The Brownings Part 31

DEAREST FRIEND,--It is indeed a delight to expect a meeting so soon.

Be good and mindful of how simple our tastes and wants are, and how they have been far more than satisfied by the half of what you provided to content them. I shall have nothing to do but to enjoy your company, not even the little business of improving my health since that seems perfect. I hear you do not walk as in the old days. I count upon setting that right again. O Venezia, benedetta!

It was with greater enjoyment, apparently, than ever before even, that Mr.

Browning turned to the Asolo of his "Pippa Pa.s.ses" and "Sordello." Mrs.

Bronson, in her brilliant and sympathetic picturing of the poet, speaks of his project "to raise a tower like Pippa's near a certain property in Asolo, where he and Miss Browning might pa.s.s at least a part of every year." The "certain property," to which Mrs. Bronson so modestly alludes, was her own place, "La Mura." The tower has since been erected by the poet's son, and the dream is thus fulfilled, though the elder Browning did not live to see it. Mrs. Bronson describes his enjoyment of nature in this lovely little hill-town,--"the ever-changing cloud shadows on the plain, the ranges of many-tinted mountains in the distance, and the fairy-like outline of the blue Euganean Hills, which form in part the southern boundary of the vast Campagna." Browning would speak of the a.s.sociations which these hills bear with the names of Sh.e.l.ley and Byron.

Across the deep ravine from La Mura a ruined tower was all that remained of the villa of Queen Catarina Cornaro, who, when she lost Cyprus, retired to Asolo; and in Browning's dedication to Mrs. Bronson of his "Asolando,"

he ascribes the t.i.tle to Cardinal Bembo, the secretary of Queen Catarina.

Mr. Browning loved to recall the traditions of that poetic little court, which for two decades was held within those walls, whose decay was fairly hidden by the wealth of flowers that embowered them. Of his own project he would talk, declaring that he would call it "Pippa's Tower," and that it should be so built that from it he could see Venice every day. He playfully described the flag-signals that should aid communication between "Pippa's Tower" and Casa Alvisi. "A telephone is too modern," he said; and explained that when he asked his friend to dine the flag should be blue,--her favorite color; and if her answer was yes, her flag should be the same color; or if no, her flag should be red. This last visit of the poet to his city of dream and vision seemed to Mrs. Bronson one of unalloyed pleasure. "To think that I should be here again!" he more than once exclaimed, as if with an unconscious recognition that these weeks were to complete the cycle of his life on earth. Asolo is thirty-four miles from Venice, and it is within easy driving distance of Possagno, the native place of Canova, in whose memory the town has a museum filled with his works and casts. "Pen must see this," remarked Mr. Browning, as he lingered over the statues and groups and tombs. Mrs. Bronson records that one day on returning from a drive to Ba.s.sano the poet was strangely silent, and no one spoke; finally he announced that he had written a poem since they left Ba.s.sano. In response to an exclamation of surprise he said: "Oh, it's all in my head, but I shall write it out presently." His hostess asked if he would not even say what inspired it, to which he returned:

"Well, the birds twittering in the trees suggested it. You know I don't like women to wear those things in their bonnets." The poem in question proved to be "The Lady and the Painter."

Mr. Browning took the greatest enjoyment in the view from Mrs. Bronson's loggia. "Here," he would say, "we can enjoy beauty without fatigue, and be protected from sun, wind, and rain." His hostess has related that its charm made him often break his abstemious habit of refusing the usual five o'clock refreshment, and that he "loved to hear the hissing urn," and when occasionally accepting a cup of tea and a biscuit would say, "I think I am the better for this delicious tea, after all."

Every afternoon at three they all went to drive, exploring the region in all directions. The driving in Asolo seemed to charm him as did the gondola excursions in Venice. "He observed everything," said Mrs. Bronson, "hedges, trees, the fascination of the little river Musone, the great _carri_ piled high with white and purple grapes. He removed his hat in returning the salutation of a priest, and touched his hat in returning the salutation of the poorest peasant, who, after the manner of the country, lifted his own to greet the pa.s.sing stranger. 'I always salute the church,' Mr. Browning would say; 'I respect it.'"

All his life Browning was an early riser. In Asolo, as elsewhere, he began his day with a cold bath at seven, and at eight he and his sister sat down to their simple breakfast, their hostess keeping no such heroic hours.

Mrs. Bronson had adopted the foreign fas.h.i.+on of having her light breakfast served in her room, and her mornings were given to her wide correspondence and her own reading and study. She was a most accomplished and scholarly woman, whose goodness of heart and charm of manner were paralleled by her range of intellectual interests and her grasp of affairs.

After breakfasting Browning and his sister, inseparable companions always, would start off on their wanderings over the hills. The poet was keenly interested in searching out the points of interest of his early years in Asolo; the "echo," the remembered views, the vista whose fascination still remained for him. From the ruined _rocca_ that crowned the hill, the view comprised all the violet-hued plain, stretching away to Padua, Vicenzo, Ba.s.sano; the entire atmosphere filled with historic and poetic a.s.sociations. How the poet mirrored the panorama in his stanzas:

"How many a year, my Asolo, Since--one step just from sea to land-- I found you, loved yet feared you so-- For natural objects seemed to stand Palpably fire-clothed! No--"

The "lambent flame," and "Italia's rare, o'er-running beauty," enchanted his vision.

Returning from their saunterings, the brother and sister took up their morning reading of English and French newspapers, Italian books, with the poet's interludes always of his beloved Greek dramatists.

In these October days the Storys arrived to visit Mrs. Bronson in her picturesque abode. An ancient wall, mostly in ruins, with eighteen towers, still surrounds Asolo, and partly in one of these towers, and partly in the arch of the old portal, "La Mura" was half discovered and half constructed. Its loggia had one wall composed entirely of sliding gla.s.s, which could be a shelter from the storm with no obstruction of the view, or be thrown open to all the bloom and beauty of the radiant summer. Just across the street was the apartment in which Mrs. Bronson bestowed her guests.

That Browning and Story should thus be brought together again for their last meeting on earth, however undreamed of to them, prefigures itself now as another of those mosaic-like events that combined in beauty and loveliness to make all his last months on earth a poetic sequence. The Storys afterward spoke of Mr. Browning as being "well, and in such force, brilliant, and delightful as ever"; and the last words that pa.s.sed between the poet and the sculptor were these of Browning's: "We have been friends for forty years, forty years without a break!"

On the first day of November this perfect and final visit to Asolo ended, and yielding to the entreaties of his son, Browning and his sister bade farewell to Mrs. Bronson and her daughter, who were soon to follow them to Venice, where the poet and Miss Browning were to be the guests of the Barrett Brownings in Palazzo Rezzonico.

The events of all these weeks seem divinely appointed to complete with stately symmetry this n.o.ble life. As one of them he found in Venice his old friend, and (as has before been said) the greatest interpreter of his poetry, Dr. Hiram Corson. The Cornell professor was taking his University Sabbatical year, and with Mrs. Corson had arrived in Venice just before the poet came down from Asolo. "I called on him the next day," Dr. Corson said of this meeting. "He seemed in his usual vigor, and expressed great pleasure in the restorations his son was making in the palace. 'It's a grand edifice,' he said, 'but too vast.'"

Dr. Corson continued:

"He was then engaged in reading the proofs of his 'Asolando.' He usually walked two hours every day; went frequently in his gondola with his sister to his beloved Lido, and one day when I walked with him

'Where St. Mark's is, where the Doges used to wed the sea with rings,'

I had to quicken my steps to keep pace with him. He called my attention to an interesting feature of this world-renowned place, and told me much of their strange history. He knew the city literally _par coeur_."

[Ill.u.s.tration: PROFESSOR HIRAM CORSON

From a painting by J. Colin Forbes, R.A., in the possession of Eugene Rollin Corson.]

Mr. Browning pa.s.sed with Dr. and Mrs. Corson the last morning they were in Venice. Of the parting Dr. Corson has since written in a personal letter to a friend:

"He told us much about himself; about Asolo, which he had first visited more than fifty years before, during his visit to Italy in 1838, when, as he says in the Prologue to 'Asolando,' alluding to 'the burning bush,'

'Natural objects seemed to stand Palpably fire-clothed.'

"A servant announcing that the gondola had come to take us to the railway station, he rose from his chair, and said, 'Now be sure to visit me next May, in London. You'll remember where my little house is in De Vere Gardens'; and bidding us a cordial good-bye, with a 'G.o.d bless you both,' he hastened away. We little thought, full of life as he then was, that we should see him no more in this world."

To a letter from Miss Browning to their hostess, Browning added:

DEAREST MRS. BRONSON,--I am away from you in one sense, never to be away from the thought of you, and your inexpressible kindness. I trust you will see your way to returning soon. Venice is not herself without you, in my eyes--I dare say this is a customary phrase, but you well know what reason I have to use it, with a freshness as if it were inspired for the first time. Come, bringing news of Edith, and the doings in the house, and above all of your own health and spirits and so rejoice

Ever your affectionate

ROBERT BROWNING.

With another letter of his sister's to their beloved friend and hostess, Mr. Browning sent the following note,--perhaps the last lines that he ever wrote to Mrs. Bronson, as she returned almost immediately to Casa Alvisi, and the daily personal intercourse renewed itself to be broken only by his illness and death. The poet wrote:

PALAZZO REZZONICO, Nov. 5th, 1889.

DEAREST FRIEND,--A word to slip into the letter of Sarianna, which I cannot see go without a sc.r.a.p of mine. (Come and see Pen and you will easily concert things with him.) I have all confidence in his knowledge and power.

I delight in hearing how comfortably all is proceeding with you at La Mura. I want to say that having finished the first two volumes of Gozzi, I brought the third with me to finish at my leisure and return to you; and particularly I may mention that the edition is very rare and valuable. It appears that Symmonds has just thought it worth while to translate the work, and he was six months finding a copy to translate from!

... I have got--since three or four days--the whole of my new volume in type, and expect to send it back, corrected, by to-morrow at latest. But I must continue at my work lest interruptions occur, so, bless you and good-bye in the truest sense, dear one!

Ever Your Affectionately

ROBERT BROWNING.

The "new volume in type" to which he referred was his collection ent.i.tled "Asolando," all of which, with the exception of one poem, had been written within the last two years of his life.

Mr. Barrett Browning relates that while his father was reading aloud these last proofs to himself and his wife, the poet paused over the "Epilogue,"

at the stanza--

"One who never turned his back but marched breast forward, Never doubted clouds would break, Never dreamed, though right were worsted, wrong would triumph, Held we fall to rise, are baffled to fight better, Sleep to wake."

and remarked: "It almost seems like praising myself to say this, and yet it is true, the simple truth, and so I shall not cancel it."

November, often lovely in Venice, was singularly summer-like that year. On one day Mr. Browning found the heat on the Lido "scarcely endurable,"

indeed, but "snow-tipped Alps" revealed themselves in the distance, offering a strange contrast to the brilliant suns.h.i.+ne and the soft blue skies. Still November is not June, after all, however perfect the imitation of some of its days. One day there was a heavy fog on his favorite Lido, and the poet, who refused to be deprived of his walk, became thoroughly chilled and illness followed. The following note from Mr. Barrett Browning to Mrs. Bronson indicates the anxiety that prevailed in Palazzo Rezzonico, where the tenderest care of his son and daughter-in-law ministered to the poet. The note is undated, save by the day of the week.

PALAZZO REZZONICO,