The Complete Works of Robert Browning: Poems, Plays, Letters & Biographies in One Edition. Robert Browning
far as rested with her, to destroy the letters in which they were contained. It is enough to know by simple statement that he then suffered as he did. Life conquers Death for most of us; whether or not ‘nature, art, and beauty’ assist in the conquest. It was bound to conquer in Mr. Browning’s case: first through his many-sided vitality; and secondly, through the special motive for living and striving which remained to him in his son. This note is struck in two letters which are given me to publish, written about three weeks after Mrs. Browning’s death; and we see also that by this time his manhood was reacting against the blow, and bracing itself with such consoling remembrance as the peace and painlessness of his wife’s last moments could afford to him.
Florence: July 19, ‘61.
Dear Leighton, — It is like your old kindness to write to me and to say what you do — I know you feel for me. I can’t write about it — but there were many alleviating circumstances that you shall know one day — there seemed no pain, and (what she would have felt most) the knowledge of separation from us was spared her. I find these things a comfort indeed.
I shall go away from Italy for many a year — to Paris, then London for a day or two just to talk with her sister — but if I can see you it will be a great satisfaction. Don’t fancy I am ‘prostrated’, I have enough to do for the boy and myself in carrying out her wishes. He is better than one would have thought, and behaves dearly to me. Everybody has been very kind.
Tell dear Mrs. Sartoris that I know her heart and thank her with all mine. After my day or two at London I shall go to some quiet place in France to get right again and then stay some time at Paris in order to find out leisurely what it will be best to do for Peni — but eventually I shall go to England, I suppose. I don’t mean to live with anybody, even my own family, but to occupy myself thoroughly, seeing dear friends, however, like you. God bless you. Yours ever affectionately, Robert Browning.
The second is addressed to Miss Haworth.
Florence: July 20, 1861.
My dear Friend, — I well know you feel as you say, for her once and for me now. Isa Blagden, perfect in all kindness to me, will have told you something perhaps — and one day I shall see you and be able to tell you myself as much as I can. The main comfort is that she suffered very little pain, none beside that ordinarily attending the simple attacks of cold and cough she was subject to — had no presentiment of the result whatever, and was consequently spared the misery of knowing she was about to leave us; she was smilingly assuring me she was ‘better’, ‘quite comfortable — if I would but come to bed,’ to within a few minutes of the last. I think I foreboded evil at Rome, certainly from the beginning of the week’s illness — but when I reasoned about it, there was no justifying fear — she said on the last evening ‘it is merely the old attack, not so severe a one as that of two years ago — there is no doubt I shall soon recover,’ and we talked over plans for the summer, and next year. I sent the servants away and her maid to bed — so little reason for disquietude did there seem. Through the night she slept heavily, and brokenly — that was the bad sign — but then she would sit up, take her medicine, say unrepeatable things to me and sleep again. At four o’clock there were symptoms that alarmed me, I called the maid and sent for the doctor. She smiled as I proposed to bathe her feet, ‘Well, you are determined to make an exaggerated case of it!’ Then came what my heart will keep till I see her again and longer — the most perfect expression of her love to me within my whole knowledge of her. Always smilingly, happily, and with a face like a girl’s — and in a few minutes she died in my arms; her head on my cheek. These incidents so sustain me that I tell them to her beloved ones as their right: there was no lingering, nor acute pain, nor consciousness of separation, but God took her to himself as you would lift a sleeping child from a dark, uneasy bed into your arms and the light. Thank God. Annunziata thought by her earnest ways with me, happy and smiling as they were, that she must have been aware of our parting’s approach — but she was quite conscious, had words at command, and yet did not even speak of Peni, who was in the next room. Her last word was when I asked ‘How do you feel?’ — ’Beautiful.’ You know I have her dearest wishes and interests to attend to at once — her child to care for, educate, establish properly; and my own life to fulfil as properly, — all just as she would require were she here. I shall leave Italy altogether for years — go to London for a few days’ talk with Arabel — then go to my father and begin to try leisurely what will be the best for Peni — but no more ‘housekeeping’ for me, even with my family. I shall grow, still, I hope — but my root is taken and remains.
I know you always loved her, and me too in my degree. I shall always be grateful to those who loved her, and that, I repeat, you did.
She was, and is, lamented with extraordinary demonstrations, if one consider it. The Italians seem to have understood her by an instinct. I have received strange kindness from everybody. Pen is very well — very dear and good, anxious to comfort me as he calls it. He can’t know his loss yet. After years, his will be worse than mine — he will want what he never had — that is, for the time when he could be helped by her wisdom, and genius and piety — I have had everything and shall not forget.
God bless you, dear friend. I believe I shall set out in a week. Isa goes with me — dear, true heart. You, too, would do what you could for us were you here and your assistance needful. A letter from you came a day or two before the end — she made me enquire about the Frescobaldi Palace for you, — Isa wrote to you in consequence. I shall be heard of at 151, rue de Grenelle St. Germain. Faithfully and affectionately yours, Robert Browning.
The first of these displays even more self-control, it might be thought less feeling, than the second; but it illustrates the reserve which, I believe, habitually characterized Mr. Browning’s attitude towards men. His natural, and certainly most complete, confidants were women. At about the end of July he left Florence with his son; also accompanied by Miss Blagden, who travelled with them as far as Paris. She herself must soon have returned to Italy; since he wrote to her in September on the subject of his wife’s provisional disinterment,* in a manner which shows her to have been on the spot.
* Required for the subsequent placing of the monument designed by F. Leighton.
Sept. ‘61.
‘… Isa, may I ask you one favour? Will you, whenever these dreadful preliminaries, the provisional removement &c. when they are proceeded with, — will you do — all you can — suggest every regard to decency and proper feeling to the persons concerned? I have a horror of that man of the graveyard, and needless publicity and exposure — I rely on you, dearest friend of ours, to at least lend us your influence when the time shall come — a word may be invaluable. If there is any show made, or gratification of strangers’ curiosity, far better that I had left the turf untouched. These things occur through sheer thoughtlessness, carelessness, not anything worse, but the effect is irreparable. I won’t think any more of it — now — at least… .’
The dread expressed in this letter of any offence to the delicacies of the occasion was too natural to be remarked upon here; but it connects itself with an habitual aversion for the paraphernalia of death, which was a marked peculiarity of Mr. Browning’s nature. He shrank, as his wife had done, from the ‘earth side’ of the portentous change; but truth compels me to own that her infinite pity had little or no part in his attitude towards it. For him, a body from which the soul had passed, held nothing of the person whose earthly vesture it had been. He had no sympathy for the still human tenderness with which so many of us regard the mortal remains of those they have loved, or with the solemn or friendly interest in which that tenderness so often reflects itself in more neutral minds. He would claim all respect for the corpse, but he would turn away from it. Another aspect of this feeling shows itself in a letter to one of his brothers-in-law, Mr. George Moulton-Barrett, in reference to his wife’s monument, with which Mr. Barrett had professed himself pleased. His tone is characterized by an almost religious reverence for the memory which that monument enshrines. He nevertheless writes:
‘I hope to see it one day — and, although I have no kind