Robert Browning - The Complete Works of Robert Browning - Poems, Plays, Letters & Biographies in One Edition

Penini had a choice diversion in that the Duchesse de Grammont, of the French Embassy, gave a “ matinée d’enfants ,” to which he received a card, and went, resplendent in a crimson velvet blouse, and was presented to small Italian princes of the Colonna, the Doria, Piombiono, and others, and played leap-frog with his titled companions.

Mrs. Browning reads with eager interest a long speech of their dear friend, Milsand, which filled seventeen columns of the Moniteur , a copy of which his French friend sent to Browning.

The Brownings had planned to join the poet’s father and sister in Paris that summer, but a severe attack of illness in which for a few days her life was despaired of made Mrs. Browning fear that she would be unable to take the journey. Characteristically, her only thought was for the others, never for herself, and she writes to Miss Browning how sad she is in the thought of her husband’s not seeing his father, and “If it were possible for Robert to go with Pen,” she continues, “he should, but he wouldn’t go without me.”

When she had sufficiently recovered to start for Florence, they set out on June 4, resting each night on the way, and reaching Siena four days later, where they lingered. From there Mr. Browning wrote to the Storys that they had traveled through exquisite scenery, and that Ba had borne the journey fairly well. But on arriving in Florence and opening their apartment again in Casa Guidi, it was apparent that the poet had decided rightly that there was to be no attempt made to visit Paris. During these closing days of Mrs. Browning’s stay on earth, her constant aim was “to keep quiet, and try not to give cause for trouble on my account, to be patient and live on God’s daily bread from day to day.”

“ O beauty of holiness, Of self-forgetfulness, of lowliness! ”

It is difficult to read unmoved her last words written to Miss Sarianna Browning. “Don’t fancy, dear,” she said, “that this is the fault of my will,” and she adds:

“Robert always a little exaggerates the difficulties of traveling, and there’s no denying that I have less strength than is usual to me.... What does vex me is that the dearest nonno should not see his Peni this year, and that you, dear, should be disappointed, on my account again . That’s hard on us all. We came home into a cloud here. I can scarcely command voice or hand to name Cavour . That great soul, which meditated and made Italy, has gone to the diviner country. If tears or blood could have saved him to us, he should have had mine. I feel yet as if I could scarcely comprehend the greatness of the vacancy.”

For a week previous to her transition to that diviner world in which she always dwelt, even on earth, she was unable to leave her couch; but she smilingly assured them each day that she was better, and in the last afternoon she received a visit from her beloved Isa, to whom she spoke with somewhat of her old fire of generous enthusiasm of the new Premier, who was devoted to the ideals of Cavour, and in whose influence she saw renewed hope for Italy. The Storys were then at Leghorn, having left Rome soon after the departure of the Brownings, and they were hesitating between Switzerland for the summer, or going again to Siena, where they and the Brownings might be together. The poet had been intending to meet the Storys at Leghorn that night, but he felt that he could not leave his wife, though with no prescience of the impending change. She was weak, but they talked over their summer plans, decided they would soon go to Siena, and agreed that they would give up Casa Guidi that year, and take a villa in Florence, instead. They were endeavoring to secure an apartment in Palazzo Barberini for the winter, the Storys being most anxious that they should be thus near together, and Mrs. Browning discussed with him the furnishing of the rooms in case they decided upon the Palazzo. Only that morning Mr. Lytton had called, and while Mrs. Browning did not see him, her husband talked with him nearly all the morning. Late in the evening she seemed a little wandering, but soon she slept, waking again about four, when they talked together, and she seemed to almost pass into a state of ecstasy, expressing to him in the most ardent and tender words her love and her happiness. The glow of the luminous Florentine dawn brightened in the room, and with the words “It is beautiful!” she passed into that realm of life and light and loveliness in which she had always seemed to dwell.

“And half we deemed she needed not

The changing of her sphere,

To give to heaven a Shining One,

Who walked an angel here.”

The English Cemetery, Florence, in which Mrs. Browning is Buried.

Curiously, Miss Blagden had not slept at all that night. After her return from her visit to Mrs. Browning the previous afternoon, “every trace of fatigue vanished,” she wrote to a friend, “and all my faculties seemed singularly alert. I was unable to sleep, and sat writing letters till dawn, when a cabman came to tell me ‘La Signora della Casa Guidi e morte!’ ”

The Storys came immediately from Leghorn, and Miss Blagden took Edith Story and Penini to her villa. It was touching to see his little friend’s endeavor to comfort the motherless boy. Mr. and Mrs. Story stayed with Browning in the rooms where everything spoke of her presence: the table, strewn with her letters and books; her little chair, a deep armchair of dark green velvet, which her son now holds sacred among his treasures, was drawn by the table just as she had left it, and in her portfolio was a half-finished letter to Madame Mario, speaking of Cavour, and her noble aspirations for Italy.

In the late afternoon of July 1, 1861, a group of English and American, with many Italian friends gathered about the little casket in the lovely cypress-shaded English cemetery of Florence, and as the sun was sinking below the purple hills it was tenderly laid away, while the amethyst mountains hid their faces in a misty veil.

“What would we give to our beloved?

The hero’s heart to be unmoved,

The poet’s star-tuned harp to sweep.

······

God strikes a silence through you all,

And giveth His beloved, sleep.”

Almost could the friends gathered there hear her poet-voice saying:

“And friends, dear friends, when it shall be

That this low breath is gone from me,

And round my bier ye come to weep,

Let One, most loving of you all,

Say ‘Not a tear must o’er her fall!

He giveth His beloved, sleep.’”

Table of Contents

“Think, when our one soul understands

The great Word which makes all things new,

When earth breaks up and heaven expands,

How will the change strike me and you

In the house not made with hands?

“Oh, I must feel your brain prompt mine,

Your heart anticipate my heart,

You must be just before, in fine,

See and make me see, for your part,

New depths of the divine!”

The Completed Cycle—Letters to Friends—Browning’s Devotion to his Son—Warwick Crescent—“Dramatis Personæ”—London Life—death of the Poet’s Father—Sarianna Browning—Oxford Honors the Poet—Death of Arabel Barrett—Audierne—“The Ring and the Book.”

“The cycle is complete,” said Browning to the Storys, as they all stood in those desolate rooms and gazed about. The salon was just as she had left it; the table covered with books and magazines, her little chair drawn up to it, the long windows open to the terrace, and the faint chant of nuns, “made for midsummer nights,” in San Felice, on the air. “Here we came fifteen years ago,” continued Mr. Browning; “here Ba wrote her poems for Italy; here Pen was born; here we used to walk up and down this terrace on summer evenings.” The poet lingered over many tender reminiscences, and after the Storys had taken leave, he and his son yielded to the entreaties of Isa Blagden to stay with her in her villa on Bellosguardo during the time that he was preparing to leave Florence, which he never looked upon again.