BROWNING
DAYS WITH POETS

A Day with Browning

"The Palazzo Giustiniani Recanati was a place of historical association and fifteenth-century traditions.... At three o'clock regularly, a friend's gondola, which was always at hand to convey him, came and carried him, usually, to the Lido,—his favourite spot."

Painting by E. W. Haslehust.
BROWNING'S HOUSE IN VENICE.

A DAY WITH THE POET BROWNING

NEW YORK
HODDER & STOUGHTON

In the same Series.

Longfellow.
Tennyson.
Keats.
Wordsworth.
Burns.
Scott.
Byron.
Shelley.

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A DAY WITH BROWNING.

FROM his bed-room window in the Palazzo Giustiniani Recanati, every morning in 1885, Robert Browning watched the sunrise. "My window commands a perfect view," he wrote, "the still, grey lagoon, the few seagulls flying, the islet of San Giorgio in deep shadow, and the clouds in a long purple rack, from behind which a sort of spirit of rose burns up, till presently all the rims are on fire with gold.... So my day begins."

The Palazzo, in which a suite of rooms had been placed by Mrs. Bronson at the disposal of the poet and his sister, was a place of historical association and fifteenth-century traditions. And no more appropriate abiding-place than Venice could have been selected for a man of Browning's temperament. The Venetian colouring was a perpetual feast to his eye: its mediæval glories were a source of continual inspiration. And if much of his heart[Pg 6] still remained with his native land, so that the London daily papers were a necessity of existence, and a certain sense of exile occasionally obtruded itself, we must needs be grateful to that fact for its result in certain immortal lines:

But there had always been a frankly cosmopolitan spirit in Browning,—no touch of parochialism or insularity. In the magnificent gallery of portrait studies, no two alike, which his poems present to us, the nationalities are legion. Yet Italian scenes predominate; for Browning could gauge, with the unerring instinct of genius, all the subtleties of the Italian temperament. So we come, at every turn, across some ardent vision of the South,—here, Waring sailing out of Trieste under the furled lateen-sail; and there, Fra Lippo Lippi tracking "lutestrings, laughs, and whifts of song" down the darkling streets of Florence. The "Patriot," riding into Brescia, "roses, roses all the way," and the Duke of Ferrara,—that "typical representative of a whole phase of civilisation," discussing My Last Duchess and her foolishness.

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Painting by W. J. Neatby. MY LAST DUCHESS.

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After a light and early breakfast—the poet, when abroad, lived almost entirely on milk, fruit, etc., abjuring animal food—Browning would follow his invariable custom, a stroll along the Riva to the public gardens. He never failed to leave the house at the same hour of the day: he was a man of singularly methodical habits in many ways. "Good sense," it has been said, "was his foible, if not his habit": and an orderly method of life was one of the strongest proofs of this fact: another evidence lay in his care to avoid being labelled. The disorderly locks and careless appearance of the typical poet were quite alien to this well-groomed, cleanly-looking Englishman, with his "sweet, grave face," silvery hair, and smooth,[Pg 12] healthy skin. Singularly wholesome in body as well as in mind, until past seventy he could take the longest walks without fatigue; the splendid eyesight of his clear grey eyes remained untarnished to the last. These keen grey eyes of his never failed to notice anything worth seeing in his walks: an extraordinary minuteness of observation is perceptible in all his poems dealing with out-door life,—little touches of detail such as few men are masters of:

And again, those lines of poignant, passionate reserve, which sum up May and Death:

Arrived at the public gardens, Browning was careful to visit his "friends" there and to feed them—the elephant, baboon, kangaroo, ostrich, pelican, and marmosets. He had that particular camaraderie with wild animals which is almost akin to a hypnotic influence over them: and when in the country, he would "whistle softly to the lizards basking on the low walls which border the roads, to try his old power of attracting them." Flowers he enjoyed as a colour-feast for the eye; scenery he revelled in. In that perpetual contemplation of Nature, which with Wordsworth became an[Pg 14] all-absorbent passion, Browning had but little share: his chief interest was in man. But "now and again external nature was for him ... pierced and shot through with spiritual fire."

Three times punctually he would walk round the gardens, and then walk home. Upon these daily strolls he was accompanied by his sister Sarianna: in whose love and companionship he was singularly fortunate. Sarianna Browning had always been the best of sisters to the poet and his wife,—a kindred spirit in every sense of the word; and she was now intent to supply, so far as in her lay, the place of that "soul of fire enclosed in a shell of pearl"—Elizabeth Barrett Browning. Of the dead wife, who had been all-in-all to him, Browning seldom spoke in words: but his burning need of her and hope of reunion with her gleamed continually through his writings:

And in all his poems which deal with the love of man and woman, "he regarded the union of[Pg 15] soul with soul as the capital achievement of life." He thought of love "as a supreme possession in itself, and as a revelation of infinite things which lie beyond it: as a test of character, and even as a pledge of perpetual advance in the life of the spirit." Hence, even where the shadow of death broods over a poem, as we see it In a Gondola, that shadow "glows with colour like the shadows of a Venetian painter." Love, to the very last, is infinitely stronger than death.

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Painting by W. Russell Flint. IN A GONDOLA.

The latter hours of the morning were devoted by the poet to work, proof-sheets, and correspondence. He would complain bitterly of the quantity of "ephemeral correspondence" which took up so much of his time: yet, with the rarest exceptions, he answered every letter he received. He counted that day lost in which he had not written at least a little. In earlier life he had worked fast and copiously, but now he was satisfied with twenty or thirty lines as the result of a morning's work. And upon these lines he expended infinite trouble; for, despite all suppositions to the contrary, he finished his work with great care. "People accuse me of not taking pains!" he grumbled, "I take nothing but pains!"

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His subject-matter fell naturally into three groups of poems: those interpreting love in its various phases, those occupied with art and artists, those treating of religious ideas and emotions. And these again may be subdivided into poems of failure and attainment: it is hard to say which are which, for Browning was the singer of heroic failures, and they, to him, were spiritual triumphs. He held that "we fall to rise—are baffled to fight better,—sleep, to wake." No such moral tonic has ever been proffered to the weary and dispirited as the invulnerable optimism of Browning. He regarded this present life as a state of probation and preparation; therefore, "his faith in the unseen order of things created a hope which persists through all apparent failure." The Miltonic ideal, "and what is else, not to be overcome," is the core and centre of Browning's teaching. Sometimes it refers to hopeless love, as in The Last Ride Together.

Sometimes death, to all seeming, has shut the doors of hope for ever:

Or, again, the tragedy of ingratitude and crumbled aspirations ends—as the world might say—upon the scaffold.

In all these, as in Childe Roland, that forlorn romance of dreary and depressed heroism, "the trumpet-note of the soul's victory rings through the darkness of terrestrial defeat":

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... At noon, Browning would make a second and more substantial breakfast on Italian dishes; and at three o'clock regularly, a friend's gondola, which was always at hand to convey him, came and carried him, usually, to the Lido,—his favourite spot. "I walk, even in wind or rain," he wrote, "for a couple of hours on Lido, and enjoy the break of sea on the strip of sand, as much as Shelley did in those old days.... Go there,—if only to be[Pg 26] blown about by the sea-wind!" The sea-wind, indeed, was the very utterance of his own robust and vigorous nature, his keen alertness of sense, and his impetuous, impulsive spirit.

In the course of the afternoon, he would explore Venice in all directions, studying her multitudinous points of interest and beauty. The daughter of his hostess, Mrs. Bronson, sometimes companioned him on these excursions, guiding him through the narrow by-streets, or examining, with him, the monuments, sculptures and frescoes of the churches.

Art, in its various manifestations, had been a life-long study with Browning. He took great delight in modelling in clay, and had for some while studied sculpture under Story. He possessed the artistic temperament—fiery, nervous, susceptible—in its sanest form: and not only was he able to express all an artist's aims, ambitions, and despairs, but to arrive in all his poems, at one point or other, at a superb pictorial moment. Some of his lines are penetrated from end to end with this remarkable pictorial quality: perhaps the most notable example is Love Among the Ruins, with its triple contrast,—the infinite calm of the pasture-lands prolonging themselves into the sunset, the noise[Pg 27] and vital movement which had filled the now-vanished city,—and the lover, endeavouring to curb his impatience for the one beloved face by dwelling on these outward things:

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Painting by W. Russell Flint. LOVE AMONG THE RUINS.

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Another characteristic of Browning was his consummate comprehension of artistic ideals, those of temperaments so opposite as Fra Lippo Lippi, Pictor Ignotus, and that too-perfect painter Andrea del Sarto. His poem on the last-named was written and forwarded to a friend, who had begged him to procure a copy of the Pitti portrait of Del Sarto and his wife. It tells far more than any portrait could: and expresses the writer's doctrine that in art, as in life, the aspiration toward the higher is greater than the achievement of the lower: "A man's reach should exceed his grasp, or what's heaven for?" According to Browning's belief, a soul's probation, its growth, its ultimate value, lie mainly if not wholly in this choice between the high and the less high.

Social intercourse occupied a large portion of the day. Browning identified himself with the daily life of Venice, and, besides this, English and American acquaintances were frequently in Venice: the poet, his reputation now firmly established and extending, was sought after by innumerable admirers. He was a man of great social charm,—a brilliant talker, full of amusing anecdotes,—his memory for historical incident was only paralleled by his immense literary knowledge, upon which he drew for apt illustration. Yet he was naturally a reticent man, of painfully nervous excitability; "nervous[Pg 34] to such a degree," as he said of himself, "that I might fancy I could not enter a drawing-room, did I not know from my experience that I could do it." This very nervousness, however, often induced an almost abnormal vivacity of speech: and Browning was warmly welcomed amongst the notable and even royal folk whose names were included in Mrs. Bronson's circle; they recognised in him, as Frederick Tennyson had done, "a man of infinite learning, jest, and bonhomie, and moreover a sterling heart that reveals no hollowness." To women he was specially attracted, and vice-versâ; "that golden-hearted Robert," as his wife had termed him, had an intimate understanding of the woman's mind. But towards children, he was, so to speak, almost numb. Devoted though he was to his only son, "the essential quality of early childhood was not that which appealed to him:" and the fervour of parental instinct finds practically no expression in his poems.

In the course of the day the poet would lose no opportunity of hearing any important concert: an accomplished musician himself, his love for the tone-art amounted to a passion: and in many of his greatest poems, he had voiced the most secret meanings of music, and[Pg 35] the yearning aspirations of a composer. We "sit alone in the loft" with the organist, Master Hughes of Saxe-Gotha, and his "huge house of the sounds," to listen and wonder while his fugue "broadens and thickens, greatens and deepens and lengthens," and the intricacy of constructive technique forms, as someone has said, "an interposing web spun by the brain between art and things divine." Or we stand with Abt Vogler in his "palace of music" as it falls to pieces, and the magic of inspiration over-rides the mastery of construction. The void of the silence is filled with "the substance of things hoped for; the evidence of things not seen," and faith is born of the composer's very impotence to realize the heights of his own ambition—yet one more rendering of that triumphant failure, of which Browning was the prophet:

And, as a final contrast, drawn out of that shoreless sea of contrasts which music can[Pg 37] reveal, we have A Toccata of Galuppi's, suffused with the melancholy of mundane pleasure, steeped in the ephemeral voluptuousness of eighteenth-century Venice. In these lines, it has been pointed out, "Browning's self-restraint is admirable.... The poet will not say a word more than the musician has said in his Toccata."

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Painting by W. Russell Flint. A TOCCATA OF GALUPPI'S.

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The afternoon wore by quickly, and it was soon time to dress for dinner: for Browning was precise in adhering to the customs of civilised life: and he liked to see his sister seated opposite him, clad in beautiful gowns of sombre richness, and wearing quaint old jewelry. Browning accepted his meals with frank pleasure; he was no ascetic, and "his optimism and his belief in direct Providence led him to make a direct virtue of happiness," and to welcome it in its simplest form. Any guest who might be present was privileged to enjoy that sparkling and many-faceted eloquence to which reference has been made already. But the host was always careful to avoid deep or solemn topics—doubtless because he felt them far too keenly, to use them as mere texts for dinner-table discussion. "If such were broached[Pg 42] in his presence, he dismissed them with one strong convincing sentence, and adroitly turned the current of conversation into a shallower channel."

Later on, he would probably visit the Goldoni Theatre, where he had a large box: or, if remaining at home, he was often prevailed upon to read aloud. His delivery was forcible and dramatic,—he would strongly emphasise all the light and shade of a poem, and the touches of character in the dialogue. Especially was this the case when reading his own compositions. But often he would say with a smile, "No R. B. to-night!—let us have some real poetry," and would take down a volume of Shelley, Keats or Coleridge.

At last, another of the "divine sunsets" which Browning adored had faded over the Lido; the "quiet-coloured end of evening" had darkened into dusk and stars. Even that alert and indefatigable frame grew weary with the day's long doings, and a natural desire for rest descended upon "the brain which too much thought expands." The vision of Guercino's picture, "fraught with a pathos so magnificent," returned upon him from that sultry day in which he had beheld the "Guardian Angel" at[Pg 43] Fano, "my angel with me, too," and he longed for the touch of those divinely-healing hands.

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Painting by W. Russell Flint. THE GUARDIAN ANGEL.

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Yet it was not to a celestial visitant that Browning's thoughts turned most, now or at any other time. It was towards the one love of his life,—towards that re-union, that restoration, that infrangible joy of retrieval, which was the goal of his whole desire. And, characteristically of the man who was "ever a fighter," he did not expect to reach his haven by a calm and prosperous passage. It had to be fought for—struggled for from strength to strength,—attained through incessant and arduous combat.[Pg 47] For those do not "mount, and that hardly, to eternal life," who remain content upon terrestrial planes;

Therefore, as sleep, "Death's twin-brother," came slowly through the darkness, the fighter faced his last hour in imagination, and made haste to "greet the future with a cheer." For Prospice is an "act of the faith which comes through love.... No lonely adventure is here to reward the victor o'er death: the transcendant joy is human love recovered":

Printed by Percy Lund, Humphries & Co., Ltd., Bradford and London.