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

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СКАЧАТЬ De Vere Gardens, W.: Aug. 12, ‘88.

Dear Lady Martin, — The date of your kind letter, — June 18, — would affect me indeed, but for the good conscience I retain despite of appearances. So uncertain have I been as to the course we should take, — my sister and myself — when the time came for leaving town, that it seemed as if ‘next week’ might be the eventful week when all doubts would disappear — perhaps the strange cold weather and interminable rain made it hard to venture from under one’s roof even in fancy of being better lodged elsewhere. This very day week it was the old story — cold — then followed the suffocating eight or nine tropical days which forbade any more delay, and we leave tomorrow for a place called Primiero, near Feltre — where my son and his wife assure us we may be comfortably — and coolly — housed, until we can accompany them to Venice, which we may stay at for a short time. You remember our troubles at Llangollen about the purchase of a Venetian house … ? My son, however, nothing daunted, and acting under abler counsels than I was fortunate enough to obtain,* has obtained a still more desirable acquisition, in the shape of the well-known Rezzonico Palace (that of Pope Clement 13th) — and, I believe, is to be congratulated on his bargain. I cannot profess the same interest in this as in the earlier object of his ambition, but am quite satisfied by the evident satisfaction of the ‘young people’. So, — by the old law of compensation, — while we may expect pleasant days abroad — our chance is gone of once again enjoying your company in your own lovely Vale of Llangollen; — had we not been pulled otherwise by the inducements we could not resist, — another term of delightful weeks — each tipped with a sweet starry Sunday at the little church leading to the House Beautiful where we took our rest of an evening spent always memorably — this might have been our fortunate lot once again! As it is, perhaps we need more energetic treatment than we should get with you — for both of us are more oppressed than ever by the exigencies of the lengthy season, and require still more bracing air than the gently lulling temperature of Wales. May it be doing you, and dear Sir Theodore, all the good you deserve — throwing in the share due to us, who must forego it! With all love from us both, ever affectionately yours Robert Browning.

* Those of Mr. Alexander Malcolm.

      He did start for Italy on the following day, but had become so ill, that he was on the point of postponing his departure. He suffered throughout the journey as he had never suffered on any journey before; and during his first few days at Primiero, could only lead the life of an invalid. He rallied, however, as usual, under the potent effects of quiet, fresh air, and sunshine; and fully recovered his normal state before proceeding to Venice, where the continued sense of physical health combined with many extraneous circumstances to convert his proposed short stay into a long one. A letter from the mountains, addressed to a lady who had never been abroad, and to whom he sometimes wrote with more descriptive detail than to other friends, gives a touching glimpse of his fresh delight in the beauties of nature, and his tender constant sympathy with the animal creation.

      Primiero: Sept. 7, ‘88.

      … . .

      ‘The weather continues exquisitely temperate, yet sunny, ever since the clearing thunderstorm of which I must have told you in my last. It is, I am more and more confirmed in believing, the most beautiful place I was ever resident in: far more so than Gressoney or even St.-Pierre de Chartreuse. You would indeed delight in seeing the magnificence of the mountains, — the range on either side, which morning and evening, in turn, transmute literally to gold, — I mean what I say. Their utterly bare ridges of peaks and crags of all shape, quite naked of verdure, glow like yellow ore; and, at times, there is a silver change, as the sun prevails or not.

      ‘The valley is one green luxuriance on all sides; Indian corn, with beans, gourds, and even cabbages, filling up the interstices; and the flowers, though not presenting any novelty to my uninstructed eyes, yet surely more large and purely developed than I remember to have seen elsewhere. For instance, the tiger-lilies in the garden here must be above ten feet high, every bloom faultless, and, what strikes me as peculiar, every leaf on the stalk from bottom to top as perfect as if no insect existed to spoil them by a notch or speck… .

      ‘… Did I tell you we had a little captive fox, — the most engaging of little vixens? To my great joy she has broken her chain and escaped, never to be recaptured, I trust. The original wild and untameable nature was to be plainly discerned even in this early stage of the whelp’s life: she dug herself, with such baby feet, a huge hole, the use of which was evident, when, one day, she pounced thence on a stray turkey — allured within reach by the fragments of fox’s breakfast, — the intruder escaping with the loss of his tail. The creature came back one night to explore the old place of captivity, — ate some food and retired. For myself, — I continue absolutely well: I do not walk much, but for more than amends, am in the open air all day long.’

      No less striking is a short extract from a letter written in Venice to the same friend, Miss Keep.

      Ca’ Alvise: Oct. 16, ‘88.

      ‘Every morning at six, I see the sun rise; far more wonderfully, to my mind, than his famous setting, which everybody glorifies. My bedroom window commands a perfect view: the still, grey lagune, the few seagulls flying, the islet of S. Giorgio in deep shadow, and the clouds in a long purple rack, behind which a sort of spirit of rose burns up till presently all the rims are on fire with gold, and last of all the orb sends before it a long column of its own essence apparently: so my day begins.’

      We feel, as we read these late, and even later words, that the lyric imagination was renewing itself in the incipient dissolution of other powers. It is the Browning of ‘Pippa Passes’ who speaks in them.

      He suffered less on the whole during the winter of 1888-9. It was already advanced when he returned to England; and the attacks of cold and asthma were either shorter or less frequent. He still maintained throughout the season his old social routine, not omitting his yearly visit, on the anniversary of Waterloo, to Lord Albemarle, its last surviving veteran. He went for some days to Oxford during the commemoration week, and had for the first, as also last time, the pleasure of Dr. Jowett’s almost exclusive society at his beloved Balliol College. He proceeded with his new volume of poems. A short letter written to Professor Knight, June 16, and of which the occasion speaks for itself, fitly closes the labours of his life; for it states his view of the position and function of poetry, in one brief phrase, which might form the text to an exhaustive treatise upon them.

      29, De Vere Gardens, W.: June 16, 1889.

      My dear Professor Knight, — I am delighted to hear that there is a likelihood of your establishing yourself in Glasgow, and illustrating Literature as happily as you have expounded Philosophy at St. Andrews. It is certainly the right order of things: Philosophy first, and Poetry, which is its highest outcome, afterward — and much harm has been done by reversing the natural process. How capable you are of doing justice to the highest philosophy embodied in poetry, your various studies of Wordsworth prove abundantly; and for the sake of both Literature and Philosophy I wish you success with all my heart.

      Believe me, dear Professor Knight, yours very truly, Robert Browning.

      But he experienced, when the time came, more than his habitual disinclination for leaving home. A distinct shrinking from the fatigue of going to Italy now added itself to it; for he had suffered when travelling back in the previous winter, almost as much as on the outward journey, though he attributed the distress to a different cause: his nerves were, he thought, shaken by the wearing discomforts incidental on a broken tooth. He was for the first time painfully sensitive to the vibration of the train. He had told his friends, both in Venice and London, that so far as he was able to determine, he would never return to Italy. But it was necessary he should go somewhere, and he had no alternative plan. For a СКАЧАТЬ