Part 5 (1/2)

When Browning and his wife reached Paris, Mrs Browning orn out by the exciteue By a happy accident Mrs Jameson and her niece were at hand, and when the first surprise, with kisses to both fugitives, was over, she persuaded the, if they consented, to be their companion and aider until they arrived at Pisa Their ”iht of prudence”; ”wild poets or not” they were ”wise people” The week at Paris was given up to quietude; once they visited the Louvre, but the hours passed for the e and visionary--”Whether in the body or out of the body,” wrote Mrs Browning, ”I cannot tell scarcely” From Paris and Orleans they proceeded southwards in weather, which, notwithstanding soe to Petrarch's Vaucluse; Browning bore his wife to a rock in mid stream and seated her there, while Flush scurried after in alare fro was able to sit on deck; the change of air, although gained at the expense of soood

Early in October the journeying closed at Pisa Rooio Ferdinando, close to the Duo Tower, rooms not quite the warmest in aspect Mrs Jameson pronounced the invalid not improved but transformed The repose of the city, asleep, as dickens described it, in the sun and the secluded life--a perpetual _tete-a-tete_, but one so happy--suited both the wedded friends; days of cloudless weather, following a spell of rain, went by in ”reading and writing and talking of all things in heaven and earth, and a little besides; and soh with us, or rather _hadn't_” Their sole acquaintance was an Italian Professor of the University; for three months they never looked at a newspaper; then a loophole on the world was opened each evening by the arrival of the Siecle The lizards were silent friends of one poet, and golden oranges gleamed over the walls to the unaccustolobes

They wandered through pine-woods and drove until the purple mountains seeht of Byron, to see a curl of whose hair or a glove fronorant) he would have gone farther than to see all Wordsworth, Coleridge and Southey condensed in Rosicrucian fashi+on into a vial In the Campo Santo they listened to a musical mass for the dead In the Duo their dreaour of the church bells ”I never was happy before inHer husband relieved her of all housekeeping anxieties At two o'clock caht dinner--perhaps thrushes and chianti--from the _trattoria_; at six appeared coffee and milk-rolls; at nine, when the pine-fire blazed, roast chestnuts and grapes Debts there were none to vex the spirits of these prudent children of genius If a poet could not pay his butcher's and his baker's bills, Browning's sympathies were all with the baker and the butcher ”He would not sleep,” wrote his wife, ”if an unpaid bill dragged itself by any chance into another week ”; and elsewhere: ”Being descended from the blood of all the Puritans, and educated by the strictest of dissenters, he has a sort of horror about the dreadful fact of owing five shi+llings five days” Perhaps soht which pecuniary cares hang upon all the rief and only one was still present; Mr Barrett rehter hoped that with tiain It was a hope never to be fulfilled In the cordial co's sister, Sarianna, a new correspondent, there was ahad in view the collected edition of his Poetical Works which did not appear until 1849 The poems were to be made so lucid, ”that everyone who understood them hitherto” was to ”lose that mark of distinction” _Paracelsus_ and _Pippa_ were to be revised with special care The sales reported by Moxon were considered satisfactory; but of course the profits as yet were those of his wife's poems ”She is,” he wrote to his publisher, ”there as in all else, as high above hest evidence of his wife's powers as a poet caift to her husband In a letter of December 1845--more than a year since--she had confessed that she was idle; and yet ”silent” was a better word she thought than ”idle” Her apology was that the apostle Paul probably did not work hard at tent- of the unspeakable things At the close of a letter written on July 22, 1846, she wrote: ”You shall see some day at Pisa what I will not show you now Does not Solomon say that 'there is a tiht” The time to read had now come ”One day, early in 1847,” as Mr Gosse records as told to hi went upstairs, while her husband stood at the atching the street till the table should be cleared He was presently aware of soone It was Mrs Browning who held hi to look at her, and at the same time pushed a packet of papers into the pocket of his coat She told him to read that, and to tear it up if he did not like it; and then she fled again to her own room” The papers were a transcript of those ardent poeuese” So in 1847 for private circulation with the title ”Sonnets by EBB” The later title under which they appeared a's Poeestion His wife's proposal to name them ”Sonnets from the Bosnian” was dismissed ords which allude to a poe been specially dear to hiuese: they are Catarina's sonnets!”

Pisa with all its charm lacked movement and animation It was decided to visit Florence in April, and there enjoy for some days the society of Mrs Jaence was secured, and on April 20th Mrs Jameson's ”wild poets but wise people”

arrived at Florence An excellent apartment was found in the Via delle Belle Donne near the Piazza Santa Maria Novella, and for Browning's special delight a grand piano was hired When Mrs Browning had sufficiently recovered strength to view the city and its surroundings her pleasure was great: ”At Pisa we say, 'How beautiful!' here we say nothing; it is enough if we can breathe” They had hoped for sus in Northern Italy; but Florence held the which they atte the pines of Vallombrosa Provided with a letter of recommendation to the abbot they set forth froo onwards, while Browning rode, Mrs Browning and Wilson in basket sledges were slowly draards the monastery by white bullocks A new abbot, a little holy man with a red face, had been recently installed, who announced that in his nostrils ”a petticoat stank” Yet in the charity of his heart he extended the three days ordinarily per which period beef and oil, es from the ”Life of San Gualberto” were vouchsafed to heretics of both sexes; the mountains and the pinewoods in their sole down the precipitous path” they returned to Florence in a , for disappointed people Shelter fro desirable, a suite of comparatively cool rooood taste, and opened upon a terrace--”a sort of balcony terrace whichswis” Fro was occupied with the first part of her poe of the life of Italy at a moment of peculiar interest could be observed Europe in the years 1847 and 1848 was like a sea broken by wave after wave of Revolutionary passion Browning and his ere ardently liberal in their political feeling; but there were differences in the colours of their respective creeds and sentiination to popular movements; she was also naturally a hero-worshi+pper; she hoped more enthusiastically than he ont to do; she was more readily depressed; the word ”liberty”

for her had an aureole or a nis Browning, although in this year 1847 he made a move towards an appointment as secretary to a roups or societies; he cared greatly for individuals, for the growth of individual character He had faith in a forward movement of society; but the law of social evolution, as he conceived it, is not in the hands of political leaders or ministers of state He valued liberty chiefly because eachtested, in process of being formed, and liberty is the condition of a man's true probation and developive his answer to the question: ”Why aave it succinctly in a sonnet which he did not reprint in any edition of his Works, although it received otherwise a wide circulation It raphy:

”Why?” Because all I haply can and do, All that I am now, all I hope to be,-- Whence co free Body and soul the purpose to pursue, God traced for both? If fetters, not a few, Of prejudice, convention, fall frouided--bear, and gladly too?

But little do or can the best of us: That little is achieved through Liberty

Who then dares hold--emancipated thus-- His fellow shall continue bound? Not I Who live, love, labour freely, nor discuss A brother's right to freedom That is ”Why”[40]

This is an excellent reason for the faith that was in Browning; he holds that individual progress depends on individual freedom, and by that word he understands not only political freedom but also ee of injurious convention But Browning in his verse, setting aside the early _Strafford_, nowhere celebrates a popular political movement; he nowhere chaunts a paean, in the manner of Byron or Shelley, in honour of the abstraction ”Liberty” Nor does he anywhere study political phenoht upon an individual character Things and persons that gave him offence he could summarily dismiss fro one word said by M Thiers”; ”Proudhon is a madman; who cares for Proudhon?” ”The President's an ass; _he_ is not worth thinking of”[41] This may be admirable economy of intellectual force; but it is not the way to understand the course of public events; it does not indicate a political or a historical sense And, indeed, his writings do not show that Browning possessed a political or a historical sense in any high degree, save as a representative persona phase of civilisation When Mrs Trollope called at Casa Guidi, Browning was only reluctantly present; she had written against liberal institutions and against the poetry of Victor Hugo, and that was enough

Might it not have been rounds of her prejudice? ”Blessed be the inconsistency of , for whose sake he tolerated the offending authoress until by and by he careeable wo and his wife saw frorateful and enthusiastic Florentines stream into the _Piazza_ Pitti with banners and _vivas_ for the space of three hours and a half It was the time when the Grand Duke was a patriot and Pio Nono was a liberal The new hellories of genuine freedom The pleasure of the populace was like that of children, and perhaps it had so behind it The incoranted a liberal constitution, and was led back fro crowd--”through the dark night a flock of stars see up the piazza” A fewis ”Ah, poor Italy”; the people are attractive, delightful, but they want conscience and self reverence[42] Browning and she painfully felt that they grew cooler and cooler on the subject of Italian patriotism A revolution had been promised, but a shower of rain fell and the revolution was postponed Noas the Grand Duke _out_, and the bells rang, and a tree of liberty was planted close to the door of Casa Guidi; six weeks later it was the Grand Duke _in_, and the sa, and the tree of liberty was pulled down The Pope is well- honorific epithets have to be denied hie and power over souls is lost The liberal Grand Duke is transformed into a Duke decorated with Austrian titles As for France, Mrs Browning had long since learnt froht to feel a debt to the country of Balzac and George Sand She thought that the unrest and the eager hopes of the French Revolution, notwithstanding its errors, indicated at least the conception of a higher ideal than any known to the English people

Browning did not possess an equal confidence in France; he did not accept her view that the French occupation of Rorowing hero-worshi+p--as yet far from its full development--of Louis Napoleon Her admiration for Balzac he shared, and it is probable that the death of the great novelist ret than did the death, at no considerable distance of time, of Wordsworth With French communism or socialism neither husband nor wife, however republican in their faith, had sympathy; they held that its tendency is to diminish the influence of the individual, and that in the end the progress of theforth fro forward of individual minds They believed as firmly as did Edmund Burke in the importance of what Burke styles a natural aristocracy

For four years--fro never crossed the confines of Italy No duties summoned him away, and he was happy in his home ”We are as happy,” he wrote in December 1847, ”as tls in a hole, two toads under a tree-stu creatures that we let live after the fashi+on of their black hearts, only Ba is fat and rosy; yes indeed” In spring they drove day by day through the Cascine, passing on the way the carvenof the _Statue and the Bust_, and ”the stone called Dante's,” whereupon

He used to bring his quiet chair out, turned To Brunelleschi's church[43]

And after tea there was the bridge of Trinita froold while thealoft It was a life of retire mentions to a friend that for fifteenout--”not even to a concert, nor to hear a play of Alfieri's,” but ith , she adds, ”we scarcely kno the days go, it's such a gallop on the grass” The ”writing” included the revision and preparation for the press of Browning's _Poems_, in two volumes, which Chapman & Hall, more liberal than Moxon, had undertaken to publish at their own risk, and which appeared in 1849 So to the alterations of textyear; and for a ti occupation As to the ”reading,” the chief disadvantage of Florence towards thenew books of interest, whether French or English Yet _Vanity Fair_ and _The Princess, Jane Eyre_ and _Modern Painters_ somehow found their way to Casa Guidi[44]

Casa Guidi proper, the Casa Guidi which held the books and pictures and furniture and graceful knick-knacks chosen by its occupants, ere lovers of beauty, dates only from 1848 Previously they had been satisfied with a furnished apart before the unfurnished roo rooms which suffered fro an opportunity of displaying what to his wife's eyes appeared to be unexananimity The six months' rent was promptly paid, and cha to evening” were secured ”Any other els,” his wife assured Miss Mitford, ”would have sta, but as to _his_ being angry with _h dinner, the sun would turn the wrong way first” It seemed an excellent piece of economy to take the spacious suite of unfurnished roouished by the inscription known to all visitors to Florence, which were to be had for twenty-five guineas a year, and which, when furnished, ed absence for a considerable suround-floor in the Frescobaldi Palace, and a garden bright with ca for a time inclined, was rejected At Casa Guidi the double terrace where orange-trees and caarden with its threatening cloud of mosquitoes, ”worse than Austrians”; every need of space and height, of warmth and coolness seemed to be met; and it only remained to expend the welcoathering together ”rococo chairs, spring sofas, carved bookcases, satin fro a up for a few pauls this or that picture, on seeing which an accomplished connoisseur, like Kirkup, would even hazard the name of Cimabue or Ghirlandaio, or if not that of Giotto, then the safer adjective Giottesque

Although living the life of retirement which his wife's uncertain state of health required, Browning gradually obtained the acquaintance of several interesting persons, of whom Kirkup, who has just been mentioned, was one ”As to Italian society,” wrote Mrs Browning, ”onestar, for it seems quite inaccessible” But the na, was a sufficient introduction to cultivated English the earliest of these acquaintances were the Aian and spiritualist (a sienial ht”), and Hillard, the American lawyer, who, in his _Six 's conversation as ”like the poetry of Chaucer,” orous, ”or like his own poetry simplified and oes on, ”to think that he can ever grow old” And of Mrs Browning: ”I have never seen a human frame which seemed so nearly a transparent veil for a celestial and immortal spirit She is a soul of fire enclosed in a shell of pearl” A third As of Earet Fuller of ”The Dial,” now Countess d'Ossoli, ”far better than her writings,” says Mrs Browning, ” not only exalted but _exaltee_ in her opinions, yet calm in e to A ”Was she happy in anything?” asks her sorrowing friend The first person seen on Italian soil when Browning and his wife disehorn was the brilliant and erratic Irish priest, ”Father Prout” of _Fraser's Magazine_, who befriended thes and port hen Browning was ill in Florence, and chided Mrs Browning as a ”bambina” for her needless fears Charles Lever ”with the sunniest of faces and cordialest ofa little too etic intellect--called on them at the Baths of Lucca, but the acquaintance did not ripen into friendshi+p And little Miss Boyle, one of the faht, at the hour of chestnuts andthat warmed her feet These, with the Hoppners, known to Shelley and Byron, a French sculptress of royalist sy, and one of the grandsons of Goethe, who flits into and out of the scene, were a colish folk at Florence who gathered together only for the frivolities, and worse than frivolities, of foreign wayfaring

In March 1849 joy and sorrowand his wife On the ninth of that month a son was born at Casa Guidi, who six weeks later was described by hischild, with double chin and rosy cheeks and a great wide chest”

He was baptised, with the simple Lutheran rites, Robert Wiedemann Barrett--the ”Wiede'sand his wife, to adopt a phrase froht up their parental pleasures with a sort of passion[45] Mrs Browning's letters croon with happiness in the beauty, the strength, the intelligence, the kind-hearted disposition of her boy

And the boy's father, from the days when he would walk up and down the terrace of Casa Guidi with the infant in his arladness and the repose that cae of his heart When little Wiedemann could frame imperfect speech upon his lips he transformed that name into ”Penini,”

which abbreviated to ”Pen” became serviceable for domesticities It was a fantastic derivation of Nathaniel Hawthorne which connected Penini with the colossal statue in Florence bearing the narew jealous, and not altogether without cause

But the joy was pursued and overtaken by sorrow A few days after the birth of his son ca's ree of passion; the sudden reaction from the happiness of his wife's safety and his son's birth was terrible; it alrief to adladness of the time In this conflict of eave way He could not think of returning to his father's home without extreme pain--”It would break his heart,” he said, ”to see his mother's roses over the wall, and the place where she used to lay her scissors and gloves” He longed that his father and sister should quit the home of sorrow, and hasten to Florence; but this was not to be As for England, it could not be thought of as much on his wife's account as his own Her father held no co letters reed Her sister Henrietta had left her for his consent to her e with Captain Surtees Cook, she had taken the matter into her own hands; the deed was done, and the nahter--married to a person of ain to be land had beco a place of painful memories, and a centre of present strife which she did not feel herself as yet able to encounter

The love of wandering, however, when successive surew irresistible, and drove Browning and his household to seek elsewhere for fresh interests or for coolness and repose In 1848, beguiled by the guide-book, they visited Fano to find it quivering with heat, ”the very air swooning in the sun” Their reward at Fano was that picture by Guercino of the guardian angel teaching a child to pray, the thought of which Browning has translated into song:

We were at Fano, and three times ent To sit and see him in his chapel there, And drink his beauty to our soul's content --My angel with me too