Part 1

Chapter 13,787 wordsPublic domain

"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."

_In the same Series._

_Longfellow._ _Tennyson._ _Keats._ _Wordsworth._ _Burns._ _Scott._ _Byron._ _Shelley._

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 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:

Oh, to be in England Now that April's there, And whoever wakes in England Sees, some morning, unaware, That the lowest boughs and the brush-wood sheaf Round the elm-tree bole are in tiny leaf, While the chaffinch sings on the orchard bough In England--now!

And after April, when May follows, And the whitethroat builds, and all the swallows! Hark! where my blossomed pear-tree in the hedge Leans to the field and scatters on the clover Blossoms and dewdrops--at the bent-spray's edge-- That's the wise thrush; he sings each song twice over, Lest you should think he never could recapture The first fine careless rapture! And though the fields look rough with hoary dew, All will be gay when noontide wakes anew The buttercups, the little children's dower, --Far brighter than this gaudy melon-flower!

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.

That's my last Duchess painted on the wall, Looking as if she were alive; I call That piece a wonder, now: Frà Pandolf's hands Worked busily a day, and there she stands. Will't please you sit and look at her? I said "Frà Pandolf" by design, for never read Strangers like you that pictured countenance, The depth and passion of its earnest glance, But to myself they turned (since none puts by The curtain I have drawn for you, but I) And seemed as they would ask me, if they durst, How such a glance came there; so, not the first Are you to turn and ask thus. Sir, 'twas not Her husband's presence only, called that spot Of joy into the Duchess' cheek: perhaps Frà Pandolf chanced to say "Her mantle laps Over my Lady's wrist too much," or "Paint Must never hope to reproduce the faint Half-flush that dies along her throat;" such stuff Was courtesy, she thought, and cause enough For calling up that spot of joy. She had A heart ... how shall I say? ... too soon made glad, Too easily impressed; she liked whate'er She looked on, and her looks went everywhere. Sir, 'twas all one! My favour at her breast, The dropping of the daylight in the West, The bough of cherries some officious fool Broke in the orchard for her, the white mule She rode with round the terrace--all and each Would draw from her alike the approving speech, Or blush, at least. She thanked men,--good; but thanked Somehow ... I know not how ... as if she ranked My gift of a nine-hundred-years-old name With anybody's gift. (_My Last Duchess._)

* * * * *

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, 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 the leaf-buds on the vine are woolly, I noticed that, to-day; One day more bursts them open fully, --You know the red turns grey.

(_The Lost Mistress._)

And again, those lines of poignant, passionate reserve, which sum up _May and Death_:

I wish that when you died last May, Charles, there had died along with you Three parts of spring's delightful things; Ay, and for me, the fourth part too.

A foolish thought, and worse, perhaps! There must be many a pair of friends Who, arm in arm, deserve the warm Moon-births, and the long evening-ends.

So, for their sake, be May still May! Let their new time, as mine of old, Do all it did for me: I bid Sweet sights and sounds throng manifold.

Only, one little sight, one plant, Woods have in May, that starts up green Save a sole streak which, so to speak, Is spring's blood, spilt its leaves between,--

That, they might spare; a certain wood Might miss the plant; their loss were small: But I,--whene'er the leaf grows there, Its drop comes from my heart, that's all.

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 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:

"Oh, their Rafael of the dear Madonnas, Oh, their Dante of the dread Inferno, Wrote one song--and in my brain I sing it, Drew one angel--borne, see, on my bosom!"

And in all his poems which deal with the love of man and woman, "he regarded the union of 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.

* * * * *

I send my heart up to thee, all my heart, In this my singing. For the stars help me, and the sea bears part; The very night is clinging Closer to Venice' streets to leave one space Above me, whence thy face May light my joyous heart to thee its dwelling-place.

_He sings._

I send my heart up to thee, all my heart In this my singing. For the stars help me, and the sea bears part; The very night is clinging Closer to Venice' streets to leave one space Above me, whence thy face May light my joyous heart to thee its dwelling-place.

_She speaks._

Say after me, and try to say My very words, as if each word Came from you of your own accord, In your own voice, in your own way: "This woman's heart and soul and brain Are mine as much as this gold chain She bids me wear; which," (say again) "I choose to make by cherishing A precious thing, or choose to fling Over the boat-side, ring by ring." And yet once more say ... no word more! Since words are only words. Give o'er! Unless you call me, all the same, Familiarly by my pet-name Which, if the Three should hear you call, And me reply to, would proclaim At once our secret to them all.

* * * * *

_She speaks._

There's Zanze's vigilant taper; safe are we! Only one minute more to-night with me? Resume your past self of a month ago! Be you the bashful gallant, I will be The lady with the colder breast than snow: Now bow you, as becomes, nor touch my hand More than I touch yours when I step to land, And say, "All thanks, Siora!"-- Heart to heart, And lips to lips! Yet once more, ere we part, Clasp me, and make me thine, as mine thou art!

(_He is surprised and stabbed._)

It was ordained to be so, Sweet,--and best Comes now, beneath thine eyes, and on thy breast. Still kiss me! Care not for the cowards! Care Only to put aside thy beauteous hair My blood will hurt! The Three, I do not scorn To death, because they never lived: but I Have lived indeed, and so--(yet one more kiss)--can die! (_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!"

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_.

I said--Then, Dearest, since 'tis so, Since now at length my fate I know, Since nothing all my love avails, Since all, my life seemed meant for, fails, Since this was written and needs must be--

My whole heart rises up to bless Your name in pride and thankfulness! Take back the hope you gave,--I claim Only a memory of the same, --And this beside, if you will not blame, Your leave for one more last ride with me.

My mistress bent that brow of hers; Those deep dark eyes where pride demurs When pity would be softening through, Fixed me a breathing-while or two With life or death in the balance: right! The blood replenished me again; My last thought was at least not vain: I and my mistress, side by side Shall be together, breathe and ride, So, one day more am I deified-- Who knows but the world may end to-night?

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

Beautiful Evelyn Hope is dead! Sit and watch by her side an hour. That is her book-shelf, this her bed; She plucked that piece of geranium-flower, Beginning to die too in the glass; Little has yet been changed, I think: The shutters are shut, no light may pass Save two long rays thro' the hinge's chink.

* * * * *

Is it too late then, Evelyn Hope? What, your soul was pure and true, The good stars met in your horoscope, Made you of spirit, fire and dew-- And, just because I was thrice as old And our paths in the world diverged so wide, Each was nought to each, must I be told? We were fellow-mortals, nought beside?

No, indeed! for God above Is great to grant, as mighty to make, And creates the love to reward the love: I claim you still, for my own love's sake! Delayed it may be for more lives yet, Through worlds I shall traverse, not a few: Much is to learn and much to forget Ere the time be come for taking you.

But the time will come,--at last it will, When, Evelyn Hope, what meant, I shall say, In the lower earth, in the years long still, That body and soul so pure and gay? Why your hair was amber, I shall divine, And your mouth of your own geranium's red-- And what you would do with me, in fine, In the new life come in the old one's stead.

* * * * *

I loved you, Evelyn, all the while! My heart seemed full as it could hold-- There was place and to spare for the frank young smile, And the red young mouth and the hair's young gold. So, hush,--I will give you this leaf to keep-- See, I shut it inside the sweet cold hand. There, that is our secret! go to sleep; You will wake, and remember, and understand.

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

It was roses, roses, all the way, With myrtle mixed in my path like mad: The house-roofs seemed to heave and sway, The church-spires flamed, such flags they had, A year ago on this very day!

* * * * *

There's nobody on the house-tops now-- Just a palsied few at the windows set; For the best of the sight is, all allow, At the Shambles' Gate--or, better yet, By the very scaffold's foot, I trow.

I go in the rain, and, more than needs, A rope cuts both my wrists behind; And I think, by the feel, my forehead bleeds, For they fling, whoever has a mind, Stones at me for my year's misdeeds.

Thus I entered Brescia, and thus I go! In triumphs, people have dropped down dead. "Thou, paid by the World,--what dost thou owe Me?" God might question: but now instead, 'Tis God shall requite! I am safer so.

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":

Not hear? when noise was everywhere! it tolled Increasing like a bell. Names in my ears Of all the lost adventurers my peers,-- How such a one was strong, and such was bold, And such was fortunate, yet each of old Lost, lost! one moment knelled the woe of years.

There they stood, ranged along the hill-sides, met To view the last of me, a living frame For one more picture! in a sheet of flame I saw them and I knew them all. And yet Dauntless the slug-horn to my lips I set And blew, "_Childe Roland to the Dark Tower came_."

... 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 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 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:

* * * * *

And I know, while thus the quiet-coloured eve Smiles to leave To their folding, all our many-tinkling fleece In such peace, And the slopes and rills in undistinguished grey Melt away-- That a girl with eager eyes and yellow hair Waits me there In the turret whence the charioteers caught soul For the goal, When the king looked, where she looks now, breathless, dumb Till I come.

Where the quiet-coloured end of evening smiles Miles and miles On the solitary pastures where our sheep Half asleep Tinkle homeward thro' the twilight, stray or stop As they crop--

Was the site once of a city great and gay, (So they say) Of our country's very capital, its prince Ages since Held his court in, gathered councils, wielding far Peace or war.

* * * * *

And I know, while thus the quiet-coloured eve Smiles to leave To their folding, all our many-tinkling fleece In such peace, And the slopes and rills in undistinguished grey Melt away--

That a girl with eager eyes and yellow hair Waits me there In the turret whence the charioteers caught soul For the goal, When the king looked, where she looks now, breathless, dumb Till I come.

But he looked upon the city, every side, Far and wide, All the mountains topped with temples, all the glades' Colonnades, All the causeys, bridges, aqueducts,--and then, All the men!

When I do come, she will speak not, she will stand, Either hand On my shoulder, give her eyes the first embrace Of my face, Ere we rush, ere we extinguish sight and speech Each on each.

* * * * *

Oh heart! oh, blood that freezes, blood that burns! Earth's returns For whole centuries of folly, noise and sin! Shut them in, With their triumphs and their glories and the rest. Love is best!

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.