The Complete Works of Robert Browning: Poems, Plays, Letters & Biographies in One Edition. Robert Browning

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СКАЧАТЬ that we had to pay heaps of guineas away, for leave to go, ourselves, but you can scarcely fancy the wonderful difference which the sun makes in Italy. So away we came into the blaze of him into the Piazza Pitti; precisely opposite the Grand Duke’s palace; I with my remorse, and poor Robert without a single reproach. Any other man, a little lower than the angels, would have stamped and sworn a little for the mere relief of the thing,—but as for his being angry with me for any cause except not eating enough dinner, the said sun would turn the wrong way first.”

Mrs. Browning’s dog, Flush, was a member of the household not to be ignored, and her one source of consolation, in being turned away from the Vallombrosa summer, lay in the fact that “Flush hated it,” and was frightened by the vast and somber pine forests. “Flush likes civilized life,” said Mrs. Browning laughingly, “and the society of little dogs with turned-up tails, such as abound in Florence.”

      So now they bestowed themselves in “rooms yellow with sunshine from morning till night,” in Casa Guidi, where, “for good omen,” they looked down on the old gray church of San Felice. There was a large, square anteroom, where the piano was placed, with one large picture, picked up in an obscure street in Florence; and a little dining-room, whose walls were covered with tapestry, and where hung medallions of Tennyson, Carlyle, and of Robert Browning; a long, narrow room, wraith-like with plaster casts and busts, was Mr. Browning’s study, while she had her place in the large drawing-room, looking out upon the ancient church. Its old pictures of saints, gazing sadly from their sepulchral frames of black wood, with here and there a tapestry, and with the lofty, massive bookcases of Florentine carving, all gave the room a medieval look. Almost could one fancy that it enthroned the “fairy lady of Shalott,” who might weave

      “... from day to day,

       A magic web of colors gay.”

Dante’s grave profile, a cast of the face of Keats taken after death, and a few portraits of friends, added their interest to the atmosphere of a salon that seemed made for poets’ uses. There were vast expanses of mirrors in the old carved Florentine frames, a colossal green velvet sofa, suggesting a catafalque, and a supernaturally deep easy-chair, in the same green velvet, which was Mrs. Browning’s favorite seat when she donned her singing robes. Near this low arm-chair was always her little table, strewn with writing materials, books, and newspapers. Other tables in the salotto bore gayly bound volumes, the gifts of brother authors. On the floor of a bedroom were the arms (in scabola), of the last count who had lived in this apartment, and there was a picturesque oil-jar, to hold rain-water, which Mrs. Browning declared would just hold the Captain of the Forty Thieves. All in all, the poets vowed they would not change homes with the Grand Duke himself, who was their neighbor in the Palazzo Pitti at the distance of a stone’s throw. In the late afternoons they would wander out to the Loggia dei Lanzi, where Mrs. Browning greatly admired Cellini’s Perseus with the Head of Medusa, and they watched “the divine sunsets on the Arno, turning it to pure gold under the bridges.” Sometimes they were joined by Hiram Powers, who was one of their earliest friends in Florence, “our chief friend and favorite,” Mrs. Browning said of him, and she found him a “simple, straightforward, genial American, as simple as the man of genius he has proved himself need be.” Another friend of these early days was Miss Boyle, a niece of the Earl of Cork, somewhat a poet, withal, who, with her mother, was domiciled in the Villa Careggi, in which Lorenzo il Magnifico died, and which was loaned to the Boyles by Lord Holland. Miss Boyle frequently dropped in on them in the evening, “to catch us at hot chestnuts and mulled wine,” said Mrs. Browning, “and a good deal of laughing she and Robert make between them.” On the terrace of Casa Guidi orange trees and camellias bloomed, and the salons with their “rococo chairs, spring sofas, carved bookcases, and satin from Cardinals’ beds,” were a picturesque haunt. The ideal and poetic life of Mrs. Browning, so far from isolating her from the ordinary day and daylight duties, invested these, instead, with glow and charm and playful repartee; and, indeed, her never-failing sense of humor transformed any inconvenience or inadvertence into amusement. She, who is conceded to have written the finest sonnets since Shakespeare, could also mend a coat for her husband with a smile and a Greek epigram.

      The Guardian Angel.

       guercino. church of san agostino, fano, italy

      “Guercino drew this angel I saw teach (Alfred, dear friend!) that little child to pray.”

      The Guardian Angel; A Picture at Fano.

Joseph Arnould again wrote to their mutual friend, Domett:

      “Browning and his wife are still in Florence; both ravished with Italy and Italian life; so much so, that I think for some years they will make it the Paradise of their poetical exile. I hold fast to my faith in ‘Paracelsus.’ Browning and Carlyle are my two crowning men amongst the highest English minds of the day. Third comes Alfred Tennyson.... By-the-bye, did you ever happen upon Browning’s ‘Pauline’? a strange, wild (in parts singularly magnificent) poet-biography; his own early life as it presented itself to his own soul viewed poetically; in fact, psychologically speaking, his ‘Sartor Resartus’; it was written and published three years before ‘Paracelsus,’ when Shelley was his God.”

      A little later Arnould wrote again:

      “Browning and his wife are still in Florence, and stay there till the summer; he is bringing out another edition of his poems (except ‘Sordello’), Chapman and Hall being his publishers, Moxon having declined. He writes always most affectionately, and never forgets kind inquiries about and kind messages to you.”

      Allured by resplendent tales of Fano, the Brownings made a trip to that seaside hamlet, but found it uninhabitable in the late summer heat. A statue in the Piazza commemorated the ancient Fanum Fortunæ of tradition, and in the cathedral of San Fortunato were frescoes by Domenichino, and in the chiesa of Sant’ Agostino was the celebrated painting of Sant’ Angelo Custode, by Guercino, which suggested to Browning his poem “The Guardian Angel.” The tender constancy of Browning’s friendship for Alfred Domett is in evidence in this poem, and the beauty of his reference to his wife,—

      “My angel with me, too,...”

      lingers with the reader.

In no poem of his entire work has Browning given so complete a revelation of his own inner life as in this memorable lyric. The picture, dim as is the light in which it is seen, is one of the most impressive of all Guercino’s works. In the little church of San Paterniano is a “Marriage of the Virgin,” by Guercino, and in the Palazzo del Municipio of Fano is Guercino’s “Betrothal of the Virgin,” and the “David” of Domenichino.

      The Brownings while in Fano made the excursion to the summit of Monte Giove, an hour’s drive from the Piazza, where was the old monastery and a wonderful view of the Adriatic, and of the panorama of the Apennines. “We fled from Fano after three days,” wrote Mrs. Browning, “and finding ourselves cheated out of our dream of summer coolness, we resolved on substituting for it what the Italians call ‘un bel giro.’ So we went to Ancona ... where we stayed a week, living on fish and cold water.” They found Ancona “a straggling sea city, holding up against the brown rocks, and elbowing out the purple tides,” and Mrs. Browning felt an inclination to visit it again when they might find a little air and shadow. They went on to Loreto, and then to Ravenna, where in the early dawn of a summer morning they stood by the tomb of Dante, deeply touched by the inscription. All through this journey they had “wonderful visions of beauty and glory.” Returning to Florence, to their terraces, orange trees, and divine sunsets, one of their earliest visitors in Casa Guidi was Father Prout, who had chanced to be standing on the dock at Livorno when they first landed in Italy, from the journey from France, and who now appeared in Florence СКАЧАТЬ