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

“At luncheon,” continues Dr. Corson, “his talk was, as usual with him, rapid and off-hand. He gave but a coup d’œil to every subject that came up. In all subsequent talks with him, I never got the slightest impression from him of pride of intellect, though his was certainly one of the subtlest and most comprehensive intellects of his time. He was absolutely free from it; was saved from it by his spiritual vitality. His intellectual and his spiritual nature jointly operated. Nor did he ever show to me any pride of authorship; never made any independent allusion to his poetry. One might have supposed that his poetry, great and extensive as it was, was a πάρεργον, a by-work, with him.

“I have no recollection of any saying of his, such as might be recorded for its wisdom or profundity. Never a brilliant thought crystallized in a single sentence. His talk was especially characterized by its cordiality and rapid flow. The ‘member of society’ and the poet seemed to be quite distinct.

“One day when Mrs. Corson and I were lunching with him in Warwick Crescent,” said Dr. Corson, “he told us a most amusing incident. On that morning Browning was particularly ‘an embodied joy.’ He told several good stories, one of which showed that the enigmatical character attributed to his poetry by some of his critics was to him a good joke. I have no doubt he must have enjoyed the Douglas Jerrold story, that Jerrold, in endeavoring to read ‘Sordello,’ thought he had lost his mind.

“But to Browning’s story. He said, ‘I was visited by the Chinese minister and his attachés, without having been previously informed of their coming. Before they entered, I had noticed from my window a crowd in the street, which had been attracted by the celestials in their national rigs, who were just then getting out of their carriages, I not knowing then what manner of visitors I was to have. Soon the interpreter announced at the drawing-room door, “His Excellency, the Chinese Minister and his attachés.” As they entered, the interpreter presented them, individually, first, of course, his Excellency, the Minister, and then the rest in order of rank. It was quite an impressive occasion. Recovering myself, I said to the interpreter: “To what am I indebted for this great honor?” He replied: “You are a distinguished poet in your country, and so is his Excellency in his.” We did obeisance to each other. I then asked the character of his Excellency’s poetry. The interpreter replied, “Chiefly poetical enigmas.” Grasping his Excellency’s hand, I said, “I salute you as a brother.”’

“Browning told this story while walking up and down the room. When he said, ‘I salute you as a brother,’ he made the motion of a most hearty hand-shake.”

Mrs. Arthur Bronson, than whom Mr. Browning never had a more sympathetic and all-comprehending friend, said that if she tried to recall Robert Browning’s words it was as though she had talked to a being apart from other men. “My feeling may seem exaggerated,” she smiled, “but it was only natural, when considering my vivid sense of his moral and intellectual greatness. His talk was not abstruse and intricate, like some of his writings. Far from it. As a rule he seemed rather to avoid deep and serious subjects. There was no loss, for everything he chose to say was well said. A familiar story, grave or gay, when clothed with his words, and accentuated by his expressive gestures and the mobility of his countenance, had all the charm of novelty; while a comic anecdote from his lips sparkled with wit, born of his own keen sense of humor. I found in him that most rare combination of a powerful personality united to a nature tenderly sympathetic.”

Another who knew him well perpetrated the mot that “Tennyson hides behind his laurels, and Browning behind the man of the world.” Henry James, whose gift of subtle analysis was never more felicitously revealed than in his expressions about Browning, declared that the poet had two personalities: one, the man of the world, who walked abroad, talked, did his duty; the other, the Poet,—“an inscrutable personage,—who sat at home and knew, as well he might, in what quarters of that sphere to look for suitable company. The poet and the man of the world were disassociated in him as they can rarely elsewhere have been.”

For three or four summers after this sojourn in Scotland the Brownings were at St. Aubin, in Brittany, where they had a cottage “not two steps away” from that of his friend Milsand. In the early mornings Browning would be seen pacing the sands, reading from his little Greek copy of Homer; and in the late afternoons the two friends would stroll on the Normandy beach with their arms around each other’s shoulders. They are described as very different in appearance,—Browning vigorous and buoyant, Milsand nervous, thin, reserved,—but akin in a certain delicate sensitiveness, a swift susceptibility to impressions. Of Browning Milsand said that what he really valued most was his kindness, his simple, open, radiant goodness. “All the chords of sympathy vibrated in his strong voice,” added Milsand. The French critic was very fond of the poet’s son, and in reference to him he once said: “The father has reason to be happy that in walking before he has opened a path for his son, instead of making him stumble.” As has been seen, in Mrs. Browning’s letters, she always shared her husband’s enthusiasm for Milsand, and the latter had said that he felt in her “that shining superiority always concealing itself under her unconscious goodness and lovely simplicity.”

On Sundays at St. Aubin’s, Browning frequently accompanied Milsand to the little chapel of Château-Blagny, for Protestant worshipers. From his cottage Browning could gaze across the bay to the lighthouse at Havre, and he “saw with a thrill” the spot where he once passed a summer with his wife.

Italian recollections sometimes rose before his inner vision. To Isa Blagden, who had gone to Siena, he wrote that he could “see the fig-tree under which Ba sat, reading and writing, poor old Landor’s oak opposite.”

Of Milsand he wrote to a friend: “I never knew or shall know his like among men,” and to Milsand, who had assisted him in some proof-reading, he wrote acknowledging his “invaluable assistance,” and said:

“The fact is, in the case of a writer with my peculiarities and habits, somebody quite ignorant of what I may have meant to write, and only occupied with what is really written, ought to supervise the thing produced. I won’t attempt to thank you, dearest friend.... The poem will reach you in about a fortnight. I look forward with all confidence and such delight to finding us all together again in the autumn. All love to your wife and daughter. R. B.”

Milsand, writing of Browning in the Revue , revealed his high appreciation of the poet when he said: “Browning suggests a power even greater than his achievement. He speaks like a spirit who is able to do that which to past centuries has been almost impossible.”

It was St. Aubin that furnished Browning with material for his poem, “Red Cotton Night-cap Country,” the title of which was suggested by Miss Thackeray (now Lady Ritchie) who had a cottage there one summer, near those of Browning and Milsand. Browning and his sister occupied one of the most primitive of cottages, but the location was beautiful, perched on the cliff of St. Aubin, and commanded a changeful panorama of sea and sky. “The sitting-room door opened to the garden and the sea beyond—a fresh-swept bare floor, a table, three straw chairs, one book upon the table,—the only book he had with him. The bedrooms were as bare as the sitting-room, but there was a little dumb piano standing in a corner, on which he used to practice in the early morning. Mr. Browning declared they were perfectly satisfied with their little house; that his brains, squeezed as dry as a sponge, were only ready for fresh air.” [12]As all Browning readers will remember, “Red Cotton Night-cap Country” is dedicated to Miss Thackeray.