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

The little record continues through 1866.

Feb. 19, ‘66.

‘… I go out a great deal; but have enjoyed nothing so much as a dinner last week with Tennyson, who, with his wife and one son, is staying in town for a few weeks, — and she is just what she was and always will be — very sweet and dear: he seems to me better than ever. I met him at a large party on Saturday — also Carlyle, whom I never met at a “drum” before… . Pen is drawing our owl — a bird that is the light of our house, for his tameness and engaging ways… .’

May 19, ‘66.

‘… My father has been unwell, — he is better and will go into the country the moment the east winds allow, — for in Paris, — as here, — there is a razor wrapped up in the flannel of sunshine. I hope to hear presently from my sister, and will tell you if a letter comes: he is eighty-five, almost, — you see! otherwise his wonderful constitution would keep me from inordinate apprehension. His mind is absolutely as I always remember it, — and the other day when I wanted some information about a point of mediaeval history, he wrote a regular bookful of notes and extracts thereabout… .’

June 20, ‘66.

‘My dearest Isa, I was telegraphed for to Paris last week, and arrived time enough to pass twenty-four hours more with my father: he died on the 14th — quite exhausted by internal haemorrhage, which would have overcome a man of thirty. He retained all his faculties to the last — was utterly indifferent to death, — asking with surprise what it was we were affected about since he was perfectly happy? — and kept his own strange sweetness of soul to the end — nearly his last words to me, as I was fanning him, were “I am so afraid that I fatigue you, dear!” this, while his sufferings were great; for the strength of his constitution seemed impossible to be subdued. He wanted three weeks exactly to complete his eighty-fifth year. So passed away this good, unworldly, kind-hearted, religious man, whose powers natural and acquired would so easily have made him a notable man, had he known what vanity or ambition or the love of money or social influence meant. As it is, he was known by half-a-dozen friends. He was worthy of being Ba’s father — out of the whole world, only he, so far as my experience goes. She loved him, — and he said, very recently, while gazing at her portrait, that only that picture had put into his head that there might be such a thing as the worship of the images of saints. My sister will come and live with me henceforth. You see what she loses. All her life has been spent in caring for my mother, and seventeen years after that, my father. You may be sure she does not rave and rend hair like people who have plenty to atone for in the past; but she loses very much. I returned to London last night… .’

During his hurried journey to Paris, Mr. Browning was mentally blessing the Emperor for having abolished the system of passports, and thus enabled him to reach his father’s bedside in time. His early Italian journeys had brought him some vexatious experience of the old order of things. Once, at Venice, he had been mistaken for a well-known Liberal, Dr. Bowring, and found it almost impossible to get his passport ‘vise’; and, on another occasion, it aroused suspicion by being ‘too good’; though in what sense I do not quite remember.

Miss Browning did come to live with her brother, and was thenceforward his inseparable companion. Her presence with him must therefore be understood wherever I have had no special reason for mentioning it.

They tried Dinard for the remainder of the summer; but finding it unsuitable, proceeded by St.-Malo to Le Croisic, the little seaside town of south-eastern Brittany which two of Mr. Browning’s poems have since rendered famous.

The following extract has no date.

Le Croisic, Loire Inferieure.

‘… We all found Dinard unsuitable, and after staying a few days at St. Malo resolved to try this place, and well for us, since it serves our purpose capitally… . We are in the most delicious and peculiar old house I ever occupied, the oldest in the town — plenty of great rooms — nearly as much space as in Villa Alberti. The little town, and surrounding country are wild and primitive, even a trifle beyond Pornic perhaps. Close by is Batz, a village where the men dress in white from head to foot, with baggy breeches, and great black flap hats; — opposite is Guerande, the old capital of Bretagne: you have read about it in Balzac’s ‘Beatrix’, — and other interesting places are near. The sea is all round our peninsula, and on the whole I expect we shall like it very much… .’

Later.

‘… We enjoyed Croisic increasingly to the last — spite of three weeks’ vile weather, in striking contrast to the golden months at Pornic last year. I often went to Guerande — once Sarianna and I walked from it in two hours and something under, — nine miles: — though from our house, straight over the sands and sea, it is not half the distance… .’

In 1867 Mr. Browning received his first and greatest academic honours. The M.A. degree by diploma, of the University of Oxford, was conferred on him in June; *and in the month of October he was made honorary Fellow of Balliol College. Dr. Jowett allows me to publish the, as he terms it, very characteristic letter in which he acknowledged the distinction. Dr. Scott, afterwards Dean of Rochester, was then Master of Balliol.

*‘Not a lower degree than that of D.C.L., but a much higher honour, hardly given since Dr. Johnson’s time except to kings and royal personages… .’ So the Keeper of the Archives wrote to Mr. Browning at the time.

19, Warwick Crescent: Oct. 21, ‘67.

Dear Dr. Scott, — I am altogether unable to say how I feel as to the fact you communicate to me. I must know more intimately than you can how little worthy I am of such an honour, — you hardly can set the value of that honour, you who give, as I who take it.

Indeed, there are both ‘duties and emoluments’ attached to this position, — duties of deep and lasting gratitude, and emoluments through which I shall be wealthy my life long. I have at least loved learning and the learned, and there needed no recognition of my love on their part to warrant my professing myself, as I do, dear Dr. Scott, yours ever most faithfully, Robert Browning.

In the following year he received and declined the virtual offer of the Lord Rectorship of the University of St. Andrews, rendered vacant by the death of Mr. J. S. Mill.

He returned with his sister to Le Croisic for the summer of 1867.

In June 1868, Miss Arabel Barrett died, of a rheumatic affection of the heart. As did her sister seven years before, she passed away in Mr. Browning’s arms. He wrote the event to Miss Blagden as soon as it occurred, describing also a curious circumstance attendant on it.

19th June, ‘68.

‘… You know I am not superstitious — here is a note I made in a book, Tuesday, July 21, 1863. “Arabel told me yesterday that she had been much agitated by a dream which happened the night before, Sunday, July 19. She saw Her and asked ‘when shall I be with you?’ the reply was, ‘Dearest, in five years,’ whereupon Arabella woke. She knew in her dream that it was not to the living she spoke.” — In five years, within a month of their completion — I had forgotten the date of the dream, and supposed it was only three years ago, and that two had still to run. Only a coincidence, but noticeable… .’

In August he writes again from Audierne, Finisterre (Brittany).

‘… You never heard of this place, I daresay. After staying a few days at Paris we started for Rennes, — reached Caen and halted a little — thence made for Auray, where we made excursions to Carnac, Lokmariaker, and Ste.-Anne d’Auray; all very interesting of their kind; then saw Brest, Morlaix, St.-Pol de Leon, and the seaport Roscoff, — our intended bathing place — it was full of folk, however, and otherwise impracticable, so we had nothing for it, but to “rebrousser chemin” and get to the south-west again. At Quimper we heard (for a second time) that Audierne would suit us exactly, and to it we came — happily, for “suit” it certainly does. Look on the map for the most westerly point of Bretagne — and of the mainland of Europe — there is niched Audierne, a delightful quite unspoiled little fishing-town, with the open ocean in front, and beautiful woods, hills and dales, meadows and lanes behind and around, — sprinkled here and there with villages each with its fine old Church. Sarianna and I have just returned from a four hours’ walk in the course of which we visited a town, Pont Croix, with a beautiful cathedral-like building amid the cluster of clean bright Breton houses, — and a little farther is another church, “Notre Dame de Comfort”, with only a hovel or two round it, worth the journey from England to see; we are therefore very well off — at an inn, I should say, with singularly good, kind, and liberal people, so have no cares for the moment. May you be doing as well! The weather has been most propitious, and to-day is perfect to a wish. We bathe, but somewhat ingloriously, in a smooth creek of millpond quietude, (there being no cabins on the bay itself,) unlike the great rushing waves of Croisic — the water is much colder… .’