatre, at last consenting to leave the MS. with me for a second perusal. September 10. [M]et Mrs. Procter, and talked long with her about Browning, of whom she and all think as I do. 2 September 15. Again read what I could of Browning's mystical, strange and heavy play of the Return of the Druses. It is not good. Wrote to him, and, offering to do all in my power, gave him my reconsidered opinion. 3 Diaries, ii.72, 73, 76, 79, 80

Notes 1 Benjamin Nottingham Webster

(1797-1882), actor, manager of the Haymarket Theatre 1837-53. 2 Ann Skepper Procter (1799-1888) later told John Kenyon that 'it was a pity [Browning] had not seven or eight hours a day of occupation' (12 April 1846, Correspondence, xii.236). Browning was a loyal friend of her husband, the barrister and writer Bryan Waller Procter ('Barry Cornwall', 1787-1874). After his return to London in 1861 he regularly attended the Procters' Sunday afternoon gatherings. 3 Unperformed, the play was published in January 1843.

Browning, Macready and Forster III: A Blot on the 'Scutcheon

William Charles Macready 1843 January 31. Went to Drury Lane theatre. Found Browning waiting for me in a state of great excitement. He abused the doorkeeper and was in a very great passion. I calmly apologized for having detained him, observing that I had made a great effort to meet him at all. He had not given his name to the doorkeeper, who had told him he might walk into the green-room; but his dignity was mortally wounded. I fear he is a very conceited man.

46 Elizabeth Barrett Browning and Robert Browning

February 7. Rehearsed Browning's play, with the idea of acting the part of Lord Tresham, if Mr. Phelps should continue ill. 1 Browning came and in better humour than I have lately seen him. February 10. Began the consideration and study of the part of Tresham, which was to occupy my single thoughts till accomplished. About a quarter past one a note came from Willmott, 2 informing me that Mr. Phelps would do the part, if he 'died for it', so that my time had been lost. Arrived I applied to business; offered to give to Browning and Mr. Phelps the benefit of my consideration and study in the cuts, etc. I had made one I thought particularly valuable, not letting Tresham die, but consigning him to a convent. Browning, however, in the worst taste, manner, and spirit, declined any further alterations, expressing himself perfectly satisfied with the manner in which Mr. Phelps executed Lord Tresham. I had no more to say. I could only think Mr. Browning a very disagreeable and offensively mannered person. Voila tout! February 11. Directed the rehearsal of Blot on the 'Scutcheon, and made many valuable improvements. Browning seemed desirous to explain or qualify the strange carriage and temper of yesterday, and laid much blame on Forster for irritating him. March 18. Went out; met Browning, who was startled into accosting me, but seeming to remember that he did not intend to do so, started off in great haste. What but contempt, which one ought not to feel, can we with galled spirit feel for these wretched insects about one? Oh God! How is it all to end?

1846 June 4. Went to Mrs. Procter's ball. ... Saw ... Browning- who did not speak to me - the puppy! Diaries, ii.194, 195, 196, 198, 340 Notes The unhappiness over A Blot- one of the main causes of which was Macready's vacillation over whether or not himself to act in the playended Browning's direct involvement in the commercial theatre and his friendship with Macready. (A formal reconciliation was effected in 1852.) For an account of events from Browning's point of view see Browning and Domett, pp. 62-7, and for the complicated affair as a whole see Oxford, iii.357-65. 1 Samuel Phelps (1804-78), often overshadowed by Macready at this point in his career. At Sadler's Wells Theatre, which he leased from 1844, he was a

Part II: Robert Browning 1812-46 4 7

freer agent and mounted and performed much Shakespeare as well as a second production of A Blot (1848-9). 2 The Drury Lane prompter, who had reported to Macready on 28 January that during his read-through of A Blot the actors had laughed.

'Conversation ... as remarkably good as his books'

Joseph Arnauld 1843. I still believe as devoutly as ever in Paracelsus, and find more wealth of thought and poetry in it than [in] any book except Shakespeare. The more one reads the more miraculous does that book seem as the work of a man of five-and-twenty. Browning's conversation is as remarkably good as his books, though so different: in conversation anecdotal, vigorous, showing great thought and reading, but in the language most simple, energetic, and accurate. From the habit of good and extensive society he has improved in this respect wonderfully. We remember him as hardly doing justice to himself in society; now it is quite the reverse - no one could converse with him without being struck by his great conversational power - he relates admirably; in fact, altogether I look upon him as to be our foremost literary man. 28 July 1844. At Browning's especially you are a constant topic; nothing can exceed the kindness - the affection with which he speaks of you- in fact he is a true friend; he has an energy of kindness about him which never slumbers. In me he seems to take a thoroughly friendly interest, and it is solely by his means that I have obtained an entrance at last into Periodical literature, which I have long been endeavouring through less zealous friends to procure. He is a noble fellow. His life so pure, so energetic, so simple, so laborious, so loftily enthusiastic. It is impossible to know and not to love him. 24 November 1845. Glorious Robert Browning is as ever, but more genial, more brilliant, and more anecdotical than when we knew him four years ago. 1 Letters to Alfred Domett in Browning and Domett, pp. 86, 103-4, 122

Notes Arnould (1814-86 - not, as is often stated, 1866) was, with Alfred Domett and Browning, a member of the 'set' of companions who met for 'colloquials' mainly in the 1830s. A lawyer, he was knighted

48 Elizabeth Barrett Browning and Robert Browning

in 1859 and became a High Court judge in Bombay (1859-69). Domett (1811-87) emigrated to New Zealand in 1842 (prompting the composition of Browning's 'Waring' soon afterwards) and eventually became prime minister before returning to England in 1872. Browning took an interest in the publication of Domett's long New Zealand poem Ranolf and Amohia (1872). 1 on 18 December 1851, several months after seeing the Brownings in London, Arnauld reported to Domett that 'He is absolutely the same man: her I like of all things - full of quiet genius' (Browning and Domett, p. 142)

Part III The Brownings 1846-61

Part III: The Brownings 1846-61 51

Marriage Elizabeth Barrett Browning He has loved me for nearly two years, and said so at the beginning. I would not listen- I could not believe even. And he has said since, that almost he began to despair of making me believe in the force and steadfastness of his attachment. Certainly I conceived it to be a mere poet's fancy ... an illusion of a confusion between the woman and the poetry. I have seen a little of the way of men in such respects, and I could not see beyond that with my weary, weeping eyes, for long. How can I tell you on this paper, even if my hands did not tremble as the writing shows, how he persisted and overcame me with such letters, and such words, that you might tread on me like a stone if I had not given myself to him, heart and soul. When I bade him see that I was bruised and broken, unfit for active duties, incapable of common pleasures, that I had lost even the usual advantages of youth and good spirits- his answer was, 'that with himself also the early freshness of youth had gone by, and that, throughout his season of youth, he had loved no woman at all, nor had believed himself made for any such affection - that he loved now once and for ever - he, knowing himself - That, for my health, ... he had understood, on first seeing me, that I suffered from an accident on the spine of an incurable nature, and that he never could hope to have me stand up before him. He bade me tell him, what, if that imagination had been true, what there was in that truth, calculated to suppress any pure attachment, such as he professed for me? For his part, the wish of his heart had been then- that by consenting to be his wife even so, I would admit him to the simple privilege of sitting by my side two hours a day, as a brother would: he deliberately preferred the realization of that dream, to the brightest, excluding me, in this world or any other.' My dear friend, feel for me. It is to your woman's nature that I repeat these words, that they may commend themselves to you and teach you how I must have felt in hearing them - I who loved Flush 1 for not hating to be near me ... I, who by a long sorrowfulness and solitude, had sunk into the very ashes of self humiliation - Think how I must have felt to have listened to such words from such a man. A man of genius and of miraculous attainments ... but of a heart and spirit beyond them all! -

52 Elizabeth Barrett Browning and Robert Browning

He overcame me at last. Whether it was that an unusual alikeness of mind ... (the high and the low may be alike in the general features), a singular closeness of sympathy on a thousand subjects, ... drew him fast to me- or whether it was love simple ... which after all is love proper ... an unreasonable instinct, accident, ... 'falling', as the idiom says ... the truth became obvious that he would be happier with me than apart from me - and I ... why I am only as any other woman in the world, with a heart belonging to her. He is best, noblest- If you knew him, YOU should be the praiser. We go to live a quiet, simple, rational life - to do work 'after the pattern in the mount' 2 which we both see ... to write poems and read books, and try to live not in vain and not for vanities In the meantime, it is in anguish of heart that I think of leaving this house so - Oh - a little thread might have bound my hands, from even working at my own happiness- But all the love came from that side! On the other ... too still it was - not with intention ... I do not say so - yet too still. I was a woman and shall be a wife 3 when you read this letter. It is finished, the struggle is As to marriage ... it never was high up in my ideal, even before my illness brought myself so far down. A happy marriage was the happiest condition, I believed vaguely - but where were the happy marriages? I, for my part, never could have married a common man - and never did any one man whom I have had the honour of hearing talk love, as men talk, 4 lead me to think a quarter of a minute of the possibility of being married by such an one. Then I thought always that a man whom I could love, would never stoop to love me - That was my way of thinking, years ago, in my best days, as a woman's days are counted- and often and often have I been gently upbraided for such romantic fancies - for expecting the grass underfoot to be sky blue, and for not taking Mr A or B or C for the 'best possible' whatever might be. We shall not be rich- but we shall have enough to live out our views of life - and fly from the winters in Italy. I write on calmly to you- How little this paper represents what is working within in the intervals of a sort of stupour. Feel for me if not with me my dear dear friend - He says that we shall justify by our lives this act, - which may and must appear to many - as I say wilful and rash. People will say that he is mad, and I, bad- with my

Part III: The Brownings 1846-61

53

long traditions and associations with all manner of sickness. Yet God judges, who sees the root of things - And I believe that no woman with a heart, could have done otherwise ... much otherwise - You do not know him. Letter to Mary Russell Mitford, 18 September 1846 (Correspondence, xiv.4-6) Notes Flush, a spaniel, was given to her by Mitford in January 1841 as one way of trying to distract her from her grief at the death of Bra the previous summer. Having three times been stolen and ransomed in London, Flush went with the Brownings to Italy, where he died in the summer of 1854. 2 See Hebrews 8:5 and Exodus 25:40. 3 That is 'a publicly acknowledged wife' (Raymond and Sullivan, iii. 190 n. 2)they were married at St Marylebone Church on 12 September 1846 but continued to live in their separate homes until leaving for the Continent a week later. 4 Rev. George Barrett Hunter is perhaps the man most likely to have 'talked love' to her before she met Browning. (See Taplin, pp. 53-4.)

The Journey to Italy Anna Brownell Jameson Paris, 22 September. Robert Browning, my poet, is here- and with a

wife he has run off with - and who, think you is this wife? - no other than Elizabeth Barrett- my poetess- a pretty pair to go thro this prosaic world together! - but there was nothing else to be done apparently- her life depended on her leaving England this winter (at least all hope of health;) - her father would not hear of it- and Browning, in desperation - for he has long loved her, asserted the only right that could supersede that of a father- married her a week ago- and has brought her so far safely- but she has suffered much - she is nervous- frightened ashamed agitated happy, miserable- I have sympathized, scolded[,] rallied, cried and helped - and now they want me to join them on the road to the South .... Paris, 23 September. Robert Browning and his wife are now under the same roof with me and have a nice apartment - She had a feverish desire to go on on - as if there was to be neither peace nor health till she was beyond the Alps - she is now better - more quiet - and willing to rest here a few days - rest is indeed most necessary for her.

54 Elizabeth Barrett Browning and Robert Browning

Paris, 24 September. This charming fugitive pair of whom I told you, are a great interest and a great care - she is in a most feeble state but better certainly today than I have ever yet seen her - I really believe I have saved her life by persuading her to rest. RB. came down this morning to settle about our movements- and I shall go down the Rhone with them - the rest is uncertain - as to the step they have taken, I see that the sympathy and approval of all her relations is secure, except that of her father - and with him, the disapprobation - without deigning to give a reason - seems like a madness. The deportment of both is perfect, but how the experiment is to end I know not - I have not faith in the poetical temperament as a means of permanent happiness tho, it may heighten the relish of sentiment - in short, I fear- even now I see what makes me fear, but I hope also - both are so good! Orleans, 29 September. While travelling with these friends I am obliged to put all my own convenience and all selfish projects out of the question 1 - They have thrown themselves upon me with such an entire and undoubting confidence - that to have refused help and comfort- or even hesitated would have been like a brute or a stone. I did hesitate in my own heart at first - partly on Gerardines account, but it has all turned out well and could hardly be better- Letters from her family met her here at Orleans, all full of comfort and approbation 2 - one of [them] from Mr Kenyon her cousin - in which he uses the strongest expressions of sympathy and kindness and says that 'while he appreciates the delicacy which prevented them from confiding in him or in any one - he must - if his advice had been asked have advised just what they have done.' There is no letter from her father -but she hopes he will relent- in short she is much comforted, and certainly gaining strength in spite of the exertion and fatigue - as yet there is not a trace of animal spirits, tho evidently a sense [of] deep happiness, gratitude and love- as to him- his joy and delight, and his poetical fancies and antics, with every now and then the profoundest seriousness and tenderness interrupting the brilliant current of his imagination make him altogether a most charming companion The deportment of both is in the best taste and Gerardine can only gain by all she sees and hears -we are five in company, including her maid 3 - six, including her pet dog - so you can conceive that we are rather a cumbersome party, and I am in constant dread about her - and not, I must confess, in very good spirits, but I am 'in for it' as the phrase is and regret nothing ...

Part III: The Brownings 1846-61 55

Avignon, 7 October. We are so far on our long anxious journey- ten days since we left Paris - and only here! but tedious as our progress

has been, and even painful now and then - I rejoice every hour that I did venture on a step which seemed not without risks of many kinds- We have brought our poor invalid so far in safetyand without any increase of indisposition, or any return of her disorder, but the suffering has been very great- not only we have had to carry her fainting from the carriage but from her extreme thinness and weakness, every few hours journey has bruised her all over- till movement became almost unbearable- with her present feelings it is not perhaps great praise to say that all this has been endured with patience - but the unselfish sweetness of the temper - the unfailing consideration for others, I did not quite expect - He is most devoted and their mutual deportment has been marked by the most graceful propriety without any appearance of gene - Gerardine has profited every way - by the example, by the sympathy - by the conversation, by all she has seen, felt and heard, and has been very good. We came down the Rhone yesterday in a dirty confined steam boat the rain pouring in torrents - and today we are resting here, E. B. on her bed in the hope of being able to go to Vaucluse tomorrow 4 - Geddie[,] R. B. and myself have been running about, seeing as much as we could - ... There has been for these last days - as you can well suppose, cause of deep anxiety - but for pleasure of one kind a higher has been substituted- I have the feeling that I have been of some use to these dear people- whatever may be the issue -what has been done, has been well done and the rest remains with God -and 'reason, virtue, time' 5 - you know what follows- sometimes I have an inward trembling- and fear- but hope is stronger than fear ... Avignon, October 9. E. B. is tolerably well this morning- and there is no return of disease tho' occasionally much suffering. Pisa. October 15. We have brought our dear Invalid in safety to what she fondly calls her 'home' - as they purpose spending the winter here .... It is like your self to sympathize with me so kindly about my friends- They are really excellent- but with all the abundance of love, and sense and high principles - I have had now and then a tremour at my heart about their future - he is full of spirit and good humour and his unselfishness - and his turn for making the best of every thing and his bright intelligence and his rare

56 Elizabeth Barrett Browning and Robert Browning

acquirements of every kind rendered him the very prince of travelling companions - but (always buts !!) he is in all the common things of this life the most impractical of men- the most uncalculating- rash - in short the worst manager I ever met with. She- in her present state - and from her long seclusion almost helpless now only conceive the menage that is likely to ensue and without FAULT on either side!- but no more of that- for the present our first care is to get her into some comfortable Lodging [-] no easy matter ... I have just seen E. B. - looking wonderfully well - considering all the fatigue undergone - under her husband's influence and mine she is leaving off those medicines on which she existed [-] ether, morphine, &c and I am full of hope for her[.] Pisa. 27 October. They have settled themselves in a comfortable lodging 6 - and all their arrangements are as sensible as if they had never spoken anything but prose in their lives and they are so happy! - and the quality of the happiness is so rare and so fine! - 0 if it may but last! ... I have a letter from Kenyon today in which he tells me that he considered her- with all her fine qualities of mind and heart as doomed to end her days in her sick room - he saw no escape for her from the peculiar despotism of her father and he says 'it never occurred to his grosser sense that there was a man who could undertake the difficulties the constant slavery and anxiety attendant on the circumstances of her health' &c - what would he say if he saw B - carrying his wife up and down two flights of stairs -hanging over her as if she were something spared for him for a while out of heaven! -and she deserves his devotion and appreciates it. Letters to Lady Byron, (Correspondence, xiv.362-6 1846) Notes Anna Brownell Jameson (1794-1860) wrote chiefly on art history. She was also well known for The Diary of an Ennuyee (1822) and Shakespeare's Heroines (1832). Elizabeth Barrett had written about her in R. H. Horne's New Spirit of the Age (1844) and been visited by her at Wimpole Street. She several times suggested that Barrett should go with her to Italy. At the same time, Jameson became a friend of Browning. She was also a good friend of Annabella, Lady Byron (1792-1860), the poet's widow; like her, Jameson had been unhappily married.

Part III: The Brownings 1846-61 57 1 jameson was travelling, with her niece Gerardine Bate (later Macpherson), in order to research her Sacred and Legendary Art (2 vols, 1848). 2 Letters of encouragement came from Barrett's sisters, but her father and her brother George sent letters of condemnation. George soon relented while Edward Barrett, to his daughter's enduring grief, stood by his determination to regard her as dead. He refused to open her letters. Most other members of the family were prepared, in the long term, to enter into friendly relations with the Brownings, but some disapproval lingered; the eldest surviving brother Charles James ('Stormie') strongly opposed Pen Browning's publication of the Courtship Letters in 1899, on the grounds that Edward Barrett's reputation would be unjustly tarnished. 3 Elizabeth Wilson (1817-1902) worked for the Brownings from 1844 to 1857. She arranged many of the practical details of the departure from London. Later she was Pen's beloved nurse and married (1855) her fellow employee Ferdinanda Romagnoli; she left their first child with her family in Yorkshire in order to return to the Brownings' service. (For sympathetic treatments of this and other aspects of her life see Forster, p. 302 f. and passim and, in fiction, Margaret Forster's Lady's Maid (1990)). 4 Gerardine Macpherson, Memoirs of the Life of Anna Jameson (London, 1878), pp. 231-2, supplies details of this 'poetical pilgrimage' to Fontaine de Vaucluse where 'at the very source of the "chiare, fresche e dolci acque", Mr Browning took his wife up in his arms, and, carrying her across through the shallow curling waters, seated her on a rock that rose throne-like in the middle of the stream. Thus love and poetry took a new possession of the spot immortalized by Petrarch's loving fancy'. (See Petrarch, Canzoniere, 126; and for Barrett Browning's own account, Correspondence, 14.23-4.) 5 I have been unable to identify this quotation. 6 They rented rooms in the Collegia di Ferdinanda until April 1847, when they moved to Florence.

The Brownings, 1847 George Stillman Hillard It is well for the traveller to be chary of names. It is an ungrateful

return for hospitable attentions to print the conversation of your host, or describe his person, or give an inventory of his furniture, or proclaim how his wife and daughters were dressed. But I trust I may be pardoned if I state that one of my most delightful associations with Florence arises from the fact that here I made the acquaintance of Robert and Elizabeth Browning. These are even more familiar names in America than in England, and their poetry is probably more read and better understood with us than among their own countrymen. A happier home and a more perfect union than theirs is not easy to imagine; and this completeness arises not

58 Elizabeth Barrett Browning and Robert Browning

only from the rare qualities which each possesses, but from their adaptation to each other. Browning's conversation is like the poetry of Chaucer, or like his own simplified and made transparent. His countenance is so full of vigour, freshness, and refined power, that it seems impossible to think that he can ever grow old. His poetry is subtle, passionate, and profound; but he himself is simple, natural, and playful. He has the repose of a man who has lived much in the open air; with no nervous uneasiness and no unhealthy self-consciousness. Mrs. Browning is in many respects the correlative of her husband. As he is full of manly power, so she is a type of the most sensitive and delicate womanhood. She has been a great sufferer from ill health, and the marks of pain are stamped upon her person and manner. Her figure is slight, her countenance expressive of genius and sensibility, shaded by a veil of long brown locks; and her tremulous voice often flutters over her words, like the flame of a dying candle over the wick. I have never seen a human frame which seemed so nearly a transparent veil for a celestial and immortal spirit. She is a soul of fire enclosed in a shell of pearl. Her rare and fine genius needs no setting forth at my hands. She is also, what is not so generally known, a woman of uncommon, nay, profound learning, even measured by a masculine standard. Nor is she more remarkable for genius and learning than for sweetness of temper, tenderness of heart, depth of feeling, and purity of spirit. It is a privilege to know such beings singly and separately, but to see their powers quickened, and their happiness rounded, by the sacred tie of marriage, is a cause for peculiar and lasting gratitude. A union so complete as theirs - in which the mind has nothing to crave nor the heart to sigh for - is cordial to behold and soothing to remember. Six Months in Italy, 2 vols (London, 1853), i.l39-40 Notes Hillard (1808-79) was a Boston lawyer and man of letters. He visited Italy in 1847-8, meeting the Brownings in December 1847, by which time they had been living in Florence for eight months. His account of Elizabeth Barrett Browning is one of several which 'privileges the life of the spirit over that of the body ... seeing in physical debility the sign of a visionary closeness to the spirit world' (Daniel Karlin, 'The Brownings' Marriage: Contemporary Representations', Studies in Browning and His Circle, 21 (1993-7), p. 44).

Part III: The Brownings 1846-61 59

Story's first impressions of the Brownings

William Wetmore Story The Brownings and we became great friends in Florence, and of course we could not become friends without liking each other. He, Emelyn says, is like you- judge from this portrait? He is of my size, but slighter, with straight black hair, small eyes, wide apart, which he twitches constantly together, a smooth face, a slightly aquiline nose, and manners nervous 1 and rapid. He has a great vivacity, but not the least humour, some sarcasm, considerable critical faculty, and very great frankness and friendliness of manner and mind .... Mrs Browning ... used to sit buried up in a large easy chair, listening and talking very quietly and pleasantly, with nothing of that peculiarity which one would expect from reading her poems. Her eyes are small, her mouth large, she wears a cap and long curls. Very unaffected and pleasant and simple-hearted is she, and Browning says 'her poems are the least good part of her.' Letter to James Russell Lowell, 21 March 1849, in Henry James, William Wetmore Story and his Friends: from Letters, Diaries, and Recollections, 2 vols (Edinburgh and London, 1903), i.l71-2 Notes Story (1819-95), American lawyer turned sculptor, had recently settled in Italy. He and his wife Emelyn (1820-94) became close friends of the Brownings. The two families were together in Rome in 1853 at the time of the death of six-year-old Joe Story, and they spent several summers with each other in Bagni di Lucca and near Siena. Browning modelled in clay under Story's direction in Rome and edited his Roba di Roma (2 vols, 1863) for the one-volume version of 1864. Story enjoyed Browning's 'intellectual companionship': 'Englishmen who think are very rare; they are generally ganglions of prejudices, which they call opinions .... Their education is never general, but special, and outside their speciality they are terribly barren .... Browning is by nature not an Englishman' (letter to Charles Eliot Norton, 15 August 1861, in James, Story, ii.68-9). Lowell (1819-91), poet and essayist, was a correspondent of Elizabeth Barrett. He knew Browning mostly during his period as American minister in England (1880-5). 1 That is energetic, vigorous, forceful (see OED 'nervous' 2-3).

60 Elizabeth Barrett Browning and Robert Browning

Casa Guidi

Kate Field

Those who have known Casa Guidi as it was could hardly enter the loved rooms now and speak above a whisper. They who have been so favoured can never forget the square anteroom, with its great picture and piano-forte, at which the boy Browning passed many an hour, -the little dining-room covered with tapestry, and where hung medallions of Tennyson, Carlyle, and Robert Browning, - the long room filled with plaster casts and studies, which was Mr Browning's retreat, - and, dearest of all, the large drawing-room, where she always sat. It opens upon a balcony filled with plants, and looks out upon the old iron-gray church of San Felice. There was something about this room which seemed to make it a proper and especial haunt for poets. The dark shadows and subdued light gave it a dreamy look, which was enhanced by the tapestry-covered walls and the old pictures of saints that looked out sadly from their carved frames of black wood. Large book-cases, constructed of specimens of Florentine carving selected by Mr Browning, were brimming over with wise-looking books. Tables were covered with more gaily bound volumes, the gifts of brother authors. Dante's grave profile, a cast of Keats's face and brow taken after death, a pen-and-ink sketch of Tennyson, the genial face of John Kenyon, Mrs Browning's good friend and relative, little paintings of the boy Browning, all attracted the eye in turn, and gave rise to a thousand musings. A quaint mirror, easy-chairs and sofas, and a hundred nothings that always add an indescribable charm, were all massed in this room. But the glory of all, and that which sanctified all, was seated in a low arm-chair near the door. A small table, strewn with writing-materials, books and newspapers, was always by her side. 'Elizabeth Barrett Browning', Atlantic Monthly, 8 (1861), p. 370 Notes Field (1838-96), American writer, journalist, and lecturer, came to Italy (partly to study art) in 1859 and at once became popular in AngloFlorentine circles. The Brownings rented an apartment of seven furnished rooms in Casa (or Palazzo) Guidi in July-October 1847 and the same rooms unfurnished from May 1849. The title of Barrett Browning's Casa Guidi Windows refers to the front windows of the

Part III: The Brownings 1846-61 61

palace, from which in September 1847 the Brownings watched the celebrations when Grand Duke Leopolda II granted the Florentines the right to form a civic guard.

Florence Elizabeth Barrett Browning I love Florence, the place looks exquisitely beautiful in its gardenground of vineyards and olive-trees, sung round by the nightingales day and night, nay, sung into by the nightingales, for as you walk along the streets in the evening the song trickles down into them till you stop to listen. Such nights we have between starlight and firefly-light, and the nightingales singing! I would willingly stay here, if it were not that we are constrained by duty and love to go, 1 and at some day not distant, I dare say we shall come back 'for good and all' as people say, seeing that, if you take one thing with another, there is no place in the world like Florence, I am persuaded, for a place to live in. Cheap, tranquil, cheerful, beautiful, within the limit of civilisation yet out of the crush of it. Letter to Mary Russell Mitford, 6 June 1854 (LEBB, ii.l69-70)

Notes The Brownings lived in Florence for much of 1847-61 but with extended absences in Rome, Bagni di Lucca, Siena, France and England. Browning, who found the social life of Florence rather restricted, was somewhat less consistently enthusiastic about the city than his wife. 1 In the summer of 1854, lacking funds, the Brownings in fact stayed in Florence. 'Duty and love' necessitated visits (next in 1855-6) to Browning's father and sister in Paris and Barrett Browning's brothers and sisters in England.

Browning and the Anglo-Florentines Thomas Adolphus Trollope It may be readily imagined that the 'tag-rag and bob-tail' of the men

who mainly constituted that very pleasant but not very intellectual society, were not likely to be such as Mr Browning would readily make intimates of. And I think I see in memory's magic glass that the men

62 Elizabeth Barrett Browning and Robert Browning

used to be rather afraid of him. Not that I ever saw him rough or uncourteous with the most exasperating fool that ever rubbed a man's nervous system the wrong way; but there was a quiet, lurking smile which, supported by very few words, used to have the singular property of making the utterers of platitudes and the mistakers of nonsequiturs for sequiturs, uncomfortably aware of the nature of their words within a very few minutes after they had uttered them. I may say, however, that I believe that in any dispute on any sort of subject between any two men in the place, if it had been proposed to submit the matter in dispute for adjudication by Mr Browning, the proposal would have been jumped at with a greater readiness of consensus than in the case of any other man there. What I Remember, 2 vols (London, 1887), vol. 2, pp. 190-1 Notes Trollope (1810-92), historian and novelist, son of Fanny and elder brother of Anthony, lived in Florence between 1843 and 1873.

'Better than any poem' Henriette Corkran Then my mother described how Mrs Browning had brought her into the bedroom where her little boy 1 was fast asleep. How carefully she held the candle, shading the light with her slim, delicate hands. How her wonderful dark eyes radiated with delight as she gazed upon her sleeping child. 'A solemn, tender scene,' said my mother to us. 'Is he not a little angel?' Mrs Browning whispered, with a tremulous voice. 'Better than any poem, more precious than anything on earth, is my darling little Wiedemann' (The Present Pen). Her smile was exquisitely touching. 'Love me always, love me much!' she exclaimed, when bidding good-bye to my mother. Elizabeth Barrett Browning was certainly the most feminine of women- she loved devotedly. Celebrities and I (London, 1902), pp. 64-5 Notes Corkran (d. 1911) was a painter. Her father John Frazer Corkran (d. 1884) was Paris correspondent of The Morning Herald and The Evening Standard

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and her mother 'conducted a salon much frequented by literary and artistic groups' (Taplin, p. 266). They were particular friends of Browning's father and sister, who lived in Paris from 1852 until the father's death in 1866. 1 Robert Wiedemann Barrett Browning (1849-1912), who soon became known as 'Penini' and later as 'Pen'.

Recollections of Mrs Browning Eliza Ogilvy On reaching Florence from Rome, June 1848, we at once called at Casa Guidi. Robert Browning was playing with all his heart and soul on a grand piano. He sprang up, striding forward with outstretched hand. His wife was curled up in a corner of a sofa in the middle of the large dim sala, hung with old brown tapestry and ancient pictures. With her profuse feathery curls half hiding her small face, and her large, soft, pleading eyes, she always reminded me of a King Charles spaniel. Something unutterably pathetic looked out of those soft dog like eyes, and I could fancy that when her beloved dog 'Flush' was young and handsome there might have been a likeness. But by the time I knew Flush he was an old mangy creature, an uncomfortable fellow-passenger in a vettura. Light was not in favour with Mrs. Browning. She habitually sat in dark rooms, and was so little out of doors that her accuracy of observation was all the more remarkable. Her son was born on March 9, 1849, and as my son was born not long before, we were much drawn together by motherhood as by intellectual sympathy. We were four eager enthusiasts, and quite in accord about painting and sculpture. But in poetry we had different canons, and the Brownings were too original-minded themselves to wish for servile assent in our opinions. 1 Mrs. Browning read largely of French novels. I once saw a huge pile beside her; 'They will soon melt down!' she remarked. She greatly admired George Sand's writings, and, on meeting her in Paris in 1852, wrote to me, elated that George Sand had kissed her. 2 She was scandalized by my reply, that such a kiss reminded me of Becky kissing Amelia when they met in later life. 3 In truth, Mrs. Browning with all her genius had the simple purity of Thackeray's heroine.

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[I]n May 1851 my husband and I joined the Brownings in a vetturino journey by Bologna, Parma, Modena, and Mantua, to Venice, where we had rooms on the Grand Canal, the Brownings on the first floor, and we Ogilvys on the floor above. We generally went together for dinner to the Piazza di San Marco, and if Mrs. Browning and I came back alone, she invariably lost her way, unless I did the piloting. I think those were the longest walks I ever knew her attempt. She very much depended for strength on a daily dose of ether in some peculiar mixture prescribed for her. One day the child got hold of the medicine after the maid had measured and poured it out. He drank it off, and great was the alarm, but it did not harm him. Both she and her husband ate little. I remember a quail once sufficed for dinner to them both; but he was very eloquent in food, and found out the special dainty of every place we visited and insisted on its being included on the bill of fare. He and his wife were a contrast in temperament. He so vehement, talkative, and hasty, full of gesticulation, and fond of argument. She quiet, half-proud, half-humorous in her expression, as he expatiated, coming in now and then with a little deprecatory 'Oh, Robert!' as a gentle drag on his impetuosity. She could fire up on occasion but in general, she was intense rather than excitable, and she took life too seriously for her own happiness. She could so little bear to pain any one she loved, that I had to administer the baby's medicine, to save her the trial. It was well for her that she went before husband and child. She could not have survived them. We met again in the Great Exhibition, 4 which was too gaudy, too noisy, and too fatiguing to please Mrs. Browning. Her letters were written in minute scratches no thicker than the hairs on a daisy stalk, on tiny note sheets, folded sometimes into tiny envelopes, the whole forming apparently a doll's epistle. But if the writing was thin, the thoughts and feelings were stout and strong. Nearly half of every letter is made up of anecdotes of 'Penini', as her boy called himself. How he longed for a little brother; how he wished to be either the Pope or Louis Napoleon; how he went to the Carnival in a rose domino and a mask, and resented the holding of his hand by his nurse; how he read Grimm's fairy tale of the Twelve Brothers, and sighed for a dozen

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of the same, and how his mother too sighed for a little daughter that never came. A daughter was born to me while I lived at Casa Guidi and I can see vividly in my mind the figure of Mrs. Browning pacing up and down with the baby girl in her arms, her long curls dropping over the tiny face, her eyes full of love and yearning. As Penini grew older, the letters told how his mother taught him English, French, and Italian; how he kept a journal, and read Dumas in his bed, by the light of a candle in his washbasin, and recited the patriotic songs of Dall'Ongaro 5 to the Sienese boy peasants. His father gave him two hours' daily musical instruction, and one letter tells proudly that he could play a sonata of Beethoven at eight or nine years old. Penini had one rival only in his mother's heart, and that was Italy. All her letters are full of Italian politics. Her doubts of Mazzini, her rapturous admiration for Louis Napoleon as Italy's deliverer, 6 her wrath at British apathy, her dread of priestly machinations; the letters are seething from end to end with passionate emotion. It irked her that, with almost equal desire for Italian freedom, I could not believe in Louis Napoleon's disinterested greatness and magnanimity. She had condoned the coup d'etat of December 1851/ I could not. It was strange that, with such boundless sympathy for Italy's troubles, she expressed scant feeling for either the Crimean or the Indian Mutiny troubles 8 of her own countrymen. The little she does say of them refers chiefly to my anxiety over relatives engaged in both of those terrible wars. Mrs. Browning was reared in Nonconformity, and Mr. Browning was brought up in Calvinism. Both to a certain extent shook off their trammels, but both lived and died Puritans at heart. Mrs. Browning added to her religious faith a keen hankering after mesmeric spiritualism, more than, I fancy, her husband thought safe for her impressionable nature. In the summer of 1855, when they were in London, she was telling me her recent experiences at seances. 9 He was impatiently pacing up and down the room; suddenly he wheeled round and broke out, 'And what does it all end in? In your finding yourself in a locked room, and the keeper putting in his head, and asking what you will be pleased to have for dinner!' 'Oh, Robert!' was all his wife's rejoinder. Looking back over thirty years since her death, I can see that her high and noble mind had many limitations; that she was a powerful torrent foaming against the rocks, and not a wide sea spreading over a hemisphere. But her perfect sincerity and

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purity of motive, her freedom from jealousy or pettiness of feeling, her warm heart and sweet temper, would have made a stupid woman loveable, and made her, with her intellectual power, adorable then when she lived in the flesh, and now when she lives in the memory. Recollections of Mrs Browning (London, 1893), in Elizabeth Barrett Browning's Letters to Mrs. David Ogilvy 1849-1861, eds Peter N. Heydon and Philip Kelley (New York, 1973), pp. xxv-xxxv Notes Eliza Ogilvy (1822-1912) and her husband David (1813-79) knew the Brownings in Italy in 1848-50 (living for a time one floor above them in Casa Guidi), met them again several times in the early and mid-1850s, and continued to correspond. 1 David, Eliza says in her manuscript recollections, maintained against the Brownings his preference for easily comprehensible, rhymed verse (Heydon and Kelley, p. xxviii). 2 See the letter of 18 March 1852 (Heydon and Kelley, pp. 73-4). 3 This happens at the end of chapter 65 in Vanity Fair (1847-8). 4 The Great Exhibition took place in London in May-October 1851. The Brownings went to it that summer with Anna Jameson. 5 Francesco Dall'Ongaro (1808-73) was a Risorgimento activist, writer in various forms, and professor of literature at Florence from 1859. In 1860-1 he was considering translating into Italian Barrett Browning's poems on Italian subjects. 6 For Barrett Browning's doubts about the republican ideologist Giuseppe Mazzini (1805-72) see her letter to Ogilvy of 1 March 1858 (Heydon and Kelley, pp. 138-9). Her enthusiasm for Louis Napoleon Bonaparte Napoleon III- as 'Italy's deliverer' survived even the Treaty of Villafranca, by which he unexpectedly failed to follow up his victories against the Austrians in 1859. Her poems on the emperor include 'Napoleon III in Italy' (in Poems before Congress, 1860). 7 Louis Napoleon, French President since 1848 and legally unable to stand for a second term in office, seized power on 2 December 1851 and became Emperor Napoleon III exactly a year later. 8 Barrett Browning believed that British involvement in the Crimean War (1854-6) was justifiable but that the war was mismanaged as a result of the class-based organization of the British army (see below, p. 87). She had less to say about the Indian Mutiny (1857-8); in a letter to George Barrett of 1 April 1846 (Landis, p. 138) she had questioned Britain's right to an Indian empire after the bloody end of the First Sikh War. 9 It was in July 1855, at the house of Mr and Mrs Rymer of Ealing, that the Brownings first encountered Daniel Dunglas Home, the main model for 'Mr Sludge the Medium' (Dramatis Personae, 1864).

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The Brownings: a Child's View Henriette Corkran I had seen pictures of Dante and Tasso, ·and imagined that the Brownings would wear wreaths of laurel round their heads and be draped in togas, so my disappointment was great when our French servant opened the door and announced 'Monsieur et Madame Brunig'. Could that frail little lady, attired in a simple grey dress and straw bonnet, and the cheerful gentleman in a brown overcoat, be great poets! As we lived au cinquieme, Elizabeth Barrett Browning was quite exhausted after climbing so many stairs. She panted a great deal and was very pale. My mother pushed her gently into a large, low armchair. How thin and small she looked lying back! I stared at her, overpowered by a kind of awe, wondering where the poetry was; and then I felt sure it was in her large, dark eyes, like seas of light, and full of soul. She wore her thick brown hair in long curls, and, from illness, I suppose, held her head on one side. She struck me then as being all eyes and hair, not unlike a spaniel. Penini, I remember, had long golden ringlets; he wore white drawers edged with embroidery; these peculiarities impressed me, for I thought he looked like a girl. They brought with them a beautiful brown dog, with golden eyes. After a few minutes of general conversation, which I thought extremely dull and commonplace for such great poets, Mrs Barrett Browning beckoned to me. I approached her, feeling shy. What was that little, but great woman going to speak about to a small child like me? I was soon put at my ease. In a feeble voice she said, 'You and Penini must be friends, dear. He is my Florentine boy,' stroking his head lovingly. 'Has he not got beautiful hair? so golden - that is because he was born in Italy, where the sun is always golden.' Then she kissed me and placed my hand in Pen's. The tea-things were now brought in; on the tray was a big plumcake. The dog wagged his tail, and then Mrs Browning said to me, 'Flush is a dear, devoted old dog. When I was very ill Flush never left my side day and night. Every time I put my hand out of the bed I could always feel his curly head and cold nose.'

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Flush, on hearing his mistress mention his name, looked up in her face with intense love in his beautiful, wistful eyes. We gave Flush some slices of bread and butter, which he accepted, but instead of eating them he disappeared underneath a big satin sofa; but when I presented him with a piece of plum-cake he swallowed it there and then with gusto. I recollect that Mrs Barrett Browning whispered to me that if I looked under the divan I would find the bread and butter hidden there. She explained that Flush was far too polite a dog to refuse anything offered to him; but from personal observation she knew that he would not eat bread and butter when he saw any chance of getting plum-cake. Pen and I crept on all fours and looked under the divan; yes, there were all the slices of thin bread and butter in a row, and untouched. During most of her visit Mrs Barrett Browning kept her right arm round her little son's neck, running her long, thin fingers through his golden curls. She struck me as being very loving. I recollect that my mother mentioned the subject of spiritualism and the name of some medium. Mr Browning, whose loud tone of voice was a contrast to his wife's, exclaimed, 'What! a clever woman like you to be taken in by such humbugs and charlatans!' Then Mrs Browning, in her thin, little voice, said something about her interest in the subject, and then everybody spoke at once. Flush barked and Pen yawned; and then they said good-bye, and left .... I was glad to hear Mr Robert Browning denounce spiritualism and mediums, etc.: it had a good effect on me, for I was then prone to believe in ghosts, and had a terror of being left in the dark alone .... Mr Browning seemed . . . the incarnation of good health and of common sense. In his presence a ghost might not care to appear. He was just the sort of man to throw a slipper, a book, or an ink-bottle at anything which annoyed him. Perhaps spirits knew this and took care not to be seen by him! After this visit of the Brownings I felt strangely disillusioned. I was an imaginative child, and having learnt a great deal of poetry by heart, I had pictured to myself poets as ethereal beings. It gave me a shock to see Mr Browning eat with avidity so much bread and butter and big slices of plum-cake. He never uttered a word that in any way suggested a poetical thought. His coat, trousers and gloves were according to the fashion of the time; his voice loud and cheerful; his

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thick hair well brushed. Altogether, in my opinion, he looked a prosperous man of business. Now his retiring, shy, old father, with his quaint ways, simplicity and unworldliness, was, in my estimation, much more like a man of genius than his celebrated son, Robert Browning. Celebrities and I, pp. 31-4

Browning and his Beard Elizabeth Barrett Browning A comfort is that Robert is considered here to be looking better than he ever was known to look. And this notwithstanding the greyness of his beard, which indeed is, in my own mind, very becoming to him, the argentine touch giving a character of elevation and thought to the whole physiognomy. This greyness was suddenly developed; let me tell you how. He was in a state of bilious irritability on the morning of his arrival in Rome 1 from exposure to the sun or some such cause, and in a fit of suicidal impatience shaved away his whole beard, whiskers and all! I cried when I saw him, I was so horror-struck. I might have gone into hysterics and still been reasonable; for no human being was ever so disfigured by so simple an act. Of course I said, when I recovered breath and voice, that everything was at an end between me and him if he didn't let it all grow again directly, and (upon the further advice of his looking-glass) he yielded the point, and the beard grew. But it grew white, which was the just punishment of the gods - our sins leave their traces. Letter to Sarianna Browning, 8 June 1854 (as 'Late May' in LEBB, ii.168)

Notes 1 The Brownings had been in Rome (Via Bocca di Leone 43) between November 1853 and May 1854.

'A countenance of April shine and shower' William Michael Rossetti [Elizabeth Barrett Browning's] face was a very difficult one to make impressive in a work of art, the features being far from regular or

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imposing. It was a countenance of April shine and shower, to which full justice could only be done by its own varying and exceptional play of expression. 'Portraits of Robert Browning', The Magazine of Art (1890), p. 184 Notes Rossetti (1829-1919), member of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood and brother, editor and memorialist of Dante Gabriel and Christina, knew the Brownings from the early 1850s. He visited them at Marciano, near Siena, in 1860, and in London the friendship with Browning survived Dante Gabriel's break with the poet over alleged satire of his work in Fifine at the Fair (1872).

A face 'corresponding with delicate exactness to the tone of her poems' William Michael Rossetti I must have found myself in the company of this noble poetess some half-dozen times in all. She was truly petite in form, with the smallest of human hands. I consider that the chalk head of her by Field Talfourd, done in 1859 and now in the National Portrait Gallery, is an extremely true likeness - so much so that those who know it hardly need any further description of her face. I find however one fault in the portrait. The lachrymose look of it can barely be pronounced over-charged; for Mrs Browning was of that excessive sensibility (and her face showed as much) which seemed to tremble towards tears at any moment - though I never actually saw her shed them, unless perhaps on the occasion next to be mentioned. 1 But the fault is that, along with this truly lachrymose look, Mr Talfourd gives (to use an undignified term) something of a 'snivelling' look; and this did not belong to our Queen of Helicon. The spacious rounded brow, the very dark and liquid eyes, the profusion of dark satiny curls over which advancing years seemed to claim no control, are all rightly rendered; also the less attractive forms of the nose and mouth. Mrs Browning's face, as I knew it, was not beautiful, nor yet pretty: for a student of expression it was fascinating, corresponding with delicate exactness to the tone of her poems. I can imagine that in childhood and early girlhood she was an exquisite fairy-like creature. Her voice was not strong, and

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was intermittent rather than flowing in delivery; I never heard her read poetry, whether her own or that of others. Some Reminiscences, 2 vols (London, 1906), i.242-3 Notes 1 This, Rossetti goes on to explain, was when she pleaded with jesse White (Mario), the ardent Risorgimento activist (see below, p. 104 n.S), not to embark on a dangerous expedition to Italy.

Browning Portraits William Michael Rossetti [Michele Gordigiani's portrait:] The spacious unwrinkled forehead, in which thought seems to have accumulated and condensed; the watchful eyes, slightly over-drooped by their lids; the half-smiling, half-pondering mouth, -Browning's face was, indeed, seldom without a certain lambency, as of a pleasant and kindly thought which would easily lapse into a smile; the whole set of the visage, which seems to be listening, and preparing to reply- all these points are well given, and realise very satisfactorily the impression which the man produced. The face in this portrait is certainly a highly intellectual one; but I think it is treated with too much morbidezza, so as to lack some of that extreme keenness which characterised Browning. [Rudolf Lehmann's pencil drawing:] The sensitive look of the mouth is well expressed by Lehmann; and I have often seen in Browning's face something of that air, here indicated, of half-assent tempered by arriere pensee- much as if he were to say, 'Yes, I see all that you have said on the subject, and maybe I see a goodish deal more besides.' This characteristic and rather prevalent expression did not, however, give the poet's face any air of irresolution- such as seems to me traceable in Mr Lehmann's likeness; rather it lent zest to his look of personal decision, and bias to his rapidity. One seemed to see in him a slinger adjusting his aim. [H]is countenance, even when most in repose, seemed constantly ready to light up at any incentive or suggestion. It was the countenance of a thinker with whom thought and the expression of thought (whether spoken or written) were habitually at one. 'Portraits of Robert Browning', The Magazine o( Art (1890), pp. 186, 187-8, 250

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Notes The portrait (1858) by Gordigiani (1830-1909) is in the National Portrait Gallery, London. The drawing (1859) by Lehmann (for whom see below, p. 119) is in the British Museum.

'I'll fling you down the stairs': Browning and Mr Sludge

William Allingham Thursday, June 30 [1864]. We spoke of Tennyson. T. told B. he thought 'Sludge' 1 too long. B. answered, 'I hope he thought it too long!'- that is, Sludge, when the confession was forced from him. Sludge is Home, the Medium, 2 of whom Browning told me to-day a great deal that was very amusing. Having witnessed a seance of Home's, at the house of a friend of B.'s, 3 Browning was openly called upon to give his frank opinion on what had passed, in presence of Home and the company, upon which he declared with emphasis that so impudent a piece of imposture he never saw before in all his life, and so took his leave. Next day Browning's servant came into his room with a visitor's card, and close behind followed the visitor himself - no other than Mr Home, who advanced with a cordial smile and right hand outstretched in amity. He bore no ill-will- not he! Browning looked sternly at him (as he is very capable of doing) and pointing to the open door, not far from which is rather a steep staircase, said- 'If you are not out of that door in half a minute I'll fling you down the stairs.' Home attempted some expostulation, but B. moved towards him, and the Medium disappeared with as much grace as he could manage. 'And now comes the best of it all,' said B.- 'What do you suppose he says of me?- You'd never guess. He says to everybody, "How Browning hates me! - and how I love him!'" He further explains B.'s animosity as arising out of a seance at Florence, where a 'spirit-wreath' was placed on Mrs Browning's head, and none on her husband's. 4 William Allingham: a Diary, eds H. Allingham and D. Radford [1907] (Harmondsworth, 1985), pp. 101-2 Notes Allingham (1824-89), Irish poet and customs officer, was a particular friend of Tennyson.

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'Mr Sludge the Medium' was published in Dramatis Personae (1864). 2 Daniel Dunglas Home (1833-86). For his version of events see Incidents in My Life, Second Series (London, 1872), pp. 106-8. 3 The seance, on 23 July 1855, was at the house of Wilkie Rymer and his wife at Ealing. 4 This took place not in Florence but on the same occasion at the Rymers'.

Tennyson and Browning perform William Michael Rossetti When Tennyson had concluded, Browning was implored to read his 'Fra Lippo Lippi', which, with some little pressing, he consented to do. The contrast between the two readers was interesting and highly characteristic. Tennyson, in his introduction to his 'Mort Arthur', has well described his own elocution- 'mouthing out his hollow o's and a's' (except that 'mouthing', as a term of disparagement, should be altered into some milder word) - his grand deep voice sways onward with a long-drawn chaunt, which some hearers might deem monotonous, but which gives noble value and emphasis to the metrical structure and pauses. Browning's voice, which was at once rich and peculiar, took much less account of the poem as a rhythmical whole; his delivery had more affinity to that of an actor, laying stress on all the light and shade of the composition - its touches of character, its conversational points, its dramatic give-and-take. In those qualities of elocution in which Tennyson was strong, and aimed to be strong, Browning was contentedly weak; and vice-versa. 1 To which of the two modes of reading the preference should be accorded will remain a matter of taste; in the very small audience on that occasion, most were, I think, in favour of Tennyson. 'Portraits of Robert Browning', The Magazine of Art (1890), pp. 182-3 Notes On 27 September 1855, Tennyson and Browning read at 13 Dorset Street, London, where the Brownings were staying. Tennyson gave his recent Maud, and was sketched as he read by Dante Gabriel Rossetti. Also present were Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Arabel Barrett, Ford Madox Brown, William Michael Rossetti and William Holman Hunt. It was, W. M. Rossetti declared elsewhere, 'truly a night of the gods, not

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to be remembered without pride and pang' (Dante Gabriel Rossetti: his Family Letters, 2 vols (London, 1895), i.191). 1 Browning read 'with as much sprightly variation as there was in Tennyson of sustained continuity' (W. M. Rossetti in Family Letters, i.191).

'This generous humility of nature' Anne Thackeray Ritchie Mr Browning was not there, but Mrs Browning received us in a low room with Napoleonic chairs and tables, and a wood-fire burning on the hearth. I do not think any girl who had once experienced it could fail to respond to Mrs Browning's motherly advance. There was something more than kindness in it; there was an implied interest, equality, and understanding which is very difficult to describe and impossible to forget. This generous humility of nature was also to the last one special attribute of Robert Browning himself, translated by him into cheerful and vigorous good-will and utter absence of affectation. But, again and again one is struck by that form of greatness which consists in reaching the reality in all things, instead of keeping to the formalities and the affectations of life .... To the writer's own particular taste there never will be any more delightful person than the simple-minded woman of the world, who has seen enough to know what its praise is all worth, who is sure enough of her own position to take it for granted, who is interested in the person she is talking to, and unconscious of anything but a wish to give kindness and attention. This is the impression Mrs Browning made upon me from the first moment I ever saw her to the last. Alas! the moments were not so very many when we were together. Perhaps all the more vivid is the recollection of the peaceful home, of the fireside where the logs are burning, while the lady of that kind hearth is established in her safe corner, with her little boy curled up by her side, the door opening and shutting meanwhile to the quick step of the master of the house, to the life of the world without as it came to find her in her quiet nook. The hours seemed to my sister and to me warmer, more full of interest and peace, in her sitting-room than elsewhere. Whether at Florence, at Rome, at Paris, or in London once more, she seemed to carry her own atmosphere always, something

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serious, motherly, absolutely artless, and yet impassioned, noble, and sincere. I can recall the slight figure in its thin black dress, the writing apparatus by the sofa, the tiny inkstand, the quill-nibbed pen- the unpretentious implements of her magic. 'She was a little woman; she liked little things,' Mr Browning used to say. Her miniature editions of the classics are still carefully preserved, with her name written in each in her delicate, sensitive handwriting, and always with her husband's name above her own, for she dedicated all her books to him; it was a fancy that she had. Nor must his presence in the home be forgotten any more than in the books - the spirited domination and inspired common-sense, which seemed to give a certain life to her vaguer visions. But of these visions Mrs Browning rarely spoke; she was too simple and practical to indulge in many apostrophes. The only memoranda I ever made of Mrs. Browning's talk were when I was quite a young girl keeping a diary, and I heard her saying that Tennyson's Maud was 'splendid', and also 'that without illness, she saw no reason why the mind should ever fail'. The visitor to whom she expressed this opinion seems to have come away with me complaining that the conversation had been too matter-of-fact, too much to the point; nothing romantic, nothing poetic, such as one might expect from a poet! Another person also present had answered that was just the reason of Mrs Browning's power - she kept her poetry for her poetry, and didn't scatter it about in conversation where it was not wanted; and then follows a girlish note in the old diary: 'I think Mrs Browning is the greatest woman I ever saw in all my life. She is very small, she is brown, with dark eyes and dead brown hair; she has white teeth, and a low, curious voice; she has a manner full of charm and kindness; she rarely laughs, but is always cheerful and smiling; her eyes are very bright. Her husband is not unlike her. He is short; he is dark, with a frank, open countenance, long hair, streaked with grey; he opens his mouth wide when he speaks; he has white teeth'. And there the diary wanders off. When I first remember Mr Browning he was a comparatively young man - though, for the matter of that, he was always young, as his father had been before him; and he was also happy in this, that the length of his life can best be measured by his work. In those days I had not read one single word of his poetry, but somehow one realised that it was there. Almost the first time I ever really recall Mr Browning, he

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and my father and Mrs Browning were discussing spiritualism in a very human and material fashion, each holding to their own point of view, and my sister and I sat by listening and silent. My father was always immensely interested by the stories told of spiritualism and tableturning, though he certainly scarcely believed half of them. Mrs Browning believed, and Mr Browning was always irritated beyond patience by the subject. I can remember her voice, a sort of faint minor chord, as she, lisping the 'r' a little, uttered her remonstrating 'Robert!' and his loud, dominant baritone sweeping away every possible plea she and my father could make; and then came my father's deliberate notes, which seemed to fall a little sadly- his voice always sounded a little sad - upon the rising waves of the discussion. I think this must have been just before we all went to Rome- it was in the morning, in some foreign city. I can see Mr and Mrs Browning, with their faces turned towards the window, and my father with his back to it, and all of us assembled in a little high-up room. Mr Browning was dressed in a rough brown suit, and his hair was black hair then; and she, as far as I can remember, was, as usual, in soft falling flounces of black silk, and with her heavy curls drooping, and a thin gold chain hanging round her neck. Records of Tennyson, Ruskin and Browning (London, 1892), pp. 160-3, 189-92 Notes Anne Thackeray (1837-1919), daughter of the novelist William Makepeace Thackeray, first met the Brownings at the end of 1853 when she was sixteen. She and Browning were estranged for a time after 1870 but a reconciliation was brought about by his friend Joseph Milsand and he dedicated Red Cotton Night-Cap Country to her in 1873.

Browning at Bellosguardo Frances Power Cobbe

Among our most frequent visitors was Mr Browning. Mrs Browning was never able to drive so far, but her warm friendship for Miss Blagden 1 was heartily shared by her husband and we saw a great deal of him. Always full of spirits, full of interest in everything from politics to hedge-flowers, cordial and utterly unaffected, he was at all times a charming member of society; but I confess that in those

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days I had no adequate sense of his greatness as a poet. I could not read his poetry, though he had not then written his most difficult pieces, and his conversation was so playful and light that it never occurred to me that I was wasting precious time chatting frivolously with him when I might have been gaining high thoughts and instruction. There was always a ripple of laughter round the sofa where he used to seat himself, generally beside some lady of the company, towards whom, in his eagerness, he would push nearer and nearer till she frequently rose to avoid falling off at the end! When we drove out in parties he would discuss every tree and weed, and get excited about the difference between eglantine and eglatere (if there be any), and between either of them and honeysuckle. He and Isa were always wrangling in an affectionate way over some book or music; (he was a fine performer himself on the piano), and one night when I had left Villa Brichieri 2 and was living at Villa Niccolini at least half-a-mile off, the air, being in some singular condition of sonority, carried their voices between the walls of the two villas so clearly across to me that I actually heard some of the words of their quarrel, and closed my window lest I should be an eavesdropper. I believe it was about Spirit-rapping they were fighting, for which, and the professors of the art, Browning had a horror. I have seen him stamping on the floor in a frenzy of rage at the way some believers and mediums were deceiving Mrs Browning. At that time I do not think that any one, certainly no one of the society which surrounded him, thought of Mr Browning as a great poet, or as an equal one to his wife, whose Aurora Leigh was then a new book. The utter unselfishness and generosity wherewith he gloried in his wife's fame, -bringing us up constantly good reviews of her poems and eagerly recounting how many editions had been called for, -perhaps helped to blind us, stupid that we were! to his own claims. Life of Frances Power Cobbe As Told By Herself [1894], introduced by Blanch Atkinson (London, 1904), pp. 376-7 Notes Cobbe (1822-1904) was a campaigner for women's rights and later against vivisection. (Browning assured her of his support in a letter of December 1874- see Cobbe's Life, pp. 378-9.) She visited Italy in 1857 and several times subsequently.

78 Elizabeth Barrett Browning and Robert Browning Isa Blagden (1816?-73) was the Brownings' closest friend in Florence; after his wife's death Browning attempted to write to Blagden once a month and took an interest in the publication of her novels. 2 Cobbe for a time shared this villa, on the hill of Bellosguardo above Florence, with Blagden.

Elizabeth Barrett Browning's Conversation Kate Field Mrs Browning's conversation was most interesting. It was not characterized by sallies of wit or brilliant repartee, nor was it of that nature which is most welcome in society. It was frequently intermingled with trenchant, quaint remarks, leavened with a quiet, graceful humour of her own; but it was eminently calculated for a tetea-tete. Mrs Browning never made an insignificant remark. All that she said was always worth hearing; - a greater compliment could not be paid her. She was a most conscientious listener, giving you her mind and heart, as well as her magnetic eyes. Though the latter spoke an eager language of their own, she conversed slowly, with a conciseness and point that, added to a matchless earnestness, which was the predominant trait of her conversation as it was of her character, made her a most delightful companion. Persons were never her theme, unless public characters were under discussion, or friends were to be praised, - which kind office she frequently took upon herself. One never dreamed of frivolities in Mrs Browning's presence, and gossip felt itself out of place. Yourself (not herself) was always a pleasant subject to her, calling out all her best sympathies in joy, and yet more in sorrow. Books and humanity, great deeds, and, above all, politics, which include all the grand questions of the day, were foremost in her thoughts, and therefore oftenest on her lips. I speak not of religion, for with her everything was religion. Her Christianity was not confined to church and rubric: it meant civilization. 'Elizabeth Barrett Browning', Atlantic Monthly, 8 (1861), p. 373

Browning's 'celerity, or ... immediateness' William Michael Rossetti The mental quality which I felt most in him was celerity, or (if I may coin the word) immediateness. Whatever he had to consider or speak about, he disposed of in the most forthright style. Along with the

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celerity of perception, of appraisement, and of solution, there was the greatest directness of method; every touch told, every nail was hit on the head. Sometimes there was a large nail to clench, and very often only a small one, hardly worthy of a master-craftsman's hand; large or small, the nails received the same treatment. With his vast mental power, and very extensive range of knowledge, Browning was sure to talk well on all sorts of subjects. He was not (within my experience, at least) a sustained conversationalist, nor exactly a brilliant one; but he said something pleasant and pointed on whatever turned up- he was anecdotic and racy, gave himself no air of superiority, and put you very much at your ease. His talk was rich in variety and aplomb; one could dip into it as into a treasure-trove of fine coins, all ringing true, and with constantly new image and superscription. He had no objection to talking about himself, as well as about anything else; but I never heard him 'hold forth' by way of self-assertion, or of browbeating his inferiors (and when was it that he encountered his equal?) from the height of his faculties and his performances. He neither 'fished for compliments' nor required any general profession or insinuating detail of admiration. To be lonely was his prerogative: to be companionable his pleasure. I have sometimes heard it said that Browning did not, either in aspect or in conversation, produce upon one the distinct impression of a man of genius. In this view I do not acquiesce. I think that one felt his mind to be extraordinarily rich, while his facility, accessibility, and bonhomie, softened but did not by any means disguise the sense of his power. It would be hard if a man could not voluntarily descend from his pedestal, out of brotherly consideration for others, without being supposed not to have a pedestal after all. [H]e was below the middle height, but of manly frame and erect bearing, so compactly knit that the question of an inch or two more or less scarcely presented itself to the attention. He looked courageous, resolute, unflinching; cordial and easy; alert in perception, keen in outlook, and exacting little from others, except that his own frankness should be met by frankness in return. 'Portraits of Robert Browning', The Magazine of Art (1890), pp. 185-6 Notes For a similar assessment see Rossetti's more often cited Some Reminiscences, 2 vols (London, 1906), i.235.

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The Brownings, 1850 Charles Eliot Norton [18 November 1850 ]. Mrs Browning is even more slight and delicate in her appearance than I had supposed. Her manners are reserved and timid, her voice is low and she joined but little in the conversation. You feel as if she were so distrustful of herself that she kept back the expression of her sentiments and thoughts from all but those with whom she was familiar, - and, knowing what those thoughts and sentiments must be, you long so to win her confidence as to lead her to express them to you. Her face is pleasing, but like her voice and manner is melancholy and quiet, but full of sensibility. You would not believe from it that she has written as she has. You would believe her to have been the most delicate and sensitive of poets, not one to have written poems which show as hers do very great intellectual strength and power of expression. These are my first impressions ... 13 December 1850 . ... The more that I saw of [Browning] and of Mrs Browning the more did I discover in them the characteristics which their poetry would lead one to believe them to possess. Browning's conversation is remarkable and often very striking. His thoughts flow quickly, he uses many figures, but always apposite ones, he has a store of pleasant anecdotes, and he says everything with such entire straightforward earnestness that one cannot but like him. He is quite unconscious and never even in the slightest way claims any regard for himself as a poet, or shows that he expects you to remember that he is one. Indeed one of the most charming characteristics of both him and his wife is their self-forgetfulness .... Mrs Browning seemed better and stronger than I had ever seen her, she talked more than usual and was only too kind to me. Her last words as I bade her goodbye were, - 'You will be sure that your sisters let us know as soon as they arrive in Florence, for we shall be very glad to see them.' Letters of Charles Eliot Norton, eds Sara Norton and M.A. De Wolfe Howe, 2 vols (London, 1913), i.75, 78-9

Notes Norton (1827-1908), later Professor of Fine Arts at Harvard 1873-98, wrote for several important American reviews including The Atlantic Monthly. He visited Europe a number of times and corresponded with, among others, the Brownings, Carlyle and Elizabeth Gaskell.

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'What Mignon might be in maturity and maternity'

Sara Coleridge Mrs Browning is in weak health, and cannot remain in this foggy clime; they are to reside in Paris. 1 She is little, hard-featured, with long dark ringlets, a pale face, and plaintive voice, something very impressive in her dark eyes and her brow. Her general aspect puts me in mind of Mignon, -what Mignon might be in maturity and maternity. 2 Memoirs and Letters of Sara Coleridge [ed. Edith Coleridge], 2 vols (London, 1873), ii.447 Notes S. T. Coleridge's daughter met the Brownings at John Kenyon's in August 1851. Earlier she had corresponded with Barrett: see above, p. 16-17. 1 They lived in Paris for extensive periods of 1851-2 and 1855-6. 2 For the mysterious girl Mignon see Goethe's Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre (1795-6).

'The delight of the encounter'

Bayard Taylor In his lively, cheerful manner, quick voice, and perfect selfpossession, he made upon me the impression of an American rather than an Englishman. He was then, I should judge, about thirtyseven years of age, 1 but his dark hair was already streaked with grey about the temples. His complexion was fair, with perhaps the faintest olive tinge, eyes large, clear, and grey, nose strong and well cut, mouth full and rather broad, and chin pointed, though not prominent. His forehead broadened rapidly upwards from the outer angle of the eyes, slightly retreating. The strong individuality which marks his poetry was expressed, not only in his face and head, but in his whole demeanour. He was about the medium height, strong in the shoulders, but slender at the waist, and his movements expressed a combination of vigour and elasticity. Mr Kenyon 2 had called to say good-bye to his friends, and presently took his leave. 'There,' said Browning, when the door had closed after him, 'there goes one of the most splendid men living- a man

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so noble in his friendships, so lavish in his hospitality, so largehearted and benevolent, that he deserves to be known all over the world as 'Kenyon the Magnificent!' His eulogy was interrupted by the entrance of Mrs Browning, whom he ran to meet with a boyish liveliness. She was slight and fragile in appearance, with a pale, wasted face, shaded by masses of soft chestnut curls which fell on her cheeks, and serious eyes of bluish-grey. Her frame seemed to be altogether disproportionate to her soul. This, at least, was the first impression: her personality, frail as it appeared, exercised its power, and it seemed a natural thing that she should have written the 'Cry of the Children' or the 'Lady Geraldine's Courtship'. I also understood how these two poets, so different both intellectually and physically, should have found their complements in each other. The fortunate balance of their reciprocal qualities makes them an exception to the rule that the intermarriage of authors is unadvisable, and they appear to be - and are - perfectly happy in their wedded life. They both expressed great satisfaction with their American reputation, adding that they had many American acquaintances in Florence and Rome. 'In fact,' said Browning, 'I verily believe that if we were to make out a list of our best and dearest friends, we should find more American than English names.' Mrs Browning was anxious to learn something with regard to Art in this country, and the patronage extended to it; and, in the course of the conversation, freely expressed her belief that a Republican form of Government is unfavourable to the development of the Fine Arts. To this opinion I dissented as moderately as possible, but I soon had a powerful ally in Browning, who declared that no artist had ever before been honoured with a more splendid commission than the State of Virginia had given to Crawford. 3 A general historical discussion ensued, which was carried on for some time with the greatest spirit, the two poets taking directly opposite views. It was good-humouredly closed at last, and I thought both of them seemed to enjoy it. There is no fear that two such fine intellects will rust: they will keep each other bright through the delight of the encounter. Home and Abroad, 2nd series (New York, 1862), pp. 412-15 Notes Taylor (1825-78), a popular travel writer and poet, met the Brownings in London in the summer of 1851.

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1 He was thirty-nine. 2 On Kenyon see above, p. 11. 3 In 1850 the sculptor Thomas Crawford (1813/14-5 7) won the commission for a large equestrian monument to George Washington at Richmond, Virginia.

'She talks no commonplaces'

Ellen Twisleton [London.] 21 July 1852. I have seen [Mrs Browning], and am not, in any way, displeased or disappointed with her appearance- I could not have been possibly, for I knew what was in her, and should have looked till I found it out. She is very small, shorter than I am, dressed in black and not with any particular care or nicety, but not at all sluttish either, only as if she did not spend money or thought upon the matter - she has very small hands and feet, beautiful thick brown hair, but covered with a black cap, behind, and worn in curls, not beautiful, in front, has a fine, calm forehead, soft grey eyes, a low gentle voice, and quiet, well-bred manner. Her mouth might be called ugly, but I should not call it so- it is somewhat too large and a little projecting, but you would never think of it- her face has great refinement, great sensibility, a susceptibility, whether to sorrow or joy - it looks as if her own words expressed the simple truth, that she had had for her trial, 'all the sun and all the shower,' 1 she looks like an invalid, but a self-controlled one, who made no fuss - and is through and through gentle, refined, and ladylike. Florence. 26 December 1852. She said it was hard for her to be away from her family, for she was of an anxious disposition and always building 'dungeons in the air', which I thought forcible. She talks no commonplaces, and is a one-er, 2 evidently, in various different directions. Letters of the Han. Mrs Edward [Ellen] Twisleton Written to Her Family 1852-1862 [ed. Ellen Twisleton Vaughan] (London, 1928), pp. 34-5, 64

Notes Ellen Twisleton (1829-62), from Boston, was the young wife of the English politician Edward Twisleton. She was introduced to Barrett Browning by Jane Carlyle. Browning attended her funeral in May 1862.

84 Elizabeth Barrett Browning and Robert Browning 1 Barrett's 'The Lost Bower' (in Poems, 1844). 2 'A person or thing of a unique or very remarkable kind' (OED).

'We mustn't leave the great Elizabeth alone in such a state' Elizabeth Kinney I had a singular escapade with the Brownings during a visit at Florence of Hattie Hosmer, the American sculptress living in Rome. 1 She is well-known as something of a tom-boy, - is fond of boyish scrapes, and of getting her friends into them. One day when we met her at Casa Guidi Mr Browning spoke of some fine old pictures he had seen in ... Florence, adding how sorry he was that we and his wife could not see them, as no woman was ever admitted within the gates. Hattie Hosmer jumped up and exclaimed, 'But we will see these pictures!' And this was her proposition: That we three, - Mrs Browning, she, and myself, -should procure suits of students' clothes, -composed of full pleated frocks reaching to the knees, and fastened at the waist by leather belts, with loose trousers a Ia Turque, cloth caps, etc., and go as male pupils of Mr Kinney and Mr Browning, they to pass as our tutors. 'Good!' cried Mr Browning. 'I will let my wife do it, if Mr Kinney will let his.' To my utter amazement Mr Kinney consented, and we were all in for a frolic! The two Elizabeths did not shrink from the fun, so long as our grave husbands approved it. Mr Powers 2 was let into the secret, as we required his aid in getting up our disguises, and he was delighted. Before a week was over we had our uniforms, boys' wigs, etc., which were becoming and a complete disguise for Mrs Browning and me. Mr Powers declared that no one would suspect that we were not youths, Mrs Browning about nineteen, and I fifteen. But Hattie Hosmer, being short and stout, looked like a fat boy, if boy at all, and very peculiar! We all met at Casa Guidi to dress, while, not daring to use our own carriage, it was sent home, and our tutors, to be, went out to bring a fiacre, or hack, for our conveyance to the monastery. We laughed at one another so heartily that it was difficult to get dressed; but Mrs Browning completed her toilet first, and really looked handsome in it. For the first time I saw her without those dark, heavy curls she always wore half concealing her cheeks, and

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the wig of short straight hair improved her looks; excitement gave her usually pale face a fine color, and her large black eyes an unwonted brightness. But our merriment at Hattie's looks was suddenly checked by a crazy act on Mrs Browning's part that filled us with terror! It had been agreed that the carriage should enter the porte-cochere and stop at the foot of the stairs, so that we could enter it unseen. What then was our dismay, Hattie's as well as mine, on glancing out of the window, to see Mrs'Browning walking slowly on the square up and down! It must have been an extra dose of opium that pushed her to such a wild step. 3 'What shall we do?' I exclaimed. 'Why, go to her!' answered Hattie. 'We mustn't leave the great Elizabeth alone in such a state!' This was convincing, yet I feared to make bad worse. Hattie rushed down into the street and took Mrs Browning's arm to conduct her back, and I, like one bewildered, needs must follow. By that time our strange appearance began to attract attention, when all at once Mrs Browning, seeming conscious of the situation, began to cry, and whispered in my ear, 'Oh, Mrs Kinney, we shall be in the Bargello!'- Oail). And so ludicrously pitiful was the whole scene that Hattie and I burst into a laugh. This excited observation still more, and we should have been the center of a crowd had not our husbands driven up in a hack and taken us in, just in time. But Browning was as pale as death with fright, and declared that now he would not venture to carry out our plan, as no doubt we had been discovered, and that the police might follow us, and the whole matter be exposed in the papers, with our names. Mr Kinney laughed at his fears, while Hattie took fire and called him a poltroon and other hard names. Mrs Browning cried, I laughed, and we all, save Browning, declared that it would be too sad to disappoint us after all! But he refused to visit the monastery; we drove back, and so ended our escapade! Ronald A. Bosco, 'The Brownings and Mrs Kinney: a record of their friendship', BIS, 4 (1976), pp. 115-17, from Elizabeth Clementine Kinney, MS, 'Personal Reminiscences', in the Edmund Clarence Stedman Collection of the Columbia University Library. Notes Kinney (1810-89), author of poems and essays, was married to William Burnet Kinney (1799-1880), American charge d'affaires in Turin 1850-3.

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They lived in Florence for much of the next twelve years. The incident retold here took place in the spring of 1855. 1 Harriet Goodhue Hosmer (1830-1908) had come to work in Italy in 1852. The Brownings liked her; Barrett Browning (working on Aurora Leigh) particularly admired her as one who 'emancipates the eccentric life of a perfectly "emancipated female" from all shadow of blame by the purity of hers' (letter to Mitford, 10 May 1854, LEBB, ii.166). Browning broke off his friendship with Hosmer in the spring of 1872. She had taken Lady Ashburton's part against him in the scandal once thought to have followed his proposal of marriage to Ashburton, and now known almost certainly to have followed hers to him. Browning angrily refused to reply to Hosmer's letter attempting reconciliation in 1887. 2 Hiram Powers (1805-73), American sculptor resident in Florence since 1837. Barrett Browning wrote a sonnet on his 'Greek Slave' (Poems, 1850). 3 Opium seems to have been prescribed first for Barrett's undiagnosed illness of 1821. The concept and nature of addiction was as yet little understood. Although on occasion she attempted to reduce her intake - probably most successfully during her pregnancy with Pen in 1848-9- she remained more or less dependent on the drug (in the form of morphine) for the rest of her life. She praised its good effects on the spirits and the lungs in a letter to Mary Russell Mitford of 21 December 1842 (Correspondence, vi.232-3).

A Retrograde Step for Women

Elizabeth Barrett Browning I know Florence Nightingale 1 slightly .... I honour her from my heart. She is an earnest, noble woman, and has fulfilled her woman's duty where many men have failed. At the same time, I confess myself to be at a loss to see any new position for the sex, or the most imperfect solution of the 'woman's question', in this step of hers. If a movement at all, it is retrograde, a revival of old virtues! Since the siege of Troy and earlier, we have had princesses binding wounds with their hands; it's strictly the woman's part, and men understand it so, as you will perceive by the general adhesion and approbation on this late occasion of the masculine dignities. Every man is on his knees before ladies carrying lint, calling them 'angelic she's', whereas, if they stir an inch as thinkers or artists from the beaten line (involving more good to general humanity than is involved in lint), the very same men would curse the impudence of the very same women and stop there. 2 .•• For my own part (and apart from the exceptional miseries of the war), I acknowledge to you that I do not consider the best use to which we can put a gifted and

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accomplished woman is to make her a hospital nurse. If it is, why then woe to us all who are artists! The woman's question is at an end. The men's 'noes' carry it. Letter to Anna Jameson, 24 February 1855, LEBB, ii.188-9 Notes 1 Nightingale (1820-1910) transformed conditions in the Crimean war hospitals in 1854-6 and on her return continued to lead the radical reform of the nursing profession. Barrett Browning had met her briefly in 1852. 2 This was indeed the attitude taken by, for instance, Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine in its review of Barrett Browning's Poems Before Congress. Instead of interfering in politics women should adorn 'the domestic circle'. They should sing, write on the fine arts or cookery, or- Nightingale is explicitly contrasted with Barrett Browning - engage in 'deeds of true charity' like visiting the sick, in which case they may justly be likened to the angels ('Poetic Aberrations', April 1860, pp. 490-4).

'Our close, stifling, corrupt system' Elizabeth Barrett Browning Oh, the Crimea! How dismal, how full of despair and horror! The results will, however, be good if we are induced to come down from the English pedestal in Europe of incessant self-glorification, and learn that our close, stifling, corrupt system gives no air nor scope for healthy and effective organisation anywhere. We are oligarchic in all things, from our parliament to our army. Individual interests are admitted as obstacles to the general prosperity. This plague runs through all things with us. It accounts for the fact that, according to the last marriage statistics, thirty per cent. of the male population signed with the mark only. It accounts for the fact that London is at once the largest and ugliest city in Europe. For the rest, if we cannot fight righteous and necessary battles, we must leave our place as a nation, and be satisfied with making pins. Letter to Anna Jameson, 24 February 1855, LEBB, ii.l89-90

'A noble devotion to and faith in the regeneration of Italy' Kate Field She watched the progress of the world with tireless eye and beating heart, and, anxious for the good of the whole world, scorned to take an insular view of any political question. With her a political

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question was a moral question as well. Mrs Browning belonged to no particular country; the world was inscribed upon the banner under which she fought. A noble devotion to and faith in the regeneration of Italy was a prominent feature in Mrs Browning's life. To her, Italy was from the first a living fire, not the bed of dead ashes at which the world was wont to sneer. 1 Her trust in God and the People was supreme; and when the Revolution of 1848 kindled the passion of Liberty from the Alps to Sicily, she, in common with many another earnest spirit, believed that the hour for the fulfilment of her hopes had arrived. 2 Her joyful enthusiasm at the Tuscan uprising found vent in the 'Eureka' which she sang with so much fervour in Part First of 'Casa Guidi Windows' .... It is a matter of great thankfulness that God permitted Mrs Browning to witness the second Italian revolution 3 before claiming her for heaven. No patriot Italian, of whatever high degree, gave greater sympathy to the aspirations of 1859 than Mrs Browning. Great was the moral courage of this frail woman to publish the 'Poems Before Congress' at a time when England was most suspicious of Napoleon. Greater were her convictions, when she abased England and exalted France for the cold neutrality of the one and the generous aid of the other in this war of Italian independence. 4 Bravely did she bear up against the angry criticism excited by such anti-English sentiment. 5 Strong in her right, Mrs Browning was willing to brave the storm, confident that truth would prevail in the end .... But though Mrs Browning wrote her 'Tale of Villafranca' in full faith, after many a mile-stone in time lay between her and the fact, her friends remember how the woman bent and was well-nigh crushed, as by a thunderbolt, when the intelligence of this Imperial Treaty was first received. Coming so quickly upon the heels of the victories of Solferino and San Martino, it is no marvel that what stunned Italy should have almost killed Mrs Browning. 6 That it hastened her into the grave is beyond a doubt, as she never fully shook off the severe attack of illness occasioned by this check upon her life-hopes. The summer of 1859 was a weary, suffering season for her in consequence; and although the following winter, passed in Rome, helped to repair the evil that had been wrought, a heavy cold, caught at the end of the season, (and for the sake of seeing Rome's gift of swords to Napoleon and Victor EmmanueF), told upon her lungs. The autumn of 1860 brought with it another 00.

000

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sorrow in the death of a beloved sister, 8 and this loss seemed more than Mrs Browning could bear; but by breathing the soft air of Rome again she seemed to revive, and indeed wrote that she was 'better in body and soul'. Those who have known Mrs Browning in later years thought she never looked better than upon her return to Florence in the first days of last June, although the overland journey had been unusually fatiguing to her. But the meeting was a sad one; for Cavour had died, and the national loss was as severe to her as a personal bereavement. 9 Her deep nature regarded Italy's benefactor in the light of a friend; for had he not laboured unceasingly for that which was the burden of her song? and could she allow so great a man to pass away without many a heart-ache? It is as sublime as it is rare to see such intense appreciation of great deeds as Mrs Browning could give. Her fears, too, for Italy, when the patriot pilot was hurried from the helm, gave rise to much anxiety, until quieted by the assuring words of the new minister, Ricasoli. 10 'Elizabeth Barrett Browning', Atlantic Monthly, 8 (1861), pp. 371-2 Notes Italian politics are the theme of many of Barrett Browning's poems from 1847 onwards. Browning shared her interest, if in a less passionate and committed way. His liking for Italy, he later told Isa Blagden, was a selfish one - there, given the 'uninterestingness' of individual Italians, he could be alone with his soul as not in England (19 May 1866, DI, pp. 238-9). This need to live in the present- including the need for Italy itself to stop sweeping 'Heroic ashes up for hour-glass sand; I Of her own past, impassioned nympholept!' (II. 189-90)- is one of the main themes of Casa Guidi Windows, Part One. 2 In 1848 liberal constitutions were granted in Piedmont, Naples, and (as celebrated in Casa Guidi Windows, Part One) Tuscany, the Austrians were for a time driven out of Milan, and republics were established in Rome and Venice. By August 1849 all these developments, except Piedmont's constitution, had been reversed. (See Casa Guidi Windows, Part Two. In the Advertisement to the two parts (185 1) Barrett Browning 'takes shame upon herself that she believed, like a woman, some royal oaths, and lost sight of the probable consequences of some obvious popular defects' but, as in the poem, hopes for the future.) 3 In 1859 Piedmont and France (under Napoleon III) freed Lombardy from Austrian rule; in 1860 Tuscany and a number of other northern states united with Piedmont and Garibaldi liberated southern Italy. The Kingdom of Italy (still not including Rome and Venetia) was proclaimed in March 1861.

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4 One of Barrett Browning's most explicit attacks on the British attitude to Italian affairs is made in the Advertisement to Poems before Congress (1860): 'non-intervention in the affairs of neighbouring states ... does not mean, passing by on the other side when your neighbour falls among thieves'. France was 'exalted' in such poems as 'Napoleon III in Italy'. S Poems Before Congress received hostile reviews, mainly on account of its politics and their unsuitability to her gender, in Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine (80 (1860), pp. 490-4), The Athenaeum (17 March 1860, pp. 371-2) and several other journals. 6 The victories over the Austrians of June 1859 were followed, unexpectedly, by the Treaty of Villafranca in July. Disappointment at this turn of events left the already frail Barrett Browning ill in bed for nearly three weeks. She refused, however, to lose faith in Napoleon III: see 'A Tale of Villafranca' in Poems Before Congress and 'First News from Villafranca' in Last Poems. 7 After the excursion to see the swords, in january 1860, at the workshop of the famous jewellers and goldsmiths Castellani, Barrett Browning suffered from irregular heart-beat, breathlessness and a persistent cough. 8 Henrietta Cook died of cancer of the womb in November 1860. 9 Count Camillo Benso di Cavour (1810-61), architect of Italian unity under the House of Savoy, died on 6 June 1861, just over three weeks before Barrett Browning. 10 Baron Bettina Ricasoli (1809-80) succeeded Cavour as prime minister of Italy in 1861-2. Only hours before her death Barrett Browning was reassured by Isa Blagden that Ricasoli's politics were essentially the same as Cavour's (LRB, p. 61).

The 'logical and common-sensible' poet and the 'good and kind fairy' Nathaniel Hawthorne Florence, June 9 [1858]

Mrs Browning met us at the door of the drawing-room, and greeted us most kindly - a pale, small person, scarcely embodied at all; at any rate, only substantial enough to put forth her slender fingers to be grasped, and to speak with a shrill, yet sweet, tenuity of voice. Really, I do not see how Mr Browning can suppose that he has an earthly wife any more than an earthly child; both are of the elfinrace, and will flit away from him some day when he least thinks of it. She is a good and kind fairy, however, and sweetly disposed towards the human race, although only remotely akin to it. It is wonderful to see how small she is, 1 how pale her cheek, how bright and dark her eyes. There is not such another figure in this world; and her black ringlets cluster down into her neck, and make her face look the whiter by their sable profusion. I could not form any judge-

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ment about her age; it may range any where within the limits of human life, or elfin-life. When I met her in London, at Lord Houghton's breakfast-table 2 she did not impress me so singularly; for the morning light is more prosaic than the dim illumination of their great tapestried drawing-room; and besides, sitting next to her, she did not have occasion to raise her voice in speaking, and I was not sensible what a slender voice she has. 3 It is marvellous to me how so extraordinary, so acute, so sensitive a creature, can impress us, as she does, with the certainty of her benevolence. It seems to me there were a million chances to one that she would have been a miracle of acidity and bitterness. Mr Browning was very efficient in keeping up conversation with everybody, and seemed to be in all parts of the room and in every group at the same moment; a most vivid and quick-thoughted person - logical and common-sensible, as, I presume, poets generally are in their daily talk. . . . I am rather surprised that Browning's conversation should be so clear, and so much to the purpose at the moment, since his poetry can seldom proceed far without running into the high grass of latent meanings and obscure allusions. Florence, June 27. Browning's nonsense is of very genuine and excellent quality, the true bubble and effervescence of a bright and powerful mind; and he lets it play among his friends with the faith and simplicity of a child. 4 He must be an amiable man. I should like him much, and should make him like me, if opportunities were favourable. Passages from the French and Italian Note-Books of Nathaniel Hawthorne, 2 vols (London, 1871), ii.ll-14, 67-8

Notes Hawthorne (1804-64), whose The Scarlet Letter had been published in 1850, was American consul in Liverpool 1853-7 and lived in Italy in 1857-9. The Marble Faun, drawing much on his Roman experiences and notebooks, appeared in 1860. Sophia Hawthorne removed from the posthumously published Passages from the ... Note-Books remarks likely to cause offence to the then still living Browning and Pen, including reflections on the ethereality of the strange nine-year-old Pen, 'at once less childlike and less manly than would befit that age'.

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1 The manuscript adds that her face was 'peaked' but without ugliness (The French and Italian Notebooks, ed. Thomas Woodson (Columbus, OH, 1980), p. 301. 2 Richard Monckton Milnes (1809-85), later Lord Houghton, gave breakfastparties for his literary friends. Hawthorne had first met the Brownings at one of these gatherings in July 1856. 3 It was, Hawthorne originally noted, 'as if a grasshopper should speak' (French and Italian Notebooks, p. 303). 4 Quoting this remark Hawthorne's younger daughter Rose (1851-1926) suggests a possible influence on Count Donatello in The Marble Faun (1860): 'Not one of all the cherubs of all the great masters had a sunnier face, more dancing curls, or a sweeter smile' than Browning; 'I have wondered whether the Faun would have sprung with such untainted jollity into the sorrows of to-day if Mr Browning had not leaped so blithely before my father's eyes' (Rose Hawthorne Lathrop, Memories of Hawthorne (London, 1897), p. 403).

Spiritualism: 'Mrs Browning kept trying to stem his flow of eager, funny talk' Sophia Hawthorne Mrs Browning is a spiritualist. Mr Browning opposes and protests with all his might, but he says he is ready to be convinced. Mrs Browning is wonderfully interesting. She is the most delicate sheath for a soul I ever saw. One evening at Casa Guidi there was a conversation about spirits, and a marvellous story was told of two hands that crowned Mrs Browning with a wreath through the mediumship of Mr Hume. 1 Mr Browning declared that he believed the two hands were made by Mr Hume and fastened to Mr Burne's toes, and that he made them move by moving his feet. Mrs Browning kept trying to stem his flow of eager, funny talk with her slender voice, but, like an arrowy river, he rushed and foamed and leaped over her slight tones, and she could not succeed in explaining how she knew they were spirit hands .... You would be infinitely charmed with Mrs Browning, and with Mr Browning as well. The latter is very mobile, and flings himself about just as he flings his thoughts on paper, and his wife is still and contemplative. Love, evidently, has saved her life. Letter to Elizabeth Peabody, 25 August 1858, in Rose Hawthorne Lathrop, Memories of Hawthorne (London, 1897), pp. 397-8 Notes Hawthorne (1809-71), born Sophia Amelia Peabody, married Nathaniel Hawthorne in 1842. Her Notes in England and Italy was published in 1875.

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1 The evening was that of 8 June 1858, also described by Nathaniel Hawthorne who says that that 'The marvellousness of the fact, as I have read of it, and heard it from other eye-witnesses, melted strangely away in [Browning's] hearty gripe, and at the sharp touch of his logic' (Passages from the French and Italian Notebooks, ii.14). The Home incident had taken place in 1855; see above, p. 72.

'The corruption of our society requires not shut doors and windows, but light and air' Elizabeth Barrett Browning I confess it, dear Mr Thackeray, never was anyone turned out of a room for indecent behaviour in a more gracious and conciliatory manner!~ Also, I confess that from your 'Cornhill' standpoint (paterfamilias looking on) you are probably right ten times over. From mine, however, I may not be wrong, and I appeal to you as the deep man you are, whether it is not the higher mood, which on Sunday bears with the 'plain word', so offensive on Monday, during the cheating across the counter? I am not a 'fast woman'. I don't like coarse subjects, or the coarse treatment of any subject. But I am deeply convinced that the corruption of our society requires not shut doors and windows, but light and air; and that it is exactly because pure and prosperous women choose to ignore vice, that miserable women suffer wrong by it everywhere. Has paterfamilias, with his Oriental traditions and veiled female faces, very successfully dealt with a certain class of evil? What if materfamilias, with her quick sure instincts and honest innocent eyes, do more towards their expulsion by simply looking at them and calling them by their names? See what insolence you put me up to by your kind way of naming my dignities- 'Browning's wife and Penini's mother'. And I, being vain (turn some people out of a room and you don't humble them properly), retort with- 'materfamilias!' Letter to William Makepeace Thackeray, 21 April 1861, LEBB, ii.445-6 Notes Thackeray, as editor of The Cornhill Magazine, had politely rejected EBB's 'Lord Walter's Wife' on the grounds that 'our Magazine is written not only for men and women but for boys, girls, infants, sucklings almost .... In your poem, you know, there is an account of unlawful passion, felt by a man for a woman, and though you write pure doctrine, and real modesty, and pure ethics, I am sure our readers would make an outcry ... I go down on my

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knees before cutting my victim's head off, and say, "Madam, you know how I respect and regard you, Browning's wife and Penini's mother; and for what I am going to do I most humbly ask your pardon'" (2 April 1861, in LEBB, ii.444). The poem was included in Last Poems (1862).

'All poetry being a putting the infinite within the finite': Men and Women Robert Browning I cannot begin writing poetry till my imaginary reader has conceded licences to me which you demur at altogether. I know that I don't make out my conception by my language; all poetry being a putting the infinite within the finite. You would have me paint it all plain out, which can't be; but by various artifices I try to make shift with touches and bits of outlines which succeed if they bear the conception from me to you. You ought, I think, to keep pace with the thought tripping from ledge to ledge of my 'glaciers', as you call them; not stand poking your alpen-stock into the holes, and demonstrating that no foot could have stood there; - suppose it sprang over there? In prose you may criticise so because that is the absolute representation of portions of truth, what chronicling is to history - but in asking for more ultimates you must accept less mediates, nor expect that a Druid stone-circle will be traced for you with as few breaks to the eye as the North Crescent and South Crescent that go together so cleverly in many a suburb. Do you think poetry was ever generally understood- or can be? Is the business of it to tell people what they know already, as they know it, and so precisely that they shall be able to cry out 'Here you should supply this- that, you evidently pass over, and I'll help you from my own stock'? It is all teaching, on the contrary, and the people hate to be taught. They say otherwise, - making foolish fables about Orpheus enchanting stocks and stones, poets standing up and being worshipped, -all nonsense and impossible dreaming. A poet's affair is with God, to whom he is accountable, and of whom is his reward: look elsewhere, and you find misery enough. Do you believe people understand Hamlet? Letter to John Ruskin, 10 December 1855, in W. G. Collingwood, The Life and Works of!ohn Ruskin, 2 vols (London, 1893), i.200-2

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95

Notes Browning is replying to a letter of 2 December in which Ruskin acknowledges the power of Men and Women but finds some of the poems 'the most amazing Conundrums that ever were proposed to me' (R. ]. DeLaura, 'Ruskin and the Brownings', Bulletin of the fohn Rylands Library 54 (1971-2), p. 324). Ruskin (1819-1900) first met the Brownings in London in 1852. In Modern Painters, iv (London, 1856), p. 379, he praised and extensively quoted 'The Bishop Orders His Tomb at St Praxed's Church'. On the whole, however, he found Barrett Browning's work more congenial; he was particularly enthusiastic about Aurora Leigh.

Writing Aurora Leigh Alexandra Orr Mrs Browning was then writing Aurora Leigh, and her husband must have been more than ever impressed by her power of work, as displayed by her manner of working. To him, as to most creative writers, perfect quiet was indispensable to literary production. She wrote in pencil, on scraps of paper, as she lay on the sofa in her sitting-room, open to interruption from chance visitors, or from her little omnipresent son; simply hiding the paper beside her if anyone came in, and taking it up again when she was free. And if this process was conceivable in the large, comparatively silent spaces of their Italian home, and amidst habits of life which reserved social intercourse for the close of the working day, it baffles belief when one thinks of it as carried on in the conditions of a Parisian winter, and the little salon of the apartment in the Rue du Colisee in which those months were spent. Orr, pp. 208-9 Notes Barrett Browning wrote most of Aurora Leigh in Paris between December 1855 and June 1856.

With Landor at Siena Edith Peruzzi de' Medici The Brownings almost invariably came over in the afternoon to tea on the grass terrace. 1 Mr Hamilton Wild, 2 the genial artist, was a constant

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guest at the villa, and painted a charming little picture that perished, unfortunately, in a Boston fire. With the picturesque background of the villa there were grouped around the tea-table the Brownings, Mr Landor, and my mother and father; in the distance my brothers Waldo and Julian playing games with Pen Browning, whilst I, an awkward little girl, sat on the garden-wall near the tea-table listening to the talk of the elders, as in memory I am listening today. It seems to me very vivid still. Would that I could record it word for word, so full of interest and vigour and covering such space of thought! Mr Browning and my father were always the principal talkers, and so to speak capped each other's verses. 3 .•. Mr Landor was most extravagant in the expression of his likes and dislikes. His admiration of Garibaldi amounted to hero worship, and he followed every act of his life with intense interest; not so with Louis Napoleon, for whom he had the greatest contempt, never losing a chance when he could utter his anathema against him .... Mrs Browning, with her face hidden under her large hat and curls, would be stirred past endurance by these assaults on her hero who was her 'Emperor evermore', 4 and would raise her treble voice even to a shrill pitch in protest, until Mr Browning would come into the fray as mediator. Marchesa Peruzzi de' Medici, 'Walter Savage Landor', The Cornhill Magazine, n.s. 38 (1915), pp. 493-4 Notes The Marchesa Peruzzi de' Medici (1844-1917) was William Wetmore Story's daughter, Edith. She had known the Brownings since she was about five. For her adult relationship with Browning- for a time she thought he was in love with her- see Virginia Surtees, 'Browning's Last Duchess', London Review of Books, 8 October 1986, pp. 17-18, and 'Danny Karlin Comments on Edith Story's Story', p. 18. Walter Savage Landor (1775-1864), famously irascible poet and author of Imaginary Conversations, met Browning and Barrett separately in 1836. In 'To Robert Browning' (The Morning Chronicle, 22 November 1845) Landor hailed him as the poet most active, enquiring, and 'varied in discourse' since Chaucer, and 'Robert always said that he owed more as a writer to Landor than to any contemporary' (LEBB, ii.354). 1 In 1859, when Landor was expelled by his wife from their house in Fiesole, Browning agreed to act as his 'guardian'. While the Brownings were at Villa Alberti, Marciano, near Siena, Landor stayed nearby with the Storys at Villa Belvedere. (Subsequently he was established in Florence at the lodging-house of Barrett Browning's former servant Elizabeth Wilson.)

Part III: The Brownings 1846-61 97 2 Wild or Wilde (1827-84) was a friend of Story. 3 Sidney Colvin remembered how, at Naworth Castle in 1869, Browning and Story 'kept up between them hour by hour the ball of anecdote and reminiscence and repartee' (Memories and Notes of Persons and Places 1852-1912 (London, 1921), p. 78). 4 This is the refrain of her 'Napoleon III in Italy'.

Rome in 1853-4: 'They did not come back with the usual impressions'

Walter Cassels They did not come back with the usual impressions of Rome. They said all their sympathies lay with the Greeks and not with the Romans, and that therefore even the associations had not the same strength for them .... They said that old Rome was so mixed up with new, and so scraped and polished up, they did not like it; but they saw it under unfavourable circumstances, their little boy having been ill all the time, many of their friends dying, and the pestilence about them. 1 They seemed to think that you had all the bustle and parade of London and Paris without their conveniences. Letter to David Holt, 11 September 1854, in Leonard Huxley (ed.), 'A Visitor to the Brownings', Yale Review, n.s. 13 (1924), p. 244 Notes Walter Richard Cassels was a young Manchester poet working in business in Livorno. 1 Less than a week after the Brownings' arrival in Rome in November 1853 the Storys' six-year-old son, Joe, died of gastric fever. joe's sister Edith was also ill and recovered only after a dangerous relapse in March 1854. Barrett Browning in particular had been terrified that Pen too would catch the fever.

Rome in 1859: 'plenty of distraction, and no Men and Women'

Elizabeth Barrett Browning Robert caught cold two or three days ago; in spite of which he chose to get up at six every morning as usual and go out to walk with Mr Eckley. 1 Only by miracle and nux2 is he much better to-day. I thought he was going to have a furious grippe, as last year and the year

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before. I must admit, however, that he is extremely well just now, to speak generally, and that this habit of regular exercise (with occasional homoeopathy) has thrown him into a striking course of prosperity, as to looks, spirits and appetite. He eats 'vulpinely' he says - which means that a lark or two is no longer enough for dinner. At breakfast the loaf perishes by Gargantuan slices. He is plunged into gaieties of all sorts, caught from one hand to another like a ball, has gone out every night for a fortnight together, and sometimes two or three times deep in a one night's engagements. So plenty of distraction, and no Men and Women. 3 Men and women from without instead! I am shut up in the house of course, and go to bed when he goes out- and the worst is, that there's a difficulty in getting books. Still, I get what I can, and stop up the chinks with Swedenborg; 4 and in health am very well, for me, and in tranquillity excellently well. Not that there are not people more than enough who come to see me, but that there is nothing vexatious just now; life goes smoothly, I thank God, and I like Rome better than I did last time. Letter to Isa Blagden, 7 January 1859, LEBB, ii.303 Notes 1 David Eckley, a wealthy native of Boston. His wife Sophie (Sophia May, 1821?-74) was one of Barrett Browning's closest friends between 1857 and 1859. Sophie appears to have fabricated spiritualist experiences in order to impress her. Their intimacy ended once Barrett Browning realized this in the summer of 1859; her disenchantment influenced the scathing 'Where's Agnes?' (in Last Poems, 1862). 2 Nux: nux vomica, a powerful natural emetic which contains strychnine, taken as a tincture. 3 Men and Women was published in 1855; Browning's next collection, Dramatis Personae, followed only in 1864. It is uncertain when most of its individual poems were written, but by May 1860, apparently, he was 'working at a long poem' which his wife had 'not seen a line of' - probably the piece which became 'Mr Sludge, the Medium'- and on 'short lyrics' which she had seen (LEBB, ii.388). 4 Since the early 1840s Barrett Browning had been a keen reader of the works of the Swedish mystic and philosopher Emanuel Swedenborg (1688-1772).

Browning in 1861: 'the brain stratifies and matures creatively, even in the pauses of the pen' Elizabeth Barrett Browning Robert is looking remarkably well and young- in spite of all lunar lights in his hair. Though my hair keeps darker (with a certain

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sprinkle however, underneath, which forces its way outwards), I would willingly change on the whole with him, if he were not my own Robert. He is not thin or worn, as I am - no indeed - and the women adore him everywhere far too much for decency. In my own opinion he is infinitely handsomer and more attractive than when I saw him first, sixteen years ago - which does not mean as much as you may suppose, that I myself am superannuated and wholly anile, 1 and incompetent therefore for judgement. No, indeed, I believe people in general would think the same exactly. And as to the modelling 2 - well, I told you that I grudged a little the time from his own particular art - and that is true. But it does not do to dishearten him about his modelling. He has given a great deal of time to anatomy with reference to the expression of form, and the clay is only the new medium which takes the place of drawing. Also, Robert is peculiar in his ways of work as a poet. I have struggled a little with him on this point- for I don't think him right- that is to say, it wouldn't be right for me - and I heard the other day that it wouldn't be right for Tennyson. Tennyson is a regular worker, shuts himself up daily for so many hours. And we are generally so made that a regular hour is good, even for so uncertain an influence as mesmerism. But Robert waits for an inclination- works by fits and starts - he can't do otherwise he says. Then reading hurts him. As long as I have known him he has not been able to read long at a time- he can do it now better than in the beginning of time. The consequence of which is that he wants occupation and that an active occupation is salvation to him with his irritable nerves, saves him from ruminating bitter cud, and from the process which I call beating his dear head against the wall till it is bruised, simply because he sees a fly there, magnified by his own eyes almost indefinitely into some Saurian monster. He has an enormous superfluity of vital energy, and if it isn't employed, it strikes its fangs into him. He gets out of spirits as he was at Havre. 3 Nobody understands exactly why - except me who am in the inside of him and hear him breathe. For the peculiarity of our relation is, that even when he's displeased with me, he thinks aloud with me and can't stop himself. And I know ultimately that whatever takes him out of a certain circle (where habits of introvision and analysis of fly-legs are morbidly exercised), is life and joy to him. I wanted his poems 4 done this winter very much- and here was a bright room with three windows consecrated to use. But he had a room all last summer, and did nothing. Then, he worked himself out by riding for three or four

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hours together- there has been little poetry done since last winter, when he did much. He was not inclined to write this winter. The modelling combines body-work and soul-work, and the more tired he has been, and the more his back ached, poor fellow, the more he has exulted and has been happy - 'no, nothing ever made him so happy before'- also the better he has looked and the stouter grown. So I couldn't be much in opposition against the sculpture - I couldn't, in fact, at all. He has the material for a volume, and will work at it this summer, he says. His power is much in advance of 'Strafford', which is his poorest work of all. Oh, the brain stratifies and matures creatively, even in the pauses of the pen. Letter to Sarianna Browning, 19 January 1861, LEBB ii.434-6 (as 'end of March' 1861). Notes 1 Anile: 'of or like an old woman; old womanish; imbecile' (OED). 2 He modelled in clay at William Wetmore Story's studio during the Brownings' periods of residence in Rome between 1858 and 1861. 3 The Brownings had stayed at Le Havre in the summer of 1858 with Browning's father and sister, Barrett Browning's sister Arabel and, for a time, her brother Henry and his new wife Amelia. Both poets apparently found the mixed company exhausting and frustrating. 4 Presumably some of the poems which eventually became Dramatis Personae (1864).

'She has genius; I am only a painstaking fellow' Alexandra Orr He would ... declaim passages from his wife's poems; and when, on one of these occasions, Madame du Quaire 1 had said, as so many persons now say, that she much preferred his poetry to hers, he made this characteristic answer, to be repeated in substance some years afterwards to another friend: 'You are wrong- quite wrong- she has genius; I am only a painstaking fellow. Can't you imagine a clever sort of angel who plots and plans, and tries to build up something - he wants to make you see it as he sees it- shows you one point of view, carries you off to another, hammering into your head the thing he wants you to understand; and whilst this bother is going on God Almighty turns you off a little star- that's the difference between us. The true creative power is hers, not mine. 2 Orr, pp. 243-4

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Notes Browning made these remarks in Rome, probably early in 1861. 1 Frances Mary du Quaire, formerly Blackett, a rich widow with homes in London and Paris whom the Brownings had known for some time. 2 Cp. Browning's letter to Isa Blagden, 19 August 1871: 'she was the poet, and I the clever person by comparison'. He had given Barrett herself a diagnosis of the difference between them on 13 January 1845 (Correspondence, x.22): 'you speak out, you, - I only make men and women speak, - give you truth broken into prismatic hues, and fear the pure white light, even if it is in me: but I am going to try'.

The Death and Funeral of Elizabeth Barrett Browning

William Wetmore Story You have before this heard of course of the death of Mrs Browning .... This was sudden and unexpected at the last, for though she had always been so frail that one only wondered what kept soul and body together at all, we had become so accustomed to thinking of her as different from all others in the matter of health that we began to think she might even outlast us. Fifteen years ago her physicians told her that life was impossible, yet she had lived and borne a child and written immortal verses and shown an amazing energy of spirit and intellect. But last winter I had many fears that she was failing. The death of her father had struck her a hard blow; then her sister's death struck her again, as it were, when she was down, and I feared that her vital energy, great as it was, might not resist. Yet she revived and, as spring came on, went out to drive, and, though weak, began to gather herself together again, even at one time projecting a journey to Paris. This however was impossible. Yet she went to Florence by vettura and did not suffer more than usual, and we were all hesitating, at Leghorn, whether we should not abandon our scheme of Switzerland for another summer together in Siena when the fatal news of her death reached us. Browning was to have come down to spend Sunday with us, but on Saturday night she was attacked with difficulty of breathing, and at dead of night he was forced to run for a physician, Dr Wilson, who remained with her all night and took a very gloomy view. 1 The morning brought relief, and, though weaker, she declared she was otherwise as well as ever. They talked over their plans for the future, decided to go to Siena for the summer with us, agreed to give up Casa

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Guidi and take a villa in Florence to return to in the spring and autumn. Being in treaty for an apartment in Palazzo Barberini2 at Rome for six years, they discussed the question of how they should furnish it. During the subsequent days she constantly came into the salon and lay on the sofa there all day - until Friday, when Lytton 3 stayed all the morning there talking with B., so that she did not come out. On Friday evening they had again a long talk about their future plans, and she went to bed as well as she had been in general respects, though there were some few symptoms which troubled B., such as raising now and then her hands and holding them long before her, and also a slight wandering of the mind at intervals and as she was just about to doze. But this wandering he attributed to the morphine, which by order of Dr W. she was obliged to take in larger quantities than those she was accustomed to. At about three o'clock he was startled by her breathing and woke her, but she said she was better, and reasoned so quietly and justly about her state that his fears were again subdued. She talked with him and jested and gave expression to her love for him in the tenderest words; 4 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. She had passed as if she had fallen asleep, without pain, without thought of death. After death she looked, as Browning told me, like a young girl; all the outlines rounded and filled up, all traces of disease effaced, and a smile on her face so living that they could not for hours persuade themselves she was really dead. We went immediately to Florence, and it was a sad house enough. There stood the table with her letters and books as usual, and her little chair beside it, and in her portfolio a half-finished letter to Mme Mario, full of noble words about Italy. 5 Yes, it was for Italy that her last words were written; for her dear Italy were her last aspirations. The death of Cavour had greatly affected her. 6 She had wept many tears for him, and been a real mourner. This agitation undoubtedly weakened her and perhaps was the last feather that broke her down. 'The cycle is complete,' as Browning said, looking round the room; 'here we came fifteen years ago; here Pen was born; here Ba wrote her poems for Italy. She used to walk up and down this verandah in the summer evenings, when, revived by the southern air, she first again began to enjoy her out-doors life. Every day she used to walk with me or drive with me, and once even walked to Bellosguardo and back; that was when she was strongest. Little by little, as I now see, that distance was lessened, the active out-doors life restricted, until walking had finally ceased. We

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saw from these windows the return of the Austrians; they wheeled round this corner and came down this street with all their cannon, just as she describes it in 'Casa Guidi'. 7 Last week when we came to Florence I said: 'You used, you know, to walk on this verandah so often- come and walk up and down once. Just once,' I urged, and she came to the window and took two steps on it. But it fatigued her too much, and she went back and lay down on the sofa- that was our last walk. Only the night she went away for ever she said she thought we must give up Casa Guidi; it was too inconvenient and in case of illness too small. We had decided to go away and take a villa outside the gates. For years she would not give up this house, but at last and, as it were, suddenly, she said she saw it was too small for us and too inconvenient. And so it was; so the cycle was completed for us here, where the beginning was is the end. Looking back at these past years I see that we have been all the time walking over a torrent on a straw. Life must now be begun anew - all the old cast off and the new one put on. I shall go away, break up everything; go to England and live and work and write.' The funeral was not impressive, as it ought to have been. She was buried in the Protestant cemetery where Theodore Parker8 lies; many of her friends were there, but fewer persons than I expected and hoped to see. The services were blundered though by a fat English parson in a brutally careless way, and she was consigned by him to the earth as if her clay were no better than any other clay. I did what I could, but I had arrived too late to assume the arrangements .... So I carried two wreaths- it was all I could do- one of those exquisite white Florence roses, and the other of laurel, and these I laid on her coffin. She is a great loss to literature, to Italy and to the world - the greatest poet among women. What energy and fire there was in that little frame; what burning words were winged by her pen; with what glorious courage she attacked error, however strongly entrenched in custom; how bravely she stood by her principles! Never did I see anyone whose brow the world hurried and crowded so to crown, who had so little vanity and so much pure humility. Praise gratified her when just blame when unjust scarcely annoyed her. She could afford to let her work plead for itself. Ready to accept criticism, she never feared it, but defended herself with spirit when unjustly attacked. For public opinion she cared not a straw, and could not bear to be looked on as a lion. Her faiths were rooted in the centre of her being. William Wetmore Story to Charles Eliot Norton, 15 August 1861 in James, Story, ii.61-7

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Notes

Elizabeth Barrett Browning died at 4.30 a.m. on 29 June 1861. The funeral was on 1 July. 1 Dr Wilson diagnosed congestion of the right lung and a possible abscess. Barrett Browning maintained, however, that her problem had always been with her left lung. 2 The Storys were already living in what Henry james (Story, i.338) describes as a 'voluminous apartment' on the second floor of Palazzo Barberini (completed by Bernini in 1633). Here at a children's party earlier in 1861 Hans Christian Andersen had read 'The Ugly Duckling' and Browning 'The Pied Piper of Hamelin', 'which led to the formation of a grand march through the spacious Barberini apartment, with Story doing his best on a flute in default of bagpipes' (Story, i.286). 3 Robert Bulwer Lytton (1831-91), son of Edward, wrote poetry under the name Owen Meredith. He was attached to the British Legation in Florence from 1852. (His long diplomatic career climaxed later in his appointment as Viceroy of India in 1876-80 and ambassador in Paris 1887-91.) He was at Bagni di Lucca with the Brownings and the Storys in the summer of 185 7, when Browning helped to nurse him through severe gastric fever; he was particularly close to Barrett Browning, whose spiritualism he shared. 4 When Browning asked if she knew him she said 'My Robert- my heavens, my beloved' and, kissing him, 'our lives are held by God.' When he asked her if she was comfortable she replied (the last word he reports her saying) 'Beautiful' (letter to Sarianna Browning, 30 june 1861, LRB, pp. 61-3). 5 jesse Meriton White (1832-1906) was a supporter of Giuseppe Mazzini and, later, of Giuseppe Garibaldi. She organized lectures in Britain in the Risorgimento cause during 1856-7. Involved in the attempted revolution in Genoa in 1857, she married her fellow revolutionary Alberto Mario. Later she worked with Garibaldi's troops as a nurse. Barrett Browning, for all her enthusiasm for a united Italy, disliked White Mario's republicanism and her risk-taking. 6 See above, p. 89. 7 Part Two, 11.286 ff. 8 Theodore Parker (1810-60), American liberal Unitarian minister and lecturer, knew the Brownings in Rome in 1859-60. (He died in Florence in May 1860.) Parker disagreed with Barrett Browning about spiritualism. His ideas on evolving human conceptions of deity are a probable influence on Browning's 'Caliban Upon Setebos' (in Dramatis Personae, 1864).

Part IV Robert Browning 1861-89

Browning's Return to London

Henry fames [The Storys] were constantly present in spirit at that work of building up a new life from the very foundation to which their friend was now committed. Browning's existence had sharply broken and had, in conditions completely changed, to be, as it were, repaired and made practicable. There would be perhaps no more interesting chapter in his biography than that of his return from his long Italian absence, stricken and lonely (save for the place henceforth taken in his thoughts by his young son), to address himself to a future indefinite and obscure. 1 It was almost a fresh beginning; he had quitted London, fourteen years before, sufficiently young and sufficiently unknown to have left his possibilities in general, his maturer contacts and relations, still to establish, themselves, his impressions, mainly, still to condense .... The writer's London period was in fact to be rich and ample, was to be attended with felicities and prosperities, of every sort, that cast the comparatively idyllic Italian time into the background and seemed, superficially, to build it out. 2 But thus, really, was generated, in the personal, social, intellectual way, the wonderful Browning we so largely were afterwards to know- the accomplished, saturated, sane, sound man of the London world and the world of 'culture', of whom it is impossible not to believe that he had arrived somehow, for his own deep purposes, at the enjoyment of a double identity. It was not easy to meet him and know him without some resort to the supposition that he had literally mastered the secret of dividing the personal consciousness into a pair of independent compartments. 3 The man of the world - the man who was good enough for the world, such as it was - walked abroad, showed himself, talked, right resonantly, abounded, multiplied his contacts and did his duty; the man of 'Dramatic Lyrics', of 'Men and Women', of 'The Ring and the Book', of 'A Blot on the 'Scutcheon', of 'Pippa Passes', of 'Colombe's Birthday', of everything, more or less, of the order of these, -this inscrutable personage sat at home and knew as well as he might in what quarters of that sphere to look for suitable company. The poet and the 'member of society' were, in a word, dissociated in him as they can rarely elsewhere have been; so that, for the observer impressed with this oddity, the image I began by using quite of necessity completed itself: the wall that built out the idyll (as we call 107

108 Elizabeth Barrett Browning and Robert Browning

it for convenience) of which memory and imagination were virtually composed for him stood there behind him solidly enough, but subject to his privilege of living almost equally on both sides of it. It contained an invisible door through which, working the lock at will, he could softly pass and of which he kept the golden key- carrying the same about with him even in the pocket of his dinner-waistcoat, yet even in his most splendid expansions showing it, happy man, to none. Such at least was the appearance he could repeatedly conjure up to a deep and mystified admirer. Our point, at any rate, is that we see him vividly, during the early 'sixties', in the letters before us; see him without mystery or attitude, with his explicit sense and his clear, full, masculine tone, the tone, ever, of reason and cheer. He is always, to our conceit, on the hither side of the wall. William Wetmore Story, ii.87-90 Notes James (1843-1916) was well versed in Browning's work by the time he met him in London in 1877. They were near neighbours in DeVere Gardens, London, from 1887. Throughout their acquaintance James was fascinated by the divide - which he himself to some extent manifested - between public and private figure.

1

Mary Altham, daughter of Barrett Browning's sister Henrietta, remembered the arrival of Browning and Pen at Arabel Barrett's home, 7 Delamere Terrace, where initially they stayed. She recalled Browning and Arabel walking arm-in-arm about the drawing-room, speechless in their sorrow ('I Remember', MS (1936)- Collections, L3). 2 Browning told Isa Blagden in May 1867 that he had contradictory feelings about the past and Italy and changed his mind continually about how old sights would now affect him; 'the general impression of the past is as if it had been pain .... Yet all that seems my real life' and everything else 'nothing at all' (DI, p. 267). 3 ]ames develops this idea further in his short story 'The Private Life'. Earlier he had suggested that there were 'two Brownings - an esoteric and an exoteric' (Leon Edel, Henry fames: the Conquest of London 1870-83 (London, 1962), p. 330).

'No man was ever more free from bardic pose' Rudolf Chambers Lehmann I can remember something of the awe with which at first I looked upon the man of whom I had been told that he was a great poet,

Part IV: Robert Browning 1861-89 109

but his extraordinary cordiality soon banished that feeling. He had the happy knack of making even a small boy feel that it gave him real pleasure to shake that small boy by the hand or to pat him on the back and talk to him about the little interests of his life. No man was ever more free from bardic pose, and, indeed, from affectation of any kind, than Browning. His dress was simple, his manner was genial, and his appearance, though he was by no means a tall man, was in the highest degree manly and impressive. His massive, noble head was splendidly set on a strong neck; his shoulders were solid, and his chest was deep, a fit generator for the resonant voice with which he held you in conversation. A vision of him standing foursquare and firmly poised rises before me as I write, and I can still feel the grip of his hand and see the kind light in his eyes as he looked into mine. Then my mind's eye follows him to the diningroom table, where his special decanter of port has been set by his place, and I can hear him, 'while the great poet rolled us out his mind', 1 throughout the dinner. Memories of Half a Century: a Record of Friendships (London, 1908), pp. 109-10 Notes Lehmann (1856-1929) was a barrister, Punch contributor, and MP. His family, originally from Germany, included several members who were distinguished as painters or musicians. His uncle was the painter Rudolf Lehmann (see below, p. 119). 1 'While the great bishop rolled him out a mind ... ' (Bishop Blougram's Apology, I. 978).

Browning and Forster: 'I will pitch this bottle of claret at your head' Rudolf Chambers Lehmann It must not be supposed ... that Browning was always in a state of indiscriminating good temper. I have myself seen him flash into anger at some incident that displeased him, and I may add an account of one of his rare explosions as related in my father's 1 uncompleted reminiscences ... : 'The ... quarrel was between Robert Browning, the poet, and John Forster, the well-known editor of The Examiner and biographer

110 Elizabeth Barrett Browning and Robert Browning

of Dickens. These two men had lived for years in the closest intimacy. Forster's great literary judgement, his willingness to take trouble, and his passionate desire to be consulted about all the ventures of his literary friends made him for many years a kind of Court of Appeal on all literary matters. I believe he had, during many years, prepared all Browning's and Mrs Browning's works for the press. However valuable such aid and interference may have been to Browning while he was living in Florence, it may have become irksome when Browning took up his domicile in London. Forster exercised a kind of patent-right or ownership over Browning. It was an understood thing that on Sundays Browning had to dine with Forster, and that any one wanting Browning to dinner on Sundays could only secure him after some diplomatic negotiations, of which one of the fundamental conditions was that Mr and Mrs Forster were to be invited together with Browning. Forster was kind but ponderous; Browning was nervous and sensitive, and had, no doubt, grown restive under this kind of literary bear-leading. There may have been other combustibles, but at any rate a mere nothing brought about a sudden and violent conflagration. At a dinner at 10, Kensington Palace Gardens, the house of my brother-in-law, Mr Benzon, 2 Browning and Forster began to nag at each other, and so continued for some time, till Browning spoke of the incredible neglect which had lately occurred at Marlborough House, where, when the Princess of Wales had suddenly been taken very ill, no carriage could be got for the purpose of fetching a doctor. Forster at once ridiculed the story as a foolish invention. Browning gave chapter and verse, adding that he had it from Lady - . Forster retorted that he did not believe it a whit more on account of that authority. Suddenly Browning became very fierce, and said, 'dare to say one word in disparagement of that lady' - seizing a decanter while he spoke 'and I will pitch this bottle of claret at your head!' Forster seemed as much taken aback as the other guests. Our host, who had left the room with Sir Edwin Landseer, 3 on his return at this moment found Browning standing up in great anger, with a decanter in his hand ready for action. He had the greatest difficulty in realising the situation. I soon made him hurry every one from the room, but all attempts to bring about an immediate apology or reconciliation were in vain. A kind of peace was, however, patched up before Forster's death'. Memories of Half a Century, pp. 112-14

Part IV: Robert Browning 1861-89 111

Notes On Forster see above, p. 43. The incident described took place in about 1870-2. 1 Frederick Lehmann (1826-91), with his wife Nina long a friend of Browning in London. 2 Ernest L. Benzon (1819-73), industrialist, Frederick Lehmann's business partner. Browning stayed at his Perthshire estate in the summer of 1871 while writing Prince Hohenstiel-Schwangau. 3 Landseer (1802-73), painter best known for his studies of animals.

Browning's Conversation in 1872: port, a pun and financial matters

Cornelia Crosse In 1872 I had the pleasure of meeting Mr Browning again Mr Browning was very intimate at the house where we were dining, and I noticed that one of the servants placed a decanter of port wine near him, offering him no other during dinner. On [my] expressing my surprise at his drinking port, having been so long in Italy, he replied 'It is because I have been so long in Italy that I am tired of their sour wines.' In the course of conversation I mentioned that an accident had happened to our gas meter, and that when I left my house the place was in darkness. 'I should not be surprised if the same thing occurred to me,' said Mr Browning, 'for my critics tell me there is something very wrong with my metre.' The reviews of 'The Ring and the Book' were then appearing. In conversation he was a many-sided man. I have heard him talk on financial matters as Solomon might have spoken had he been a member of the Stock Exchange. Mr Browning's enthusiasm for Italy did not prevent a feeling of soreness at their taxing his interest coupons. [Mrs Andrew Crosse], 'The Brownings', Littell's Living Age, 192, 19 March 1892, pp. 726-7 Notes Cornelia Crosse was the second wife of the 'electro-chemical philosopher' (DNB) Andrew Crosse (1784-1855).

112 Elizabeth Barrett Browning and Robert Browning

'Browning's talk had not much intellectual resemblance to his poetry' Sidney Colvin

Browning's talk had not much intellectual resemblance to his poetry. That is to say, it was not apt to be specially profound or subtle; still less was it ever entangled or obscure. Probably the act of speech did not allow his brain time to perform those prodigies of activity by which it was wont, when he had the pen in hand, to discover a thousand complications and implications and side-issues beneath the surface of the simplest-seeming matters; complications which often he could only express by defying the rules of grammar and discarding half the auxiliary parts of speech, by stitching clause on to clause and packing parenthesis within parenthesis, till the drift of his sentences became dark and their conclusion undiscoverable. (The mere act of writing seemed to have a peculiar effect on him, for I have known him manage to be obscure even in a telegram.) Rather his style in talk was straightforward, plain, emphatic, heartily and agreeably voluble, ranging easily from deep earnest to jolly jest, rich and varied in matter but avoiding rather than courting the abstruse whether in speculation or controversy, and often condescending freely to ordinary human gossip on a level with the rest of us. Its general tone was genially kind, encouraging and fortifying; but no one was more promptly moved to indignation, indignation to which he never hesitated to give effect, by any tale or instance of cruelty or calumny or injustice: nor could any one be more tenderly or chivalrously sympathetic with the victim of such offences. Not to quote instances known to me of a more private and personal kind, I remember his strong and re-iterated expressions of anger against Froude for having, as he thought, misrepresented the character of Carlyle. 1 Instead of being the hard man figured in Froude's pages- inconsiderate in relations with his wife, unkind, in one instance at least, in his treatment of a horseCarlyle, maintained Browning, was the most intensely, sensitively tender-hearted of men: and he went on to tell how, as he walked one day in Chelsea with Carlyle's arm in his, a butcher-boy drove by savagely flogging his horse and he felt the sage shake from head to foot in a spasm of righteous indignation. Memories and Notes of Persons and Places 1852-1912 (London, 1921), pp. 80-1.

PartiV: Robert Browning 1861-89 113

Notes Colvin (1845-1927) wrote on art and literature and held important posts in Cambridge (Slade Professor of Fine Art 1873-85 and Director of the Fitzwilliam Museum 1876-84) and London (Keeper of Prints and Drawings at the British Museum 1884-1912). 1 ]. A. Froude, in his Reminiscences of Carlyle (1881) and his biography of 1882-4 (and in the letters of Jane Carlyle he published in 1882), revealed more of his subject's personal life than was usual in Victorian biography.

Browning at King Lear Sidney Colvin

One of my vividest recollections is of an evening when [Browning] made one of a party of three to see the great Italian tragedian Salvini play King Lear. 1 Every one had seen Salvini play Othello, his most usual Shakespearean part; but this performance of Lear was new to us all. It turned out to be overwhelming, an absolute, ideal incarnation of ruined age and outcast greatness and shattered reason and unchilded fatherhood and fallen majesty in despair. Browning sat there between us, his face set firm and white like marble, but before the end tears were coursing down it quite unchecked. He seemed unconscious of them, and as we came out could only murmur with a kind of awe, 'It makes one wonder which is the greater, the poet or the actor.' 2 Memories and Notes of Persons and Places, p. 84 Notes

1

Tommaso Salvini (1829-1915) toured widely in Europe and America, playing most often in Shakespearean tragedy. Browning saw him play Lear on 1 March 1884. 2 Browning told William Michael Rossetti that Salvini's Oedipus 'was absolutely the finest effort of art he had ever beheld; not only the finest in the art of acting, but in any art whatsoever, including painting, music, etc.' (Some Reminiscences of William Michael Rossetti, 2 vols (London, 1906), i.189).

'A constant flow of anecdotes and social allusions' W. H. Mallock }owett 1 •.• asked me to breakfast with him in order that I might meet Browning. Browning ... had been shown certain manuscript

114 Elizabeth Barrett Browning and Robert Browning verses - precious verses of my own. He had sent me a message of a flattering kind with regard to them, and he now held out both his hands to me with almost boisterous cordiality. His eyes sparkled with laughter, his beard was carefully trimmed, and an air of fashion was exhaled from his dazzling white waistcoat. He did not embarrass me by any mention of my own performances. He did not, so far as I remember, make any approach to the subject of literature at all, but reduced both Jowett and myself to something like complete silence by a constant flow of anecdotes and social allusions, which, though not deficient in point, had more in them of jocularity than wit. He was not, perhaps, my ideal of the author of 'Men and Women', or the singer of 'Lyric Love' as 'a wonder and a wild desire? but there the great man was, and when I quitted his presence and found myself once more in undergraduate circles, I felt myself shining like Moses when he came down from the mount. 3 Memoirs of Life and Literature (London, 1920), p. 53 Notes William Hurrell Mallock (1849-1923), a student at Balliol College, Oxford, when he met Browning, wrote poems, novels, and works on subjects including economics and religion. 1 Benjamin Jowett (1817-93), Professor of Greek at Oxford from 1855, Master of Balliol from 1870, and Vice-Chancellor of the university 1882-6, first met Browning in 1865 to talk about Pen's prospects of entering Balliol. In the event Pen failed to get into this highly academic college and went instead to Christ Church (until he twice failed his first-year examinations). The friendship between his father and Jowett lasted, however; they admired each other as learned but forthright and sensible. Partly at Jowett's prompting Oxford conferred an MA by diploma on Browning in 1867, and Balliol an Honorary Fellowship. After this, and especially in the 1880s, Browning was a regular visitor at Balliol. Jowett was a pall-bearer at his funeral. 2

The Ring and the Book,

i.l383-4.

3 Moses descends from Mount Sinai after hearing the word of God in Exodus 19 and 32.

Tennyson and Browning

Hallam Tennyson Browning frequently dined with us. The tete-a-tete conversations between him and my father on every imaginable topic, when no one but myself was with them, were the best talk I have ever heard,

Part IV: Robert Browning 1861-89 115

so full of repartee, quip, epigram, anecdote, depth and wisdom: but it is quite impossible to attempt to reproduce them, owing to their very brilliancy. These brother-poets were two of the most widelyread men of their time, absolutely without a touch of jealousy, and revelling as it were in each other's power. On rare occasions my father would rally Browning playfully on his harshness of rhythm, the obscurity and length of his poems. The retort would be: 'I cannot alter myself: the people must take me as they find me.' My father would repeat his usual dictum about literary work: 'An artist should get his workmanship as good as he can, and make his work as perfect as possible. A small vessel, built on fine lines, is likely to float further down the stream of time than a big raft.' They would laugh heartily together at Browning's faculty for absurd and abstruse rhymes. I remember a dinner where Jebb, 1 Miss Thackeray, and Browning were present. Browning said he thought that he could make a rhyme for every word in the English language. We gave him 'rhinoceros'. Without a pause he said: '0, if you should see a rhinoceros And a tree be in sight, Climb quick for his might Is a match for the Gods, he can toss Eros.'

At another time Browning produced for my father's amusement impromptu verses on Carlyle and his wife, 'Terse Verse, being a contribution to Scottish Anthology', as he called it: 'Hail ye hills and heaths of Ecclefechan! 'Hail ye banks and braes of Craigenputtock! T. Carlyle was born in Ecclefechan, Jane his wife in Craigenputtock. She, a pearl where eye detect no speck can, He, ordained to close with and cross-buttock Cant, the giant- these, 0 Ecclefechan, These your glories be, 0 Craigenputtock!'

Alfred Lord Tennyson: a Memoir By His Son, 2 vols (London, 1897), ii.229-30 Notes The two most often paired and contrasted Victorian poets enjoyed - in spite of Tennyson's much earlier fame and much larger sales - a long

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and cordial association from their first encounter in 1841 to Browning's death in 1889. Privately Browning disliked certain aspects of Tennyson's verse, and on the whole preferred his early pieces to his later. For instance he liked 'Sir Galahad' (1842) better than The Holy Grail (1869) and such later Idylls. And if Browning were dealing with an adulterous knight he would describe the conflict in his soul, not the moon shining on the castle towers (DI, pp. 328-9). Tennyson's reservations about Browning were generally of the nature mentioned by Hallam Tennyson. See further The Brownings to the Tennysons.

1

Richard ]ebb (1841-1905), classical scholar, Professor of Greek at Glasgow and then (from 1889) Cambridge.

'He talks everybody down with his dreadful voice' Mary Gladstone 12 February 1875. Went in [to dinner with Edward Burne-]ones 1] ... We talked hard, and he told me lots of things worth remembering. Called Browning's outside 'moss' and said the works of a man were his real self. 9 March 1877. Flew home and dressed, out again for 5.45 dinner at 'the Bard's' (Mr Colvin); handed in by old Browning (disliked him more than ever, we talked about the Ring and the Book and Abt Vogler) .... He talks everybody down with his dreadful voice, and always places his person in such disagreeable proximity with yours and puffs and blows and spits in your face. I tried to think of Abt Vogler but it was no use- he couldn't ever have written it. 14 March 1901. I was only provoked by [Browning] at Belton, he talked so loud and breathed into one's face and grasped one's arm; and we all supposed he was proposing to Lady Ashburton (she was there too), at least she let it be thought so. 2 After that he often took me in to dinner at parties in London, but I generally felt more than anything what some American had said of him, 'Browning has dinnered himself away.' However, somewhere about 1885, sitting next him at dinner, he talked to me about La Saisiaz, 3 and later, dining with the Bensons4 at Lambeth, he talked again about his poems, and told me about Mrs Sutherland Orr (Leighton's sister), and what an astonishing interpretation of him was her handbook. Mary Gladstone (Mrs Drew): Her Diaries and Letters, ed. Lucy Masterman (London, 1930), pp. 94,116-17,454

Part IV: Robert Browning 1861-89 117

Notes Gladstone (1847-1927) was the daughter of William Ewart Gladstone, the Liberal prime minister, whose friendship of some years with Browning was effectively terminated by the latter's opposition to him on the issue of Irish Home Rule in 1888.

1

Burne-Jones (1833-98), with his friend and associate William Morris (1834-96) met Browning in London in 1856 (not 1865, as stated in Chronology, p. 127). Browning was among the early encouragers of his painting; Burne-Jones was one of the 'small knot of pre-Raffaelite men' (LEBB, ii.436) who were among Browning's most fervent admirers in the 1850s-60s. 2 While it was long widely believed or suspected that Browning proposed marriage to Louisa, Lady Ashburton (1827-1903) it is now fairly certain that she raised the matter in the summer of 1869. The topic was raised again probably in 1871 and seemingly cordial relations were then replaced by anger on both parts. See Virginia Surtees, The Ludovisi Goddess: the Life of Louisa Lady Ashburton (Wilton, 1984), pp. 137-49. 3 'La Saisiaz', in La Saisiaz; the Two Poets ofCroisic (1878). 4 Edward White Benson (1829-96), Archbishop of Canterbury from 1882, and his wife Mary.

Exerting himself 'for the amusement of his fellow-guests at a dinner-table' Alexandra Orr

We cannot doubt that the excited stream of talk which sometimes flowed from him was, in the given conditions of mind and imagination, due to a nervous impulse which he could not always restrain; and that the effusiveness of manner with which he greeted alike old friends and new, arose also from a momentary want of self-possession. We may admit this the more readily that in both cases it was allied to real kindness of intention, above all in the latter, where the fear of seeming cold towards even a friend's friend, strove increasingly with the defective memory for names and faces which were not quite familiar to him. He was also profoundly averse to the idea of posing as a man of superior gifts; having indeed, in regard to social intercourse, as little of the fastidiousness of genius as of its bohemianism. He, therefore, made it a rule, from the moment he took his place as a celebrity in the London world, to exert himself for the amusement of his fellowguests at a dinner-table, whether their own mental resources were

118 Elizabeth Barrett Browning and Robert Browning

great or small; and this gave rise to a frequent effort at conversation, which converted itself into a habit, and ended by carrying him away. This at least was his own conviction in the matter. The loud voice, which so many persons must have learned to think habitual with him, bore also traces of this half-unconscious nervous stimulation. 1 It was natural to him in anger or excitement, but did not express his gentler or more equable states of feeling; and when he read to others on a subject which moved him, his utterance often subsided into a tremulous softness which left it scarcely audible. Orr, pp. 391-3 Notes 1 Orr notes that Sarianna Browning 'reminds me that loud speaking

had become natural to him through the deafness of several of his intimate friends: Landor, Kirkup, Barry Cornwall, and previously his uncle Reuben .... This fact necessarily modifies my impression of the case, but does not quite destroy it'. According to Rudolf Lehmann, An Artist's Reminiscences (London, 1894), p. 227, Browning 'attributed his rather loud and rasping voice to the fact of his father's prolonged deafness'. Sidney Colvin, Memories and Notes of Persons and Places 1852-1912 (London, 1921), p. 79, maintains that 'loudness of voice and a vigorous geniality of bearing' were symptoms simply of 'an inborn vital energy surpassing by fivefold those of other men'. The young Arthur Symons (1865-1945) recalled from his one meeting with Browning a voice violent but musical and possessed of 'certain touches of rare magic' ('Some Browning Reminiscences', North American Review (October 1916), pp. 606-7).

The Companionable Sage Anne Thackeray Ritchie Browning has been described as looking something like a hale naval officer; but in later life, when his hair turned snowy white, he seemed to me more like some sage of bygone ages. There was a statue in the Capitol of Rome to which Mrs Sartoris 1 always likened him. I cannot imagine that any draped and filleted sage could ever have been so delightful a companion, so racy, so unselfishly interested in the events of the hour as he. Records of Tennyson, Ruskin and Browning (London, 1892), p. 213

Part IV: Robert Browning 1861-89 119

Notes

1

1

Adelaide Sartoris (1814-79), former opera-singer, sister of the actress Fanny Kemble, had known the Brownings mainly in Rome. Her later friendship with Browning in London ended in the early 1870s (see Browning to his American Friends: Letters Between the Brownings, the Storys and fames Russell Lowell 1841-1890, ed. Gertrude Reece Hudson (London, 1965), pp. 167-9).

An exception to his broad liberal principles'

Rudolf Lehmann As a curious anomaly and an exception to his broad liberal principles, [Browning's] punctiliousness on the subject of his and his wife's pedigree may be worth recording. On one occasion, when marriages among people of different social positions formed the abstract subject of conversation, I heard him exclaim, 'If ever a son of mine should so disgrace himself, I should certainly cut him off with a shilling.' 1 An Artist's Reminiscences (London, 1894), pp. 230-1 Notes Lehmann (1819-1905) knew Browning well and drew or painted his portrait several times (see above, p. 71). Pen Browning wanted to marry a Belgian woman, daughter of a hotel-owner, in 1877. His father strongly objected, not explicitly on grounds of 'different social positions' but because Pen lacked a substantial income and would be distracted from his profession. The relationship was broken off, and a reconciliation between father and son was effected by Joseph Milsand (1817-86), French landowner and critic and probably Browning's closest friend. 1

An enviably happy man'

William Michael Rossetti [Browning] always appeared to me - spite of the one great sorrow of his life- an enviably happy man. Conscious of power, conscious of the fine exercise of his power; having no definite occupation save that of writing poetry, writing as much of it as he chose - and he was wont to sit down to it day by day with the regularity of a professional man, as I have more than once heard him avouch - and, when he had done what he wanted, devoting the rest of the day to

120 Elizabeth Barrett Browning and Robert Browning

cheerful converse, pleasant sight-seeing, or attractive society; undisturbed by censure or indifference, unelated by fame, free from envy or jealousy, and 'from all uncharitableness'; 1 exalted above this world by a firm confidence in an immortal destiny - Browning lived such a life as united the highest ideal of a great genius with the choice satisfactions of a man of leisure and social success. To achieve poetry, to hunger and thirst after righteousness, and to have all the fleshpots of Egypt thrown in as a bonne bouche - this is indeed a destiny to which few of the sons of song have attained. It is true that until a mature period of life Browning was not rich, either in widespread fame or in the material gifts of fortune; but then, in compensation, he was young, ardent, full of the capacity for enjoyment, and prodigal of fine work which could not in the long run miss its aim. 'Portraits of Robert Browning', The Magazine of Art (1890), p. 186

Notes 1 From the Litany in The Book of Common Prayer

'On some of the great subjects ... he scarcely seemed to have thought at all' Robert Buchanan

Our relations though friendly were never those of unreserved intimacy. I was many years his junior, and had been reared in a rougher school; I had neither his dilettante tastes nor his dilettante omniscience. My attitude towards him, moreover, was that of a pupil to a teacher, to one whose intellectual position was assured, while mine was, to say the best of it, uncertain. But for this very reason I was prepared to recognise the moral greatness in him, and even to exaggerate the signs of a superior wisdom. I realised, however, very reluctantly, that, apart from his books, which were still a priceless treasure to me, he had little or no intellectual stimulus to give me. Many of his opinions seemed narrow, some of them even childish. They seemed to me essentially the opinions of a man in good society, less concerned with the great movements of Humanity than with the fleeting artistic phenomena of the hour. On some of the great subjects which concern our happiness as conditioned beings, he scarcely seemed to have thought at all.

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I was greatly struck by this fact, just before the publication of his poem 'La Saisiaz'. He had returned from an excursion to Switzerland in company with his sister Sarah Ann and a lady to whom he was much attached - Miss Egerton Smith, proprietress of the Liverpool Mercury. 1 One morning just as they were preparing for a mountain excursion, Miss Smith had died suddenly and painlessly, without any previous warning whatever of indisposition. Well, he came to my rooms in Gloucester Place, Regent's Park, and we had scarcely shaken hands before he began volubly to tell me of what had occurred, and to express his natural amazement and sorrow at the catastrophe. His feelings appeared to me those of simple horror, or, if I may use the word without any suggestion of personal timidity, of terror. 'If such things can be,' he cried, 'there is nothing safe in life whatever. At any moment we may be struck down suddenly and swept away!' I wondered, remembering many of the beautiful things he had written on the subject of death, and quoted to him, I remember, certain lines of verse without telling him that they were my own:We mortals are as men on ships at sea, And oft forget how thin a plank divides Our lives from the abyss in which we sail. 2 But this particular occurrence, he suggested, was so extraordinary, so unanticipated- he had been familiar with Death before, but it had always approached with some kind of warning, and he proceeded to describe in detail, as he afterwards described in his poem, the piteous circumstances of the event which so amazed him. His manner was that of a child startled amid its play, by a lightningflash which strikes down one of its companions. He was completely agitated and unstrung. Harriett Jay, Robert Buchanan: Some Account of his Life's Work and his Literary Friendships (London, 1903), pp. 111-13 Notes Buchanan (1841-1901), poet, novelist, opponent of Swinburne, Rossetti and 'the Fleshly School of Poetry', lost faith in Browning because, as he saw it, Browning was well disposed to him and his work only while he was writing favourable reviews of the older man's

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poems. (In The Athenaeum on 20 March 1869 he hailed The Ring and the Book as not only the supreme poetical achievement of its own time but England's 'most precious and profound spiritual treasure ... since the days of Shakespeare'.) 1 Annie Egerton Smith, who saw much of Browning and his sister and was his regular companion at concerts, died on 14 September 1877. 'La Saisiaz', occasioned by her death, was completed in November 1877 and published in May 1878. 2 I have been unable to trace these lines in Buchanan's published works.

Browning's 'loathing and contempt for poor Walt' Robert Buchanan On one occasion, when I was lunching at [Browning's] house, I was unsuspecting enough to avow my deep admiration for the American Poet, Walt Whitman. No sooner had I done so than I found that I had loosened an avalanche. No words were strong enough, no terms indignant enough, to express my host's loathing and contempt for poor Walt, and chiefly on moral grounds! As far as I was able, I stuck up for the defence of the man whom I reverenced this side of idolatry; but it was of no use, I was buried under the attack of Browning's copious vocabulary, and could only pant for breath. The squabble, the first serious one I had ever had with Browning, lasted until I rose to go, very glad indeed to get out of range. The next morning, to my amazement, I received a letter from the poet, which, for reasons of propriety, I am unable to print verbatim. The mischief was out, however. Although it did not appear that Browning had studied Whitman at all (which was singular seeing what an omnivorous reader Browning was) he was ready to pass judgement on him and to condemn him to instant execution, simply on the score of some miserable and possibly garbled quotation carried to him at secondhand. Harriett]ay, Robert Buchanan, pp. 114-15 Notes Given Buchanan's hostility to Browning there may be at least an element of exaggeration here. Buchanan believed that his 'admiration for another modern poet was resented as an act of disloyalty' in view of his printed praise of Browning's work.

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'The pretty nothings, the subtle flatteries of the poet's talk' Lilian Aldrich Nothing in his appearance, excepting the white hair, proclaimed the poet. He was faultlessly dressed; the white waistcoat, the galloon 1 on his trousers, all were of the dernier cri. The diamond studs at his breast sparkled and twinkled with mischievous irony, seeming to say: 'Ah, simple one, where is your lost Leader now? "Just for a handful of silver he left us, just for a ribbon to stick in his coat".' 2 But more disquieting even than the diamond studs was a crush hat, which Mr Browning carried under his arm, and sat upon through the dinner. The words I had longed to say - all the things I had ached to say- vanished; tears of disappointment were in very slight ambush at the pretty nothings, the subtle flatteries of the poet's talk. [Mrs Thomas Bailey Aldrich], Crowding Memories (London, 1921), pp. 178-9. Notes Aldrich was married to American writer and editor Thomas Bailey Aldrich (1836-1907). They visited England in 1875. Browning's works 'had been the God of [her] girlish idolatry'. 1 Galloon: 'a kind of narrow, close-woven ribbon or braid, of gold, silver, or silk thread' (OED). 2 Browning's 'The Lost Leader', 11. 1-2.

'He was a rich banker, he was a perfected butler' Julian Hawthorne My appointment-book for that week mentions 'Smalleys, 5 p.m.' 1 It had become a pleasant and profitable habit to go to afternoon tea

there Thursdays .... The room was spacious, with a large bow window, in which, on these afternoons, Robert Browning was often to be found philandering with Mrs Smalley's pretty daughters and telling them fairy-tales. How different from when I had first seen him in Siena and Florence twenty years before! Then he was a man of five-and-forty, but still a boy, leaping across the narrow Siena street, apparently over a waggon that was passing, both hands outstretched, his vivid face alight in his brown jungle of bushy hair

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and beard, buoyant, impetuous, torrential in speech, greeting my father and mother, and even the urchin with them. 'Fine boy! Kindling eyes!'- marshalling us to his 'studio'- for he was to be a painter then as well as poet- unveiling on an easel a large canvas, with an heroic figure, life size, scrawled on it in black chalk. Or, later, in our Montauto villa on Bellosguardo, overlooking Florence, he and his little black-haired wife, like a witch etching by Dulac, both intent upon the performance of our plain little American governess, who happened to be a 'writing medium'. But Browning was scoffing and sceptical, while his wife vibrated with faith, as before a Divine epiphany; and our poor governess, who was also a sceptic, in spite of her endowment, was acquiring a bad headache. The little witch-woman was to die two or three years later, and Browning had become another Browning. His silver hair was brushed close to his head, his short, pointed beard was carefully barbered, his silk hat and all below it were of Piccadilly and Pall Mall, he was staid, grave, urbane, polished; he was a rich banker, he was a perfected butler, no one would have suspected him of poetry. I once asked him, in the simplicity of my youth, why he made his poetry so obscure? 'I don't,' was his reply; 'I try to make it easy; but it comes that way.' He was not English or Italian, but hybrid. 'Your poetry doesn't sing!' Swinburne told him. 2 The Browning cult- the societies -were already starting. 3 They remind one of chimeras, ruminating in vacuo, disseminating second intentions. Browning, I say, was perfectly delightful to the children, and delighted with them, and told them fairy-tales. When we happened to be at a dinner together, we gradually would draw together, after the ladies had left us; not by reason of intellectual sympathies, but because we were naturally united by our liking for port wine, which was always on the table, but which, I don't know why, was seldom touched by Englishmen of that particular era. Browning and I would finish the decanter and talk politics; literature was eschewed, perhaps because he feared I might ask him to read one of my stories. Shapes That Pass: Memories of Old Days (London, 1928), pp. 139-41 Notes Hawthorne (1846-1934), novelist, biographer of his parents Nathaniel and Sophia, was in Italy with them in 1857-9. He lived in London between 1874 and 1882.

Part IV: Robert Browning 1861-89 125 1 George Washburn Smalley (1833-1916), based in London, was European correspondent for The New York Tribune between 1866 and 1895. 2 On Browning's relationship with Algernon Charles Swinburne (1837-1909) and low estimate of him as a poet see Chronology, pp. 129-30, 140, 142, 147, 178-9. 3 The Browning Society was founded in 1881. Smaller clubs like that set up by Hiram Corson at Cornell University preceded it, and many more societiessome subordinate to the London one, some independent - followed.

Encounters with Browning

Henriette Corkran One afternoon I wended my way to Warwick Crescent to see the friend of my childhood, Miss Browning. She was not much altered, and as lively as ever. She was sitting in the drawing-room, so picturesquely furnished with tapestries on the walls, carved oak furniture, and works of art. I looked out of the back window, and there I saw Mr Robert Browning nursing a goose, absolutely carrying it in his arms. 'Ah, our pet has been ill,' exclaimed Miss Browning, 'so Robert is looking after it.' The poet came into the hall with the goose. I laughed, remarking that it was a queer kind of pet. 'It is so clever and affectionate,' answered Mr Browning. 'It is not well, so I am looking after it; the goose follows me about just like a dog, does he not, Sarianna?' appealing to his sister. 'Yes, indeed,' answered his sister, stroking the goose. 'Robert is devoted to all kinds of animals, but it is difficult in a London house to harbour dogs and cats, monkeys, owls and geese. However, at present we have only got this dear goose. Pen has a menagerie at Dinant. 1 He has inherited his father's love of animals.' 'Now a truce to the goose and its perfections,' exclaimed Mr Browning. 'Come,' linking his arm in mine, 'and look at Pen's picture'. Though as a rule I did not think that Mr Browning looked like a poet, that evening he looked what he really was - a strong poetthinker as he sat at the piano in the dim evening, the firelight illuminating his finely-poised head, with its thick grey hair; his eyes so bright and piercing; the well-shaped hands moving eloquently over the ivory keys. His fair skin and features in the semi-obscurity

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seemed carved out of Carrara marble. The background of tapestry and Florentine furniture, bric-a-brac, and last but not least the marble bust of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, made a most harmonious setting. Another time I called at Warwick Crescent, and met Robert Browning in the hall. He was in evening dress. 'I am sorry,' he exclaimed, 'to have to go out just as you are coming in, but Sarianna will be delighted to see you; poor thing, she is often alone in the London season.' Then he flushed up. 'I am a bit annoyed tonight for I have been reading an unpleasant article in a magazine about myself, accusing me of being always seen in "gilded salons" amongst the great and wealthy. 2 I should like to rub the writer's nose in this article. What on earth can it concern him if I am fond of society? What has that to do with the quality of my work? The fool! What a lot of asses there are in this world to be sure. I do like to be with refined people who appreciate me; it is a pleasure; wealthy people have leisure to read, and their houses are pleasant. I am not ashamed to confess that I do enjoy being with cultured folk, besides I find that mixing with others and the friction of ideas are necessary to a writer. With painters it is different- unless they want commissions for portraits, etc.,' he added smiling. He was affectionate, almost gushing, to people he liked, and had a number of lady worshippers - young, middle-aged and elderly; they were mostly widows. 3 It amused me to watch his behaviour to each and all. He liked them for different qualities and varieties of disposition. They were all wealthy women, and he managed to get the best from all of them. He paid them visits at their different beautiful places on the Continent, 4 was always pleasant, and tried to make others happy. His exuberance of manner, which amounted to gush, was a part of himself; mere acquaintances were often deceived by it, imagining that Mr Browning, for some unaccountable reason, had taken a particular fancy to them. I recollect one afternoon when visiting mutual friends, a wealthy American widow rushed in, exclaiming, 'I thought till to-day that Mr Browning only cared for me platonically, but such is not the case, I assure you.' We all laughed, remarking that the poet's manner was generally affectionate; that it meant nothing but hearty genial goodwill towards most women. This particular widow did not relish this interpretation. She had secret hopes of being the successor of the great Elizabeth Barrett

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Browning; but time showed that the poet never intended marrying again. One afternoon, as I was hurrying to a Theosophical 5 meeting, I met Mr Robert Browning, and told him where I was going. 'You! Well, I always gave you credit for common sense. Now, don't go; it will not do you any good. I once went to a lecture, and when it was over, had not the slightest notion what they were all driving at.' He talked to me on different subjects so agreeably, that when I looked at my watch it was too late to go to the meeting. 'I talked long on purpose!' Mr Browning exclaimed, chuckling. 'Nothing has ever, or ever can, replace the teachings of that grand book of books, the Bible. Stick to that; you can't do better. I hate everything concerned with Mahatmas and so-called spiritualism.' Celebrities and I (London, 1902), pp. 162-7 Notes 1 Pen studied painting under jean-Arnould Heyermans at Dinant in Belgium from 1874. He continued to work in Belgium for much of the next decade. 2 See [Alfred Austin], 'The Poetry of the Period', The Temple Bar, 26 Qune 1869), p. 332. Browning caricatured Austin (1835-1913) as 'Dogface Eruxis, the small satirist' (Aristophanes' Apology (1875), I. 1674). 3 Among the widows close to Browning were Alexandra Orr, Lily Benzon (widow of Ernest L. Benzon - see above, p. 111), Clara Bloomfield-Moore (1824-99), and Katharine de Kay Bronson (see below, p. 15 1), widowed in 1885. 4 In the summers of 1884 and 1887 Robert and Sarianna Browning stayed at Villa Berry, St Moritz, rented by Clara Bloomfield-Moore. They were Bronson's guests in Venice for several extended periods beginning in 1883. 5 The Theosophical Society was founded in 1875 by Madame Blavatsky and others.

Browning at Home William Grove 'Oh! dear me! I am deeply grieved,' said Mr Grove, when I had informed him of Mr Browning's death; 'a kinder-hearted man and master never lived. Liking is not the word; nobody who knew him

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could help loving him. He was a friend rather than a master to his servants.' 'And we would not have felt the loss so greatly,' said the housekeeper, whom I afterwards saw at De Vere-gardens 1 'if he had died at home, where we might have had the satisfaction of doing something for him. I have been with him for fourteen years, and never knew a kinder master. When any of us were ill we had rest and medicine and the best medical advice, just like any of the family. He never took any of the servants abroad with him.' 'You knew his habits well?' I said to Mr Grove. 'Yes,' was the reply, 'and he was as regular in them as a clock. I could tell at any time of the day where he could be found and what he would probably be doing. I got to know him so well that I could almost tell what he wanted without his saying. My work was largely in his study, where he kept his books. Of these he had several thousands, and for economy of space the shelves were made to hold the books two deep. On the day of publication of his books I used to have to wrap up five or six dozen copies with his autograph, for presentation to friends. He used to get up at seven o' clock every morning, and stayed in his bedroom till eight. He read during that time generally French and Italian works, and he invariably ate a plate of fruit which had been left in his room over-night - strawberries or grapes by preference, oranges and other fruits in their season. From eight till half-past he had a bath, and at nine came down to breakfast. This took about twenty minutes, and he would then turn his chair to the fire and read the morning papers till ten o'clock. He had the Times and Daily News in the morning, and in the evening he read the Pall Mall and the weekly and fortnightly reviews. From ten till one he spent the time in his study writing, and when I afterwards photographed him I took him in an attitude I have seen him in thousands of times, his head leaning on his hand. 2 He would sit like that for half an hour sometimes, and then take up his pen to jot something down. At one o'clock he had lunch. His breakfast and lunch were very light meals, the latter generally consisting of some pudding only, but he always ate a good dinner. His favourite wine was Carlowitz or claret, but he drank very little of either. Sometimes when he dined out he would drink a little port, but never more than one wine. 'After lunch,' continued Mr Grove, 'he would go out to pay afternoon calls or to the private views, frequently walking across Kensington-gardens. He came back at half-past five or six to dress for dinner, which was at seven o' clock, and he went to bed

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at half-past ten or eleven. During the season he dined out a great deal. I have seen him out every evening for three weeks, but however late he was, and he was seldom later than half-past twelve, he invariably got up at the same time in the morning. His friends? Well, I should have to give you a list of two or three hundred. Carlyle was a great friend of his, and so was Dean Stanley, Mr Gladstone, Mr Mundella, Sir Frederick Leighton and his sister (who, I am afraid, did not reach Venice in time to see him alive), Watts, Tadema, 3 and a host of others. Tennyson came two or three times a year, and always on Show Sundays, to see Mr Barrett Browning's pictures. 4 'He was a Liberal, 5 as you know, but did not take much interest in politics during the last few years. He was not a frequent attendant at church, but took great interest in religious matters, discussing them frequently with his clerical friends when they visited him. He took three months' holiday, generally in Italy, and spent the rest of the year in London, with the exception of an occasional visit of a week or so to Oxford or the country. 'He was very fond of animals, although he did not keep any latterly - he had no horses or carriage. He at one time made great pet of an owl. He had a little room kept for it, but as a matter of fact, it had the run of the house and was oftenest found in his study. He was very fond of flowers, and I remember when he was in Warwick-crescent, 6 a shoot of Virginia creeper found its way through some crevice in his study window. He had it trained round the inside of the window, and very pretty it looked in summer, though in winter it was rather scraggy. It was broken at last by some one cleaning the window; and I think you will find it is referred to in one of his poems. 7 'Robert Browning at home. A chat with a former servant of the poet', Pall Mall Budget, 19 December 1889, p. 1625. Notes William Grove was 'servant and personal attendant' to Browning between 1875 and 1882. He then became a photographer, later setting up his own business with some assistance from his former employer. 1 Browning lived at 29 DeVere Gardens, London, in 1887-9. 2 For information on extant photographs by Grove see Collections, G90-1, 120-4 and for reproductions Griffin and Minchin, frontispiece, and MTF, facing p. 93.

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3 Arthur Penrhyn Stanley (1815-81), Dean of Westminster; William Ewart Gladstone (1809-98); John Anthony Mundella (1825-97), Liberal politician; the painter Sir Frederic Leighton (1830-96) and his sister Alexandra Orr, who reached Venice the day after Browning's death; the painters George Frederic Watts (1817-1904) and Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema (1836-1912). 4 Browning assiduously promoted his son's paintings, which were exhibited first in houses in Kensington provided by Browning's publisher, George Murray Smith. 5 His 'Why I am a Liberal' - proclaiming more a general belief in liberty than a precise party adherence -was included in the book of the same name, edited by Andrew Reid (1885). He subsequently supported the Liberal Unionist group led by Joseph Chamberlain, which opposed Gladstone on Irish Home Rule. 6 He lived at 19 Warwick Crescent in 1862-87. 7 In 'Martin Relph' (Dramatic Idyls: First Series, 1879), 11. 43-4, there is a creeper, feared killed by frost (rather than window-cleaning), which 'is twining afresh round casement in famous leaf'.

'As far a dandy as a sensible man can be' The World Persons who evolved a social idea of the author from his writings would picture to themselves a man of austere bearing, who spoke little, and then spoke shortly and scornfully, who had a sneer for the frivolities and amenities of existence, and who was the embodiment of gruffness in private life. Imagine their surprise on discovering that the crabbed and mystical poet is identical with the possessor of the compact little figure, the urbane and genial bearing, the well-made clothes; and that this gentleman, who is as far a dandy as a sensible man can be, 1 is the author of poems, some of which have given universal and unrivalled pleasure, but others of which will be as unintelligible to future generations of commentators as the most desperately corrupt passages in the choruses of his own Aeschylus. He is well-nigh a septuagenarian; but time has dealt very gently with him, and neither thought nor trouble have quenched the happy buoyancy of his temperament. He is one of the best and sprightliest of our latter-day raconteurs. He might be, from his talk, a diplomatist, who has seen all the countries of the world and the glories of them; a traveller who was not, as is generally the case, a bore; a country gentleman who was not always wanting to kill something; or a gentleman of independent fortune and no pursuits in particular. No poet in private life, it may be safely said,

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ever showed to greater advantage than the masculine genius who has pondered more deeply than all but a very few people now living, the problems of existence. 'Poets in private life', The World, 7 December 1881, p. 7 Notes This account of Browning starts from a contrast with the reclusive Tennyson, whose 'pipe has been his firmest friend through life'.

'Browning and his Lady Admirers' 'An American correspondent' Another instance of modern Browningolatry was recently recorded. 'One day,' wrote an American correspondent, 'while driving through High-street, Kensington, I saw a funny sight. A party of Yankee schoolmarms had caught sight of Robert Browning walking briskly down the street past Albert Hall, and recognised him by his photograph. With a wild whoop they all gave chase. He crossed the street to avoid them, then dodged into the park. They followed and pursued him round and round the Albert Memorial, until at last they played the Juliet and the nurse dodge, 1 and rushed at him from all sides. As I looked back a gaunt female had him by the hand, and they were all looking at him with an eager, hungry gaze, as if they were going to preserve his every word - to can them, in fact - and take them back to Boston. I was in terror till I saw him the next time for fear that in their desire for souvenirs they might not leave him a single hair, but he bobbed up just as bright as ever, so perhaps it is a common experience.' 'Browning and his lady admirers', Pall Mall Budget, 19 December 1889, p. 1620 Notes Perhaps there is some exaggeration in this account, but Irvine and Honan, p. 503, say (without citing a source) that Browning 'regaled the company at Leslie Stephen's dinner-table' with a similar story involving sightseers and the Albert Memorial. In the 1870s and 1880s Browning had evidently become a 'celebrity'. 1 The author may be thinking of some familiar piece of stage business. There seems to be no such 'dodge' in the text of Romeo and Juliet.

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Impromptus and a Reading

Felix Moscheles How rapidly his mind worked I had occasional opportunities of witnessing. He would let us give him a number of rhymes, perhaps twenty or thirty, to be embodied in an impromptu poem. This he would read to us just once, and, as he spoke the last words, he would ruthlessly tear it up into small fragments and scatter them to the winds. 1 Nothing would induce him to stay his iconoclastic hand, and on such occasions it only remained for me to regret that I was not some sensitive plate, some uncanny Edisonian Poetophone, to preserve the spontaneous creation of his mind. 'Do you ever listen to Reciters?' my wife asked him one day; 'I mean to Reciters of Browning's poems?' 'Oh, I do the Reciting myself,' he said, 'when I am amongst a few sympathetic friends. I will read to you with pleasure. What have you got?' The few sympathetic ones were not wanting that Sunday afternoon; I gave him the volume of 'Selections' from his poems, 1 and turning over the pages he said, 'As we are in an artist's studio, I will read "Andrea del Sarto".' There was not a shadow of declamation in his reading. For the time being he was just Andrea talking to his wife, the 'Faultless Painter' as they called him, who knew his own faults but had not the strength to battle with them. It was Andrea himself we were in touch with, his dreamy sadness that we shared. His yearnings for requited love, his longings for the unattainable in art, drew us to him, and we would have helped him had we been able. That sorry business with the King of France was disgraceful - there was no denying it. He admitted himself that he had abused the king's friendship and misused his moneys, but surely for such a man as was Del Sarto, something could be done to settle matters, and once more to turn his genius to account. And that Lucretia, his wife! his 'serpentining beauty, rounds on rounds!' Why will she not answer? The right words from her spoken now might yet make of him the good man and the great artist that a God may create, but that a woman must consecrate. One just felt as if one could give her a good shaking, if only to make her break the aggravating silence she so imperturbably maintains whilst he so

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pathetically pleads. As for the cousin, one would have liked to go out and give him a sound thrashing to stop his whistling once for all. We were so impressed at the close of his reading that for a moment we remained hushed in a silence which none of us cared to break. He looked round at us, anxious lest he should not have brought home his meaning, and said, 'Have I made it clear?' 3 Fragments of an Autobiography (London, 1899), pp. 340-2 Notes Browning frequently visited the studio of Moscheles (1833-1917), portrait and genre painter, in the 1870s and 1880s. 'The Isle's Enchantress' (1889) was written to accompany one of his paintings and in 1888 Browning provided him with a translation ('Hail to the man who upwards strives ... ') of Karl Klingeman's poem on his father, the musician Ignaz Moscheles. 1 Extemporary or semi-extemporary pieces by Browning which do survive include 'Impromptu on Hearing a Sermon by the Rev. T[homasj R[eady] Pronounced "Heavy"' (1833), 'A Forest Thought' (1834), 'Wagner gave six concerts ... ' (1877), and 'Terse Verse' (c. 1882). 2 Selections from the Poetical Works of Browning (1863) or the 1872 volume of the same title. (Moxon's Miniature Poets: a Selection from the Works of Robert Browning (1865) does not include 'Andrea'.) 3 Henry James recorded some very different impressions of Browning as a reader: he read his poems as if he didn't himself understand them, 'as if he hated them and would like to bite them to pieces' (letter to Grace Norton, 26 July 1880, in Letters, ed. Leon Edel, vol. 2 1875-83 (London, 1975), p. 302. Other witnesses, however, do seem to have been as impressed and enlightened as Moscheles (see pp. 149, 157).

At the Desk

Felix Moscheles Shortly after his death I painted a water-colour of his study in DeVere Gardens. 1 Everything had remained intact. 'All here- only our poet's away', as he says in 'Asolando'. 2 The empty chair by the writing-table which bears his initials, the desk which he looked upon as a relic. His father had used it when a lad, and had taken it with him on his voyage to the West Indies. 3 The poet possessed it from his earliest boyhood, and used it all his life; everything he wrote in England, so his sister told me, was written on that desk. The little dumb keyboard;

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it had five notes over which he would mechanically run his fingers. He had a way too of beating a tattoo on his knee, or he would just for a few seconds mark time, moving his arm backwards and forwards. Sometimes he would squeeze up his eyes and look out of the window, or he would take up some little object and scrutinise it closely, whilst his thoughts were busy elsewhere. On his table lay a book he had shown me as one he treasured: a little Greek Bible. On the last leaf was written: 'My wife's book and mine'. Pictures by his son hung on the walls; so too a portrait of his wife when a little girl, by Hayter; 4 one of Hope End, the house in which she lived, and one of the tomb in the English Cemetery in Florence where she lies buried. Another reminiscence of her is the low chair to the right of the table; she at all times liked low seats, and this chair was a favourite with her. Fragments of an Autobiography (London, 1899), pp. 349-50 Notes 1 Robert and Sarianna Browning had lived at 29 DeVere Gardens only since june 1887, but the study was evidently arranged in much the same way as at 19 Warwick Gardens. For Moscheles' picture see Collections, Plate 32. 2 The quotation is in fact from Pippa Passes, 1.289. 3 Browning's father, at the age of twenty, had been sent by his father to work at the plantations on St Kitts owned by his mother's family. Outraged by the slave system, he soon returned and, effectively disinherited for his disobedience, became a clerk at the Bank of England. 4 Charles Hayter (1761-1835); see Collections, F2 and Plate 12.

'His skill in fence was very great' Frederick fames Furnivall

Petty gossip and scandal, he would none of; he took everyone at his best and had a kindly word for many whom I unhesitatingly condemned. When once he gave his friendship, he was firm; the vain and mean, the misled and the hasty might say what they liked; of them Browning took no heed. If he were shown that greater profit and popularity would accrue to him by giving up a man who had acted fairly by him, he would say, Never mind them, I stick to-. His manliness was apparent in every word and act. As to the charm of his frank ways, are there not thousands in Europe and America who can testify to it? It had not the womanly delicacy of Ruskin's early manner - how delightful that was! - but, as an instance of it, take this: this spring when I told him that in no place was he so abused as

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at the Browning Society, and that I in particular had called him all the bad names I could think of, he leant forward with a cheery smile on his face, gave me one of his frequent pats on the knee, and said, 'Ah well, I don't mind. I'm not afraid of you' - as if he'd fight the lot of us, 'one down, t'other come on': how could one help loving him? It was a real pleasure to be with him, and hear his hearty 'Goodbye, and mind it isn't so long before you come again! There's always lunch at one.' Another characteristic was his wonderful tact, which long experience in Society had given him. His skill in fence was very great; you couldn't get under his guard. Browning kept clear of our Society and we kept it clear of him. But when we couldn't understand a passage or a poem, I either walkt over or wrote to him and got his explanation of it. At first I didn't take the volume with me, and he amused me very much by saying, "Pon my word I don't know what I did mean by the poem. I gave away my last copy six years ago, and haven't seen a line of it since. But I'll borrow a copy to-morrow, and look at it again. If I don't write before Sunday, come to lunch and I'll tell you about it.' So I got up a subscription, and on his seventieth birthday, May 7, 1882, sent him a handsomelybound set of his own Works in an oak case carved with Bells and Pomegranates .... This tickled him; and whenever afterwards a passage was in question, he walkt me up to his carven case, and settled the difficulty there and then .... More than once have I talked over the effect of the Society's work with Browning, and he has said, 'I know the difference in the pace of publishers' cheques coming to me since the Society started. And when people have asked me why I don't stop the Society, I tell them that to do so would be just like my putting a policeman at Smith and Elder's door to say to every one coming in, "if you want to buy one of Mr Browning's books, please don't." Surely I am not such a fool as that.' Pall Mall Gazette, 14 December 1889, p. 2 Notes Furnivall (1825-1910), among manifold activities as editor, educator, oarsman and lexicographer, founded the New Shakespere Society in 1873 and, with Emily Hickey, the Browning Society in 1881. He persuaded Browning, with some difficulty, to become president of the New Shakespere Society in 1879. On the Browning Society see further William S. Peterson, Interrogating the Oracle: A History o( the Browning Society (Athens, OH, 1969).

136 Elizabeth Barrett Browning and Robert Browning

Showing the Old Yellow Book

Hiram Corson He received me in the drawing room on the second floor. After a few minutes' conversation, he showed me various interesting things in the drawing room, busts and portraits, and mementos of Mrs Browning, keeping up a rapid and meandering current of talk. Something was said, I forget what, which caused me to allude to 'the Book', the 'Square Old Yellow Book', with 'crumpled vellum covers', which he picked out of the market-day trumpery in the Piazza San Lorenzo, in Florence, and which led to the composition of his masterpiece, The Ring and the Book. 1 'I'll take you down in a few minutes,' he said, 'to the library, and show it to you.' When we left the drawing-room and were at the top of the stairway, he, with an apparent unconsciousness, and as if I were a younger brother, put his arm over my off shoulder, and so descended with me, talking all the while at his usual rapid rate. I tell this little incident, as I observed later, on several occasions, such an expression of unconscious cordiality and good fellowship was a characteristic of him. Beside his chair, at the writing table, stood Mrs Browning's low-seated, high and straight-backed, black haircloth covered chair, on which were piled books almost to the top of the back, which most effectually excluded anyone from the honor of sitting in it. When showing me 'The Book' he called my attention to passages in the Latin portion of it - the arguments of the two lawyers, Bottinius and Hyacinth us de Archangelis, 2 and I was struck with the way in which he translated them, the rapid and close recasting of the thought in English, a rare gift even with the best Latin scholars. I had occasions to discover, in subsequent visits, that he read the Greek in a genial way and with less grammatical consciousness than do many Greek professors. His scholarship was extensive and, I would add, vital, it not having been imposed upon him at a public school and a university, and he having had what must have been Shakespeare's power of acquiring and absorbing knowledge of all kinds. On some subsequent visit, I do not remember what we had been talking about, that led to the remark, he said to me, in his rapid mode of speech, 'I never could have done much at a public school', meaning, of course, an endowed foundation school, such as

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Eton and others, in which there is a special preparation for the universities. After a pause, he added, 'no, nor at a university either. 3 Italy was my university.' 'A Few Reminiscences of Robert Browning', Cornell Era, 40 (1908), reprinted in Browning Institute Studies, 3 (1975), pp. 62-3 Notes Corson (1828-1911) was Professor of English Literature at Cornell University and founder of a Browning Club. He met Browning in London in 1881 and 1882 and in Venice in 1889. 1 See The Ring and the Book, 1.33-83. The 'Old Yellow Book' is now in the library of Balliol College, Oxford. 2 Drawn on in The Ring and the Book, VIII-IX. 3 After leaving Peckham School at fourteen in 1826, he continued from home his training in languages, music, fencing, boxing, dancing and drawing. He was admitted to the London University (subsequently University College, London) in October 1828 but withdrew seven months later.

'I've forgotten my own verses': Browning's 'marvellous memory' and its 'funny failure'

George Henry Boughton Browning had the most marvellous memory I ever knew and could quote Milton, Shakespeare, Spenser, and a host of other poets by the page together. If one wanted a quotation for a picture, one had only to go to him, and he would be able to give the necessary lines without a reference to any book, and he'd reel them off letterperfect. I remember once, though, a funny failure of his memory the funnier because it was in one of his own poems. When the phonograph was first brought over to London, it was being shown at the house of an artist, and we were all asked to speak something into the receiver. Browning modestly declined for a time, but we egged him on, and at last someone said, 'Quote some lines from one of your own poems.' 'I know those least of all,' he replied, with a smile, and eventually he said he thought he knew 'How they brought the good news from

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Aix to Ghent' 1 better than he knew anything else. He began splendidly:We sprang to the saddle, 2 andjoris and he; I galloped, Dirk galloped, we galloped all three; We- we- we; we- we -we! 'Upon my word, I've forgotten my own verses,' 3 he exclaimed, and stopped there. Somebody prompted him; he took up the thread again, but he couldn't get on any farther. He apologized, but the owner of the phonograph declared that the cylinder was more valuable to him on account of the breakdown than if the poet had recited it right through. 4 One night Wilkie Collins, William Black, Millais, 5 Browning and I were dining all together at the Reform Club. Browning began telling a story from an old Florentine poem. It took him between twenty minutes and half an hour, and we sat open-mouthed, like children, listening to the wonderful rhythm of the words and entranced by the marvellous power of the speaker. It was all impromptu, but some time afterwards Black referring to it said, 'Do you know, that might have been taken down verbatim, and it would have stood as splendid literature without a single alteration of a word!' But there was another side to Browning, which came out at the same dinner. We were talking about the disappearance of the commercial or advertising poet whose verses were used to proclaim the superiority of his employer's wares. 'How funny those were,' said Browning, and he quoted a most absurd verse in laudation of Somebody's Trousers, as glibly as if he were the author. We were even more surprised than ever. Millais said, 'How on earth can you remember such beastly things?' 'Because I don't forget them,' replied Browning. 'You know we go through a wood and gather burrs and thousands of dead leaves and all kinds of rubbish, and find them sticking to our clothes, but when we come to look we find we have lost our watch!' Rudolph de Cordova, 'Illustrated Interviews. LXXXI. Mr. George Henry Boughton, R. A.', The Strand Magazine, XX: 115 Ouly 1900). The recording was made at the house of Rudolf Lehmann on 7 April 1889.

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Notes Boughton (1833-1905) was a painter, mainly of historical, literary and rustic scenes. 1 That is Ghent to Aix. 2 For 'I sprang to the stirrup'. 3 These words have also been interpreted as 'I'm incredibly sorry that I can't remember me own verses' (Longman, ii.239). 'Me' for 'my' was common in informal speech at the time. 4 For further details of the recording and alternative versions of what Browning said see Michael Hancher and jerrold Moore, '"The Sound of a Voice That is Still": Browning's Edison Cylinder', Browning Newsletter, 4-5 (1970), pp. 21-33, 10-18. 5 The novelists William Wilkie Collins (1824-89) and William Black (1841-98) and the painter Sir John Everett Millais (1829-96).

'A wise and reflective man guides himself aright' fohn Churton Collins This day, March 29th, 1886, I went up to see Robert Browning .... The first point on which we got was how far allegorical interpretation could be legitimately carried in studying his poems. I took my stand on 'Hugues of Saxe-Gotha', and he repeated what he had told me before that he had no allegorical intent in his head when he wrote the poem; that it was composed in an organ loft and was merely the expression of a fugue - the construction of which he understood he said, because he had composed fugues himself: it was an involved labyrinth of entanglement leading to nothing- the only allegory in it was its possible reflection of the labyrinth of human life. That was all and he warned me not to go too deep in his poetry in search of allegory. 'My Last Duchess' he illustrated from the anecdote of the Proud Duke of Somerset whose name he could not remember, who, on his second wife attempting to sit on his knees, said to her that his first wife who was a Percy would never have taken such a liberty; 1 and also from Lord Sandwich warning one of his guests who entered into conversation with Mrs Ray- etc. 2 This I notice he related neither with indignation nor contempt, but simply as a fact. We talked much about Christianity: he did not put it on a level with any other Creed or Dogma, but thought it stood alone in unique greatness and importance: I asked him whether its dogmas might be literally true - that it was a distinct Revelation involving the suspension of

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natural laws, and he said that might be so. But he could not accept anything so monstrous as the eternity of punishment; it was logically inconsistent with the justice and benevolence of the Creator. And he said that in arguing with a person on the subject, he should get out a pencil, and put down on paper what was conceded- 'God is just, benevolent, omnipotent.' Very well, 'and He has condemned His creatures to an eternity of pain.' But you have conceded He is just and benevolent and omnipotent. And he compared such an argument to a game of chess with a blindfolded player who insists on playing a bishop when the bishop had been taken some moves back. In a word he said that the world had seen nothing like Christianity - that its historical basis was of no importance - that it was the revelation of that God whom he had felt. 'We have, at least,' he said, 'I have, a knowledge of a God within me. I know Him, He is here' -pointing to his heart- 'and it matters little to me what tales you tell me about Him, I smile, I care nothing for any stories you tell me about Him, I know Him.' He took as his illustration the dead wife whom you have known and loved - some person comes up and says how you were quite mistaken about her character. I will tell you some stories about her early life which will undeceive you. The answer to this is 'I knew her, I know more about her than you can tell me.' He never, he said, stretched out his hand without an overpowering sense of the spirit mystery involved in that simple action. 'If you don't accept Revelation,' he said, 'I honestly do not see, after all my thinking and experience, any indication to lead us to suppose that there is a life after this. It is a great desire, that is certain: but I see no reason to suppose that it will be fulfilled. I can't agree with Tennyson. Tennyson told me that he felt positively certain of an extension of individual consciousness after death. Carlyle said to me a short time before his death "I have no notion at all, not the smallest idea whether I am going to be annihilated, or whether I shall burst out into something splendid and quite strange." Old Landor said "I do not care a jot which way it goes. I am ready for either." Huxley 3 felt very depressed and dissatisfied that he would be "out of it"- felt the hardness of having to quit consciousness when his curiosity was so ardent, when so many new truths were daily coming to light.' Harriet Martineau, 4 he said, was anxious to live because she hated the idea of annihilation and that was, she felt, certain. He (Browning) said himself that if he were perfectly certain that a new life was before him, that a new series of experiences was

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awaiting him - he should not scruple to determinate this life himself, after, he said, making arrangements to secure the comfort of those connected with him- pointing as he said it to that part of the house where I suppose his belongings were. 5 'Just as if I were tired of the house where I had been living for many years - I should be glad to go into another house and into a new world of experience. ' 6 He spoke not as one who was unhappy but simply as a man who had seen enough of a particular place and was anxious to widen his range of experience. With regard to a definite religious creed, to a prescribed Coda, it was, he thought, only necessary for people who hadn't the guidance within. A wise and reflective man guides himself aright - is moral and decent - knows what the law is of himself without going to Blackstone. 7 But Blackstone is necessary for the guidance and government of those who have not that law in themselves. 'And therefore,' he said, 'I should tell such people to believe the Miracles and prescribed Dogma; and if I were writing to teach such people I should preach that Gospel. I should not of course talk to such persons as I am now talking to you. If people find what they want in the old dogmas - let them keep to them - if the old garments fit, they don't want new ones. The great mistake which people seem to me to make now-a-days is to complain that the old garments are not the new and to reject both in consequence.' (I am not quite sure whether I remember this rightly- but I think this is what he said.) He alluded to Buddhism coming on and said it was much talked about - but he knew, he said, nothing about it. He said that he always wrote dramatically. I said it would I suppose be erroneous to take the whole mass of your writings and framing from them a body of opinions pronounce them to be the expression of your individual opinion and convictions. 'Yes, yes, most certainly it would. I very seldom write anything which is to be regarded as my own individual feeling. 'But,' he added, 'I am now engaged on a work which will be more personal more directly from myself than anything which I have yet published.' 8 When I entered the room, he was apparently engaged on it- for glancing at his desk I saw a sheet of paper evidently containing poetry. We talked together for nearly an hourhe was perfectly frank and open and answered directly every question I put to him. What struck me most in him was his extreme kindliness and humanity; when we parted, he held my hand shaking it for a long time - told me he should be always glad to see

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me and patted me on the back when I was going out of the front door just as if I had been a very intimate friend: but this he would have done to everybody. I noticed great impatience and, what was strange, no interest in what was said. For example I was about to tell him of an illustration of one of his poems and began about my experience of an anomaly in human nature- but he instantly cut it short to point out the real meaning of the poem. Vigorous common sense was the characteristic of his conversation - he literally said nothing which would be new to a person of any reflection. He talked with marked earnestness and sadness about the question of a future state. There is nothing at all remarkable about his face and head except his eyes which are as bright, large, and clear as a child's. What he said he said with determination - and it was evident that nothing would alter his views -but there was not the smallest assumption in anything he said: no preaching: no giving advice. I noticed the really pained expression on his face when he spoke of the evil, vice and depravity which existed in the world. I asked him whether 'a lie' could be imbedded in so much good as Christianity is composed of. 'I would not say "a lie",' he said - 'but merely different phases of the same great truths.' He said that if a Revelation came to the world it would not come in the form in which the old came, but in some new and unexpected form. L. C. Collins, Life and Memoirs of fohn Churton Collins (London and New York, 1912), pp. 78-84 Notes Collins (1848-1908), critic and editor (mainly of Renaissance literature), campaigned for the recognition of English Literature as a subject of academic study.

1

Charles Seymour, Duke of Somerset (1662-1748), known as 'the proud Duke', was married first to Lady Elizabeth Percy (1667-1722), heiress of one of the oldest noble families, and secondly to Lady Charlotte Finch (d. 1773), daughter of the Earl of Winchester and Nottingham. Browning was probably thinking of the anecdote told by John Heneage Jesse as an example of the Duke's 'usual pompous vulgarity': 'His second Duchess happened once familiarly to tap him on the shoulder with her fan. The Duke turned upon her with all the haughtiness of offended dignity: "My first Duchess," he said, "was a Percy, and she never took such a liberty'" (Memoirs of the Court of England from the Revolution in 1688 to the Death of George the Second, 3 vols (London, 1843), iii.257).

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2 John Montagu, 4th Earl of Sandwich (1718-91) and his mistress Martha Ray or Reay (1745?-79). 3 T. H. Huxley (1825-95), best known for his public defence of Darwin's evolutionary theory. 4 Martineau (1802-76), essayist, novelist, author of Illustrations of Political Economy. She knew Browning and corresponded with Barrett mainly before their marriage. 5 More likely a reference to his sister Sarianna? 6 Browning on occasion expressed more definite beliefs: William G. Kingsland remembered 'the vehemence with which he spoke on the subject of personal immortality: "If there is anything I hold to, it is that: why, I know I shall meet my dearest friends again!'" (Robert Browning: Chief Poet of the Age, 2nd edn (London, 1890), p. 3); he told Rudolf Lehmann that 'I have doubted, and denied it ... and I fear have even printed my doubts, but now I am as deeply convinced that there is something after death' (An Artist's Reminiscences (London, 1894), p. 231). 7 Sir William Blackstone's Commentaries on the Laws of England (1765-9 and many later editions). 8 Collins notes that 'This was probably his "Parleyings", published in 1887'. In March 1886 he was working on the 'Parleying With Charles Avison'.

Personalia Edmund Gosse

[Browning's] private conversation was a very different thing from his talk over the dinner-table or in a picture-gallery. It was a much finer phenomenon, and one which tallied far better with the noble breadth of his genius. To a single listener, with whom he was on familiar terms, the Browning of his own study was to the Browning of a dinner party as a tiger is to a domestic cat. In such conversation his natural strength came out. His talk assumed the volume and the tumult of a cascade. His voice rose to a shout, sank to a whisper, ran up and down the gamut of conversational melody. Those whom he was expecting will never forget his welcome, the loud trumpet-note from the other end of the passage, the talk already in full flood at a distance of twenty feet. Then, in his own study or drawing-room, what he loved was to capture the visitor in a low armchair's 'sofa-lap of leather', 1 and from a most unfair vantage of height to tyrannise, to walk around the victim in front, behind, on this side, on that, weaving magic circles, now with gesticulating arms thrown high, now grovelling on the floor to find some reference in a folio, talking all the while, a redundant turmoil of thoughts, fancies, and reminiscences flowing from those generous lips. To think of it is to conjure up an

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image of intellectual vigour, armed at every point, but overflowing, none the less, with the geniality of strength. The last time that the present writer enjoyed one of these neverto-be-forgotten talks was on the earliest Sunday in June last summer. For the first time in many years Mr. Browning was in Cambridge, and he was much feted. He proposed a temporary retreat from too full society, and we retired alone to the most central and most sequestered part of the beautiful Fellows' Garden of Trinity. A little tired and silent at first, he was no sooner well ensconced under the shadow of a tree, in a garden-chair, than his tongue became unloosed. The blue sky was cloudless above, summer foliage hemmed us round in a green mist, a pink mountain of double-may in blossom rose in front. We were close to a hot shrub of sweetbriar that exhaled its balm in the sunshine. Commonly given to much gesticulation, the poet sat quite still on this occasion; and, the perfect quiet being only broken by his voice, the birds drew closer and closer, curiously peeping. So we sat for more than two hours, and I could but note what I had had opportunity to note before, that although, on occasion, he could be so accurate an observer of nature, it was not instinctive with him to observe. In the blaze of summer, with all the life of birds and insects moving around us, he did not borrow an image from or direct an allusion to any natural feature about us. He sat and talked of his own early life and aspirations; how he marvelled, as he looked back, at the audacious obstinacy which had made him, when a youth, determine to be a poet and nothing but a poet. He remarked that all his life long he had never known what it was to have to do a certain thing to-day and not to-morrow; he thought this had led to a super-abundance of production, since, on looking back, he could see that he had often, in his unfettered leisure, been afraid to do nothing. Then, with complete frankness, he described the desolateness of his early and middle life as a literary man; how, after certain spirits had seemed to rejoice in his first sprightly runnings, and especially in Paracelsus, a blight had fallen upon his very admirers. He touched, with a slight irony, on 'the entirely unintelligible Sardella', and the forlorn hope of Bells and Pamegranates. 2 Then he fell, more in the manner of old men, to stories of early loves and hatreds, Italian memories of the forties, stories with names in them that meant nothing to the ignorant listener. And, in the midst of these reminiscences, a chord of extreme interest to the critic was touched. For in recounting a story of some Tuscan nobleman

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who had shown him two exquisite miniature paintings, the work of a young artist who should have received for them the prize in some local contest, and who, being unjustly defrauded, broke his ivories, burned his brushes, and indignantly forswore the thankless art for ever, Mr. Browning suddenly reflected that there was, as he said, 'stuff for a poem' in that story, and immediately with extreme vivacity began to sketch the form it should take, the suppression of what features and the substitution of what others were needful; and finally suggested the non-obvious or inverted moral of the whole, in which the act of spirited defiance was shown to be, really, an act of tame renunciation, the poverty of the artist's spirit being proved by his eagerness to snatch, even though it was by honest merit, a benefit simply material. The poet said, distinctly, that he had never before reflected on this incident as one proper to be versified .... He left it, in five minutes, needing nothing but the mere outward crust of the versification ... [I]t was not his strength only, his vehement and ever-eruptive force, which distinguished him, but to an almost equal extent his humanity. Of all the great poets, except (one fancies) Chaucer, he must have been the most accessible. It is almost a necessity with imaginative genius of a very high order to require support from without: sympathy, admiration, amusement must be constantly poured in to balance the creative evaporation. But Mr. Browning demanded no such tribute. He rather hastened forward with both hands full of entertainment for the new-comer, anxious to please rather than hoping to be pleased. The most part of men of genius look upon an unknown comer as certainly a bore and probably an enemy, but to Robert Browning the whole world was full of vague possibilities of friendship. No one resented more keenly an unpleasant specimen of humanity, no one could snub more royally at need, no one was certain premises being established - more ruthless in giving the coup de grace; but then his surprise gave weight to his indignation. He had assumed a new acquaintance to be a good fellow, and behold! against all ordinary experience, he had turned out to be a bore or a sneak. Sudden, irreparable chastisement must fall on one who had proved the poet's optimism to be at fault. And, to those who shared a nearer intimacy than genial acquaintanceship could offer, is there one left to-day who was disappointed in his Browning or had any deep fault to find with him as a friend? Surely, no! He was human to the core, red with the warm blood to the centre of his being; and if he erred, as occasionally he did- as lately, to the sorrow of all who knew him, he

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did err 3 - it was the judgment not the instinct that was amiss. He was a poet, after all, and not a philosopher. It was part of Mr. Browning's large optimism, of his splendid and self-sufficing physical temperament, that he took his acquaintances easily- it might almost be said superficially. His poetic creations crowded out the real world to a serious extent. With regard to living men and women he was content to speculate, but with the children of his brain the case was different. These were not the subject of more or less indolent conjecture, but of absolute knowledge. It must be ten years ago, but the impression of the incident is as fresh upon me as though it happened yesterday, that Mr. Browning passed from languid and rather ineffective discussion of some persons well known to us both into vivid and passionate apology 4 for an act of his own Colombe of Ravenstein. 5 It was the flash from conventionality to truth, from talk about people whom he hardly seemed to see to a record of a soul that he had formed and could follow though all the mazes of caprice. It was seldom, even in intimacy, I think, that he would talk thus liberally about his sons and daughters of the pen, but that was mainly from a sensible reticence and hatred of common vanity. But when he could be induced to discuss his creations, it was easy to see how vividly the whole throng of them were moving in the hollow of his mind. It is doubtful whether he ever totally forgot any one of the vast assemblage of his characters. In this close of our troubled century ... the robust health of Robert Browning's mind and body has presented a singular and most encouraging phenomenon. He missed the over-refinement of the age; the processes of his mind were sometimes even a little coarse, and always delightfully direct. For real delicacy he had full appreciation, but he was brutally scornful of all exquisite morbidness. The vibration of his loud voice, his hard fist upon the table, would make very short work with cobwebs. But this external roughness, like the rind of a fruit, merely served to keep the inner sensibilities young and fresh. None of his instincts grew old. Long as he lived, he did not live long enough for one of his ideals to vanish, for one of his enthusiasms to lose its heat; to the last, as he so truly said, he 'never doubted clouds would break, Never dreamed, though right were worsted, wrong would triumph'. 6 The subtlest of writers, he was the simplest of men, and he learned in serenity what he taught in song. Robert Browning: Personalia (London, 1890; first published in The New Review, January 1890)

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Notes Gosse (1849-1928), prolific writer of authors' lives, first drew himself to Browning's attention through his plays and poems in the 1870s. Gosse won Browning's confidence to such an extent that, usually hostile to the very idea of biography as he was, he agreed to let the younger man 'take down some notes of my life' in February 1889. 1 Browning's 'Dubiety', I. 4. 2 When a less intimate acquaintance, William G. Kingsland, asked him "'Were you never discouraged ... at the indifference of the public and the hostility of the critics to your writings?" "Never," was the emphatic reply. "Why, I had the approbation of Fox, of Mill, of Forster, and I was content with their verdict'" (Robert Browning: Chief Poet of the Age, 2nd edn (London, 1890), p. 133). 3 In July 1889 Browning had come across an insensitive comment about Barrett's death ('rather a relief to me, I must say: no more Aurora Leighs, thank God!') in the posthumously published letters of Edward FitzGerald (1809-83). The sonnet 'To Edward FitzGerald', published in The Athenaeum on 13 July, was a passionate personal attack. Having sent the poem Browning tried to withdraw it, and much embarrassment followed; see his delicate letter of explanation to Emily Tennyson - FitzGerald was a close friend of Alfred Tennyson - in The Brownings to the Tennysons, pp. 48-50). 4 In other words defence. 5 In Colombe's Birthday (1844). 6 Epilogue to Asolando (1889).

'Browning in Venice' Katharine de Kay Bronson The view of the rose-coloured city rising from the pale-green waters, of the golden light of sunset on the distant Alps, of the day as it turned to evening behind the Euganean Hills, never seemed to pall upon his sense. 'Only Shelley has given us an idea of this,' he would say, and quote lines from 'Julian and Maddalo'. 1 •.• His memory for the poems he had read in his youth was extraordinary. If one quoted a line from Byron, who, he said, was the singer of his first enthusiasm,Z he would continue the quotation, never hesitating for a word, and then interrupt himself, saying, 'I think you have had enough of this,' to which his dear sister and I would give silent consent, lest the effort of memory should tire him. He was very proud of his retentive memory and of his well-preserved sight; the latter he attributed to his practice

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of bathing his eyes in cold water every morning. He was proud, too, of his strength, of his power of walking for hours without fatigue, of the few requirements of his Spartan-like daily life, and above all he was proud of his son, who was his idol. Yes, that was his vulnerable point, his heel of Achilles. People who praised or loved or noticed his only child found the direct road to his heart. Even those who only spoke with him of 'Pen' were at once his friends and worthy of attention and interest. He said to me many years ago, while awaiting anxiously the result of his son's earnest art studies: 'Do you know, my friend, if the thing were possible, I would renounce all personal ambition and would destroy every line I ever wrote, if by doing so I could see fame and honour heaped on my Robert's head.' What a proof are these words of an intense nature devoid of all egotism! In his boy he saw the image of the wife whom he adored, literally adored; for, as I felt, the thought of her, as an angel in heaven, was never out of his mind. He wore a small gold ring on his watch-chain. 'This was hers,' he said. 'Can you fancy that tiny finger?' Can you believe that a woman could wear such a circlet as this? It is a child's.' The only other souvenir on his chain was a coin placed there years ago, the date 1848, a piece of the first money struck by Manin in Venice to record the freedom from Austrian dominion. 3 'I love this coin,' he said, 'as she would have loved it. You know what she felt and wrote about United Italy.' The saying that 'no man is a hero to his valet de chambre' was disproved in the case of Robert Browning. He was so gracious and yet so dignified with servants that he was as profoundly revered by them as he was beloved. An exact account of his gentle geniality in this regard might read like an exaggeration. He appeared to dread giving his inferiors trouble; it was as though he would fain spare them the sense of servitude, which his own independent spirit caused him to imagine a painful burden. It seemed as if he were ever striving to place a cushion under a galling yoke, and in vain one sought to convince him that service rendered to such as he could only be a source of pride and pleasure to the server. He would always resist the hand of a friend or menial that tried to assist him, even in so small a matter as the adjustment or removal of his great-coat or his hat.

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'Nothing that I can do for myself should be done for me,' he would say, and brave was the servant who dared hold an umbrella over his head as he stepped into or out of the gondola. 'What do you take me for,' he would exclaim- 'an infant or a man?' His long walks on the Lido were among his greatest pleasures. At one time he went there daily with his congenial friends Mr and Mrs Sargent Curtis. 4 He would return full of colour and health, talk of the light and life and fresh air with enthusiasm, combined with a sort of pity for those who had remained at home. 'It is like coming into a room from the outer air,' he said, 'to reenter Venice after walking on the sea-shore.' He liked especially to read for his friends the Curtises at the Palazzo Barbaro, where he felt at home, feeling certain that hosts and guests were sympathetic. 5 The day and hour fixed, he allowed nothing to interfere with his intention .... Let me quote ... from my friend's letter: His reading of his own poems was a never-to-be-forgotten delight - simple, direct, and virile as was the nature of the man. The graver portions he read in a quiet, almost introspective way, as if he were thinking it all out again. I remember once that in finishing the grand profession of faith at the end of 'Saul' his voice failed him a very little, and when it was ended he turned his back to us, who were gathered about him in reverent silence, and laying the book quietly on the table, stood so for a moment .... He seemed as full of dramatic interest in reading 'In a Balcony' as if he had just written it for our benefit. One who sat near him said that it was a natural sequence that the step of the guard should be heard coming to take Norbert to his doom, 6 as, with a nature like the queen's, who had known only one hour of joy in her sterile life, vengeance swift and terrible would follow on the sudden destruction of her happiness. 'Now, I don't quite think that,' answered Browning, as if he were following out the play as a spectator. 'The queen had a large and passionate temperament, which had only once been touched and brought into intense life. She would have died, as by a knife in her heart. The guard would have come to carry away her dead body.'

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'But I imagine that most people interpret it as I do,' was the reply. 'Then,' said Browning with quick interest, 'don't you think it would be well to put it in the stage directions, and have it seen that they were carrying her across the back of the stage?' Whether this was ever done, I do not know; but it was wonderful to me, as showing the personal interest he took in his own creations. In Venice, as elsewhere, Browning rose early, and after a light breakfast went with his sister to the Public Gardens. They never failed to carry with them a store of cakes and fruits for the prisoned elephant, whose lonely fate was often pityingly alluded to by the poet, in whom a love of animals amounted to a passion. A large baboon, confined in what had once been a greenhouse, was also an object of special interest to him. This beast fortunately excited no commiseration, being healthy and content, and taking equal pleasure with the givers in his daily present of dainty food. After saying 'Good morning' and 'Good appetite' to these animals, he gave a passing salutation to a pair of beautiful gazelles, presented to the gardens by one of his friends; then a word of greeting to two merry marmosets, the gift of another friend; then a glance to the pelicans, the ostriches, and the quaint kangaroos: he had a word and a look for each, seeming to study them and almost to guess their thoughts. After this he made the tour of the gardens, three times round the enclosure with great exactness, and then returned to his temporary home in the Palazzo Giustiniani-Recanati. Sometimes, though rarely, they wandered through the antiquity shops. The poet had a keen flair for good bric-a-brac, and had an especial liking for tapestry and old carved furniture. He seldom sought for them, but his eye seized quickly upon an object of interest or value. He never hesitated or changed his mind; his intuition was always correct. A purchase once made, he was as thoroughly delighted as if the particular object were the first bibelot he had ever had the good luck to acquire. Like a child with a new toy, he would carry it himself (size and weight permitting) into the gondola, rejoice over his chance in finding it, and descant eloquently upon its intrinsic merits. In this, as in every other phase of his character, he was entirely unspoiled. Then he would explain minutely where the object should be placed in the London house, and add significantly,

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'I never buy anything without knowing exactly what I wish to do with it,' which was quite true, as his mind was unfailingly clear from great things to trifles. 'You might take this lesson from me, if none other,' he said to me playfully; for he disapproved of the habit of buying useless things in a vague manner only because they were old and pretty. 'Browning in Venice', The Century Magazine, 63 (February 1902), pp. 5 72-84; Appendix B in MTF Notes Bronson (1834-1901), a rich American who had settled in Venice in 1875, knew Browning during the last decade of his life. Robert and Sarianna Browning visited her at Ca' Alvisi on the Grand Canal and were accommodated at her adjoining Palazzo Giustiniani-Recanati in 1883 and 1885. In the autumn of 1888 they stayed at Ca' Alvisi itself for nearly three months. Bronson regarded Browning, as is apparent from this extract and the next, with both awe and affection. For an absorbing account of their relationship see Michael Meredith's introduction and notes in MTF. 1 See ll. 64-92. 2 Browning read Byron even before he discovered Shelley. He was a strong influence on the mostly destroyed Incondita (c. 1826); Browning would, he claimed in a letter to Barrett of 22 August 1846, have travelled miles for a sight of 'a curl of his hair or one of his gloves'. 3 Daniele Marrin (1804-57) proclaimed a new Venetian republic which survived 17 months before the Austrians regained control. (Venice finally became part of the kingdom of Italy in 1866.) Bronson herself had given Browning the coin. 4 Daniel Sargent Curtis (1825-1908) and Ariana Curtis (1833-1922). 5 Under these circumstances, apparently, Browning left behind his role in 'Society' to become 'Browning the Poet'. His whole demeanour took on the qualities of his verse (Daniel Curtis, 'Robert Browning 1879 to 1885', MS at Armstrong Browning Library; MTF Appendix C, p. 173). 6 See 'In a Balcony' (Men and Women, 1855), 11. 915-19.

'Browning in Asolo' Katharine de Kay Bronson He never wearied of gazing from the loggia of La Mura at the view over the plain, and of pointing out sights he had kept clear in his mind while writing Sardella and Pippa Passes.

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'See!' he would say to each newcomer, 'there is Romano, cradle of the Eccelini, those cruel twelfth-century tyrants, you know. The tower stands there, to the right of those trees and walls. That is Bassano; it had a wonderful history in the middle ages, and there Napoleon fought; he created one of his generals Duke of Bassano, you remember? On this nearer hill is San Zenone, scene of the most fearful tragedy in all history.' If his listener seemed interested he would relate in a few fiery sentences the story of Alberico, betrayed in his last stronghold; how the Trevisani determined to extirpate the race of Eccelini from the earth, and how, to this end, they destroyed Alberico, his wife, and five children, by tortures too terrible to describe. 1 At another time the poet would put aside the terrible medieval memories, and looking toward the tower on the opposite side of the ravine, standing bold and high against the western sky, would talk of Queen Caterina Cornaro, and of her graceful, poetic little court, as it was held during twenty years within those yellow-gray, flower-covered walls. 2 At times forgetting all else, Browning rejoiced with keen artistic sense in the beauty of nature in this favoured spot, noting the everchanging cloud-shadows on the plain, the ranges of many-tinted mountains in the west and southwest, and the fairy-like outline of the blue Euganean Hills, which partly form the southern boundary of the vast Campagna. He spoke of the indelible association which these hills bear with the names of Shelley and Byron, 3 as being a grand monument to their memory. His face always lighted with pleasure when he spoke of a poet's undying fame, or heard of honours, even if only in the form of a tablet on a wall, to prove that the great dead are not forgotten. Looking out upon the wondrous beauty of the varied landscape before him, he said: 'I was right to fall in love with this place fifty years ago, was I not? We outlive some places, people, and things that charmed us in our youth, but the loveliness of this is no disappointment; it is even more beautiful to me now than then.' The great poet, perhaps because he was so great, ruled his days with a precision and a regularity such as one would more naturally attribute to a mathematician. At Asolo he began his day at the early hour of seven, took his cold bath, scarcely tempered even in chilly weather, then his simple breakfast, served punctually at eight of the clock, then with his sister - here, as elsewhere, his inseparable companion - he

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wandered over the hills, seeking and finding such points of view and interest as he had known in his first youth. He recognised a bit of old fresco still left on a house wall, a Gothic window here, a doorway there, the palace where Napoleon slept before the battle of Bassano, the gravelled bit of square above the market-place, which in his time was the site of a bowling-alley, where from his hotel windows he could see the Asolani playing their favourite game at odd hours of the day. After their long walks the brother and sister returned to the morning readings and writings; the former were alternately English newspapers, the memoirs in Italian of Carlo Gozzi, 4 - a book which he said he continued to read to the end 'out of sheer obstinacy', but which he did not find to his taste 'in the very least', - and the reading, entirely to his mind, of various Greek plays. About midday luncheon was served with much the same menu as he was wont to choose in Venice in previous years, namely, local Italian dishes and native wines. He wrote and read again after this light repast, and at three o' clock appeared on the loggia of La Mura, his favourite place in Asolo. Soon after three o' clock we went to drive, and explored the country for miles around .... Summer was nearly over when he took the long, delightful excursions he so greatly enjoyed. He rebelled at first against the numerous wraps piled up in the carriage, which prudence suggested as a precaution against change of weather or autumnal air. 'One would think we were going to Siberia,' he said; but he relented as the afternoon grew chill, and accepted the Siberian rugs with words of approbation. He observed everything observable by the way - the thick hedges that border all the roads and fields, the great chestnut-trees and apple-orchards, which give an English character to the landscape, unknown in other parts of Italy already familiar to him. He remarked upon the vivacity of the clear, running brooks between hedges and highroads, the charm of the little river Musone, with its borders of alders and willows and shivering aspens, the perfumed wains of autumn hay, the great carri piled high with white or purple grapes, which he said 'might serve as models in a procession to Bacchus.' He uncovered his head in returning the salutation of a priest, and touched his hat to the meanest peasant, who, after the manner of the country, lifted his own to greet the passing stranger. 'I always salute the church,' he said to me in an aside; 'I respect it'.

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One day, on returning from a drive to Bassano, the poet was unusually silent; no one spoke. I felt anxious lest he should not feel quite well, but forbore to question him, and consoled myself by thinking, 'He is tired; perhaps he is resting his brain.' We had nearly reached home when he said: 'I have written a poem since we left Bassano.' 'A poem? How? When?' 'Oh, it is all in my head. I shall write it out presently, as soon as I can find a bit of paper.' 'The subject? Please tell.' 'No, not now; you will see it quite soon enough when it is printed.' 'Will you not even say what inspired it?' Then, smiling: 'Well, since you are so inquisitive, the birds twittering in the trees have suggested it to me. You know I don't like women to wear those wings in their bonnets.' It was 'The Lady and the Painter'. 5 With the poet's accustomed impulsive ardour he talked constantly of [his] new scheme for making a temporary home 6 in the land he loved so dearly ... 'It shall have a tower,' he said, 'whence I can see Venice at every hour of the day, and I shall call it "Pippa's Tower". We will have flag-signals,' he went on. 'When I ask you to dine, the flag shall be blue - it is your favourite colour; and remember, if the answer is "Yes," you float a blue flag; if "No," it must be a red one. We will throw a rustic bridge across the streamlet in the ravine. It will be easier for us than the long walk round by the town and the castle. The telephone is too modern; don't you think so?' And so on and on, beguiling the time with playful plans to amuse himself and his hearers. Sometimes, turning very grave, he would say: 'It may not be for me to enjoy it long- who can say? But it will always be useful for Pen and his family. They can come here so easily from Venice whenever they need the rest or change of air.' Then, with his old courage, faith, and fire: 'But I am good for ten years yet. I am perfectly well.' And so, indeed, he seemed, apparently quite his old self, so gay, so strong, so wondrously youthful in mind and sentiment. True, on his arrival in Asolo a difficulty in his breathing was very apparent, especially after mounting steep stairs or a hill; but this annoying

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symptom disappeared after a few weeks, either under the influence of the pure, invigorating air, or the small globules of arsenicum which he took daily to please those who recommended them; perhaps through the effects of the two precious remedies combined. He was overjoyed when his son came to make him a few days' visit, and wanted to show him everything at once, and especially the site he had chosen for Pippa's Tower. The 'Rocca' of Asolo is a ruined fortress of prehistoric foundation which crowns the hill above the town. The poet always enjoyed the steep and slippery walk, or rather climb, which leads to it. The views by the way are very striking, and from the summit the little town may be seen lying at one's feet, the immense stretch of plain before it bounded by the sea. He remembered an echo he had discovered within the fortress walls fifty years before, to which he alludes in 'Pippa Passes'/ and so anxious was he to refind it that he could scarcely be persuaded to wait until the fatigue of his journey from England should be dispelled before seeking to hear it again. More than a week elapsed before a suitable day could be agreed upon for the rough excursion. He specially wished that the horizon should be clear of mist, that he might plainly see the Adriatic and the campanile of St Mark's. We reached the wretched hut near the top of the hill, where the keys of the one portal of the strange old fortress are kept, and chairs were brought for us by a peasant woman that we might rest before attempting the sharp finish. A number of small, bare-footed children were to be seen idly sprawling on the ground, interspersed among cats and hungry-looking fowls. At one side of the house a rustic, with a heavy hammer in his hand, was engaged in building a wooden partition in what seemed to be a cow-shed. He explained that, as the family grew larger every year, new rooms were required, and that he always built them himself. Browning's face and voice expressed the tenderest pity at the sight of this discomfort. It moved him to such compassion that I am fain to think that a rest on a rush-bottomed chair was never before paid for so generously. He asked sympathetically, 'Do you find it hard to live up here so far from the town?' 'We get on pretty well in summer, but oh, signore, the winters are long and cold.' 'They must be,' he said tenderly. 'Ci vuol pazienza.' Suddenly the woman addressed him with, 'I know who you are.'

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'Who am I?' he inquired. 'You are a great English poet.' 'How do you know that?' 'Because I see your shirt; one of my friends ironed it last week, and no one else has one like it down in Asolo. This appealed to Browning's sense of humour. The garment in question was of a very simple pattern, white with fine blue lines. He laughed aloud, and said, 'Well, upon my word, this is the very first time I was ever recognised by my shirt!' and he told the story to others afterward with great glee. Once within the Rocca fortress we could find no echo, though small boys were easily persuaded to shout for it. 'I should have thought an echo could never fade,' he said rather sadly; but she was there, after all, his nymph Echo, only she proved for some reason coy on that occasion. The evenings at Asolo were spent very quietly, and with no visits to interrupt the agreeable monotony. Immediately after dinner Browning played on the spinet, the same one he had used in Venice in other years .... Browning played in a dreamy manner, generally recalling old music he had heard in early youth, English ballads and Russian folk-songs, the airs always melodious, often melancholy; and he would occasionally sing his favourite 'Chanson de Roland', and seemed troubled because he could remember only one or two verses .... After playing for some time on the spinet, his fingers, so long out of practice, would get tired, and he would leave the instrument saying, 'Now I will read to you. What would you like?' 'Any poem signed "R.B."' 'No, no; no R.B. tonight.' Then, with a smile, 'Let us have some real poetry'. So saying, he would take Shelley or Keats, Coleridge or Tennyson, from the book-shelves, read aloud some of his favourite poems, and say: 'This is poetry; don't you know it is?' Once, on his first arrival at La Mura, he said of his own accord, 'I will read Shakespeare to you tonight.' I was silent, conscience-stricken, and watched him run his eyes quickly along the book-shelves. All his own volumes were there, the works of the poets above mentioned, and many others; but they were not what he sought. 'What! No Shakespeare?' he exclaimed. 'I would never have believed it! Now, to punish you, I will read one of my toughest poems- at least, so the critics say.'

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It was far from being the punishment he pretended I deserved, for when he read a difficult poem, giving his own emphasis and punctuation, it seemed to be revealed in a new light, and to become as clear and comprehensible as one could possibly desire. Though one would have supposed his morning hours to be more than occupied with the preparation of Asolando for the press, together with his walks and his correspondence, yet he always found time for his favourite Greek plays, which he read from a small edition, the small print of which would have wearied any eyes less remarkable than his own. He said to me one day, speaking of his delight in such reading: 'Shall I whisper to you my ambition and my hope? It is to write a tragedy better than anything I have done yet. I think of it constantly.' If I try to recall Robert Browning's words it is as though I had talked

to a being apart from other men. My feeling may seem exaggerated, but it was only natural when one considers my vivid sense of his moral and intellectual superiority, and connects that with his kindness to me and mine. It has been observed that his conversation so fascinated the listener that if one tried to recall it an hour afterward the very subjects seemed to elude one's memory. Or was this an uncommon experience, more an idiosyncrasy of my own, rarely shared by others? I cannot surely say. Not that his talk was abstruse and intricate, like some of his writings. Far from it. Perhaps an instinct told him that it was kind to others to bring himself down to the ordinary hearer's level, or he may have needed that repose to the mind which easy talk brings to those who think intensely. As a rule, he seemed purposely to avoid deep and serious topics. If such were broached in his presence he dismissed them with one strong, convincing sentence, and adroitly turned the current of conversation into a shallower channel. This was no loss, for everything he chose to say was well said. A familiar story, grave or gay, when clothed in his words and accentuated by his expressive gestures and the mobility of his countenance, had all the charm of novelty, while a comic anecdote, the very same that from another might seem trite or spiritless, from his lips actually sparkled with wit, born of his own keen sense of humour. I found in him also that most rare instance of a powerful personality united to a nature tenderly sympathetic. When I saw him daily I felt constrained to conceal

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the very slightest contretemps or a commonplace household annoyance. Such trivial matters as the shortcomings of a servant or the exaggerations of a chef were no despised trifles to him. His knowledge of the importance of detail made him take even minor occurrences quickly and acutely to heart. 'Browning in Asolo', The Century Magazine, 59 (April 1900), pp. 920-31; Appendix A in MTF Notes Browning was first in Asolo in 1838 when, during his first visit to Italy, he sought to finish Sardella 'among the scenes it describes' (Correspondence, iv.24). It and its surroundings are the setting of Pippa Passes (1841). Later Browning had a recurring dream in which he saw, but was prevented from reaching, Asolo (Allingham's Diary, 6 April 1876). He did at last reach it in 1878 and 1889, when he stayed for nearly two months before leaving for Venice where he died that December. Bronson's house, La Mura, where Robert and Sarianna Browning were frequent guests, had once formed part of the town ramparts. Here, Browning told Bronson in his dedication, 'some few' of the poems in Asolando (1889) were written, 'all of them supervised, in the comfort of your presence'. 1 As in Sardella, VI.777-81. 2 Caterina (1454-1510), formerly Queen of Cyprus, had Asolo conferred on her by the Venetian republic in 1489. At her court her kinsman Pietro (later Cardinal) Bembo set Gli Asolani (1505); in Asolando, says Browning in the dedication, 'I unite ... the disconnected poems by a title-name popularly ascribed to the inventiveness of the ancient secretary of Queen Cornaro whose palace-tower still overlooks us: Asolare- "to disport in the open air, amuse onself at random".' 3 The hills are described in Shelley's 'julian and Maddalo', II. 76-85 and 'Lines Written Among the Euganean Hills', II. 70 ff. Byron describes Arqua, in the Euganeans, in Chi/de Harold's Pilgrimage, IV.xxx-xxxiii. Also in this area Byron leased, and then lent the Shelleys, Villa I Capuccini at Este. 4 Memorie inutile (1797-8). Gozzi (1720-1806) was a Venetian aristocrat and author of such dramatic fiabe as L'amore delle tre melarance (The Love of Three Oranges, 1761). 5 In Asolando. 6 Browning was attempting to buy a plot of land in Asolo, once part of Queen Caterina's pleasure-garden; a roofless building was to be converted into 'Pippa's Tower'. Difficulties and delays in completing the purchase continued after Browning's departure for Venice. Pen later completed the project. 7 III.4-15.

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'Never say of me that I am dead' William Sharp It seems but a day or two ago that the present writer received from

the lips of the dead poet a mockery of death's vanity - a brave assertion of the glory of life. 'Death, death! It is this harping on death I despise so much,' he remarked with emphasis of gesture as well as of speech - the inclined head and body, the right hand lightly placed upon the listener's knee, the abrupt change in the inflection of the voice, all so characteristic of him - 'this idle and often cowardly as well as ignorant harping! Why should we not change like everything else? In fiction, in poetry, in so much of both, French as well as English, and, I am told, in American art and literature, the shadow of death - call it what you will, despair, negation, indifference - is upon us. But what fools who talk thus! Why, amico mio, you know as well as I that death is life, just as our daily, our momentarily dying body is none the less alive and ever recruiting new forces of existence. Without death, which is our crapelike churchyardy word for change, for growth, there could be no prolongation of that which we call life. Pshaw! it is foolish to argue upon such a thing even. For myself, I deny death as an end of everything. Never say of me that I am dead!' Life of Robert Browning (London, 1890), pp. 195-6 Notes Sharp (1855-1905) wrote such works as his Life of Browning under his own name and, unknown to most of his contemporaries, much of his fiction and verse as 'Fiona Macleod'.

'One who never turned his back but marched breast forward' Sarianna Browning

Which did he prefer of the Asolando poems? I can scarcely say only I know, that on the very last Sunday he was up, before the last, Fannie and I were alone (she had been unwell and was lying down), he came into the bedroom and had afternoon tea with us, and Fannie asked him to read to her- she wanted something from the

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new volume just coming out, she said. He fetched the proof-sheets and read Rephan, the Reverie, and finally the Epilogue - half ashamed that the latter might seem boastfuV as he read it, a cold feeling crept over me, though I said nothing, that those lines might be a real farewell to life - as they were. Sarianna Browning to 'Michael Field', Works and Days: from the Journal of Michael Field, eds T. and D. C. Sturge Moore (London, 1933), p. 42 Notes Michael Field was the joint pseudonym of the writers Katharine Bradley (1846-1914) and her niece Edith Cooper (1862-1913). 1 According to F. T. Furnivall he said 'It almost looks like bragging to say this, and as if I ought to cancel it; but it's the simple truth; and as it's true, it shall stand' (Pall Mall Gazette, 1 February 1890).

Death and Funeral Alexandra Orr

[I]t was winter, even in Venice, and one day began with an actual fog. He insisted, notwithstanding, on taking his usual walk on the Lido. He caught a bronchial cold of which the symptoms were aggravated not only by the asthmatic tendency, but by what proved to be exhaustion of the heart; and believing as usual that his liver alone was at fault, he took little food, and refused wine altogether. He did not yield to the sense of illness; he did not keep his bed. Some feverish energy must have supported him through this avoidance of every measure which might have afforded even temporary strength or relief. On Friday, the 29th, he wrote to a friend 1 in London that he had waited thus long for the final answer from Asolo, 2 but would wait no longer. He would start for England, if possible, on the Wednesday or Thursday of the following week. It was true 'he had caught a cold; he felt sadly asthmatic, scarcely fit to travel; but he hoped for the best, and would write again soon.' He wrote again the following day, declaring himself better. He had been punished, he said, for long-standing neglect of his 'provoking liver'; but a simple medicine, which he had often taken before, had

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this time also relieved the oppression of his chest; his friend was not to be uneasy about him; 'it was in his nature to get into scrapes of this kind, but he always managed, somehow or other, to extricate himself from them.' He concluded with fresh details of his hopes and plans. In the ensuing night the bronchial distress increased; and in the morning he consented to see his son's physician, Dr Cini, whose investigation of the case at once revealed to him its seriousness. The patient had been removed two days before, from the second storey of the house, which the family then inhabited, to an entresol apartment just above the ground-floor, from which he could pass into the dining-room without fatigue. Its lower ceilings gave him (erroneously) an impression of greater warmth, and he had imagined himself benefited by the change. A freer circulation of air was now considered imperative, and he was carried to Mrs [Fannie] Browning's spacious bedroom, where an open fireplace supplied both warmth and ventilation, and large windows admitted all the sunshine of the Grand Canal. Everything was done for him which professional skill and loving care could do. Mrs Browning, assisted by her husband, and by a young lady 3 who was then her guest, filled the place of the trained nurses until these could arrive; for a few days the impending calamity seemed even to have been averted. The bronchial attack was overcome. Mr Browning had once walked from the bed to the sofa; his sister, whose anxiety had perhaps been spared the full knowledge of his state, could send comforting reports to his friends at home. But the enfeebled heart had made its last effort. Attacks of faintness set in. 4 Special signs of physical strength maintained themselves until within a few hours of the end. On Wednesday, December 11, a consultation took place between Dr Cini, Dr da Vigna, and Dr Minich; and the opinion was then expressed for the first time that recovery, though still possible, was not within the bounds of probability. Weakness, however, rapidly gained upon him towards the close of the following day. Two hours before midnight of this Thursday, December 12, he breathed his last:' He had been a good patient. He took food and medicine whenever they were offered to him. Doctors and nurses became alike warmly interested in him. His favourite among the latter was, I think, the Venetian, a widow, Margherita Fiori, a simple kindly creature who had known much sorrow. To her he said, about five hours before the end, 'I feel much worse. I know now that I must die.' He

162 Elizabeth Barrett Browning and Robert Browning

had shown at intervals a perception, even conviction, of his danger; but the excitement of the brain, caused by exhaustion on the one hand and the necessary stimulants on the other, must have precluded all systematic consciousness of approaching death. He repeatedly assured his family that he was not suffering. A painful and urgent question now presented itself for solution: Where should his body find its last rest? He had said to his sister in the foregoing summer, that he wished to be buried wherever he might die; if in England, with his mother; if in France, with his father; if in Italy, with his wife. Circumstances all pointed to his removal to Florence; but a recent decree had prohibited further interment in the English Cemetery there, and the town had no power to rescind it. When this was known in Venice, that city begged for itself the privilege of retaining the illustrious guest, and rendering him the last honours. For the moment the idea even recommended itself to Mr Browning's son. But he felt bound to make a last effort in the direction of the burial at Florence; and was about to despatch a telegram, in which he invoked the mediation of Lord Dufferin, 6 when all difficulties were laid at rest by a message from the Dean of Westminster, conveying his assent to an interment in the Abbey. Arrangements were ... made for a private service to be conducted by the British Chaplain in one of the great halls of the Rezzonico Palace and by two o'clock of the following day, Sunday, a large number of visitors and residents had assembled there. 7 The subsequent passage to the mortuary island of San Michele had been organized by the city, and was to display as much of the character of a public pageant as the hurried preparation allowed. The chief municipal officers attended the service. When this had been performed, the coffin was carried by eight firemen (pompieri), arrayed in their distinctive uniform, to the massive, highly decorated municipal barge (Barca delle Pompe funebri) which waited to receive it. It was guarded during the transit by four uscieri 8 in gala dress, two sergeants of the Municipal Guard, and two of the firemen bearing torches: the remainder of these followed in a smaller boat. The barge was towed by a steam launch of the Royal Italian Marine. The chief officers of the city, the family and friends in their separate gondolas, completed the procession. On arriving at San Michele, the firemen again received their burden, and bore it to the chapel in which its place had been reserved.

Part IV: Robert Browning 1861-89 163

He was buried in Westminster Abbey, in Poets' Corner, on the 31st of December, 1889. 9 In this tardy act of national recognition England claimed her own. A densely packed, reverent and sympathetic crowd of his countrymen and countrywomen assisted at the consignment of the dead poet to his historic resting place. Three verses of Mrs Browning's poem, The Sleep, set to music by Dr Bridge, 10 were sung for the first time on this occasion. Orr, pp. 424-32 Notes Orr's account of Browning's death, like many such writings of the period, attempts to minimise the suffering of the dying man. But the family (Pen, Fannie and Sarianna Browning) felt that, here as often, Orr had made him sound too weak and ill. In 1908 Frederic Kenyon, revising the Life for a new edition, substituted for parts of the original version Pen's terse report of the facts as he felt they should have been stated. (Orr's version is retained here.) B. R. Jerman, 'The Death of Robert Browning', University of Toronto Quarterly 35 (1965), pp. 47-74, gleans more precise details of Browning's last days from sources including the Venetian diaries of Evelyn Barclay and Lady Layard. The identity of the friend is not known; conceivably Orr herself? 2 See above, p. 158, n.6. 3 Evelyn Barclay, whose diary account of the period is printed in Baylor Bulletin, 31 (1932), pp. 1-10. 4 According to Pen 'it is not the case that he suffered from attacks of faintness' (Kenyon's revision, p. 400). But Evelyn Barclay mentions faintness too in her diary entry for 10 December. He was often, she also records, delirious. During one lucid interval he looked at the first copy of Asolando and gave it to his daughter-in-law. In another he was able to receive from Pen news of George Smith's telegram announcing the critical and commercial success of the volume; according to Pen, Fannie, Barclay, and others they spoke to, Browning responded with 'How gratifying' or words to that effect. (See Jerman, 'Death of Browning', pp. 73-4 n. 46.) 5 According to Pen's account (p. 400) 'death came with a violent heaving of his big chest as he lay otherwise motionless'. 6 Frederick Hamilton-Temple-Blackwood, Marquess of Dufferin (1826-1902), holder of various important posts, most recently as Viceroy of India (1884-8). In 1870 Browning had written the sonnet 'Helen's Tower' (Pall Mall Gazette, 28 December 1883) in memory of Dufferin's mother. 7 Among those present were Orr herself (who arrived in Venice the day after Browning's death), Katharine Bronson, Daniel and Ariana Curtis, Sir Austen Henry Layard (1817-94) the Assyriologist and diplomat, and Lady Layard.

164 Elizabeth Barrett Browning and Robert Browning 8 Ushers. 9 For full details of the occasion see Pall Mall Gazette, 31 December 1889, reprinted in BIS, 3 (1975), pp. 119-30. For Henry James this was 'exactly one of those occasions in which [Browning's] own analytic spirit would have rejoiced and his irrepressible faculty for looking at human events in all sorts of slanting coloured lights have found a signal opportunity' ('Browning in Westminster Abbey', The Speaker, 4 January 1890; Essays in London and Elsewhere (London, 1893), p. 233). 10 'The Sleep' was first published in Barrett Browning's The Seraphim and Other Poems (1838). Browning had read it at her funeral. John Frederick Bridge (1844-1924) was organist at Westminster Abbey.

Chronology 1806 1812 1820 1826 1828 1832 1833 1835 1837 1838 1840 1841 1842 1843 1844 1845 1846 1847 1849 1850 1851 1851-2 1855 1855-6 1856 1857 1860 1861 1862 1864 1866 1868-9 1869 1872 1878

Elizabeth Barrett Moulton-Barrett born (6 March). Robert Browning born (7 May). The Battle of Marathon (EBB) printed privately. An Essay on Mind with Other Poems (EBB). Death of Barrett's mother. The Barrett family leaves Hope End. Pauline: a Fragment of a Confession (RB). Prometheus Bound, Translated from the Greek of Aeschylus; and Miscellaneous Poems (EBB). Paracelsus (RB). Strafford (RB). Browning's first visit to Italy. The Seraphim and Other Poems (EBB). Sardella (RB). Death of Barrett's brother 'Bro'. Pippa Passes (RB). Dramatic Lyrics (RB). A Blot in the 'Scutcheon (RB). Poems (EBB). Browning's second visit to Italy. Browning's first letter to Barrett (10 January) and first visit (20 May). Dramatic Romances and Lyrics (RB). Marriage (12 September). The Brownings settle in Pisa. They move to Florence. Birth of Robert Wiedemann Barrett (Pen) Browning (9 March). Death of Browning's mother. Christmas-Eve and Easter-Day (RB). Poems (EBB), including Sonnets from the Portuguese and the revised Prometheus Bound. Casa Guidi Windows (EBB). Long visit to Paris and London. Men and Women (RB). Second long visit to Paris, London, and the Isle of Wight. Aurora Leigh (EBB). Death of John Kenyon, who leaves the Brownings £11 000. Death of Barrett Browning's father. Poems Before Congress (EBB). Death of Barrett Browning's sister Henrietta. Death of Elizabeth Barrett Browning (29 June). Browning and Pen settle in London. Last Poems (EBB). Dramatis Personae. Death of Browning's father. The Ring and the Book. Probable proposal of marriage from Lady Ash burton. Fifine at the Fair. Browning's first visit to Italy since 1861.

165

166 Chronology

1879 1880 1881 1887 1889

Dramatic Idyls. Dramatic Idyls: Second Series. Browning Society founded. Parleyings with Certain People oflmportance in Their Day. Death of Robert Browning (12 December). Asolando: Fancies and Facts.

Index Aeschylus, 10, 130 Ainsworth, William Harrison, 35-6 Alberico, 152 Alcott, Amos Bronson, 37 Aldrich, Lilian, 123 Alexandra, Princess of Wales, 110 Allingham, William, 36-7, 72 Alma-Tadema, Sir Lawrence, 129 Almache (i.e. A/mack's?), 8, 10 n.3 Altham, Mary, 108 n.1 Anderson, Hans Christian, 104 n.2 Arnould, joseph, xxi, 22, 37 n.1, 47-8 Artaud, William, xix, 4 n.4 Ashburton, Louisa, Lady, 86 n.1, 116, 117 n.2 The Athenaeum, 90 n.5, 122, 147 n.3 Austin, Alfred, 127 n.2; quoted 126 Bach, Johann Sebastian, 32 Baillie, joanna, 17 Barclay, Evelyn, 161, 163 Barrett, Alfred Moulton-, 22 Barrett, Arabella (Arabel) Moulton-, 57 n.2, 73, 100 n.3, 108 n.l Barrett, Charles james Moulton-, 57 n.2 Barrett, Edward Moulton- (EBB's father), xx, 3, 8-9, 21-3, 53, 54, 56, 57 n.2, 101 Barrett, Edward Moulton- (EBB's brother 'Bro'), 4, 11-12, 21-2 Barrett, Elizabeth Moulton-, see Elizabeth Barrett Browning Barrett, George Moulton-, 57 n.2 Barrett, Henrietta Moulton-, (Henrietta Cook) 22, 57 n.2, 89, 101 Barrett, Henry Moulton-, 100 n.3 Barry, Dr, 12 Bate, Gerardine, 54, 55 Beethoven, Ludwig van, 32 n.l Belloc, Bessie Rayner, 37 n.3

Bembo, Pietro, 158 n.2 Benson, Edward and Mary, 116 Benzon, Ernest L., 110 Benzon, Lily, 127 n.3 Black, William, 138 Blackstone, Sir William, 141 Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, 87

n.Z, 90 n.5 Blagden, Isabella (Isa), 76, 77, 89, 98 Bloomfield-Moore, Clara, 127 nn.3-4 Boughton, George Henry, 137-9 Bridell-Fox, Eliza, xxi, 34-5 Bromley, Katie, 33-4 Bronson, Katharine de Kay, xxiii, xxiv n.11, 127 nn.3-4, 147-58, 163 n.7 Brotherton, Mary, xx Brown, Ford Madox, 73 Browning Society, 124, 135 Browning, Elizabeth Barrett: popularity of work in America, 57, 82; appearance and dress, 10, 12-13, 58, 59, 63, 67, 69-70, 75, 76,80,81,82,83,84-5,90; childhood, 3-5, 6, 7; on British class system, 87; conversation, xx-xxi, 13, 59, 64, 75, 78, 80, 83; on the Crimean War, 65, 86-7, 87; on 'the corruption of our society', 93; death and funeral, 101-4; finances, 11 n.1; health, xx, 11-12, 13, 51, 53-6, 58, 67, 80, 81, 101, 102, 104 n.l; and Italian politics, 65, 87-90, 102, 104 n.5; and the Indian Mutiny, 65; knowledge of languages, 3, 6-7, 11, 12, 63, 65; letters, 10, 13, 65; marriage, 51-3, 58, 82; opium (morphine dependence), 64, 85, 86 n.3, 102; on poetry, 15-19, 20, 21 n.3; politics, 78; reading, xix, 3, 63, 167

I68 Index Browning, Elizabeth Barrett (contd) 75; religious beliefs, 4-S, S, 65, 78; on RB's poetry, I8; spiritualism, 65, 68, 76, 77, 92, I24; voice, xx, 58, 68, 70-I, 75, 7~ 8~ 8I, 83,9~9I, 9~ 96; on women, xix-xx, 6, I4, 86-7 Browning, Elizabeth Barrett: residences and visits: Hope End, 3, 7, 23 n.I, 134; Torquay, 11-I2; Orleans, 54; Avignon, SS; fontaine de Vaucluse, SS, 57 n.4; Pisa, 22, SS-6; Florence, 57-62, 63, 65, 66, 76-7, 80, 82, 84-S, 89, 90-I, 92, IOI-3, I24, 134; Bagni di Lucca, 59, I04 n.3; Siena, 59, 70, 95-6, IOI; Venice, 64; Paris, 53-4, 81, 95; London, 73; Rome, 59, 69, 88-9,97-8,102 Browning, Elizabeth Barrett, works: Aurora Leigh, xxiii, I6, 77, 86 n.1, 95 The Battle of Marathon, 3-4 birthday verses, 3 Casa Guidi Windows, xx 60-I, 88, 89 nn.1-2, I03 'The Cry of the Children', 82 'The Development of Genius', 8-9 An Essay on Mind, 8, 10 n.2, 10 'First News from Villafranca', 90 n.6 'Fragments of "An Essay on Woman'", IS n.3 'Glimpses into my own literary character', 3-7 'Hiram Powers' "Greek Slave'", 86 n.2 'Lady Geraldine's Courtship', I6, I9 n.3, 82 lines on virtue, 3 'Lord Walter's Wife', xix-xx, 93 'The Lost Bower', (quoted) 83 'My Character and Bra's compared, 4 'Napoleon III in Italy', 66 n.6, 90 n.4; quoted 96

Poems Before Congress, xx, 87 n.2, 88,90 n.S Prometheus Bound, 10 'the Sleep', 163 'A Tale of Villafranca', 88 'Three Hymns, Translated from the Greek of Gregory Nazianzen', 13 untitled essays, xix, 8-9 'Where's Agnes?', 98 n.I Browning, Fannie Barrett, IS9-60, I6I, I63 Browning, Pen, see Robert Wiedemann Barrett Browning Browning, Reuben, II8 n.1 Browning, Robert (RB's father), 28-9, 30, 42, 63, 69, 75, IOO n.3, 133, 162 Browning, Robert: popularity of work in America, 57, 82; and animals, 28, I2S, I29, 150; appearance and dress, xxi-xxii, 33, 34-S, 35-6, 38, 58, 59,67,68-9, 7I, 75, 76, 79,81, 98-9, 114, 118, 123, 123-4, 125-6, 130, 142; childhood, 27-30; conversation, xxi, xxii, 33, 47, 54,58, 59, 62,64, 78-9, 80, 91, 96, 97 n.3, I11, 112, 114-15, 116, 117-I8, I23, 130, 136, 142, 143-S, IS7; attitude to death, 12I, 140-1, 143 n.6, IS9; death and funeral, 160-4; division between public and private, xxi-xxii, xxiv n.II, I07-8, 112, 113, 116, 145; drawing and modelling, 99, 100, I24; education, 27-30, 136-7, 137 n.3; food and drink preferences, 64, 98, III, I24, I28, IS3; health, 97-8, IS4-S, I60-I, I63 n.4; on Italy, 89, 108 n.2, I11, 137; knowledge of languages, 30, 33, 136, 153, IS7; letters, xxi, 51; marriage, 51-3,58, 82; interest in music, 30, 32,35,63,65, 77, I2S, 133-4, 139, I 56; plans for 'Pippa's Tower', I54, ISS, I58

Index 169 n.6; on poetry, 94, 100-1; on EBB's poetry, 59, 77, 100-1; politics, 129; as reader or reciter of his poems, xxiii, 73-4, 132-3, 137-9, 149, 151 n.5, 156-7; reading, 28-9, 128, 153; recorded on wax cylinder, 137-9; religious beliefs, 27, 65, 127, 129, 139-41, 142, 153; daily routine in later life, 127-9, 150, 152-3, 156; opposition to spriritualism, 65, 68, 72, 76, 77, 92, 124, 127; voice, xx, 34 n.2, 73, 76, 81, 116, 118, 118 n.1, 143, 146; and women, 126-7, 131; attitude to own writing, 21 n.4, 30-1, 94, 99-100, 100, 119, 124, 141, 144-5, 146, 147 n.2, 149-50, 154, 157 Browning, Robert, residences and visits: Orleans, 54; Avignon, 55; Fontaine de Vaucluse, 55, 57 n.4; Pisa, 22, 55-6; Florence, 57-62, 63, 65, 66, 76-7, 80, 82, 74-5, 90-1, 92, 101-3, 110, 124, 162; Bagni di Lucca, 59, 104 n.3; Siena, 59, 70, 95-6, 101; Venice, 34-5, 64, 147-51, 154, 155, 160-2; Paris, 53-4, 81; London, 73, 107, 110, 126 (DeVere Gardens, 108, 128, 133-4; Warwick Crescent, 125, 127-8); Rome, 59, 69, 82, 97-8, 101, 102; Le Havre, 99; Naworth Castle, 97 n.3; Oxford, 113-14, 129; Cambridge, 144-5; Asolo, 151-8, 160; Bassano, 152, 153, 154 Browning, Robert, works: 'Abt Vogler', 116 'Andrea del Sarto', xxiii, 132-3 Asolando, 157, 158, 158 n.2, 159-60 Bells and Pomegranates, 144 'Bishop Blougram's Apology' (quoted), 109 'The Bishop Orders his Tomb at St Praxed's Church', 95

A Blot in the 'Scutcheon, 19 n.3, 45-7, 107 'Caliban Upon Setebos', 104 n.8 'Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came', xxiii Colombe's Birthday, 43 n.2, 107, 146 'The Dance of Death', 31 Dramatic Lyrics, 107 Dramatic Romances and Lyrics, 19 n.3 Dramatis Personae, 98 n.3, 100 n.4 'Dubiety' (quoted), 143 Epilogue to Asolando, (quoted) 146; 150 Fifine at the Fair, 70 'The First-Born of Egypt', 31 'Fra Lippo Lippi', xxiii, 73 'Hail to the man who upward strives ... ', 133 'How they brought the good news from Ghent to Aix', 137-9 impromptus, 132, 133 n.1 'In a Balcony', 149-50 Incondita, 30 'The Isle's Enchantress', 133 La Saisiaz, 116, 121 'The Lady and the Painter', 154 'The Lost Leader', (quoted) 123 Luria, 19 n.3 'Martin Relph', 129 'Master Hugues of Saxe-Gotha', 139 Men and Women, 94-5, 98, 107, 114 'Mr Sludge the Medium', 66 n.9, 72, 98 'My Last Duchess', 139 '0, if you should see a rhinoceros ... ', 115

Parleyings With Certain People of Importance In Their Day, 32, 143 n.8

Pauline, 30-1, 33 Paracelsus, 18, 31, 37, 38, 43 n.2, 47, 144 'The Pied Piper of Hamelin', 43, 104 n.2 Pippa Passes, xxiii, 18, 43 n.6, 44, 107, 151, 155, 158; quoted 133

170 Index Prince Hohenstiel-Schwangau, Saviour of Society, 111 n.2 Poetical Works (1863), 43 n.2 Red Cotton Night-Cap Country, 76 'Rephan', 160 The Return of the Druses, 19 n.3, 44-5 'Reverie', 160 The Ring and the Book, 107, 111, 116, 122, 136; quoted, 114 'Saul', 149 Selections, 43 n.2, 132 Sardella, 44, 45, 144, 151-2, 158 A Soul's Tragedy, 19 n.3 Suatford, 32, 39-44, 100 'Terse Verse', 115 'To Edward FitzGerald', 147 n.3 'Waring', 48 'Words we might else have been compelled to say ... ', 39, 43 n.3 Browning, Robert Wiedemann Barrett ('Pen'), xx, xxii, 60, 63, 64, 64-5, 67, 68, 74, 86 n.3, 90, 91, 93, 96, 97, 101, 102, 107, 114 n.1, 119 n.1, 125, 129, 134, 148, 155, 161, 162, 163 Browning, Sarah Anna (RB's mother), 27, 29 n.1, 162 Browning, Sarianna (Sarah Anna, RB's sister), xxi, 28, 29, 63, 69, 100, 100 n.3, 121, 125, 126, 127 n.4, 147, 152-3, 159-60, 161, 163 Buchanan, Robert, 120-2 Bulwer, Henry (Lord Dalling), 42 Bulwer-Lytton, Edward (Lord Lytton), 42,43 Burne-Jones, Sir Edward, 116, 117 n.1 Byron, Annabella, Lady, 56 Byron, George Gordon, Lord, 8, 14, 147, 151 n.2, 152; The Bride of Abydos (quoted), 15; Don Juan, 16

Carlyle, Jane Welsh, 38, 115 Carlyle, Thomas, xxi, 29, 36-7, 60, 112, 115, 129, 140 Casa Guidi, 60, 63, 65, 66, 84-5, 92, 101-3

Cassels, Walter, 97 Castellani (goldsmith and jeweller), 90 n.7 Cavour, Count Camillo Benso di, 89, 102 Chambers, Dr William, 11 Chasles, Philarete, 12 Chaucer, Geoffrey, 58, 96, 145 Chorley, Henry Fothergill, 17, 18, 35 Cini, Dr, 161 Cobbe, Frances Power, 76-7 Coleridge, Samuel Taylor, 156 Coleridge, Sara, xxiii, 17, 81 Collins, (William) Wilkie, 138 Colvin, Sidney, xxi, 97 n.3, 112-13, 116, 118 n.1 Corkran, John Frazer, 62-3 Corkran, Henriette, xix, 62, 67-9, 125-7 Cornaro, Caterina, 152 The Camhi// Magazine, 93 Cornwall, Barry, see Bryan Waller Procter Corson, Hiram, 136-7 Crawford, Thomas, 82 Crosse, Cornelia, 111 Croxall, Samuel, 28 Curtis, Ariana and David Sargent, 149, 163 n.7 The Daily News, 128 Dall'Ongaro, Francesco, 65 Dante Alighieri, 60, 67 Defoe, Daniel, 29 (Robinson Crusoe) Dickens, Charles, 39 (Pickwick Papers) Domett, Alfred, 47-8 Dow, James, 39, 42 Dufferin, Frederick Hamilton-TempleBlackwood, Marquess of, 162 Dumas, Alexandre pere, 65

Eckley, David, 97 Eckley, Sophia-May (Sophie), 98 n.1 Euganean Hills, 152 Field, Kate, xx-xxi, 60, 78, 87-9 Field, Michael (pseudonym of Katharine Bradley and Edith Cooper), 160

Index

Fiori, Margherita, 161 FitzGerald, Edward, 147 n.3 Fitzgerald, Edward Marlborough, 42 Flower, Eliza, 31 n.l, 33, 34 Flower (Adams), Sarah, 33 Flush, 51, 54, 63, 67-8 Forster, John, xxi, 31 n.6, 39-43, 44, 46, 109-11, 147 n.2 Fox, Rev. William Johnson, 30, 31, 33, 34, 43 n.l, 45, 147 n.2 Froude, James Anthony, 112 Furnivall, Frederick James, xxii, 134-5 Garibaldi, Giuseppe, 96 Gladstone, Mary, 116-17 Gladstone, William Ewart, 117, 129 Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von, 81 (Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre) Gordigiani, Michele, 71 Gosse, Edmund, xxii, xxiii, 143-7 Gozzi, Carlo, 153 Great Exhibition, 64 Grove, William, 127-9 Halle, Sir Charles, xxii Harness, William, 35 Hawthorne, Julian, 123-4 Hawthorne, Nathaniel, xx, 90-2, 92 n.4, 93 n.l Hawthorne, Sophia, xx, 91, 92 Hawthorne Lathrop, Rose, 92 n.4 Hayter, Charles, 134 Hickey, Emily, 135 Hillard, George Stillman, 57-8 Home, Daniel Dunglas, xxii, 92 Homer, xix, 4 Horne, Richard Henry 'Hengist', xx, 56, 66 n.9, 72 Hosmer, Harriet Goodhue (Hattie), 84,85 Houghton, Lord (Richard Monckton Milnes), 91 Hugo, Victor, 33 Hunt, Games Henry) Leight, 36, 37 Hunt, William Holman, 73 Hunter, Rev. George Barrett, 53 n.4 Huxley, Thomas Henry, 140

171

James, Henry, xxii, 107-8, 133 n.3, 164 Jameson, Anna Brownell, xix, 53-7, 66 n.4, 87 ]ebb, Richard, 115 Jerdan, William, 42 Jowett, Benjamin, 113-14 Junius, 29 Karlin, Daniel (quoted), 58 Kean, Edmund, 30 Keats, John, 60, 156 Kenyon, Frederick, 163 Kenyon, John, 11 n.l, 35, 54, 56, 60, 81, 81-2 Killing No Murder, 29, 30 n.5 Kinney, Elizabeth Clementine, 84-6 Kinney, William Burnet, 84-6 Kirkup, Baron Seymour, 118 n.l Knowles, Sheridan, 43 Landon, Letitia Elizabeth, 17 Landor, Walter Savage, 11 n.l, 18, 95-6, 118 n.l, 140 Landseer, Sir Edwin, 110 Layard, Sir Austen Henry, 163 n. 7 Lehmann, Frederick, 109-11 Lehmann, Nina, 111 n.l Lehmann, Rudolf, xxii, 71, 109, 118 n.l, 119 Lehmann, Rudolf Chambers, 109-11 Leighton, Frederick (Lord), 116, 129 Lowell, James Russell, 59 Lytton, Lord, see Edward Bulwer-Lytton Lytton, Robert Bulwer ('Owen Meredith'), 102, 194 n.3 Maclise, Daniel, 36 Macready, William Charles, xxi, 38-43,44-7 Macready, Willy, 43 Macrone, John, 36 McSwiney, Daniel, 3, 7 Mallock, William Hurrell, 113-14 Mandeville, Bernard, 29 Manin, Daniele, 148 Martineau, Harriet, xix, 140

172 Index

Mazzini, Giuseppe, 65 Mill, John Stuart, 31 n.5, 147 n.2 Millais, Sir John Everett, 138 Milsand, Joseph, 76, 119 n.1 Milton, John, 29, 137 Mitford, Mary Russell, xix, xxiii, 10-13, 14, 15, 16, 18, 35, 53, 61 Mignon, 81 Monclar, Count Andre Victor Amedee de Ripert-, 31 Moscheles, Felix, 132-4 Mundella, John Anthony, 129 Napoleon I, 152, 153 Napoleon III (Louis Napoleon Bonaparte), 64, 65, 66 nn.6-7, 88, 96 New Shakespere Society, 135 Nightingale, Florence, xix, 86-7 Norton, Charles Eliot, 80, 103 Ogilvy, David, 66 Ogilvy,Eliza,xx, 63-6 'Old Yellow Book', 136 Orr, Alexandra, xxiii, 27-9, 38, 44, 95, 100, 116, 117-18, 127 n.3, 129, 160-3, 163 n.7 Osbaldiston, D. W., 39, 40 Paganini, Nicolo, 36 Paget, Sir james, 32 Pall Mall Gazette, 128 Parker, Theodore, 103 Peruzzi de' Medici, Edith, see Edith Story Petrarch (Francesco Petrarca), 57 n.4 Phelps, Samuel, 46 Plato, 12 Pope, Alexander, 4 Potter, (Philip) Cipriani, 32 Powers, Hiram, 84 Price, Sir Uvedale, 8, 10 n.2 Procter, Ann Skepper, 45, 46 Procter, Bryan Waller ('Barry Cornwall'), 45 n.2, 118 n.1 Quaire, Frances Mary du, 100 Quarles, Francis, 29

Ray or Reay, Martha, 139 Redi, Francesco, 32 n.2 Relfe, John, 32 Ricasoli, Baron Bettino, 89 Romagnoli, Ferdinanda, 57 n.3 Rossetti, Dante Gabriel, 70, 73 Rossetti, William Michael, xxiv n. 11, 69-72, 73-4, 78-9, 119-20 Ruskin, John, xxiii, 94-5, 134 Salvini, Tommaso, 113 San Martino, Battle of, 88 Sand, George, 63 Sandwich, John Montague, Earl of, 139 Sartoris, Adelaide, 118, 119 n.1 Shakespeare, William, 20, 47, 122, 137, 156; Hamlet, 43 n.1, 94; King Lear, 113; Othello, 113 Sharp, William, 159 Shelley, Percy Bysshe, 147, 152, 156 Sidney, Robert, 32 Smalley, George Washburn and family, 123 Smith [&] Elder (publishers), 135 Smith, Anne Egerton, 121 Smith, George Murray, 163 n.4 Smith, Henry, 42 Solferino, Battle of, 88 Somerset, Charles Seymour, Duke of, 139 Sophocles (Oedipus), 113 n.2 Spenser, Edmund, 8, 137 Stephen, Sir Leslie, 131 Story, Edith (Peruzzi de' Medici), 95-6, 97 n.1 Story, Emelyn, 59, 96, 107 Story, joseph, 59, 97 n.1 Story, Julian, 96 Story, Waldo, 96 Story, William Wetmore, 59, 96, 97 n.3, 100 n.2, 101-4, 107 Stanley, Arthur Penrhyn, 129 Swedenborg, Emanuel, 98 Swinburne, Algernon Charles, 124, 125 n.2 Symons, Arthur, 118 n.1

Index 173

Talfourd, Field, 70 Talfourd, Thomas Noon, 35 n.1, 42 Tasso, Torquato, 67 Taylor, Bayard, 81-2 Tennyson, Alfred (Lord), xxii, 60, 72, 73, 75, 99, 114-16, 129, 131, 140, 147 n.3, 156 Tennyson, Emily, 147 n.3 Tennyson, Frederick, xx Tennyson, Hallam, 114-15, 116 Thackeray (Richie), Anne, xxi, 7, 74-6, 115, 118 Thackeray, William Makepeace, xix-xx, 63, 76, 93-4 Theosophical Society, 127 The Times, 128

Trollope, Thomas Adolphus, 61-2 Twisleton, Ellen, 83 Victor, Emanuel, King, 88 Voltaire (Fran