The Complete Works of Robert Browning: Poems, Plays, Letters & Biographies in One Edition. Robert Browning
with it, and for me — it will be pleasant to be in such hands — only, pray follow the corrections in the last edition — (Chapman and Hall will give you a copy) — as they are important to the sense. As for the condensation into three acts — I shall leave that, and all cuttings and the like, to your own judgment — and, come what will, I shall have to be grateful to you, as before. For the rest, you will play the part to heart’s content, I know… . And how good it will be to see you again, and make my wife see you too — she who “never saw a great actress” she says — unless it was Dejazet! …’
Mrs. Browning writes about the performance, April 12:
‘… I am beginning to be anxious about ‘Colombe’s Birthday’. I care much more about it than Robert does. He says that no one will mistake it for his speculation; it’s Mr. Buckstone’s affair altogether. True — but I should like it to succeed, being Robert’s play, notwithstanding. But the play is subtle and refined for pits and galleries. I am nervous about it. On the other hand, those theatrical people ought to know, — and what in the world made them select it, if it is not likely to answer their purpose? By the way, a dreadful rumour reaches us of its having been “prepared for the stage by the author.” Don’t believe a word of it. Robert just said “yes” when they wrote to ask him, and not a line of communication has passed since. He has prepared nothing at all, suggested nothing, modified nothing. He referred them to his new edition, and that was the whole… .’
She communicates the result in May:
‘… Yes, Robert’s play succeeded, but there could be no “run” for a play of that kind. It was a “succes d’estime” and something more, which is surprising perhaps, considering the miserable acting of the men. Miss Faucit was alone in doing us justice… .’
Mrs. Browning did see ‘Miss Faucit’ on her next visit to England. She agreeably surprised that lady by presenting herself alone, one morning, at her house, and remaining with her for an hour and a half. The only person who had ‘done justice’ to ‘Colombe’ besides contributing to whatever success her husband’s earlier plays had obtained, was much more than ‘a great actress’ to Mrs. Browning’s mind; and we may imagine it would have gone hard with her before she renounced the pleasure of making her acquaintance.
Two letters, dated from the Baths of Lucca, July 15 and August 20, ‘53, tell how and where the ensuing summer was passed, besides introducing us, for the first time, to Mr. and Mrs. William Story, between whose family and that of Mr. Browning so friendly an intimacy was ever afterwards to subsist.
July 15.
‘… We have taken a villa at the Baths of Lucca after a little holy fear of the company there — but the scenery, and the coolness, and convenience altogether prevail, and we have taken our villa for three months or rather more, and go to it next week with a stiff resolve of not calling nor being called upon. You remember perhaps that we were there four years ago just after the birth of our child. The mountains are wonderful in beauty, and we mean to buy our holiday by doing some work.
‘Oh yes! I confess to loving Florence, and to having associated with it the idea of home… .’
Casa Tolomei, Alta Villa, Bagni di Lucca: Aug. 20.
‘… We are enjoying the mountains here — riding the donkeys in the footsteps of the sheep, and eating strawberries and milk by basinsful. The strawberries succeed one another throughout the summer, through growing on different aspects of the hills. If a tree is felled in the forests, strawberries spring up, just as mushrooms might, and the peasants sell them for just nothing… . Then our friends Mr. and Mrs. Story help the mountains to please us a good deal. He is the son of Judge Story, the biographer of his father, and for himself, sculptor and poet — and she a sympathetic graceful woman, fresh and innocent in face and thought. We go backwards and forwards to tea and talk at one another’s houses.
‘… Since I began this letter we have had a grand donkey excursion to a village called Benabbia, and the cross above it on the mountain-peak. We returned in the dark, and were in some danger of tumbling down various precipices — but the scenery was exquisite — past speaking of for beauty. Oh, those jagged mountains, rolled together like pre-Adamite beasts and setting their teeth against the sky — it was wonderful… .’
Mr. Browning’s share of the work referred to was ‘In a Balcony’; also, probably, some of the ‘Men and Women’; the scene of the declaration in ‘By the Fireside’ was laid in a little adjacent mountain-gorge to which he walked or rode. A fortnight’s visit from Mr., now Lord, Lytton, was also an incident of this summer.
The next three letters from which I am able to quote, describe the impressions of Mrs. Browning’s first winter in Rome.
Rome: 43 Via Bocca di Leone, 30 piano. Jan. 18, 54.
‘… Well, we are all well to begin with — and have been well — our troubles came to us through sympathy entirely. A most exquisite journey of eight days we had from Florence to Rome, seeing the great monastery and triple church of Assisi and the wonderful Terni by the way — that passion of the waters which makes the human heart seem so still. In the highest spirits we entered Rome, Robert and Penini singing actually — for the child was radiant and flushed with the continual change of air and scene… . You remember my telling you of our friends the Storys — how they and their two children helped to make the summer go pleasantly at the Baths of Lucca. They had taken an apartment for us in Rome, so that we arrived in comfort to lighted fires and lamps as if coming home, — and we had a glimpse of their smiling faces that evening. In the morning before breakfast, little Edith was brought over to us by the manservant with a message, “the boy was in convulsions — there was danger.” We hurried to the house, of course, leaving Edith with Wilson. Too true! All that first day we spent beside a deathbed; for the child never rallied — never opened his eyes in consciousness — and by eight in the evening he was gone. In the meanwhile, Edith was taken ill at our house — could not be moved, said the physicians … gastric fever, with a tendency to the brain — and within two days her life was almost despaired of — exactly the same malady as her brother’s… . Also the English nurse was apparently dying at the Story’s house, and Emma Page, the artist’s youngest daughter, sickened with the same disease.
‘… To pass over the dreary time, I will tell you at once that the three patients recovered — only in poor little Edith’s case Roman fever followed the gastric, and has persisted ever since in periodical recurrence. She is very pale and thin. Roman fever is not dangerous to life, but it is exhausting… . Now you will understand what ghostly flakes of death have changed the sense of Rome to me. The first day by a deathbed, the first drive-out, to the cemetery, where poor little Joe is laid close to Shelley’s heart (“Cor cordium” says the epitaph) and where the mother insisted on going when she and I went out in the carriage together — I am horribly weak about such things — I can’t look on the earthside of death — I flinch from corpses and graves, and never meet a common funeral without a sort of horror. When I look deathwards I look over death, and upwards, or I can’t look that way at all. So that it was a struggle with me to sit upright in that carriage in which the poor stricken mother sat so calmly — not to drop from the seat. Well — all this has blackened Rome to me. I can’t think about the Caesars in the old strain of thought — the antique words get muddled and blurred with warm dashes of modern, everyday tears and fresh grave-clay. Rome is spoilt to me — there’s the truth. Still, one lives through one’s associations when not too strong, and I have arrived at almost enjoying some things — the climate, for instance, which, though pernicious to the general health, agrees particularly with me, and the sight of the blue sky floating like a sea-tide through the great gaps and rifts of ruins… . We are very comfortably settled in rooms turned to the sun, and do work and play by turns, having almost too many visitors, hear excellent music at Mrs. Sartoris’s (A. K.) once or twice a week, and have Fanny Kemble to come and talk to us with the doors shut, we three together. This is pleasant. I like her decidedly.
‘If anybody wants small talk by handfuls, of glittering dust swept out of salons, here’s Mr. Thackeray besides! …’
Rome: March 29.
‘…