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

The only serious difference which ever arose between Mr. Browning and his wife referred to the subject of spiritualism. Mrs. Browning held doctrines which prepared her to accept any real or imagined phenomena betokening intercourse with the spirits of the dead; nor could she be repelled by anything grotesque or trivial in the manner of this intercourse, because it was no part of her belief that a spirit still inhabiting the atmosphere of our earth, should exhibit any dignity or solemnity not belonging to him while he lived upon it. The question must have been discussed by them on its general grounds at a very early stage of their intimacy; but it only assumed practical importance when Mr. Home came to Florence in 1857 or 1858. Mr. Browning found himself compelled to witness some of the ‘manifestations’. He was keenly alive to their generally prosaic and irreverent character, and to the appearance of jugglery which was then involved in them. He absolutely denied the good faith of all the persons concerned. Mrs. Browning as absolutely believed it; and no compromise between them was attainable, because, strangely enough, neither of them admitted as possible that mediums or witnesses should deceive themselves. The personal aspect which the question thus received brought it into closer and more painful contact with their daily life. They might agree to differ as to the abstract merits of spiritualism; but Mr. Browning could not resign himself to his wife’s trustful attitude towards some of the individuals who at that moment represented it. He may have had no substantial fear of her doing anything that could place her in their power, though a vague dread of this seems to have haunted him; but he chafed against the public association of her name with theirs. Both his love for and his pride in her resented it.

He had subsided into a more judicial frame of mind when he wrote ‘Sludge the Medium’, in which he says everything which can excuse the liar and, what is still more remarkable, modify the lie. So far back as the autumn of 1860 I heard him discuss the trickery which he believed himself to have witnessed, as dispassionately as any other non-credulous person might have done so. The experience must even before that have passed out of the foreground of his conjugal life. He remained, nevertheless, subject, for many years, to gusts of uncontrollable emotion which would sweep over him whenever the question of ‘spirits’ or ‘spiritualism’ was revived; and we can only understand this in connection with the peculiar circumstances of the case. With all his faith in the future, with all his constancy to the past, the memory of pain was stronger in him than any other. A single discordant note in the harmony of that married love, though merged in its actual existence, would send intolerable vibrations through his remembrance of it. And the pain had not been, in this instance, that of simple disagreement. It was complicated by Mrs. Browning’s refusal to admit that disagreement was possible. She never believed in her husband’s disbelief; and he had been not unreasonably annoyed by her always assuming it to be feigned. But his doubt of spiritualistic sincerity was not feigned. She cannot have thought, and scarcely can have meant to say so. She may have meant to say, ‘You believe that these are tricks, but you know that there is something real behind them;’ and so far, if no farther, she may have been in the right. Mr. Browning never denied the abstract possibility of spiritual communication with either living or dead; he only denied that such communication had ever been proved, or that any useful end could be subserved by it. The tremendous potentialities of hypnotism and thought-reading, now passing into the region of science, were not then so remote but that an imagination like his must have foreshadowed them. The natural basis of the seemingly supernatural had not yet entered into discussion. He may, from the first, have suspected the existence of some mysterious force, dangerous because not understood, and for this reason doubly liable to fall into dangerous hands. And if this was so, he would necessarily regard the whole system of manifestations with an apprehensive hostility, which was not entire negation, but which rebelled against any effort on the part of others, above all of those he loved, to interpret it into assent. The pain and anger which could be aroused in him by an indication on the part of a valued friend of even an impartial interest in the subject points especially to the latter conclusion.

He often gave an instance of the tricks played in the name of spiritualism on credulous persons, which may amuse those who have not yet heard it. I give the story as it survives in the fresher memory of Mr. Val Prinsep, who also received it from Mr. Browning.

‘At Florence lived a curious old savant who in his day was well known to all who cared for art or history. I fear now few live who recollect Kirkup. He was quite a mine of information on all kinds of forgotten lore. It was he who discovered Giotto’s portrait of Dante in the Bargello. Speaking of some friend, he said, “He is a most ignorant fellow! Why, he does not know how to cast a horoscope!” Of him Browning told me the following story. Kirkup was much taken up with spiritualism, in which he firmly believed. One day Browning called on him to borrow a book. He rang loudly at the storey, for he knew Kirkup, like Landor, was quite deaf. To his astonishment the door opened at once and Kirkup appeared.

‘“Come in,” he cried; “the spirits told me there was some one at the door. Ah! I know you do not believe! Come and see. Mariana is in a trance!”

‘Browning entered. In the middle room, full of all kinds of curious objects of “vertu”, stood a handsome peasant girl, with her eyes fixed as though she were in a trance.

‘“You see, Browning,” said Kirkup, “she is quite insensible, and has no will of her own. Mariana, hold up your arm.”

‘The woman slowly did as she was bid.

‘“She cannot take it down till I tell her,” cried Kirkup.

‘“Very curious,” observed Browning. “Meanwhile I have come to ask you to lend me a book.”

‘Kirkup, as soon as he was made to hear what book was wanted, said he should be delighted.

‘“Wait a bit. It is in the next room.”

‘The old man shuffled out at the door. No sooner had he disappeared than the woman turned to Browning, winked, and putting down her arm leaned it on his shoulder. When Kirkup returned she resumed her position and rigid look.

‘“Here is the book,” said Kirkup. “Isn’t it wonderful?” he added, pointing to the woman.

‘“Wonderful,” agreed Browning as he left the room.

‘The woman and her family made a good thing of poor Kirkup’s spiritualism.’

Something much more remarkable in reference to this subject happened to the poet himself during his residence in Florence. It is related in a letter to the ‘Spectator’, dated January 30, 1869, and signed J. S. K.

‘Mr. Robert Browning tells me that when he was in Florence some years since, an Italian nobleman (a Count Ginnasi of Ravenna), visiting at Florence, was brought to his house without previous introduction, by an intimate friend. The Count professed to have great mesmeric and clairvoyant faculties, and declared, in reply to Mr. Browning’s avowed scepticism, that he would undertake to convince him somehow or other of his powers. He then asked Mr. Browning whether he had anything about him then and there, which he could hand to him, and which was in any way a relic or memento. This Mr. Browning thought was perhaps because he habitually wore no sort of trinket or ornament, not even a watchguard, and might therefore turn out to be a safe challenge. But it so happened that, by a curious accident, he was then wearing under his coat-sleeves some gold wrist-studs which he had quite recently taken into wear, in the absence (by mistake of a sempstress) of his ordinary wrist-buttons. He had never before worn them in Florence or elsewhere, and had found them in some old drawer where they had lain forgotten for years. One of these studs he took out and handed to the Count, who held it in his hand a while, looking earnestly in Mr. Browning’s face, and then he said, as if much impressed, “C’equalche cosa che mi grida nell’ orecchio ‘Uccisione! uccisione!’“ (“There is something here which cries out in my ear, ‘Murder! murder!’“)