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

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СКАЧАТЬ starting that very day. An order, he said, had been issued that no native should leave the country, and it only needed some unusually thickheaded Maire for Mr. Browning to be arrested as a runaway Frenchman or a Prussian spy. The usual passenger boats from Calais and Boulogne no longer ran; but there was, he believed, a chance of their finding one at Havre. They acted on this warning, and discovered its wisdom in the various hindrances which they found on their way. Everywhere the horses had been requisitioned for the war. The boat on which they had relied to take them down the river to Caen had been stopped that very morning; and when they reached the railroad they were told that the Prussians would be at the other end before night. At last they arrived at Honfleur, where they found an English vessel which was about to convey cattle to Southampton; and in this, setting out at midnight, they made their passage to England.

      Some words addressed to Miss Blagden, written I believe in 1871, once more strike a touching familiar note.

      ‘… But no, dearest Isa. The simple truth is that she was the poet, and I the clever person by comparison — remember her limited experience of all kinds, and what she made of it. Remember on the other hand, how my uninterrupted health and strength and practice with the world have helped me… .’

      ‘Balaustion’s Adventure’ and ‘Prince Hohenstiel-Schwangau’ were published, respectively, in August and December 1871. They had been preceded in the March of the same year by a ballad, ‘Herve Riel’, afterwards reprinted in the ‘Pacchiarotto’ volume, and which Mr. Browning now sold to the ‘Cornhill Magazine’ for the benefit of the French sufferers by the war.

      The circumstances of this little transaction, unique in Mr. Browning’s experience, are set forth in the following letter:

      Feb. 4, ‘71.

      ‘My dear Smith, — I want to give something to the people in Paris, and can afford so very little just now, that I am forced upon an expedient. Will you buy of me that poem which poor Simeon praised in a letter you saw, and which I like better than most things I have done of late? — Buy, — I mean, — the right of printing it in the Pall Mall and, if you please, the Cornhill also, — the copyright remaining with me. You remember you wanted to print it in the Cornhill, and I was obstinate: there is hardly any occasion on which I should be otherwise, if the printing any poem of mine in a magazine were purely for my own sake: so, any liberality you exercise will not be drawn into a precedent against you. I fancy this is a case in which one may handsomely puff one’s own ware, and I venture to call my verses good for once. I send them to you directly, because expedition will render whatever I contribute more valuable: for when you make up your mind as to how liberally I shall be enabled to give, you must send me a cheque and I will send the same as the “Product of a Poem” — so that your light will shine deservedly. Now, begin proceedings by reading the poem to Mrs. Smith, — by whose judgment I will cheerfully be bound; and, with her approval, second my endeavour as best you can. Would, — for the love of France, — that this were a “Song of a Wren” — then should the guineas equal the lines; as it is, do what you safely may for the song of a Robin — Browning — who is yours very truly, into the bargain.

      ‘P.S. The copy is so clear and careful that you might, with a good Reader, print it on Monday, nor need my help for corrections: I shall however be always at home, and ready at a moment’s notice: return the copy, if you please, as I promised it to my son long ago.’

      Mr. Smith gave him 100 guineas as the price of the poem.

      He wrote concerning the two longer poems, first probably at the close of this year, and again in January 1872, to Miss Blagden.

      ‘… By this time you have got my little book (‘Hohenstiel’) and seen for yourself whether I make the best or worst of the case. I think, in the main, he meant to do what I say, and, but for weakness, — grown more apparent in his last years than formerly, — would have done what I say he did not.* I thought badly of him at the beginning of his career, et pour cause: better afterward, on the strength of the promises he made, and gave indications of intending to redeem. I think him very weak in the last miserable year. At his worst I prefer him to Thiers’ best. I am told my little thing is succeeding — sold 1,400 in the first five days, and before any notice appeared. I remember that the year I made the little rough sketch in Rome, ‘60, my account for the last six months with Chapman was — nil, not one copy disposed of! …

      * This phrase is a little misleading.

      ‘… I am glad you like what the editor of the Edinburgh calls my eulogium on the second empire, — which it is not, any more than what another wiseacre affirms it to be “a scandalous attack on the old constant friend of England” — it is just what I imagine the man might, if he pleased, say for himself.’

      Mr. Browning continues:

      ‘Spite of my ailments and bewailments I have just all but finished another poem of quite another kind, which shall amuse you in the spring, I hope! I don’t go sound asleep at all events. ‘Balaustion’ — the second edition is in the press I think I told you. 2,500 in five months, is a good sale for the likes of me. But I met Henry Taylor (of Artevelde) two days ago at dinner, and he said he had never gained anything by his books, which surely is a shame — I mean, if no buyers mean no readers… .’

      ‘Prince Hohenstiel-Schwangau’ was written in Scotland, where Mr. Browning was the guest of Mr. Ernest Benzon: having left his sister to the care of M. and Madame Milsand at St.-Aubin. The ailment he speaks of consisted, I believe, of a severe cold. Another of the occurrences of 1871 was Mr. Browning’s election as Life Governor of the London University.

      A passage from a letter dated March 30, ‘72, bears striking testimony to the constant warmth of his affections.

‘… The misfortune, which I did not guess when I accepted the invitation, is that I shall lose some of the last days of Milsand, who has been here for the last month: no words can express the love I have for him, you know. He is increasingly precious to me… . Waring came back the other day, after thirty years’ absence, the same as ever, — nearly. He has been Prime Minister at New Zealand for a year and a half, but gets tired, and returns home with a poem.’*

* ‘Ranolf and Amohia’.

      This is my last extract from the correspondence with Miss Blagden. Her death closed it altogether within the year.

      It is difficult to infer from letters, however intimate, the dominant state of the writer’s mind: most of all to do so in Mr. Browning’s case, from such passages of his correspondence as circumstances allow me to quote. Letters written in intimacy, and to the same friend, often express a recurrent mood, a revived set of associations, which for the moment destroys the habitual balance of feeling. The same effect is sometimes produced in personal intercourse; and the more varied the life, the more versatile the nature, the more readily in either case will a lately unused spring of emotion well up at the passing touch. We may even fancy we read into the letters of 1870 that eerie, haunting sadness of a cherished memory from which, in spite of ourselves, life is bearing us away. We may also err in so doing. But literary creation, patiently carried on through a given period, is usually a fair reflection of the general moral and mental conditions under which it has taken place; and it would be hard to imagine from Mr. Browning’s work during these last ten years that any but gracious influences had been operating upon his genius, any more disturbing element than the sense of privation and loss had entered into his inner life.

      Some leaven of bitterness must, nevertheless, have been working within him, or he could never have produced that piece of perplexing cynicism, ‘Fifine at the Fair’ — the poem referred to as in progress in a letter to Miss СКАЧАТЬ