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

We are now indeed fully confronted with one of the great difficulties of Mr. Browning’s biography: that of giving a sufficient idea of the growing extent and growing variety of his social relations. It is evident from the fragments of his wife’s correspondence that during, as well as after, his married life, he always and everywhere knew everyone whom it could interest him to know. These acquaintances constantly ripened into friendliness, friendliness into friendship. They were necessarily often marked by interesting circumstances or distinctive character. To follow them one by one, would add not chapters, but volumes, to our history. The time has not yet come at which this could even be undertaken; and any attempt at systematic selection would create a false impression of the whole. I must therefore be still content to touch upon such passages of Mr. Browning’s social experience as lie in the course of a comparatively brief record; leaving all such as are not directly included in it to speak indirectly for themselves.

Mrs. Browning writes again, in 1859:

‘Massimo d’Azeglio came to see us, and talked nobly, with that noble head of his. I was far prouder of his coming than of another personal distinction you will guess at, *though I don’t pretend to have been insensible to that.’

*An invitation to Mr. Browning to dine in company with the young Prince of Wales.

Dr. — afterwards Cardinal — Manning was also among the distinguished or interesting persons whom they knew in Rome.

Another, undated extract might refer to the early summer of 1859 or 1860, when a meeting with the father and sister must have been once more in contemplation.

Casa Guidi.

‘My dearest Sarianna, — I am delighted to say that we have arrived, and see our dear Florence — the Queen of Italy, after all … A comfort is that Robert is considered here to be looking better than he ever was known to look — and this, notwithstanding the greyness of his beard … which indeed, is, in my own mind, very becoming to him, the argentine touch giving a character of elevation and thought to the whole physiognomy. This greyness was suddenly developed — let me tell you how. He was in a state of bilious irritability on the morning of his arrival in Rome, from exposure to the sun or some such cause, and in a fit of suicidal impatience shaved away his whole beard … whiskers and all!! I cried when I saw him, I was so horror-struck. I might have gone into hysterics and still been reasonable — for no human being was ever so disfigured by so simple an act. Of course I said when I recovered heart and voice, that everything was at an end between him and me if he didn’t let it all grow again directly, and (upon the further advice of his looking-glass) he yielded the point, — and the beard grew — but it grew white — which was the just punishment of the gods — our sins leave their traces.

‘Well, poor darling Robert won’t shock you after all — you can’t choose but be satisfied with his looks. M. de Monclar swore to me that he was not changed for the intermediate years… .’

The family returned, however, to Siena for the summer of 1860, and from thence Mrs. Browning writes to her sister-in-law of her great anxiety concerning her sister Henrietta, Mrs. Surtees Cook, *then attacked by a fatal disease.

*The name was afterwards changed to Altham.

‘… There is nothing or little to add to my last account of my precious Henrietta. But, dear, you think the evil less than it is — be sure that the fear is too reasonable. I am of a very hopeful temperament, and I never could go on systematically making the worst of any case. I bear up here for a few days, and then comes the expectation of a letter, which is hard. I fight with it for Robert’s sake, but all the work I put myself to do does not hinder a certain effect. She is confined to her bed almost wholly and suffers acutely… . In fact, I am living from day to day, on the merest crumbs of hope — on the daily bread which is very bitter. Of course it has shaken me a good deal, and interfered with the advantages of the summer, but that’s the least. Poor Robert’s scheme for me of perfect repose has scarcely been carried out… .’

This anxiety was heightened during the ensuing winter in Rome, by just the circumstance from which some comfort had been expected — the second postal delivery which took place every day; for the hopes and fears which might have found a moment’s forgetfulness in the longer absence of news, were, as it proved, kept at fever-heat. On one critical occasion the suspense became unbearable, because Mr. Browning, by his wife’s desire, had telegraphed for news, begging for a telegraphic answer. No answer had come, and she felt convinced that the worst had happened, and that the brother to whom the message was addressed could not make up his mind to convey the fact in so abrupt a form. The telegram had been stopped by the authorities, because Mr. Odo Russell had undertaken to forward it, and his position in Rome, besides the known Liberal sympathies of Mr. and Mrs. Browning and himself, had laid it open to political suspicion.

Mrs. Surtees Cook died in the course of the winter. Mr. Browning always believed that the shock and sorrow of this event had shortened his wife’s life, though it is also possible that her already lowered vitality increased the dejection into which it plunged her. Her own casual allusions to the state of her health had long marked arrested progress, if not steady decline. We are told, though this may have been a mistake, that active signs of consumption were apparent in her even before the illness of 1859, which was in a certain sense the beginning of the end. She was completely an invalid, as well as entirely a recluse, during the greater part if not the whole of this last stay in Rome.

She rallied nevertheless sufficiently to write to Miss Browning in April, in a tone fully suggestive of normal health and energy.

‘… In my own opinion he is infinitely handsomer and more attractive than when I saw him first, sixteen years ago… . I believe people in general would think the same exactly. As to the modelling — well, I told you that I grudged a little the time from his own particular art. But it does not do to dishearten him about his modelling. He has given a great deal of time to anatomy with reference to the expression of form, and the clay is only the new medium which takes the place of drawing. Also, Robert is peculiar in his ways of work as a poet. I have struggled a little with him on this point, for I don’t think him right; that is to say, it would not be right for me … But Robert waits for an inclination, works by fits and starts; he can’t do otherwise he says, and his head is full of ideas which are to come out in clay or marble. I yearn for the poems, but he leaves that to me for the present… . You will think Robert looking very well when you see him; indeed, you may judge by the photographs meanwhile. You know, Sarianna, how I used to forbid the moustache. I insisted as long as I could, but all artists were against me, and I suppose that the bare upper lip does not harmonise with the beard. He keeps the hair now closer, and the beard is pointed… . As to the moony whiteness of the beard, it is beautiful, I think, but then I think him all beautiful, and always… .’

Mr. Browning’s old friend, Madame du Quaire, *came to Rome in December. She had visited Florence three years before, and I am indebted to her for some details of the spiritualist controversy by which its English colony was at that time divided. She was now a widow, travelling with her brother; and Mr. Browning came whenever he could, to comfort her in her sorrow, and, as she says, discourse of nature, art, the beautiful, and all that ‘conquers death’. He little knew how soon he would need the same comfort for himself. He would also declaim passages from his wife’s poems; and when, on one of these occasions, Madame du Quaire had said, as so many persons now say, that she much preferred his poetry to hers, he made this characteristic answer, to be repeated in substance some years afterwards to another friend: ‘You are wrong — quite wrong — she has genius; I am only a painstaking fellow. Can’t you imagine a clever sort of angel who plots and plans, and tries to build up something — he wants to make you see it as he sees it — shows you one point of view, carries you off to another, hammering into your head the thing he wants you to understand; and whilst this bother is going on God Almighty turns you off a little star — that’s the difference between us. The true creative power is hers, not mine.’