The Complete Works of Robert Browning: Poems, Plays, Letters & Biographies in One Edition. Robert Browning
before which exercise of patience I had to sit to another gentleman, who will summon me again in due time,—all this since my return from Venice and the youthful five! However, when, two days ago, there was yet another application to sit, the bear within the ‘lion’ came out, and I declined, as little gruffly as I was able. And so the end is I can talk and enjoy myself—even at a distance—with a friend as suddenly dear as all hands from the clouds must needs be. I will not try and thank you for what you know I so gratefully have accepted,—and shall keep forever, I trust.
“Well, here is the Duke’s letter; he is a man of few words, and less protestation; but feels, as he should, your kindness, and will gladly acknowledge it, should you come to England, and it seems that you may. But what will Venice be without you next year, if we return there as we hope to do?
“... Mrs. Bloomfield Moore passed through London some three weeks ago, and at once wrote to me about what pictures of Robert’s might be visible? She at once bought the huge ‘Delivery to the Secular Arm,’ for the Philadelphia Academy of Fine Arts, and the ‘Dinard Market Woman’ for herself, and this so spontaneously, and I did hear in a day or two that she was convinced I had not asked half enough for the pictures! She had inquired at the Gallery where the larger one was exhibited, and they estimated its value at so much. I told her their estimate was not mine, and that Robert was thoroughly remunerated—to say nothing of what he would think of all this graciousness; and since her departure I have had an extremely gratifying letter full of satisfaction at her purchases,...”
On the death of Lord Houghton, Mr. Browning had been prevailed upon to accept the office of Foreign Correspondent to the Royal Academy; he was much beloved by the Academicians, many of whom were among his familiar friends, and that his son was an artist endeared to him all art.
To Mrs. Bronson Browning once remarked: “Do you know, dear friend, if the thing were possible, I would renounce all personal ambition and would destroy every line I ever wrote, if by so doing I could see fame and honors heaped on my Robert’s head.” Mrs. Bronson’s comment on this was that in his son he saw the image of his wife, whom he adored,—“literally adored,” she added.
At the Academy banquets Browning was always an honored guest, and his nomination by the President to the post of Foreign Correspondent was promptly ratified by the Council.
On the removal to DeVere Gardens, Mr. Browning took great pleasure in the arrangement of his home. His father’s library of six thousand books was now unpacked, and, for the first time, he had space for them; many of the beautiful old carvings, chests, cabinets, bookcases, that he had brought from Florence, could in the new home be placed to advantage. The visitor, to-day, to Mr. Barrett Browning’s Florentine villa will see many of these rich and elaborate furnishings, and the younger Browning will point out an immense sofa (that resembles a catafalque), with amused recollection of having once seen his father and Ruskin sitting side by side on it, “their feet dangling.” From Venice the poet had brought home, first and last, many curious and beautiful things,—a silver lamp, old sconces from churches, and many things of which he speaks in his letters to Mrs. Bronson.
The initial poem in “Asolando,” entitled “Rosny,” was written at the opening of the year 1888, and it was soon followed by “Beatrice Signorini” and “Flute-Music.” In February he writes to George Murray Smith, his publisher, of his impulse to revise “Pauline,” which had lain untouched for fifty years,—an impulse to “correct the most obvious faults ... letting the thoughts, such as they are, remain exactly as at first.” It seems that the portrait, too, that is to accompany the volume does not quite please him, and he suggests slight changes. “Were Pen here,” he says, “he could manage it all in a moment.”
This confidence was not undeserved. Richly gifted in many directions, a true child of the gods, Robert Barrett Browning has an almost marvelous gift in portraiture. He seems to be the diviner, the seer, as well as the artist, when transferring to canvas a face that interests him. The portrait of Milsand, to which allusion has before been made, and that of his father, painted in his Oxford robes, with “the old yellow book in his hand,” which is in Balliol, are signal illustrations of his power in portraying almost the very mental processes of thought and feeling and kindling imagination,—all that goes to make up the creative life of art.
He is fairly a connoisseur in literature, as well as in his own specialties of painting and sculpture; and the poetry of the elder Browning has no more critically appreciative reader than his son. Some volume of his father’s is always at hand in his traveling; and he, like all Browning-lovers, can never open any volume of Robert Browning’s without finding revealed to him new vistas of thought, renewed aspiration and resolve for all noble living, and infinite suggestiveness of spiritual achievement.
CHAPTER XII
1888-1889
“On the earth the broken arcs; in the heaven, a perfect round.”
“O thou soul of my soul! I shall clasp thee again,
And with God be the rest!”
“Asolando”—Last Days in DeVere Gardens—Letters of Browning and Tennyson—Venetian Lingerings and Friends—Mrs. Bronson’s Choice Circle—Browning’s Letters to Mrs. Bronson—Asolo—“In Ruby, Emerald, Chrysopras”—Last Meeting of Browning and Story—In Palazzo Rezzonico—Last Meeting with Dr. Corson—Honored by Westminster Abbey—a Cross of Violets—Choral Music to Mrs. Browning’s Poem, “The Sleep”—“And With God be the Rest.”
In the winter of 1887-1888 Mr. Browning wrote “Rosny,” which follows the “Prologue” in “Asolando,” and soon after the “Beatrice Signorini” and “Flute Music.” He also completely revised his poems for the new edition which his publishers were issuing in monthly volumes, the works completed in July. “Parleyings,” which had appeared in 1887, had, gloriously or perilously as may be, apparently taken all the provinces of learning, if not all the kingdoms of earth, for its own; for its themes ranged over Philosophy, Politics, Love, and Art, as well as Alchemy, and one knows not what; but its power and vigor reveal that there had been no fading of the divine fire. The poet made a few minor changes in “The Inn Album,” but with that exception he agreed with his friend and publisher, that no further alterations of any importance were required. Mr. Browning’s relations with his publishers were always harmonious and mutually gratifying. Such a relation is, to any author, certainly not the least among the factors of his happiness or of his power of work, and to Browning, George Murray Smith was his highly prized friend and counselor, as well as publisher, whose generous courtesies and admirable judgment had more than once even served him in ways quite outside those of literature.
In the late summer of 1888 Browning and his sister fared forth for Primiero, to join the Barrett Brownings, with whom the poet concurred in regarding this little hill-town as one of the most beautiful of places, his favorite Asolo always excepted. “Primiero is far more beautiful than Gressoney, far more than Saint-Pierre de Chartreuse,” he wrote to a friend: “with the magnificence of the mountains that, morning and evening, are literally transmuted to gold.” In letters or conversation, as well as in his verse, Browning’s love of color was always in evidence. “He dazzles us with scarlet, and crimson, and rubies, and the poppy’s ‘red effrontery,’” said an English critic; “with topaz, amethyst, and the glory of gold, and makes the sonnet ache with the luster of blue.” When, in the haunting imagery of memory pictures, after leaving Florence, he reverted to the gardens of Isa Blagden, on Bellosguardo, the vision before him was of “the herbs in red flower, and the butterflies on the wall under the olive trees.” For Browning was the poet of every thrill and intensity of life—the poet and prophet of the dawn, not of the dark; the herald who announced the force of the positive truth and ultimate greatness; never the interpreter of the mere negations of life. The splendor of color particularly appealed to him, thrilling every