The Romantic Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning & Robert Browning - Robert Browning

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are unquestionably endowed with some super-human power of volition, and invariably arrive at the psychological moment when, if their author were being married or buried, the ceremony would have to be postponed until they were corrected. But the poets were not without pleasant interludes, either; as when Tennyson came from the Isle of Wight to London for three or four days, two of which he passed with the Brownings. He “dined, smoked, and opened his heart” to them; and concluded this memorable visit at the witching hour of half-past two in the morning, after reading “Maud” aloud the evening before from the proof-sheets. The date of this event is established by an inscription affixed to the back of a pen-and-ink sketch of Tennyson, made on that night by Dante Gabriel Rossetti, and which is now in the possession of Robert Barrett Browning. This inscription, written by Robert Browning, reads: “Tennyson read his poem ‘Maud’ to E. B. B., R. B., Arabel, and Rossetti, on the evening of Sept. 27th, 1855, at 13, Dorset Street. Rossetti made this sketch of Tennyson, as he sat, reading, on one end of the sofa, E. B. B. being on the other end.” And this is signed, “R. B. March 6th, 1874 ... 19, Warwick Crescent.” As the date is Mrs. Browning’s birthday, it is easy to realize how, in that March of 1874, he was recalling tender and beloved memories. On the drawing itself Mrs. Browning had, at the time of the reading, copied the first two lines of “Maud.” Tennyson replied to a question from William Sharp, who in 1882 wrote to the Laureate to ask about this night, that he had “not the slightest recollection” of Rossetti’s presence; but the inscription on the picture establishes the fact. William Michael Rossetti was also one of the group, and a record that he made quite supports the fact of Tennyson’s unconsciousness of his brother’s presence, for he says: “So far as I remember the Poet-Laureate neither saw what my brother was doing nor knew of it afterward.” And as if every one of this gifted group present that night left on record some impression, Dante Gabriel Rossetti has noted that, after Tennyson’s reading, Browning read his “Fra Lippo Lippi,” and “with as much sprightly variation as there was in Tennyson of sustained continuity.” In a letter to Allingham, Rossetti also alluded to this night, and infused a mild reproach to Mrs. Browning in that her attention was diverted by “two not very exciting ladies”; and in a letter to Mrs. Tennyson, Mrs. Browning speaks of being “interrupted by some women friends whom I loved, but yet could not help wishing a little further just then, that I might sit in the smoke, and listen to the talk,” after the reading. So, from putting together, mosaic fashion, all the allusions made by the cloud of witnesses, the reader constructs a rather accurate picture of that night of the gods. Mrs. Browning, who “was born to poet-uses,” like the suitor of her own “Lady Geraldine,” was in a rapture of pleasure that evening, and of “Maud” she wrote: “The close is magnificent, full of power, and there are beautiful, thrilling lines all through. If I had a heart to spare, the Laureate would have won mine.” Tennyson’s voice she found “like an organ, music rather than speech,” and she was “captivated” by his naïveté, as he stopped every now and then to say, “There’s a wonderful touch!” Mrs. Browning writes to Mrs. Tennyson of “the deep pleasure we had in Mr. Tennyson’s visit to us.” She adds:

      “He didn’t come back, as he said he would, to teach me the ‘Brook’ (which I persist, nevertheless, in fancying I understand a little), but he did so much and left such a voice (both him ‘and a voice!’) crying out ‘Maud’ to us, and helping the effect of the poem by the personality, that it’s an increase of joy and life to us ever.”

The Coronation of the Virgin, Filippo Lippi.

      The Coronation of the Virgin, Filippo Lippi.

       in the accademia di belle arti, florence.

      “Ringed by a bowery, flowery angel-brood, Lilies and vestments and white faces....”

      Fra Lippo Lippi

      Deciding to pass the ensuing winter in Paris, the Brownings found themselves anxious to make the change, that they might feel settled for the time, as she needed entire freedom from demands that she might proceed with her “Aurora Leigh.” He had conceived the idea of revising and recasting “Sordello.” They passed an evening with Ruskin, however, and presented “young Leighton” to him. They met Carlyle at Forster’s, finding him “in great force”—of denunciations. They met Kinglake, and were at the Proctors, and of the young poet, Anne Adelaide Proctor, Mrs. Browning says, “How I like Adelaide’s face!” Mrs. Sartoris and Mrs. Kemble were briefly in London, and Kenyon, the beloved friend, vanished to the Isle of Wight. To Penini’s great delight, Wilson, the maid, married a Florentine, one Ferdinando Romagnoli, who captivated the boy by his talk of Florence, and Penini caught up his pretty Italian enthusiasms, and discoursed of Florentine skies, and the glories of the Cascine, to any one whom he could waylay.

      In Paris they first established themselves in the Rue de Grenelle, in the old Faubourg San Germain, a location they soon exchanged for a more comfortable apartment in the Rue de Colisée, just off the Champs Élysées. Here they renewed their intercourse with Lady Elgin (now an invalid) and with her daughter, Lady Augusta Bruce, Madame Mohl, and with other friends. Mrs. Browning was absorbed in her great poem, which she was able to complete, however, only after their return to London the next June, and never did an important literary work proceed with less visible craft. She lay on her sofa, half supported by cushions, writing with pencil on little scraps of paper, which she would slip under the pillows if any chance visitor came in. “Elizabeth is lying on the sofa, writing like a spirit,” Browning wrote to Harriet Hosmer. To Mrs. Browning Ruskin wrote, praising her husband’s poems, which gratified her deeply, and she replied, in part, that when he wrote to praise her poems, of course she had to bear it. “I couldn’t turn around and say, ‘Well, and why don’t you praise him, who is worth twenty of me?’ One’s forced,” she continued, “to be rather decent and modest for one’s husband as well as for one’s self, even if it’s harder. I couldn’t pull at your coat to read ‘Pippa Passes,’ for instance.... But you have put him on your shelf, so we have both taken courage to send you his new volumes, ‘Men and Women,’... that you may accept them as a sign of the esteem and admiration of both of us.” Mrs. Browning considered these poems beyond any of his previous work, save “Paracelsus,” but there is no visible record left of what she must have felt regarding that tender and exquisite dedication to her, that “One Word More ... To E. B. B.,” which must have been to her

      “The heart’s sweet Scripture to be read at night.”

      These lines are, indeed, a fitting companion-piece to her “Sonnets from the Portuguese.” For all these poems, his “fifty men and women,” were for her,—his “moon of poets.”

      “There they are, my fifty men and women

       Naming me the fifty poems finished!

       Take them, Love, the book and me together;

       Where the heart lies, let the brain lie also.

       ······

       I shall never, in the years remaining, Paint you pictures, no, nor carve you statues, Make you music that should all-express me; ······ Verse and nothing else have I to give you. Other heights in other lives, God willing; All the gifts from all the heights, your own, Love!”

      So he wrote to his “one angel,—borne, see, on my bosom!” For her alone were the

      “Silent, silver lights and darks undreamed of,”

      and while there was one side to face the world with, he thanked God that there was another,—

      “One to show a woman when he loves her!”

      It was Rossetti, however, who was the true interpreter of Browning to Ruskin,—for if it requires a god to recognize a god, so likewise in poetic recognitions. To Rossetti the poems comprised in “Men and Women” were the “elixir of life.” The moving drama of Browning’s poetry fascinated him. Some years before he had chanced upon “Pauline” in the British Museum, and being unable to procure the book, had copied every line of it. The “high seriousness” which Aristotle claims to be one of the high virtues of poetry, impressed Rossetti in Browning. What a drama of

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