The Brownings Part 22

The "square old yellow book" which Browning had chanced upon in the market-place of San Lorenzo, in that June of 1860, was not a volume, but a "lawyer's file of doc.u.ments and pamphlets." In relating how he found the book Browning says, in the poem:

"... I found this book, Gave a _lira_ for it, eightpence English just, (Mark the predestination!) when a Hand, Always above my shoulder, pushed me once,

Across a Square in Florence, crammed with booths."

He stepped out on the narrow terrace, built

"Over the street and opposite the church,

Whence came the clear voice of the cloistered ones Chanting a chant made for midsummer nights--"

and making his own the story.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE PALAZZO RICCARDI, FLORENCE.

ERECTED BY MICHELOZZO ABOUT 1435.

"_....Riccardi where they lived_ _His race........_"

The Ring and the Book.]

In 1908 Dr. Charles W. Hodell was enabled by the courtesy of Balliol College, to whom Browning left the "Old Yellow Book," to make a photographic reproduction of the original doc.u.ments, to which Dr. Hodell added a complete and masterly translation, and a n.o.ble essay ent.i.tled "On the Making of a Great Poem," the most marvelous a.n.a.lysis and commentary on "The Ring and the Book" that has ever been produced. The photographed pages of the original doc.u.ments, the translation, and this essay were published by the Carnegie Inst.i.tution, in a large volume ent.i.tled "The Old Yellow Book." In his preface Professor Hodell records that he was drawn to the special study of this poem by Professor Hiram Corson, Litt.D., LL.D., to whom he reverently refers as "my Master." Of "The Ring and the Book"

Dr. Hodell says:

"In the wide range of the work of Robert Browning no single poem can rival 'The Ring and the Book,' in scope and manifold power. The subject had fallen to his hands at the very fulness of his maturity, by 'predestination,' as it seemed to him. In the poem, as he planned his treatment, there was opportunity for every phase of his peculiar genius.... so that the completed masterpiece becomes the macrocosm of his work.... Without doubt it may be held to be the greatest poetic work, in a long poem, of the nineteenth century. It is a drama of profound spiritual realities.

'So write a book shall mean beyond the facts, Suffice the eye, and save the soul beside.'

Browning was the only important poet of the Victorian age who did not draw upon the Morte d'Arthur legends; and the rich mythology of the Greeks tempted him as little. The motive that always appealed to him most was that of the activity of the human spirit, its power to dominate all material barriers to transcend every temporary limit, by the very power of its own energy."

In his historic researches Professor Hodell found reason to believe that the Pope, in "The Ring and the Book," was Stephen VI, and not VII; and writing to Robert Barrett Browning to inquire regarding this point, he received from the poet's son the following interesting letter, which, by Dr. Hodell's generous courtesy, is permitted to appear in this book.

LA TORRE ALL' ANTELLA, FLORENCE, Jan. 6, 1904.

MY DEAR SIR,--I wish I were able to give you the information you ask me for, but my father's books are in Venice, and I have not any here touching on the matter to refer to.

If Pope Stephen was, as you say, the Sixth and not the Seventh, of course the mistake is obvious and perhaps attributable to an unconscious slip of the memory, which with my father was not at its best in dates and figures. It is not likely that such an error should have appeared in any old work, such as he would have consulted; and certainly it was not caused by carelessness, for he was painstaking to a degree, and had a proper horror of blundering, which is the word he would have used. I can only account for such a mistake as this--which he would have been the first to p.r.o.nounce unpardonable--by his absent-mindedness, his attention being at the moment absorbed by something else. Absent-mindedness was one of his characteristics, over instances of which he used to laugh most heartily. My father's intention, I know, was to be scrupulously accurate about the facts in this poem. I may tell you as an instance that, wishing to be sure that there was moonlight on a particular night, he got a distinguished mathematician to make the necessary calculation. The description of the finding of the book is without doubt true in every detail. Indeed, to this day the market at San Lorenzo is very much what it was then and as I can remember it. Not long ago, I myself bought an old volume there off a barrow.

The "Yellow Book" was probably picked up in June of 1860 before going to Rome for the winter--the last my father pa.s.sed in Italy. As it had always been understood that the Book should be presented to Balliol, I went soon after my father's death to stay a few days with Jowett, and gave it to him.

In the portrait that hangs in Balliol Hall I painted my father as he sat to me with the Book in his hands.

Nothing would have gratified him more than what you tell me about the interest with which his works are studied in America, and I need not say how much pleasure this gives me.

Believe me with many thanks for your kind letter,

Yours Very Sincerely,

R. BARRETT BROWNING.

A very curious discovery was made in Rome, in the winter of 1900, by Signer Giorgi, the Librarian of the Royal Casanatense Library, in an ancient ma.n.u.script account of curious legal trials, among which were those of Beatrice Cenci, of Miguel de Molinos (in 1686), and of the trial and sentence of Guido Franceschini. The fact that taxes credulity in regard to this ma.n.u.script, of whose existence, even, no one in modern times had ever dreamed, is that the three points of view, as presented by Browning in the "Half Rome," "The Other Half Rome," and "Tertium Quid," are in accord with those given in this strange doc.u.ment, which for more than a century had lain undisturbed in the archives.

In a little explanation regarding the significance of the closing lines of "The Ring and the Book," also kindly given by Robert Barrett Browning, it seems that his mother habitually wore a ring of Etruscan gold, wrought by Castellani, with the letters "A. E. I." on it; and that after her death the poet always wore it on his watch-chain, as does now his son. In the tablet placed on Casa Guidi to the memory of Mrs. Browning (the inscription of which was written by the Italian poet, Tommaseo) the source of the other allusion, of the linking Italy and England, is found. As the reader will recall, the lines run:

"And save the soul! If this intent save mine,-- If the rough ore be rounded to a ring, Render all duty which good ring should do, And, failing grace, succeed in guardianship,-- Might mine but lie outside thine, Lyric Love, Thy rare gold ring of verse (the poet praised) Linking our England to his Italy!"

Dr. Corson especially notes Browning's opening invocation to his wife, praying her aid and benediction in the work he has undertaken. "This pa.s.sage," says Dr. Corson, "has a remarkable movement, the un.o.btrusive but distinctly felt alliteration contributing to the effect."

"O lyric Love, half angel and half bird And all a wonder and a wild desire,-- Boldest of hearts that ever braved the sun, Took sanctuary within the holier blue."

That Browning could never have created the character of Pompilia, save for that all-enfolding influence of the character of his wife, all the greater critics of "The Ring and the Book" agree. To Dr. Corson, Browning said of her:

"I am not sorry, now, to have lived so long after she went away, but I confess to you that all my types of women were beautiful and blessed by my perfect knowledge of one woman's pure soul. Had I never known Elizabeth, I never could have written 'The Ring and the Book.'"

Of Pompilia Dr. Hodell also says:

"... But there is another influence in the creation of this ideal character beside that of the Madonna, it was the Madonna of his home, the mother of his own child, whose spiritual nature was as noteworthy as her intellect. And before this spiritual nature the poet bowed in humble reverence."

Mrs. Orr, too, has written:

"Mrs. Browning's spiritual presence was more than a presiding memory in the heart. I am convinced that it entered largely into the conception of Pompilia.

"It takes, however, both the throbbing humanity of Balaustion and the saintly glory of Pompilia to express fully the nature of Elizabeth Barrett Browning as she appeared to her husband."

Dr. Dowden, Brooke, Corson, Herford, Hodell, Chesterton, and other authoritative critics allude to their recognition of Mrs. Browning in the character of Pompilia; and no reader of this immortal masterpiece of poetic art can ever fail to find his pulses thrilling with those incomparable lines, spoken in her last hour on earth by Pompilia:

"O lover of my life, O soldier-saint, No work begun shall ever pause for death!

Love will be helpful to me more and more I' the coming course, the new path I must tread--

Tell him that if I seem without him now, That's the world's insight! Oh, he understands!