The Brownings Part 17

Live for fame, side by side with Agnolo!

Rafael is waiting; up to G.o.d, all three!'

I might have done it for you...."

And that exquisite idyl of "the love of wedded souls" in "By the Fire-side." It requires no diviner to discover from whose image he drew the line,

"My perfect wife, my Leonor."

How Browning's art fused poetic truth and poetic beauty in all these poems, vital with keen and shrewd observation, deep with significance, and pervaded by the perpetual recognition of a higher range of achievements than are realized on earth.

"A man's grasp should exceed his reach, Or what's a heaven for?"

In all these poems can be traced the magic of Italy and happiness. (Are the two more than half synonymous?) The perfect sympathy, the delicate divination and intuitive comprehension with which Browning was surrounded by his wife, were the supreme source of the stimulus and development of his powers as a poet.

[Ill.u.s.tration: ANDREA DEL SARTO. PORTRAIT OF THE ARTIST AND HIS WIFE.

IN THE PITTI GALLERY, FLORENCE.

"_You turn your face, but does it bring your heart?_"

Andrea del Sarto.]

The Parisian winter was full of movement and interest. No twentieth-century prophet had then arisen to instruct the populace how to live on twenty-four hours a day, but the Brownings captured what time they could rescue from the devouring elements, rose early, breakfasted at nine, and gave the next hour and a half to Penini's lessons,--"the darling, idle, distracted child," who was "blossoming like a rose" all this time; who "learned everything by magnetism," and, however "idle," was still able in seven weeks to read French "quite surprisingly." Mrs. Browning had already finished and transcribed some six thousand lines (making five books) of "Aurora Leigh "; but she planned at least two more books to complete the poem, which must needs be ready by June; and when, by the author's calendar, it is February, by some necromancy June is apt to come in the next morning. The Brownings made it an invariable rule to receive no visitors till after four, but the days had still a trick of vanishing like the fleet angel who departs before he leaves his blessing. At all events, the last days of May came before "Aurora Leigh" was completed, and its author half despairingly realized that two weeks more were needed for the transcription of her little slips to the pages ready for the press.

Meantime Browning had occupied himself for a time in an attempt to revise "Sordello," an effort soon abandoned, as he saw that, for good or ill, the work must stand as first written.

Madame Mohl's "evenings" continued to attract Browning, where he met a most congenial and brilliant circle, and while his wife was unable to accompany him to these mild festivities, she insisted that he should avail himself of these opportunities for intercourse with French society. With Lady Monson he went to see Ristori in "Medea," finding her great, but not, in his impression, surpa.s.sing Rachel. Monckton Milnes comes over to Paris, and a Frenchman of letters gives a dinner for him, at which Browning meets George Sand and Cavour.

The success of "Men and Women" was by this time a.s.sured. Browning stood in the full light of recognition on both sides the ocean. For America--or rather, perhaps, one should say, Boston, for American recognition focused in Boston (which was then, at all events, incontestably the center of all "sweetness and light")--discerned the greatness of Robert Browning as swiftly as any transatlantic dwellers on the watch-tower.

Rossetti, who from the days that he copied "Pauline" in the British Museum Library, not knowing the author, was an ardent admirer of Browning, found himself in Paris, and he and Browning pa.s.sed long mornings in the Louvre.

The painter declared that Browning's knowledge of early Italian art was beyond that of any one whom he had met, Ruskin not excepted.

Ruskin was a standard of artistic measurement in those days to a degree hardly conceivable now; not that much of his judgment does not stand the test of time, but that authoritative criticism has so many embodiments.

Mrs. Browning, to whom Ruskin was one of the nearest of her circle, considered him a critic who was half a poet as well, and her clear insight discerned what is now universally recognized, that he was "enc.u.mbered by a burning imagination." She told him that he was apt to light up any object he looked upon, "just as we, when we carried torches into the Vatican, were not clear as to how much we brought to that wonderful Demosthenes, folding the marble round him in its thousand folds," and questioned as to where was the dividing line between the sculptor and the torch-bearer.

This fairly clairvoyant insight of Mrs. Browning into character, the ability to discern defects as well as virtues where she loved, and to love where she discerned defects, is still further ill.u.s.trated by a letter of hers to Ruskin on the death of Miss Mitford. "But no, her 'judgment'

was not 'unerring,'" wrote Mrs. Browning. "She was too intensely sympathetic not to err often ... if she loved a person it was enough....

And yet ... her judgment could be fine and discriminating, especially upon subjects connected with life and society and manners."

Again, to a friend who had met a great bereavement she also wrote in these Paris days:

"We get knowledge in losing what we hoped for, and liberty by losing what we love. This world is a fragment, or, rather, a segment, and it will be rounded presently. Not to doubt that is the greatest blessing it gives now. The common impression of death is as false as it is absurd. A mere change of circ.u.mstances,--what more? And how near these spirits are, how conscious of us, how full of active energy, of tender reminiscence and interest in us? Who shall dare to doubt? For myself, I do not doubt at all."

In that latest collection of Browning's poems, no one excited more discussion at the time than "The Statue and the Bust." There being then no Browning Societies to authoritatively decide the poet's real meaning on any disputed point, the controversy a.s.sumed formidable proportions. Did Browning mean this poem to be an _apologia_ for illegal love? was asked with bated breath.

The statue of Fernandino di Medici, in the Piazza dell' Annunziata, in Florence,--that magnificent equestrian group by Giovanni da Bologna,--is one of the first monuments that the visitor who has a fancy for tracing out poetic legends fares forth to see. As an example of plastic art, alone, it is well worth a pilgrimage; but as touched by the magic of the poet's art, it is magnetic with life. Dating back to 1608, it was left for Robert Browning to invest it with immortality.

"There's a palace in Florence, the world knows well And a statue watches it from the square."

In the poem Mr. Browning alludes to the cornice, "where now is the empty shrine"; but his son believes that there never was any bust in this niche, the bust being simply the poet's creation. The statue of the Grand Duke is remarkable enough to inspire any story; and the Florentine n.o.ble may well take pride in the manner that "John of Douay" has presented him, if he still "contrives" to see it, and still "laughs in his tomb" at the perpetual pilgrimage that is made to the scene of the legend, as well as to the royal Villa Petraja, also immortalized in Browning's poem.

June came, the closing books of "Aurora Leigh" had been written, and under the roof of her dear friend and cousin, Kenyon, who had begged the Brownings to accept the loan of his house in Devonshire Place, the last pages were transcribed, and the dedication made to the generous friend who was the appointed good angel of their lives. They were saddened by Kenyon's illness, which imprisoned him for that summer on the Isle of Wight, and after seeing "Aurora Leigh" through the press, they pa.s.sed a little time with him at Cowes, and also visited Mrs. Browning's sister Henrietta (Mrs. Surtees Cook), before setting out for Italy. No one in London missed them more than Dante Gabriel Rossetti. "With them has gone one of my delights," he said; "an evening resort where I never felt unhappy."

[Ill.u.s.tration: EQUESTRIAN STATUE OF FERDINANDO DE' MEDICI,

BY GIOVANNI DA BOLOGNA.

IN THE PIAZZA DELL' ANNUNZIATA, FLORENCE.

"_There's a palace in Florence the world knows well,_ _And a statue watches it from the square._"

The Ring and the Book.]

The success of "Aurora Leigh" was immediate, a second edition being called for within a fortnight, and edition after edition followed. This work, of which, twelve years before, she had a dim foreshadowing, as of a novel in verse, has the twofold interest of a great dramatic poem and of a philosophic commentary on art and life. To estimate it only as a social treatise is to recognize but one element in its kaleidoscopic interest.

Yet the narrative, it must be confessed, is fantastic and unreal. When the conception of the work first dawned upon her, she said she preferred making her story to choosing that of any legend, for the theme; but the plot is its one defect, and is only saved from being a serious defect by the richness and splendor of thought with which it is invested. The poem is to some degree a spiritual autobiography; its narrative part having no foundation in reality, but on this foundation she has recorded her highest convictions on the philosophy of life. Love, Art, Ethics, the Christianity of Christ,--all are here, in this almost inexhaustible mine of intellectual and spiritual wealth. It is a poem peculiarly calculated to kindle and inspire. What a pa.s.sage is this:

"... I can live At least my soul's life, without alms from men, And if it be in heaven instead of earth, Let heaven look to it,--I am not afraid."

A profound occult truth is embodied in the following:

"Whate'er our state we must have made it first; And though the thing displease us,--aye, perhaps, Displease us warrantably, never doubt That other states, though possible once, and then Rejected by the instinct of our lives, If then adopted had displeased us more.

What we choose may not be good; But that we choose it, proves it good for us."

No Oriental savant could more forcibly present his doctrine of karma than has Mrs. Browning in these lines. Her recognition of the power of poetry is here expressed:

"And plant a poet's word even deep enough In any man's breast, looking presently For offshoots, you have done more for the man Than if you dressed him in a broadcloth coat, And warmed his Sunday pottage at your fire."

Poetry was to her as serious a thing as life itself. "There has been no playing at skittles for me in either poetry, or life," she said; "I never mistook pleasure for the final cause of poetry; nor leisure, for the hour of the poet."

In the success of "Aurora Leigh" she was herself surprised. Private letters from strangers filled with the warmest, even if sometimes indiscriminate, praises, rained down upon her, and she found the press "astonishing in its good will." That her "golden-hearted Robert" was "in ecstasies about it, far more than as if it had been a book of his own,"

was apparently her most precious reward. Milsand, who she had fancied would hardly like this poem, wrote a critique of it for the _Revue_ which touched her with its "extraordinary kindness." He asked and obtained permission to translate it into French, and in a letter to Miss Sarianna Browning she speaks of her happiness that he should thus distinguish the poem.

Soon after their arrival in Florence came the saddest of news, that of the death of John Kenyon, their beloved friend, whose last thoughtful kindness was to endow them with a legacy insuring to them that freedom from material care which is so indispensable to the best achievements in art.

During his life he had given to them one hundred pounds a year, and in his will he left them ten thousand guineas,--the largest of the many legacies that his generous will contained.

The carnival, always gay in Florence, was exceedingly so that year, and Penini, whose ardor for a blue domino was gratified, and who thought of nothing else for the time being, seemed to communicate his raptures, so that Browning proposed taking a box at the opera ball, and entertaining some invited friends with gallantina and champagne. Suddenly the air grew very mild, and he decided that his wife might and must go; she sent out hastily to buy a mask and domino (he had already a beautiful black silk one, which she later trans.m.u.ted into a black silk gown for herself), and while her endurance and amus.e.m.e.nt kept her till two o'clock in the morning, the poet and his friends remained till after four. The Italian carnival, however wild and free it may be (and is), yet never degenerates into rudeness. The inborn delicacy and gentle refinement of the people render this impossible. Yet for the time being there is perfect social equality, and at this ball the Grand Duke and Wilson's husband, Ferdinando, were on terms of fellowship.

In the early April of that spring the summer suddenly dawned upon lovely Florence like a transformation scene on a stage. The trees in the Cascine were all a "green mist." Everywhere was that ethereal enchantment of the Flower City, with her gleaming towers and domes, her encircling purple hills and picturesque streets. And how, indeed, could any one who has watched the loveliness of a Florentine springtime ever escape its haunting spell? The dweller in Italy may see a thousand things to desire,--better public privileges, more facilities for comfort, but the day comes when, if he has learned to love the Italian atmosphere so intensely that all the glories of earth could not begin to compensate for it, he would give every conceivable achievement of modern art and progress for one hour among those purple hills, for one hour with the sunset splendors over the towers, and the olive-crowned heights of Fiesole and Bellosguardo; or to hear again the impa.s.sioned strains of street singers ring out in pathetic intensity in the bewildering moonlight. _La Bella Firenze_, lying dream-enchanted among her amethyst hills, would draw her lover from the wilds of Siberia, for even one of those etherial evenings, when the stars blaze in a splendor over San Miniato, or one rose-crowned morning, when the golden sunshine gilds the tower of the old cathedral on Fiesole.

In that spring Mrs. Stowe visited Florence, and the Brownings liked her and rejoiced that she had moved the world for good. To Mrs. Jameson Mrs.