Part 6 (2/2)

Mrs Browning's illness during the summer and early autumn of 1850 left her for a tie But by the spring of the following year she had recovered strength; and designs of travel were formed, which should include Rome, North Italy, Switzerland, the Rhine, Brussels, Paris and London Al for Rome at the end of April, the plans were altered; the season was too far advanced for going south; ways and ht be postponed for a future visit; and Venice would make amends for the present sacrifice And Venice in May and early June did indeed for a time make a wrote, ”since our arrival at Venice”

The rich architecture, the colour, thesilencethat she had previously known When evening came she and her husband would follow the opera frolish,” or sit under thethe French papers But as thelost appetite and lost sleep The ”soothing, lulling, rocking at row nervous and dispirited They hastened away to Padua, drove to Arqua, ”for Petrarch's sake,” passed through Brescia in a flood of whitereached Milan climbed--the invalid of Wimpole Street and her husband--to the topmost point of the cathedral

From the Italian lakes they crossed by the St Gothard to Switzerland, and o, journeyed in twenty-four hours without stopping fro to Paris

In Paris they loitered for three weeks Mrs Browning during the short visit which followed her ht shop-s, before which little Wiedemann would scream with pleasure, restaurants and dinners _a la carte_, full-foliaged trees and gardens in the heart of the toere a not unwelcoe for Italian church-interiors and altar-pieces Even ”disreputable prints and fascinating hats and caps” were appreciated as proper to the genius of the place, and the writer of _Casa Guidi Windows_ had the happiness of seeing her hero, M le President, ”in a cocked hat, and with a train of cavalry, passing like a rocket along the boulevards to an occasional yell frohted in Paris upon Tennyson, now Poet-laureate, whoh his poeed that they should land, an offer which was not refused, though there was no intention of actually taking advantage of the kindness As for England, the thought of it, with her father's heart and her father's door closed against her, was bitter as ood to Mrs Browning ”It's only Robert,” she wrote, ”who is a patriot now, of us two”

English soil as they stepped ashore was a puddle, and English air a fog London lodgings were taken at 26 Devonshi+re Street, and, although Mrs Browning suffered from the climate, they were soon dizzied and dazzled by the whirl of pleasant hospitalities An evening with Carlyle (”one of the greatest sights in England”), a dinner given by Forster at Thaers, daily visits of Barry Cornwall, cordial companionshi+p of Mrs Ja of _Hamlet_ by fanny Kemble--with these distractions and such as these the two months flew quickly It was in some ways a relief when Pen's faithful ht to see her kinsfolk, and Mrs Browning had to take her place and substitute for social racketing domestic cares The one central sorrow remained and in some respects was intensified She had written to her father, and Browning hiht-forward letter,” she infor” A violent and unsparing reply was hter had written to Mr

Barrett; not one had been read or opened He returned them now, because he had not previously kno he could be relieved of the obnoxious documents ”God takes it all into his own hands,” wrote Mrs Browning, ”and I wait” Soained; her brothers were reconciled; Arabella Barrett was constant in kindness; and Henrietta journeyed from Taunton to London to enjoy a week in her company

It was at Devonshi+re Street that Bayard Taylor, the distinguished As, and the record of his visit gives a picture of Browning at the age of thirty-nine, so clearly and firht not to be o-rooreat cordiality In his lively, cheerful manner, quick voice, and perfect self-possession, he lishe, about thirty-seven years of age, but his dark hair was already streaked with gray about the temples His coe, eyes large, clear, and gray, nose strong and well cut, h not prominent His forehead broadened rapidly upwards fro individuality which marks his poetry was expressed not only in his face and head, but in his whole de in the shoulders, but slender at the waist, and his our and elasticity” Mrs Browning with her slight figure, pale face, shaded by chestnut curls, and grave eyes of bluish gray, is also described; and presently entered to the Aolden-haired boy, who babbled his little sentences in Italian

When, towards the close of Septe and his wife left London for Paris, Carlyle by his own request was their co feared that his irritable nerves would suffer from the vivacities of little Pen, but it was not so; he accepted with good humour the fact that the small boy had not yet learned, like his own Teufelsdrockh, the Eternal No: ”Why, sir,” exclaimed Carlyle, ”you have as , as Carlyle records, ”did everything, fought for us, and we--that is, the woman, the child and I--had only to wait and be silent” At Paris in the , vociferous tu me to sit beside the woman” An apartment was found on the sunny side of the Avenue des Chahter and better than those of Devonshi+re Street, and when, to Browning's amusement, his wife had ht position, they could rest and be thankful Carlyle spent several evenings with them, and repaid the assistance which he received in various difficulties froe, by picturesque conversations in his native speech: ”You co, ”when you know him, that his bitterness is only melancholy, and his scorn sensibility” A little later Browning's father and sister spent some weeks in Paris Here, at all events, were perfect relations between the hter here was her father's corandfather discovered to his great satisfaction that his own talent for drawing had descended to his grandchild

The time was one when the surface of life in Paris showed an unruffled aspect; but under the surface were heavings of inward agitation On the ainst the Republic was delivered; the _coup d'etat_ was an accomplished fact Later in the day Louis Napoleon rode under the s of the apartment in the Avenue des Champs-Elysees, fro it seerandest of spectacles--”he rode there in the name of the people after all” She and her husband had witnessed revolutions in Florence, and political upheavals did not seem so very formidable On the Thursday of bloodshed in the streets--Deceh not without certain precautions; as the day advanced the excite on the boulevards kept Mrs Browning froe and drove to see the field of action; the crowdsthe situation, but of real disturbance there was none; next day the theatres had their customary spectators and the Champs-Elysees its proalite, Fraternite,” as Mrs Browning heard it suggested, ht now be inscribed ”Infanterie, Cavallerie, Artillerie”

Such may have been her husband's opinion, but such was not hers Her faith in the President had been now and again shaken; her faith in the Emperor became as time went on an enthusiasm of hero-worshi+p The display of force on Deceination; there was a dramatic completeness in the whole perforht, should be logical and thorough; the vote of theviewed affairs more critically, ly, ”have had some domestic _emeutes_, because he hates some imperial names” He detested all Buonapartes, he would say, past, present, and to co to her satisfaction, as being only his self-willed way of dishts, aand known to hiood sense were on the woman's side, how could she be disturbed by such h only a very little lower than the angels, he was after all that hu--a man

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 47: ”Mrs Orr's Life and Letters of RB,” 173]

Chapter VIII

1851 to 1855

It was during the ht to the poet of his youthful love, and wrote that essay which was prefixed to the volued letters published as Shelley's by Moxon in 1852 The essay is interesting as Browning's only considerable piece of prose, and also as an utterance h the mask of any _dramatis persona_, but openly and directly froh not without value as a contribution to the study of Shelley's genius, it is perhaps chiefly of i's own views concerning his art He distinguishes between two kinds or types of poet: the poet who like Shakespeare is pris independent of his own personality, artistic creations which e it to others to interpret, as best they are able, its significance; and secondly the poet who is rather a ”seer” than a fashi+oner, who atteinative form his own conceptions of absolute truth, conceptions far fro towards completeness; the poet ould shadow forth, as he himself apprehends the burningly on the Divine Hand”--which Ideas he discovers not so often in the external world as in his own soul, this being for him ”the nearest reflex of the absolute Mind” What a poet of this second kind produces, as Browning finely states it, will be less a work than an effluence He is attracted a external phenoht and power, ”he selects that silence of the earth and sea in which he can best hear the beating of his individual heart, and leaves the noisy, complex, yet imperfect exhibitions of nature in the manifold experience of man around hi of his brain” To this latter class of poets, although in _The Cenci_ and _Julian and Maddalo_ he is es Mankind cannot wisely dispense with the services of either type of poet; at one time it chiefly needs to have that which is already known interpreted into its highest s; and at another, when the virtue of these interpretations has been appropriated and exhausted, it needs a fresh study and exploration of the facts of life and nature--for ”the world is not to be learned and thrown aside, but reverted to and relearned” The truest and highest point of view froard the poetry of Shelley is that which shows it as a ”sublimentary essay towards a presentment of the correspondency of the universe to Deity, of the natural to the spiritual, and of the actual to the ideal”

For Browning the poet of _Proel of Matthew Arnold's fancy, beating in the void his lureat moral purpose looked forth fro would add, from all lofty works of art And it s which considers not only their artistic methods and artistic success or failure, but also their ethical and spiritual purport, is entirely in accord with his thoughts in this essay Far fro Shelley as unpractical, he notes--and with perfect justice--”the peculiar practicalness” of Shelley's mind, which in his earlier years acted injuriously upon both his conduct and his art His power to perceive the defects of society was accompanied by as precocious a fertility to contrive re and his inexperience in practice resulted in not a few youthful errors Gradually he left behind hiradually he learnt that ”the best way of re abuses is to stand fast by truth Truth is one, as they are ative effects are produced by the upholding of one positive principle” Browning urges that Shelley, before the close, had passed from his doctrinaire atheism to as virtually a theistic faith ”I shall say what I think,” he adds--”had Shelley lived he would have finally ranged himself with the Christians The preli the dead to bury their dead” Perhaps this hypothetical anticipation is to be classed with the surhtly attributed to that eminent ecclesiastic a review of _Men and Wo himself would one day be found in the ranks of converts to Catholicis recognised the fact that Shelley assigned a place to love, side by side with power, a the forces which deter himself ”poas a synonym for the Divine will, and ”love” was often an equivalent for God es of the essaycertain characteristics of the writer's : ”Everywhere is apparent Shelley's belief in the existence of Good, to which Evil is an accident”--it is an optih of a subtler doctrine than Shelley's, who is applauding optih tenderness is not always the characteristic of very sincere natures; he was e his own heart, which was always sincere, and could be tender, but whose tenderness sonant wrath? The principle, again, by which he detereneral feeling that ed less by their actual achievements than by the possibilities that lie unfolded within theh such ends be unattained: ”In the hierarchy of creative ives first rank, in virtue of its kind, not degree; no pretension of a lower nature, whatever the co the precedency of the rarer endownition of Shelley's genius as a poet, Browning wrote in words which though, as he hiood praisers, no doubt express a thought that helped to sustain hiainst the indifference of the public to his poetry: ”The e is exactly what a poet is sent to reenerally perceptible effect of it, is no greater, less indeed than in reat human effort The 'E pur si muove' of the astronomer was as bitter a word as any uttered before or since by a poet over his rejected living work, in that depth of conviction which is so like despair” The volu's essay appeared ithdrawn from circulation on the discovery of the fraudulent nature of its contents He had hied manuscripts, and no question of authenticity was raised until several copies of the book had passed into circulation[48]

During the nine months spent in Paris, froed the circle of his friends andfriendshi+ps was that with Joseph Milsand of Dijon, whose na's ”Poetical Works” of the year 1863 Under the title ”La Poesie Anglaise depuis Byron,” two articles by Milsand were contributed to the ”Revue des Deux Mondes,” the first on Tennyson, the second (published 15th August 1851) a little before the poet's arrival in Paris, on Robert Browning ”Of all the poets known to me,” wrote his French critic, ”he is the ion, the ethics, and the theoretic knowledge of our period in forms which embody the beauty proper to such abstractions” Such criticishtful student of our literature could not but prepare the way pleasantly for personal acquaintance Milsand, we are told by his friend Th Bentzon (M a passage in an article as yet unpublished, in which he had spoken of the great sorrow of Mrs Browning's early life--the death of her brother, went straight to Browning, as then in Paris, and declared that he was ready to cancel what he had written if it would cause her pain ”Only a French both hands of his visitor, ”would have done this” So began a friendshi+p of an intimate and most helpful kind, which closed only with Milsand's death in 1886 To his memory is dedicated the volus with certain People of I ain: ”No words can express the love I have for hihtcap Country_ it is Milsand who is characterised in the lines:

He knows more and loves better than the world That never heard his name and never may,

What hinders that my heart relieve itself, O friend! who makest warm my wintry world, And wise my heaven, if there we consort too

In the correction of Browning's proof-sheets, and especially in regulating the punctuation of his poeh value In 1858 when Browning happened to be at Dijon, and had reason to believe, though in fact erroneously, that his friend was absent in Paris, he went twice ”in a passion of friendshi+p,” as his wife tells a correspondent, to stand before Maison Milsand, anddesired ratified After Deceo's was in hostility to the new regime and its chief representative Balzac, whom it would have been a happiness even to look at, was dead La was delayed By a , expecting to er was to be seen ”in his white hat wandering along the asphalte” The blind historian Thierry begged Browning and his wife to call upon him At the house of Ary Scheffer, the painter, they heard Min and Mme Mohl werein the social life of Paris At the theatre they saith the deepest excitehts Caricatures in the streets exhibited the occupants of the pit protected by umbrellas from the rain of tears that fell froh he had believed hi cried herself ill, and pronounced the play painful but profoundly s of George Sand was so great that it would have been a sore disappointe Sand were to prove inaccessible A letter of introduction to her had been obtained fro wrote on Christone, and we haven't ain was known to be for a few days in Paris; Browning was not eager to push through difficulties on the chance of obtaining an interview, but his as all impatience: ”' No,' said I, 'you _shan't_ be proud, and I _won't_ be proud, and ill_ see her I won't die, if I can help it, without seeing George Sand'” A gracious reply and an appointment came in response to their joint-petition which acco and Mrs Browning--she wearing a respirator and se to thewith beating heart stooped and kissed her hand They found in George Sand's face no sweetness, but great moral and intellectual capacities; inmen formed the company, to whom she addressed counsel and comh all her speech a certain undercurrent of scorn, a half-veiled touch of disdain, was perceptible At their parting she invited the English visitors to co on the lips, and received Browning's kiss upon her hand The second call upon her was less agreeable She sat warht or nine ill-bred ed Red diluted with the lower theatrical”