The Complete Works of Robert Browning: Poems, Plays, Letters & Biographies in One Edition. Robert Browning
true. It’s the drawback of Italy. To live in one place there is impossible for us, almost just as to live out of Italy at all, is impossible for us. It isn’t caprice on our part. Siena pleases us very much — the silence and repose have been heavenly things to me, and the country is very pretty — though no more than pretty — nothing marked or romantic — no mountains, except so far off as to be like a cloud only on clear days — and no water. Pretty dimpled ground, covered with low vineyards, purple hills, not high, with the sunsets clothing them… . We shall not leave Florence till November — Robert must see Mr. Landor (his adopted son, Sarianna) settled in his new apartments with Wilson for a duenna. It’s an excellent plan for him and not a bad one for Wilson… . Forgive me if Robert has told you this already. Dear darling Robert amuses me by talking of his “gentleness and sweetness”. A most courteous and refined gentleman he is, of course, and very affectionate to Robert (as he ought to be), but of self-restraint, he has not a grain, and of suspiciousness, many grains. Wilson will run many risks, and I, for one, would rather not run them. What do you say to dashing down a plate on the floor when you don’t like what’s on it? And the contadini at whose house he is lodging now have been already accused of opening desks. Still upon that occasion (though there was talk of the probability of Mr. Landor’s “throat being cut in his sleep” — ) as on other occasions, Robert succeeded in soothing him — and the poor old lion is very quiet on the whole, roaring softly, to beguile the time, in Latin alcaics against his wife and Louis Napoleon. He laughs carnivorously when I tell him that one of these days he will have to write an ode in honour of the Emperor, to please me.’
Mrs. Browning writes, somewhat later, from Rome:
‘… We left Mr. Landor in great comfort. I went to see his apartment before it was furnished. Rooms small, but with a look-out into a little garden, quiet and cheerful, and he doesn’t mind a situation rather out of the way. He pays four pounds ten (English) the month. Wilson has thirty pounds a year for taking care of him — which sounds a good deal, but it is a difficult position. He has excellent, generous, affectionate impulses — but the impulses of the tiger, every now and then. Nothing coheres in him — either in his opinions, or, I fear, his affections. It isn’t age — he is precisely the man of his youth, I must believe. Still, his genius gives him the right of gratitude on all artists at least, and I must say that my Robert has generously paid the debt. Robert always said that he owed more as a writer to Landor than to any contemporary. At present Landor is very fond of him — but I am quite prepared for his turning against us as he has turned against Forster, who has been so devoted for years and years. Only one isn’t kind for what one gets by it, or there wouldn’t be much kindness in this world… .’
Mr. Browning always declared that his wife could impute evil to no one, that she was a living denial of that doctrine of original sin to which her Christianity pledged her; and the great breadth and perfect charity of her views habitually justified the assertion; but she evidently possessed a keen insight into character, which made her complete suspension of judgment on the subject of Spiritualism very difficult to understand.
The spiritualistic coterie had found a satisfactory way of explaining Mr. Browning’s antagonistic attitude towards it. He was jealous, it was said, because the Spirits on one occasion had dropped a crown on to his wife’s head and none on to his own. The first instalment of his long answer to this grotesque accusation appears in a letter of Mrs. Browning’s, probably written in the course of the winter of 1859-60.
‘… My brother George sent me a number of the “National Magazine” with my face in it, after Marshall Wood’s medallion. My comfort is that my greatest enemy will not take it to be like me, only that does not go far with the indifferent public: the portrait I suppose will have its due weight in arresting the sale of “Aurora Leigh” from henceforth. You never saw a more determined visage of a strong-minded woman with the neck of a vicious bull… . Still, I am surprised, I own, at the amount of success, and that golden-hearted Robert is in ecstasies about it, far more than if it all related to a book of his own. The form of the story, and also, something in the philosophy, seem to have caught the crowd. As to the poetry by itself, anything good in that repels rather. I am not so blind as Romney, not to perceive this … Give Peni’s and my love to the dearest ‘nonno’ (grandfather) whose sublime unselfishness and want of common egotism presents such a contrast to what is here. Tell him I often think of him, and always with touched feeling. (When he is eighty-six or ninety-six, nobody will be pained or humbled by the spectacle of an insane self-love resulting from a long life’s ungoverned will.) May God bless him! — … Robert has made his third bust copied from the antique. He breaks them all up as they are finished — it’s only matter of education. When the power of execution is achieved, he will try at something original. Then reading hurts him; as long as I have known him he has not been able to read long at a time — he can do it now better than at the beginning. The consequence of which is that an active occupation is salvation to him… . Nobody exactly understands him except me, who am in the inside of him and hear him breathe. For the peculiarity of our relation is, that he thinks aloud with me and can’t stop himself… . I wanted his poems done this winter very much, and here was a bright room with three windows consecrated to his use. But he had a room all last summer, and did nothing. Then, he worked himself out by riding for three or four hours together — there has been little poetry done since last winter, when he did much. He was not inclined to write this winter. The modelling combines body-work and soul-work, and the more tired he has been, and the more his back ached, poor fellow, the more he has exulted and been happy. So I couldn’t be much in opposition against the sculpture — I couldn’t in fact at all. He has material for a volume, and will work at it this summer, he says.
‘His power is much in advance of “Strafford”, which is his poorest work of art. Ah, the brain stratifies and matures, even in the pauses of the pen.
‘At the same time, his treatment in England affects him, naturally, and for my part I set it down as an infamy of that public — no other word. He says he has told you some things you had not heard, and which I acknowledge I always try to prevent him from repeating to anyone. I wonder if he has told you besides (no, I fancy not) that an English lady of rank, an acquaintance of ours, (observe that!) asked, the other day, the American minister, whether “Robert was not an American.” The minister answered — ”is it possible that you ask me this? Why, there is not so poor a village in the United States, where they would not tell you that Robert Browning was an Englishman, and that they were sorry he was not an American.” Very pretty of the American minister, was it not? — and literally true, besides… . Ah, dear Sarianna — I don’t complain for myself of an unappreciating public. I have no reason. But, just for that reason, I complain more about Robert — only he does not hear me complain — to you I may say, that the blindness, deafness and stupidity of the English public to Robert are amazing. Of course Milsand had heard his name — well the contrary would have been strange. Robert is. All England can’t prevent his existence, I suppose. But nobody there, except a small knot of pre-Raffaellite men, pretend to do him justice. Mr. Forster has done the best, — in the press. As a sort of lion, Robert has his range in society — and — for the rest, you should see Chapman’s returns! — While, in America he is a power, a writer, a poet — he is read — he lives in the hearts of the people.
‘“Browning readings” here in Boston — ”Browning evenings” there. For the rest, the English hunt lions, too, Sarianna, but their lions are chiefly chosen among lords and railway kings… .’
We cannot be surprised at Mrs. Browning’s desire for a more sustained literary activity on her husband’s part. We learn from his own subsequent correspondence that he too regarded the persevering exercise of his poetic faculty as almost a religious obligation. But it becomes the more apparent that the restlessness under which he was now labouring was its own excuse; and that its causes can have been no mystery even to those ‘outside’ him. The life and climate of Italy were beginning to undermine his strength. We owe it perhaps to the great and sorrowful change, which was then drawing near, that the full power of work returned to him.
During the winter of 1859-60, Mr. Val Prinsep was in Rome. He had gone to Siena with Mr. Burne Jones, bearing an introduction from Rossetti to Mr. Browning and his wife; and the acquaintance with them was renewed in the ensuing months.