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

“He received me in the drawing-room, on the second floor. After a few minutes’ conversation, he showed me various interesting things, in the drawing-room, busts and portraits and mementoes of Mrs. Browning, keeping up a rapid and meandering current of talk. Something was said, I forget what, which caused me to allude to ‘the Book,’ the ‘square old yellow book,’ with ‘crumpled vellum covers,’ which he picked out of the market-day trumpery in the Piazza San Lorenzo, in Florence, and which led to the composition of his masterpiece, ‘The Ring and the Book,’ ‘I’ll take you down in a few minutes,’ he said, ‘to the library, and show it to you.’ When we left the drawing-room and were at the top of the stairway, he, with an apparent unconsciousness, and as if I were a younger brother, put his arm over my off shoulder, and so descended with me, talking all the while at his usual rapid rate. I tell this little incident, as I observed later, on several occasions, such an expression of unconscious cordiality and good fellowship was a characteristic of him.

“Beside his chair, at the writing table, stood Mrs. Browning’s low-seated, high and straight-backed, black haircloth covered chair, on which were piled books almost to the top of the back, which most effectually excluded any one from the honor of sitting in it.

“When showing me ‘The Book,’ he called my attention to passages in the Latin portion of it—the arguments of the two lawyers, Bottinius and Hyacinthus de Archangelis, and I was struck with the way in which he translated them, the rapid and close recasting of the thought in English, a rare gift even with the best Latin scholars. I had occasions to discover, in subsequent visits, that he read the Greek in a genial way and with less grammatical consciousness than do many Greek professors. His scholarship was extensive and, I would add, vital , it not having been imposed upon him at a public school and a university, and he having had what must have been Shakespeare’s power of acquiring and absorbing knowledge of all kinds. On some subsequent visit, I don’t remember what we had been talking about that led to the remark, he said to me, in his rapid mode of speech, ‘I never could have done much at a public school,’ meaning, of course, an endowed foundation school, such as Eton and others, in which there is a special preparation for the Universities. After a pause, he added, ‘no, nor at a university either. Italy was my university.’ In his ‘De Gustibus——’ he says:

‘Open my heart and you will see Graved inside of it, Italy.’

“While he was showing me ‘The Book,’ I asked him about a passage in ‘The Ring and the Book.’ He replied, ‘I don’t remember the passage. It has been some time since I read the poem, and I haven’t a copy of it in my house!’

“He showed me many of Mrs. Browning’s books—nearly all of them 24mo editions—said she couldn’t hold big books—English, French, Italian, Latin, and Greek books; a Hebrew Bible which had belonged to a distinguished English bishop, whose name I’ve forgotten. ‘Did Mrs. Browning read Hebrew?’ I asked. ‘Oh, yes,’ he replied, and added with a sigh, ‘she was a wonderful woman.’”

Church of San Lorenzo, Florence

“ June was the month, Lorenzo named the Square. ”

The Ring and the Book.

The succeeding summer found the Corsons again in London, and the following invitation from Browning particularly pleased them in its assurance that “nobody else” would be present.

Dear Professor Corson,—Could Mrs. Corson and yourself do my sister and me the great pleasure of taking luncheon with us—and nobody else—next Tuesday (27th) at one o’clock?

Believe me, dear Professor Corson,

Yours Truly Ever,—

Robert Browning.

On Browning’s return to England in 1861, after his wife’s death, he had entered into a most brilliant and congenial social life. Thackeray died soon after his return; but there were Carlyle, Ruskin, Jowett, Millais, Rossetti, Proctor, Matthew Arnold, Woolner, Leighton, Tennyson (whose companionship, as we have seen, was one of his keenest enjoyments), and his publisher, George Murray Smith, of the head of the house of Smith, Elder, and Company, who was one of his chosen friends. Carlyle died in 1881, but many of this group well outlived Browning. On New Year’s Day of 1884 Miss Browning wrote to Mrs. Bronson:

The very first word I write this year is to you, dearest friend, wishing you every good gift the earth below, and Heaven above, can offer. If Robert does not write his own share in these kind feelings, it is only because we have mutually agreed that we shall come more constantly before you if we keep our letters apart.

... You cannot think how incessantly we dwell on the memories of the pleasant past. We are in Casa Alvisi in spirit daily, and I picture to myself all that is going on in the well-loved rooms. I hope Edith works at her guitar. She will find that it will repay the trouble.

Give our kindest love to her, and take yourself our loving hearts.

God bless you this year.

Ever Yours Affectionately,

Sarianna Browning.

In a letter to Mrs. Bronson Browning alludes to the purchase of the new house in DeVere Gardens:

“... I am really in treaty—not too deeply in it for extrication at need—with the land-owner who proposes to build me the house I want,—freehold, if you please! so that it can be Pen’s after me; my notion is to contract just what Sarianna and I require now, leaving it in the said Pen’s power to add and alter according to future advisability.”

Portions of other letters from Browning to Mrs. Bronson are as follows. The first refers to the little daughter of Princess Mélanie Metternich.

“First and worst of all, dear friend, how truly grieved I am to hear of the sad end of the poor little girl I remember so well. Do you remember how she, with her sister, walked before us on our way homeward from the Piazza on nearly our last evening? And how prettily she asked me at her own house to write in her Birthday Book! All this sudden extinction of light in the gay Ca’ Bembo, where I saw the silks bespread before your knowledge and my ignorance!

“It is needless to say how much I pity the Princess, and her kindly husband, too, and I am sorry, very sorry, for you also, Dear Friend of mine, well knowing how you must have suffered in degree.”

Mrs. Bronson had a talent for the writing of drawing-room comedies, and to one of these the poet alludes:

“Dear Friend,—I kept your Comedietta by me a whole week that I might taste of it again and again; how clever it is, who can know better than I, who furnished the bare framework which your Virginia creeper has over-flourished so charmingly? It is all capitally done; quite as much elaborated as the little conception was worth; but its great value to me is the proof it really gives what really good work you might do on a larger scale....

“... I dined last evening at John Murray’s, in the room where used to meet Byron, Scott, Moore, all those famous men of old, whose portraits still adorn the walls. Murray told me he well remembered Byron and his ways; could still in fancy see him and Scott, and also hear them, as they stamped heavily (lame as both were) down the somewhat narrow stairs. Sociability may well come to the relief of people who cannot amuse themselves at home, for the weather, mild, and too mild, is gray, sunless and spiritless, altogether. To-day it rains, a rare occurrence....”

One of the very pleasant interludes in Mr. Browning’s life came about this time in the receipt of a letter from Professor Masson of the University of Edinburgh, inviting the poet to be his guest the week of the coming Tercentenary celebration of the University. It had been decided to confer on Mr. Browning an Honorary Degree, but by some misadventure the official letter announcing this had not reached him, and in reply to Professor Masson he wrote that he had not received “the invitation to Edinburgh which occasions this particularly kind one,” which he thankfully acknowledged, “but I should find it difficult if not impossible to leave London in April,” he continues, “as my son will then be with me; but had I seen my way in so doing it would delight me, indeed, could I spend the days in question with you and Mrs. Masson.” He added that if ever he was privileged “to see the as famous as beautiful City again,” he should call on the Massons the first thing of all, and he desired thanks to Mrs. Masson “for associating her goodness with yours.”