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

A painful subject of correspondence had been also for some time engaging Mr. Browning’s thoughts and pen. A letter to Miss Blagden written January 19, ‘63, is so expressive of his continued attitude towards the questions involved that, in spite of its strong language, his family advise its publication. The name of the person referred to will alone be omitted.

‘… Ever since I set foot in England I have been pestered with applications for leave to write the Life of my wife — I have refused — and there an end. I have last week received two communications from friends, enclosing the letters of a certain … of …, asking them for details of life and letters, for a biography he is engaged in — adding, that he “has secured the correspondence with her old friend …” Think of this beast working away at this, not deeming my feelings or those of her family worthy of notice — and meaning to print letters written years and years ago, on the most intimate and personal subjects to an “old friend” — which, at the poor … [friend’s] death fell into the hands of a complete stranger, who, at once wanted to print them, but desisted through Ba’s earnest expostulation enforced by my own threat to take law proceedings — as fortunately letters are copyright. I find this woman died last year, and her son writes to me this morning that … got them from him as autographs merely — he will try and get them back… , evidently a blackguard, got my letter, which gave him his deserts, on Saturday — no answer yet, — if none comes, I shall be forced to advertise in the ‘Times’, and obtain an injunction. But what I suffer in feeling the hands of these blackguards (for I forgot to say another man has been making similar applications to friends) what I undergo with their paws in my very bowels, you can guess, and God knows! No friend, of course, would ever give up the letters — if anybody ever is forced to do that which she would have writhed under — if it ever were necessary, why, I should be forced to do it, and, with any good to her memory and fame, my own pain in the attempt would be turned into joy — I should do it at whatever cost: but it is not only unnecessary but absurdly useless — and, indeed, it shall not be done if I can stop the scamp’s knavery along with his breath.

‘I am going to reprint the Greek Christian Poets and another essay — nothing that ought to be published shall be kept back, — and this she certainly intended to correct, augment, and reproduce — but I open the doubled-up paper! Warn anyone you may think needs the warning of the utter distress in which I should be placed were this scoundrel, or any other of the sort, to baffle me and bring out the letters — I can’t prevent fools from uttering their folly upon her life, as they do on every other subject, but the law protects property, — as these letters are. Only last week, or so, the Bishop of Exeter stopped the publication of an announced “Life” — containing extracts from his correspondence — and so I shall do… .’

Mr. Browning only resented the exactions of modern biography in the same degree as most other right-minded persons; but there was, to his thinking, something specially ungenerous in dragging to light any immature or unconsidered utterance which the writer’s later judgment would have disclaimed. Early work was always for him included in this category; and here it was possible to disagree with him; since the promise of genius has a legitimate interest from which no distance from its subsequent fulfilment can detract. But there could be no disagreement as to the rights and decencies involved in the present case; and, as we hear no more of the letters to Mr… ., we may perhaps assume that their intending publisher was acting in ignorance, but did not wish to act in defiance, of Mr. Browning’s feeling in the matter.

In the course of this year, 1863, Mr. Browning brought out, through Chapman and Hall, the still well-known and well-loved three-volume edition of his works, including ‘Sordello’, but again excluding ‘Pauline’. A selection of his poems which appeared somewhat earlier, if we may judge by the preface, dated November 1862, deserves mention as a tribute to friendship. The volume had been prepared by John Forster and Bryan Waller Procter (Barry Cornwall), ‘two friends,’ as the preface states, ‘who from the first appearance of ‘Paracelsus’ have regarded its writer as among the few great poets of the century.’ Mr. Browning had long before signalized his feeling for Barry Cornwall by the dedication of ‘Colombe’s Birthday’. He discharged the present debt to Mr. Procter, if such there was, by the attentions which he rendered to his infirm old age. For many years he visited him every Sunday, in spite of a deafness ultimately so complete that it was only possible to converse with him in writing. These visits were afterwards, at her urgent request, continued to Mr. Procter’s widow.

Table of Contents

1863-1869

Pornic — ’James Lee’s Wife’ — Meeting at Mr. F. Palgrave’s — Letters to Miss Blagden — His own Estimate of his Work — His Father’s Illness and Death; Miss Browning — Le Croisic — Academic Honours; Letter to the Master of Balliol — Death of Miss Barrett — Audierne — Uniform Edition of his Works — His rising Fame — ’Dramatis Personae’ — ’The Ring and the Book’; Character of Pompilia.

The most constant contributions to Mr. Browning’s history are supplied during the next eight or nine years by extracts from his letters to Miss Blagden. Our next will be dated from Ste.-Marie, near Pornic, where he and his family again spent their holiday in 1864 and 1865. Some idea of the life he led there is given at the close of a letter to Frederic Leighton, August 17, 1863, in which he says:

‘I live upon milk and fruit, bathe daily, do a good morning’s work, read a little with Pen and somewhat more by myself, go to bed early, and get up earlyish — rather liking it all.’

This mention of a diet of milk and fruit recalls a favourite habit of Mr. Browning’s: that of almost renouncing animal food whenever he went abroad. It was partly promoted by the inferior quality of foreign meat, and showed no sign of specially agreeing with him, at all events in his later years, when he habitually returned to England looking thinner and more haggard than before he left it. But the change was always congenial to his taste.

A fuller picture of these simple, peaceful, and poetic Pornic days comes to us through Miss Blagden, August 18:

‘… This is a wild little place in Brittany, something like that village where we stayed last year. Close to the sea — a hamlet of a dozen houses, perfectly lonely — one may walk on the edge of the low rocks by the sea for miles. Our house is the Mayor’s, large enough, clean and bare. If I could, I would stay just as I am for many a day. I feel out of the very earth sometimes as I sit here at the window; with the little church, a field, a few houses, and the sea. On a weekday there is nobody in the village, plenty of hay-stacks, cows and fowls; all our butter, eggs, milk, are produced in the farm-house. Such a soft sea, and such a mournful wind!

‘I wrote a poem yesterday of 120 lines, and mean to keep writing whether I like it or not… .’

That ‘window’ was the ‘Doorway’ in ‘James Lee’s Wife’. The sea, the field, and the figtree were visible from it.

A long interval in the correspondence, at all events so far as we are concerned, carries us to the December of 1864, and then Mr. Browning wrote:

‘… on the other hand, I feel such comfort and delight in doing the best I can with my own object of life, poetry — which, I think, I never could have seen the good of before, that it shows me I have taken the root I did take, well. I hope to do much more yet — and that the flower of it will be put into Her hand somehow. I really have great opportunities and advantages — on the whole, almost unprecedented ones — I think, no other disturbances and cares than those I am most grateful for being allowed to have… .’