The Complete Works of Robert Browning: Poems, Plays, Letters & Biographies in One Edition. Robert Browning
his command, Mr. Browning never abjured the active habits of the English traveller. He daily walked with his sister, as he did in the mountains, for walking’s sake, as well as for the delight of what his expeditions showed him; and the facilities which they supplied for this healthful pleasurable exercise were to his mind one of the great merits of his autumn residences in Italy. He explored Venice in all directions, and learned to know its many points of beauty and interest, as those cannot who believe it is only to be seen from a gondola; and when he had visited its every corner, he fell back on a favourite stroll along the Riva to the public garden and back again; never failing to leave the house at about the same hour of the day. Later still, when a friend’s gondola was always at hand, and air and sunshine were the one thing needful, he would be carried to the Lido, and take a long stretch on its farther shore.
The letter to Mrs. FitzGerald, from which I have already quoted, concludes with the account of a tragic occurrence which took place at Saint-Pierre just before his departure, and in which Mr. Browning’s intuitions had played a striking part.
‘And what do you think befell us in this abode of peace and innocence? Our journey was delayed for three hours in consequence of the one mule of the village being requisitioned by the ‘Juge d’Instruction’ from Grenoble, come to enquire into a murder committed two days before. My sister and I used once a day to walk for a couple of hours up a mountain-road of the most lovely description, and stop at the summit whence we looked down upon the minute hamlet of St.-Pierre d’Entremont, — even more secluded than our own: then we got back to our own aforesaid. And in this Paradisial place, they found, yesterday week, a murdered man — frightfully mutilated — who had been caught apparently in the act of stealing potatoes in a field: such a crime had never occurred in the memory of the oldest of our folk. Who was the murderer is the mystery — whether the field’s owner — in his irritation at discovering the robber, — or one of a band of similar ‘charbonniers’ (for they suppose the man to be a Piedmontese of that occupation) remains to be proved: they began by imprisoning the owner, who denies his guilt energetically. Now the odd thing is, that, either the day of, or after the murder, — as I and S. were looking at the utter solitude, I had the fancy “What should I do if I suddenly came upon a dead body in this field? Go and proclaim it — and subject myself to all the vexations inflicted by the French way of procedure (which begins by assuming that you may be the criminal) — or neglect an obvious duty, and return silently.” I, of course, saw that the former was the only proper course, whatever the annoyance involved. And, all the while, there was just about to be the very same incident for the trouble of somebody.’
Here the account breaks off; but writing again from the same place, August 16, 1882, he takes up the suspended narrative with this question:
‘Did I tell you of what happened to me on the last day of my stay here last year?’ And after repeating the main facts continues as follows:
‘This morning, in the course of my walk, I entered into conversation with two persons of whom I made enquiry myself. They said the accused man, a simple person, had been locked up in a high chamber, — protesting his innocence strongly, — and troubled in his mind by the affair altogether and the turn it was taking, had profited by the gendarme’s negligence, and thrown himself out of the window — and so died, continuing to the last to protest as before. My presentiment of what such a person might have to undergo was justified you see — though I should not in any case have taken that way of getting out of the difficulty. The man added, “it was not he who committed the murder, but the companions of the man, an Italian charcoal-burner, who owed him a grudge, killed him, and dragged him to the field — filling his sack with potatoes as if stolen, to give a likelihood that the field’s owner had caught him stealing and killed him, — so M. Perrier the greffier told me.” Enough of this grim story.
… . .
‘My sister was anxious to know exactly where the body was found: “Vouz savez la croix au sommet de la colline? A cette distance de cela!” That is precisely where I was standing when the thought came over me.’
A passage in a subsequent letter of September 3 clearly refers to some comment of Mrs. FitzGerald’s on the peculiar nature of this presentiment:
‘No — I attribute no sort of supernaturalism to my fancy about the thing that was really about to take place. By a law of the association of ideas — contraries come into the mind as often as similarities — and the peace and solitude readily called up the notion of what would most jar with them. I have often thought of the trouble that might have befallen me if poor Miss Smith’s death had happened the night before, when we were on the mountain alone together — or next morning when we were on the proposed excursion — only then we should have had companions.’
The letter then passes to other subjects.
‘This is the fifth magnificent day — like magnificence, unfit for turning to much account — for we cannot walk till sunset. I had two hours’ walk, or nearly, before breakfast, however: It is the loveliest country I ever had experience of, and we shall prolong our stay perhaps — apart from the concern for poor Cholmondeley and his friends, I should be glad to apprehend no long journey — besides the annoyance of having to pass Florence and Rome unvisited, for S.’s sake, I mean: even Naples would have been with its wonderful environs a tantalizing impracticability.
‘Your “Academy” came and was welcomed. The newspaper is like an electric eel, as one touches it and expects a shock. I am very anxious about the Archbishop who has always been strangely kind to me.’
He and his sister had accepted an invitation to spend the month of October with Mr. Cholmondeley at his villa in Ischia; but the party assembled there was broken up by the death of one of Mr. Cholmondeley’s guests, a young lady who had imprudently attempted the ascent of a dangerous mountain without a guide, and who lost her life in the experiment.
A short extract from a letter to Mrs. Charles Skirrow will show that even in this complete seclusion Mr. Browning’s patriotism did not go to sleep. There had been already sufficient evidence that his friendship did not; but it was not in the nature of his mental activities that they should be largely absorbed by politics, though he followed the course of his country’s history as a necessary part of his own life. It needed a crisis like that of our Egyptian campaign, or the subsequent Irish struggle, to arouse him to a full emotional participation in current events. How deeply he could be thus aroused remained yet to be seen.
‘If the George Smiths are still with you, give them my love, and tell them we shall expect to see them at Venice, — which was not so likely to be the case when we were bound for Ischia. As for Lady Wolseley — one dares not pretend to vie with her in anxiety just now; but my own pulses beat pretty strongly when I open the day’s newspaper — which, by some new arrangement, reaches us, oftener than not, on the day after publication. Where is your Bertie? I had an impassioned letter, a fortnight ago, from a nephew of mine, who is in the second division [battalion?] of the Black Watch; he was ordered to Edinburgh, and the regiment not dispatched, after all, — it having just returned from India; the poor fellow wrote in his despair “to know if I could do anything!” He may be wanted yet: though nothing seems wanted in Egypt, so capital appears to be the management.’
In 1879 Mr. Browning published the first series of his ‘Dramatic Idyls’; and their appearance sent a thrill of surprised admiration through the public mind. In ‘La Saisiaz’ and the accompanying poems he had accomplished what was virtually a life’s work. For he was approaching the appointed limit of man’s existence; and the poetic, which had been nourished in him by the natural life — which had once outstripped its developments, but on the whole remained subject to them — had therefore, also, passed through the successive phases of individual growth. He had been inspired as dramatic poet by the one avowed conviction that little else is worth study but the history of a soul; and outward act or circumstance had only entered into his creations as condition or incident of the given psychological state. His dramatic imagination had first, however unconsciously, sought its materials in himself; then gradually been projected into the world of men and women, which his widening knowledge laid open to him; it is scarcely necessary to say that its power was only fully revealed when it left the remote regions of poetical and metaphysical self-consciousness,