The Brownings Part 1

The Brownings.

by Lilian Whiting.

FOREWORD

The present volume was initiated in Florence, and, from its first inception, invested with the cordial a.s.sent and the sympathetic encouragement of Robert Barrett Browning. One never-to-be-forgotten day, all ethereal light and loveliness, has left its picture in memory, when, in company with Mr. Browning and his life-long friend, the Marchesa Peruzzi di' Medici (_nata_ Story), the writer of this biography strolled with them under the host's orange trees and among the riotous roses of his Florentine villa, "La Torre All' Antella," listening to their sparkling conversation, replete with fascinating reminiscences. To Mr. Browning the tribute of thanks, whose full scope is known to the Recording Angel alone, is here offered; and there is the blending of both privilege and duty in grateful acknowledgements to Messrs. Smith, Elder, & Company for their courtesy in permitting the somewhat liberal drawing on their published Letters of both the Brownings, on which reliance had to be based in any effort to

"Call up the buried Past again,"

and construct the story, from season to season, so far as might be, of that wonderful interlude of the wedded life of the poets.

Yet any formality of thanks to this house is almost lost sight of in the rush of memories of that long and mutually-trusting friendship between the late George Murray Smith, the former head of this firm, and Robert Browning, a friendship which was one of the choicest treasures in both their lives.

To The Macmillan Company, the publishers for both the first and the present Lord Tennyson; To Houghton Mifflin Company; to Messrs. Dodd, Mead, & Company; to The Cornhill Magazine (to which the writer is indebted for some data regarding Browning and Professor Ma.s.son); to each and all, acknowledgments are offered for their courtesy which has invested with added charm a work than which none was ever more completely a labor of love.

To Edith, Contessa Rucellai (_nata_ Bronson), whose characteristically lovely kindness placed at the disposal of this volume a number of letters written by Robert Browning to her mother, Mrs. Arthur Bronson, special grat.i.tude is offered.

"Poetry," said Mrs. Browning, "is its own exceeding great reward." Any effort, however remote its results from the ideal that haunted the writer, to interpret the lives of such transcendent genius and n.o.bleness as those of Robert and Elizabeth Barrett Browning, must also be its own exceeding reward in leading to a pa.s.sion of pursuit of all that is highest and holiest in the life that now is, and in that which is to come.

LILIAN WHITING

THE BRUNSWICK, BOSTON Midsummer Days, 1911

CHAPTER I

1812-1833

"Allons! after the Great Companions! and to belong to them!"

"To know the universe itself as a road--as many roads--as roads for travelling souls."

THE MOST EXQUISITE ROMANCE OF MODERN LIFE--ANCESTRY AND YOUTH OF ROBERT BROWNING--LOVE OF MUSIC--FORMATIVE INFLUENCES--THE FASCINATION OF BYRON--A HOME "CRAMMED WITH BOOKS"--THE SPELL OF Sh.e.l.lEY-- "INCONDITA"--POETIC VOCATION DEFINITELY CHOSEN--"PAULINE."

Such a very page _de Contes_ is the life of the wedded poets, Robert and Elizabeth Barrett Browning, that it is difficult to realize that this immortal idyl of Poetry, Genius, and Love was less than fifteen years in duration, out of his seventy-seven, and her fifty-five years of life. It is a story that has touched the entire world

"... with mystic gleams, Like fragments of forgotten dreams,"

this story of beautiful a.s.sociations and friendships, of artistic creation, and of the entrance on a wonderful realm of inspiration and loveliness. At the time of their marriage he was in his thirty-fifth, and she in her forty-first year, although she is described as looking so youthful that she was like a girl, in her slender, flower-like grace; and he lived on for twenty-eight years after

"Clouds and darkness Fell upon Camelot,"

with the death of his "Lyric Love." The story of the most beautiful romance that the world has ever known thus falls into three distinctive periods,--that of the separate life of each up to the time of their marriage; their married life, with its scenic setting in the enchantment of Italy; and his life after her withdrawal from earthly scenes. The story is also of duplex texture; for the outer life, rich in a.s.sociations, travel, impressions, is but the visible side of the life of great creative art. A delightful journey is made, but its record is not limited to the enjoyment of friends and place; a poem is written whose charm and power persist through all the years.

[Ill.u.s.tration: BUSTS OF ROBERT AND ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING

Made in 1861 by William Wetmore Story]

No adequate word could be written of the Brownings that did not take account of this twofold life of the poets. It is almost unprecedented that the power and resplendence and beauty of the life of art should find, in the temporal environment, so eminent a correspondence of beauty as it did with Robert and Elizabeth Browning. Not that they were in any wise exempt from sorrow and pain; the poet, least of all, would choose to be translated, even if he might, to some enchanted region remote from all the mingled experiences of humanity; it is the common lot of destiny, with its prismatic blending of failure and success, of purpose and achievement, of hope and defeat, of love and sorrow, out of which the poet draws his song.

He would not choose

"That jar of violet wine set in the air, That palest rose sweet in the night of life,"

to the exclusion of the common experiences of the day.

"Who never ate his bread in sorrow, Who never spent the darksome hours Weeping, and watching for the morrow, He knows you not, ye unseen Powers."

But to those who, poets or otherwise, see life somewhat in the true proportion of its lasting relations, events are largely trans.m.u.ted into experiences, and are realized in their extended relations. The destiny of the Brownings led them into constantly picturesque surroundings; and the force and manliness of his nature, the tender sweetness and playful loveliness of hers, combined with their vast intellectual range, their mutual genius for friendships, their devotion to each other and to their son, their reverence for their art, and their lofty and n.o.ble spirituality of nature,--all united to produce this exquisite and unrivaled romance of life,--

"A Beauty pa.s.sing the earth's store."

The rapture of the poet's dream pervaded every experience.

"O Life, O Poetry, Which means life in life."

The trans.m.u.tation of each into the other, both Life and Poetry, as revealed in their lives, is something as exceptional as it is beautiful in the world's history.

It is only to those who live for something higher than merely personal ends, that the highest happiness can come; and the aim of these wedded poets may well be read in the lines from "Aurora Leigh":

"... Beloved, let us love so well, Our work shall still be better for our love, And still our love be sweeter for our work, And both commended, for the sake of each, By all true workers and true lovers born."

In the ancestry of Robert Browning there was nothing especially distinctive, although it is representative of the best order of people; of eminently reputable life, of moderate means, of culture, and of a.s.sured intelligence. It is to the Brownings of Dorsetshire, who were large manor-owners in the time of Henry VII, that the poet's family is traced.

Robert Browning, the grandfather of the poet, was a clerk in the Bank of England, a position he obtained through the influence of the Earl of Shaftesbury. Entering on this work at the age of twenty, he served honorably for fifty years, and was promoted to the position of the Bank Stock office, a highly responsible place, that brought him in constant contact with the leading financiers of the day. Born in 1749, he had married, in 1778, Margaret t.i.ttle, the inheritor of some property in the West Indies, where she was born of English parentage. The second Robert, the father of the poet, was the son of this union. In his early youth he was sent out to take charge of his mother's property, and his grandson, Robert Barrett Browning, relates with pardonable pride how he resigned the post, which was a lucrative one, because he could not tolerate the system of slave labor prevailing there. By this act he forfeited all the estate designed for him, and returned to England to face privation and to make his own way. He, too, became a clerk in the Bank of England, and in 1811, at the age of thirty, married Sarah Anna Wiedemann, the daughter of a ship-owner in Dundee. Mr. Wiedemann was a German of Hamburg, who had married a Scotch lady; and thus, on his maternal side, the poet had mingled Scotch and German ancestry. The new household established itself in Southampton Street, Camberwell, and there were born their two children, Robert, on May 7, 1812, and on January 7, 1814, Sarah Anna, who came to be known as Sarianna through all her later life.

The poet's father was not only an efficient financier, but he was also a man of scholarly culture and literary tastes. He was a lover of the cla.s.sics, and was said to have known by heart the first book of the Iliad, and the Odes of Horace. There is a legend that he often soothed his little son to sleep by humming to him an ode of Anacreon. He wrote verse, he was a very clever draughtsman, and he was a collector of rare books and prints. Mr. W. J. Stillman, in his "Autobiography of a Journalist," refers to the elder Browning, whom he knew in his later years, as "a serene, untroubled soul,... as gentle as a gentle woman, a man to whom, it seemed to me, no moral conflict could ever have arisen to cloud his frank acceptance of life as he found it come to him.... His unworldliness had not a flaw." In Browning's poem ent.i.tled "Development" (in "Asolando") he gives this picture of his father and of his own childhood:

"My Father was a scholar and knew Greek.

When I was five years old, I asked him once 'What do you read about?'

'The siege of Troy.'

'What is a siege, and what is Troy?'

Whereat He piled up chairs and tables for a town, Set me a-top for Priam, called our cat --Helen, enticed away from home (he said) By wicked Paris, who couched somewhere close Under the footstool....

This taught me who was who and what was what; So far I rightly understood the case At five years old; a huge delight it proved And still proves--thanks to that instructor sage My Father...."

The poet's mother was a true gentlewoman, characterized by fervent religious feeling, delicacy of perception, and a great love for music. She was reared in the Scottish kirk, and her husband in the Church of England, but they both connected themselves after their marriage with an "Independent" body that held their meetings in York Street, where the Robert Browning Hall now stands. They were, however, greatly attached to the Rev. Henry Melvill (later Canon at St. Paul's), whose evening service they habitually attended. While the poet's mother had little training in music, she was a natural musician, and was blessed with that keen, tremulous susceptibility to musical influence that was so marked a trait in her son. William Sharp pictures a late afternoon, when, playing softly to herself in the twilight, she was startled to hear a sound in the room.