Greek," she adds, "especially the dramatists." So already the air begins
to stir and tremble with the coming of him of whom in later days she
wrote:

  "I yield the grave for thy sake, and resign
  My near sweet view of heaven for earth with thee."

The entrancing thrill of that wonderful Wagner music that ushers in the
first appearance of the knight in the music-drama of "Lohengrin" is
typical of the vibrations that thrill the air in some etherial
announcement of experiences that are on the very threshold, and which are
recognized by a nature as sensitive and impressionable as was that of
Elizabeth Barrett. A new element with its transfiguring power awaited her,
and some undefined prescience of that

  "... most gracious singer of high poems"

whose music was to fall at her door

  "... in folds of golden fulness"

haunted her like "an odor from Dreamland sent."

She pondered on

                 "... how Theocritus had sung
  Of the sweet years, the dear and wished-for years,"

but she dared not dream that the "mystic Shape" that drew her backward,
and whose voice spoke "in mastery," had come to lead her,--not to Death,
but Love.

CHAPTER V

1841-1846

        "... If a man could feel,
  Not one day in the artist's ecstasy,
  But every day,--feast, fast, or working-day,
  The spiritual significance burn through
  The hieroglyphic of material shows,
  Henceforward he would paint the globe with wings."

"BELLS AND POMEGRANATES"--ARNOULD AND DOMETT--"A BLOT IN THE 'SCUTCHEON"--
    MACREADY--SECOND VISIT TO ITALY--MISS BARRETT'S POETIC WORK--
    "COLOMBE'S BIRTHDAY"--"LADY GERALDINE'S COURTSHIP"--"ROMANCES AND
    LYRICS"--BROWNING'S FIRST LETTER TO MISS BARRETT--THE POETS MEET--
    LETTERS OF ROBERT BROWNING AND ELIZABETH BARRETT--"LOVES OF THE
    POETS"--VITA NUOVA.

The appearance of "Bells and Pomegranates" made a deep impression on
Elizabeth Barrett, as the numbers, opening with "Pippa Passes,"
successively appeared between 1841 and 1846. Of "Pippa" she said she could
find it in her heart to covet the authorship, and she felt all the
combinations of effect to be particularly "striking and noble." In a paper
that Miss Barrett wrote in these days for the _Athenæum_, critically
surveying the poetic outlook of the time, she referred to Browning and
Tennyson as "among those high and gifted spirits who would still work and
wait." When this London journal reviewed (not too favorably) Browning's
"Romances and Lyrics," Miss Barrett took greatly to heart the injustice
that she felt was done him, and reverted to it in a number of personal
letters, expressing her conviction that "it would be easier to find a more
faultless writer than a poet of equal genius." An edition of Tennyson, in
two volumes, came out, including the "Ulysses," "Morte d'Arthur,"
"Locksley Hall," and "OEnone," of which she says no one quite appeals to
her as does "OEnone," and she expresses her belief that philosophic
thinking, like music, is always involved in high ideality of any kind.
Wordsworth she insisted upon estimating from his best, not from his
poorest work, and his "Ode" was to her so grand as to atone for a
multitude of poetic sins. "I confess," she wrote to Boyd, "that he is not
unfrequently heavy and dull, and that Coleridge has an intenser genius."
To her cousin, Kenyon, Miss Barrett sent the manuscript of her poem, "The
Dead Pan," which he showed to Browning, who wrote of it to Kenyon with
ardent admiration. This note was sent to Miss Barrett, who displayed it to
Horne that he might see the opinion of the poet whom they both admired.
Still later, Horne published in his "New Spirit of the Age" sketches of
several writers with their portraits; and those of Carlyle, Miss
Martineau, Wordsworth, Tennyson, and Browning, Miss Barrett had framed for
her own room. She asked Kenyon if that of Browning were a good one.
"Rather like," he replied. So here and there the Fates were invisibly at
work, forging the subtle threads that were drawing the poets unconsciously
nearer.

It was the suggestion of Browning's publisher, Moxon, that "Bells and
Pomegranates" might be issued in pamphlet form, appearing at intervals, as
this plastic method would be comparatively inexpensive, and would also
permit the series to be stopped at any time if its success was not of a
degree to warrant continuance. The poet found his title, as he afterward
explained in a letter to Miss Barrett, in Exodus, "... upon the hem of the
robe thou shalt make pomegranates of blue and of purple, and of scarlet,
and bells of gold between them round about." After "Pippa Passes" there
followed "King Victor and King Charles," a number of Lyrics, "The Return
of the Druses," "A Blot in the 'Scutcheon," "Luria," and "A Soul's
Tragedy." On each of the title-pages the author was named as the writer of
"Paracelsus," "Sordello" being ignored. Among the dedications of these
several numbers those so honored included John Kenyon, Proctor, and
Talfourd.

Browning offered "A Blot in the 'Scutcheon" to Macready (whose stage
fortunes at this period were not brilliant), with the remark that "The
luck of the third venture is proverbial." The actor consulted Forster, who
passed the play on to Dickens, to whom it deeply appealed. Under date of
November 25, 1842, Dickens wrote of it to Forster in the most enthusiastic
words, saying the reading of it had thrown him "into a perfect passion of
sorrow," and that it was "full of genius, natural, and great thoughts,...
and I swear it is a tragedy that must be played, and played by Macready,"
continued the novelist. "And tell Browning that I believe from my soul
there is no man living (and not many dead) who could produce such a work."
Forster did not, however, administer this consolation to the young author,
who was only to learn of Dickens's admiration thirty years later, when
Forster's biography of him appeared. The story of the production of the
play is told in a letter from Joseph Arnould to Alfred Domett (then in New
Zealand), written under date of May, 1843, dated from Arnould's home in
Victoria Square, Pimlico:

    "As one must begin somewhere, suppose we take Browning.... In February
    his play, 'A Blot in the 'Scutcheon,' was announced as forthcoming at
    Drury Lane.... Meantime, judicious friends had a habit of asking when
    the play was coming out...."[5]

A long chapter of vexations is humorously described by Domett, who
concludes his letter with this tribute to the play.

    "... With some of the finest situations and grandest passages you can
    conceive, it does undoubtedly want a sustained interest to the end of
    the third act; in fact the whole of that act on the stage is a falling
    off from the second, which I need not tell you is, for purposes of
    performance, the most unpardonable fault. Still, it will no
    doubt--nay, it must--have done this, viz., produced a higher opinion
    than ever of Browning's genius and the great things he is yet to do,
    in the minds not only of a clique, but of the general world of
    readers. This man will go far yet...."

While this vexation cancelled the friendly relations that had existed
between Browning and Macready, it fostered the friendship between the poet
and Helen Faucit (later Lady Martin), who remembered Browning's attitude
"as full of generous sympathy" for the actors of the cast; while he
recalled Miss Faucit's "perfect behavior as a woman, and her admirable
playing, as the one gratifying factor" in the affair. But Browning was too
noble by nature for any lasting resentment, and meeting Macready soon
after the death of both his own wife, in Italy, and of Mrs. Macready, he
could only grasp his old friend's hand and exclaim with emotion, "Oh,
Macready!"

In the autumn of 1844 Browning set forth for Italy on his second visit.
Two years before his friend Domett had left England for New Zealand,
commemorated by the poet in the lines,--

  "How, forsooth, was I to know it
  If Waring meant to glide away
  Like a ghost at break of day."

Browning landed at Naples, and there, according to Mrs. Orr, he became
acquainted with a young Neapolitan, Signor Scotti, who took the
bargaining of their tour upon himself, after they had agreed to travel
together, "and now as I write," said Mr. Browning in a letter from his
Naples hotel to his sister Sarianna, "I hear him disputing our bill. He
does not see why we should pay for six wax candles when we have used only
two." The pair wandered over the enchanting shores of all the Naples
region, lingered in Sorrento, drove over the picturesque road to Amalfi,
and listened to the song of the sirens along the shore. Their arrival in
Rome was Browning's first sight of the Eternal City. Here Mr. Browning
found an old friend, the Contessa Carducci, with whom the two passed most
of their evenings. He made his poetic pilgrimage to the graves of Shelley
and Keats, as do all later pilgrims, and he visited the grotto of Egeria
in memory of Byron. He loitered in the old _chiesa_ near Santa Maria
Maggiore, where the sixteenth century Bishop "ordered his tomb," and he
visited Trelawney in Leghorn. There exists little record of this trip save
in the poem "The Englishman in Italy," and his return to England through
Germany is alike unrecorded.

Six years had passed since the publication of "The Seraphim and Other
Poems," and on Mr. Browning's arrival at home again, he found two new
volumes of Miss Barrett's, entitled simply "Poems," in which were "A Drama
of Exile," "Bertha in the Lane," "Catarina to Camoens," "A Vision of
Poets," nearly all of the sonnets that she ever wrote save that immortal
sequence, "Sonnets from the Portuguese," and "Lady Geraldine's Courtship."
These volumes absolutely established her poetic rank with that of Tennyson
and Browning. She "heard the nations praising her far off." While she had
many expressions of grateful gladness for all this chorus of praise with
hardly a dissenting voice, the verdict did not affect her own high
standards. "I have written these poems as well as I could," she says, "and
I hope to write others better. I have not reached my own ideal ... but I
love poetry more than I love my own successes in it."

Her love of absolute truth, and the absence of any petty self-love in her
character, stand out in any study of her life. "Why, if you had told me
that my books were without any value in your eyes, do you imagine that I
should not have valued you, reverenced you ever after for your truth, so
sacred a thing in friendship?" she writes to a friend.

The reviews are eminently appreciative and satisfying. _Blackwood's_ gave
a long critique in a special article, frankly pointing out faults, but
asserting that her merits far outweighed her defects, and that her genius
"was profound, unsullied, and without a flaw." The long poem, "A Drama of
Exile" was pronounced the least successful of all, and the prime favorite
was "Lady Geraldine's Courtship." Of this poem of ninety-two stanzas, with
eleven more in its "Conclusion," thirty-five of the stanzas, or one
hundred and forty-four lines, were written in one day.

Though lack of health largely restricted Miss Barrett to her room, her
sympathies and interests were world-wide. She read the reviews of the
biography of Dr. Arnold, a work she desired to read, entire, and records
that "Dr. Arnold must have been a man in the largest and noblest sense."
She rejoices in the refutation of Puseyism that is offered in the
_Edinburgh Review_; she reads "an admirable paper by Macaulay" in the same
number; she comments on the news that Newman has united himself with the
Catholic Church; and in one letter she writes that Mr. Horne has not
returned to England and adds: "Mr. Browning is not in England, either, so
that whatever you send for him must await his return from the east, or
west, or south, wherever he is; Dickens is in Italy; even Miss Mitford
talks of going to France, and the 'New Spirit of the Age' is a wandering
spirit."

In her "Lady Geraldine's Courtship" had occurred the lines:

  "Or from Browning some 'Pomegranate,' which, if cut deep down the
      middle,
  Shows a heart within blood-tinctured, of a veined humanity."

A certain consciousness of each other already stirred in the air for
Browning and Miss Barrett, and still closer were the Fates drawing the
subtle threads of destiny.

It was in this November that Mrs. Jameson first came into Miss Barrett's
life, coming to the door with a note, and "overcoming by kindness was let
in." This initiated a friendship that was destined in the near future to
play its salient part in the life of Elizabeth Barrett. In what orderly
sequence the links of life appear, viewed retrospectively!

She "gently wrangles" with Mr. Boyd for addressing her as "Miss Barrett,"
deprecating such cold formality, and offering him his choice of her little
pet name "Ba" or of Elizabeth.

She reads Hans Christian Andersen's "Improvisatore," and in reply to some
expressed wonder at her reading so many novels she avows herself "the most
complete and unscrupulous romance reader" possible; and adds that her love
of fiction began with her breath, and will end with it; "and it goes on
increasing. On my tombstone may be written," she continued, "'_Ci gît_ the
greatest novel reader in the world,' and nobody will forbid the
inscription."

And so the prelude of her life draws to a close, and the future is to be
no more the mere living "with visions for her company," for now, in this
January of 1845, she has a letter from Browning, and she writes: "I had a
letter from Browning, the poet, last night, which threw me into
ecstasies,--Browning, the author of 'Paracelsus,' and king of the
mystics." Not long after she writes that she is getting deeper and deeper
into correspondence with Robert Browning, and that they are growing to be
the truest of friends. Lowell writes to Miss Barrett regarding her poems,
though the letter does not seem to be anywhere on record, and she writes
to Mr. Westwood that in her view Mr. Browning's power is of a very high
order, and that he must read "Paracelsus." In its author she finds one who
"speaks true oracles." She finds "Colombe's Birthday" exquisite, and
"Pippa Passes" she "kneels to, with deepest reverence."

The first letter of Browning to Miss Barrett was written on January 10 of
this year (1845), and he began with the words: "I love your verses with
all my heart, dear Miss Barrett." He enters into the "fresh strange music,
the exquisite pathos, and true, brave thought" of her work; and reminds
her that Kenyon once asked him if he would like to see Miss Barrett, but
that she did not feel able, and he felt as if close to some world's
wonder, but the half-opened door shut. Her reply, which is dated the next
day, thanks him for his sympathy and offers him her gratitude, "agreeing
that of all the commerce from Tyre to Carthage, the exchange of sympathy
for gratitude is the most princely thing." And she craves a lasting
obligation in that he shall suggest her master-faults in poetry. She does
not pretend to any extraordinary meekness under criticism, and possibly
might not be at all obedient to it, but she has such high respect for his
power in Art, and his experience as an artist. She refers to Mr. Kenyon as
her friend and helper, and her books' friend and helper, "critic and
sympathizer, true friend at all hours!" and she adds that "while I live to
follow this divine art of poetry ... I must be a devout student and
admirer of your works."

Browning is made very happy by her words, and he feels that his poor
praise "was nearly as felicitously brought out as a certain tribute to
Tasso, which amused me in Rome some weeks ago," he says. "In a neat
penciling on the wall by his tomb at Sant' Onofrio--'_Alla cara
memoria--di--Torquato Tasso--il Dottore Bernardini--offriva--il sequente
Carme--tu_'--and no more; the good man, it would seem, breaking down with
the over-load of love here! But my '_O tu_' was breathed out most
sincerely, and now you have taken it in gracious part, the rest will come
after." And then he must repeat (to himself) that her poetry must be
infinitely more to him than his could be to her, "for you do what I have
only hoped to do." And he hopes she will nevermore talk of "the honor" of
his acquaintance, but he will joyfully wait for the delight of her
friendship. And to his fear that she may hate letter-writing she replies
suggesting that nobody likes writing to everybody, but it would be strange
and contradictory if she were not always delighted to hear from and to
write to him; and she can read any manuscript except the writing on the
pyramids, and if he will only treat her _en bon camarade_ "without
reference to the conventionalities of 'ladies and gentlemen'"; taking no
thought for his sentences (or hers), "nor for your badd speling nor for
mine," she is ready to sign and seal the contract of correspondence. And
while she throws off the ceremony, she holds faster to the kindness. She
is overjoyed with this cordial sympathy. "Is it true," she asks, "that I
know so little of you? And is it true that the productions of an artist do
not partake of his real nature? It is not true to my mind,--and therefore
it is not true that I know little of you, except in so far as it is true
that your greatest works are to come.... I think--if I may dare name
myself with you in the poetic relation--that we both have high views of
the Art we follow and steadfast purpose in the pursuit of it.... And that
neither of us would be likely to be thrown from the course by the casting
of any Atalanta ball of speedy popularity.

"And after all that has been said and mused upon the anxiety experienced
by the true artist,--is not the good immeasurably greater than the evil?
For my part I sometimes wonder how, without such an object and purpose of
life, people contrive to live at all."

And her idea of happiness "lies deep in poetry and its associations." And
he replies that what he has printed "gives no knowledge of me," and that
he has never begun what he hopes he was born to begin and end--"R. B. a
poem."

"Do you know Tennyson?" she asks, "that is, with a face to face knowledge?
I have great admiration for him," she continues. "In execution he is
exquisite,--and in music a most subtle weigher out to the ear of fine
airs." And she asks if he knows what it is to covet his neighbor's
poetry,--not his fame, but his poetry. It delights her to hear of his
garden full of roses and his soul full of comforts. She finds the
conception of his Pippa "most exquisite, and altogether original."

In one of Miss Barrett's letters a few weeks later there seems discernible
a forecast of "Aurora Leigh," when she writes that her chief intention is
the writing "of a sort of novel-poem," and one "as completely modern as
'Geraldine's Courtship,' running into the midst of our conventions, and
rushing into drawing-rooms and the like 'where angels fear to tread'; and
so meeting face to face and without mask the Humanity of the age, and
speaking the truth, as I conceive of it, out plainly." She is waiting for
a story; she will not take one, because she likes to make her own. Here is
without doubt the first conception of "Aurora Leigh."

Touching on Life in another letter, she records her feeling that "the
brightest place in the house is the leaning out of the window."

Browning replies: "And pray you not to lean out of the window when my own
foot is only on the stair."...

"But I did not mean to strike a tragic chord," she replies; "indeed I did
not. As to 'escaping with my life,' it was just a phrase ... for the rest
I am essentially better ... and feel as if it were intended for me to live
and not to die." And referring to a passage relating to Prometheus she
asks: "And tell me, if Æschylus is not the divinest of all the divine
Greek souls?" She continues:

    "But to go back to the view of Life with the blind Hopes; you are not
    to think--whatever I may have written or implied--that I lean either
    to the philosophy or affectation which beholds the world through
    darkness instead of light ... and after a course of bitter mental
    discipline and long bodily seclusion I come out with two lessons
    learned--the wisdom of cheerfulness and the duty of social
    intercourse. Anguish has instructed me in joy, and solitude in
    society.... What we call life is a condition of the soul, and the soul
    must improve in happiness and wisdom, except by its own fault.... And
    I do like to hear testimonies like yours, to happiness, and I feel it
    to be a testimony of a higher sort than the obvious one.... Remember,
    that as you owe your unscathed joy to God, you should pay it back to
    His world. I thank you for some of it already."

And she feels how kind he is,--how gently and kindly he speaks to her. In
his next letter he alludes with much feeling to her idea of the
poem-novel:

    "The Poem you propose to make; the fresh, fearless, living work you
    describe, is the only Poem to be undertaken now by you or any one who
    is a poet at all; the only reality, only effective piece of service to
    be rendered God or man; it is what I have been all my life intending
    to do, and now shall be much nearer doing since you will be along with
    me. And you can do it, I know and am sure,--so sure that I could find
    it in my heart to be jealous of your stopping on the way even to
    translate the Prometheus...."

The lovers, for such they already are, however unconsciously to both, fall
into a long discussion of Prometheus, and the Greek drama in general, and
in another letter, with allusion to his begging her to take her own good
time in writing, she half playfully proffers that it is her own bad time
to which she must submit. "This implacable weather!" she writes; "this
east wind that seems to blow through the sun and the moon!... There will
be a May and June if we live to see such things," and then she speaks of
seeing him besides, and while she recognizes it is morbid to shrink and
grow pale in the spirit, yet not all her fine philosophy about social
duties quite carries her through. But "if he thinks she shall not like to
see him, he is wrong, for all his learning." What pathos of revelation of
this brave, celestial spirit, tenanting the most fragile of bodies, is
read in the ensuing passage:

    "What you say of society draws me on to many comparative thoughts of
    your life and mine. You seem to have drunken of the cup of life full
    with the sun shining on it. I have lived only inwardly, or with sorrow
    for a strong emotion. Before this seclusion of my illness I was
    secluded still, and there are few of the youngest women in the world
    who have not seen more, known more, of society, than I, who am hardly
    to be called young now. I grew up in the country, had no social
    opportunities, had my heart in books and poetry, and my experience in
    reveries.... Books and dreams were what I lived in--and domestic life
    seemed to buzz gently around, like the bees about the grass.... Why,
    if I live on and escape this seclusion, do you not perceive that I
    labor under signal disadvantages, that I am, in a manner, a blind
    poet?... I have had much of the inner life ... but how willingly would
    I exchange some of this ponderous, helpless knowledge of books for
    some experience of life.... But grumbling is a vile thing, and we
    should all thank God for our measures of life, and think them
    enough.... Like to write? Of course, of course I do. I seem to live
    while I write--it is life for me. Why, what is it to live? Not to eat
    and drink and breathe,--but to feel the life in you down all the
    fibers of being, passionately and joyfully....

    "Ah, you tempt me with a grand vision of Prometheus!... I am inclined
    to think that we want new forms.... The old gods are dethroned. Why
    should we go back to the antique moulds? If it is a necessity of Art
    to do this, then those critics are right who hold that Art is
    exhausted.... I do not believe this; and I believe the so-called
    necessity of Art to be the mere feebleness of the artist. Let us all
    aspire rather to Life.... For there is poetry everywhere...."

Miss Barrett writes to him, continuing the discussion of poetry as an Art,
that she does not want "material as material, but that every life requires
a full experience," and she has a profound conviction that a poet is at a
lamentable disadvantage if he has been shut from most of the outer aspects
of life. And he, replying, deprecates a little the outward life for a
poet, with amusing references to a novel of D'Israeli's, where, "lo,
dinner is done, and Vivian Grey is here, and Violet Fane there, and a
detachment of the party is drafted off to catch butterflies." But still he
partly agrees, and feels that her Danish novel ("The Improvisatore") must
be full of truth and beauty, and "that a Dane should write so, confirms me
in a belief that Italy is stuff for the use of the North and no more--pure
Poetry there is none, as near as possible none, in Dante, even;... and
Alfieri,... with a life of travel, writes you some fifteen tragedies as
colorless as salad grown under a garden glass...." But she--if she asks
questions about novels it is because she wants to see him by the refracted
lights, as well as by the direct ones; and Dante's poetry--"only material
for northern rhymers?" She must think of that before she agrees with him.

As for Browning, he bids her remember that he writes letters to no one but
her; but there is never enough of telling her.... And she, noting his
sitting up in the morning till six, and sleeping only till nine, wants to
know "how 'Lurias' can be made out of such ungodly imprudences? And what
is the reasonableness of it," she questions, "when we all know that
thinking, dreaming, creative people, like yourself, have two lives to bear
instead of one, and therefore ought to sleep more than others"; and he is
anticipating the day when he shall see her with his own eyes, and now a
day is named on which he will call, and he begs her not to mind his coming
in the least, for if she does not feel able to see him he will come again,
and again, as his time is of no importance.

It was on the afternoon of May 20 (1845) that Robert Browning and
Elizabeth Barrett first met, and of them it could almost have been said,
in words ascribed to Michael Angelo for Vittoria Colonna,--

    "We are the only two, that, face to face,
  Do know each other, as God doth know us both."

It is said that the first letter of Browning's to her after this meeting
is the only one destroyed of all this wonderful correspondence; and this
was such a letter as could only be interpreted into a desire for marriage,
which she, all tender thoughtfulness always for others, characteristically
felt would be fatal to his happiness because of her invalid state. He
begged her to return the letter, and he then destroyed it; and again
pleaded that their friendship and intellectual comradeship should
continue. "Your friendship and sympathy will be dear and precious to me
all my life, if you indeed leave them with me so long, or so little," she
writes; and she utterly forbids any further expression or she must do this
"to be in my own eyes and before God a little more worthy, or a little
less unworthy, of a generosity...." And he discreetly veils his ardors for
the time, and the wonderful letters run on.

[Illustration: MONUMENT TO MICHAEL ANGELO, BY VASARI

CHURCH OF SANTA CROCE.

    "_They are safe in heaven...._
  _The Michaels and Rafaels...._"

Old Pictures in Florence.]

He is writing "The Flight of the Duchess," and sending it to her by
installments; she finds it "past speaking of," and she also refers to
"exquisite pages" of Landor's in the "Pentameron." And poems which he has
left with her,--she must have her own gladness from them in her own way.
And did he go to Chelsea, and hear the divine philosophy?

Apparently he did, for he writes:

    "Yes, I went to Chelsea and found dear Carlyle alone--his wife is in
    the country where he will join her as soon as the book's last proof
    sheets are corrected.... He was all kindness, and talked like his own
    self while he made me tea--and would walk as far as Vauxhall Bridge
    with me on my way home."

She writes:

    "I had a letter yesterday from Charles Hemans, the son of Felicia, ...
    who says his mother's memory is surrounded to him 'with almost a
    divine lustre,'... and is not that better than your tradition about
    Shelley's son? and is it not pleasant to know that the noble,
    pure-hearted woman, the Vittoria Colonna of our country, should be so
    loved and comprehended by one, at least, of her own house?"

Under date of August 25, Miss Barrett has been moved to write out the
pathetic story of her brother Edward's death. He had accompanied her to
Torquay,--he, "the kindest, the noblest, the dearest, and when the time
came for him to return I, weakened by illness, could not master my spirits
or drive back my tears," and he then decided not to leave her. "And ten
days from that day," she continued, "the boat left the shore which never
returned--and he had left me! For three days we waited,--oh, that awful
agony of three days!... Do not notice what I have written to you, my
dearest friend. I have never said so much to a living being--I never could
speak or write of it...."

But he writes her that "better than being happy in her happiness, is it
to participate in her sorrow." And the very last day of that August he
writes that he has had such power over himself as to keep silent ... but
"Let me say now--this only once,--that I loved you from my soul, and gave
you my life, as much of it as you would take, and all that ... is
independent of any return on your part." She assures him that he has
followed the most generous of impulses toward her, "yet I cannot help
adding that, of us two, yours has not been quite the hardest part." She
confesses how deeply she is affected by his words, "but what could I
speak," she questions, "that would not be unjust to you?... Your life! if
you gave it to me and I put my whole heart into it, what should I put in
but anxiety, and more sadness than you were born to? What could I give you
which it would not be ungenerous to give?"

There was a partial plan that Miss Barrett should pass that next winter in
Pisa, but owing to the strange and incalculable disposition of her father,
who, while he loved her, was singularly autocratic in his treatment, the
plan was abandoned. All this sorrow may have contributed to her confession
to Browning that no man had ever been to her feelings what he was; and
that if she were different in some respects she would accept the great
trust of his happiness.... "But we may be friends always," she continues,
"and cannot be so separated that the knowledge of your happiness will not
increase mine.... Worldly thoughts these are not at all, there need be no
soiling of the heart with any such;... you cannot despise the gold and
gauds of the world more than I do,... and even if I wished to be very
poor, in the world's sense of poverty, I could not, with three or four
hundred a year, of which no living will can dispossess me. And is not the
chief good of money, the being free from the need of thinking of it?" But
he, perfect in his beautiful trust and tenderness, was "joyfully
confident" that the way would open, and he thanks God that, to the utmost
of his power, he has not been unworthy of having been introduced to her.
He is "no longer in the first freshness of his life" and had for years
felt it impossible that he should ever love any woman. But he will wait.
That she "cannot dance like Cerito" does not materially disarrange his
plan! And by the last of those September days she confesses that she is
his "for everything but to do him harm," he has touched her so profoundly,
and now "none, except God and your own will, shall interpose between you
and me." And he answered her in such words as these:

    "When I come back from seeing you and think over it all, there is
    never a least word of yours I could not occupy myself with...."

In a subsequent letter Elizabeth Barrett questions: "Could it be that
heart and life were devastated to make room for you? if so it was well
done." And she sends thanks to Browning's sister, Sarianna, for a copy of
Landor's verses.

And with all these gracious and tenderly exquisite personal matters, the
letters are yet brilliant in literary allusion and criticism.

During these three years from 1844 to 1847 were written the greater number
of Miss Barrett's finest lyrics. Those two remarkable poems, "A Rhapsody
of Life's Progress" and "Confessions"; "Loved Once"; "The Sleep" (the poem
which was read at her burial in the lovely, cypress-crowned cemetery in
Florence, and whose stanzas, set to music, were chanted by the choir in
Westminster Abbey when the body of her husband was laid in the "Poets'
Corner"), "The Dead Pan," and that most exquisite lyric of all, "Catarina
to Camoens," were all written during this period.

The title of the latter was but a transparent veil for her own feelings
toward Robert Browning, and had she died in his absence, as Catarina did
in that of Camoens, the words would have expressed her own feeling. What
profound pathos is in the line,

  "Death is near me,--and not _you_,"

and how her own infinite sweetness of spirit is mirrored in the stanza,

  "I will look out to his future;
    I will bless it till it shine,
  Should he ever be a suitor
    Unto sweeter eyes than mine."

And read her own self-revelation again in "A Denial,"

  "We have met late--it is too late to meet,
      O friend, not more than friend!"

But the denial breaks down, and the last lines tell the story:

  "Here's no more courage in my soul to say
      'Look in my face and see.'"

And in that last line of "Insufficiency,"

  "I love thee so, Dear, that I only can leave thee."

In "Question and Answer," in "Proof and Disproof," "A Valediction," "Loved
Once," and "Inclusions," he who reads between the lines and has the magic
of divination may read the story of her inner life.

In the poem "Confessions" is touched a note of mystical, spiritual
romance, spiritual tragedy, wholly of the inner life, that entirely
differentiates from any other poetic expression of Mrs. Browning. In one
stanza occur these lines:

  "The least touch of their hands in the morning, I keep it by day and
      by night;
  Their least step on the stair, at the door, still throbs through me,
      if ever so light."

Even with all allowance for the imagination of the poet, these lines
reveal such feeling, such tremulous susceptibility, that with less
intellectual balance than was hers, combined with such lack of physical
vigor, would almost inevitably have resulted in failure of poise. The
current of spiritual energy was so strong with Elizabeth Barrett as to
largely take the place of greater physical strength. That she never
relapsed into the conditions of morbid invalidism is a marvel, and it is
also an impressive testimony to the power of spiritual energy to control
and determine physical conditions.

All through that summer the letters run on, daily, semi-daily. Of his work
Browning writes that he shall be "prouder to begin one day,--may it be
soon!--with your hand in mine from the beginning." Miss Barrett, referring
to the Earl of Compton, who is reported from Rome as having achieved some
prominence as a painter, proceeds to say:

    "People in general would rather be Marquises than Roman artists,
    consulting their own wishes and inclination. I, for my part, ever
    since I could speak my mind and knew it, always openly and inwardly
    preferred the glory of those who live by their heads, to the opposite
    glory of those who carry other people's arms. So much for glory.
    Happiness goes the same way to my fancy. There is something
    fascinating to me in that Bohemian way of living.... All the
    conventions of society cut so close and thin, that the soul can see
    through.... Beyond, above. It is real life as you say ... whether at
    Rome or elsewhere. I am very glad that you like simplicity in habits
    of life--it has both reasonableness and sanctity.... I am glad that
    you--who have had temptation enough, more than enough, I am sure, in
    every form--have lived in the midst of this London of ours, close to
    the great social vortex, yet have kept so safe, and free, and calm,
    and pure from the besetting sins of our society."

Browning, in one letter, alluding to the prevailing stupidity of the idea
that genius and domestic happiness are incompatible, says: "We will live
the real answer, will we not?... A man of genius mistreats his wife; well,
take away the genius,--does he so instantly improve?"

Of the attitude of his family toward their marriage he writes:

    "My family all love you, dearest,--you cannot conceive my father's and
    mother's childlike faith in goodness--and my sister is very
    high-spirited, and quick of apprehension--so as to seize the true
    point of the case at once.... Last night I asked my father, who was
    absorbed over some old book, if he should not be glad to see his new
    daughter?--to which he, starting, replied, 'Indeed I shall'; with such
    a fervor as to make my mother laugh,--not abated by his adding: 'And
    how I should be glad of her seeing Sarianna!'"

And she writes:

    "Shall we go to Greece, then, Robert? Let us, if you like it. When we
    have used a little the charm of your Italy,... I should like to see
    Athens with my living eyes.... Athens was in all the dreams I dreamed,
    before I knew you. Why should we not see Athens, and Egypt, too, and
    float down the mystical Nile, and stand in the shadow of the Pyramids?
    All of it is more possible now, than walking up the street seemed to
    me last year."

And he writes that he always felt her "Wine of Cyprus" poem to fill his
heart "with unutterable desires."

To book-lovers the question as to how many books may be taken on a
journey, or what volumes, indeed, may be left behind, is a vital one. The
reader will smile sympathetically at Miss Barrett's consultation with
Browning as to whether, if they do "achieve the peculiar madness of going
to Italy," they could take any books? And whether it would be well to so
arrange that they should not take duplicates? He advises the narrowest
compass for luggage. "We can return for what we want, or procure it
abroad," he says, made wise by his two Italian journeys; and he adds:

    "I think the fewer books we take the better; they take up room,--and
    the wise way always seemed to me to read at home, and open one's eyes
    and see abroad. A critic somewhere mentioned that as my
    characteristic--there were two other poets he named placed in novel
    circumstances ... in a great wood, for instance, Mr. Trench would
    begin opening books to see how woods were treated ... the other man
    would set to writing poetry forthwith,--and R. B. would sit still and
    learn how to write after! A pretty compliment, I thought that. But,
    seriously, there must be a great library at Pisa (with that
    University) and abroad they are delighted to facilitate such
    matters.... I have read in a chamber of the Doges' palace at Venice
    painted all over by Tintoretto, walls and ceiling, and at Rome there
    is a library with a learned priest always kept ready 'to solve any
    doubts that may arise.'"

Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett were married on September 12, 1846,
in the church of St. Pancras, Marylebone, the only witnesses being his
cousin, James Silverthorne, and her maid, Wilson. To have taken her
sisters into her confidence would have been to expose them to the fairly
insane wrath of her father. "I hate and loathe everything which is
clandestine--we both do, Robert and I," said Mrs. Browning later; but this
was the only possible way. Had Mr. Browning spoken to her father in the
usual manner, "he would have been forbidden the house without a moment's
scruple," she explained to a friend; "and I should have been incapacitated
from any after exertion by the horrible scenes to which, as a thing of
course, I should have been exposed.... I cannot bear some words. In my
actual state of physical weakness, it would have been the sacrifice of my
whole life--of my convictions, of my affections, and, above all, of what
the person dearest to me persisted in calling his life, and the good of
it--if I had observed that 'form.' Therefore I determined not to observe
it, and I consider that in not doing so, I sinned against no duty. That I
was _constrained_ to act clandestinely, and did not _choose_ to do so, God
is my witness. Also, up to the very last, we stood in the light of day for
the whole world, if it please, to judge us. I never saw him out of the
Wimpole Street house. He came twice a week to see me, openly in the sight
of all."

In no act of her life did Mrs. Browning more impressively reveal her good
sense than in this of her marriage. "I had long believed such an act," she
said, "the most strictly personal of one's life,--to be within the rights
of every person of mature age, man or woman, and I had resolved to
exercise that right in my own case by a resolution which had slowly
ripened. All the other doors of life were shut to me, and shut me as in a
prison, and only before this door stood one whom I loved best and who
loved me best, and who invited me out through it for the good's sake he
thought I could do him."... To a friend she explained her long refusal to
consent to the marriage, fearing that her delicate health would make it
"ungenerous" in her to yield to his entreaty; but he replied that

    "he would not tease me, he would wait twenty years if I pleased, and
    then, if life lasted so long for both of us, then, when it was ending,
    perhaps, I might understand him and feel that I might have trusted
    him.... He preferred, he said, of free and deliberate choice, to be
    allowed to sit only an hour a day by my side, to the fulfillment of
    the brightest dream which should exclude me, in any possible world."

She continues:

    "I tell you so much that you may see the manner of man I had to do
    with, and the sort of attachment which for nearly two years has been
    drawing and winning me. I know better than any in the world, indeed,
    what Mr. Kenyon once unconsciously said before me, that 'Robert
    Browning is great in every thing.'... Now may I not tell you that his
    genius, and all but miraculous attainments, are the least things in
    him, the moral nature being of the very noblest, as all who ever knew
    him admit."

After the marriage ceremony Mrs. Browning drove with her maid to the home
of Mr. Boyd, resting there, as if making a morning call on a familiar
friend, until joined by her sisters, who took her for a little drive on
Hampstead Heath. For five days she remained in her father's house, and
during this time Browning could not bring himself to call and ask for his
wife as "Miss Barrett," so they arranged all the details of their journey
by letter. On September 19 they left for Paris, and the last one of these
immortal letters, written the evening before their departure, from Mrs.
Browning to her husband, contains these words:

    "By to-morrow at this time I shall have you, only, to love me, my
    beloved! You, only! As if one said, God, only! And we shall have Him
    beside, I pray of Him!"

With her maid, Mrs. Browning walked out of her father's house the next
day, meeting her husband at a bookseller's around the corner of the
street, and they drove to the station, leaving for Southampton to catch
the night boat to Havre.

Never could the world have understood the ineffable love and beauty and
nobleness of the characters of both Robert and Elizabeth Barrett Browning,
had these letters been withheld from the public. Quite aside from the
deeper interest of their personal revelation,--the revelation of such
nobleness and such perfect mutual comprehension and tenderness of sympathy
as are here revealed,--the pages are full of interesting literary allusion
and comment, of wit, repartee, and of charm that defies analysis. It was a
wise and generous gift when the son of the poets, Robert Barrett
Browning, gave these wonderful letters to the reading public. The supreme
test of literature is that which contributes to the spiritual wealth of
the world. Measured by this standard, these are of the highest literary
order. No one can fail to realize how all that is noblest in manhood, all
that is holiest in womanhood, is revealed in this correspondence.

Edmund Clarence Stedman, after reading these letters, said: "It would have
been almost a crime to have permitted this wonderful, exceptional
interchange of soul and mind, between these two strong, 'excepted' beings,
to leave no trace forever."

Robert Barrett Browning, in referring to his publication of this
correspondence in a conversation with the writer of this volume, remarked
that he really had no choice in the matter, as the Apochryphal legends and
myths and improvisations that had even then begun to weave themselves
about the remarkable and unusual story of the acquaintance, courtship, and
marriage of his parents, could only be dissipated by the simple truth, as
revealed in their own letters.

Their love took its place in the spiritual order; it was a bond that made
itself the mystic force in their mutual development and achievement; and
of which the woman, whose reverence for the Divine Life was the strongest
element in her nature, could yet say,--

  "And I, who looked for only God, found thee!"

Life, as well as Literature, would have been the poorer had not Mr.
Barrett Browning so wisely and generously enriched both by the publication
of this correspondence.

Not the least among the beautiful expressions that have been made by those
spirits so touched to fine issues as to enter into the spiritual
loveliness of these letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett, is
a sonnet by a New England poet, Rev. William Brunton,--a poet who "died
too soon," but whose love for the poetry of the Brownings was as ardent as
it was finely appreciative:

  "Oh! dear departed saints of highest song,
    Behind the screen of time your love lay hid,
    Its fair unfoldment was in life forbid--
  As doing such divine affection wrong,
  But now we read with interest deep and strong,
    And lift from off the magic jar the lid,
    And lo! your spirit stands the clouds amid
  And speaks to us in some superior tongue!

  "Devotion such as yours is heavenly-wise,
    And yet the possible of earth ye show;
  Ye dwellers in the blue of summer skies,
    Through you a finer love of love we know;
  It is as if the angels moved with men,
  And key of Paradise were found again!"

CHAPTER VI

1846-1850

  "And on her lover's arm she leant
    And round her waist she felt it fold,
  And far across the hills they went
    To that new world which is the old.
  Across the hills, and far away,
    Beyond their utmost purple rim,
  Beyond the night, beyond the day,
    Through all the world she followed him."

MARRIAGE AND ITALY--"IN THAT NEW WORLD"--THE HAUNTS OF PETRARCA--THE MAGIC
    LAND--IN PISA--VALLOMBROSA--"UN BEL GIRO"--GUERCINO'S ANGEL--CASA
    GUIDI--BIRTH OF ROBERT BARRETT BROWNING--BAGNI DI LUCCA--"SONNETS
    FROM THE PORTUGUESE"--THE ENCHANTMENT OF ITALY.

Paris, "and such a strange week it was," wrote Mrs. Browning to Miss
Mitford; "whether in the body, or out of the body, I can scarcely tell.
Our Balzac should be flattered beyond measure by my even thinking of him
at all." The journey from London to Paris was not then quite the swift and
easy affair it now is, the railroad between Paris and Havre not being then
completed beyond Rouen; still, such an elixir of life is happiness that
Mrs. Browning arrived in the French Capital feeling much better than when
she left London. Mrs. Jameson had only recently taken leave of Miss
Barrett on her sofa, and sympathetically offered to take her to Italy
herself for the winter with her niece; Miss Barrett had replied: "Not only
am I grateful to you, but happy to be grateful to you," but she had given
no hint of the impending marriage. Mrs. Jameson's surprise, on receiving
a note from Mrs. Browning, saying she was in Paris, was so great that her
niece, Geraldine Bate (afterward Mrs. MacPherson of Rome), asserted that
her aunt's amazement was "almost comical." Mrs. Jameson lost no time in
persuading the Brownings to join her and her niece at their quiet pension
in the Rue Ville l'Eveque, where they remained for a week,--this "strange
week" to Mrs. Browning.

In Paris they visited the galleries of the Louvre, but did little
sight-seeing beyond, "being satisfied with the idea of Paris," she said.

To a friend Mrs. Jameson wrote:

    "I have also here a poet and a poetess--two celebrities who have run
    away and married under circumstances peculiarly interesting, and such
    as render imprudence the height of prudence. Both excellent; but God
    help them! for I know not how the two poet heads and poet hearts will
    get on through this prosaic world."

As for ways and means, however, the Brownings were sufficiently provided.
He had a modest independence, and she also had in her own right a little
fortune of some forty thousand pounds, yielding three or four hundred
pounds a year; but in the July preceding their marriage Browning, with his
sensitive honor, insisted upon her making a will bequeathing this capital
to her own family. In a letter to him dated July 27 of that summer the
story of his insistence on this is revealed in her own words: "I will
write the paper as you bid me.... You are noble in all things ... but I
will not discuss it so as to tease you.... I send you the paper therefore,
to that end, and only to that end...." The "document," by Browning's
insistence, gave her property to her two sisters, in equal division, or,
in case of their death, to the surviving brothers. Nothing less than this
would satisfy Robert Browning.

Meantime, there was the natural London comment. Wordsworth observed: "So
Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett have gone off together! It is to be
hoped they can understand each other, for no one else can."

Mr. Kenyon wrote "the kindest letter" to them both, and pronounced them
"justified to the uttermost," and to Mrs. Browning he said: "I considered
that you had imperiled your life upon this undertaking and I still thought
you had done wisely!" But by that magic alchemy of love and happiness Mrs.
Browning only gained constantly in strength, and Mrs. Jameson pronounced
them "wise people, whether wild poets or not."

Among the interesting comments on the marriage was Joseph Arnould's letter
to Alfred Domett, under date of November of that year. He wrote:

    "... I think the last piece of news I told you of was Browning's
    marriage to Miss Barrett. She is, you know, our present greatest
    living English poetess: ... she has been in the most absolute and
    enforced seclusion from society; cultivating her mind to a wonderful
    amount of accomplishment, instructing herself in all languages,
    reading Chrysostom in the original Greek, and publishing the best
    metrical translation that has yet appeared of the 'Prometheus
    Bound'--having also found time to write three volumes of poetry, the
    last of which raised her name to a place second only to that of
    Browning and Tennyson, amongst all those who are not repelled by
    eccentricities of external form from penetrating into the soul and
    quintessential spirit of poetry that quickens the mould into which the
    poet has cast it. Well, this lady, so gifted, so secluded, so
    tyrannized over, fell in love with Browning in the spirit before ever
    she saw him in the flesh--in plain English, loved the writer, before
    she knew the man. Imagine, you who know him, the effect which his
    graceful bearing, high demeanor, and noble speech must have had on
    such a mind when first she saw the man of her visions in the twilight
    of her darkened room. She was at once in love as a poet-soul only can
    be; and Browning, as by contagion or electricity, was no less from
    the first interview wholly in love with her.... He is a glorious
    fellow! Oh, I forgot to say that the _soi-disante_ invalid, once
    emancipated from the paternal despotism, has had a wondrous revival,
    or rather, a complete metamorphosis; walks, rides, eats, and drinks
    like a young and healthy woman,--in fact, is a healthy woman of, I
    believe, some five and thirty. But one word covers all; they are in
    Love, who lends his own youth to everything."

The journey from Paris to Italy, if less comfortable and expeditious than
now, was certainly more romantic, and the Brownings, in company with Mrs.
Jameson and her niece, fared forth to Orleans, and thence to Avignon,
where they rested for two days, making a poetic pilgrimage to Vaucluse,
where Petrarca had sought solitude. "There at the very source of the
'_chiare, fresche e dolci acque_,'" records Mrs. MacPherson in her
biography of Mrs. Jameson, "Mr. Browning took his wife up in his arms, and
carrying her across through the shallow, curling waters, seated her on a
rock that rose throne-like in the middle of the stream. Thus Love and
Poetry took a new possession of the spot immortalized by Petrarca's
fancy."

From Marseilles they sailed to Livorno (Leghorn), the port only a few
miles from Pisa. The voyage was a delight to Mrs. Browning. She was
enchanted with the beautiful panorama of the Riviera as they sailed down
the coast, where the terraces of mountains rise, with old castles and
ruins often crowning their summits, and the white gleam of the hill-towns
against a background of blue sky. All the Spezzia region was haunted by
memories of Shelley; Lerici, where last he had lived, was plainly in view,
and they gazed sadly at Viareggio, encircled by pine woods and mountains,
where the body of the poet had been found. In Pisa they took rooms in the
Collegio Fernandino, in the Piazza del Duomo, in that corner of Pisa
wherein are grouped the Cathedral, the Baptistery, the Leaning Tower, and
the Campo Santo, all in this consummate beauty of silence and
seclusion,--a splendor of abandoned glory. All the stir of life (if,
indeed, one may dream of life in Pisa) is far away on the other side of
the city; to this corner is left the wraith-like haunted atmosphere, where
only shadows flit over the grass, and the sunset reflections linger on the
Tower. A statue of Cosimo di Medici was near; the Lanfranchi palace, where
Byron had lived, was not far away, on the banks of the Arno. They quite
preferred the Duomo and the Campo Santo to social festivities, and
Professor Ferrucci offered them all the hospitalities of the University
library. They had an apartment of four rooms, "matted and carpeted,"
coffee and rolls in the morning, dinner at the Trattoria, "thrushes and
chianti with a marvelous cheapness, no trouble, no cook, no kitchen; the
prophet Elijah, or the lilies of the field, took as little thought for
their dining," writes Mrs. Browning, "and it exactly suits us. At nine we
have our supper of roast chestnuts and grapes.... My head goes round
sometimes. I was never happy before in my life.... And when I am so good
as to let myself be carried up-stairs, and so angelical as to sit still on
the sofa, and so considerate as not to put my foot into a puddle, why, my
duty is considered done to a perfection worthy all adoration.... Mrs.
Jameson and Geraldine are staying in the hotel, and we manage to see them
every day; so good and true and affectionate she is, and so much we shall
miss her when she goes.... Our present residence we have taken for six
months, but we have dreams, and we discuss them like soothsayers over the
evening grapes and chestnuts."

That in London Mrs. Jameson, on her first call on Miss Barrett, should
have so winningly insisted on being admitted to her room as to be
successful, almost to Miss Barrett's own surprise, seems, when seen in
connection with the way in which Fate was to throw them together
afterward, in Italy, to have been one of those "foreordained" happenings
of life.

They heard a musical mass for the dead in the Campo Santo; they walked
under orange trees with golden fruit hanging above their heads; they took
drives to the foot of the mountains, and watched the reflections in the
little lake of Ascuno. Mrs. Browning, from her windows, could see the
cathedral summit glitter whitely, between the blue sky and its own yellow
marble walls. Beautiful and tender letters came to them both from Mr.
Kenyon, and they heard that Carlyle had said that he hoped more from
Robert Browning, for the people of England, than from any other living
English writer. All of these things entered into the very fiber of their
Pisan days. Pisa seemed to her a beautiful town,--it could not be less,
she felt, with Arno and its palaces, and it was to her full of repose, but
not desolate. Meantime, Mr. Browning was preparing for a new edition of
his collected poems.

Curiously, all the biographers of Robert Browning have recorded that it
was during this sojourn in Pisa that the "Sonnets from the Portuguese"
were first made known to him. Dr. Dowden quotes the story as given by Mr.
Edmund Gosse, and Mr. Gosse cites Browning himself as his authority. Yet
there was some mistake, as the Sonnets were not seen by Mr. Browning till
some time later.

Robert Barrett Browning, in Florence, in the spring of 1910, in reply to a
question asked by the writer of this book in regard to the accuracy of
this impression, replied that both Mr. Gosse and Dr. Dowden were mistaken;
as his mother did not show these "Sonnets" to his father until the summer
of 1849, when they were at Bagni di Lucca. Mr. Gosse must in some way have
mistaken Mr. Browning's words, and the error has perpetuated itself
through every successive biography of the poet.

The first home of the Brownings in Florence was in an apartment near
Santa Maria Novella, where the Italian sunshine burned fiercely, and where
Mrs. Browning exclaimed that she began to comprehend the possibility of
St. Lawrence's ecstasies on the gridiron. "Yet there have been cool
intermissions," she wrote, "and as we have spacious and airy rooms, and as
we can step out of the window on a balcony terrace which is quite private,
and swims over with moonlight in the evenings, and as we live upon
watermelons, and iced water, and figs, and all manner of fruit, we bear
the heat with angelic patience."

There was a five days' interlude at Vallombrosa, which the poets vainly
entreated the monks to prolong to two months, but the brethren would have
none of the presence of two women,--Mrs. Browning and her maid, Wilson. So
they perforce left these fascinating hills, "a sea of hills looking alive
among the clouds." Still further up above the monastery was the old
Hermitage now transformed into a hotel. It was here that Migliorotti
passed many years, asserting that he could only think of it as Paradise,
and thus it came to be known as Paradisino, the name it still bears. Far
below in a dim distance lies Florence, with her domes and towers on which
the sunshine glitters, or the white moonlight of the Val d'Arno shines;
and on every hand are the deep valleys and crevasses, the Val di Sieve,
the Val di Casentino, and the height of San Miniato in Alpe. Castles and
convents, or their ruins, abound; and here Dante passed, and there St.
Benedict, and again is the path still holy with the footsteps of St.
Francis. The murmuring springs that feed the Arno are heard in the hills;
and the vast solitudes of the wood, with their ruined chapels and shrines,
made this sojourn to the Brownings something to be treasured in memory
forever. They even wandered to that beautiful old fifteenth-century
church, Santa Maria delle Grazie Vallombrosella, "a daughter of the
monastery of Vallombrosa," where were works of Robbia, and saw the blue
hills rise out of the green forests in their infinite expanse.

[Illustration: OLD MONASTERY AT VALLOMBROSA

  "_And Vallombrosa we two went to see_
  _Last June beloved companion..._"

Casa Guidi Windows.]

When they fared forth for Vallombrosa, it was at four o'clock in the
morning, Mrs. Browning being all eagerness and enthusiasm for this
matutinal pilgrimage. Reaching Pelago, their route wound for five miles
along a "_via non rotabile_," through the most enchanting scenery, to
Pontassieve.

    "Oh! such mountains," wrote Mrs. Browning of this
    never-to-be-forgotten journey, "as if the whole world were alive with
    mountains--such ravines--black in spite of flashing waters in
    them--such woods and rocks--traveled in basket sledges drawn by four
    white oxen--Wilson and I and the luggage--and Robert riding step by
    step. We were four hours doing the five miles, so you may fancy what
    rough work it was. Whether I was most tired or charmed was a _tug_
    between body and soul.

    "The worst was that," she continued, "there being a new abbot at the
    monastery--an austere man, jealous of his sanctity and the approach of
    women--our letter, and Robert's eloquence to boot, did nothing for us,
    and we were ingloriously and ignominiously expelled at the end of five
    days."

While the Brownings were in Vallombrosa Arnould wrote to Alfred Domett:

    "Browning is spending a luxurious year in Italy--is, at this present
    writing, with his poetess bride dwelling in some hermit hut in
    Vallombrosa, where the Etruscan shades high overarched embower. He
    never fails to ask pressingly about you, and I give him all your
    messages. I would to God he would purge his style of
    obscurities,--that the wide world would, and the gay world and even
    the less illuminated part of the thinking world, know his greatness
    even as we do. I find myself reading 'Paracelsus' and the 'Dramatic
    Lyrics' more often than anything else in verse."

They descended, perforce, into Florence again, burning sunshine and all,
the abbot of the monastery having someway confounded their pleadings with
the temptation of St. Anthony, as something to be as heroically resisted.
They set up their household gods in the shades of the Via delle Belle
Donne, near the Duomo, where dinners, "unordered," Mrs. Browning said,
"come through the streets, and spread themselves on our table, as hot as
if we had smelt cutlets hours before." She found Florence "unspeakably
beautiful," both by grace of nature and of art, but they planned to go to
Rome in the early autumn, taking an apartment "over the Tarpeian rock."
Later this plan was relinquished, and with an apartment on their hands for
six months they yet abandoned it, for want of sunshine, and removed to
Casa Guidi.

    "Think what we have done," wrote Mrs. Browning to Miss Mitford; "taken
    two houses, that is, two apartments, each for six months, pre-signing
    the contract. You will set it down to excellent poet's work in the way
    of domestic economy, but the fault was altogether mine, for my
    husband, to please me, took rooms with which I was not pleased for
    three days, through the absence of sunshine. The consequence was that
    we had to pay heaps of guineas away, for leave to go, ourselves, but
    you can scarcely fancy the wonderful difference which the sun makes in
    Italy. So away we came into the blaze of him into the Piazza Pitti;
    precisely opposite the Grand Duke's palace; I with my remorse, and
    poor Robert without a single reproach. Any other man, a little lower
    than the angels, would have stamped and sworn a little for the mere
    relief of the thing,--but as for his being angry with me for any cause
    except not eating enough dinner, the said sun would turn the wrong way
    first."

Mrs. Browning's dog, Flush, was a member of the household not to be
ignored, and her one source of consolation, in being turned away from the
Vallombrosa summer, lay in the fact that "Flush hated it," and was
frightened by the vast and somber pine forests. "Flush likes civilized
life," said Mrs. Browning laughingly, "and the society of little dogs
with turned-up tails, such as abound in Florence."

So now they bestowed themselves in "rooms yellow with sunshine from
morning till night," in Casa Guidi, where, "for good omen," they looked
down on the old gray church of San Felice. There was a large, square
anteroom, where the piano was placed, with one large picture, picked up in
an obscure street in Florence; and a little dining-room, whose walls were
covered with tapestry, and where hung medallions of Tennyson, Carlyle, and
of Robert Browning; a long, narrow room, wraith-like with plaster casts
and busts, was Mr. Browning's study, while she had her place in the large
drawing-room, looking out upon the ancient church. Its old pictures of
saints, gazing sadly from their sepulchral frames of black wood, with here
and there a tapestry, and with the lofty, massive bookcases of Florentine
carving, all gave the room a medieval look. Almost could one fancy that it
enthroned the "fairy lady of Shalott," who might weave

          "... from day to day,
  A magic web of colors gay."

Dante's grave profile, a cast of the face of Keats taken after death, and
a few portraits of friends, added their interest to the atmosphere of a
salon that seemed made for poets' uses. There were vast expanses of
mirrors in the old carved Florentine frames, a colossal green velvet sofa,
suggesting a catafalque, and a supernaturally deep easy-chair, in the same
green velvet, which was Mrs. Browning's favorite seat when she donned her
singing robes. Near this low arm-chair was always her little table, strewn
with writing materials, books, and newspapers. Other tables in the
_salotto_ bore gayly bound volumes, the gifts of brother authors. On the
floor of a bedroom were the arms (in scabola), of the last count who had
lived in this apartment, and there was a picturesque oil-jar, to hold
rain-water, which Mrs. Browning declared would just hold the Captain of
the Forty Thieves. All in all, the poets vowed they would not change homes
with the Grand Duke himself, who was their neighbor in the Palazzo Pitti
at the distance of a stone's throw. In the late afternoons they would
wander out to the Loggia dei Lanzi, where Mrs. Browning greatly admired
Cellini's Perseus with the Head of Medusa, and they watched "the divine
sunsets on the Arno, turning it to pure gold under the bridges." Sometimes
they were joined by Hiram Powers, who was one of their earliest friends in
Florence, "our chief friend and favorite," Mrs. Browning said of him, and
she found him a "simple, straightforward, genial American, as simple as
the man of genius he has proved himself need be." Another friend of these
early days was Miss Boyle, a niece of the Earl of Cork, somewhat a poet,
withal, who, with her mother, was domiciled in the Villa Careggi, in which
Lorenzo il Magnifico died, and which was loaned to the Boyles by Lord
Holland. Miss Boyle frequently dropped in on them in the evening, "to
catch us at hot chestnuts and mulled wine," said Mrs. Browning, "and a
good deal of laughing she and Robert make between them." On the terrace of
Casa Guidi orange trees and camellias bloomed, and the salons with their
"rococo chairs, spring sofas, carved bookcases, and satin from Cardinals'
beds," were a picturesque haunt. The ideal and poetic life of Mrs.
Browning, so far from isolating her from the ordinary day and daylight
duties, invested these, instead, with glow and charm and playful repartee;
and, indeed, her never-failing sense of humor transformed any
inconvenience or inadvertence into amusement. She, who is conceded to have
written the finest sonnets since Shakespeare, could also mend a coat for
her husband with a smile and a Greek epigram.

[Illustration: THE GUARDIAN ANGEL.

GUERCINO. CHURCH OF SAN AGOSTINO, FANO, ITALY

  "_Guercino drew this angel I saw teach_
  (_Alfred, dear friend!_) _that little child to pray._"

The Guardian Angel; A Picture at Fano.]

Joseph Arnould again wrote to their mutual friend, Domett:

    "Browning and his wife are still in Florence; both ravished with Italy
    and Italian life; so much so, that I think for some years they will
    make it the Paradise of their poetical exile. I hold fast to my faith
    in 'Paracelsus.' Browning and Carlyle are my two crowning men amongst
    the highest English minds of the day. Third comes Alfred Tennyson....
    By-the-bye, did you ever happen upon Browning's 'Pauline'? a strange,
    wild (in parts singularly magnificent) poet-biography; his own early
    life as it presented itself to his own soul viewed poetically; in
    fact, psychologically speaking, his 'Sartor Resartus'; it was written
    and published three years before 'Paracelsus,' when Shelley was his
    God."

A little later Arnould wrote again:

    "Browning and his wife are still in Florence, and stay there till the
    summer; he is bringing out another edition of his poems (except
    'Sordello'), Chapman and Hall being his publishers, Moxon having
    declined. He writes always most affectionately, and never forgets kind
    inquiries about and kind messages to you."

Allured by resplendent tales of Fano, the Brownings made a trip to that
seaside hamlet, but found it uninhabitable in the late summer heat. A
statue in the Piazza commemorated the ancient _Fanum Fortunæ_ of
tradition, and in the cathedral of San Fortunato were frescoes by
Domenichino, and in the _chiesa_ of Sant' Agostino was the celebrated
painting of Sant' Angelo Custode, by Guercino, which suggested to Browning
his poem "The Guardian Angel." The tender constancy of Browning's
friendship for Alfred Domett is in evidence in this poem, and the beauty
of his reference to his wife,--

  "My angel with me, too,..."

lingers with the reader.

In no poem of his entire work has Browning given so complete a revelation
of his own inner life as in this memorable lyric. The picture, dim as is
the light in which it is seen, is one of the most impressive of all
Guercino's works. In the little church of San Paterniano is a "Marriage of
the Virgin," by Guercino, and in the Palazzo del Municipio of Fano is
Guercino's "Betrothal of the Virgin," and the "David" of Domenichino.

The Brownings while in Fano made the excursion to the summit of Monte
Giove, an hour's drive from the Piazza, where was the old monastery and a
wonderful view of the Adriatic, and of the panorama of the Apennines. "We
fled from Fano after three days," wrote Mrs. Browning, "and finding
ourselves cheated out of our dream of summer coolness, we resolved on
substituting for it what the Italians call '_un bel giro_.' So we went to
Ancona ... where we stayed a week, living on fish and cold water." They
found Ancona "a straggling sea city, holding up against the brown rocks,
and elbowing out the purple tides," and Mrs. Browning felt an inclination
to visit it again when they might find a little air and shadow. They went
on to Loreto, and then to Ravenna, where in the early dawn of a summer
morning they stood by the tomb of Dante, deeply touched by the
inscription. All through this journey they had "wonderful visions of
beauty and glory." Returning to Florence, to their terraces, orange trees,
and divine sunsets, one of their earliest visitors in Casa Guidi was
Father Prout, who had chanced to be standing on the dock at Livorno when
they first landed in Italy, from the journey from France, and who now
appeared in Florence on his way to Rome. Mr. Browning had fallen ill after
their trip to Fano, and Father Prout prescribed for him "port wine and
eggs," which _régime_, combined with the racy conversation of the genial
priest, seemed efficacious.

In the meantime Mrs. Browning stood with her husband by the tomb of
Michael Angelo in Santa Croce; she saw the Venus, the "divine Raphaels."
The Peruzzi chapel had then recently been restored--some exquisite
frescoes by Giotto being among the successful restorations. The
"mountainous marble masses" of the Duomo, "tessellated marbles climbing
into the sky, self-crowned with that prodigy of marble domes," struck Mrs.
Browning as the wonder of all architecture.

The political conditions of Italy began to enlist her interest. In June of
1846 Pio Nono had ascended the Papal throne, preceded by a reputation for
a liberal policy, and it was even hoped that he would not oppose the
formation of a United Italy. The papal and the temporal government was
still one, but Pius IX was a statesman as well as a churchman. England had
especially commissioned Lord Minto to advocate reform, and the enthusiasts
for Italian liberty received him with acclaim. The disasters of 1848 were
still in the unrevealed future, and a new spirit was stirring all over the
Italian kingdom. Piedmont was looked to with hope; and the Grand Duke of
Tuscany had instituted a National Guard, as the first step toward popular
government. The great topic of the day was the new hope of Italy. In
Florence the streets and piazzas were vocal with praises of the Grand
Duke. On one night that Browning went to the opera the tumult grew
intense, and the Duke was escorted back to Palazzo Pitti with thousands of
wax torchlights and a blaze of glory and cries of "Eviva! Eviva!"
Browning, however, distrusted Pio Nono, thinking him weak, and events
proved that his opinion was justified.

The winter of 1847-1848 was passed by the Brownings in Casa Guidi. "I wish
you could see what rooms we have," wrote Mrs. Browning to her husband's
sister, Sarianna: "what ceilings, what height and breadth, what a double
terrace for orange trees; how cool, how likely to be warm, how perfect
every way!"

The poets were constantly engaged in their work. Mrs. Browning began her
long poem, "Casa Guidi Windows," and many of Browning's lyrics that
appeared in the collection called "Men and Women" were written at this
period. They passed much time in the galleries and churches. They drove in
the beautiful environs of Florence. The pictures, history, and legends
entered into their lives to serve in later days as poetic material. In the
brief twilight of winter days they often strolled into the old gray church
of San Felice, on which their windows looked out, where Browning would
gratify his passion for music by evolving from the throbbing keys of the
organ some faint Toccata of Galuppi's, while his wife smiled and listened,
and the tide of Florentine life flowed by in the streets outside. Casa
Guidi is almost opposite the Palazzo Pitti, so that Mrs. Browning had easy
access to her beloved Madonnas in the Pitti gallery, which to her husband,
also, was so unfailing a resource.

One of Mrs. Browning's American admirers, and one of the reviewers of her
poems, George Stillman Hillard, visited Florence that winter, and passed
more than one evening in Casa Guidi with the Brownings. Of Mrs. Browning
he wrote:

    "Mrs. Browning is in many respects the correlative of her husband....
    I have never seen a human frame which seemed so nearly a transparent
    veil for a celestial and immortal spirit. She is a soul of fire
    enclosed in a shell of pearl.... Nor is she more remarkable for genius
    and learning than for sweetness of temper, tenderness of heart, depth
    of feeling, and purity of spirit.... A union so complete as theirs--in
    which the mind has nothing to crave, nor the heart to sigh for--is
    cordial to behold and cheering to remember."

Of all Italy Mr. Hillard perhaps best loved Florence, finding there an
indescribable charm, "a blending of present beauty and traditional
interest; but then Florence is alive," he added, "and not enslaved." It
was probably Hillard who suggested to William Wetmore Story that he
should meet Browning. At all events this meeting took place, initiating
the friendship that endured "forty years, without a break," and that was
one of the choicest social companionships.

The spring of 1849 brought new joy to Casa Guidi, for on March 9 was born
their son, who was christened Robert Wiedemann Barrett, the middle name
(which in his manhood he dropped) being the maiden name of the poet's
mother. The passion of both husband and wife for poetry was now quite
equaled by that for parental duties, which they "caught up," said Mrs.
Browning, "with a kind of rapture." Mr. Browning would walk the terraces
where orange trees and oleanders blossomed, with the infant in his arms,
and in the summer, when they visited Spezzia, and the haunt of Shelley at
Lurici, they wandered five miles into the mountains, the baby with them,
on horseback and donkey-back. The child grew rounder and rosier; and Mrs.
Browning was able to climb hills and help her husband to lose himself in
the forests.

The death of Browning's mother immediately after the birth of his son was
a great sadness to the poet, and one fully shared by his wife, who wrote
to Miss Browning: "I grieve with you, as well as for you; for though I
never saw her face, I loved that pure and tender spirit.... Robert and I
dwell on the hope that you and your father will come to us at once.... If
Florence is too far off, is there any other place where we could meet and
arrange for the future?"

The Brownings went for the summer to Bagni di Lucca, after the little
_détour_ on the Mediterranean coast, where they lingered in the white
marble mountains of Carrara. In Lucca they passed long summer hours in the
beautiful Duomo, which had been consecrated by Pope Alexander II in the
eleventh century. The beauty and the solitude charmed the poets; the
little Penini was the "most popular of babies," and when Wilson carried
the child out in the sunshine the Italians would crowd around him and
exclaim, "_Che bel bambino!_" They had given him the pet Italian name
"Penini," which always persisted. The Austrians had then taken possession
of Florence, and Leopoldo, "L'intrepido," as the Italians asserted,
remained quietly in the Palazzo Pitti. Browning, writing to Mrs. Jameson,
says there is little for his wife to tell, "for she is not likely to
encroach upon my story which I could tell of her entirely angel nature, as
divine a heart as God ever made." The poet with his wife and Wilson and
the baby made almost daily excursions into the forests and mountains, up
precipitous fays and over headlong ravines; dining "with the goats," while
the baby "lay on a shawl, rolling and laughing." The contrast of this
mountain-climbing Mrs. Browning, with her husband and child, and the Miss
Barrett of three or four years before, lying on a sofa in a darkened room,
is rather impressive. The picture of one day is suggested by Mrs.
Browning's description in a letter to Miss Mitford, where she writes:

    "... I have performed a great exploit, ridden on a donkey five miles
    deep into the mountains, to an almost inaccessible volcanic ground not
    far from the stars. Robert on horseback, Wilson and the nurse with
    baby, on other donkeys; guides, of course. We set off at eight in the
    morning and returned at six P. M., after dining on the mountain
    pinnacle.... The scenery, sublime and wonderful,... innumerable
    mountains bound faintly with the gray sea, and not a human
    habitation."

[Illustration: MONUMENT TO DANTE, IN THE PIAZZA DI SANTA CROCE.

STEFANO RICCI.

  "_....The architect and hewer_
  _Did pile the empty marbles as thy tomb._"

Casa Guidi Windows.]

It was during this _villeggiatura_ that Mrs. Browning, one morning after
their breakfast, with shy sweetness, tucked the pages of the "Sonnets"
into her husband's pocket and swiftly vanished. Robert Barrett Browning,
who, as already noted, gave the history of this poetic interlude _viva
voce_, has also recorded it in writing, as follows:

What earthly vocabulary can offer fit words in which to speak of
celestial beauty? How these exquisite "Sonnets" tell the story of that
romance of Genius and Love,--from the woman's first thrill of interest in
the poetry of an unknown poet, to the hour when he, "the princely giver,"
brought to her "the gold and purple" of his heart

  "For such as I to take or leave withal,"

and she questions

  "Can it be right to give what I can give?"

with the fear that her delicacy of health should make such gifts

  "Be counted with the ungenerous."

But she thinks of how he "was in the world a year ago," and thus she
drinks

  "Of life's great cup of wonder! Wonderful,
  Never to feel thee thrill the day or night
  With personal act or speech,--

  ... Atheists are as dull,
  Who cannot guess God's presence out of sight."

And the questioning,--

  "How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.
  I love thee to the depth and breadth and height
  My soul can reach,...
  ... I love thee with the breath,
  Smiles, tears, of all my life!--and, if God choose,
  I shall but love thee better after death."

Returning to Florence in October, Browning soon began the preparation for
his poem, "Christmas Eve and Easter Day," and Mrs. Browning arranged for a
new one-volume edition of her poems, to include "The Seraphim," and the
poems that had appeared in the same volume, and also the poems appearing
in 1844, many of them revised.

Marchesa d'Ossoli, whom the Brownings had heretofore known as Margaret
Fuller, surprised them by appearing in Florence with her husband and
child, the private marriage having taken place some two years before. The
Greenoughs, the Storys, and Mr. and Mrs. Christopher Pearse Cranch were
all in Florence, and were all habitués of Casa Guidi. Mr. Cranch, poet,
painter, and musician, was the kindly friend of Longfellow and of Lowell
in their Cambridge homes, and the Greenoughs and Storys were also of the
Cambridge circle. To friends at home the Marchesa wrote of going to the
opera with the Greenoughs, and that she saw the Brownings often, "and I
love and admire them more and more," she continued. "Mr. Browning enriches
every hour passed with him, and he is a most true, cordial, and noble
man."

The Florentine days have left their picturings: Mr. Story opens a studio,
and while he is modeling, Mrs. Story reads to him from Monckton Milnes's
Life of Keats, which Mr. Browning loaned them. Mrs. Story drives to Casa
Guidi to carry Mrs. Browning her copy of "Jane Eyre," and Mrs. Greenough
takes both Mrs. Story and Mrs. Browning to drive in the Cascine. Two
American painters, Frank Boott and Frank Heath, are in Florence, and are
more or less caught up in the Casa Guidi life; and the coterie all go to
Mrs. Trollope's to see fancy costumes arranged for a ball to be given at
Sir George Hamilton's. In one of the three villas on Bellosguardo Miss Isa
Blagden was now domiciled. For more than a quarter of a century Miss
Blagden was a central figure in English society in Florence. She became
Mrs. Browning's nearest and most intimate friend, and she was the ardently
prized friend of the Trollopes also, and of Miss Frances Power Cobbe, who
shared her villa during one spring when Florence was in her most radiant
beauty. "Isa was a very bright, warm-hearted, clever little woman," said
Thomas Adolphus Trollope of her; "who knew everybody, and was, I think,
more universally beloved among us than any other individual." Miss Blagden
had written one or two novels, of little claim, however, and after her
death a small volume of her poems was published, but all these had no more
than the mere _succès d'estime_, as apparently the pen was with her, as
with Margaret Fuller, a non-conductor; but as a choice spirit, of the most
beautiful and engaging qualities of companionship, "Isa," as she was
always caressingly called, is still held in memory. Madame Pasquale
Villari, the wife of the great historian and the biographer of Machiavelli
and of Savonarola, well remembers Miss Blagden, who died, indeed, in her
arms in the summer of 1872.

The intimate friendship between Mrs. Browning and Miss Blagden was
initiated in the early months of the residence of the Brownings in
Florence; but it was in this winter of 1849-1850 that they began to see
each other so constantly. The poems of Matthew Arnold were published that
winter, among which Mrs. Browning especially liked "The Deserted Merman"
and "The Sick King of Bokkara," and about this time the authorship of
"Jane Eyre" was revealed, and Charlotte Brontë discovered under the
_nom-de-plume_ of Currer Bell.

During the time that Mrs. Browning had passed at Torquay, before her
marriage, she had met Theodosia Garrow, whose family were on intimate
terms with Mr. Kenyon. Miss Barrett and Miss Garrow became friends, and
when they met again it was in Florence, Miss Garrow having become the wife
of Thomas Adolphus Trollope. Hiram Powers in these days was domiciled in
the Via dei Serragli, in close proximity to Casa Guidi, and he frequently
dropped in to have his morning coffee with the Brownings.

[Illustration: THE PALAZZO VECCHIO, FLORENCE.]

Landor had been for some years in his villa on the Fiesolean slope, not
far from Maiano, where Leigh Hunt had wandered, dreaming of Boccaccio. Two
scenes of the "Decameron" were laid in this region, and the deep ravine
at the foot of one of the neighboring hills was the original of the
"Valley of the Ladies." Not far away had been the house of Machiavelli;
and nestling among the blue hills was the little white village of
Settignano, where Michael Angelo was born. Leigh Hunt had been on terms of
the most cordial intimacy with Landor, whom he described as "living among
his paintings and hospitalities"; and Landor had also been visited by
Emerson, and by Lord and Lady Blessington, by Nathaniel Parker Willis
(introduced by Lady Blessington), by Greenough, Francis and Julius Hare,
and by that universal friend of every one, Mr. Kenyon, all before the
arrival of the Brownings in Florence. Landor had, however, been again in
England for several years, where Browning and Miss Barrett had both met
and admired him, as has been recorded.

The Florence on which the Brownings had entered differed little from the
Florence of to-day. The Palazzo Pitti, within a stone's throw of Casa
Guidi, stood in the same cyclopean massiveness as now; the piazza and
church of San Miniato, cypress-shaded, rose from the sweep of the hills,
and the miraculous crucifix of San Giovanni Gualberto was then, as now, an
object of pilgrimage. The wonder of the Italian sunsets, that "perished
silently of their own glory," burned away over the far hills, and the
strange, lofty tower of the Palazzo Vecchio caught the lingering rays.
Beyond the Porta Romana, not far from Casa Guidi, was the road to the Val
d'Emo, where the Certosa crowns an eminence. The stroll along the Arno at
sunset was a favorite one with the poets, and in late afternoons they
often climbed the slope to the Boboli Gardens for the view over Florence
and the Val d'Arno. Nor did they ever tire of lingering in the Piazza
della Signoria, before the marvelous palace with its medieval tower, and
standing before the colossal fountain of Neptune, just behind the spot
that is commemorated by a tablet in the pavement marking the martyrdom of
Savonarola. The great equestrian statue of Cosimo I always engaged their
attention in this historic piazza, which for four centuries had been the
center of the political life of the Florentines. All these places, the
churches, monuments, palaces, and the art of Florence, were fairly
mirrored in the minds of the wedded poets, impressing their imagination
with the fidelity of an image falling on a sensitized plate. To them, as
to all who love and enter into the ineffable beauty of the City of Lilies,
it was an atmosphere of enchantment.

CHAPTER VII

1850-1855

  "I heard last night a little child go singing
    'Neath Casa Guidi windows, by the church,
   _O bella libertà, O bella!..._"

       "But Easter-Day breaks! But
  Christ rises! Mercy every way
  Is infinite,--and who can say?"

"CASA GUIDI WINDOWS"--SOCIETY IN FLORENCE--MARCHESA D'OSSOLI--BROWNING'S
    POETIC CREED--VILLEGGIATURA IN SIENA--VENICE--BRILLIANT LIFE IN
    LONDON--PARIS AND MILSAND--BROWNING ON SHELLEY--IN FLORENCE--IDYLLIC
    DAYS IN BAGNI DI LUCCA--MRS. BROWNING'S SPIRITUAL OUTLOOK--DELIGHTFUL
    WINTER IN ROME--A POETIC PILGRIMAGE--HARRIET HOSMER--CHARACTERISTICS
    OF MRS. BROWNING.

The Brownings were never for a moment caught up in the wave of popular
enthusiasm for Pio Nono that swept over Italy. Yet Mrs. Browning confessed
herself as having been fairly "taken in" by the Grand Duke of Tuscany. Had
_Blackwood's Magazine_ published Part I of her "Casa Guidi Windows" at the
time that she sent it to this periodical, the poem would have been its own
proof of her distrust of the Pope, but it would also have offered the same
proof of her ill-founded trust in the Grand Duke; so that, on the whole,
she was well content to fail in having achieved the distinction of a
prophet regarding Pio Nono, as no Cassandra can afford to be convicted of
delusion in some portion of the details of her prophecy. To achieve
lasting reputation as a soothsayer, the prophecy must be accurate
throughout. The fact that there was an interval of three years between the
first and the second parts of this poem accounts for the discrepancy
between them. In her own words she confessed:

  "I wrote a meditation and a dream,
    Hearing a little child sing in the street:
  I leant upon his music as a theme,
    Till it gave way beneath my heart's full beat
  Which tried at an exultant prophecy,
    But dropped before the measure was complete--
  Alas for songs and hearts! O Tuscany,
    O Dante's Florence, is the type too plain?"

The flashing lightnings of a betrayed people gleam like an unsheathed
sword in another canto beginning:

  "From Casa Guidi windows I looked forth,
  And saw ten thousand eyes of Florentines
  Flash back the triumph of the Lombard north."

These ardent lines explain how she had been misled, for who could dream at
the time that Leopoldo ("_l'Intrepido_," as a poet of Viareggio called him
in a truly Italian fervor of enthusiasm) could have proved himself a
traitor to these trusting people,--these tender-hearted, gentle,
courteous, refined Italians? All these attributes pre-eminently
characterize the people; but also Mrs. Browning's insight that "the
patriots are not instructed, and the instructed are not patriots," was too
true. The adherents of the papal power were strong and influential, and
the personal character, whatever might be said of his political
principles,--the personal character of Pio Nono was singularly winning,
and this was by no means a negligible factor in the great problem then
before Italy.

[Illustration: STATUE OF SAVONAROLA, BY E. PAZZI,

IN THE SALA DEI CINQUECENTO, PALAZZO VECCHIO.]

Mrs. Browning very wisely decided to let "Casa Guidi Windows" stand as
written, with all the inconsistency between its first and second parts,
as each reflected what she believed true at the time of writing; and it
thus presents a most interesting and suggestive commentary on Italian
politics between 1850 and 1853. Its discrepancies are such "as we are
called upon to accept at every hour by the conditions of our nature," she
herself said of it, "implying the interval between aspiration and
performance, between faith and disillusion, between hope and fact." This
discrepancy was more painful to her than it can be even to the most
critical reader; but the very nature of the poem, its very fidelity to the
conditions and impressions of the moment, give it great value, though
these impressions were to be modified or canceled by those of a later
time; it should stand as it is, if given to the world at all. And the
courage to avow one's self mistaken is not the least of the forms that
moral courage may assume.

Regarding Pio Nono, Mrs. Browning is justified by history, notwithstanding
the many amiable and beautiful qualities of the Pontiff which forever
assure him a place in affection, if not in political confidence. Even his
most disastrous errors were the errors of judgment rather than those of
conscious intention. Pio Nono had the defects of his qualities, but loving
and reverent pilgrimages are constantly made to that little chapel behind
the iron railing in the old church of San Lorenzo _Fuori le Mura_ in Rome
(occupying the site of the church founded by Constantine), where his body
is entombed in a marble sarcophagus of the plainest design according to
his own instructions; but the interior of the vestibule is richly
decorated with mosaic paintings, the tribute of those who loved him.

Leopoldo was so kindly a man, so sincere in his work for the liberty of
the press and for other important reforms, that it is no marvel that Mrs.
Browning invested him with resplendence of gifts he did not actually
possess, but which it was only logical to feel that such a man must have.
Sometimes a too complete reliance on the _ex pede Herculem_ method of
judgment is misleading.

While the cause of Italian liberty had the entire sympathy of Robert
Browning, he was yet little moved to use it as a poetic motive. Professor
Hall Griffin suggests that it is possible that Browning deliberately chose
not to enter a field which his wife so particularly made her own; but that
is the less tenable as they never discussed their poetic work with each
other, and as a rule rarely showed to each other a single poem until it
was completed.

The foreign society in Florence at this time included some delightful
American sojourners, for, beside the Storys and Hiram Powers (an especial
friend of the Brownings), there were George S. Hillard, George William
Curtis, and the Marchesa d'Ossoli with her husband,--all of whom were
welcomed at Casa Guidi. The English society then in Florence was, as Mrs.
Browning wrote to Miss Mitford, "kept up much after the old English
models, with a proper disdain for continental simplicities of expense; and
neither my health nor our pecuniary circumstances," she says, "would admit
of our entering it. The fact is, we are not like our child, who kisses
everybody who smiles on him! You can scarcely imagine to yourself how we
have retreated from the kind advances of the English here, and struggled
with hands and feet to keep out of this gay society." But it is alluring
to imagine the charm of their chosen circle, the Storys always first and
nearest, and these other gifted and interesting friends.

Mr. Story is so universally thought of as a sculptor that it is not always
realized how eminent he was in the world of letters as well. Two volumes
of his poems contain many of value, and a few, as the "Cleopatra," "An
Estrangement," and the immortal "Io Victis," that the world would not
willingly let die; his "Roba di Roma" is one of those absolutely
indispensable works regarding the Eternal City; and several other books
of his, in sketch and criticism, enrich literature. A man of the most
courtly and distinguished manner, of flawless courtesy, an artist of
affluent expressions, it is not difficult to realize how congenial and
delightful was his companionship, as well as that of his accomplished
wife, to the Brownings. Indeed, no biographical record could be made of
either household, with any completeness, that did not largely include the
other. In all the lovely chronicles of literature and life there is no
more beautiful instance of an almost lifelong friendship than that between
Robert Browning and William Wetmore Story.

In this spring of 1850 Browning was at work on his "Christmas Eve and
Easter Day," and Casa Guidi preserved a liberal margin of quiet and
seclusion. "You can scarcely imagine," wrote Mrs. Browning, "the retired
life we live.... We drive day by day through the lovely Cascine, only
sweeping through the city. Just such a window where Bianca Capello looked
out to see the Duke go by,--and just such a door where Tasso stood, and
where Dante drew his chair out to sit."

When Curtis visited Florence he wrote to Browning begging to be permitted
to call, and he was one of the welcomed visitors in Casa Guidi. Browning
took him on many of those romantic excursions with which the environs of
Florence abound,--to Settignano, where Michael Angelo was born; to the old
Roman amphitheater in Fiesole; to that somber, haunted summit of San
Miniato, and to Vallombrosa, where he played to Curtis some of the old
Gregorian chants on an organ in the monastery. Afterward, in a
conversation with Longfellow, Mr. Curtis recalled a hymn by Pergolese that
Browning had played for him.

Tennyson's poem, "The Princess," went into the third edition that winter,
and Mrs. Browning observed that she knew of no poet, having claim _solely_
through poetry, who had attained so certain a success with so little
delay. Hearing that Tennyson had remarked that the public "hated poetry,"
Mrs. Browning commented that, "divine poet as he was, and no laurel being
too leafy for him," he must yet be unreasonable if he were not gratified
with "so immediate and so conspicuous a success."

Browning's "imprisoned splendor" found expression that winter in several
lyrics, which were included in the new (two volume) edition of his poems.

Among these were the "Meeting at Night," "Parting at Morning," "A Woman's
Last Word," and "Evelyn Hope." "Love among the Ruins," "Old Pictures in
Florence," "Saul," and his "A Toccata of Galuppi's," all belong to this
group. In that ardent love poem, "A Woman's Last Word," occur the lines:

  "Teach me, only teach, Love!
      As I ought
  I will speak thy speech, Love,
      Think thy thought--

  "Meet, if thou require it,
      Both demands,
  Laying flesh and spirit
      In thy hands."

No lyric that Robert Browning ever wrote is more haunting in its power and
sweetness, or more rich in significance, than "Evelyn Hope," with "that
piece of geranium flower" in the glass beside her beginning to die. The
whole scene is suggested by this one detail, and in characterization of
the young girl are these inimitable lines,--

  "The good stars met in your horoscope,
    Made you of spirit, fire, and dew--

  Yet one thing, one, in my soul's full scope,
    Either I missed or itself missed me;

  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."

[Illustration: FRESCO OF DANTE, BY GIOTTO, IN THE BARGELLO, FLORENCE.

  "_.... With a softer brow_
  _Than Giotto drew upon the wall._"

Casa Guidi Windows.]

Mrs. Browning's touching lyric, "A Child's Grave at Florence," was
published in the _Athenæum_ that winter; and in this occur the simple but
appealing stanzas,--

  "Oh, my own baby on my knees,
      My leaping, dimpled treasure,

  But God gives patience, Love learns strength,
      And Faith remembers promise;

  Still mine! maternal rights serene
      Not given to another!
  The crystal bars shine faint between
      The souls of child and mother."

To this day, that little grave in the English cemetery in Florence, with
its "A. A. E. C." is sought out by the visitor. To Mrs. Browning the love
for her own child taught her the love of all mothers. In "Only a Curl" are
the lines:

  "O children! I never lost one,--
  But my arm's round my own little son,
  And Love knows the secret of Grief."

Florence "bristled with cannon" that winter, but nothing decisive
occurred. The faith of the Italian people in Pio Nono, however, grew less.
Mr. Kirkup, the antiquarian, still carried on his controversy with Bezzi
as to which of them were the more entitled to the glory of discovering the
Dante portrait, and in the spring there occurred the long-deferred
marriage of Mrs. Browning's sister Henrietta to Captain Surtees Cook, the
attitude of Mr. Barrett being precisely the same as on the marriage of his
daughter Elizabeth to Robert Browning. The death of Wordsworth was another
of the events of this spring, leaving vacant the Laureateship. The
_Athenæum_ at once advocated the appointment of Mrs. Browning, as one
"eminently suitable under a female sovereign." Other literary authorities
coincided with this view, it seeming a sort of poetic justice that a woman
poet should be Laureate to a Queen. The _Athenæum_ asserted that "there is
no living poet of either sex who can prefer a higher claim than Elizabeth
Barrett Browning," but the honor was finally conferred upon Tennyson, with
the ardent approbation of the Brownings, who felt that his claim was
rightly paramount.

In the early summer the Marchese and Marchesa d'Ossoli, with their child,
sailed on that ill-starred voyage whose tragic ending startled the
literary world of that day. Their last evening in Florence was passed with
the Brownings. The Marchesa expressed a fear of the voyage that, after its
fatal termination, was recalled by her friends as being almost prophetic.
Curiously she gave a little Bible to the infant son of the poets as a
presentation from her own little child; and Robert Barrett Browning still
treasures, as a strange relic, the book on whose fly-leaf is written "In
memory of Angelino d'Ossoli." Mrs. Browning had a true regard for the
Marchesa, of whom she spoke as "a very interesting person, thoughtful,
spiritual, in her habitual mode of mind."

In his poetic creed, Browning deprecated nothing more entirely (to use a
mild term where a stronger would not be inappropriate) than that the poet
should reveal his personal feeling in his poem; and to the dramatic
character of his own work he held tenaciously. He rebuked the idea that
Shakespeare "unlocked his heart" to his readers, and he warns them off
from the use of any fancied latch-key to his own inner citadel.

  "Which of you did I enable
    Once to slip inside my breast,
  There to catalogue and label
    What I like least, what love best?"

And in another poem the reader will recall how fervently he thanks God
that "even the meanest of His creatures"

  "Boasts two soul-sides, one to face the world with,
  One to show a woman when he loves her!"

It was the knowledge of this intense and pervading conviction of her
husband's that kept Mrs. Browning so long from showing to him her
exquisitely tender and sacred self-revelation in the "Sonnets from the
Portuguese." Yet it was in that very "One Word More" where Browning thanks
God for the "two soul-sides," that he most simply reveals himself, and
also in "Prospice" and in this "Christmas Eve and Easter Day." This poem,
with its splendor of vision, was published in 1850, with an immediate sale
of two hundred copies, after which for the time the demand ceased. William
Sharp well designates it as a "remarkable Apologia for Christianity," for
it can be almost thought of in connection with Newman's "Apologia pro vita
sua," and as not remote from the train of speculative thought which
Matthew Arnold wrought into his "Literature and Dogma." It is very
impressive to see how the very content of Hegelian Dialectic is the
key-note of Browning's art. "The concrete and material content of a life
of perfected knowledge and volition means one thing, only, love," teaches
Hegelian philosophy. This, too, is the entire message of Browning's
poetry. Man must love God in the imperfect manifestation which is all he
can offer of God. He must relate the imperfect expression to the perfect
aspiration.

  "All I aspired to be
  And was not--comforts me."

In the unfaltering search for the Divine Ideal is the true reward.

  "One great aim, like a guiding star, above--
  Which tasks strength, wisdom, stateliness, to lift
  His manhood to the height that takes the prize."

Browning conceived and presented the organic idea and ideal of life, in
its fullness, its intensity, as perhaps few poets have ever done. He would
almost place a positive sin above a negative virtue. To live intensely,
even if it be sinfully, was to Browning's vision to be on the upward way,
rather than to be in a state of negative good. The spirit of man is its
own witness of the presence of God. Life cannot be truly lived in any
fantastic isolation.

  "Just when we're safest, there's a sunset touch,
  A fancy from a flower-bell, some one's death,
  A chorus ending from Euripides."

With Browning, as with Spinoza, there is an impatience, too, with the
perpetual references to death, and they both constantly turn to the
everlasting truth of life. "It is this harping on death that I despise so
much," exclaimed Browning, in the later years of his life, in a
conversation with a friend. "In fiction, in poetry, in art, in literature
this shadow of death, call it what you will,--despair, negation,
indifference,--is upon us. But what fools who talk thus!... Why, death is
life, just as our daily momentarily dying body is none the less alive, and
ever recruiting new forces of existence. Without death, which is our word
for change, for growth, there could be no prolongation of that which we
call life."

After the completion of "Christmas Eve and Easter Day," Mrs. Browning
questioned her husband about the apparent asceticism of the second part of
the poem, and he replied that he meant it to show only one side of the
matter. "Don't think," she wrote to a friend, "that Robert has taken to
the cilix,--indeed he has not, but it is his way to see things as
passionately as other people feel them."

Browning teaches in this poem that faith is an adventure of the spirit,
the aspiration felt, even if unnamed. But as to renunciation,--

  "'Renounce the world!'--Ah, were it done
  By merely cutting one by one
  Your limbs off, with your wise head last,
  How easy were it!"

The renunciation that the poet sees is not so simple. It is not to put
aside all the allurements of life, but to use them nobly; to persist in
the life of the spirit, to offer love for hatred, truth for falsehood,
generous self-sacrifice rather than to grasp advantages,--to live, not to
forsake the common daily lot. It is, indeed, the philosophy amplified that
is found in the words of Jesus, "I pray not that Thou shouldest take them
out of the world, but that thou shouldest keep them from the evil."

The Brownings remained till late in the summer in their Casa Guidi home,
detained at first by the illness of Mrs. Browning, after which they
decided to postpone going to England until another year. In the late
summer they went for a few weeks to Siena, where, two miles outside the
walls, they found a seven-roomed villa with a garden and vineyard and
olive orchard, and "a magnificent view of a noble sweep of country,
undulating hills and verdure, and on one side the great Maremma extending
to the foot of the Roman mountains." They were located on a little hill
called Poggia dei venti, with all the winds of the heavens, indeed,
blowing about them, and with overflowing quantities of milk and bread and
wine, and a loggia at the top of the villa. Mrs. Browning found herself
rapidly recovering strength, and their comfort was further extended by
finding a library in Siena, where, for three francs a month, they had
access to the limited store of books which seem so luxurious in Italy. The
boy Browning was delighted with his new surroundings, his sole infelicity
being his inability to reach the grapes clustering over the trellises; he
missed the Austrian band that made music (or noise) for his delectation in
Florence, although to compensate for this privation he himself sang
louder than ever. In after years Mr. Browning laughingly related this
anecdote of his son's childhood: "I was one day playing a delicate piece
of Chopin's on the piano, and hearing a loud noise outside, hastily
stopped playing when my little boy ran in, and my wife exclaimed: 'How
could you leave off playing when Penini brought three drums to accompany
you?'"

For all this bloom and beauty in Siena they paid a little less than
fifteen francs a week. Soon after their arrival they learned of the
shipwreck in which the Marchese and Marchesa d'Ossoli and the little
Angelino all perished, and the tragedy deeply impressed Mrs. Browning.
"The work that the Marchesa was preparing upon Italy would have been more
equal to her faculties than anything she has ever produced," said Mrs.
Browning, "her other writings being curiously inferior to the impression
made by her conversation."

Before returning to Florence the Brownings passed a week in the town of
Siena to visit the pictures and churches, but they found it pathetic to
leave the villa, and especially harrowing to their sensibilities to part
with the pig. There is consolation, however, for most mortal sorrows, and
the Brownings found it in their intense interest in Sienese art. The
wonderful pulpit of the Duomo, the work of Niccola Pisano; the font of San
Giovanni; the Sodomas, and the Libreria (the work of Pius III, which he
built when he was Cardinal, and in which, at the end of the aisle, is a
picture of his own elevation to the Papal throne, painted after his death)
fascinated their attention. The Brownings found it dazzling to enter this
interior, all gold and color, with the most resplendent decorative
effects. They followed in the footsteps of Saint Catherine, as do all
pilgrims to Siena, and climbed the hill to the Oratorio di Santa Caterina
in Fontebranda, and read that inscription: "Here she stood and touched
that precious vessel and gift of God, blessed Catherine, who in her
life did so many miracles." They lingered, too, in the Cappella Santa
Caterina in San Domenico, where Catherine habitually prayed, where she
beheld visions and received her mystic revelations. They loitered in the
piazza, watching the stars hang over that aerial tower, "Il Mangia," and
drove to San Gimignano, with its picturesque medieval atmosphere.

[Illustration: CATHEDRAL OF SANTA MARIA DEL FIORE, FLORENCE,
               KNOWN AS THE DUOMO.

  "_The most to praise and the best to see_
  _Was the startling bell-tower Giotto raised._"

Old Pictures in Florence.]

It was in the autumn of 1850 that Tennyson's "In Memoriam," first
privately and then anonymously printed, was acknowledged by the poet. The
Brownings read extracts from it in the _Examiner_, and they were deeply
moved by it. "Oh, there's a poet!" wrote Mrs. Browning. At last, "by a
sort of miracle," they obtained a copy, and Mrs. Browning was carried away
with its exquisite touch, its truth and earnestness. "The book has gone to
my heart and soul," she says, "I think it full of deep pathos and beauty."

An interesting visitor dropped in at Casa Guidi in the person of a
grandson of Goethe; and his mission to Florence, to meet the author of
"Paracelsus" and discuss with him the character of the poem, was a tribute
to its power. Mrs. Browning, whose poetic ideals were so high, writing to
a friend of their guest, rambled on into some allusions to poetic art, and
expressed her opinion that all poets should take care to teach the world
that poetry is a divine thing. "Rather perish every verse I ever wrote,
for one," she said, "than help to drag down an inch that standard of
poetry which, for the sake of humanity as well as literature, should be
kept high."

In "Aurora Leigh" she expresses the same sentiment in the lines:

                        "I, who love my art,
  Would never wish it lower to suit my stature."

Full of affection and interest are Mrs. Browning's letters to her
husband's sister, Sarianna, who, with her father, is now living in
Hatcham, near London. In the spring of 1852, after passing the winter in
Florence, the Brownings set out for England; the plan at first being to go
south to Naples, pause at Rome, and then go northward; but this was
finally abandoned, and they proceeded directly to Venice, where Mrs.
Browning was enchanted with life set in a scenic loveliness of "music and
stars."

"I have been between heaven and earth since our arrival in Venice," she
writes. "The heaven of it is ineffable. Never have I touched the skirts of
so celestial a place. The beauty of the architecture, the silver trails of
water between all that gorgeous color and carving, the enchanting silence,
the moonlight, the music, the gondolas,--I mix it all up together...."

In the divine beauty of Venetian evenings they sat in the white moonlight
in the piazza of San Marco, taking their coffee and the French papers
together. Or they would go to the opera, where for a ridiculously small
sum they had an entire box to themselves. But while Mrs. Browning longed
"to live and die in Venice, and never go away," the climate did not agree
with Mr. Browning, and they journeyed on toward Paris, stopping one night
at Padua and driving out to Arqua for Petrarca's sake. In Milan Mrs.
Browning climbed the three hundred and fifty steps, to the topmost
pinnacle of the glorious cathedral. At Como they abandoned the diligence
for the boat, sailing through that lovely chain of lakes to Flüelen, and
thence to Lucerne, the scenery everywhere impressing Mrs. Browning as
being so sublime that she "felt as if standing in the presence of God."
From Lucerne they made a _détour_ through Germany, pausing at Strasburg,
and arriving in Paris in July. This journey initiated an absence of almost
a year and a half from Italy. They had let their apartment, so they were
quite free to wander, and they were even considering the possibility of
remaining permanently in Paris, whose brilliant intellectual life
appealed to them both. After a brief sojourn in the French capital, they
went on to England, and they had rather an embarrassment of riches in the
number of houses proffered them, for Tennyson begged them to accept the
loan of his house and servants at Twickenham, and Joseph Arnould was
equally urgent that they should occupy his town house. But they took
lodgings, instead, locating in Devonshire Street, and London life proceeds
to swallow them up after its own absorbing fashion. They breakfast with
Rogers, and pass an evening with the Carlyles; Forster gives a
"magnificent dinner" for them; Mrs. Fanny Kemble calls, and sends them
tickets for her reading of "Hamlet"; and the Proctors, Mrs. Jameson, and
other friends abound. They go to New Cross, Hatcham, to visit Mr.
Browning's father and sister, where the little Penini "is taken into
adoration" by his grandfather. Mrs. Browning's sisters show her every
affection, and her brothers come; but her father, in reply to her own and
her husband's letter, simply sends back to her, with their seals unbroken,
all the letters she had written to him from Italy. "So there's the end,"
she says; "I cannot, of course, write again. God takes it all into His own
hands, and I wait." The warm affection of her sisters cheered her, Mrs.
Surtees Cook (Henrietta Barrett) coming up from Somersetshire for a week's
visit, and her sister Arabel being invited with her. It was during this
sojourn in London that Bayard Taylor, poet and critic, and afterward
American Minister Plenipotentiary to Germany, called upon the Brownings,
bringing a letter of introduction from Hillard.

The poet's wife impressed Taylor as almost a spirit figure, with her
pallor and slender grace, and the little Penini, "a blue-eyed,
golden-haired boy, babbling his little sentences in Italian," strayed in
like a sunbeam. While Taylor was with them, Mr. Kenyon called, and after
his departure Browning remarked to his guest: "There goes one of the most
splendid men living,--a man so noble in his friendship, so lavish in his
hospitality, so large-hearted and benevolent, that he deserves to be known
all over the world as Kenyon the Magnificent."

The poets were overwhelmed with London hospitalities, and as Mrs. Browning
gave her maid, Wilson, leave of absence to visit her own family, the care
of little Pen fell upon her. He was in a state of "deplorable grief" for
his nurse, "and after all," laughed Mrs. Browning, "the place of nursery
maid is more suitable to me than that of poetess (or even poet's wife) in
this obstreperous London."

In the late September the Brownings crossed to Paris, Carlyle being their
traveling companion, and after an effort to secure an apartment near the
Madeleine, they finally established themselves in the Avenue des Champs
Élysées (No. 128), where they had pretty, sunny rooms, tastefully
furnished, with the usual French lavishness in mirrors and clocks,--all
for two hundred francs a month, which was hardly more than they had paid
for the dreary Grosvenor Street lodgings in London. Mrs. Browning was very
responsive to that indefinable exhilaration of atmosphere that pervades
the French capital, and the little Penini was charmed with the gayety and
brightness. Mrs. Browning enjoyed the restaurant dining, _à la carte_,
"and mixing up one's dinner with heaps of newspapers, and the 'solution'
by Émile de Girardin," who suggested, it seems, "that the next President
of France should be a tailor." Meantime she writes to a friend that "the
'elf' is flourishing in all good fairyhood, with a scarlet rose leaf on
each cheek." They found themselves near neighbors of Béranger, and
frequently saw him promenading the avenue in a white hat, and they learned
that he lived very quietly and "kept out of scrapes, poetical and
political." Mrs. Browning notes that they would like to know Béranger,
were the stars propitious, and that no accredited letter of introduction
to him would have been refused, but that they could not make up their
minds to go to his door and introduce themselves as vagrant minstrels. To
George Sand they brought a letter from Mazzini, and although they heard
she "had taken vows against seeing strangers," Mrs. Browning declared she
would not die, if she could help it, without meeting the novelist who had
so captivated her. Mazzini's letter, with one from themselves, was sent to
George Sand through mutual friends, and the following reply came:

    Madame, j'aurai l'honneur de vous recevoir Dimanche prochain, rue
    Racine, 3. C'est le seul jour que je puisse passer chez moi; et encore
    je n'en suis pas absolument certaine--mais je ferai tellement mon
    possible, que ma bonne étoile m'y aidera peut-être un peu. Agréez
    mille remerciments de coeur ainsi que Monsieur Browning, que
    j'espère voir avec vous, pour la sympathie que vous m'accordez.

    GEORGE SAND.

    PARIS, 12 _fevrier_, 1852.

The visit must have been mutually satisfactory, for it was repeated two or
three times, and they found her simple, "without a shade of affectation or
consciousness." Another pleasure they had was in meeting Lamartine, who
took the initiative in asking to be allowed to call on them. After their
arrival in Paris Carlyle passed several evenings with them, and Mrs.
Browning felt, with her husband, that he was one of the most interesting
of men, "highly picturesque" in conversation. Her sympathetic insight gave
her always the key and the clue to character, and perhaps no one ever read
Carlyle more truly than she, when she interpreted his bitterness only as
melancholy, and his scorn as sensibility.

The Brownings had not been long in Paris before they were invited to a
reception at Lady Elgin's, where they met Madame Mohl, who at once
cordially urged their coming to her "evenings," to meet her French
celebrities. Lady Elgin was domiciled in the old Faubourg Saint Germain,
and received every Monday evening from eight to twelve, _sans façon_,
people being in morning dress, and being served with simple refreshment of
tea and cakes. Lady Elgin expressed the hope that the Brownings would come
to her on every one of these evenings, Mrs. Browning said that she had
expected "to see Balzac's duchesses and _hommes de lettres_ on all sides,"
but she found it less notable, though very agreeable. The elder Browning
and his daughter pay a visit to them, greatly to Mrs. Browning's
enjoyment. At this time they half contemplated living permanently in
Paris, if it seemed that Mrs. Browning could endure the climate, and she
records, during the visit of her husband's father and sister, that if they
do remain in Paris they hope to induce these beloved members of the family
to also establish themselves there. As it turned out, the Brownings passed
only this one winter in the French capital, but the next spring Mr.
Browning (_père_) and his daughter Sarianna took up their residence in
Paris, where they remained during the remainder of his life. Mrs. Browning
was always deeply attached to her husband's sister. "Sarianna is full of
accomplishment and admirable sense," she wrote of her, and the visit of
both gave her great pleasure. The _coup d'état_ took place early in
December, but they felt no alarm. Mrs. Browning expressed her great faith
in the French people, and declared the talk about "military despotism" to
be all nonsense. The defect she saw in M. Thiers was "a lack of breadth of
view, which helped to bring the situation to a dead lock, on which the
French had no choice than to sweep the board clean and begin again."

It was during this early winter, with French politics and French society
and occasional spectacles and processions extending from the Carrousel to
the Arc de l'Étoile, that Browning wrote that essay on Shelley, which his
publisher of that time, Mr. Moxon, had requested to accompany a series of
Shelley letters which had been discovered, but which were afterward found
to be fraudulent. The edition was at once suppressed; but a few copies had
already gone out, and, as Professor Dowden says, "The essay is interesting
as Browning's only considerable piece of prose;... for him the poet of
'Prometheus Unbound' was not that beautiful and ineffectual angel of
Matthew Arnold's fancy, beating in the void his luminous wings. A great
moral purpose looked forth from Shelley's work, as it does from all lofty
works of art." It was "the dream of boyhood," Browning tells us, to render
justice to Shelley; and he availed himself of this opportunity with
alluring eagerness. His interpretation of Shelley is singularly noble and
in accord with all the great spiritual teachings of his own poetic work.
Browning's plea that there is no basis for any adequate estimate of
Shelley, who "died before his youth was ended," cannot but commend its
justice; and he urges that in any measurement of Shelley as a man he must
be contemplated "at his ultimate spiritual stature" and not judged by the
mistakes of ten years before when in his entire immaturity of character.

How all that infinite greatness of spirit and almost divine breadth of
comprehension that characterize Robert Browning reveal themselves in this
estimate of Shelley. It is seeing human errors and mistakes as God sees
them,--the temporary faults, defects, imperfections of the soul on its
onward way to perfection. This was the attitude of Browning's profoundest
convictions regarding human life.

  "Eternal process moving on;
    From state to state the spirit walks."

This achievement of the divine ideal for man is not within the
possibilities of the brief sojourn on earth, but what does the transition
called death do for man but to

  "Interpose at the difficult moment, snatch Saul, the mistake,
  Saul, the failure, the ruin he seems now,--and bid him awake
  From the dream, the probation, the prelude, to find himself set
  Clear and safe in new light and new life,--a new harmony yet
  To be run, and continued, and ended--who knows?--or endure!
  The man taught enough by life's dream, of the rest to make sure."

Browning's message in its completeness was invariably that which is
imaged, too, in these lines from Mrs. Browning's "Aurora Leigh":

  "And take for a worthier stage the soul itself,
  Its shifting fancies and celestial lights."

For it is only in this drama of the infinite life that the spiritual man
can be tested. It was from the standpoint of an actor on this celestial
stage that Browning considered Shelley. In the entire range of Browning's
art the spiritual man is imaged as a complex and individualized spark of
the divine force. He is seen for a flitting moment on his way toward a
divine destiny.

Professor Hall Griffin states as his belief that Browning's paper was to
some degree inspired by that of Joseph Milsand on himself, which appeared
in August, 1851, in the _Revue des Deux Mondes_ in which Milsand commended
Browning's work "as pervaded by an intense belief in the importance of the
individual soul."

To Browning this winter was enchanted by the initiation of his friendship
with Milsand, the distinguished French scholar and critic, who had already
made a name as a philosophic thinker and had published a book on Ruskin
(_L'Esthétique Anglaise_), and who was a discerner of spirits in poetic
art as well. About the time that "Paracelsus" appeared, Milsand had seen
an extract from the poem that captivated him, and he at once sent for the
volume. He had also read, with the deepest interest, Browning's "Christmas
Eve and Easter Day." He was contributing to the _Revue des Deux Mondes_
two papers on _La Poésie Anglaise depuis Byron_, the first of which, on
Tennyson, had appeared the previous August. Milsand was about completing
the second paper of this series (on Browning), and it happened just at
this time that Miss Mitford's "Recollections of a Literary Life" was
published, in which, writing of the Brownings, she had told the story of
that tragic death of Mrs. Browning's brother Edward, who had been drowned
at Torquay. In these days, when, as Emerson rhymes the fact,

  "Every thought is public,
    Every nook is wide,
  The gossips spread each whisper
    And the gods from side to side,"

it is a little difficult to quite comprehend, even in comprehending Mrs.
Browning's intense sensitiveness and the infinite sacredness of this
grief, why she should have been so grieved at Miss Mitford's tender
allusion to an accident that was, by its very nature, public, and which
must have been reported in the newspapers of the day. Mrs. Browning was
always singularly free from any morbid states, from any tendency to the
_idée fixe_, to which a semi-invalid condition is peculiarly and
pardonably liable; but she said, in an affectionate letter to Miss
Mitford:

    "I have lived heart to heart (for instance) with my husband these five
    years: I have never yet spoken out, in a whisper even, what is in me;
    never yet could find heart or breath; never yet could bear to hear a
    word of reference from his lips."

It is said there are no secrets in heaven, and in that respect, at least,
the twentieth century is not unlike the celestial state; and it is almost
as hard a task for the imagination to comprehend the reserve in all
personal matters that characterized the mid-nineteenth century as it
would be to enter into absolute comprehension of the medieval mind; but
Mrs. Browning's own pathetic deprecation of her feelings regarding this is
its own passport to the sympathy of the reader. To Miss Mitford's reply,
full of sympathetic comprehension and regret, Mrs. Browning replied that
she understood, "and I thank you," she added, "and love you, which is
better. Now, let us talk of reasonable things." For Mrs. Browning had that
rare gift and grace of instantly closing the chapter, and turning the
page, and ceasing from all allusion to any subject of regret, after the
inevitable reference of the moment had been made. She had the mental
energy and the moral buoyancy to drop the matter, and this characteristic
reveals how normal she was, and how far from any morbidness.

Milsand, with a delicacy that Robert Browning never forgot, came to him to