Мэтью Перл: The Dante Chamber

“A month, maybe, since we crossed paths,” Browning said with a quick calculation. “Five weeks?”

The timeline might spark an insight in Tennyson. In general, Browning trusted the poet laureate to be practical and well-informed. When Browning wrote his will, he brought it to Tennyson to be witnessed. It will be a wonder if this is legal , Browning joked at the time, written out by one poet, witnessed by another .

“Look at this!” The laureate returned to a column in the newspaper reviewing the latest crimes and trials in London. “We are tender to criminals, Browning. We are more tender to savage criminals than to ourselves, and that’s why more and more exist today than ever. You heard the terrible story about the Honorable Mr. Morton, I suppose?”

“The politician,” Browning replied. “Yes. Found somewhere in North Woolwich, wasn’t it?”

“That’s right, in the pleasure gardens, which are beset by all the sins of man. Have you been following the details?”

Though it dominated the papers, he had avoided reading most of it. Browning had been at a few social affairs at the same time as Morton over the years. Morton, from what he recalled, had been a haughty type, using his seat in the House of Commons to prove himself important.

“The newspapermen relish any story that proves that London is sinking into the ocean under the weight of its vices, and maybe it is,” Browning said. “Morton was bludgeoned in the head with a rock, wasn’t he? To be honest, my dear Tennyson, I try to stay away from the morbidity that always excited you and Dickens.”

“You don’t always stay away from darkness, now do you, Browning? No, the poor soul wasn’t hit on the head with a rock, nothing so ordinary. The stone was actually fastened... ,” Tennyson said, stopping himself and making a halfhearted gesture of apology before puffing the pipe that perched between his lips. “I suppose Dickens turns loose what you call morbidity in his books, while for me the darker side of humanity seems to better reveal the light. Example: Why do mosquitoes exist, Browning? I will tell you. They exist to remind us that they should not. After God made his world, the devil began adding his touches.”

Browning had no patience for Tennyson’s philosophies, and Tennyson noticed, circling back. “Careful not to feel too tender about the remarkable Gabriel Rossetti. He doesn’t keep skeletons in his cupboard; his skeletons drink whiskey and dance along the road while out for long walks. Why so fixated on him, Browning?”

Browning wanted to say: He lost an Elizabeth. I lost an Elizabeth . This came out instead: “He’s a friend.”

Tennyson gave a skeptical ugh and Browning suddenly found the poet’s expressive, judgmental face irritating — made to be sculpted rather than spoken to. At the same time, Tennyson always had an uncanny ability to read other people, frequently compared by friends to a Scotland Yard detective, and Browning could not help but be curious what he thought.

Tennyson explained: “That word. ‘Friend.’ Rossetti talks rather critically of his friends, including the two of us, I daresay, when we’re not present. Sometimes even when we are present,” he growled out a chuckle.

Browning thought back fifteen years earlier, when he and Elizabeth lived in Italy and made a visit to London, inviting over Tennyson, Rossetti, and other poets and artists. They read from works in progress. Browning read “Fra Lippo Lippi,” before Tennyson, first objecting to the idea of reciting at all (“No, I shan’t. No, I shan’t read it... It can be appreciated only by knowing the difficulties overcome!”), went on to read “Maud.” “What a beautiful touch!” “How tender!” Tennyson would pause to exclaim of his own verses , tears rolling down his cheeks, his fingers rippling in the air. Sitting right beside Tennyson, Ba — as Browning called Elizabeth — swept her curls from her eyes.

Now he is a virtuoso , was what Browning imagined his wife thinking. Before she met Browning, Ba kept a portrait of Browning and one of Tennyson on her wall. When Browning was coming to call on her for the first time, she grabbed Browning’s portrait off its nail and then, in a fit of justice, took down Tennyson.

During the same evening they heard “Maud,” Browning noticed Dante Gabriel Rossetti sketching Tennyson, bestowing his version of the poet with a lordly self-importance. Tennyson never saw the saucy though affectionate caricature. Gabriel, as if sensing Browning’s own mixed emotions about Tennyson, later sent the original to the Brownings, and Browning had been tempted to show it to Tennyson on more than one occasion. See, not everyone takes you as seriously as you do .

“Pray understand, I would willingly know so fine spirits as the Rossettis more intimately, Browning,” Tennyson concluded, “but as he and his sister keep themselves so shut up — even more than I do — it is all but impossible. What is it that Oliver Wendell Holmes wrote? ‘We have a special mask we wear for each friend.’ That might not be Dr. Holmes’s exact quote, but if not, I’ve improved it. If Gabriel Rossetti decides to hide himself, leave it at that.”

Browning replied flatly: “I stick to my friends no matter what.”

He was more resolved than when he’d first entered the meeting to discover the whereabouts of Dante Gabriel Rossetti. It was as though the ominous concerns trembling through Christina Rossetti in the penitentiary for fallen women in Highgate had silently traveled up the rafters, floated over Parliament Hill, skimmed over the ponds, jostled themselves against hungry-eyed pedestrians, darted under carriages and omnibuses, and poured themselves directly into the heart of Browning. Half of London society was right here in this room. Someone was bound to have seen Gabriel recently.

Browning shook hands on his way through the crowd and inquired, futilely, as it turned out, for news of his friend. At one point he heard the literary editor John Forster approach Tennyson’s sofa and comment on Browning’s perturbed mood. “Seems like Browning’s still running away from ghosts.”

Browning rather liked the response Tennyson barked out: “No. A poet never sees ghosts.”

Christina’s fears for the well-being of her eldest brother deepened the closer she came to 16 Cheyne Walk. She had only the afternoon prior walked this route to Tudor House — that was what everyone called Dante Gabriel Rossetti’s residence in Chelsea, up the river from London proper — after completing her session at Saint Mary’s alongside the nuns. But she had found nobody inside and the house locked up. She didn’t know her brother’s doors had locks.

Afterward, she’d hunted up Lord Cadogan to secure a spare key, having to promise nothing was wrong, that her brother was on a holiday and she had to retrieve some documents inside. Christina hated lying, hated all the more telling a convincing lie. She even hated lying to a landlord.

The rambling old-world houses of Chelsea that backed onto the Thames wore their usual draperies of thick fog, mixed with a drizzling rain and the noxious fumes floating in from the city’s smokestacks. She paused under her umbrella several times to wait for a clearing. At one point, she thought a horse and rider behind her slowed to mimic the speed of her walking. When she turned to look, the rider dashed out of sight.

She frowned at the vague and foolish suspicions. Worse than suspicions, superstitions. Was she beginning to imagine people sneaking around to trace her movements? Just like the professore had, and just like Gabriel , she thought. Christina rarely felt lonely, but suddenly she felt alone. She was glad she had thought to send a message to William, her other brother, asking him to meet there.