What I Remember Part 10

To say that amid all that frivolous, gay, giddy, and, it must be owned, for the most part very unintellectual society (in the pleasures and pursuits of which, to speak honestly, I took, well pleased, my full share), my visits to Casa Guidi were valued by me as choice morsels of my existence, is to say not half enough. I was conscious even then of coming away from those visits a better man, with higher views and aims. And pray, reader, understand that any such effect was not produced by any talk or look or word of the nature of preaching, or anything approaching to it, but simply by the perception and appreciation of what Elizabeth Barrett Browning was; of the immaculate purity of every thought that pa.s.sed through her pellucid mind, and the indefeasible n.o.bility of her every idea, sentiment, and opinion. I hope my reader is not so much the slave of conventional phraseology as to imagine that I use the word "purity" in the above sentence in its restricted and one may say technical, sense. I mean the purity of the upper spiritual atmosphere in which she habitually dwelt; the absolute disseverance of her moral as well as her intellectual nature from all those lower thoughts as well as lower pa.s.sions which smirch the human soul. In mind and heart she was _white_--stainless. That is what I mean by purity.

Her most intimate friend at Florence was a Miss Isabella Blagden, who lived for many years at Bellosguardo, in a villa commanding a lovely view over Florence and the valley of the Arno from the southern side, looking across it therefore to Fiesole and its villa-and-cypress-covered slopes. Whether the close friends.h.i.+p between Mrs. Browning and Isa Blagden (we all called her Isa always) was first formed in Florence, or had its commencement at an earlier date, I do not know. But Isa was also the intimate and very specially highly-valued friend of my wife and myself. And this also contributed to our common friends.h.i.+p. Isa was (yes, as usual, "was," alas, though she was very much my junior) a very bright, very warm-hearted, very clever little woman, who knew everybody, and was, I think, more universally beloved than any other individual among us. A little volume of her poems was published after her untimely death. They are not such as could take by storm the careless ears of the world, which knows nothing about her, and must, I suppose, be admitted to be marked by that mediocrity which neither G.o.ds nor men can tolerate.

But it is impossible to read the little volume without perceiving how choice a spirit the auth.o.r.ess must have been, and understanding how it came to pa.s.s that she was especially honoured by the close and warm attachment of Mrs. Browning. I have scores of letters signed "Isa," or rather Sibylline leaves scrawled in the vilest handwriting on all sorts of abnormal fragments of paper, and despatched in headlong haste, generally concerning some little projected festivity at Bellosguardo, and advising me of the expected presence of some stranger whom she thought I should like to meet. Very many of such of these fragmentary scribblings, as were written before the Brownings left Florence, contain some word or reference to her beloved "Ba," for such was the pet name used between them, with what meaning or origin I know not.

Dear Isa's death was to me an especially sad one, because I thought, and think, that she need not have died. She lived alone with a couple of old servants, and though she was rich in troops of friends, and there were one or two near her during the day or two of her illness, they did not seem to have managed matters wisely. Our Isa was extremely obstinate about calling in medical advice. It could not be done at a moment's notice, for a message had to be sent and a doctor to come from Florence. And this was not done till the second day of her illness. And I had good reason for thinking that, had she been properly attended to on the first day, her life might have been saved.

She would not let her friends send for the doctor, and the friends were unable to make her do so. Unhappily, I was absent for a few days at Siena, and returned to be met by the intelligence that she was dead. It seemed the more sad in that I knew that if I had been there I could have made her call a doctor before it was too late. Browning could also have done so; but it was after the death of Mrs. Browning and his departure from Florence.

How great her sorrow was for the death of her friend, Browning knew, doubtless, but n.o.body else, I think, in the world save myself.

I have now before me one of her little sc.r.a.ps of letters, in which she encloses one from Mrs. Browning which is of the highest interest. The history and genesis of it is as follows. Shortly after the publication of the well-known and exquisite little poem on the G.o.d Pan in the _Cornhill Magazine_, my brother Anthony wrote me a letter venturing to criticise it, in which he says: "The lines are very beautiful, and the working out of the idea is delicious. But I am inclined to think that she is ill.u.s.trating an allegory by a thought, rather than a thought by an allegory. The idea of the G.o.d destroying the reed in making the instrument has, I imagine, given her occasion to declare that in the sublimation of the poet the man is lost for the ordinary purposes of man's life. It has been thus instead of being the reverse; and I can hardly believe that she herself believes in the doctrine which her fancy has led her to ill.u.s.trate. A man that can be a poet is so much the more a man in becoming such, and is the more fitted for a man's best work. Nothing is destroyed, and in preparing the instrument for the touch of the musician the G.o.ds do nothing for which they need weep. The idea however is beautiful, and it is beautifully worked."

Then follows some verbal criticism which need not be transcribed.

Going on to the seventh stanza he says, "In the third line of it, she loses her ant.i.thesis. She must spoil her man, as well as make a poet out of him--spoil him as the reed is spoilt. Should we not read the lines thus:--

"'Yet one half beast is the great G.o.d Pan Or he would not have laughed by the river.

Making a poet he mars a man; The true G.o.ds sigh,' &c."?

In justice to my brother's memory I must say that this was not written to me with any such presumptuous idea as that of offering his criticism to the poetess. But I showed the letter to Isa Blagden, and at her request left it with her. A day or two later, she writes to me: "Dear friend,--I send you back your criticism and Mrs. B.'s rejoinder.

She _made_ me show it to her, and she wishes you to see her answer."

Miss Blagden's words would seem to imply that she thought the criticism mine. And if she did, Mrs. Browning was doubtless led to suppose so too. Yet I think this could hardly have been the case.

Of course my only object in writing all this here is to give the reader the great treat of seeing Mrs. Browning's "rejoinder." It is very highly interesting:--

"DEAREST ISA,--Very gentle my critic is; I am glad I got him out of you. But tell dear Mr. Trollope he is wrong nevertheless" [here it certainly seems that she supposed the criticism to be mine]; "and that my 'thought' was really and decidedly _anterior_ [_sic_] to my 'allegory.' Moreover, it is my thought still. I meant to say that the poetic organisation implies certain disadvantages; for instance an exaggerated general susceptibility, ...[1] which may be shut up, kept out of the way in every-day life, and must be (or the man is '_marred_' indeed, made a Rousseau or a Byron of), but which is necessarily, for all that, cultivated in the very cultivation of art itself. There is an inward reflection and refraction of the heats of life ...[1] doubling pains and pleasures, doubling therefore the motives (pa.s.sions) of life. I have said something of this in A.L.

[_Aurora Leigh_]. Also there is a pa.s.sion for essential truth (as apprehended) and a necessity for speaking it out at all risks, inconvenient to personal peace. Add to this and much else the loss of the sweet unconscious cool privacy among the 'reeds' ...[1] which I for one care so much for--the loss of the privilege of being glad or sorry, ill or well, without a 'notice.' That may have its glory to certain minds. But most people would be glad to 'stir their tea in silence' when they are grave, and even to talk nonsense (much too frivolously) when they are merry, without its running the round of the newspapers in two worlds perhaps. You know I don't _invent_, Isa. In fact, I am sorely tempted to send Mr. Trollope a letter I had this morning, as an ill.u.s.tration of my view, and a reply to his criticism.

Only this letter among many begins with too many fair speeches. Still it seems written by somebody in earnest and with a liking for me. Its main object is to complain of the cowardly morality in _Pan_. Then a stroke on the poems before Congress. The writer has heard that I 'had been to Paris, was _feted_ by the Emperor, and had had my head turned by Imperial flatteries,' in consequence of which I had taken to 'praise and flatter the tyrant, and try to help his selfish ambition.'

Well! one should laugh and be wise. But somehow one doesn't laugh. A letter beginning, 'You are a great teacher of truth,' and ending, 'You are a dishonest wretch,' makes you cold somehow, and ill disposed towards the satisfactions of literary distinction. Yes! and be sure, Isa, that the 'true G.o.ds sigh,' and have reason to sigh, for the cost and pain of it; sigh only ... don't haggle over the cost; don't grudge a crazia, but.... sigh, sigh ... while they pay honestly.

"On the other hand, there's much light talking and congratulation, excellent returns to the pocket from the poem in the _Cornhill_; pleasant praise from dear Mr. Trollope.... with all drawbacks: a good opinion from Isa worth its gold--and Pan laughs.

"But he is a beast up to the waist; yes, Mr. Trollope, a beast. He is not a true G.o.d.

"And I am neither G.o.d nor beast, if you please--only a

"BA."

[Footnote 1: These dots do not indicate any hiatus. They exist in the MS. as here given.]

It seems that she certainly imagined me to be the critic; but must have been subsequently undeceived. I will not venture to say a word on the question of the marring or making of a man which results from the creation of a poet; but if my brother had known Mrs. Browning as well as I knew her, he would not have written that he could "hardly believe that she herself believes in the doctrine that her fancy has led her to ill.u.s.trate." At all events, the divine afflatus had not so marred the absolutely single-minded truthfulness of the woman in her as to make it possible that she should, for the sake of ill.u.s.trating, however appositely, any fancy however brilliant, put forth a "doctrine" as believing in it, which she did not believe. It may seem that this is a foolish making of a mountain out of a molehill; but she would not have felt it to be so. She had so high a conception of the poet's office and responsibilities that nothing would have induced her to play at believing for literary purposes any position, or fancy, or imagination, which she did not in her heart of hearts accept.

There was one subject upon which both my wife and I disagreed in opinion with Mrs. Browning; and it was a subject which sat very near her heart, and was much occupying all minds at that time--the phases of Italy's struggle for independence, and especially the part which the Emperor Napoleon the Third was taking in that struggle, and his conduct towards Italy. We were all equally "Italianissimi," as the phrase went then; all equally desirous that Italy should accomplish the union of her _disjecta membra_, throw off the yoke of the bad governments which had oppressed her, make herself a nation, and do well as such. But we differed widely as to the ultimate utility, the probable results, and, above all, as to the motives of the Emperor's conduct. Mrs. Browning believed in him and trusted him. We did neither. Hence the following interesting and curious letter, written to my wife at Florence by Mrs. Browning, who was pa.s.sing the summer at Siena. Mrs. Browning felt very warmly upon this subject--so indeed did my wife, differing from her _toto coelo_ upon it. But the difference not only never caused the slightest suspension of cordial feeling between them, but never caused either of them to doubt for a moment that the other was with equal sincerity and equal ardour anxious for the same end. The letter was written, as only the postmark shows, on September 26th, 1859, and was as follows:--

"MY DEAR MRS. TROLLOPE,--I feel doubly ungrateful to you ... for the music (one of the proofs of your multiform faculty) and for your kind and welcome letter, which I have delayed to thank you for. My body lags so behind my soul always, and especially of late, that you must consider my disadvantages in whatever fault is committed by me trying to forgive it.

"Certainly we differ in our estimate of the Italian situation, while loving and desiring for Italy up to the same height and with the same heart.

"For me I persist in looking to _facts_ rather than to words official or unofficial, and in repeating that, 'whereas we were bound, now we are free.'

"'I think, therefore, I am.' _Cogito, ergo sum_, was, you know, an old formula. Italy thinks (aloud) at Florence and Bologna; therefore she _is_. And how did that happen? Could it have happened last year, with the Austrians at Bologna, and ready (at a sign) to precipitate themselves into Tuscany? Could it have happened previous to the French intervention? And could it happen _now_ if France used the power she has in Italy _against_ Italy? Why is it that the _Times_ newspaper, which declared ... first that the elections were to be prevented by France, and next that they were to be tampered with ... is not justified before our eyes? I appeal to your sober judgment ... if indeed the Emperor Napoleon _desires the restoration of the Dukes!!_ Is he not all the more admirable for being loyal and holding his hand off while he has fifty thousand men ready to 'protect' us all and prevent the exercise of the people's sovereignty? And he a despot (so called) and accustomed to carry out his desires. Instead of which Tuscans and Romagnoli, Parma and Modena, have had every opportunity allowed them to combine, carry their elections, and express their full minds in a.s.semblies, till the case becomes so complicated and strengthened that her enemies for the most part despair.

"The qualities shown by the Italians--the calm, the dignity, the intelligence, the constancy ... I am as far from not understanding the weight of these virtues as from not admiring them. But the _opportunity_ for exercising them comes from the Emperor Napoleon, and it is good and just for us all to remember this while we admire the most.

"So at least I think; and the Italian official bodies have always admitted it, though individuals seem to me to be too much influenced by the suspicions and calumnies thrown out by foreign journals--English, Prussian, Austrian, and others--which traduce the Emperor's motives in diplomacy, as they traduced them in the war. A prejudice in the eye is as fatal to sight as mote and beam together.

And there are things abroad _worse_ than any prejudices--yes, worse!

"It is a fact that the Emperor used his influence with England to get the Tuscan vote accepted by the English Government. Whatever wickedness he meant by _that_ the G.o.ds know; and English statesmen suspect ... (or suspected a very short short time ago); but the deed itself is not wicked, and you and I shall not be severe on it whatever bad motive may be imputable.

"So much more I could write ... about Villafranca, but I won't. The Emperor, great man as he is, could not precisely antic.i.p.ate the high qualities given proof of in the late development of Italian nationality. He made the best terms he could, having had his hand forced. In consequence of this treaty he has carried out his engagement to Austria in certain official forms, knowing well that the free will and choice of the Italians are hindered by none of them; and knowing besides that every apparent coldness and reserve of his towards the peninsula removes a jealousy from England, and instigates her to a more liberal and human bearing than formerly.

"Forgive me for all these words. I am much better, but still not as strong as I was before my attack; only getting strength, I hope.

"Miss Blagden and Miss Field are staying still with us, and are gone to Siena to-day to see certain pictures (which has helped to expose you to this attack). We talk of returning to Florence by the first of October, or soon after, in spite of the revival of fine weather. Mr.

Landor is surprisingly improved by the good air here and the repose of mind; walks two miles, and writes alcaics and pentameters on most days ... on his domestic circ.u.mstances, and ... I am sorry to say ... Louis Napoleon. But I tell him that I mean him to write an ode on my side of the question before we have done.

"I honour you and your husband for the good work you have both done on behalf of this great cause. But his book[1] we only know yet by the extracts in the _Athenaeum_, which brings us your excellent articles.

May I not thank you for them? And when does Mr. Trollope come back?"

[from a flying visit to England]. "We hope not to miss him out of Florence long.

[Footnote 1: _Tuscany in_ 1849 _and_ 1859.]

"Peni's love to Bice.[1] He has been very happy here, galloping through the lanes on a pony the colour of his curls. Then he helps to work in the vineyards and to keep the sheep, having made close friends with the _contadini_ to whom he reads and explains Dall' Ongaro's poems with great applause. By the way, the poet paid us a visit lately, and we liked him much.

[Footnote 1: Browning's boy and my girl.]

"And let me tell _Bice's mother_ another story of Penini. He keeps a journal, be it whispered; I ventured to peep through the leaves the other morning, and came to the following notice: 'This is the happiest day of my _hole (sic)_ life, because dearest Vittorio Emanuele is really _nostro re!_'

"There's a true Italian for you! But his weak point is spelling.

"Believe me, with my husband's regards,

"Ever truly and affectionately yours,

"ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING."

It may possibly enter into the mind of some one of those who never enjoyed the privilege of knowing Mrs. Browning the woman, to couple together the stupidly calumnious insinuations to which she refers in the first letter I have given, with the admiration she expresses for the third Napoleon in the second letter. I differed from her wholly in her estimate of the man, and in her views of his policy with regard to Italy. And many an argument have I had with her on the subject. And my opinions respecting it were all the more distasteful to her because they concerned the character of the man himself as well as his policy as a ruler. And those talks and arguments have left me probably the only man alive, save one, who knows with such certainty as I know it, and can a.s.sert as I can, the absolute absurdity and impossibility of the idea that she, being what she was, could have been bribed by any amount of Imperial or other flattery, not only to profess opinions which she did not veritably hold--this touches her moral nature, perhaps the most pellucidly truthful of any I ever knew--but to hold opinions which she would not have otherwise held. This touches her intellectual nature, which was as incapable of being mystified or modified by any suggestion of vanity, self-love, or gratified pride, as the most judicial-minded judge who ever sat on the bench. Her intellectual view on the matter _was_, I thought, mystified and modified by the intensity of her love for the Italian cause, and of her hatred for the evils from which she was watching the Italians struggling to liberate themselves.

I heard, probably from herself, of whispered calumnies, such as those she refers to in the first of the two letters given. She despised them then, as those who loved and valued her did, though the sensitive womanly gentleness of her nature made it a pain to her that any fellow-creature, however ignorant and far away from her, should so think of her. And my disgust at a secret attempt to stab has impelled me to say what I _know_ on the subject. But I really think that not only those who knew her as she lived In the flesh, but the tens of thousands who know her as she lives in her written words, cannot but feel my vindication superfluous.

The above long and specially interesting letter is written in very small characters on ten pages of extremely small duodecimo note-paper, as is also the other letter by the same writer given above. Mrs.

Browning's handwriting shows ever and anon an odd tendency to form each letter of a word separately--a circ.u.mstance which I mention for the sake of remarking that old Huntingford, the Bishop of Hereford, in my young days, between whom and Mrs. Browning there was one thing in common, namely, a love for and familiarity with Greek studies, used to write in the same manner.