A Day with Browning Part 2

How strange now, looks the life He makes us lead!

So free we seem, so fettered fast we are!

I feel He laid the fetter: let it lie!

This chamber for example--turn your head-- All that's behind us! you don't understand Nor care to understand about my art, But you can hear at least when people speak; And that cartoon, the second from the door --It is the thing, Love! so such things should be-- Behold Madonna, I am bold to say.

I can do with my pencil what I know, What I see, what at bottom of my heart I wish for, if I ever wish so deep-- Do easily, too--when I say perfectly I do not boast, perhaps: yourself are judge Who listened to the Legate's talk last week, And just as much they used to say in France.

At any rate 'tis easy, all of it, No sketches first, no studies, that's long past-- I do what many dream of all their lives --Dream? strive to do, and agonise to do, And fail in doing. I could count twenty such On twice your fingers, and not leave this town, Who strive--you don't know how the others strive To paint a little thing like that you smeared Carelessly pa.s.sing with your robes afloat,-- Yet do much less, so much less, Someone says, (I know his name, no matter) so much less!

Well, less is more, Lucrezia! I am judged.

There burns a truer light of G.o.d in them, In their vexed, beating, stuffed and stopped-up brain, Heart, or whate'er else, that goes on to prompt This low-pulsed forthright craftsman's hand of mine.

Their works drop groundward, but themselves, I know, Reach many a time a heaven that's shut to me, Enter and take their place there sure enough, Though they come back and cannot tell the world.

My works are nearer heaven, but I sit here.

(_Andrea del Sarto._)

Social intercourse occupied a large portion of the day. Browning identified himself with the daily life of Venice, and, besides this, English and American acquaintances were frequently in Venice: the poet, his reputation now firmly established and extending, was sought after by innumerable admirers. He was a man of great social charm,--a brilliant talker, full of amusing anecdotes,--his memory for historical incident was only paralleled by his immense literary knowledge, upon which he drew for apt ill.u.s.tration. Yet he was naturally a reticent man, of painfully nervous excitability; "nervous to such a degree," as he said of himself, "that I might fancy I could not enter a drawing-room, did I not know from my experience that I _could_ do it." This very nervousness, however, often induced an almost abnormal vivacity of speech: and Browning was warmly welcomed amongst the notable and even royal folk whose names were included in Mrs. Bronson's circle; they recognised in him, as Frederick Tennyson had done, "a man of infinite learning, jest, and _bonhomie_, and moreover a sterling heart that reveals no hollowness." To women he was specially attracted, and _vice-versa_; "that golden-hearted Robert,"

as his wife had termed him, had an intimate understanding of the woman's mind. But towards children, he was, so to speak, almost numb.

Devoted though he was to his only son, "the essential quality of early childhood was not that which appealed to him:" and the fervour of parental instinct finds practically no expression in his poems.

In the course of the day the poet would lose no opportunity of hearing any important concert: an accomplished musician himself, his love for the tone-art amounted to a pa.s.sion: and in many of his greatest poems, he had voiced the most secret meanings of music, and the yearning aspirations of a composer. We "sit alone in the loft" with the organist, Master Hughes of Saxe-Gotha, and his "huge house of the sounds," to listen and wonder while his fugue "broadens and thickens, greatens and deepens and lengthens," and the intricacy of constructive technique forms, as someone has said, "an interposing web spun by the brain between art and things divine." Or we stand with Abt Vogler in his "palace of music" as it falls to pieces, and the magic of inspiration over-rides the mastery of construction. The void of the silence is filled with "the substance of things hoped for; the evidence of things not seen," and faith is born of the composer's very impotence to realize the heights of his own ambition--yet one more rendering of that triumphant failure, of which Browning was the prophet:

All we have willed or hoped or dreamed of good shall exist; Not its semblance, but itself; no beauty, nor good, nor power Whose voice has gone forth, but each survives for the melodist When eternity affirms the conception of an hour.

The high that proved too high, the heroic for earth too hard, The pa.s.sion that left the ground to lose itself in the sky, Are music sent up to G.o.d by the lover and the bard; Enough that he heard it once: we shall hear it by-and-by.

And what is our failure here but a triumph's evidence For the fulness of the days? Have we withered or agonized?

Why else was the pause prolonged but that singing might issue thence?

Why rushed the discords in but that harmony should be prized?

Sorrow is hard to bear, and doubt is slow to clear, Each sufferer says his say, his scheme of the weal and woe: But G.o.d has a few of us whom he whispers in the ear; The rest may reason and welcome: 'tis we musicians know.

(_Abt Vogler._)

And, as a final contrast, drawn out of that sh.o.r.eless sea of contrasts which music can reveal, we have _A Toccata of Galuppi's_, suffused with the melancholy of mundane pleasure, steeped in the ephemeral voluptuousness of eighteenth-century Venice. In these lines, it has been pointed out, "Browning's self-restraint is admirable.... The poet will not say a word more than the musician has said in his Toccata."

Did young people take their pleasure when the sea was warm in May?

b.a.l.l.s and masks begun at midnight, burning ever to mid-day, When they made up fresh adventures for the morrow, do you say?

Well (and it was graceful of them) they'd break talk off and afford-- --She to bite her mask's black velvet, he to finger on his sword, While you sat and played Toccatas, stately at the clavichord?

[Ill.u.s.tration: _Painting by W. Russell Flint._ A TOCCATA OF GALUPPI'S.]

Oh, Galuppi, Balda.s.saro, this is very sad to find!

I can hardly misconceive you; it would prove me deaf and blind; But although I take your meaning, 'tis with such a heavy mind!

Here you come with your old music, and here's all the good it brings.

What, they lived thus at Venice, where the merchants were the kings, Where St. Mark's is, where the Doges used to wed the sea with rings?

Did young people take their pleasure when the sea was warm in May?

b.a.l.l.s and masks begun at midnight, burning ever to mid-day, When they made up fresh adventures for the morrow, do you say?

Well (and it was graceful of them) they'd break talk off and afford-- --She to bite her mask's black velvet, he to finger on his sword, While you sat and played Toccatas, stately at the clavichord?

What? Those lesser thirds so plaintive, sixths diminished, sigh on sigh, Told them something? Those suspensions, those solutions--"Must we die?"

Those commiserating sevenths--"Life might last! we can but try!"

"Were you happy?"--"Yes."--"And are you still as happy?"--"Yes. And you?"

--"Then, more kisses!"--"Did I stop them, when a million seemed so few?"

Hark! the dominant's persistence, till it must be answered to!

So an octave struck the answer. Oh, they praised you, I dare say!

"Brave Galuppi! that was music! good alike at grave and gay!

I can always leave off talking when I hear a master play!"

Then they left you for your pleasure: till in due time, one by one, Some with lives that came to nothing, some with deeds as well undone, Death came tacitly and took them where they never see the sun.

(_A Toccata of Galuppi's._)

The afternoon wore by quickly, and it was soon time to dress for dinner: for Browning was precise in adhering to the customs of civilised life: and he liked to see his sister seated opposite him, clad in beautiful gowns of sombre richness, and wearing quaint old jewelry. Browning accepted his meals with frank pleasure; he was no ascetic, and "his optimism and his belief in direct Providence led him to make a direct virtue of happiness," and to welcome it in its simplest form. Any guest who might be present was privileged to enjoy that sparkling and many-faceted eloquence to which reference has been made already. But the host was always careful to avoid deep or solemn topics--doubtless because he felt them far too keenly, to use them as mere texts for dinner-table discussion. "If such were broached in his presence, he dismissed them with one strong convincing sentence, and adroitly turned the current of conversation into a shallower channel."

Later on, he would probably visit the Goldoni Theatre, where he had a large box: or, if remaining at home, he was often prevailed upon to read aloud. His delivery was forcible and dramatic,--he would strongly emphasise all the light and shade of a poem, and the touches of character in the dialogue. Especially was this the case when reading his own compositions. But often he would say with a smile, "No R. B.

to-night!--let us have some real poetry," and would take down a volume of Sh.e.l.ley, Keats or Coleridge.

At last, another of the "divine sunsets" which Browning adored had faded over the Lido; the "quiet-coloured end of evening" had darkened into dusk and stars. Even that alert and indefatigable frame grew weary with the day's long doings, and a natural desire for rest descended upon "the brain which too much thought expands." The vision of Guercino's picture, "fraught with a pathos so magnificent,"

returned upon him from that sultry day in which he had beheld the "Guardian Angel" at Fano, "my angel with me, too," and he longed for the touch of those divinely-healing hands.

Dear and great Angel, would'st thou only leave That child, when thou hast done with him, for me!

Let me sit all the day here, that when eve Shall find performed thy special ministry And time come for departure, thou, suspending Thy flight, may'st see another child for tending, Another still, to quiet and retrieve.

[Ill.u.s.tration: _Painting by W. Russell Flint._ THE GUARDIAN ANGEL.]

Dear and great Angel, wouldst thou only leave That child, when thou hast done with him, for me!

Let me sit all the day here, that when eve Shall find performed thy special ministry And time come for departure, thou, suspending Thy flight, mayst see another child for tending, Another still, to quiet and retrieve.

Then I shall feel thee step one step, no more, From where thou standest now, to where I gaze, --And suddenly my head is covered o'er With those wings, white above the child who prays Now on that tomb--and I shall feel thee guarding Me, out of all the world; for me, discarding Yon Heaven thy home, that waits and opes its door!

I would not look up thither past thy head Because the door opes, like that child, I know, For I should have thy gracious face instead,

Thou bird of G.o.d! And wilt thou bend me low Like him, and lay, like his, my hands together, And lift them up to pray, and gently tether Me, as thy lamb there, with thy garments spread?...

How soon all worldly wrong would be repaired!

I think how I should view the earth and skies And sea, when once again my brow was bared After thy healing, with such different eyes.

O world, as G.o.d has made it! all is beauty: And knowing this, is love, and love is duty.