Robert Browning: How To Know Him

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XIII

Yet a semblance of resource avails us--
Shade so finely touched, love's sense must seize it.
Take these lines, look lovingly and nearly,
Lines I write the first time and the last time.
He who works in fresco, steals a hair-brush,
Curbs the liberal hand, subservient proudly,
Cramps his spirit, crowds its all in little,
Makes a strange art of an art familiar,
Fills his lady's missal-marge with flowerets.
He who blows thro' bronze, may breathe thro' silver,
Fitly serenade a slumbrous princess.
He who writes, may write for once as I do.

XIV

Love, you saw me gather men and women,
Live or dead or fashioned by my fancy,
Enter each and all, and use their service,
Speak from every mouth,--the speech, a poem.
Hardly shall I tell my joys and sorrows,
Hopes and fears, belief and disbelieving:
I am mine and yours--the rest be all men's,
Karshish, Cleon, Norbert and the fifty.
Let me speak this once in my true person,
Not as Lippo, Roland or Andrea,
Though the fruit of speech be just this sentence:
Pray you, look on these my men and women,
Take and keep my fifty poems finished;
Where my heart lies, let my brain lie also!
Poor the speech; be how I speak, for all things.

XV

Not but that you know me! Lo, the moon's self!
Here in London, yonder late in Florence,
Still we find her face, the thrice-transfigured.
Curving on a sky imbrued with colour,
Drifted over Fiesole by twilight,
Came she, our new crescent of a hair's-breadth.
Full she flared it, lamping Samminiato,
Rounder 'twixt the cypresses and rounder,
Perfect till the nightingales applauded.
Now, a piece of her old self, impoverished,
Hard to greet, she traverses the houseroofs,
Hurries with unhandsome thrift of silver,
Goes dispiritedly, glad to finish.

XVI

What, there's nothing in the moon noteworthy?
Nay: for if that moon could love a mortal,
Use, to charm him (so to fit a fancy),
All her magic ('tis the old sweet mythos)
She would turn a new side to her mortal,
Side unseen of herdsman, huntsman, steersman--
Blank to Zoroaster on his terrace,
Blind to Galileo on his turret,
Dumb to Homer, dumb to Keats--him, even!
Think, the wonder of the moonstruck mortal--
When she turns round, comes again in heaven,
Opens out anew for worse or better!
Proves she like some portent of an iceberg
Swimming full upon the ship it founders,
Hungry with huge teeth of splintered crystals?
Proves she as the paved work of a sapphire
Seen by Moses when he climbed the mountain?
Moses, Aaron, Nadab and Abihu
Climbed and saw the very God, the Highest,
Stand upon the paved work of a sapphire.
Like the bodied heaven in his clearness
Shone the stone, the sapphire of that paved work,
When they ate and drank and saw God also!

XVII

What were seen? None knows, none ever shall know.
Only this is sure--the sight were other,
Not the moon's same side, born late in Florence,
Dying now impoverished here in London.
God be thanked, the meanest of his creatures
Boasts two soul-sides, one to face the world with,
One to show a woman when he loves her!

XVIII

This I say of me, but think of you, Love!
This to you--yourself my moon of poets!
Ah, but that's the world's side, there's the wonder,
Thus they see you, praise you, think they know you!
There, in turn I stand with them and praise you--
Out of my own self, I dare to phrase it.
But the best is when I glide from out them,
Cross a step or two of dubious twilight,
Come out on the other side, the novel
Silent silver lights and darks undreamed of,
Where I hush and bless myself with silence.

XIX

Oh, their Rafael of the dear Madonnas,
Oh, their Dante of the dread Inferno,
Wrote one song--and in my brain I sing it,
Drew one angel--borne, see, on my bosom!

R. B.

The Brownings travelled a good deal: they visited many places in
Italy, Venice, Ancona, Fano, Siena, and spent several winters in Rome.
The winter of 1851-52 was passed at Paris, where on the third of
January Browning wrote one of his most notable poems, _Childe Roland
to the Dark Tower Came_. One memorable evening at London in 1855
there were gathered together in an upper room Mr. and Mrs. Browning,
Mr. and Mrs. Tennyson, Dante and William Rossetti. Tennyson had just
published _Maud_ and Browning the two volumes called _Men and Women_.
Each poet was invited to read from his new work. Tennyson, with one
leg curled under him on the sofa, chanted _Maud_, the tears running
down his cheeks; and then Browning read in a conversational manner
his characteristic poem, _Fra Lippo Lippi_. Rossetti made a
pen-and-ink sketch of the Laureate while he was intoning. On one of
the journeys made by the Brownings from London to Paris they were
accompanied by Thomas Carlyle, who wrote a vivid and charming
account of the transit. The poet was the practical member of the
party: the "brave Browning" struggled with the baggage, and the
customs, and the train arrangements; while the Scot philosopher
smoked infinite tobacco.

The best account of the domestic life of the Brownings at Casa Guidi
in Florence was written by Nathaniel Hawthorne, and published in his
_Italian Note-Books_. On a June evening, Mr. and Mrs. Browning,
William Cullen Bryant, and Nathaniel Hawthorne ate strawberries and
talked spiritualism. Hawthorne and Browning stood on the little
balcony overlooking the street, and heard the priests chanting in
the church of San Felice, the chant heard only in June, which
Browning was to hear again on the night of the June day when he
found the old yellow book. Both chant and terrace were to be
immortalised in Browning's epic. Hawthorne said that Browning had an
elfin wife and an elf child. "I wonder whether he will ever grow up,
whether it is desirable that he should." Like all visitors at Casa
Guidi, the American was impressed by the extraordinary sweetness,
gentleness, and charity of Elizabeth Browning, and by the energy,
vivacity, and conversational powers of her husband. Hawthorne said
he seemed to be in all parts of the room at once.

Mr. Barrett Browning told me in 1904 that he remembered his mother,
Elizabeth Barrett Browning, as clearly as though he had seen her
yesterday. He was eleven years old at the time of her death. He
would have it that her ill health had been greatly exaggerated. She
was an invalid, but did not give the impression of being one. She
was able to do many things, and had considerable power of endurance.
One day in Florence she walked from her home out through the Porta
Romana, clear up on the heights, and back to Casa Guidi. "That was
pretty good, wasn't it?" said he. She was of course the idol of the
household, and everything revolved about her. She was "intensely
loved" by all her friends. Her father was a "very peculiar man." The
son's account of her health differs radically from that written by
the mother of E. C. Stedman, who said that Mrs. Browning was kept
alive only by opium, which she had to take daily. This writer added,
however, that in spite of Mrs. Browning's wretched health, she had
never heard her speak ill of any one, though she talked with her
many times.

After the death of his wife, Browning never saw Florence again. He
lived in London, and after a few years was constantly seen in society,
Tennyson, who hated society, said that Browning would die in a dress
suit. His real fame did not begin until the year 1864, with the
publication of _Dramatis Personae_. During the first thirty years of
his career, from the publication of _Pauline_ in 1833 to the
appearance of _Dramatis Personae_, he received always tribute from
the few, and neglect, seasoned with ridicule, from the many. _Pauline,
Paracelsus, Pippa Passes, A Blot in the 'Scutcheon, Christmas-Eve,
Men and Women_--each of these volumes was greeted enthusiastically
by men and women whose own literary fame is permanent. But the world
knew him not. How utterly obscure he was may be seen by the fact
that so late as 1860, when the publisher's statement came in for
_Men and Women_, it appeared that during the preceding six months
not a single copy had been sold! The best was yet to be. _The
Dramatis Personae_ was the first of his books to go into a genuine
second edition. Then four years later came _The Ring and the Book_,
which a contemporary review pronounced to be the "most precious and
profound spiritual treasure which England has received since the
days of Shakespeare."

Fame, which had shunned him for thirty years, came to him in
extraordinary measure during the last part of his life: another
exact parallel between him and the great pessimist Schopenhauer. It
was naturally sweet, its sweetness lessened only by the thought that
his wife had not lived to see it. Each had always believed in the
superiority of the other: and the only cloud in Mrs. Browning's mind
was the (to her) incomprehensible neglect of her husband by the
public. At the time of the marriage, it was commonly said that a
young literary man had eloped with a great poetess: during their
married life, her books went invariably into many editions, while
his did not sell at all. And even to the last day of Browning's
earthly existence, her poems far outsold his, to his unspeakable
delight. "The demand for my poems is nothing like so large," he
wrote cheerfully, in correcting a contrary opinion that had been
printed. Even so late as 1885, I found this passage in an account of
Mrs. Browning's life, published that year, It appears that "she was
married in 1846 to Robert Browning, who was also a poet and dramatic
writer of some note, though his fame seems to have been almost
totally eclipsed by the superior endowments of his gifted wife." This
reminds us of the time when Mr. and Mrs. Schumann were presented to
a Scandinavian King: Mrs. Schumann played on the piano, and His
Majesty, turning graciously to the silent husband, enquired
"Are you also musical?"

The last summer of Browning's life, the summer of 1889, was passed
at Asolo: in the autumn he moved into his beautiful house in Venice,
the Palazzo Rezzonico, which had the finest situation of all
Venetian residences, built at an angle in the Grand Canal. Although
seventy-seven years old, he was apparently as vigorous as ever: no
change had taken place in his appearance, manner or habits. One day
he caught a bad cold walking on the Lido in a bitter wind; and with
his usual vehement energy declined to take any proper care of his
throat. Instead of staying in, he set out for long tramps with
friends, constantly talking in the raw autumn air. In order to prove
to his son that nothing was the matter with him, he ran rapidly up
three flights of stairs, the son vainly trying to restrain him.
Nothing is more characteristic of the youthful folly of aged folk
than their impatient resentment of proffered hygienic advice. When
we are children, we reject with scorn the suggestions of our parents;
when we are old, we reject with equal scorn the advice of our
children. Man is apparently an animal more fit to give advice than
to take it. Browning's impulsive rashness proved fatal. Bronchitis
with heart trouble finally sent him to bed, though on the last
afternoon of his life he rose and walked about the room. During the
last few days he told many good stories and talked with his
accustomed eagerness. He died at ten o'clock in the evening of the
twelfth of December, 1889, A few moments before his death came a
cablegram from London announcing that his last volume of poems had
been published that day, and that the evening papers were speaking
in high terms of its contents. "That is very gratifying," said he.

Browning's life was healthy, comfortable, and happy. With the
exception of frequent headaches in his earlier years, he never knew
sickness or physical distress. His son said that he had never seen
him in bed in the daytime until the last illness. He had a truly
wonderful digestion; it was his firm belief that one should eat only
what one really enjoyed, desire being the infallible sign that the
food was healthful. "My father was a man of _bonne fourchette_" said
Barrett Browning to me; "he was not very fond of meat, but liked all
kinds of Italian dishes, especially with rich sauces. He always ate
freely of rich and delicate things. He could make a whole meal off
mayonnaise." It is pleasant to remember that Emerson, the other
great optimist of the century, used to eat pie for breakfast. Unlike
Carlyle and Tennyson, who smoked constantly, Browning never used
tobacco; he drank wine with his meals, but sparingly, and never more
than one kind of wine at a dinner. While physically robust, fond of
riding and walking, never using a cab or public conveyance if he
could help it, he was like most first-class literary men in caring
nothing whatever for competitive sports. He did not learn to swim
until late in life; his son taught him at Pornic, in Brittany. He
was venturesome for a man well on in years, swimming far out with
boyish delight, as he has himself described it in the _Prologue to
Fifine at the Fair_.

Browning's eyes were peculiar, one having a long focus, the other
very short. He had the unusual accomplishment (try it and prove) of
closing either eye without "squinching," and without any apparent
effort, though sometimes on the street in strong sunshine his face
would be a bit distorted. He did all his reading and writing with
one eye, closing the long one as he sat down at his desk. He never
wore glasses, and was proud of his microscopic eye. He often wrote
minutely, to show off his powers. When he left the house to go for a
walk, he shut the short eye and opened the long one, with which he
could see an immense distance. He never suffered with any pain in
his eyes except once, when a boy, he was trying to be a vegetarian
in imitation of his youthful idol, Shelley.

Contrary to the oft-repeated statement, Browning was not a really
fine pianist. As a very young man, he used to play several
instruments, and once he had been able to play all of Beethoven's
sonatas on the piano. In later life he became ambitious to improve
his skill with this instrument, and had much trouble, for his
fingers were clumsy and stiff. He therefore used to rise at six, and
practise finger-exercises for an hour!

He loved first-class music ardently, had a profound knowledge of it,
and was a good judge. If the performance was fine, he would express
his praise with the utmost enthusiasm; but bad work caused him acute
pain. Sometimes at a concert he would put his fingers in his ears,
his suffering being apparently uncontrollable.

The salient feature of his character was his boyish vivacity and
enthusiasm. If he looked out of the window and saw a friend coming
along the street to call, he would often rush out and embrace him.
In conversation he was extraordinarily eager and impulsive, with a
great flow of talk on an enormous range of subjects. If he liked
anything, he spoke of it in the heartiest manner, laughing aloud
with delight. He was very generous in his appreciation and praise of
other men's work, being beautifully free from that jealousy which is
one of the besetting sins of artists. He always tried to see what
was good. Occasionally he was enraged at reading a particularly
hostile criticism of himself, but on the whole he stood abuse
very well, and had abundant opportunity to exercise the gift of
patience. A great admirer of Tennyson's poetry and of Tennyson's
character--they were dear and intimate friends--he never liked the
stock comparison. "Tennyson and I are totally unlike," he used to say.
No letter from one rival to another was ever more beautiful than the
letter Browning wrote to Tennyson on the occasion of the Laureate's
eightieth birthday:

"My DEAR TENNYSON--To-morrow is your birthday--indeed, a memorable
one. Let me say I associate myself with the universal pride of our
country in your glory, and in its hope that for many and many a year
we may have your very self among us--secure that your poetry will be
a wonder and delight to all those appointed to come after. And for
my own part, let me further say, I have loved you dearly. May God
bless you and yours.

"At no moment from first to last of my acquaintance with your works,
or friendship with yourself, have I had any other feeling, expressed
or kept silent, than this which an opportunity allows me to
utter--that I am and ever shall be, my dear Tennyson, admiringly and
affectionately yours,

"ROBERT BROWNING."

What I have said of Browning's impulsiveness is borne out not only
by the universal testimony of those who knew him well, but
particularly by a letter of Mrs. Browning to Mrs. Jameson. The
manuscript of this letter was bought in London by an American, and
went down with the _Titanic_ in 1912. An extract from it appeared in
a bookseller's catalogue--"You must learn Robert--he is made of
moods--chequered like a chess-board; and the colour goes for too
much--till you learn to treat it as a game."

No man--little or great--was ever more free from pose. His appearance,
in clothes and in hair, was studiously normal. No one in his later
years would ever have guessed that he was a poet, either in seeing
him on the street, or in meeting him at dinner. He was interested in
multitudinous things, but never spoke of poetry--either in general
or in his own particular--if he could avoid doing so. The fact that
strangers who were presented to him and talked with him did not
guess that he was _the_ Mr. Browning, gave rise to numberless
humorous situations.

Perhaps the best thing that can be said of his personal character is
the truthful statement that he stood in the finest manner two
searching tests of manhood--long neglect and sudden popularity, The
long years of oblivion, during which he was producing much of his
best work, made him neither angry nor sour, though he must have
suffered deeply. On the other hand, when his fame reached prodigious
proportions, he was neither conceited nor affected. He thoroughly
believed in himself, and in his work; and he cared more about it
than he did for its reception.

The crushing grief that came to him in the death of his wife he bore
with that Christian resignation of which we hear more often than
perhaps we see in experience. For Browning was a Christian, not only
in faith but in conduct; it was the mainspring of his art and of his
life. There are so many writers whose lives show so painful a
contrast with the ideal tone of their written work, that it is
refreshing and inspiring to be so certain of Browning; to know that
the author of the poems which thrill us was as great in character as
he was in genius.

II

BROWNING'S THEORY OF POETRY

With one exception, the economic law of supply and demand governs
the production of literature exactly as it determines the price of
wheat. For many years the Novel has been the chief channel of
literary expression, the dominant literary form: in the days of
Queen Elizabeth, the Drama was supreme. During the early part of the
eighteenth century, theological poetry enjoyed a great vogue; Pope's
_Essay on Man_ circulated with the rapidity of a modern detective
story. Consider the history of the English sonnet. This form of
verse was exceedingly popular in 1600, By 1660 it had vanished, and
remained obsolete for nearly a hundred years; about the middle of
the eighteenth century it was revived by Thomas Edwards and others;
in the nineteenth century it became fashionable, and still holds its
place, as one may see by opening current magazines. Why is it that
writers put their ideas on God, Nature, and Woman in the form of a
drama in 1600, and in the form of a novel in 1900? Why is it that an
inspired man should make poems of exactly fourteen lines in 1580 and
in 1880, and not do it in 1680? If we do not attempt an ultimate
metaphysical analysis, the answer is clear. The bookseller supplies
the public, the publisher supplies the bookseller, the author
supplies the publisher. A bookseller has in his window what the
people want, and the publisher furnishes material in response to the
same desire; just as a farmer plants in his fields some foodstuffs
for which there is a sharp demand. Authors are compelled to write
for the market, whether they like it or not, otherwise their work
can not appear in print. The reason why the modern novel, with all
its shortcomings, is the mirror of ideas on every conceivable topic
in religious, educational, economic, and sociological thought, is
because the vast majority of writers are at this moment compelled by
the market to put their reflections into the form of novels, just as
Marlowe and Chapman were forced to write plays. With one exception,
the law of supply and demand determines the metrical shape of the
poet's frenzy, and the prose mould of the philosopher's ideas.

The exception is so rare that it establishes the rule. The exception
is Genius--next to radium the scarcest article on earth. And even
Genius often follows the market--it takes the prevailing literary
fashion, and adapts itself to the form in vogue in a more excellent
way. Such genius--the Genius for Adaptation--never has to wait long
for recognition, simply because it supplies a keen popular demand.
Such a genius was Shakespeare: such a genius was Pope: such a genius
was Scott: such a genius was Byron: such a genius was Tennyson. But
the true exception to the great economic law is seen in the Man of
Original Genius, who cares not at all for the fashion except perhaps
to destroy it. This man is outside the law of supply and demand,
because he supplies no demand, and there exists no demand for him.
He therefore has to create the demand as well as the supply. Such a
man in Music was Wagner: such a man in Drama was Ibsen: such a man
in Poetry was Browning.

These three men were fortunate in all reaching the age of seventy,
for had they died midway in their careers, even after accomplishing
much of their best work, they would have died in obscurity. They had
to wait long for recognition, because nobody was looking for them,
nobody wanted them. There was no demand for Wagner's music--but
there is now, and he made it. There was no demand for plays like
those of Ibsen; and there was not the slightest demand for poetry
like _Pauline_ and the _Dramatic Lyrics_. The reason why the public
does not immediately recognise the greatness of a work of original
genius, is because the public at first--if it notices the thing at
all--apprehends not its greatness, but its strangeness. It is so
unlike the thing the public is seeking, that it seems grotesque or
absurd--many indeed declare that it is exactly the opposite of what
it professes to be. Thus, many insisted that Ibsen's so-called
dramas were not really plays: they were merely conversations on
serious and unpleasant themes. In like manner, the critics said that
Wagner, whatever he composed, did not compose music; for instead of
making melodies, he made harsh and discordant sounds. For eighty
years, many men of learning and culture have been loudly proclaiming
that Browning, whatever he was, was not a poet; he was ingenious, he
was thoughtful, a philosopher, if you like, but surely no poet. When
_The Ring and the Book_ was published, a thoroughly respectable
British critic wrote, "Music does not exist for him any more than
for the deaf." On the other hand, the accomplished poet, musician,
and critic, Sidney Lanier, remarked:

"Have you seen Browning's _The Ring and the Book_? I am confident
that at the birth of this man, among all the good fairies who
showered him with magnificent endowments, one bad one--as in the old
tale--crept in by stealth and gave him a constitutional twist i' the
neck, whereby his windpipe became, and has ever since remained, a
marvellous tortuous passage. Out of this glottis-labyrinth his words
won't, and can't, come straight. A hitch and a sharp crook in every
sentence bring you up with a shock. But what a shock it is! Did you
ever see a picture of a lasso, in the act of being flung? In a
thousand coils and turns, inextricably crooked and involved and
whirled, yet, if you mark the noose at the end, you see that it is
directly in front of the bison's head, there, and is bound to catch
him! That is the way Robert Browning catches you. The first sixty or
seventy pages of _The Ring and the Book_ are altogether the most
doleful reading, in point either of idea or of music, in the English
language; and yet the monologue of Giuseppe Caponsacchi, that of
Pompilia Comparini, and the two of Guido Franceschini, are
unapproachable, in their kind, by any living or dead poet, _me judice_.
Here Browning's jerkiness comes in with inevitable effect. You get
lightning glimpses--and, as one naturally expects from lightning,
zigzag glimpses--into the intense night of the passion of these souls.
It is entirely wonderful and without precedent." [1]

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