The Complete Works of Robert Browning: Poems, Plays, Letters & Biographies in One Edition. Robert Browning
boyish delight.
In August of 1882, on their leisurely way to Venice, Browning and his sister lingered at Saint-Pierre la Chartreuse and at Gressoney Saint-Jean, where his enchanting outlook upon Monte Rosa was a continual joy, Mr. Browning spent one night in the monastery of the Grand Chartreuse, in order to hear the midnight mass; while Miss Browning, denied hospitality in the monastery, received that of the convent near at hand, where she was cordially entertained by the Mother Superior.
The Prologue of “Ferishtah’s Fancies,” published the next year, is dated from Gressoney, Val d’Aosta, and the lines,
“A fancy-freak by contrast born of thee,
Delightful Gressoney!”
will recall themselves to the memory. Miss Browning was an ideal companion in these mountain wanderings. She was equal to endless walks, and she had the accomplishment of being able to ride a mule or a donkey as one to the manor born. From Gressoney they looked up to the glaciers of Monte Rosa, almost overhanging, and from Saint-Pierre Browning wrote to a friend that they were in the roughest and most primitive inn, “but my sister bears it bravely.”
Italian recognition of Browning was stimulated and extended, if not primarily inspired, by Il Signor Dottore Nancioni, who had the Chair of Literature in the University of Florence, and whom the Brownings had first met in the old Siena days. As Milsand first made Browning known in France, through his critical papers in the Revue, so Nancioni published, in the Nuova Antologia, and in the Fanfulla della Domenica of Rome, several papers devoted to serious and critical study and interpretation of Browning’s work; and he made the journey from Rome to Venice to meet the poet again. The recital of poetry was by no means ended in Italy in the days of the Improvvisatori, and Professor Nanciani frequently gave readings from Browning before cultivated Italian audiences.
When Venice honored Goldoni with a statue, Browning was invited to contribute to that wonderful “Album” of letters, with which Italy characteristically commemorates all scholarly events, with contributions from literary men. The sonnet so pleased the Venetians that they gave it the place of honor in the album.
The London seasons during all these years were of unrivaled brilliancy. Browning was seen in all the great houses, and often for two weeks he would dine out every consecutive night. Dr. Corson, whose first visit to Browning was made in the early eighties, gave to a friend in a personal letter this little transcription of his first meeting with the poet, with whom he had long been in correspondence:
“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 mementoes 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,’ ‘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 any one 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 Hyacinthus de Archangelis, 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 don’t 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 Eton and others, in which there is a special preparation for the Universities. After a pause, he added, ‘no, nor at a university either. Italy was my university.’ In his ‘De Gustibus——’ he says:
‘Open my heart and you will see Graved inside of it, Italy.’
“While he was showing me ‘The Book,’ I asked him about a passage in ‘The Ring and the Book.’ He replied, ‘I don’t remember the passage. It has been some time since I read the poem, and I haven’t a copy of it in my house!’
“He showed me many of Mrs. Browning’s books—nearly all of them 24mo editions—said she couldn’t hold big books—English, French, Italian, Latin, and Greek books; a Hebrew Bible which had belonged to a distinguished English bishop, whose name I’ve forgotten. ‘Did Mrs. Browning read Hebrew?’ I asked. ‘Oh, yes,’ he replied, and added with a sigh, ‘she was a wonderful woman.’”
Church of San Lorenzo, Florence
“June was the month, Lorenzo named the Square.”
The Ring and the Book.
The succeeding summer found the Corsons again in London, and the following invitation from Browning particularly pleased them in its assurance that “nobody else” would be present.
Dear Professor Corson,—Could Mrs. Corson and yourself do my sister and me the great pleasure of taking luncheon with us—and nobody else—next Tuesday (27th) at one o’clock?
Believe me, dear Professor Corson,
Yours Truly Ever,—
Robert Browning.
On Browning’s return to England in 1861, after his wife’s death, he had entered into a most brilliant and congenial social life. Thackeray died soon after his return; but there were Carlyle, Ruskin, Jowett, Millais, Rossetti, Proctor, Matthew Arnold, Woolner, Leighton, Tennyson (whose companionship, as we have seen, was one of his keenest enjoyments), and his publisher, George Murray Smith, of the head of the house of Smith, Elder, and Company, who was one of his chosen friends. Carlyle died in 1881, but many of this group well outlived Browning. On New Year’s Day of 1884 Miss Browning wrote to Mrs. Bronson:
The very first word I write this year is to you, dearest friend, wishing you every good gift the earth below, and Heaven above, can offer. If Robert does not write his own share in these kind feelings, it is only because we have mutually agreed that we shall come more constantly before you if we keep our letters apart.
... You cannot think how incessantly we dwell on the memories of the pleasant past. We are in Casa Alvisi in spirit daily, and I picture to myself all that is going on in the well-loved rooms. I hope Edith works at her guitar. She will find that it will repay the trouble.
Give our kindest love to her, and take yourself our loving hearts.
God bless you this year.
Ever Yours Affectionately,
Sarianna Browning.
In a letter to Mrs. Bronson Browning alludes to the purchase of the new house in DeVere Gardens:
“... I am really in treaty—not too deeply in it for extrication at need—with the land-owner who proposes to build me the house I want,—freehold, if