disadvantage if he has been shut from most of the outer aspects of life. And he, replying, deprecates a little the outward life for a poet, with amusing references to a novel of D’Israeli’s, where, “lo, dinner is done, and Vivian Grey is here, and Violet Fane there, and a detachment of the party is drafted off to catch butterflies.” But still he partly agrees, and feels that her Danish novel (“The Improvisatore”) must be full of truth and beauty, and “that a Dane should write so, confirms me in a belief that Italy is stuff for the use of the North and no more—pure Poetry there is none, as near as possible none, in Dante, even;... and Alfieri,... with a life of travel, writes you some fifteen tragedies as colorless as salad grown under a garden glass....” But she—if she asks questions about novels it is because she wants to see him by the refracted lights, as well as by the direct ones; and Dante’s poetry—“only material for northern rhymers?” She must think of that before she agrees with him.
As for Browning, he bids her remember that he writes letters to no one but her; but there is never enough of telling her.... And she, noting his sitting up in the morning till six, and sleeping only till nine, wants to know “how ‘Lurias’ can be made out of such ungodly imprudences? And what is the reasonableness of it,” she questions, “when we all know that thinking, dreaming, creative people, like yourself, have two lives to bear instead of one, and therefore ought to sleep more than others”; and he is anticipating the day when he shall see her with his own eyes, and now a day is named on which he will call, and he begs her not to mind his coming in the least, for if she does not feel able to see him he will come again, and again, as his time is of no importance.
It was on the afternoon of May 20 (1845) that Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett first met, and of them it could almost have been said, in words ascribed to Michael Angelo for Vittoria Colonna,—
“We are the only two, that, face to face,
Do know each other, as God doth know us both.”
It is said that the first letter of Browning’s to her after this meeting is the only one destroyed of all this wonderful correspondence; and this was such a letter as could only be interpreted into a desire for marriage, which she, all tender thoughtfulness always for others, characteristically felt would be fatal to his happiness because of her invalid state. He begged her to return the letter, and he then destroyed it; and again pleaded that their friendship and intellectual comradeship should continue. “Your friendship and sympathy will be dear and precious to me all my life, if you indeed leave them with me so long, or so little,” she writes; and she utterly forbids any further expression or she must do this “to be in my own eyes and before God a little more worthy, or a little less unworthy, of a generosity....” And he discreetly veils his ardors for the time, and the wonderful letters run on.
Monument to Michael Angelo, by Vasari
church of santa croce.
“They are safe in heaven.... The Michaels and Rafaels....” Old Pictures in Florence.
He is writing “The Flight of the Duchess,” and sending it to her by installments; she finds it “past speaking of,” and she also refers to “exquisite pages” of Landor’s in the “Pentameron.” And poems which he has left with her,—she must have her own gladness from them in her own way. And did he go to Chelsea, and hear the divine philosophy?
Apparently he did, for he writes:
“Yes, I went to Chelsea and found dear Carlyle alone—his wife is in the country where he will join her as soon as the book’s last proof sheets are corrected.... He was all kindness, and talked like his own self while he made me tea—and would walk as far as Vauxhall Bridge with me on my way home.”
She writes:
“I had a letter yesterday from Charles Hemans, the son of Felicia, ... who says his mother’s memory is surrounded to him ‘with almost a divine lustre,’... and is not that better than your tradition about Shelley’s son? and is it not pleasant to know that the noble, pure-hearted woman, the Vittoria Colonna of our country, should be so loved and comprehended by one, at least, of her own house?”
Under date of August 25, Miss Barrett has been moved to write out the pathetic story of her brother Edward’s death. He had accompanied her to Torquay,—he, “the kindest, the noblest, the dearest, and when the time came for him to return I, weakened by illness, could not master my spirits or drive back my tears,” and he then decided not to leave her. “And ten days from that day,” she continued, “the boat left the shore which never returned—and he had left me! For three days we waited,—oh, that awful agony of three days!... Do not notice what I have written to you, my dearest friend. I have never said so much to a living being—I never could speak or write of it....”
But he writes her that “better than being happy in her happiness, is it to participate in her sorrow.” And the very last day of that August he writes that he has had such power over himself as to keep silent ... but “Let me say now—this only once,—that I loved you from my soul, and gave you my life, as much of it as you would take, and all that ... is independent of any return on your part.” She assures him that he has followed the most generous of impulses toward her, “yet I cannot help adding that, of us two, yours has not been quite the hardest part.” She confesses how deeply she is affected by his words, “but what could I speak,” she questions, “that would not be unjust to you?... Your life! if you gave it to me and I put my whole heart into it, what should I put in but anxiety, and more sadness than you were born to? What could I give you which it would not be ungenerous to give?”
There was a partial plan that Miss Barrett should pass that next winter in Pisa, but owing to the strange and incalculable disposition of her father, who, while he loved her, was singularly autocratic in his treatment, the plan was abandoned. All this sorrow may have contributed to her confession to Browning that no man had ever been to her feelings what he was; and that if she were different in some respects she would accept the great trust of his happiness.... “But we may be friends always,” she continues, “and cannot be so separated that the knowledge of your happiness will not increase mine.... Worldly thoughts these are not at all, there need be no soiling of the heart with any such;... you cannot despise the gold and gauds of the world more than I do,... and even if I wished to be very poor, in the world’s sense of poverty, I could not, with three or four hundred a year, of which no living will can dispossess me. And is not the chief good of money, the being free from the need of thinking of it?” But he, perfect in his beautiful trust and tenderness, was “joyfully confident” that the way would open, and he thanks God that, to the utmost of his power, he has not been unworthy of having been introduced to her. He is “no longer in the first freshness of his life” and had for years felt it impossible that he should ever love any woman. But he will wait. That she “cannot dance like Cerito” does not materially disarrange his plan! And by the last of those September days she confesses that she is his “for everything but to do him harm,” he has touched her so profoundly, and now “none, except God and your own will, shall interpose between you and me.” And he answered her in such words as these:
“When I come back from seeing you and think over it all, there is never a least word of yours I could not occupy myself with....”
In a subsequent letter Elizabeth Barrett questions: “Could it be that heart and life were devastated to make room for you? if so it was well done.” And she sends thanks to Browning’s sister, Sarianna, for a copy of Landor’s verses.
And with all these gracious and tenderly exquisite personal matters, the letters are yet brilliant in literary allusion and criticism.
During
