Life and Letters of Robert Browning Part 7

I don't know that I shall leave town for a month: my friend Monclar looks piteous when I talk of such an event. I can't bear to leave him; he is to take my portrait to-day (a famous one he _has_ taken!) and very like he engages it shall be. I am going to town for the purpose... .

Now, then, do something for me, and see if I'll ask Miss M----to help you! I am going to begin the finis.h.i.+ng 'Sordello'--and to begin thinking a Tragedy (an Historical one, so I shall want heaps of criticisms on 'Strafford') and I want to have _another_ tragedy in prospect, I write best so provided: I had chosen a splendid subject for it, when I learned that a magazine for next, this, month, will have a scene founded on my story; vulgarizing or doing no good to it: and I accordingly throw it up. I want a subject of the most wild and pa.s.sionate love, to contrast with the one I mean to have ready in a short time. I have many half-conceptions, floating fancies: give me your notion of a thorough self-devotement, self-forgetting; should it be a woman who loves thus, or a man? What circ.u.mstances will best draw out, set forth this feeling?

The tragedies in question were to be 'King Victor and King Charles', and 'The Return of the Druses'.

This letter affords a curious insight into Mr. Browning's mode of work; it is also very significant of the small place which love had hitherto occupied in his life. It was evident, from his appeal to Miss Haworth's 'notion' on the subject, that he had as yet no experience, even imaginary, of a genuine pa.s.sion, whether in woman or man. The experience was still distant from him in point of time. In circ.u.mstance he was nearer to it than he knew; for it was in 1839 that he became acquainted with Mr. Kenyon.

When dining one day at Serjeant Talfourd's, he was accosted by a pleasant elderly man, who, having, we conclude, heard who he was, asked leave to address to him a few questions: 'Was his father's name Robert?

had he gone to school at the Rev. Mr. Bell's at Cheshunt, and was he still alive?' On receiving affirmative answers, he went on to say that Mr. Browning and he had been great chums at school, and though they had lost sight of each other in after-life, he had never forgotten his old playmate, but even alluded to him in a little book which he had published a few years before.*

* The volume is ent.i.tled 'Rhymed Plea for Tolerance' (1833), and contains a reference to Mr. Kenyon's schooldays, and to the cla.s.sic fights which Mr. Browning had inst.i.tuted.

The next morning the poet asked his father if he remembered a schoolfellow named John Kenyon. He replied, 'Certainly! This is his face,' and sketched a boy's head, in which his son at once recognized that of the grown man. The acquaintance was renewed, and Mr. Kenyon proved ever afterwards a warm friend. Mr. Browning wrote of him, in a letter to Professor Knight of St. Andrews, Jan. 10, 1884: 'He was one of the best of human beings, with a general sympathy for excellence of every kind. He enjoyed the friends.h.i.+p of Wordsworth, of Southey, of Landor, and, in later days, was intimate with most of my contemporaries of eminence.' It was at Mr. Kenyon's house that the poet saw most of Wordsworth, who always stayed there when he came to town.

In 1840 'Sordello' appeared. It was, relatively to its length, by far the slowest in preparation of Mr. Browning's poems. This seemed, indeed, a condition of its peculiar character. It had lain much deeper in the author's mind than the various slighter works which were thrown off in the course of its inception. We know from the preface to 'Strafford'

that it must have been begun soon after 'Paracelsus'. Its plan may have belonged to a still earlier date; for it connects itself with 'Pauline'

as the history of a poetic soul; with both the earlier poems, as the manifestation of the self-conscious spiritual ambitions which were involved in that history. This first imaginative mood was also outgrowing itself in the very act of self-expression; for the tragedies written before the conclusion of 'Sordello' impress us as the product of a different mental state--as the work of a more balanced imagination and a more mature mind.

It would be interesting to learn how Mr. Browning's typical poet became embodied in this mediaeval form: whether the half-mythical character of the real Sordello presented him as a fitting subject for imaginative psychological treatment, or whether the circ.u.mstances among which he moved seemed the best adapted to the development of the intended type.

The inspiration may have come through the study of Dante, and his testimony to the creative influence of Sordello on their mother-tongue.

That period of Italian history must also have a.s.sumed, if it did not already possess, a great charm for Mr. Browning's fancy, since he studied no less than thirty works upon it, which were to contribute little more to his dramatic picture than what he calls 'decoration', or 'background'. But the one guide which he has given us to the reading of the poem is his a.s.sertion that its historical circ.u.mstance is only to be regarded as background; and the extent to which he identified himself with the figure of Sordello has been proved by his continued belief that its prominence was throughout maintained. He could still declare, so late as 1863, in his preface to the reprint of the work, that his 'stress' in writing it had lain 'on the incidents in the development of a soul, little else' being to his mind 'worth study'. I cannot therefore help thinking that recent investigations of the life and character of the actual poet, however in themselves praiseworthy and interesting, have been often in some degree a mistake; because, directly or indirectly, they referred Mr. Browning's Sordello to an historical reality, which his author had grasped, as far as was then possible, but to which he was never intended to conform.

Sordello's story does exhibit the development of a soul; or rather, the sudden awakening of a self-regarding nature to the claims of other men--the sudden, though slowly prepared, expansion of the narrower into the larger self, the selfish into the sympathetic existence; and this takes place in accordance with Mr. Browning's here expressed belief that poetry is the appointed vehicle for all lasting truths; that the true poet must be their exponent. The work is thus obviously, in point of moral utterance, an advance on 'Pauline'. Its metaphysics are, also, more distinctly formulated than those of either 'Pauline' or 'Paracelsus'; and the frequent use of the term Will in its metaphysical sense so strongly points to German a.s.sociations that it is difficult to realize their absence, then and always, from Mr. Browning's mind. But he was emphatic in his a.s.surance that he knew neither the German philosophers nor their reflection in Coleridge, who would have seemed a likely medium between them and him. Miss Martineau once said to him that he had no need to study German thought, since his mind was German enough--by which she possibly meant too German--already.

The poem also impresses us by a Gothic richness of detail,* the picturesque counterpart of its intricacy of thought, and, perhaps for this very reason, never so fully displayed in any subsequent work. Mr.

Browning's genuinely modest att.i.tude towards it could not preclude the consciousness of the many imaginative beauties which its unpopular character had served to conceal; and he was glad to find, some years ago, that 'Sordello' was represented in a collection of descriptive pa.s.sages which a friend of his was proposing to make. 'There is a great deal of that in it,' he said, 'and it has always been overlooked.'

* The term Gothic has been applied to Mr. Browning's work, I believe, by Mr. James Thomson, in writing of 'The Ring and the Book', and I do not like to use it without saying so.

But it is one of those which must have spontaneously suggested themselves to many other of Mr. Browning's readers.

It was unfortunate that new difficulties of style should have added themselves on this occasion to those of subject and treatment; and the reason of it is not generally known. Mr. John Sterling had made some comments on the wording of 'Paracelsus'; and Miss Caroline Fox, then quite a young woman, repeated them, with additions, to Miss Haworth, who, in her turn, communicated them to Mr. Browning, but without making quite clear to him the source from which they sprang. He took the criticism much more seriously than it deserved, and condensed the language of this his next important publication into what was nearly its present form.

In leaving 'Sordello' we emerge from the self-conscious stage of Mr.

Browning's imagination, and his work ceases to be autobiographic in the sense in which, perhaps erroneously, we have hitherto felt it to be.

'Festus' and 'Salinguerra' have already given promise of the world of 'Men and Women' into which he will now conduct us. They will be inspired by every variety of conscious motive, but never again by the old (real or imagined) self-centred, self-directing Will. We have, indeed, already lost the sense of disparity between the man and the poet; for the Browning of 'Sordello' was growing older, while the defects of the poem were in many respects those of youth. In 'Pippa Pa.s.ses', published one year later, the poet and the man show themselves full-grown. Each has entered on the inheritance of the other.

Neither the imagination nor the pa.s.sion of what Mr. Gosse so fitly calls this 'lyrical masque'* gives much scope for tenderness; but the quality of humour is displayed in it for the first time; as also a strongly marked philosophy of life--or more properly, of a.s.sociation--from which its idea and development are derived. In spite, however, of these evidences of general maturity, Mr. Browning was still sometimes boyish in personal intercourse, if we may judge from a letter to Miss Flower written at about the same time.

* These words, and a subsequent paragraph, are quoted from Mr. Gosse's 'Personalia'.

Monday night, March 9 (? 1841).

My dear Miss Flower,--I have this moment received your very kind note--of course, I understand your objections. How else? But they are somewhat lightened already (confess--nay 'confess' is vile--you will be rejoiced to holla from the house-top)--will go on, or rather go off, lightening, and will be--oh, where _will_ they be half a dozen years hence?

Meantime praise what you can praise, do me all the good you can, you and Mr. Fox (as if you will not!) for I have a head full of projects--mean to song-write, play-write forthwith,--and, believe me, dear Miss Flower, Yours ever faithfully, Robert Browning.

By the way, you speak of 'Pippa'--could we not make some arrangement about it? The lyrics _want_ your music--five or six in all--how say you?

When these three plays are out I hope to build a huge Ode--but 'all goeth by G.o.d's Will.'

The loyal Alfred Domett now appears on the scene with a satirical poem, inspired by an impertinent criticism on his friend. I give its first two verses:

On a Certain Critique on 'Pippa Pa.s.ses'.

(Query--Pa.s.ses what?--the critic's comprehension.)

Ho! everyone that by the nose is led, Automatons of which the world is full, Ye myriad bodies, each without a head, That dangle from a critic's brainless skull, Come, hearken to a deep discovery made, A mighty truth now wondrously displayed.

A black squat beetle, vigorous for his size, Pus.h.i.+ng tail-first by every road that's wrong The dung-ball of his dirty thoughts along His tiny sphere of grovelling sympathies-- Has knocked himself full-b.u.t.t, with blundering trouble, Against a mountain he can neither double Nor ever hope to scale. So like a free, Pert, self-conceited scarabaeus, he Takes it into his h.o.r.n.y head to swear There's no such thing as any mountain there.

The writer lived to do better things from a literary point of view; but these lines have a fine ring of youthful indignation which must have made them a welcome tribute to friends.h.i.+p.

There seems to have been little respectful criticism of 'Pippa Pa.s.ses'; it is less surprising that there should have been very little of 'Sordello'. Mr. Browning, it is true, retained a limited number of earnest appreciators, foremost of whom was the writer of an admirable notice of these two works, quoted from an 'Eclectic Review' of 1847, in Dr. Furnivall's 'Bibliography'. I am also told that the series of poems which was next to appear was enthusiastically greeted by some poets and painters of the pre-Raphaelite school; but he was now entering on a period of general neglect, which covered nearly twenty years of his life, and much that has since become most deservedly popular in his work.

'Pippa Pa.s.ses' had appeared as the first instalment of 'Bells and Pomegranates', the history of which I give in Mr. Gosse's words. This poem, and the two tragedies, 'King Victor and King Charles' and 'The Return of the Druses'--first christened 'Mansoor, the Hierophant'--were lying idle in Mr. Browning's desk. He had not found, perhaps not very vigorously sought, a publisher for them.

'One day, as the poet was discussing the matter with Mr. Edward Moxon, the publisher, the latter remarked that at that time he was bringing out some editions of the old Elizabethan dramatists in a comparatively cheap form, and that if Mr. Browning would consent to print his poems as pamphlets, using this cheap type, the expense would be very inconsiderable. The poet jumped at the idea, and it was agreed that each poem should form a separate brochure of just one sheet--sixteen pages in double columns--the entire cost of which should not exceed twelve or fifteen pounds. In this fas.h.i.+on began the celebrated series of 'Bells and Pomegranates', eight numbers of which, a perfect treasury of fine poetry, came out successively between 1841 and 1846. 'Pippa Pa.s.ses'

led the way, and was priced first at sixpence; then, the sale being inconsiderable, at a s.h.i.+lling, which greatly encouraged the sale; and so, slowly, up to half-a-crown, at which the price of each number finally rested.'

Mr. Browning's hopes and intentions with respect to this series are announced in the following preface to 'Pippa Pa.s.ses', of which, in later editions, only the dedicatory words appear:

'Two or three years ago I wrote a Play, about which the chief matter I care to recollect at present is, that a Pit-full of good-natured people applauded it:--ever since, I have been desirous of doing something in the same way that should better reward their attention. What follows I mean for the first of a series of Dramatical Pieces, to come out at intervals, and I amuse myself by fancying that the cheap mode in which they appear will for once help me to a sort of Pit-audience again.

Of course, such a work must go on no longer than it is liked; and to provide against a certain and but too possible contingency, let me hasten to say now--what, if I were sure of success, I would try to say circ.u.mstantially enough at the close--that I dedicate my best intentions most admiringly to the author of "Ion"--most affectionately to Serjeant Talfourd.'

A necessary explanation of the general t.i.tle was reserved for the last number: and does something towards justifying the popular impression that Mr. Browning exacted a large measure of literary insight from his readers.

'Here ends my first series of "Bells and Pomegranates": and I take the opportunity of explaining, in reply to inquiries, that I only meant by that t.i.tle to indicate an endeavour towards something like an alternation, or mixture, of music with discoursing, sound with sense, poetry with thought; which looks too ambitious, thus expressed, so the symbol was preferred. It is little to the purpose, that such is actually one of the most familiar of the many Rabbinical (and Patristic) acceptations of the phrase; because I confess that, letting authority alone, I supposed the bare words, in such juxtaposition, would sufficiently convey the desired meaning. "Faith and good works" is another fancy, for instance, and perhaps no easier to arrive at: yet Giotto placed a pomegranate fruit in the hand of Dante, and Raffaelle crowned his Theology (in the 'Camera della Segnatura') with blossoms of the same; as if the Bellari and Vasari would be sure to come after, and explain that it was merely "simbolo delle buone opere--il qual Pomogranato fu pero usato nelle vesti del Pontefice appresso gli Ebrei."'

The Dramas and Poems contained in the eight numbers of 'Bells and Pomegranates' were:

I. Pippa Pa.s.ses. 1841.

II. King Victor and King Charles. 1842.

III. Dramatic Lyrics. 1842.

Cavalier Tunes; I. Marching Along; II. Give a Rouse; III. My Wife Gertrude. ['Boot and Saddle'.]

Italy and France; I. Italy; II. France.

Camp and Cloister; I. Camp (French); II. Cloister (Spanish).

In a Gondola.

Artemis Prologuizes.

Waring; I.; II.