The Complete Works of Robert Browning: Poems, Plays, Letters & Biographies in One Edition. Robert Browning
of his dramatic genius, the intellectual and emotional should exhibit the varying relations which are developed by the natural life: that feeling should begin by doing the work of thought, as in ‘Saul’, and thought end by doing the work of feeling, as in ‘Fifine at the Fair’; and that the two should alternate or combine in proportioned intensity in such works of an intermediate period as ‘Cleon’, ‘A Death in the Desert’, the ‘Epistle of Karshish’, and ‘James Lee’s Wife’; the sophistical ingenuities of ‘Bishop Blougram’, and ‘Sludge’; and the sad, appealing tenderness of ‘Andrea del Sarto’ and ‘The Worst of It’.
It was also almost inevitable that so vigorous a genius should sometimes falsify calculations based on the normal life. The long-continued force and freshness of Mr. Browning’s general faculties was in itself a protest against them. We saw without surprise that during the decade which produced ‘Prince Hohenstiel-Schwangau’, ‘Fifine at the Fair’, and ‘Red Cotton Nightcap Country’, he could give us ‘The Inn Album’, with its expression of the higher sexual love unsurpassed, rarely equalled, in the whole range of his work: or those two unique creations of airy fancy and passionate symbolic romance, ‘Saint Martin’s Summer’, and ‘Numpholeptos’. It was no ground for astonishment that the creative power in him should even ignore the usual period of decline, and defy, so far as is humanly possible, its natural laws of modification. But in the ‘Dramatic Idyls’ he did more than proceed with unflagging powers on a long-trodden, distinctive course; he took a new departure.
Mr. Browning did not forsake the drama of motive when he imagined and worked out his new group of poems; he presented it in a no less subtle and complex form. But he gave it the added force of picturesque realization; and this by means of incidents both powerful in themselves, and especially suited for its development. It was only in proportion to this higher suggestiveness that a startling situation ever seemed to him fit subject for poetry. Where its interest and excitement exhausted themselves in the external facts, it became, he thought, the property of the chronicler, but supplied no material for the poet; and he often declined matter which had been offered him for dramatic treatment because it belonged to the more sensational category.
It is part of the vital quality of the ‘Dramatic Idyls’ that, in them, the act and the motive are not yet finally identified with each other. We see the act still palpitating with the motive; the motive dimly striving to recognize or disclaim itself in the act. It is in this that the psychological poet stands more than ever strongly revealed. Such at least is the case in ‘Martin Relph’, and the idealized Russian legend, ‘Ivan Ivanovitch’. The grotesque tragedy of ‘Ned Bratts’ has also its marked psychological aspects, but they are of a simpler and broader kind.
The new inspiration slowly subsided through the second series of ‘Idyls’, 1880, and ‘Jocoseria’, 1883. In ‘Ferishtah’s Fancies’, 1884, Mr. Browning returned to his original manner, though carrying into it something of the renewed vigour which had marked the intervening change. The lyrics which alternate with its parables include some of the most tender, most impassioned, and most musical of his love-poems.
The moral and religious opinions conveyed in this later volume may be accepted without reserve as Mr. Browning’s own, if we subtract from them the exaggerations of the figurative and dramatic form. It is indeed easy to recognize in them the under currents of his whole real and imaginative life. They have also on one or two points an intrinsic value which will justify a later allusion.
Chapter 19
1881-1887
The Browning Society; Mr. Furnivall; Miss E. H. Hickey — His Attitude towards the Society; Letter to Mrs. FitzGerald — Mr. Thaxter, Mrs. Celia Thaxter — Letter to Miss Hickey; ‘Strafford’ — Shakspere and Wordsworth Societies — Letters to Professor Knight — Appreciation in Italy; Professor Nencioni — The Goldoni Sonnet — Mr. Barrett Browning; Palazzo Manzoni — Letters to Mrs. Charles Skirrow — Mrs. Bloomfield Moore — Llangollen; Sir Theodore and Lady Martin — Loss of old Friends — Foreign Correspondent of the Royal Academy — ’Parleyings with certain People of Importance in their Day’.
This Indian summer of Mr. Browning’s genius coincided with the highest manifestation of public interest, which he, or with one exception, any living writer, had probably yet received: the establishment of a Society bearing his name, and devoted to the study of his poetry. The idea arose almost simultaneously in the mind of Dr., then Mr. Furnivall, and of Miss E. H. Hickey. One day, in the July of 1881, as they were on their way to Warwick Crescent to pay an appointed visit there, Miss Hickey strongly expressed her opinion of the power and breadth of Mr. Browning’s work; and concluded by saying that much as she loved Shakespeare, she found in certain aspects of Browning what even Shakespeare could not give her. Mr. Furnivall replied to this by asking what she would say to helping him to found a Browning Society; and it then appeared that Miss Hickey had recently written to him a letter, suggesting that he should found one; but that it had miscarried, or, as she was disposed to think, not been posted. Being thus, at all events, agreed as to the fitness of the undertaking, they immediately spoke of it to Mr. Browning, who at first treated the project as a joke; but did not oppose it when once he understood it to be serious. His only proviso was that he should remain neutral in respect to its fulfilment. He refused even to give Mr. Furnivall the name or address of any friends, whose interest in himself or his work might render their cooperation probable.
This passive assent sufficed. A printed prospectus was now issued. About two hundred members were soon secured. A committee was elected, of which Mr. J. T. Nettleship, already well known as a Browning student, was one of the most conspicuous members; and by the end of October a small Society had come into existence, which held its inaugural meeting in the Botanic Theatre of University College. Mr. Furnivall, its principal founder, and responsible organizer, was Chairman of the Committee, and Miss E. H. Hickey, the co-founder, was Honorary Secretary. When, two or three years afterwards, illness compelled her to resign this position, it was assumed by Mr. J. Dykes Campbell.
Although nothing could be more unpretending than the action of this Browning Society, or in the main more genuine than its motive, it did not begin life without encountering ridicule and mistrust. The formation of a Ruskin Society in the previous year had already established a precedent for allowing a still living worker to enjoy the fruits of his work, or, as some one termed it, for making a man a classic during his lifetime. But this fact was not yet generally known; and meanwhile a curious contradiction developed itself in the public mind. The outer world of Mr. Browning’s acquaintance continued to condemn the too great honour which was being done to him; from those of the inner circle he constantly received condolences on being made the subject of proceedings which, according to them, he must somehow regard as an offence.
This was the last view of the case which he was prepared to take. At the beginning, as at the end, he felt honoured by the intentions of the Society. He probably, it is true, had occasional misgivings as to its future. He could not be sure that its action would always be judicious, still less that it would be always successful. He was prepared for its being laughed at, and for himself being included in the laughter. He consented to its establishment for what seemed to him the one unanswerable reason, that he had, even on the ground of taste, no just cause for forbidding it. No line, he considered, could be drawn between the kind of publicity which every writer seeks, which, for good or evil, he had already obtained, and that which the Browning Society was conferring on him. His works would still, as before, be read, analyzed, and discussed ‘viva voce’ and in print. That these proceedings would now take place in other localities than drawing-rooms or clubs, through other organs than newspapers or magazines, by other and larger groups of persons than those usually gathered round a dinner-or a tea-table, involved no real change in the situation. In any case, he had made himself public property; and those who thus organized their study of him were exercising an individual right. If his own rights had been assailed he would have guarded them also; but the circumstances of the case precluded such a contingency. And he had his reward. How he felt towards the Society at the close of its first session is better indicated