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

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СКАЧАТЬ Well, we are all well to begin with — and have been well — our troubles came to us through sympathy entirely. A most exquisite journey of eight days we had from Florence to Rome, seeing the great monastery and triple church of Assisi and the wonderful Terni by the way — that passion of the waters which makes the human heart seem so still. In the highest spirits we entered Rome, Robert and Penini singing actually — for the child was radiant and flushed with the continual change of air and scene… . You remember my telling you of our friends the Storys — how they and their two children helped to make the summer go pleasantly at the Baths of Lucca. They had taken an apartment for us in Rome, so that we arrived in comfort to lighted fires and lamps as if coming home, — and we had a glimpse of their smiling faces that evening. In the morning before breakfast, little Edith was brought over to us by the manservant with a message, “the boy was in convulsions — there was danger.” We hurried to the house, of course, leaving Edith with Wilson. Too true! All that first day we spent beside a deathbed; for the child never rallied — never opened his eyes in consciousness — and by eight in the evening he was gone. In the meanwhile, Edith was taken ill at our house — could not be moved, said the physicians … gastric fever, with a tendency to the brain — and within two days her life was almost despaired of — exactly the same malady as her brother’s… . Also the English nurse was apparently dying at the Story’s house, and Emma Page, the artist’s youngest daughter, sickened with the same disease.

      ‘… To pass over the dreary time, I will tell you at once that the three patients recovered — only in poor little Edith’s case Roman fever followed the gastric, and has persisted ever since in periodical recurrence. She is very pale and thin. Roman fever is not dangerous to life, but it is exhausting… . Now you will understand what ghostly flakes of death have changed the sense of Rome to me. The first day by a deathbed, the first drive-out, to the cemetery, where poor little Joe is laid close to Shelley’s heart (“Cor cordium” says the epitaph) and where the mother insisted on going when she and I went out in the carriage together — I am horribly weak about such things — I can’t look on the earthside of death — I flinch from corpses and graves, and never meet a common funeral without a sort of horror. When I look deathwards I look over death, and upwards, or I can’t look that way at all. So that it was a struggle with me to sit upright in that carriage in which the poor stricken mother sat so calmly — not to drop from the seat. Well — all this has blackened Rome to me. I can’t think about the Caesars in the old strain of thought — the antique words get muddled and blurred with warm dashes of modern, everyday tears and fresh grave-clay. Rome is spoilt to me — there’s the truth. Still, one lives through one’s associations when not too strong, and I have arrived at almost enjoying some things — the climate, for instance, which, though pernicious to the general health, agrees particularly with me, and the sight of the blue sky floating like a sea-tide through the great gaps and rifts of ruins… . We are very comfortably settled in rooms turned to the sun, and do work and play by turns, having almost too many visitors, hear excellent music at Mrs. Sartoris’s (A. K.) once or twice a week, and have Fanny Kemble to come and talk to us with the doors shut, we three together. This is pleasant. I like her decidedly.

      ‘If anybody wants small talk by handfuls, of glittering dust swept out of salons, here’s Mr. Thackeray besides! …’

      Rome: March 29.

      ‘… We see a good deal of the Kembles here, and like them both, especially Fanny, who is looking magnificent still, with her black hair and radiant smile. A very noble creature indeed. Somewhat unelastic, unpliant to the age, attached to the old modes of thought and convention — but noble in qualities and defects. I like her much. She thinks me credulous and full of dreams — but does not despise me for that reason — which is good and tolerant of her, and pleasant too, for I should not be quite easy under her contempt. Mrs. Sartoris is genial and generous — her milk has had time to stand to cream in her happy family relations, which poor Fanny Kemble’s has not had. Mrs. Sartoris’ house has the best society in Rome — and exquisite music of course. We met Lockhart there, and my husband sees a good deal of him — more than I do — because of the access of cold weather lately which has kept me at home chiefly. Robert went down to the seaside, on a day’s excursion with him and the Sartorises — and I hear found favour in his sight. Said the critic, “I like Browning — he isn’t at all like a damned literary man.” That’s a compliment, I believe, according to your dictionary. It made me laugh and think of you directly… . Robert has been sitting for his picture to Mr. Fisher, the English artist who painted Mr. Kenyon and Landor. You remember those pictures in Mr. Kenyon’s house in London. Well, he has painted Robert’s, and it is an admirable likeness. The expression is an exceptional expression, but highly characteristic… .’

      May 19.

      ‘… To leave Rome will fill me with barbarian complacency. I don’t pretend to have a ray of sentiment about Rome. It’s a palimpsest Rome, a watering-place written over the antique, and I haven’t taken to it as a poet should I suppose. And let us speak the truth above all things. I am strongly a creature of association, and the associations of the place have not been personally favourable to me. Among the rest, my child, the light of my eyes, has been more unwell than I ever saw him… . The pleasantest days in Rome we have spent with the Kembles, the two sisters, who are charming and excellent both of them, in different ways, and certainly they have given us some excellent hours in the Campagna, upon picnic excursions — they, and certain of their friends; for instance, M. Ampere, the member of the French Institute, who is witty and agreeable, M. Goltz, the Austrian minister, who is an agreeable man, and Mr. Lyons, the son of Sir Edmund, &c. The talk was almost too brilliant for the sentiment of the scenery, but it harmonized entirely with the mayonnaise and champagne… .’

      It must have been on one of the excursions here described that an incident took place, which Mr. Browning relates with characteristic comments in a letter to Mrs. FitzGerald, of July 15, 1882. The picnic party had strolled away to some distant spot. Mrs. Browning was not strong enough to join them, and her husband, as a matter of course, stayed with her; which act of consideration prompted Mrs. Kemble to exclaim that he was the only man she had ever known who behaved like a Christian to his wife. She was, when he wrote this letter, reading his works for the first time, and had expressed admiration for them; but, he continued, none of the kind things she said to him on that subject could move him as did those words in the Campagna. Mrs. Kemble would have modified her statement in later years, for the sake of one English and one American husband now closely related to her. Even then, perhaps, she did not make it without inward reserve. But she will forgive me, I am sure, for having repeated it.

      Mr. Browning also refers to her Memoirs, which he had just read, and says: ‘I saw her in those [I conclude earlier] days much oftener than is set down, but she scarcely noticed me; though I always liked her extremely.’

      Another of Mrs. Browning’s letters is written from Florence, June 6 (‘54):

      ‘… We mean to stay at Florence a week or two longer and then go northward. I love Florence — the place looks exquisitely beautiful in its garden ground of vineyards and olive trees, sung round by the nightingales day and night… . If you take one thing with another, there is no place in the world like Florence, I am persuaded, for a place to live in — cheap, tranquil, cheerful, beautiful, within the limits of civilization yet out of the crush of it… . We have spent two delicious evenings at villas outside the gates, one with young Lytton, Sir Edward’s son, of whom I have told you, I think. I like him … we both do … from the bottom of our hearts. Then, our friend, Frederick Tennyson, the new poet, we are delighted to see again.

      … . .

      ‘… Mrs. Sartoris has been here on her way to Rome, spending most of her time with us … singing passionately and talking eloquently. She is really charming… .’

      I have no record of that northward journey or of the experiences of the winter of 1854-5. In all probability Mr. and Mrs. Browning remained in, or as near as possible СКАЧАТЬ