5994. Bayard Taylor to RB
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 32, 277–279.
Casa Guidi, Florence.
Dec. 23, 1867.
My dear Mr Browning:
I make no apology for taking up ten minutes of your time with this note, because I think there are certain impulses which one should regard rather than disobey.
I have a very simple story to tell and I will make it short. We came to Florence the end of October, and quite by accident (my wife finding her old Florentine landlady in Mrs. Baranowski) [1] took quarters in the Casa Guidi. I had a fever upon me when we arrived—the crisis of months of ill-health, developed by malaria in Venice—and barely got into lodgings here when I was laid upon my back, helpless, for a month. My illness was very severe and dangerous, on account of the brain being over-excited. For eight or ten nights I was worried almost to death,—certainly to utter exhaustion—by being obliged to copy all of Giotto’s frescoes, to arrange planes of shifting perspective, and to draw the towers of Florence, while the city shifted its place. At the last, I had a dream, or rather a vision, of the Val d’ Arno by twilight. Some Italian women, whose faces I could not see, stood near me. Presently, hovering over them, appeared a shade which I recognized as that of Elizabeth Barrett Browning. She looked upon me with pitying sympathy, and then said to the women: “He has worked enough; he must now rest. Make everything smooth and soft for him.” The women prepared a couch, upon which I was laid with an indescribable sense of peace and repose, and all the forms then vanished. But my rest was real—from that moment the tormenting fancies ceased, and all the pain and trouble of the fever was over. This thing made a very powerful and grateful impression upon my mind, and what follows on the next page [2] was the natural expression of my feeling. I have just written it, and send it first to you—why, I need not say, for you will understand me.
I see by the newspapers that your new poem will soon appear. [3] I await it eagerly, for I am one of your “parish”—as Emerson says of those who specially believe in him. Each master has always a few contemporaries who represent prosperity, and I hope you will consider me one of such. I should be very glad to hear from you if you have leisure and inclination to write. My address is chez Frères Forquet, Naples. My wife joins me in kindest regard and sincerest respect.
Very truly and faithfully,
Bayard Taylor.
Robert Browning, Esq.
Publication: The Unpublished Letters of Bayard Taylor in the Huntington Library, ed. John Richie Schultz (San Marino, California, 1937), pp. 104–107.
Manuscript: Huntington Library.
Enclosure:
Casa Guidi Windows.
1.
Returned to warm existence—even as one
Sentenced, then blotted from the headsman’s book,
Accepts with doubt the life again begun—
I leave the duress of my couch, and look
Through Casa Guidi windows to the sun.
2.
A fate like Farinata’s held me fast
In some devouring pit of fever-fire,
Until, from ceaseless forms of toil that cast
Their will upon me, whirled in endless gyre,
The Spirit of the house brought help at last.
3.
With Giotto wrestling, through the desperate hours
A thousand crowded frescos must I paint,
Or snatch from twilight[’]s dim and dusky bowers
Alternate forms of bacchanal and saint,
The streets of Florence and her beauteous towers.
4.
Weak, wasted with those torments of the brain,
The circles of the Tuscan master’s hell
Were dreams no more; but when their fiery strain
Was fiercest, deep and sudden stillness fell
Athwart the storm, and all was peace again.
5.
She came, whom Casa Guidi’s chambers knew,
And know more proudly, an immortal, now:
The air without a star was shivered through
With the resistless radiance of her brow,
And glimmering landscapes from the darkness grew.
6.
Thin, phantom-like,—and yet she brought me rest.
Unspoken words, an understood command
Sealed weary lids with sleep, together pressed
In clasping quiet wandering hand to hand,
And smoothed the folded cloth above the breast.
7.
Now, looking through these windows, where the day
Shines on a terrace splendid with the gold
Of autumn shrubs and green with glossy bay,
Once more her face, re-made from dust, I hold
In light so clear, it cannot pass away.
8.
The quiet brow; the face so frail and fair
For such a voice of song; the steady eye
Where shone the spirit fated to outwear
Its fragile house—and on her features lie
The soft half-shadows of her drooping hair.
9.
Who could forget those features, having known?
Whose memory do his kindling reverence wrong,
That heard the soft Ionian flute, whose tone
Changed with the silver trumpet of her song?
No sweeter airs from woman’s lips were blown.
10.
Ah, in the silence she has left behind
How many a sorrowing voice of life is still!
Songless she left the land that cannot find
Song for its heroes: and the Roman hill,
Once free, shall for her ghost the laurel wind.
11.
The tablet tells you: “Here she wrote and died,”
And grateful Florence bids the record stand:
Here bend Italian love and English pride
Above her grave—and one remoter land,
Free as her prayers would make it, at their side.
12.
I will not doubt the vision: yonder, see
The moving clouds, that speak of freedom won!
And life, new-lighted, with a lark-like glee
Through Casa Guidi windows hails the sun,
Grown from the rest her spirit gave to me.
Florence. Dec. 1867. B.T.
1. Maria Baranowski, or Baranowsky, at 1870 Via Maggio, Florence (see letter 4081, note 2).
2. See enclosure. Taylor’s verses are written on pages three and four of this letter. They were published in The Atlantic Monthly of June 1868 (pp. 671–672).
3. A number of American newspapers in November 1867 reported (with varying degrees of accuracy) that RB had a “new poem” in the press. For example, The Evening Post (Cleveland, Ohio) of 18 November carried the following item: “Mr. Robert Browning is about to publish a poem of 15,000 lines, containing ‘discussions on a host of the most interesting and puzzling social problems of the day’” (p. 3).
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