The Complete Works of Robert Browning: Poems, Plays, Letters & Biographies in One Edition. Robert Browning
whose façade was a faint glow of color from its medallions of colored marbles, and whose balconies and arched windows seemed especially designed for a poet’s habitation. But the ancient structure was found to be in a too perilous condition, and Browning, with never-failing regret, resigned the prospect; nor was he ever consoled, it is said, until, some years later, his son became the owner of the noble Palazzo Rezzonico.
Every day the poet saw Venice transformed into new splendor. “To see these divine sunsets is the joy of life,” he would say, as a city, flushed with rose, reflected itself in pale green waters, and the golden sunset filled with liquid light every narrow street and passage, contrasting sharply with the dense black shadows. Browning had a love of the sky that made its glorious panorama one of the delights of his life.
One of the crowning honors of the poet’s life invested these days for him with renewed vitality of interest,—that of the formation of the Browning Society in London for the study and promulgation of his poetic work. This was, indeed, a contrast to the public attitude of thirty years before. Once, in a letter to Mrs. Millais (dated January 7, 1867) he had described himself to her as “the most unpopular poet that ever was.” The Browning Society was due, in its first inception, to Dr. Furnivall and to Miss Emily Hickey, and its founding was entirely without Browning’s knowledge. Although the poet avowed himself as “quite other than a Browningite,” he could not fail to be touched and gratified by such a mark of interest and appreciation.
Dr. Hiram Corson, Professor of Literature at Cornell University, had, however, formed a Browning Club, composed of professors and their wives and many eminent scholars, some four or five years before the formation of the Browning Society in London, and the notable Browning readings which Professor Corson had given continually in many of the large cities and before universities, had been of incalculable aid in making Robert Browning’s poetry known and understood in the United States. As an interpreter of Browning, Dr. Corson stood unrivaled. His aim was to give to his audience the spiritual meaning of the poem read. His rich voice had the choral intonation without which no poem can be vocally interpreted. His reading gave not only the articulated thought, but the spiritual message of the poet. It is hardly too much to say that no one has ever fully realized the dramatic power of Browning who has not listened to the interpretation of Dr. Corson. Of his own part in the creation of the Browning Society in London, Dr. Corson kindly contributed this record:
“I was stopping with my wife at the Inns of Court Hotel, on High Holborn. A day or two before receiving Mr. Browning’s invitation, Dr. Frederick James Furnivall dined with us, and after dinner we went over to the Inns of Court Gardens, just back of the hotel. There we walked about during the long evening twilight, and talked over the founding of a Society which Dr. Furnivall and Miss Emily Henriette Hickey, the poetess, had been contemplating, for the study of Browning’s poetry. I told him of what I had done at Cornell University, the previous four or five years, in a Browning Club composed of Professors and their wives, and in my University classes. It was decided that the London Browning Society should be organized in October; and I engaged to go over to England the following June, and read a paper before the Society; which I did at its eighth meeting, on the 23d of June, the subject of the paper being ‘The Idea of Personality as embodied in Robert Browning’s Poetry, and of Art as an intermediate Agency of Personality.’”
Another source of joy to Browning, and one that far exceeded that of any recognition of himself, was the increasing recognition of his son’s achievements in art. Barrett Browning was at this time a pupil of Rodin in Paris, devoting himself to sculpture with the same ardor that he gave to his painting. As to which expression in art was the more his métier, chi lo sa? The young man was the child of the muses, and all forms of art were to him a temperamental inheritance.
Oxford again honored Browning, this time in the June of 1882, with the degree of D.C.L. “I never saw my father happier than on this occasion,” Mr. Barrett Browning said to the writer of this volume when questioned regarding it; and another observer who was present speaks of Browning’s distinction in his red Oxford gown, his shoulders thrown back, and his swift, light step. One of the humors of the occasion was the dangling of a red cotton night-cap over his head by one of the undergraduates, who was in danger of a not ill-merited rebuke, but Browning interceded with the Vice-Chancellor not to be too hard “on the harmless drolleries of the young man.” It was in this Oxford gown, holding in his hand “the square old yellow book,” that Robert Barrett Browning painted the portrait of his father, which he presented to Oxford, and which now hangs, a treasured possession, in Balliol Hall, to which portrait some allusion has already been made.
Portrait of Robert Browning, by his Son.
Painted in 1882, and presented to Oxford University by the artist.
One of the most beautiful of the friendships of the last decade of the poet’s life was that with Mrs. Arthur Bronson, a very cultivated and charming American woman who for more than twenty years made her home in Venice. Casa Alvisi, on the Grand Canal, opposite Santa Maria della Salute, came to be such a delightful center of social life for the choice circle that Mrs. Bronson gathered around her, that its records fairly enter into the modern history of Venice. Adjoining Casa Alvisi was the old Giustiniani Palace, in which Mrs. Bronson had taken a suite of rooms that she might use them in dispensing her hospitalities. No one who has been the privileged guest of Mrs. Bronson can ever lose the grateful appreciation of her genius as a hostess. Her lovely hospitality was dispensed with the quality that entitled it to be considered as absolutely a special gift of the gods, and when she invited Browning and his sister to occupy these rooms in the Palazzo Giustiniani Recanti, it was with a grace that forestalled any refusal. At first Miss Browning did a little housekeeping on their own account, except that they dined and passed the evening with Mrs. Bronson; later on, for several seasons, they were her house-guests in Casa Alvisi,—that unique and dream-enchanted interior crowded with lovely Venetian things, and bibelots and bric-à-brac picked up the world over. But the brother and sister always occupied the rooms in the palace. It was after the first one of this series of annual visits that Browning wrote to Mrs. Bronson the following letter after his return to London:
19, Warwick Crescent, W.
Nov. 18, ’81.
I would not write at first arriving, Dear Friend, because I fancied that I might say too much all at once, and afterward be afraid of beginning again till some interval; this fortnight since I saw you, however, must pass for a very long interval indeed, I will try to tell you as quietly as possible that I never shall feel your kindness,—such kindness!—one whit less than I do now; perhaps I feel it “now” even more deeply than I could, at all events, realize that I was feeling.
You have given Venice an appreciation that will live in my mind with every delight of that dearest place in the world. But all the same you remain for me a dearest of friends, whether I see you framed by your Venice, or brightening up our bleak London, should you come there. In Venice, however, should I live and you be there next autumn, it will go hard with me if I do not meet you again.
What a book of memories, and instigations to get still more memories, does your most beautiful and precious book prove to me! I never supposed that photographers would have the good sense to use their art on so many out-of-the-way scenes and sights, just those I love most....
You—you have lost Lowell, and Field, and the rest of the good fellowship, but you will be sure of a succession of the sort.
On the poet’s seventieth birthday he received, from the Browning Societies of Oxford, Cambridge, Cornell University, and others, a gift of a complete set of his own works, bound in olive green morocco, in a beautifully carved oak case, with this inscription:
“To Robert Browning on his seventieth birthday, May 7th, 1882, from some members of the Browning Societies. These members having ascertained that the works of a Great Modern Poet are never in Robert Browning’s house, beg him to accept a set of these works which they assure him will be found worthy of his most serious attention.”
Dr.