E511200B. Casa Guidi Windows.
The American Whig Review, December 1851, p. 462–466
As reprinted in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 17, 352–355.
Modern English Poets.
Mr. and Mrs. Browning are psychological curiosities. Independently of the singular fact of two of the greatest poetical minds of the day being “united in the holy bonds of matrimony,” there are many peculiar traits connected with their history which render them possibly the most interesting married couple on record. Both shrouded as it were from the world, and dedicated to the service of Apollo almost from their very cradle, they, like young Hannibal, have given themselves up to that worship which, though requiring a native genius, is yet more generally determined by some particular accident. In order to render their idiosyncrasy the more intelligible, we shall briefly allude to their personal history, and as a matter of course commence with the lady.
Miss Elizabeth Barrett Barrett is the daughter of a gentleman of moderate fortune, and was born in London in 1812. Being of fragile health and slender frame, she was unable to partake of those amusements to which young ladies of her class in life are predisposed. While her friends sought the ball and the concert-room, the youthful poetess retired to her chamber, and studied Greek, Latin, and other Lady Jane Grey accomplishments. As early as her tenth year, she had written some verses of singular merit, even at that age displaying that peculiar style of thought and expression which have made her the most original poetess in the English language. Her first attempts at verse were given to the Athenæum without any signature, or indeed even initial, and excited great curiosity from their remarkable phraseology. We question if any poet of so youthful an age ever so completely exhibited the complete Minervaism as the youthful Elizabeth. A few years afterwards appeared her translation of Eschylus’s “Prometheus Vinctus,” which may challenge comparison with any translation of the day: indeed it may be pronounced unique, not only on account of its fidelity, but also by reason of its force and point. We merely give one specimen to prove our assertion:
Behold with throe on throe,
How wasted, by this woe,
I wrestle down the myriad years of Time!
Behold how fast around me
The New King of the happy ones sublime
Has flung the chain he forged, has shamed and bound me!
Woe, woe, to-day’s woe, and the coming morrow’s,
I cover with one groan. And where is found me
A limit to these sorrows!
And yet what word do I say? I have foreknown
Clearly all things that should be; nothing done
Comes sudden to my soul; and I must bear
What is ordained with patience, being aware
Necessity doth front the universe
With an invincible gesture.
The two last lines are certainly of an order for which we must, with Mr. Willis’s permission, invent a word, and call Browningesque; for we question if, till Miss Barrett wrote, so singular a position were ever put, like a straight waistcoat, upon the universe.
We will quote only one more verse of this really marvellous translation:
I know that Zeus is stern;
I know he metes his justice by his will;
And yet I also know his soul shall learn
More softness when once broken by this ill!
That, curbing his unconquerable wrath,
He shall rush on in fear, to meet with me,
Who rush to meet with him in agony,
To issues of harmonious covenant.
We have in this the germ of much of Mrs. Browning’s poetry; for, without harping too much upon one string—for her lyre is fully strung—we may yet observe that very much of her music is set in one key, which at times gives a monotony to her verse which really belongs more to its sound than its sense. In the latter point of view, she is undoubtedly the most peculiar of all the female poets of England. But her mannerism is in word, not thought. There is also a provoking fact about her, which lends her the less excuse for the tortuous style of her [p. 463→] expression, viz., that she can, if she pleases, clothe her meaning in the very simplest Saxon.
To this translation succeeded a volume entitled “The Seraphim and other Poems,” which, although not exhibiting the lofty flights she has since reached, was yet ample to convince the world that a spirit of wonderful intellect was speaking.
After this she collected her translations and poems in two volumes, prefixing thereto her “Drama of Exile,” in which she turned Adam and Eve into a pair of the most extraordinary mystics ever created. There is this one fatal defect in this otherwise grand song, that beings constituted as Mrs. Browning makes our first parents never could have fallen from the Paradise of the Bible. Notwithstanding this want of dramatic vraisemblance, there is no drama ever written by a woman that can stand a minute’s comparison with it. It is in the ideal, what Joanna Baillie’s tragic plays are in the romantic. These volumes contain, among many other new poems, “A Vision of Poets,” which is composed in the triplet. Here she runs riot, and indulges in almost every freak of accentuation. Her last production is the volume at the head of this article, and displays more maturity and power, with less of the elements of popularity, than any of her other productions.
We shall now turn to the prominent fact of her life, her marriage, in November, 1846, with Robert Browning, author of “Sordello,” “Bells and Pomegranates,” &c. Their courtship was singular—indeed almost as unintelligible as some of their verses. In 1845, Mr. Browning sent to Miss Barrett one of his plays, which the fair recipient acknowledged in a Greek letter. This brought a reply from the dramatist in the same language, and, as the poet says,
When Greek meets Greek, then comes the tug of love,
a lengthy correspondence in the language of Homer followed, till it led to an interview, which ended in marriage. Miss Barrett had been so long secluded from the world, in consequence of her delicate state of health, that her union was considered, when first announced by their friends, as a mere rumor, partaking very much of the hoax; but the tangible witnesses of wedding cards and cake carried conviction to the minds of the skeptics. After a short time the happy couple started for Florence, where they have resided ever since. Their sentiments are thoroughly Italian and republican, and the fondest wish of both their hearts is “to live and die in sunny Italy.” To those who are conversant with Browning’s poems, this will be readily believed; but we confess this Italianism surprised us in his wife’s, as she is more of an intellectual Englishwoman than any we have read—her conversation even more so than her writings. Since their marriage they have had two children, one of whom died ere it had reached its second year. Her lament is perhaps one of the most singular dirges ever written by a woman’s hand, more especially a mother’s. As it is too long to quote entire, we must content ourselves with a few verses:
Of English blood, of Tuscan birth,
What country shall we give her?
Instead of any on the earth,
The civic heavens receive her.
We think our readers will allow that heaven never had such an adjective before—“the civic heavens!”
And here among the English tombs,
In Tuscan grounds we lay her;
While the blue Tuscan sky endomes
Our English words of prayer.
A little child! how long she lived
By months, not years, is reckoned:
Born in one July, she survived
Alone to see a second.
* * * **
So, Lily, from those July hours,
No wonder we should call her;
She looked such kinship to the flowers—
Was but a little taller.
A Tuscan lily—only white,
As Dante, in abhorrence
Of red corruption, wished aright
The lilies of his Florence.
The next verse contains one of those tender felicities of thought and expression, which is worthy of the daughter of Shakspeare:—
We could not wish her whiter—her
Who perfumed with pure blossom
The house—a lovely thing to wear
Upon a mother’s bosom.
This July creature thought perhaps
Our speech not worth assuming;
She sate upon her parents’ laps,
And mimicked the gnat’s humming. [p. 464→]
Said “Father”—“Mother”—then left off,
For tongues celestial fitter;
Her hair had grown just long enough
To catch heaven’s jasper glitter.
As a specimen of the license Mrs. Browning takes in her versification, we quote a single verse:—
But God gives patience, Love learns strength,
And Faith remembers promise,
And Hope itself can smile at length
On other hopes gone from us.
Even in this short specimen our readers can discern the singularly shaping power of Mrs. Browning’s imagination. Not a thought or image is rendered as another woman would; and we really question if ever before those feelings were so presented to a female mind.
But we will give our poetess in another aspect, for the edification of our lady readers. It purports to be translated from the Portuguese, but the fair translator’s own nature is unmistakably revealed:—
First time he kissed me, he but only kissed
The fingers of this hand wherewith I write,
And ever since it grew more clear and white.
Slow to world-greetings, quick with its “Oh list!”
When the angels speak. A ring of amethyst
I could not wear here plainer to my sight
Than that first kiss. The second passed in height
The first and sought the forehead; and half missed,
Half falling on the hair. O beyond meed!
That was the chrysm of love, which love’s own crown,
With sanctifying sweetness did precede.
The third upon my lips was folded down
In perfect purple state! since when, indeed,
I have been proud, and said, “My love, my own!”
Since Bowles made Madeira tremble, when the first kiss echoed through its forests, we question if a more singular-phrased account of a kiss has been given to the world.
We can trace, since her marriage with the author of “Sordello,” a decided imitation of her husband’s style; or perhaps we ought to say, their poetical nature has assimilated. This is of course natural; for if it be true that the faces of persons who dwell together become more and more alike every day, the more ductile composition of the mind is apparent. In her “Casa Guidi Windows,” this is remarkably visible, and we shall quote an instance so true to the point, that we feel inclined to believe Robert Browning, and not his wife, was the author. The verses are upon the World’s Fair:
Just now the world is busy; it has grown
A Fair-going world. Imperial England draws
The flowing ends of the earth from Fez, Canton,
Delhi and Stockholm, Athens and Madrid,
The Russias, and the vast Americas,
As a Queen gathers in her robes amid
Her golden cincture. Isles, peninsulas,
Capes, continents, far inland countries hid
By jasper sands, and hills of chrysopras—
All trailing in their splendors through the door
Of the new Crystal Palace. Every nation
To every other nation, strange of yore,
Shall face to face give civic salutation,
And hold up in a proud right hand before
That Congress the best work which she could fashion,
By her best means. “These corals will you please
To match against your oaks? They grow as fast
Within my wilderness of purple seas.”
This diamond stared upon me as I passed
(As a live god’s eye from a marble frieze)
Along a dash of diamonds. Is it classed?
I wove these stuffs so subtly that the gold
Swims to the surface of the silk, like cream,
And curdles to fair patterns. Ye behold,
These dedicated muslins rather seen
Than be. You shrink!—nay, touch them and be bold,
Though such veiled Chakli’s face in Hafiz’ dream.
These carpets! you walk slow on them, like kings,
Inaudible, like spirits; while your foot
Dips deep in velvet roses and such things.
E’en Apollonius might commend this flute;
The music, winding through the stops, upsprings,
To make the player very rich. Compute.
Here’s goblet glass, to take in with your wine
The very sun its grapes were ripened under;
Drink light and juice together, and each fire.
This model of a steam-ship moves your wonder?
You should behold it crushing down the brine,
Like a blind Jove, who feels his way with thunder.
Here’s sculpture. Ah, we live too—why not throw
Our life into our marbles? Art has place
For other artists after Angelo.
I tried to paint out here a natural face;
For Nature includes Raphael, as we know,
Not Raphael Nature. Will it help my case?
Methinks you will not match this steel of ours,
Nor you this porcelain. One might think the clay
Retained in it the larvæ of the flowers,
They bud so round the cup the old spring way,
Nor you these Carren words where birds in bowers
With twisting snakes and climbing Cupids play.
The readers of “Sordello” and “Paracelsus” cannot fail being struck at the similarity between this extract and those wonderful poems.
In her verses entitled “A Sabbath Morning at Sea,” our fair Sappho says:
The ship went on with solemn face;
To meet the darkness of the deep,
The solemn ship went onward.
I bowed down weary in the place;
For parting tears and present sleep
Had weighed mine eyelids downward.
This is one of her attempts to engraft the style of Coleridge upon her own; but she [p. 465→] misses that etherealizing, and yet supernatural power, which gave to his adjectives their power. And in another poem she calls in the aid of the Herbert school:
O heart! O Love! I fear
That love may be kept too near.
Hast heard, O heart! that tale
How love may be false and frail
To a heart once holden dear?
But this true love of mine
Clings fast to the clinging vine,
And mingles pure as the grapes in wine.
Heart, wilt thou go?
No, no!
Full hearts beat higher so.
Surely our fair friend has allowed the jingle of the bells to drown the folly of the thoughts!
In another poem called “Human Life’s Misery,” she reminds us of Tennyson. Indeed, one might almost think she had taken up his harp by mistake:
Things nameless, which in passing so,
Do strike us with a subtle grace.
We say, “Who passes?” they are dumb;
We cannot see them go or come;
Their touches fall soft, cold, as snow
Upon a blind man’s face!”
We will give another instance of the sound rendering her indifferent to the sense. The readers of Shakspeare will see how dangerous it is for even a woman of Mrs. Browning’s genius to imitate him:
Grief sat upon a rock and sighed one day,
(Sighing is all her rest:)
“Well-a-day, well-a-day, ah, well-a-day!”
As Ocean beat the shore did she her breast;
“Ah, well-a-day! ah, me! alas! ah, me!”
Such sighing uttered she.
From these concetti, let us turn to the following:
How do I love thee? Let me count the ways:
I do love thee to the depth and breadth and height
My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight
For the ends of being and ideal grace.
I love thee to the level of every day’s
Most quiet need, by sun and candle-light.
I love thee freely, as men strive for right;
I love thee purely, as they turn from praise;
I love thee with the passion put to use
In my old griefs, and with my childhood’s faith;
I loved thee with a love I seemed to lose
With my lost saints. I love thee with the breath,
Smiles, tears, of all my life! and if God choose,
I shall but love thee better after death!
We may mention, as a proof of Mrs. Browning’s love of the abstract, her verses upon Hector in the garden. Some of them cannot fail to amuse the Grecian ghosts of those who fell at Troy. She thus commences:
Nine years old! the first of any
Seem the happiest years that come;
Yet when I was nine, I said
No such word. I thought, instead,
That the Greeks had used as many
In besieging Ilium!
There is little real Greek in the following. We are, however, glad to know that the Trojans had window-panes:
If the rain fell, there was sorrow;
Little head leant on the pane,
Little finger drawing down it
The long, trailing drops upon it;
And the “Rain, rain, come to-morrow,”
Said for charm against the rain.
We will not undertake to assert that little Hectors did not say,
Rain, rain, go away;
Come again another day;
but we have a strong recollection we have heard the little Yankees indulge in the words. It turns out then to be a quotation, and not an original remark. For the sake of our infantile national literature, we are sorry for it.
But the next verse is perfectly ludicrous:
Eyes of gentianella’s azure,
Staring, winking at the skies;
Nose of gilliflowers and box;
Scented grasses put for locks,
Which a little breeze at pleasure
Set a waving round his eyes.
Brazen helm of daffodillies,
With a glitter toward the light;
Purple violets for the mouth,
Breathing perfumes west and south;
And a sword of flashing lilies
Holden ready for the fight.
And a breastplate made of daisies,
Closely fitting leaf by leaf;
Periwinkles interlaced,
Drawn for belt about the waist;
While the brown bees, humming praises,
Shot their arrows round the chief.
The conclusion is very Barrettish:
That no dreamer, no neglector
Of the present works unsped,
I may wake up and be doing,
Life’s heroic deeds pursuing,
Though my past is dead as Hector,
And though Hector is twice dead.
There are many things, however, in Mrs. Browning’s life, to explain her recondite habit of feeling, and its expression. Her [p. 466→] fragility of constitution, which rendered her almost hermetically sealed to the world, we have already alluded to. There is another fact in her life which demands a notice. She had the harrowing trial of beholding a beloved brother drowned in her very sight, while bathing at Torbay, in Devonshire. It is another proof of her mental singularity, that whilst she has recorded the death of her first-born child in fantastic verses, she has never even alluded to the other affliction in the most distant manner.
Mrs. Browning is an ardent admirer of Mazzini and rational liberty, and has sung in her last poem the hopes and fears of a lover of true Italian freedom. We may remark, en passant, as a proof of “the silence of fame,” that in a conversation with Miss Catherine Hayes, the celebrated vocalist, the other day, she told us that although she had been in Florence last year for some time, she was unaware of these two great poets residing in that birth-place of Dante.
In person Mrs. Browning is petite, fragile and slender; her hair and eyes dark, her ringlets long, her features intellectual and delicately chiselled; her manners pleasant and unaffected, forming a strange contrast to the half pedantic tone of her muse; her voice so soft and low as to be almost inaudible across the room. She is of all the English writers of any fame the least personally known, her acquaintance being entirely confined to her own family and a small circle of friends. Her disposition is most amiable, and her piety unquestionable. Her marriage with Browning was, as Shakspeare truly says, “a marriage of true minds.” We shall now devote a few words to her husband.
[This article concludes with commentary pertaining to RB; see pp. 000–000.]
[Thomas Powell]
Reviewed:
Prometheus Bound, and Other Poems (EBB), New York: C.S. Francis, 1851.
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