The Complete Works of Robert Browning: Poems, Plays, Letters & Biographies in One Edition. Robert Browning
Chapter 18
1878-1884
He revisits Italy; Asolo; Letters to Mrs. FitzGerald — Venice — Favourite Alpine Retreats — Mrs. Arthur Bronson — Life in Venice — A Tragedy at Saint-Pierre — Mr. Cholmondeley — Mr. Browning’s Patriotic Feeling; Extract from Letter to Mrs. Charles Skirrow — ’Dramatic Idyls’ — ’Jocoseria’ — ’Ferishtah’s Fancies’.
The catastrophe of La Saisiaz closed a comprehensive chapter in Mr. Browning’s habits and experience. It impelled him finally to break with the associations of the last seventeen autumns, which he remembered more in their tedious or painful circumstances than in the unexciting pleasure and renewed physical health which he had derived from them. He was weary of the ever-recurring effort to uproot himself from his home life, only to become stationary in some more or less uninteresting northern spot. The always latent desire for Italy sprang up in him, and with it the often present thought and wish to give his sister the opportunity of seeing it.
Florence and Rome were not included in his scheme; he knew them both too well; but he hankered for Asolo and Venice. He determined, though as usual reluctantly, and not till the last moment, that they should move southwards in the August of 1878. Their route lay over the Spluegen; and having heard of a comfortable hotel near the summit of the Pass, they agreed to remain there till the heat had sufficiently abated to allow of the descent into Lombardy. The advantages of this first arrangement exceeded their expectations. It gave them solitude without the sense of loneliness. A little stream of travellers passed constantly over the mountain, and they could shake hands with acquaintances at night, and know them gone in the morning. They dined at the table d’hote, but took all other meals alone, and slept in a detached wing or ‘dependance’ of the hotel. Their daily walks sometimes carried them down to the Via Mala; often to the top of the ascent, where they could rest, looking down into Italy; and would even be prolonged over a period of five hours and an extent of seventeen miles. Now, as always, the mountain air stimulated Mr. Browning’s physical energy; and on this occasion it also especially quickened his imaginative powers. He was preparing the first series of ‘Dramatic Idylls’; and several of these, including ‘Ivan Ivanovitch’, were produced with such rapidity that Miss Browning refused to countenance a prolonged stay on the mountain, unless he worked at a more reasonable rate.
They did not linger on their way to Asolo and Venice, except for a night’s rest on the Lake of Como and two days at Verona. In their successive journeys through Northern Italy they visited by degrees all its notable cities, and it would be easy to recall, in order and detail, most of these yearly expeditions. But the account of them would chiefly resolve itself into a list of names and dates; for Mr. Browning had seldom a new impression to receive, even from localities which he had not seen before. I know that he and his sister were deeply struck by the deserted grandeurs of Ravenna; and that it stirred in both of them a memorable sensation to wander as they did for a whole day through the pinewoods consecrated by Dante. I am nevertheless not sure that when they performed the repeated round of picture-galleries and palaces, they were not sometimes simply paying their debt to opportunity, and as much for each other’s sake as for their own. Where all was Italy, there was little to gain or lose in one memorial of greatness, one object of beauty, visited or left unseen. But in Asolo, even in Venice, Mr. Browning was seeking something more: the remembrance of his own actual and poetic youth. How far he found it in the former place we may infer from a letter to Mrs. FitzGerald.
Sept. 28, 1878.
And from ‘Asolo’, at last, dear friend! So can dreams come false. — S., who has been writing at the opposite side of the table, has told you about our journey and adventures, such as they were: but she cannot tell you the feelings with which I revisit this — to me — memorable place after above forty years’ absence, — such things have begun and ended with me in the interval! It was too strange when we reached the ruined tower on the hill-top yesterday, and I said ‘Let me try if the echo still exists which I discovered here,’ (you can produce it from only one particular spot on a remainder of brickwork — ) and thereupon it answered me plainly as ever, after all the silence: for some children from the adjoining ‘podere’, happening to be outside, heard my voice and its result — and began trying to perform the feat — calling ‘Yes, yes’ — all in vain: so, perhaps, the mighty secret will die with me! We shall probably stay here a day or two longer, — the air is so pure, the country so attractive: but we must go soon to Venice, stay our allotted time there, and then go homeward: you will of course address letters to Venice, not this place: it is a pleasure I promise myself that, on arriving I shall certainly hear you speak in a letter which I count upon finding.
The old inn here, to which I would fain have betaken myself, is gone — levelled to the ground: I remember it was much damaged by a recent earthquake, and the cracks and chasms may have threatened a downfall. This Stella d’Oro is, however, much such an unperverted ‘locanda’ as its predecessor — primitive indeed are the arrangements and unsophisticate the ways: but there is cleanliness, abundance of goodwill, and the sweet Italian smile at every mistake: we get on excellently. To be sure never was such a perfect fellow-traveller, for my purposes, as S., so that I have no subject of concern — if things suit me they suit her — and vice-versa. I daresay she will have told you how we trudged together, this morning to Possagno — through a lovely country: how we saw all the wonders — and a wonder of detestability is the paint-performance of the great man! — and how, on our return, we found the little town enjoying high market day, and its privilege of roaring and screaming over a bargain. It confuses me altogether, — but at Venice I may write more comfortably. You will till then, Dear Friend, remember me ever as yours affectionately, Robert Browning.
If the tone of this does not express disappointment, it has none of the rapture which his last visit was to inspire. The charm which forty years of remembrance had cast around the little city on the hill was dispelled for, at all events, the time being. The hot weather and dust-covered landscape, with the more than primitive accommodation of which he spoke in a letter to another friend, may have contributed something to this result.
At Venice the travellers fared better in some essential respects. A London acquaintance, who passed them on their way to Italy, had recommended a cool and quiet hotel there, the Albergo dell’ Universo. The house, Palazzo Brandolin-Rota, was situated on the shady side of the Grand Canal, just below the Accademia and the Suspension Bridge. The open stretches of the Giudecca lay not far behind; and a scrap of garden and a clean and open little street made pleasant the approach from back and side. It accommodated few persons in proportion to its size, and fewer still took up their abode there; for it was managed by a lady of good birth and fallen fortunes whose home and patrimony it had been; and her husband, a retired Austrian officer, and two grown-up daughters did not lighten her task. Every year the fortunes sank lower; the upper storey of the house was already falling into decay, and the fine old furniture passing into the brokers’ or private buyers’ hands. It still, however, afforded sufficiently comfortable, and, by reason of its very drawbacks, desirable quarters to Mr. Browning. It perhaps turned the scale in favour of his return to Venice; for the lady whose hospitality he was to enjoy there was as yet unknown to him; and nothing would have induced him to enter, with his eyes open, one of the English-haunted hotels, in which acquaintance, old and new, would daily greet him in the public rooms or jostle him in the corridors.
He and his sister remained at the Universo for a fortnight; their programme did not this year include a longer stay; but it gave them time to decide that no place could better suit them for an autumn holiday than Venice, or better lend itself to a preparatory sojourn among the Alps; and the plan of their next, and, though they did not know it, many a following summer, was thus sketched out before the homeward journey had begun.
Mr. Browning did not forget his work, even while resting from it; if indeed he did rest entirely on this occasion. He consulted a Russian lady whom he met at the hotel, on the names he was introducing in ‘Ivan Ivanovitch’. It would be interesting to know what suggestions or corrections she made, and how