The Complete Works of Robert Browning: Poems, Plays, Letters & Biographies in One Edition. Robert Browning
then attacked by a fatal disease.
* The name was afterwards changed to Altham.
‘… There is nothing or little to add to my last account of my precious Henrietta. But, dear, you think the evil less than it is — be sure that the fear is too reasonable. I am of a very hopeful temperament, and I never could go on systematically making the worst of any case. I bear up here for a few days, and then comes the expectation of a letter, which is hard. I fight with it for Robert’s sake, but all the work I put myself to do does not hinder a certain effect. She is confined to her bed almost wholly and suffers acutely… . In fact, I am living from day to day, on the merest crumbs of hope — on the daily bread which is very bitter. Of course it has shaken me a good deal, and interfered with the advantages of the summer, but that’s the least. Poor Robert’s scheme for me of perfect repose has scarcely been carried out… .’
This anxiety was heightened during the ensuing winter in Rome, by just the circumstance from which some comfort had been expected — the second postal delivery which took place every day; for the hopes and fears which might have found a moment’s forgetfulness in the longer absence of news, were, as it proved, kept at fever-heat. On one critical occasion the suspense became unbearable, because Mr. Browning, by his wife’s desire, had telegraphed for news, begging for a telegraphic answer. No answer had come, and she felt convinced that the worst had happened, and that the brother to whom the message was addressed could not make up his mind to convey the fact in so abrupt a form. The telegram had been stopped by the authorities, because Mr. Odo Russell had undertaken to forward it, and his position in Rome, besides the known Liberal sympathies of Mr. and Mrs. Browning and himself, had laid it open to political suspicion.
Mrs. Surtees Cook died in the course of the winter. Mr. Browning always believed that the shock and sorrow of this event had shortened his wife’s life, though it is also possible that her already lowered vitality increased the dejection into which it plunged her. Her own casual allusions to the state of her health had long marked arrested progress, if not steady decline. We are told, though this may have been a mistake, that active signs of consumption were apparent in her even before the illness of 1859, which was in a certain sense the beginning of the end. She was completely an invalid, as well as entirely a recluse, during the greater part if not the whole of this last stay in Rome.
She rallied nevertheless sufficiently to write to Miss Browning in April, in a tone fully suggestive of normal health and energy.
‘… In my own opinion he is infinitely handsomer and more attractive than when I saw him first, sixteen years ago… . I believe people in general would think the same exactly. As to the modelling — well, I told you that I grudged a little the time from his own particular art. But it does not do to dishearten him about his modelling. He has given a great deal of time to anatomy with reference to the expression of form, and the clay is only the new medium which takes the place of drawing. Also, Robert is peculiar in his ways of work as a poet. I have struggled a little with him on this point, for I don’t think him right; that is to say, it would not be right for me … But Robert waits for an inclination, works by fits and starts; he can’t do otherwise he says, and his head is full of ideas which are to come out in clay or marble. I yearn for the poems, but he leaves that to me for the present… . You will think Robert looking very well when you see him; indeed, you may judge by the photographs meanwhile. You know, Sarianna, how I used to forbid the moustache. I insisted as long as I could, but all artists were against me, and I suppose that the bare upper lip does not harmonise with the beard. He keeps the hair now closer, and the beard is pointed… . As to the moony whiteness of the beard, it is beautiful, I think, but then I think him all beautiful, and always… .’
Mr. Browning’s old friend, Madame du Quaire,* came to Rome in December. She had visited Florence three years before, and I am indebted to her for some details of the spiritualist controversy by which its English colony was at that time divided. She was now a widow, travelling with her brother; and Mr. Browning came whenever he could, to comfort her in her sorrow, and, as she says, discourse of nature, art, the beautiful, and all that ‘conquers death’. He little knew how soon he would need the same comfort for himself. He would also declaim passages from his wife’s poems; and when, on one of these occasions, Madame du Quaire had said, as so many persons now say, that she much preferred his poetry to hers, he made this characteristic answer, to be repeated in substance some years afterwards to another friend: ‘You are wrong — quite wrong — she has genius; I am only a painstaking fellow. Can’t you imagine a clever sort of angel who plots and plans, and tries to build up something — he wants to make you see it as he sees it — shows you one point of view, carries you off to another, hammering into your head the thing he wants you to understand; and whilst this bother is going on God Almighty turns you off a little star — that’s the difference between us. The true creative power is hers, not mine.’
* Formerly Miss Blackett, and sister of the member for New Castle.
Mrs. Browning died at Casa Guidi on June 29, 1861, soon after their return to Florence. She had had a return of the bronchial affection to which she was subject; and a new doctor who was called in discovered grave mischief at the lungs, which she herself had long believed to be existent or impending. But the attack was comparatively, indeed actually, slight; and an extract from her last letter to Miss Browning, dated June 7, confirms what her family and friends have since asserted, that it was the death of Cavour which gave her the final blow.
‘… We come home into a cloud here. I can scarcely command voice or hand to name ‘Cavour’. That great soul which meditated and made Italy has gone to the diviner Country. If tears or blood could have saved him to us, he should have had mine. I feel yet as if I could scarcely comprehend the greatness of the vacancy. A hundred Garibaldis for such a man!’
Her death was signalized by the appearance — this time, I am told, unexpected — of another brilliant comet, which passed so near the earth as to come into contact with it.
Chapter 14
1861-1863
Miss Blagden — Letters from Mr. Browning to Miss Haworth and Mr. Leighton — His Feeling in regard to Funeral Ceremonies — Establishment in London — Plan of Life — Letter to Madame du Quaire — Miss Arabel Barrett — Biarritz — Letters to Miss Blagden — Conception of ‘The Ring and the Book’ — Biographical Indiscretion — New Edition of his Works — Mr. and Mrs. Procter.
The friend who was nearest, at all events most helpful, to Mr. Browning in this great and sudden sorrow was Miss Blagden — Isa Blagden, as she was called by all her intimates. Only a passing allusion to her could hitherto find place in this fragmentary record of the Poet’s life; but the friendship which had long subsisted between her and Mrs. Browning brings her now into closer and more frequent relation to it. She was for many years a centre of English society in Florence; for her genial, hospitable nature, as well as literary tastes (she wrote one or two novels, I believe not without merit), secured her the acquaintance of many interesting persons, some of whom occasionally made her house their home; and the evenings spent with her at her villa on Bellosguardo live pleasantly in the remembrance of those of our older generation who were permitted to share in them.
She carried the boy away from the house of mourning, and induced his father to spend his nights under her roof, while the last painful duties detained him in Florence. He at least gave her cause to deny, what has been so often affirmed, that great griefs are necessarily silent. She always spoke of this period as her ‘apocalyptic month’, so deeply poetic were the ravings which alternated with the simple human cry of the desolate heart: ‘I want her, I want her!’ But the ear which received these utterances has long been closed in death. The only written outbursts of Mr. Browning’s frantic