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

The success of his son in the Paris Salon and other exhibitions was a continual happiness to Mr. Browning. Both in Paris and in London the pictures of Barrett Browning were accorded an honorable place “on the line”; he received a medal from the Salon, and there was not wanting, either, that commercial side of success that sustains its theory. The young artist had now seriously entered on sculpture, under Rodin, with much prestige and promise.

The first series of “Dramatic Idyls” was published in the autumn of 1872, closely following “La Saisiaz” and the “Two Poets of Croisic.” The devoted student of Browning could hardly fail to be impressed by one feature of his poetry which, though a prominent one, has received little attention from the critics. This feature is his doctrine of the sub-self, as the source of man’s highest spiritual knowledge. He has given his fullest expression of this belief in his “Paracelsus,” and it appears in “Sordello” (especially in the fifth book), in “A Death in the Desert,” in “Fifine,” and in “Christopher Smart,” and is largely developed in “The Ring and the Book.” Again, in “Beatrice Signorini,” contained in “Asolando,” published only on the day of his death, this theory is again apparent, and these instances are only partial out of the many in which the doctrine is touched or elaborated, showing how vital it was with him from the earliest to the latest period of his work. Another striking quality in Browning is that of the homogeneous spirit of his entire poetic expression. It is the great unity in an equally great variety. It is always clear as to the direction in which Browning is moving, and as to the supreme message of his philosophy of life.

Table of Contents

“Moreover something is or seems,

That touches me with mystic gleams,

Like shadows of forgotten dreams.”

“Alas! our memories may retrace

Each circumstance of time and place,

Season and change come back again,

And outward things unchanged remain;

The rest we cannot re-instate;

Ourselves we cannot re-create;

Nor set our souls to the same key

Of the remembered harmony!”

“Les Charmettes”—Venetian Days—Dr. Hiram Corson—The Browning Society—Oxford Honors Browning—Katherine DeKay Bronson—Honors from Edinburgh—Visit to Professor Masson—Italian Recognition—Nancioni—The Goldoni Sonnet—At St. Moritz—In Palazzo Giustiniani—“Ferishtah’s Fancies”—Companionship with his Son—Death of Milsand—Letters to Mrs. Bronson—DeVere Gardens—Palazzo Rezzonico—Sunsets from the Lido—Robert Barrett Browning’s Gift in Portraiture.

Twenty-five years after Robert Browning had visited the famous haunts of Rousseau with his wife, he again made a little sojourn with his sister in lovely Chambéry, making various excursions in all the picturesque region about, and again visiting “Les Charmettes,” which Miss Browning had not before seen; as before, Browning sat down to the old harpsichord, attempting to play “Rousseau’s Dream,” but only two notes of the antique instrument responded to his touch. Through all the wonderful scenery of the Mont Cenis pass they proceeded to Turin and thence to Venice, where they arrived in the midst of the festivities of the Congress Carnival in September of 1881. The Storys, whom Browning had anticipated meeting in Venice, had gone to Vallombrosa, where their daughter (the Marchesa Peruzzi di’ Medici) had a villa, to which the family retired in summer from their stately old palace in Florence. Mr. Story’s two sons, the painter and the sculptor, both had studios in Venice at this time, and Mr. Browning often strolled into these. Among other friends Browning and his sister visited the Countess Mocenigo, who was ensconced in the same palace that Byron had occupied. She showed her guests through all the rooms with their classic associations, and Browning sat down to the desk at which Byron had written the last canto of “Childe Harold.” To the satisfaction of the Brownings, Venice soon regained her usual quiet,—that wonderful silence broken only by the plash of water against marble steps, and the cries of the gondoliers,—and he resumed his long walks, often accompanied by Miss Browning, exploring every curious haunt and lingering in shops and squares. The poet familiarized himself with the enchanting dream city, as no tours in gondolas alone could ever do. To him Venice came to be dear beyond words, and soon after he made all arrangements to purchase the Palazzo Manzoni, an ancient Venetian palace of the fifteenth century, whose façade was a faint glow of color from its medallions of colored marbles, and whose balconies and arched windows seemed especially designed for a poet’s habitation. But the ancient structure was found to be in a too perilous condition, and Browning, with never-failing regret, resigned the prospect; nor was he ever consoled, it is said, until, some years later, his son became the owner of the noble Palazzo Rezzonico.

Every day the poet saw Venice transformed into new splendor. “To see these divine sunsets is the joy of life,” he would say, as a city, flushed with rose, reflected itself in pale green waters, and the golden sunset filled with liquid light every narrow street and passage, contrasting sharply with the dense black shadows. Browning had a love of the sky that made its glorious panorama one of the delights of his life.

One of the crowning honors of the poet’s life invested these days for him with renewed vitality of interest,—that of the formation of the Browning Society in London for the study and promulgation of his poetic work. This was, indeed, a contrast to the public attitude of thirty years before. Once, in a letter to Mrs. Millais (dated January 7, 1867) he had described himself to her as “the most unpopular poet that ever was.” The Browning Society was due, in its first inception, to Dr. Furnivall and to Miss Emily Hickey, and its founding was entirely without Browning’s knowledge. Although the poet avowed himself as “quite other than a Browningite,” he could not fail to be touched and gratified by such a mark of interest and appreciation.

Dr. Hiram Corson, Professor of Literature at Cornell University, had, however, formed a Browning Club, composed of professors and their wives and many eminent scholars, some four or five years before the formation of the Browning Society in London, and the notable Browning readings which Professor Corson had given continually in many of the large cities and before universities, had been of incalculable aid in making Robert Browning’s poetry known and understood in the United States. As an interpreter of Browning, Dr. Corson stood unrivaled. His aim was to give to his audience the spiritual meaning of the poem read. His rich voice had the choral intonation without which no poem can be vocally interpreted. His reading gave not only the articulated thought, but the spiritual message of the poet. It is hardly too much to say that no one has ever fully realized the dramatic power of Browning who has not listened to the interpretation of Dr. Corson. Of his own part in the creation of the Browning Society in London, Dr. Corson kindly contributed this record:

“I was stopping with my wife at the Inns of Court Hotel, on High Holborn. A day or two before receiving Mr. Browning’s invitation, Dr. Frederick James Furnivall dined with us, and after dinner we went over to the Inns of Court Gardens, just back of the hotel. There we walked about during the long evening twilight, and talked over the founding of a Society which Dr. Furnivall and Miss Emily Henriette Hickey, the poetess, had been contemplating, for the study of Browning’s poetry. I told him of what I had done at Cornell University, the previous four or five years, in a Browning Club composed of Professors and their wives, and in my University classes. It was decided that the London Browning Society should be organized in October; and I engaged to go over to England the following June, and read a paper before the Society; which I did at its eighth meeting, on the 23d of June, the subject of the paper being ‘The Idea of Personality as embodied in Robert Browning’s Poetry, and of Art as an intermediate Agency of Personality.’”