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- Herausgeber: Booksell-Verlag
- Kategorie: Poesie und Drama
- Sprache: Englisch
The Love Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning & Robert Browning presents a mesmerizing collection illuminating the profound connection between two literary titans of Victorian literature. This anthology captures the nuanced expressions of love, longing, and intellectual companionship shared through their epistolary exchanges. The collection spans a range of literary styles from passionate declarations to introspective musings, providing insights into the emotional and philosophical depths explored by both poets. Embedded within this collection are standout pieces that echo the timelessness of their affection, offering readers a glimpse into the private sentiments that fueled some of the most compelling poetry of the era. Both Elizabeth Barrett Browning and Robert Browning contributed significantly to the literary landscape of their time, with their works standing as pillars of Victorian poetry. Elizabeth, known for her emotive and socially conscious verse, and Robert, celebrated for his dramatic monologues and exploration of philosophical themes, combine their voices to create a compelling narrative of love and collaboration. This collection serves as a testament to their joint influence on movements such as Romanticism and early feminism, providing a kaleidoscopic view of mid-19th century society and the groundbreaking changes it was undergoing. Readers are invited to explore this collection as a portal into the intimate world of two of history's greatest poets, whose letters unveil a rich tapestry of emotions and ideas. Whether for its historical significance or its artful expression of human connection, this anthology offers an unparalleled educational journey through the layers of personal and poetic evolution. With its array of perspectives and heartfelt exchanges, it fosters a deep appreciation for both the universality and particularity of the authors' experiences, underscoring the timeless quest for understanding and empathy in love. In this enriched edition, we have carefully created added value for your reading experience: - An Introduction draws the threads together, discussing why these diverse authors and texts belong in one collection. - Historical Context explores the cultural and intellectual currents that shaped these works, offering insight into the shared (or contrasting) eras that influenced each writer. - A combined Synopsis (Selection) briefly outlines the key plots or arguments of the included pieces, helping readers grasp the anthology's overall scope without giving away essential twists. - A collective Analysis highlights common themes, stylistic variations, and significant crossovers in tone and technique, tying together writers from different backgrounds. - Reflection questions encourage readers to compare the different voices and perspectives within the collection, fostering a richer understanding of the overarching conversation.
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Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2023
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The Love Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning & Robert Browning
Table of Contents
Introduction
Curatorial Vision
This collection gathers three interrelated components—The Brownings: Their Life and Art, Letters (1845 – 1846), and To LEIGH HUNT A joint epistle 1857—to illuminate a single story of creative partnership. Together, Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett emerge not only as lovers but as writers who test, refine, and share an evolving poetics through address and reply. The opening piece offers a capacious view of their intertwined practice; the letters trace its formation in real time; the joint epistle presents collaboration turned outward. The aim is to stage a living dialogue, allowing private utterance and public statement to mutually clarify each other.
At the heart of this curation lies a through-line of correspondence as art. The Brownings: Their Life and Art frames the poets’ selves as mutually revealed through writing; Letters (1845 – 1846) embodies the experiment, where confession, argument, and literary criticism coexist; To LEIGH HUNT A joint epistle 1857 crystallizes a shared address to a named interlocutor. Across titles, the philosophical concern is how affection becomes form, how dialogue makes aesthetic law. Genre becomes a conduit for ethics: a poetics of reciprocity, consent, and respect, where two distinct sensibilities learn to harmonize without erasing difference.
Our aim is to bring forward the motif of answering—from first exchange to collective declaration—and to map an arc running through these works. The Brownings: Their Life and Art offers the vantage for reading; Letters (1845 – 1846) furnishes vivid scenes of thought in motion; To LEIGH HUNT A joint epistle 1857 extends their duet toward a wider circle. Together they invite attention to voice, signature, and the ethics of address. This arrangement emphasizes the craft within intimacy and the intimacy within craft, treating personal communication as an engine of shared literary design.
Unlike volumes that center only on Letters (1845 – 1846) or present To LEIGH HUNT A joint epistle 1857 on its own, this gathering proposes a continuous conversation. The Brownings: Their Life and Art situates the exchange without fixing it to a single moment, while the letters and the joint epistle demonstrate practice and performance. The juxtaposition encourages cross-reading, where motifs migrate from personal page to public address. In assembling these works together, the collection privileges relational structure over isolation, highlighting process, reciprocity, and the emergence of a shared voice across distinct forms.
Thematic & Aesthetic Interplay
The Brownings: Their Life and Art sets out the principle that writing is a mode of relation; the letters test it line by line; the joint epistle exhibits it before a named friend. Each text answers another: a claim is made, then exemplified, then proclaimed. Recurring concerns include the ethics of address, the discipline of attention, and the risks of misreading. Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett appear as mutual readers shaping each other’s practice. The sequence traces movement from solitary composition toward duet, demonstrating how intimacy can become method without forfeiting complexity or independence.
Motifs echo across the volume: names and signatures as pledges, distance and nearness measured by the post, and the hand as both instrument and promise. Letters (1845 – 1846) turn these into scenes of recognition and testing, where affection and critique trade places. To LEIGH HUNT A joint epistle 1857 transforms the same motifs into a public vocabulary of fellowship. The Brownings: Their Life and Art gathers them under a single inquiry about how two lyric temperaments negotiate responsibility to self and to partner. The result is a counterpoint of trust, reserve, candor, and restraint.
Contrasts in tone and medium sustain the dialogue. Letters (1845 – 1846) favor immediacy, hesitations, and sudden flights of judgment; To LEIGH HUNT A joint epistle 1857 adopts a deliberate cadence, balancing courtesy with assertion. The Brownings: Their Life and Art speaks in a panoramic register, drawing connections that the other pieces enact at ground level. Across these differences, subtle borrowings occur: a phrasing tried in correspondence resurfaces as shared rhetoric; an individual stance becomes a joint signature. Such interplay reveals how the authors learn each other’s rhythms while preserving distinctive timbres.
Allusion works both privately and publicly. Within Letters (1845 – 1846), the poets often answer perceived critiques and anticipate future collaboration, preparing the ground for To LEIGH HUNT A joint epistle 1857. The epistle, in turn, retroactively casts the letters as apprenticeship in shared address. The Brownings: Their Life and Art supplies a conceptual frame, clarifying the stakes of turning dialogue into common authorship. Read together, the pieces echo recurring images of distance and approach, thresholds and openings, signatures and hands. The ongoing negotiation among them constitutes the collection’s central drama: the making and testing of a joint voice.
Enduring Impact & Critical Reception
These works matter because they model an ethic of collaboration that remains instructive. The Brownings: Their Life and Art gives language to a partnership where criticism and care coexist; Letters (1845 – 1846) shows the daily labor of such an ethic; To LEIGH HUNT A joint epistle 1857 demonstrates how private accord can sponsor public statement. The collection speaks to contemporary concerns about how intimacy shapes creativity, how dialogue becomes method, and how authorship can be shared. It offers not a theory abstracted from life but a practice visible across different forms of address.
Across generations, Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett have been recognized as central figures, and their correspondence has often been treated as an essential record of artistic development. Letters (1845 – 1846) is frequently cited for its candor, intellectual range, and stylistic poise. To LEIGH HUNT A joint epistle 1857 is commonly discussed as an instance of mutual voice directed toward a shared contemporary. The Brownings: Their Life and Art supports such readings by highlighting the interplay between personal conviction and literary craft. Together, these works have invited sustained reflection in classrooms, discussions, and general literary analysis.
Their afterlives span performance, scholarship, and cultural conversation. The letters are repeatedly quoted as touchstones for debates about intimacy and autonomy in creative work. The Brownings: Their Life and Art provides a framework that continues to inform interpretations across disciplines. To LEIGH HUNT A joint epistle 1857 circulates in considerations of literary friendship and collective address. More broadly, the collection has encouraged artists and thinkers to test collaborative models that preserve difference while fostering mutual regard. Its influence persists wherever partnership is treated not as compromise but as a rigorous, generative practice of attention.
Bringing these works into a single trajectory clarifies their continuing stakes. The Brownings: Their Life and Art poses questions about the relation between feeling and form; Letters (1845 – 1846) offers provisional answers that remain open, experimental, and humane; To LEIGH HUNT A joint epistle 1857 translates those answers into a communal register. The collection demonstrates how a sustained conversation can produce durable art without surrendering spontaneity. It invites renewed consideration of authorship as a shared endeavor, the ethics of address, and the ways literature can build bonds between individuals and the communities they engage.
Historical Context
Socio-Political Landscape
Composed amid mid-nineteenth-century Britain’s confident yet anxious constitutional monarchy, these writings navigate a culture balancing industrial dynamism with hierarchical order. The Letters (1845–1846) unfold during debates over free trade, labor protection, and the meaning of national prosperity, while a rapidly expanding empire shaped language, morality, and print circulation. The Introduction situates the pair’s art within this environment of polite sociability and noisy partisan journalism, where reputation could be made in a morning review and unmade by a scandalous whisper. By 1857, when the joint epistle was addressed, public discourse had hardened around imperial responsibility, humanitarian sentiment, and the costs of intervention abroad.
Britain’s constitutional framework coexisted with absolutist regimes across Europe, and instability abroad sharpened home arguments about reform. The Letters appear just before revolutionary shocks on the continent, yet they already register fears of disorder and hopes for peaceful modernization. Nationalist projects, particularly in the Italian peninsula, fed British fascination with liberty narratives and historical destiny, themes that texture the Introduction’s account of the writers’ aspirations. At home, campaigns for repeal and relief intersected with anxieties about urban poverty and religious authority. The monarchy symbolized continuity, while elected institutions negotiated compromise, and the press translated parliamentary struggle into personal reputations and moral judgments.
Major events decisively framed everyday experience. The Irish famine’s first terrible years coincided with the Letters, testing ideas of charity, responsibility, and economic orthodoxy. Repeal of protectionist tariffs reconfigured party alliances and press rhetoric. Soon after, the Crimean conflict reshaped expectations of patriotic duty, logistics, and battlefield reporting, while 1857 brought imperial crisis that demanded moral accounting at home. These crises altered the meanings of courage, sacrifice, and sympathy that shadow intimate correspondence. Postal reform and cheaper stamps democratized exchange, allowing private voices to travel swiftly across class lines, even as gatekeeping institutions adjudicated which sentiments might be respectable enough for print.
Class distinction structured opportunity and tone. The Letters emerge from a milieu where education, leisure, and domestic space could cultivate artistry while also enforcing dependence and surveillance. Gender norms assigned public authority to men and moral influence to women, yet women’s authorship negotiated visibility through strategies of modesty, indirection, and careful self-fashioning. Racial hierarchies abroad justified extraction and tutelage, shaping metaphors of improvement, civilization, and sympathy circulating in the press. Such discourses seep into everyday idiom, inflecting how affection, duty, and aspiration are articulated. The Introduction observes how private negotiations of feeling resonate with public expectations of virtue, candor, and restraint.
Publication depended on networks that mixed patronage with market discipline. Editors, reviewers, and large circulating libraries served as moral arbiters, rewarding decorum and punishing perceived excess. The Letters, initially private, nevertheless anticipate the scrutiny of eyes beyond their addressee, revealing how authors internalized possible readers drawn from salons, publishers’ offices, and drawing rooms. The Introduction charts how career prospects hinged on periodical visibility, subscription endorsements, and the favor of influential intermediaries. Meanwhile, libel laws and informal censorship encouraged euphemism and tact. Within these constraints, style itself—tone, metaphor, quotation—operated as a political technology, signaling allegiance, dissent, or cautious neutrality.
The 1857 joint epistle underscores the politics of literary sociability. Address and compliment act as tokens within a gift economy of esteem, where poems could function as open letters to a community of peers and readers. In a year shadowed by imperial unrest and recent war, such an occasional poem draws together friendship, public gratitude, and cultural persuasion. It exemplifies how the Brownings wielded civility as a form of critique and alliance-building, using shared references and tact to mark positions without pamphleteering. In doing so, their works model a mode of engagement that unites affection with conscientious citizenship.
Intellectual & Aesthetic Currents
These texts stand at a hinge between Romantic idealism and a more empirical, historically minded Victorian sensibility. The Introduction clarifies how inward lyric intensity coexisted with a growing appetite for documentary detail, argument, and social observation. The Letters (1845–1846) exemplify disciplined self-scrutiny shaped by moral philosophy and debates about sympathy, utility, and conscience. At the same time, they honor imagination’s power to refigure circumstance, aligning aspiration with ethical self-making. The 1857 epistle refines these tendencies into a public gesture, transforming personal regard into civic rhetoric, where aesthetics and courtesy collaborate to persuade without coercion.
Form matters. The Letters cultivate an art of spontaneity that nevertheless depends on revision, quotation, and intertextual echoes traced in the Introduction. Their epistolary mode enables experiment with voice, pacing, and rhetorical address: confession modulates into critique; observation opens toward principle. The 1857 epistle adapts ceremonial occasional verse to the dynamics of friendship and publicity, blending homage with a subtle theory of reading communities. Across the collection, verbal music, syntactic feints, and ironic counterpoint anticipate the dramatic soliloquies that would define mid-century innovation, while remaining anchored in the concreteness of lived exchange—ink, paper, delivery schedules, and the rhythm of waiting.
Philosophically, the period balances liberal individualism with emerging historical and social critique. The Letters weigh self-reliance against obligation, testing how duty to conscience converses with duty to community. Religious revivals and textual criticism alike press on inherited certainties, encouraging introspection without extinguishing conviction. Scientific cultures—geology, physiology, and new communications—reshape metaphors for time, energy, and influence. Railways and telegraphy compress distance, altering expectations of response and availability that the Introduction links to the cadences of exchange. These material accelerations encourage the poetics of immediacy while provoking anxieties about superficiality, prompting a countermovement toward depth, patience, and carefully reasoned address.
The collection also converses with adjacent arts. Theatres revived classical rhetoric alongside domestic realism; concert halls prized expressive virtuosity; painters probed sincerity through meticulous detail and medievalizing symbolism. Such crosscurrents inform the Letters’ tonal palette—alternating concentrated inwardness with staged clarity—and give the 1857 epistle its ceremonial poise. The Introduction notes how cultivating taste meant reading voices across media, training the ear for cadence and the eye for emblem. This synesthetic literacy underwrites the Brownings’ confidence that technique is ethical: to phrase precisely is to respect the world’s textures and the reader’s freedom.
Literary schools interacted competitively. Romantic bequests of visionary intensity and prophetic vocation encountered a polemic for pragmatic clarity and social utility. In the Letters, such contest appears as courteous dialectic rather than manifesto, testing whether tenderness can accommodate argument without losing grace. The 1857 epistle demonstrates coalition-building through style, where tribute to To Leigh Hunt, by its very title, asserts a genealogy of sociable criticism and hospitality. The Introduction positions both pieces as experiments in a poise between privacy and publicity, suggesting that interpersonal address can be the arena where grand aesthetic programs are most responsibly negotiated.
Technological breakthroughs broadened literary horizons without displacing craft. Steam-powered presses multiplied audiences while risking formula. Postal reliability and scheduling strengthened epistolary genres as laboratories for ethical attention. Early electrical experiments and evolutionary speculation entered common discourse, encouraging images of networks, adaptation, and transformation that shaped how writers conceived influence and growth. The Letters test the possibilities of speed and tact; the 1857 epistle distills speed into ceremony, slowing attention to honor, gratitude, and mutual recognition. In this balance, the collection models an aesthetics fit for an age of acceleration: alert, compressed, but determined to preserve nuance.
Legacy & Reassessment Across Time
Subsequent history quickly reframed these writings. The Letters, written as private conversation, circulated publicly only later, when fin-de-siècle editorial choices bolstered narratives of exemplary romance and creative partnership. Selections and cuts reflected the era’s decorum, elevating tenderness while muting friction, thereby guiding early reception toward inspirational uplift. The 1857 epistle, read retrospectively through later upheavals, appeared as a testament to civility under pressure. Together, the pieces acquired emblematic status for mid-century ideals of earnestness, mutual respect, and literary vocation, even as readers increasingly sensed the complexities that polite forms can hide or strategically redistribute.
Twentieth-century scholarship revised reputations. After wars tested faith in progress, critics prized technical rigor and psychological acuity, finding in these materials a rigorous ethics of address rather than mere sentiment. The Letters became indispensable to understanding process—drafting, tact, and mutual critique—while the Introduction organized biographical data into a map of artistic development. Later feminist inquiry foregrounded power, agency, and the negotiation of voice, emphasizing how gendered constraints shape, but do not diminish, authority. The 1857 epistle, in this view, exemplifies how public praise can be a strategy of influence, coalition, and protective self-definition.
Post-colonial and transnational perspectives altered emphasis again. The year of the joint epistle coincides with colonial violence that later readers take as a crucial context for interpreting silence, emphasis, and metaphor. The Letters’ England—secure, cultivated, vigilant—now appears entangled in global structures of extraction and tutelage, complicating the rhetoric of sympathy and improvement. Critics attend to what public courtesy can accommodate, and what it tactfully evades, without denying the writers’ ethical seriousness. This reframing invites a more capacious understanding of responsibility, hospitality, and the costs of comfort that haunt even the most intimate affirmations.
Preservation and dissemination shaped survival. With copyright protections eventually lapsing, comprehensive scholarly editions stabilized texts, documented variants, and carefully restored context suppressed by earlier decorum. Libraries and dedicated collections safeguarded manuscripts, while reproductions, recordings, and exhibitions brought the Letters and the 1857 epistle to broader publics. Digital projects now enable collation of drafts, dates, and postal marks, revealing networks of exchange once opaque. These milestones transformed private correspondence into a classroom resource and a laboratory for editorial practice, while honoring the ethical debates surrounding consent, selection, and the responsibilities of publication.
Contemporary debates keep the corpus active. Scholars dispute modernization of spelling and punctuation, the degree to which annotation should historicize or protect estrangement, and how to respect privacy while teaching the Letters’ exemplary craft. Environmental readings track weather, air, and built space in the diction of comfort and constraint; decolonizing approaches test how hospitality intersects with power; gender studies trace reciprocal mentorship within partnership. The 1857 epistle, meanwhile, prompts reflection on gratitude as cultural work—its risks of flattery, its capacity for alliance, and its claim on the future. Each approach renews the texts’ ethical and aesthetic stakes.
Synopsis (Selection)
The Brownings: Their Life and Art
A concise biographical and literary overview that situates Elizabeth Barrett Browning and Robert Browning within Victorian culture, outlining their major works, influences, and aesthetic commitments. It frames the correspondence by highlighting recurring themes of health, ambition, domestic constraint, and artistic partnership.
Letters (1845 – 1846)
The courtship letters chart the progression from professional admiration to personal intimacy as the poets debate poetics, faith, and reputation. They also register Elizabeth’s health struggles and family pressures alongside Robert’s career concerns, revealing the negotiations of privacy, independence, and commitment.
To LEIGH HUNT A joint epistle 1857
A collaborative tribute addressing Leigh Hunt with affectionate esteem, acknowledging his influence and literary fellowship. The epistle blends praise with reflections on taste, generosity, and the social role of poetry, aligning the Brownings with a liberal, humane tradition.
Author Biography
Introduction
Robert Browning (1812-1889) and Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806-1861) were prominent English poets whose works embody the transition from Romanticism to Victorian poetry. Elizabeth is best known for her collection 'Sonnets from the Portuguese,' a passionate declaration of love, while Robert's dramatic monologues, such as 'My Last Duchess,' showcase his innovative style. Their literary partnership, rooted in deep mutual respect and personal affection, greatly influenced their writings and solidified their places in literary history. Together, they contributed to the cultural landscape of the 19th century and left a lasting legacy in poetry.
Early Life
Elizabeth Barrett Browning was born on March 6, 1806, in County Durham, England, to a wealthy plantation owner, Edward Barrett, and his wife, Mary Graham-Clarke. She was the eldest of twelve siblings, though several died in infancy, profoundly affecting Elizabeth's contemplative nature. Her father, a stern and controlling figure, discouraged her pursuits in literature; nonetheless, she found solace in writing from a young age. The early proximity to loss and a highly sheltered upbringing made Elizabeth a thoughtful observer of the human condition, seminal experiences reflected in her poetry.
Robert Browning was born on May 7, 1812, in Camberwell, London, to a middle-class family. His father, a respected bank clerk, instilled a love for literature in Robert, providing a library that included works from the Romantic poets, alongside classical and contemporary authors. Robert's early exposure to a broad spectrum of literature and the artistic community in London shaped his literary outlook. The advocacy of his parents supported his pursuits, with a nurturing environment that encouraged creativity and individuality, laying the groundwork for a prolific writing career.
Education and Literary Influences
Elizabeth Barrett received her education primarily at home, where she was encouraged to read widely by her father and became well-versed in literature, languages, and the classics. Influenced by poets such as Lord Byron and Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Elizabeth's early compositions echoed their styles, but she later evolved towards her unique voice. Her chronic illness in her youth led her to a life of introspection, further enhancing her emotional depth in poetry as she connected her experiences of suffering and love into emotive verse.
Robert Browning's education was informal but significant; he attended the London University at a young age, immersing himself in the world of literature and philosophy. He was particularly influenced by Shelley and the works of Plato, which shaped his ideas about artistic expression. Browning's love for the dramatic form was inspired by Shakespeare and the emerging modernist styles of the age. His experiences in Italian cities further infused his poetry with historical and cultural dimensions, melding personal and political themes within his work. This blend became a hallmark of Browning's distinctive style.
Adulthood and Key Life Events
In adulthood, Elizabeth initially struggled with publishing her works, largely due to societal expectations of women. However, her breakthrough came with the publication of 'Poems' in 1844, which garnered significant attention. The work not only showcased her talent but also attracted the admiration of Robert Browning, who was already an established poet. This marked the beginning of the couple's profound relationship, fueled by shared literary and intellectual passions, ultimately leading to their secret marriage in 1846.
After their marriage, the Brownings moved to Italy, seeking a more liberated life far from the constraints and judgment of Victorian England. This relocation enabled Elizabeth to thrive creatively, exploring themes of love, gender, and social issues, evident in her later works. Robert, too, flourished in Italy, where he cultivated relationships with prominent literary figures and became increasingly experimental in his style. The couple supported each other's artistic endeavors through their correspondence, enriching the depth and breadth of their writings.
Tragedy struck the Browning household when their son, Robert Wiedeman Barrett Browning, was born in 1849, sparking Elizabeth's anxiety about motherhood, seen in her later reflections on parental duty. Elizabeth’s declining health compounded this strain, prompting the couple to travel extensively throughout Italy to find a suitable climate for her health. This journey not only provided a backdrop for their creativity but drew them closer, showcasing their struggles against societal norms and personal adversities.
In 1861, Elizabeth achieved widespread acclaim for 'Sonnets from the Portuguese,' which, through its exploration of love and devotion, emerged as a high-point in her career. Unfortunately, her health deteriorated even further, leaving Robert to care for her. During this period of illness, the couple's unbreakable bond became a symbol of resilience amid hardship, demonstrating the power of love in transcending physical limitations and the societal boundaries of their time.
Robert faced challenges in gaining public acceptance for his dramatic monologues, with works like 'Men and Women' (1855) often criticized for their stylistic innovation. However, his relentless pursuit of authenticity in voice and subject matter led to masterpieces that highlighted human psychology and moral ambiguity, gradually attracting a devoted readership. His unique ability to encapsulate emotion and drama in verse positioned him as an influential figure in the evolution of Victorian poetry.
Political and cultural events of the time, such as the Italian Revolution, also shaped Robert's worldview and inspired works like 'Pippa Passes' (1841), highlighting personal liberty and social justice. His poems often expressed sympathy for the struggles of the oppressed, driven by a belief in freedom and individual aspirations. Elizabeth's own social concerns, particularly regarding child labor and women's rights, reflected a collective advocacy for progressive ideals, intertwining their works with contemporary socio-political issues.
The death of Elizabeth on June 29, 1861, marked a pivotal moment in Robert's life and work. Grieving deeply, he buried her in the New Florence Cemetery in Italy, insisting on crafting a lasting tribute to her memory through his poetry. He continued to write, producing multiple works that alluded to their shared life, imbuing them with nostalgia and emotional depth. The loss also prompted him to reevaluate his place in the literary world, seeking to uphold Elizabeth's legacy through his continued contributions.
In the latter part of Robert's life, he found solace in his friendships and collaborations with fellow poets and scholars. He continued to garner respect in literary circles, eventually consulting for the Pall Mall Gazette and engaging in public readings. Robert's dedication to his craft ensured his relevance to a new generation of poets, representing a bridge between traditional forms and modernist experimentalism, establishing him as a significant figure in the Victorian literary canon.
Literary Career
Elizabeth Barrett Browning's literary career began in earnest with the publication of 'Poems' in 1844, which led to substantial public and critical acclaim. Her distinctively personal and often politically charged poetry foreshadowed her later masterpieces. This compendium included works such as 'The Battle of Marathon,' showcasing not only her lyrical talents but also her ability to engage with themes of liberty and personal agency, hallmarks of her style throughout her career.
'Sonnets from the Portuguese' (1850) remains Elizabeth's most famous work, revered for its emotional depth and innovative structure. The sequence, written during her courtship with Robert, defies the conventional sonnet form to capture the nuances of love, longing, and personal identity. This collection brought Elizabeth renewed acclaim, resonating strongly with readers and solidifying her legacy as one of the foremost female poets of her time.
Robert Browning's career in poetry began earnestly with the publication of 'Pauline' in 1833, showcasing a dramatic monologue that embedded philosophical introspection into its narrative. Although met with mixed reviews, this work laid the foundation for his signature style, marked by rich language and character-driven storytelling. His later collections, such as 'Dramatic Lyrics' (1842) and 'Dramatic Romances and Lyrics' (1845), further established his reputation and innovative approach to poetry.
Browning's breakthrough came with 'Men and Women' (1855), a collection featuring some of his most acclaimed dramatic monologues. These works challenged readers' perceptions, pushing against the boundaries of poetic convention. Critics began to appreciate his mastery over voice and character, affirming Browning's place among the eminent poets of the Victorian era. His ability to integrate psychological complexity into verse garnered both critical and popular acclaim.
Throughout his career, Robert Browning explored diverse themes, including religion, love, and morality, experimenting with form and structure to convey emotional and ethical dilemmas. Works such as 'The Ring and the Book' (1868-1869), a long narrative poem addressing the legal and philosophical themes surrounding a murder trial in 17th-century Rome, showcased his ambition and his capacity to weave intricate narratives. This monumental work affirmed his status as an innovator, influencing modern poetry.
Both Browning siblings faced evolving critical receptions in their later years. Elizabeth's untimely death temporarily overshadowed Robert’s contributions, yet he emerged resilient, publishing notable works such as 'Ferishtah's Fancies' and 'Asolando.' These continued his exploration of human experience and emotion, reinforcing Browning's artistry and a persistent relevance in literary conversations.
The public's perception of Robert Browning changed significantly by the time of his death in 1889; he had transitioned from a controversial figure to a celebrated poet. Posthumously, Browning's work has been analyzed for its psychological depth and dramatic presentation, adapting and evolving within literary scholarship. His union with Elizabeth has been described as a creative partnership that shaped and deepened their contributions, leaving a complex legacy that endures in contemporary poetry.
Greatest Achievements
Both Robert and Elizabeth Barrett Browning achieved renowned acclaim in literary circles. Elizabeth's 'Sonnets from the Portuguese' has entered the canon as one of the most celebrated love poems, while Robert's innovative dramatic monologues transformed the landscape of Victorian poetry. Their works' enduring popularity and influence elevate them as pivotal figures whose contributions resonate profoundly in the study of English literature and the evolution of poetic forms.
Beliefs and Advocacy
Elizabeth Barrett Browning was a fervent advocate for social reform, particularly women's rights and child labor laws. Her poem 'The Cry of the Children' (1843) serves as a poignant critique of the exploitation faced by child workers during the Industrial Revolution, illustrating her belief in the transformative power of poetry as a means of raising awareness and moving others toward justice. Her activism was integral to her identity, deeply intertwined with her literary output.
Robert Browning, too, held strong social convictions, often reflecting on themes of freedom and personal autonomy within his work. He believed in the power of the individual to shape their destiny, expressed through characters grappling with moral dilemmas. His connection to the Italian Risorgimento and the fight for Italian unification showcased his political engagements, adding a layer of depth to his poetry as a response to contemporary struggles against oppression.
Both poets shared a deep love for art, literature, and the transformative potential of words. Their correspondence reflects a mutual understanding of the struggles inherent in the poetic vocation, as they encouraged each other's artistic ambitions. The Brownings' commitment to intellectual and emotional truth served as a foundation for their works, uniting their literary voices with ethical considerations that continue to inspire future generations of readers and writers.
Their advocacy extended beyond poetry, as both Elizabeth and Robert believed in the importance of artistic integrity and moral duty. Their willingness to tackle controversial themes and challenge societal norms exemplified their courage as writers, making them trailblazers who advocated for the marginalized and highlighted the complexities of human experience in a rapidly changing societal landscape. Such beliefs remain relevant, underlining their lasting impact on literature.
Final Years
In the final years of Elizabeth Barrett Browning's life, her health fluctuated as she continued to produce profoundly intimate works, culminating in discussions of mortality and love. Her love for Robert and their son, coupled with her tumultuous health, threaded through her writings. However, her struggle culminated in her untimely death on June 29, 1861, prompting widespread grief among her peers and the literary community, as she was hailed as one of England's most prominent female poets.
Following Elizabeth's passing, Robert Browning faced the void left by her absence, channeling his grief into his writings. He produced several significant poems that reflected on love, loss, and existence. Robert remained active in literary circles, cultivating relationships and continuing to write, though shadows of bereavement lingered in his later works. He lived until December 12, 1889, passing away at the age of 77, leaving behind a rich legacy that resonated with both love for Elizabeth and a quest for artistic meaning.
Legacy
The literary legacies of Robert and Elizabeth Barrett Browning endure, as their contributions significantly influenced the canon of English literature. They are celebrated not only for their poetic innovations but also for their steadfast commitment to social justice and profound exploration of emotional and psychological complexities. Their works continue to resonate with modern audiences, inspiring numerous writers while cementing their standing as seminal figures in the evolution of Victorian poetry and the broader literary landscape.
The Love Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning & Robert Browning
Introduction
The Brownings: Their Life and Art
ROBERT BROWNINGFrom a drawing made by Field Talfourd, in Rome, 1855
FOREWORD
The present volume was initiated in Florence, and, from its first inception, invested with the cordial assent and the sympathetic encouragement of Robert Barrett Browning. One never-to-be-forgotten day, all ethereal light and loveliness, has left its picture in memory, when, in company with Mr. Browning and his life-long friend, the Marchesa Peruzzi di’ Medici (náta Story), the writer of this biography strolled with them under the host’s orange trees and among the riotous roses of his Florentine villa, “La Torre All’ Antella,” listening to their sparkling conversation, replete with fascinating reminiscences. To Mr. Browning the tribute of thanks, whose full scope is known to the Recording Angel alone, is here offered; and there is the blending of both privilege and duty in grateful acknowledgements to Messrs. Smith, Elder, & Company for their courtesy in permitting the somewhat liberal drawing on their published Letters of both the Brownings, on which reliance had to be based in any effort to
“Call up the buried Past again,”
and construct the story, from season to season, so far as might be, of that wonderful interlude of the wedded life of the poets.
Yet any formality of thanks to this house is almost lost sight of in the rush of memories of that long and mutually-trusting friendship between the late George Murray Smith, the former head of this firm, and Robert Browning, a friendship which was one of the choicest treasures in both their lives.
To The Macmillan Company, the publishers for both the first and the present Lord Tennyson; To Houghton Mifflin Company; to Messrs. Dodd, Mead, & Company; to The Cornhill Magazine (to which the writer is indebted for some data regarding Browning and Professor Masson); to each and all, acknowledgments are offered for their courtesy which has invested with added charm a work than which none was ever more completely a labor of love.
To Edith, Contessa Rucellai (náta Bronson), whose characteristically lovely kindness placed at the disposal of this volume a number of letters written by Robert Browning to her mother, Mrs. Arthur Bronson, special gratitude is offered.
“Poetry,” said Mrs. Browning, “is its own exceeding great reward.” Any effort, however remote its results from the ideal that haunted the writer, to interpret the lives of such transcendent genius and nobleness as those of Robert and Elizabeth Barrett Browning, must also be its own exceeding reward in leading to a passion of pursuit of all that is highest and holiest in the life that now is, and in that which is to come.
LILIAN WHITING
The Brunswick, Boston Midsummer Days, 1911
ILLUSTRATIONS
In Photogravure
Robert Browning From a drawing by Field Talfourd, Rome, 1855
Frontispiece
Page
Elizabeth Barrett Browning From a drawing by Field Talfourd, Rome, 1855
39
Engravings
Busts of Robert and Elizabeth Barrett Browning
2
Monument to Michael Angelo, by Vasari Church of Santa Croce, Florence
80
Old Monastery at Vallombrosa
98
The Guardian Angel, Guercino Church of San Agostino, Fano
103
Monument to Dante, by Stefano Ricci Piazza di Santa Croce, Florence
108
Palazzo Vecchio, Florence
113
Statue of Savonarola, by E. Pazzi Sala dei Cinquecento, Palazzo Vecchio, Florence
116
Fresco of Dante, by Giotto The Bargello, Florence
121
Cathedral of Santa Maria del Fiore, Florence (known as the Duomo)
126
The Ponte Vecchio and the Arno, Florence
142
Casa Guidi
146
The Clasped Hands of the Brownings Cast in bronze from the model taken by Harriet Hosmer in Rome, 1853
153
The Campagna and Ruins of the Claudian Aqueducts, Rome
156
The Coronation of the Virgin, by Filippo Lippi Accademia di Belle Arti, Florence
166
Andrea del Sarto. Portrait of the Artist and his Wife Pitti Gallery, Florence
170
Equestrian Statue of Ferdinando de’ Medici, by Giovanni da Bologna Piazza dell’ Annunziata, Florence
174
Villa Petraja, near Florence
178
Church of San Miniato, near Florence
182
The Palazzo Barberini, Via Quattro Fontane, Rome
188
The English Cemetery, Florence
197
Tomb of Elizabeth Barrett Browning
200
Kate Field From the portrait by Elihu Vedder, Florence, 1860
208
The Pallazzo Riccardi, Florence
214
Bust of Robert Browning, by his Son
226
Portrait of Robert Browning in 1882, by his Son
242
Church of San Lorenzo, Florence
246
Portrait of Robert Barrett Browning, as a Child, 1859
263
Portrait of Robert Browning, by George Frederick Watts, R.A.
270
Mrs. Arthur Bronson, by Ellen Montalba, in Asolo
274
Miss Edith Bronson, (Comtessa Rucellai)
280
Portrait of Professor Hiram Corson, by J. Colin Forbes, R.A.
290
Palazzo Rezzonico, Venice
294
Engraved Facsimile of a letter from Robert Browning to Professor Hiram Corson
260
CHAPTER I
1812-1833
“Allons! after the Great Companions! and to belong to them!” “To know the universe itself as a road—as many roads—as roads for travelling souls.”
The Most Exquisite Romance of Modern Life—Ancestry and Youth of Robert Browning—Love of Music—Formative Influences—The Fascination of Byron—A Home “Crammed with Books”—The Spell of Shelley—“Incondita”—Poetic Vocation Definitely Chosen—“Pauline.”
Such a very page de Contes is the life of the wedded poets, Robert and Elizabeth Barrett Browning, that it is difficult to realize that this immortal idyl of Poetry, Genius, and Love was less than fifteen years in duration, out of his seventy-seven, and her fifty-five years of life. It is a story that has touched the entire world
“... with mystic gleams, Like fragments of forgotten dreams,”
this story of beautiful associations and friendships, of artistic creation, and of the entrance on a wonderful realm of inspiration and loveliness. At the time of their marriage he was in his thirty-fifth, and she in her forty-first year, although she is described as looking so youthful that she was like a girl, in her slender, flower-like grace; and he lived on for twenty-eight years after
“Clouds and darkness Fell upon Camelot,”
with the death of his “Lyric Love.” The story of the most beautiful romance that the world has ever known thus falls into three distinctive periods,—that of the separate life of each up to the time of their marriage; their married life, with its scenic setting in the enchantment of Italy; and his life after her withdrawal from earthly scenes. The story is also of duplex texture; for the outer life, rich in associations, travel, impressions, is but the visible side of the life of great creative art. A delightful journey is made, but its record is not limited to the enjoyment of friends and place; a poem is written whose charm and power persist through all the years.
Busts of Robert and Elizabeth Barrett Browning
Made in 1861 by William Wetmore Story
No adequate word could be written of the Brownings that did not take account of this twofold life of the poets. It is almost unprecedented that the power and resplendence and beauty of the life of art should find, in the temporal environment, so eminent a correspondence of beauty as it did with Robert and Elizabeth Browning. Not that they were in any wise exempt from sorrow and pain; the poet, least of all, would choose to be translated, even if he might, to some enchanted region remote from all the mingled experiences of humanity; it is the common lot of destiny, with its prismatic blending of failure and success, of purpose and achievement, of hope and defeat, of love and sorrow, out of which the poet draws his song. He would not choose
“That jar of violet wine set in the air, That palest rose sweet in the night of life,”
to the exclusion of the common experiences of the day.
“Who never ate his bread in sorrow, Who never spent the darksome hours Weeping, and watching for the morrow, He knows you not, ye unseen Powers.”
But to those who, poets or otherwise, see life somewhat in the true proportion of its lasting relations, events are largely transmuted into experiences, and are realized in their extended relations. The destiny of the Brownings led them into constantly picturesque surroundings; and the force and manliness of his nature, the tender sweetness and playful loveliness of hers, combined with their vast intellectual range, their mutual genius for friendships, their devotion to each other and to their son, their reverence for their art, and their lofty and noble spirituality of nature,—all united to produce this exquisite and unrivaled romance of life,—
“A Beauty passing the earth’s store.”
The rapture of the poet’s dream pervaded every experience.
“O Life, O Poetry, Which means life in life.”
The transmutation of each into the other, both Life and Poetry, as revealed in their lives, is something as exceptional as it is beautiful in the world’s history.
It is only to those who live for something higher than merely personal ends, that the highest happiness can come; and the aim of these wedded poets may well be read in the lines from “Aurora Leigh”:
“... Beloved, let us love so well, Our work shall still be better for our love, And still our love be sweeter for our work, And both commended, for the sake of each, By all true workers and true lovers born.”
In the ancestry of Robert Browning there was nothing especially distinctive, although it is representative of the best order of people; of eminently reputable life, of moderate means, of culture, and of assured intelligence. It is to the Brownings of Dorsetshire, who were large manor-owners in the time of Henry VII, that the poet’s family is traced. Robert Browning, the grandfather of the poet, was a clerk in the Bank of England, a position he obtained through the influence of the Earl of Shaftesbury. Entering on this work at the age of twenty, he served honorably for fifty years, and was promoted to the position of the Bank Stock office, a highly responsible place, that brought him in constant contact with the leading financiers of the day. Born in 1749, he had married, in 1778, Margaret Tittle, the inheritor of some property in the West Indies, where she was born of English parentage. The second Robert, the father of the poet, was the son of this union. In his early youth he was sent out to take charge of his mother’s property, and his grandson, Robert Barrett Browning, relates with pardonable pride how he resigned the post, which was a lucrative one, because he could not tolerate the system of slave labor prevailing there. By this act he forfeited all the estate designed for him, and returned to England to face privation and to make his own way. He, too, became a clerk in the Bank of England, and in 1811, at the age of thirty, married Sarah Anna Wiedemann, the daughter of a ship-owner in Dundee. Mr. Wiedemann was a German of Hamburg, who had married a Scotch lady; and thus, on his maternal side, the poet had mingled Scotch and German ancestry. The new household established itself in Southampton Street, Camberwell, and there were born their two children, Robert, on May 7, 1812, and on January 7, 1814, Sarah Anna, who came to be known as Sarianna through all her later life.
The poet’s father was not only an efficient financier, but he was also a man of scholarly culture and literary tastes. He was a lover of the classics, and was said to have known by heart the first book of the Iliad, and the Odes of Horace. There is a legend that he often soothed his little son to sleep by humming to him an ode of Anacreon. He wrote verse, he was a very clever draughtsman, and he was a collector of rare books and prints. Mr. W. J. Stillman, in his “Autobiography of a Journalist,” refers to the elder Browning, whom he knew in his later years, as “a serene, untroubled soul,... as gentle as a gentle woman, a man to whom, it seemed to me, no moral conflict could ever have arisen to cloud his frank acceptance of life as he found it come to him.... His unworldliness had not a flaw.” In Browning’s poem entitled “Development” (in “Asolando”) he gives this picture of his father and of his own childhood:
“My Father was a scholar and knew Greek. When I was five years old, I asked him once ‘What do you read about?’ ‘The siege of Troy.’ ‘What is a siege, and what is Troy?’ Whereat He piled up chairs and tables for a town, Set me a-top for Priam, called our cat —Helen, enticed away from home (he said) By wicked Paris, who couched somewhere close Under the footstool.... ········ This taught me who was who and what was what; So far I rightly understood the case At five years old; a huge delight it proved And still proves—thanks to that instructor sage My Father....”
The poet’s mother was a true gentlewoman, characterized by fervent religious feeling, delicacy of perception, and a great love for music. She was reared in the Scottish kirk, and her husband in the Church of England, but they both connected themselves after their marriage with an “Independent” body that held their meetings in York Street, where the Robert Browning Hall now stands. They were, however, greatly attached to the Rev. Henry Melvill (later Canon at St. Paul’s), whose evening service they habitually attended. While the poet’s mother had little training in music, she was a natural musician, and was blessed with that keen, tremulous susceptibility to musical influence that was so marked a trait in her son. William Sharp pictures a late afternoon, when, playing softly to herself in the twilight, she was startled to hear a sound in the room. “Glancing around, she beheld a little white figure distinctly outlined against an oak bookcase, and could just discern two large wistful eyes looking earnestly at her. The next moment the child had sprung into her arms, sobbing passionately at he knew not what, but, as his paroxysm of emotion subsided, whispering over and over,‘Play! Play!’”
The elder Browning was an impassioned lover of medieval legend and story. He was deeply familiar with Paracelsus, with Faust, and with many of the Talmudic tales. His library was large and richly stored,—the house, indeed, “crammed with books,” in which the boy browsed about at his own will. It was the best of all possible educations, this atmosphere of books. And the wealth of old engravings and prints fascinated the child. He would sit among these before a glowing fire, while from the adjoining room floated strains “of a wild Gaelic lament, with its insistent falling cadences.” It is recorded as his mother’s chief happiness,—“her hour of darkness and solitude and music.” Of such fabric are poetic impressions woven. The atmosphere was what Emerson called the “immortal ichor.” The boy was companioned by the “liberating gods.” Something mystic and beautiful beckoned to him, and incantations, unheard by the outer sense, thronged about him, pervading the air. The lad began to recast in English verse the Odes of Horace. From his school, on holiday afternoons, he sought a lonely spot, elm-shaded, where he could dimly discern London in the distance, with the gleam of sunshine on the golden cross of St. Paul’s,—lying for hours on the grass whence, perchance, he
“Saw distant gates of Eden gleam And did not dream it was a dream.”
Meantime the boy read Junius, Voltaire, Walpole’s Letters, the “Emblems” of Quarles (a book that remained as a haunting influence all his life), and Mandeville’s “Fable of the Bees.” The first book of his own purchase was a copy of Ossian’s poems, and his initial effort in literary creation was in likeness of the picturesque imaginations that appealed with peculiar fascination to his mind.
“The world of books is still the world,” wrote Mrs. Browning in “Aurora Leigh,” and this was the world of Robert Browning’s early life. The genesis of many of his greatest poems can be traced directly to this atmosphere of books, and their constant use and reference in his childhood. Literature and life, are, indeed, so absolutely interpenetrated and so interdependent that they can almost invariably be contemplated as cause and effect, each reacting upon the other in determining sequences. By the magic of some spiritual alchemy, reading is transmuted into the qualities that build up character, and these qualities, in turn, determine the continued choice of books, so that selection and result perpetuate themselves, forming an unceasing contribution to the nature of life. If with these qualities is united the kindling imagination, the gift that makes its possessor the creative artist, the environment of books and perpetual reference to them act as a torch that ignites the divine fire. Browning’s early stimulus owes much, not only to the book-loving father, but to his father’s brother, his uncle Reuben Browning, who was a classical scholar and who took great interest in the boy. Preserved to the end of the poet’s life was a copy of the Odes of Horace, in translation, given to him as a lad of twelve, with his uncle’s autograph inscription on the fly-leaf. This was the translation made by Christopher Smart, whose “Song of David” soon became one of the boy’s favorites, and it is curious to trace how, more than sixty years later, Browning embodied Smart in his “Parleyings with Certain People of Importance in their Day,” as one with whom
“... truth found vent In words for once with you....”
Browning, with the poet’s instant insight, read the essential story of his boyhood into the lines:
“... Dreaming, blindfold led By visionary hand, did soul’s advance Precede my body’s, gain inheritance Of fact by fancy...?”
No transcription of the poet’s childhood could even suggest the fortunate influences surrounding him that did not emphasize the rare culture and original power of his father. The elder Browning was familiar with old French and with both Spanish and Italian literature. “His wonderful store of information might really be compared to an inexhaustible mine,” said one who knew him well.
It is easy to see how out of such an atmosphere the future poet drew unconsciously the power to weave his “magic web” of such poems as the “Parleyings,” “Abt Vogler,” “Ferishtah’s Fancies,” and was lured on into that realm of marvelous creation out of which sprang his transcendent masterpiece, “The Ring and the Book.”
The elder Browning’s impassioned love of books was instanced by the curious fact that he could go in the dark to his library, and out of many hundreds of volumes select some particular one to which conversational reference had incidentally been made regarding some point which he wished to verify. He haunted all the old book-stalls in London, and knew their contents better than did their owners.
Books are so intimately associated with the very springs of both character and achievement that no adequate idea of the formative influences of the life and poetry of Robert Browning could be gained without familiarity with this most determining and conspicuous influence of his boyhood. The book with which a man has lived becomes an essential factor in his growth. “None of us yet know,” said Ruskin, “for none of us have yet been taught in early youth, what fairy palaces we may build of beautiful thought, proof against all adversity, bright fancies, satisfied memories, noble histories, faithful sayings, treasure-houses of precious and restful thoughts,... houses built without hands for our souls to live in.” These houses for the soul, built in thought, will be transposed into outer form and semblance.
There is a nebulous but none the less pernicious tradition that great literature is formidable, and presents itself as a task rather than as a privilege to the reader. Devotion to the best books has been regarded as something of a test of mental endurance, for which the recompense, if not the antidote, must be sought in periods of indulgence in the frivolous and the sensational. Never was there a more fatal misconception. It is the inconsequential, the crude, the obtuse, that are dull in literature, as in life; and stupidity in various languages might well be entitled to rank among the Seven Deadly Sins of Dante. Even in the greatest literature there is much that the child may easily learn to appreciate and to love.
“Great the Master And sweet the Magic”
that opens the golden door of literary stimulus. Books are to the mind as is food to the body. Emerson declares that the poet is the only teller of news, and Mrs. Browning pronounced poets as
“The only truth-tellers now left to God.”
Familiarity with noble thought and beautiful expression influences the subconscious nature to an incalculable degree, and leads “the spirit finely touched” on “to all fine issues.”
Browning lived in this stimulating atmosphere. He warmed his hands at the divine fire; and the fact that all this richness of resource stimulated rather than stifled him is greatly to the credit of his real power. Favorable surroundings and circumstances did not serve him as a cushion on which to go to sleep, but rather as the pedestal on which he might climb to loftier altitudes. It was no lotus-eating experience into which the lad was lulled, but the vital activity of the life of creative thought. The Heavenly Powers are not invariably, even if frequently, sought in sorrow only, and in the mournful midnight hours. There are natures that grow by affluence as well as by privation, and that develop their best powers in sunshine.
“Even in a palace life can be well lived,” said Marcus Aurelius. The spirit formed to dwell in the starry spaces is not allured to the mere enjoyment of the senses, even when material comfort and intellectual luxuries may abound. Not that the modest abundance of the elder Browning’s books and pictures could take rank as intellectual luxury. It was stimulus, not satiety, that these suggested.
Pictures and painters had their part, too, in the unconscious culture that surrounded the future poet. London in that day afforded little of what would be called art; the National Gallery was not opened until Browning was in his young manhood; the Tate and other modern galleries were then undreamed of. But, to the appropriating temperament, one picture may do more than a city full of galleries might for another, and to the small collection of some three or four hundred paintings in the Dulwich Gallery, Browning was indebted for great enjoyment, and for the art that fostered his sympathetic appreciation. In after years he referred to his gratitude for being allowed its privileges when under the age (fourteen) at which these were supposed to be granted. Small as was the collection, it was representative of the Italian and Spanish, the French and the Dutch schools, as well as of the English, and the boy would fix on some one picture and sit before it for an hour, lost in its suggestion. It was the more imaginative art that enchained him. In later years, speaking of these experiences in a letter to Miss Barrett, he wrote of his ecstatic contemplation of “those two Guidos, the wonderful Rembrandt’s ‘Jacob’s Vision,’ such a Watteau....” An old engraving from Correggio, in his father’s home, was one of the sources of inspiration of Browning’s boyhood. The story fascinated him; he never tired of asking his father to repeat it, and something of its truth so penetrated into his consciousness that in later years he had the old print hung in his room that it might be before him as he wrote. It became to him, perhaps, one of
“the unshaped images that lie Within my mind’s cave.”
The profound significance of the picture evidently haunted him, as is made evident by a passage in “Pauline” that opens:
“But I must never grieve whom wing can waft Far from such thoughts—as now. Andromeda! And she is with me; years roll, I shall change, But change can touch her not—so beautiful With her fixed eyes....”
Is there gained another glimpse of Browning’s boyhood in those lines in “Pauline”?:
“I am made up of an intensest life, Of a most clear idea of consciousness Of self, distinct from all its qualities, From all affections, passions, feelings, powers.”
The various and complex impressions, influences, and shaping factors of destiny that any biographer discerns in the formative years of his subject are as indecipherable as a palimpsest, and as little to be classified as the contents of Pandora’s box; nor is it on record that the man himself can look into his own history and rightly appraise the relative values of these. Nothing, certainly, could be more remote from the truth than the reading of autobiographic significance into any stray line a poet may write; for imagination is frequently more real than reality. Yet many of the creations of after life may trace their germination to some incident or impression. William Sharp offers a beautiful and interesting instance of one of these when he ascribes the entrancing fantasy of “The Flight of the Duchess” to a suggestion made on the poet’s mind as a child on a Guy Fawkes day, when he followed across the fields a woman singing a strange song, whose refrain was: “Following the Queen of the Gypsies, O!” The haunting line took root in his memory and found its inflorescence in that memorable poem.
It was not conducive to poetic fancy when the lad was placed in the school of a Mr. Ready, at Peckham, where he solaced himself for the rules and regulations which he abhorred by writing little plays, and persuading his school-fellows to act in them with him.
Browning’s first excursion into Shelley’s poems, brought home to him one night as a gift from his mother, was in one of the enchanting evenings of May; where, at the open window by which he sat, there floated in the melody of two nightingales, one in a laburnum, “heavy with its weight of gold,” and the other in a copper-beech, at the opposite side of the garden. Such an hour mirrors itself unconsciously in a poet’s memory, and affords, in future years, “such stuff as dreams are made of.”
Byron, who, as Mazzini says, “led the genius of Britain on a pilgrimage throughout all Europe,” stamped an impress upon the youthful Browning that may be traced throughout his entire life. There was something in the genius of Byron that acted as an enormous force on the nature in response to it, that transformed nebulous and floating ideals and imaginings into hope and resolution, that burned away barriers and revealed truth. By its very nature influence is determined as much by the receiver as by the inspirer, and if a light is applied to a torch, the torch, too, must be prepared to ignite, or there will be no blaze.
“A deft musician does the breeze become Whenever an Æolian harp it finds; Hornpipe and hurdygurdy both are dumb Unto the most musicianly of winds.”
The fire of Byron, the spirituality of Shelley, illuminated that world of drift and dream in which Robert Browning dwelt; and while Shelley, with his finer spirit, his glorious, impassioned imagination,
“A creature of impetuous breath,”
incited poetic ardors and unmeasured rapture of vision, Byron penetrated his soul with a certain effective energy that awakened in him creative power. The spell of Shelley’s poetry acted upon Browning as a vision revealed of beauty and radiance. For Shelley himself, who, as Tennyson said, “did yet give the world another heart and new pulses,” Browning’s feeling was even more intense.
In the analysis of Shelley’s poetic nature Browning offers the critical reader a key to his own. He asserts that it is the presence of the highest faculty, even though less developed, that gives rank to nature, rather than a lower faculty more developed. Although it was in later years that the impression Shelley made upon his boyhood found adequate expression in his noted essay, the spell reflected itself in “Pauline,” and is to be distinctly traced in many of his poems throughout his entire life. He was aware from the first of that peculiarly kindling quality in Shelley, the flash of life in his work:
“He spurreth men, he quickeneth To splendid strife.”
Under the title of “Incondita” was collected a group of the juvenile verses of Robert Browning, whose special claim to interest is in the revelation of the impress made upon the youth by Byron and Shelley.
Among the early friends of the youthful poet were Alfred Domett (the “Waring” of his future poem), and Joseph Arnould, who became a celebrated judge in India.
