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

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СКАЧАТЬ room. There was a short parley at the door. It opened, and a sergeant and two Papal gendarmes marched solemnly up to the counter from which drink was supplied. There was a dead silence while Gigi supplied them with large measures of wine, which the gendarmes leisurely imbibed. Then as solemnly they marched out again, with their heads well in the air, looking neither to the right nor the left. Most discreet if not incorruptible guardians of the peace! When the door was shut the music began again; but Gigi was so earnest in his protestations, that my friend Browning suggested we should get into carriages and drive to see the Coliseum by moonlight. And so we sallied forth, to the great relief of poor Gigi, to whom it meant, if reported, several months of imprisonment, and complete ruin.

      ‘In after-years Browning frequently recounted with delight this night march.

      ‘“We drove down the Corso in two carriages,” he would say. “In one were our musicians, in the other we sat. Yes! and the people all asked, ‘who are these who make all this parade?’ At last some one said, ‘Without doubt these are the fellows who won the lottery,’ and everybody cried, ‘Of course these are the lucky men who have won.’“‘

      The two persons whom Mr. Browning saw most, and most intimately, during this and the ensuing winter, were probably Mr. and Mrs. Story. Allusion has already been made to the opening of the acquaintance at the Baths of Lucca in 1853, to its continuance in Rome in ‘53 and ‘54, and to the artistic pursuits which then brought the two men into close and frequent contact with each other. These friendly relations were cemented by their children, who were of about the same age; and after Mrs. Browning’s death, Miss Browning took her place in the pleasant intercourse which renewed itself whenever their respective visits to Italy and to England again brought the two families together. A no less lasting and truly affectionate intimacy was now also growing up with Mr. Cartwright and his wife — the Cartwrights (of Aynhoe) of whom mention was made in the Siena letter to F. Leighton; and this too was subsequently to include their daughter, now Mrs. Guy Le Strange, and Mr. Browning’s sister. I cannot quite ascertain when the poet first knew Mr. Odo Russell, and his mother, Lady William Russell, who was also during this, or at all events the following winter, in Rome; and whom afterwards in London he regularly visited until her death; but the acquaintance was already entering on the stage in which it would spread as a matter of course through every branch of the family. His first country visit, when he had returned to England, was paid with his son to Woburn Abbey.

      We are now indeed fully confronted with one of the great difficulties of Mr. Browning’s biography: that of giving a sufficient idea of the growing extent and growing variety of his social relations. It is evident from the fragments of his wife’s correspondence that during, as well as after, his married life, he always and everywhere knew everyone whom it could interest him to know. These acquaintances constantly ripened into friendliness, friendliness into friendship. They were necessarily often marked by interesting circumstances or distinctive character. To follow them one by one, would add not chapters, but volumes, to our history. The time has not yet come at which this could even be undertaken; and any attempt at systematic selection would create a false impression of the whole. I must therefore be still content to touch upon such passages of Mr. Browning’s social experience as lie in the course of a comparatively brief record; leaving all such as are not directly included in it to speak indirectly for themselves.

      Mrs. Browning writes again, in 1859:

‘Massimo d’Azeglio came to see us, and talked nobly, with that noble head of his. I was far prouder of his coming than of another personal distinction you will guess at,* though I don’t pretend to have been insensible to that.’

* An invitation to Mr. Browning to dine in company with the young Prince of Wales.

      Dr. — afterwards Cardinal — Manning was also among the distinguished or interesting persons whom they knew in Rome.

      Another, undated extract might refer to the early summer of 1859 or 1860, when a meeting with the father and sister must have been once more in contemplation.

      Casa Guidi.

      ‘My dearest Sarianna, — I am delighted to say that we have arrived, and see our dear Florence — the Queen of Italy, after all … A comfort is that Robert is considered here to be looking better than he ever was known to look — and this, notwithstanding the greyness of his beard … which indeed, is, in my own mind, very becoming to him, the argentine touch giving a character of elevation and thought to the whole physiognomy. This greyness was suddenly developed — let me tell you how. He was in a state of bilious irritability on the morning of his arrival in Rome, from exposure to the sun or some such cause, and in a fit of suicidal impatience shaved away his whole beard … whiskers and all!! I cried when I saw him, I was so horror-struck. I might have gone into hysterics and still been reasonable — for no human being was ever so disfigured by so simple an act. Of course I said when I recovered heart and voice, that everything was at an end between him and me if he didn’t let it all grow again directly, and (upon the further advice of his looking-glass) he yielded the point, — and the beard grew — but it grew white — which was the just punishment of the gods — our sins leave their traces.

      ‘Well, poor darling Robert won’t shock you after all — you can’t choose but be satisfied with his looks. M. de Monclar swore to me that he was not changed for the intermediate years… .’

The family returned, however, to Siena for the summer of 1860, and from thence Mrs. Browning writes to her sister-in-law of her great anxiety concerning her sister Henrietta, Mrs. Surtees Cook,* then attacked by a fatal disease.

* The name was afterwards changed to Altham.

      ‘… There is nothing or little to add to my last account of my precious Henrietta. But, dear, you think the evil less than it is — be sure that the fear is too reasonable. I am of a very hopeful temperament, and I never could go on systematically making the worst of any case. I bear up here for a few days, and then comes the expectation of a letter, which is hard. I fight with it for Robert’s sake, but all the work I put myself to do does not hinder a certain effect. She is confined to her bed almost wholly and suffers acutely… . In fact, I am living from day to day, on the merest crumbs of hope — on the daily bread which is very bitter. Of course it has shaken me a good deal, and interfered with the advantages of the summer, but that’s the least. Poor Robert’s scheme for me of perfect repose has scarcely been carried out… .’

      This anxiety was heightened during the ensuing winter in Rome, by just the circumstance from which some comfort had been expected — the second postal delivery which took place every day; for the hopes and fears which might have found a moment’s forgetfulness in the longer absence of news, were, as it proved, kept at fever-heat. On one critical occasion the suspense became unbearable, because Mr. Browning, by his wife’s desire, had telegraphed for news, begging for a telegraphic answer. No answer had come, and she felt convinced that the worst had happened, and that the brother to whom the message was addressed could not make up his mind to convey the fact in so abrupt a form. The telegram had been stopped by the authorities, because Mr. Odo Russell had undertaken to forward it, and his position in Rome, besides the known Liberal sympathies of Mr. and Mrs. Browning and himself, had laid it open to political suspicion.

      Mrs. Surtees Cook died in the course of the winter. Mr. Browning always believed that the shock and sorrow of this event had shortened his wife’s life, though it is also possible that her already lowered vitality increased the dejection into which it plunged her. Her own casual allusions to the state of her health had long marked arrested progress, if not steady decline. We are told, though this may have been a mistake, that active signs of consumption СКАЧАТЬ