Robert Browning Part 16

The _Pacchiarotto_ volume of 1876 was the first collection of miscellaneous poetry put forth by Browning since the appearance, twelve years previously, of _Dramatis Personae_[117] There is, of course, throughout the whole the presence of a vigorous personality; we can in an occasional mood tumble and toss even in the rough verse of _Pacchiarotto_, as we do on a choppy sea on which the sun is a-s.h.i.+ne, and which invigorates while it--not always agreeably--bobs our head, and dashes down our throat. But vigour alone does not produce poetry, and it may easily run into a kind of good-humoured effrontery. The speciality of the volume as compared with its predecessors is that it contains not a little running comment by Browning upon himself and his own work, together with a jocular-savage reply to his unfriendly critics. There is a little too much in all this of the robustious Herakles sending his great voice before him. An author ought to be aware of the fact that no pledge to admire him and his writings has been administered to every one who enters the world, and that as sure as he attracts, so surely must he repel. In the _Epilogue_ the poet informs his readers that those who expect from him, or from any poet, strong wine of verse which is also sweet demand the impossible. Sweet the strong wine can become only after it has long lain mellowing in the cask. The experience of Browning's readers contradicted the a.s.sertion. Some who drank the good wines of 1855 and of 1864 in the year of the vintages found that they were strong and needed no keeping to be sweet. Wine-tasters must make distinctions, and the quality of the yield of 1876 does not ent.i.tle it to be remembered as an extraordinary year.

The poem from which the volume was named tells in verse, "timed by raps of the knuckle," how the painter Pacchiarotto must needs become a world-reformer, or at least a city-reformer in his distressed Siena, with no good results for his city and with disastrous results for himself. He learns by unsavoury experience his lesson, to hold on by the paint-brush and maul-stick, and do his own work, accepting the mingled evil and good of life in a spirit of strenuous--not indolent--_laissez-faire_, playing, as energetically as a human being can, his own part, and leaving others to play theirs, a.s.sured that for all and each this life is the trial-time and test of eternity, the rehearsal for the performance in a future world, and "Things rarely go smooth at Rehearsal." Browning's joy in difficult rhyming as seen in this serio-grotesque jingle was great; some readers may be permitted to wish that many of his rhymes were not merely difficult but impossible.

At a dinner given by Sir Leslie Stephen he met successfully the challenge to produce a rhyme for "rhinoceros," and for Tennyson's diversion he delivered himself of an impromptu in which rhymes were found for "Ecclefechan" and "Craigenputtock." But in rhyming ingenuity Browning is inferior to the author of "Hudibras," in a rhymer's elegant effrontery he is inferior to the author of "Don Juan." Browning's good-humoured effrontery in his rhymes expects too much good-humour from his reader, who may be amiable enough to accept rough and ready successes, but cannot often be delighted by brilliant gymnastics of sound and sense. In like manner it asks for a particularly well-disposed reader to appreciate the wit of Browning's retort upon his critics: "You are chimney-sweeps," he sings out in his great voice, "listen! I have invented several insulting nicknames for you. Decamp! or my housemaid will fling the slops in your faces." This may appear to some persons to be genial and clever. It certainly has none of the exquisite malignity of Pope's poisoned rapier. Perhaps it is a little dull; perhaps it is a little outrageous.

The Browning who masks as Shakespeare in _At the Mermaid_ disclaims the ambition of heading a poetical faction, condemns the Byronic _Welt-schmerz_, and announces his resolvedly cheerful acceptance of life. Elsewhere he a.s.sures his readers that though his work is theirs his life is his own; he will not unlock his heart in sonnets. Such is the drift of the verses ent.i.tled _House_; a peep through the window is permitted, but "please you, no foot over threshold of mine." This was not Shakespeare's wiser way; if he hid himself behind his work, it was with the openness and with the taciturnity of Nature. He did not stand in the window of his "House" declaring that he was not to be seen; he did not pull up and draw down the blind to make it appear that he was at home and not at home. In the poem _Shop_ Browning continues his a.s.surances that he is no Eglamor to whom verse is "a temple-wors.h.i.+p vague and vast." Verse-making is his trade as jewel-setting and jewel-selling is the goldsmith's--but do you suppose that the poet lives no life of his own?--how and where it is not for you to guess, only be certain it is far away from his counter and his till. These poems were needless confidences to the public that no confidences would be vouchsafed to them.

But the volume of 1876 contains better work than these pieces of self-a.s.sertion. The two love-lyrics _Natural Magic_ and _Magical Nature_ have each of them a surprise of beauty; the one tells of the fairy-tale of love, the other of its inward glow and gem-like stability.

_Bifurcation_ is characteristic of the writer; the woman who chooses duty rather than love may have done well, but she has chosen the easier way and perhaps has evaded the probation of life; the man who chooses pa.s.sion rather than duty has slipped and stumbled, but his was the harder course and perhaps the better. Which of the two was sinner? which was saint? To be impeccable may be the most d.a.m.ning of offences. In _St Martin's Summer_ the eerie presence of ghosts of dead loves, haunting a love that has grown upon the graves of the past, is a check upon pa.s.sion, which by a sudden turn at the close triumphs in a victory that is defeat. _Fears and Scruples_ is a confession of the trials of theistic faith in a world from which G.o.d seems to be an absentee. What had been supposed to be letters from our friend are proved forgeries; what we called his loving actions are the acc.u.mulated results of the natural law of heredity. Yet even if theism had to be abandoned, it would have borne fruit:

All my days I'll go the softlier, sadlier For that dream's sake! How forget the thrill Through and through me as I thought "The gladlier Lives my friend because I love him still?"

And the friend will value love all the more which persists through the obstacles of partial ignorance.[118] The blank verse monologue _A Forgiveness_, Browning's "Spanish Tragedy," is a romance of pa.s.sion, subtle in its psychology, tragic in its action. Out of its darkness gleams especially one resplendent pa.s.sage--the description of those weapons of Eastern workmans.h.i.+p--

Horror coquetting with voluptuousness--

one of which is the instrument chosen by the husband's hatred, now replacing his contempt, to confer on his wife a death that is voluptuous. The grim-grotesque incident from the history of the Jews in Italy related in _Filippo Baldinucci_ recalls the comedy and the pathos of _Holy Cross Day_, to which it is in every respect inferior. The Jew of the centuries of Christian persecution is for Browning's imagination a being half-sublime and half-grotesque, and wholly human. _Cenciaja_, a note in verse connected with Sh.e.l.ley's _Cenci_, would be excellent as a note in prose appended to the tragedy, explaining, as it does, why the Pope, inclining to pardon Beatrice, was turned aside from his purposes of mercy; it rather loses than gains in value by having been thrown into verse. To recover our loyalty to Browning as a poet, which this volume sometimes puts to the test, we might well reserve _Numpholeptos_ for the close. The pure and disempa.s.sioned in womanly form is brought face to face with the pa.s.sionate and sullied lover, to whom her charm is a tyranny; she is no warm sun but a white moon rising above this lost Endymion, who never slumbers but goes forth on hopeless quests at the bidding of his mistress, and wins for all his reward the "sad, slow, silver smile," which is now pity, now disdain, and never love. The subjugating power of chaste and beautiful superiority to pa.s.sion over this mere mortal devotee is absolute and inexorable. Is the nymph an abstraction and incarnation of something that may be found in womanhood?

Is she an embodiment of the Ideal, which sends out many questers, and pities and disdains them when they return soiled and defeated? Soft and sweet as she appears, she is _La belle Dame sans merci_, and her wors.h.i.+pper is as desperately lost as the knight-at-arms of Keats's poem.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 112: See Morley's "Life of Gladstone," vol. iii. p. 417.]

[Footnote 113: Pages 46, 47 of the first edition.]

[Footnote 114: Pages 58-60.]

[Footnote 115: It may here be noted that Dante Rossetti in a morbid mood supposed that certain pa.s.sages of _Fifine_ were directed against himself; and so ceased his friends.h.i.+p with Browning.]

[Footnote 116: f.a.n.n.y Kemble also derived from the story of Lord De Ros the subject of her "English Tragedy."]

[Footnote 117: Some sentences in what follows are taken from a notice of the volume which I wrote on its appearance for _The Academy_.]

[Footnote 118: See Browning's letter to Mr Kingsland in "Robert Browning" by W. G. Kingsland (1890), pp. 32, 33.]

Chapter XV

Solitude and Society

The volume which consists of _La Saisiaz_ and _The Two Poets of Croisic_ (1878) brings the work of this decade to a close.[119] _La Saisiaz_, the record of thoughts that were awakened during that solitary clamber to the summit of Saleve after the death of Miss Egerton-Smith, is not an elegy, but it remains with us as a memorial of friends.h.i.+p. In reading it we discern the tall white figure of the "stranger lady," leaning through the terrace wreaths of leaf and bloom, or pacing that low gra.s.s-path which she had loved and called her own. It serves Browning's purpose in the poem that she should have been one of those persons who in this world have not manifested all that lies within them. Does she still exist, or is she now no more than the thing which lies in the little enclosure at Collonge? The poem after its solemn and impressive prelude becomes the record of an hour's debate of the writer with himself--a debate which has a definite aim and is brought to a definite issue. In conducting that debate on immortality, Browning is neither Christian nor anti-Christian. The Christian creed involves a question of history; he cannot here admit historical considerations; he will see the matter out as he is an individual soul, on the grounds suggested by his individual consciousness and his personal knowledge. It may be that any result he arrives at is a result for himself alone.

But why conduct an argument in verse? Is not prose a fitter medium for such a discussion? The answer is that the poem is more than an argument; it is the record in verse of an experience, the story of a pregnant and pa.s.sionate hour, during which pa.s.sion quickened the intellect; and the head, while resisting all illusions of the heart, was roused to that resistance by the heart itself. Such an hour is full of events; it may be almost epic in its plenitude of action; but the events are ideas. The frame and setting of the discussion also are more than frame and setting; they co-operate with the thoughts; they form part of the experience. The poet is alone among the mountains, with dawn and sunset for a.s.sociates, Jura thrilled to gold at sunrise, Saleve in its evening rose-bloom, Mont-Blanc which strikes greatness small; or at night he is beneath the luminous worlds which

One by one came lamping--chiefly that prepotency of Mars.

While he climbs towards the summit he is aware of "Earth's most exquisite disclosures, heaven's own G.o.d in evidence"; he stands face to face with Nature--"rather with Infinitude." All through his mountain ascent the vigour of life is aroused within him; and, as he returns--there is her grave.

The idea of a future life, for which this earthly life serves as an education and a test, is so central with Browning, so largely influences all his feelings and penetrates all his art, that it is worth while to attend to the course of his argument and the nature of his conclusion.

He puts the naked question to himself--What does death mean? Is it total extinction? Is it a pa.s.sage into life?--without any vagueness, without any flattering metaphor; he is prepared to accept or endure any answer if only it be the truth. Whether his discussion leads to a trustworthy result or not, the sincerity and the energy of his endeavour after truth serve to banish all supine and half-hearted moods. The debate, of which his poem is a report, falls into two parts: first, a statement of facts; secondly, a series of conjectures--conjectures and no more--rising from the basis of facts that are ascertained. To put the question, "Shall I survive death?" is to a.s.sume that I exist and that something other than myself exists which causes me now to live and presently to die. The nature of this power outside myself I do not know; we may for convenience call it "G.o.d." Beyond these two facts--myself and a power environing me--nothing is known with certainty which has any bearing on the matter in dispute. I am like a floating rush borne onward by a stream; whither borne the rush cannot tell; but rush and stream are facts that cannot be questioned.

Knowing that I exist--Browning goes on--I know what for me is pain and what is pleasure. And, however it may be with others, for my own part I can p.r.o.nounce upon the relation of joy to sorrow in this my life on earth:--

I must say--or choke in silence----"Howsoever came my fate, Sorrow did and joy did nowise--life well weighed--preponderate."

If this failure be ordained by necessity, I shall bear it as best I can; but, if this life be all, nothing shall force me to say that life has proceeded from a cause supreme in goodness, wisdom, and power. What I find here is goodness always intermixed with evil; wisdom which means an advance from error to the confession of ignorance; power that is insufficient to adapt a human being to his surroundings even in the degree in which a worm is fitted to the leaf on which it feeds.

Browning tacitly rejects the idea that the world is the work of some blind, force; and undoubtedly our reason, which endeavours to reduce all things in nature to rational conceptions, demands that we should conceive the world as rational rather than as some wild work of chance.

Upon one hypothesis, and upon one alone, can the life of man upon this globe appear the result of intelligence:

I have lived then, done and suffered, loved and hated, learnt and taught This--there is no reconciling wisdom with a world distraught, Goodness with triumphant evil, power with failure in the aim, If (to my own sense, remember! though none other feel the same!) If you bar me from a.s.suming earth to be a pupil's place, And life, time,--with all their chances, changes,--just probation--s.p.a.ce, Mine for me.

Grant this hypothesis, and all changes from irrational to rational, from evil to good, from pain to a strenuous joy:--

Only grant a second life, I acquiesce In this present life as failure, count misfortune's worst a.s.saults Triumph, not defeat, a.s.sured that loss so much the more exalts Gain about to be.

Thus out of defeat springs victory; never are we so near to knowledge as when we are checked at the bounds of ignorance; beauty is felt through its opposite; good is known through evil; truth shows its potency when it is confronted by falsehood;

While for love--Oh how but, losing love, does whoso loves succeed By the death-pang to the birth-throe--learning what is love indeed?

Yet at best this idea of a future life remains a conjecture, an hypothesis, a hope, which gives a key to the mysteries of our troubled earthly state. Browning proceeds to argue that such a hope is all that we can expect or ought to desire. The absolute a.s.surance of a future life and of rewards and punishments consequent on our deeds in the present world would defeat the very end for which, according to the hypothesis, we are placed here; it would be fatal to the purpose of our present life considered as a state of probation. What such a state of probation requires is precisely what we have--hope; no less than this and no more. Does our heaven overcloud because we lack certainty? No:

Hope the arrowy, just as constant, comes to pierce its gloom, compelled By a power and by a purpose which, if no one else beheld, I behold in life, so--hope!

Such is the conclusion with Browning of the whole matter. It is in entire accordance with a letter which he wrote two years previously to a lady who supposed herself to be dying, and who had thanked him for help derived from his poems: "All the help I can offer, in my poor degree, is the a.s.surance that I see ever _more_ reason to hold by the same hope--and that by no means in ignorance of what has been advanced to the contrary.... G.o.d bless you, sustain you, and receive you." To Dr Moncure Conway, who had lost a son, Browning wrote: "If I, who cannot, would restore your son, He who can, will." And Mr Rudolph Lehmann records his words in conversation: "I have doubted and denied it [a future life], and I fear have even printed my doubts; but now I am as deeply convinced that there is something after death. If you ask me what, I no more know it than my dog knows who and what I am. He knows that I am there and that is enough for him."[120]

Browning's confession in _La Saisias_ that the sorrow of his life outweighed its joy is not inconsistent with his habitual cheerfulness of manner. Such estimates as this are little to be trusted. One great shock of pain may stand for ever aloof from all other experiences; the pleasant sensations of many days pa.s.s from our memory. We cannot tell.

But that Browning supposed himself able to tell is in itself worthy of note. In _The Two Poets of Croisic_, which was written in London immediately after _La Saisiaz_, and which, though of little intrinsic importance, shows that Browning was capable of a certain grace in verse that is light, he pleads that the power of victoriously dealing with pain and transforming it into strength may be taken as the test of a poet's greatness:

Yoke Hatred, Crime, Remorse, Despair: but ever 'mid the whirling fear, Let, through the tumult, break the poet's face Radiant, a.s.sured his wild slaves win the race.

This is good counsel for art; but not wholly wise counsel for life.

Sorrow, indeed, is not wronged by a cheerfulness cultivated and strenuously maintained; but gladness does suffer a certain wrong.

Suns.h.i.+ne comes and goes; the attempt to subst.i.tute any unrelieved light for suns.h.i.+ne is somewhat of a failure at the best. Shadows and brightness pursuing each other according to the course of nature make more for genuine happiness than does any stream of moral electricity worked from a dynamo of the will. It is pleasanter to encounter a breeze that sinks and swells, that lingers and hastens, than to face a vigorous and sustained gale even of a tonic quality. Browning's unfailing cheer and cordiality of manner were admirable; they were in part spontaneous, in part an acceptance of duty, in part a mode of self-protection; they were only less excellent than the varying moods of a simple and beautiful nature.

When _La Saisiaz_ appeared Browning was sixty-six years old. He lived for more than eleven years longer, during which period he published six volumes of verse, showing new powers as a writer of brief poetic narrative and as a teacher through parables; but he produced no single work of prolonged and sustained effort--which perhaps was well. His physical vigour continued for long unabated. He still enjoyed the various pleasures and excitements of the London season; but it is noted by Mrs Orr that after the death of Miss Egerton-Smith he "almost mechanically renounced all the musical entertainments to which she had so regularly accompanied him." His daily habits were of the utmost regularity, varying hardly at all from week to week. He was averse, says Mrs Orr, "to every hought of change," and chose rather to adapt himself to external conditions than to enter on the effort of altering them; "what he had done once he was wont, for that very reason, to continue doing." A few days after Browning's death a journalist obtained from a photographer, Mr Grove, who had formerly been for seven years in Browning's service, the particulars as to how an ordinary day during the London season went by at Warwick Crescent. Browning rose without fail at seven, enjoyed a plate of whatever fruit--strawberries, grapes, oranges--were in season; read, generally some piece of foreign literature, for an hour in his bedroom; then bathed; breakfasted--a light meal of twenty minutes; sat by the fire and read his _Times_ and _Daily News_ till ten; from ten to one wrote in his study or meditated with head resting on his hand. To write a letter was the reverse of a pleasure to him, yet he was diligent in replying to a mult.i.tude of correspondents. His lunch, at one, was of the lightest kind, usually no more than a pudding. Visits, private views of picture exhibitions and the like followed until half-past five. At seven he dined, preferring Carlowitz or claret to other wines, and drinking little of any. But on many days the dinner was not at home; once during three successive weeks he dined out without the omission of a day. He returned home seldom at a later hour than half-past twelve; and at seven next morning the round began again. During his elder years, says Mr Grove, he took little interest in politics. He was not often a church-goer, but discussed religious matters earnestly with his clerical friends. He loved not only animals but flowers, and when once a Virginia creeper entered the study window at Warwick Crescent, it was not expelled but trained inside the room. To his servants he was a considerate friend rather than a master.

So far Mr Grove as reported in the _Pall Mall Gazette_ (Dec 16, 1889).

Many persons have attempted to describe Browning as he appeared in society; there is a consensus of opinion as to the energy and cordiality of his way of social converse; but it is singular that, though some records of his out-pourings as a talker exist, very little is on record that possesses permanent value. Perhaps the best word that can be quoted is that remembered by Sir James Paget--Browning's recommendation of Bach's "Crucifixus--et sepultus--et resurrexit" as a cure for want of belief. He did not fling such pointed shafts as those of Johnson which still hang and almost quiver where they struck. His energy did not gather itself up into sentences but flowed--and sometimes foamed--in a tide. Cordial as he was, he could be also vehemently intolerant, and sometimes perhaps where his acquaintance with the subject of his discourse was not sufficient to warrant a decided opinion.[121] He appeared, says his biographer, "more widely sympathetic in his works than in his life"; with no moral selfishness he was, adds Mrs Orr, intellectually self-centred; and unquestionably the statement is correct. He could suffer fools, but not always gladly. Speaking of earlier days in Italy, T.A. Trollope observes that, while he was never rough or discourteous even to the most exasperating fool, "the men used to be rather afraid of Browning." His cordiality was not insincere; but it belonged to his outer, not his inner self. With the exception of Milsand, he appears to have admitted no man to his heart, though he gave a portion of his intellect to many. His friends, in the more intimate sense of the word, were women, towards whom his feeling was that of comrades.h.i.+p and fraternal affection without over-much condescension or any specially chivalric sentiment. When early in their acquaintance Miss Barrett promised Browning that he would find her "an honest man on the whole," she understood her correspondent, who valued a good comrade of the other s.e.x, and had at the same time a vivid sense of the fact that such a comrade was not so unfortunate as to be really a man.

Let witnesses be cited and each give his fragment of evidence. Mr W.J.

Stillman, an excellent observer, was specially impressed in his intercourse with Browning, by the mental health and robustness of a nature sound to the core; "an almost unlimited intellectual vitality, and an individuality which nothing could infringe on, but which a singular sensitiveness towards others prevented from ever wounding even the most morbid sensibility; a strong man armed in the completest defensive armour, but with no aggressiveness."[122] A writer in the first volume of _The New Review_, described Browning as a talker in general society so faithfully that it is impossible to improve on what he has said: "It may safely be alleged," he writes, "that no one meeting Mr Browning for the first time, and unfurnished with a clue, would guess his vocation. He might be a diplomatist, a statesman, a discoverer, or a man of science. But, whatever were his calling, we should feel that it must be essentially practical.... His conversation corresponds to his appearance. It abounds in vigour, in fire, in vivacity. Yet all the time it is entirely free from mystery, vagueness, or technical jargon. It is the crisp, emphatic and powerful discourse of a man of the world, who is incomparably better informed than the ma.s.s of his congeners. Mr Browning is the readiest, the blithest, and the most forcible of talkers. Like the Monsignore in _Lothair_ he can 'sparkle with anecdote and blaze with repartee,' and when he deals in criticism the edge of his sword is mercilessly whetted against pretension and vanity. The inflection of his voice, the flash of his eye, the pose of his head, the action of his hand, all lend their special emphasis to the condemnation." The mental quality which most impressed Mr W.M. Rossetti in his communications with Browning was, he says, "celerity "--"whatever he had to consider or speak about, he disposed of in the most forthright style." His method was of the greatest directness; "every touch told, every nail was. .h.i.t on the head." He was not a sustained, continuous speaker, nor exactly a brilliant one; "but he said something pleasant and pointed on whatever turned up; ... one felt his mind to be extraordinarily rich, while his facility, accessibility, and _bonhomie_, softened but did not by any means disguise the sense of his power."[123] Browning's discourse with a single person who was a favoured acquaintance was, Mr Gosse declares, "a very much finer phenomenon than when a group surrounded him." Then "his talk a.s.sumed the volume and the tumult of a cascade. His voice rose to a shout, sank to a whisper, ran up and down the gamut of conversational melody.... In his own study or drawing-room, what he loved was to capture the visitor in a low arm-chair's "sofa-lap of leather", and from a most unfair vantage of height to tyrannize, to walk round the victim, in front, behind, on this side, on that, weaving magic circles, now with gesticulating arms thrown high, now grovelling on the floor to find some reference in a folio, talking all the while, a redundant turmoil of thoughts, fancies, and reminiscences flowing from those generous lips."[124]

Mr Henry James in his "Life of Story"[125] is less pictorial, but he is characteristically subtle in his rendering of the facts. He brings us back, however, to Browning as seen in society. He speaks of the Italian as a comparatively idyllic period which seemed to be "built out," though this was not really the case, by the brilliant London period. It was, he says, as if Browning had divided his personal consciousness into two independent compartments. The man of the world "walked abroad, showed himself, talked, right resonantly, abounded, multiplied his connections, did his duty." The poet--an inscrutable personage--"sat at home and knew, as well he might, in what quarters of _that_ sphere to look for suitable company." "The poet and the 'member of society' were, in a word, dissociated in him as they can rarely elsewhere have been.... The wall that built out the idyll (as we call it for convenience) of which memory and imagination were virtually composed for him, stood there behind him solidly enough, but subject to his privilege of living almost equally on both sides of it. It contained an invisible door, through which, working the lock at will, he could softly pa.s.s, and of which he kept the golden key--carrying about the same with him even in the pocket of his dinner waistcoat, yet even in his most splendid expansions showing it, happy man, to none." Tennyson, said an acquaintance of Miss Anna Swanwick, "hides himself behind his laurels, Browning behind the man of the world." She declares that her experience was more fortunate; that she seldom heard Browning speak without feeling that she was listening to the poet, and that on more than one occasion he spoke to her of his wife[126]. But many witnesses confirm the impression which is so happily put into words by Mr Henry James. The "member of society"

protected the privacy of the poet. The questions remain whether the poet did not suffer from such protection; whether, beside the superfluous forces which might be advantageously disposed of at the drawing-board or in thumping wet clay, some of the forces proper to the poet were not drawn away and dissipated by the incessant demands of Society; whether while a sufficient fund of energy for the double life was present with Browning, the peculiar energy of the poet did not undergo a certain deterioration. The doctrine of the superiority of the heart to the intellect is more and more preached in Browning's poetry; but the doctrine itself is an act of the intellect. The poet need not perhaps insist on the doctrine if he creates--as Browning did in earlier years--beautiful things which commend themselves, without a preacher, to our love.