E611000C. General Review Essay.
Harvard Magazine, October 1861, pp. 71–78.
As reprinted in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 29, 353-355.
Elizabeth Barrett Browning
While England’s chief poetess is so lately dead, it may be well to throw a glance back over her life, as far as we can see it, and turn a page or two of the books we have gathered so much pleasure from.
Mrs. Browning was born in London, in the year 1809. Concerning her early life, we know little else than what we gather from her writings, and this is meagre indeed. It would seem not improbable, however, that the father of Aurora Leigh is the antitype, in more points than one, of the father of Elizabeth Barrett, and that Aurora Leigh’s education is a ghost of Miss Barrett’s. We know that she pored over Latin and Greek before losing the child’s lisp. In one of her shorter poems, we read:—
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.
We can imagine her a strange, lonely, quiet girl, shrinking from London streets and the noisy sports of her companions, to a quiet room, with the books from which most children so instinctively fly. There are some who unfold the manly or womanly—oftener the womanly—nature within them before the little body has well reached even boy’s or girl’s stature. These gaze down into us, and thrill us with their large, deep eyes, while their grave, childish prattle is so inwoven with precocious wisdom or poetry, that we shudder, and fear an early death for them. Such we believe Mrs. Browning to have been. At ten she wrote prose and verse, and at fifteen she earned a reputation as a talented girl among the circle of her acquaintance. Of her early attempts at composition, she says, in dedicating the first collection of her poems to her father:—
“When your eyes fall upon this page of dedication, and you start to see to whom it is inscribed, your first thought will be of the time far off when I was a child and wrote verses, and when I dedicated them to you, who were my public and my critic.”
It would be pleasant to have some detailed record, at her own hand, of her childhood, and the dawning of her genius; but she has left nothing more definite than these lines:— [p. 72→]
And I think of those long mornings
Which my heart goes far to seek,
When, betwixt the folio’s turnings,
Solemn flowed the rhythmic Greek.
Past the pane the mountain spreading,
Swept the sheep-bell’s tinkling noise,
While a girlish voice was reading
Somewhat low for ai’s and oi’s.
Thus trained, she grew through girlhood. When only seventeen years of age, she published her first book, entitled “An Essay on Mind, and other Poems.” It was a strange thing that so youthful a maiden should attempt so old a subject. We can conceive that the Essay was somewhat crude; and the authoress held the same opinion, for she long since withdrew it from circulation.
I wrote false poems, and thought them true
Because myself was true in writing them,
says Aurora Leigh, and, through her, Mrs. Browning.
In 1833, being now twenty-four, she published a translation of the “Prometheus Bound” of Æschylus. This work her more mature judgment has condemned as “an early failure”; and the translation at present standing among her poems is entirely remodelled. In 1838 came “The Seraphim,” &c., including “Isabel’s [sic] Child,” “My Doves,” and the beautiful poem entitled “The Sleep.”
Miss Barrett had never been robust; but about this time she ruptured a blood-vessel in the lungs, and fell dangerously sick. By order of her physician, she was removed, at the commencement of winter, to Torquay, in Devonshire, but only to receive a more severe shock in mind than she had felt in body. Her brother had taken charge of her removal, and stayed to watch over her, and bear her company. A year passed thus, in a house at the sea-side, beneath the cliffs. Miss Barrett’s health had been much bettered by invigorating breezes of the ocean. One morning in summer, her brother, with two companions, embarked in a pleasure-boat, for a few hours’ sail. No danger was feared, as they were all practised boatmen; but before they had crossed the bar, the boat sank within plain sight of their own windows, and their bodies were never found.
“This tragedy,” says Miss Mitford, “nearly killed Elizabeth Barrett. She was utterly prostrated by the horror and the grief, and by a natural, but a most unjust feeling, that she had been in some sort the cause of this great misery. It was not until the following year that [p. 73→] she could be removed, in an invalid carriage, and by journeys of twenty miles a day, to her afflicted family and her London home.” She sank back into illness, and for long years remained an apparently hopeless invalid, bedridden, or nearly so, in a darkened chamber, seeing no one but such friends as were nearest her, with no other amusement than such as her favorite languages and her taste for poetic composition afforded. Even these enjoyments were at one time denied her by a too anxious physician, and she was obliged to have a Greek author bound like a novel, before she could read him in peace.
Of these “sweet, sad years,” these “melancholy years,” she writes, in one of the “Sonnets from the Portuguese”:—
I lived with visions for my company,
Instead of men and women, years ago,
And found them gentle mates, nor thought to know
A sweeter music than they played to me.
But soon their trailing purple was not free
Of this world’s dust,—their lutes did silent grow,
And I myself grew faint and blind below
Their vanishing eyes.
She languished. Her friends despaired of ever seeing her in health, or, indeed, of keeping her long with them. The woman’s nature, turned inward too long, was burning up the feeble body; when a new experience came, to make the invalid a strong womanly woman, and to give the world, instead of a learned priestess of Apollo, who could have had but cold fame at the best, a poetess of motherhood and wifehood, of love in its most perfect form,—to thrill the heart of humanity with some living fire.
Her sickness had not been idle. The study of the Greek writers, Pagan and Christian, had been continued and perfected, and she had contributed to the London Athenæum a series of articles on the Greek Christian Poets. In 1844 was issued the first collected edition of her works. In it was included “Lady Geraldine’s Courtship,” said by Miss Mitford to have been written in the short space of twelve hours, merely to fill out the second volume to uniform size with the first. In this poem she thus praises Robert Browning:—
Or at times some modern volumes,—Wordsworth’s solemn-thoughted idyl,
Howitt’s ballad verse, or Tennyson’s enchanted reverie,—
Or from Browning some “Pomegranate,” which, if cut deep down the middle,
Shows a heart within blood-tinctured, of a veined humanity,— [p. 74→]
alluding to the series of poems by that author, then issued, or in course of issue, and entitled “Bells and Pomegranates.”
To testify his appreciation of this praise, Browning called upon her. A new servant still unused to the customs of the house, conducted him into that darkened room where only friends were allowed to enter; and, once admitted, he could hardly be expelled. So pleasant, however, was the interview, that he solicited, and obtained, permission to renew his visit. The acquaintance, begun thus by chance, ripened into friendship, and friendship between two such natures glided quietly, but surely, into love. It was natural that these two should be drawn together. The truest love between man and woman comes only when each has looked into the very depths of the other’s heart,—into those depths from which speech rarely rises,—only signified to us by a radiance of the face or a holy gleam of the eyes. The struggling utterance of these inmost feelings is the essence of the highest poetry. What wonder, then, that these two should look at once into each other’s hearts, and should sympathize deeply and love strongly?
They were married in November, 1846, and from this time the health of the wife amended. Shortly after the marriage, Mr. and Mrs. Browning made Florence their home; and there they have since resided. In 1849 she gave birth to a son, adding to her wifely estate the full glory of motherhood.
With the Italian air she breathed in a large sympathy for the cause of Italian freedom. Her next work—if we except a second edition of her collected poems, published in 1850—was a poem suggested by the Florentine popular movement of 1848. It was entitled “Casa Guidi Windows,” and appeared in 1851. “Aurora Leigh,” her longest and highest achievement, was published in 1856. “Poems before Congress,” and contributions to different periodicals, chiefly relating to Italian matters, complete the catalogue of her works.
The latter convulsions of Italy deeply affected Mrs. Browning, whose life had almost become incorporate with that of her adopted country. She followed the different movements of 1859 with a more eager eye than had watched the outbursts of 1848. That ten years of intervening life with the Florentines had drawn her nearer to them, and that ten years spent as the poet-wife of a poet had opened yet wider that tender heart which the distant griefs of dead heroes had so touched in early childhood. From the charming [p. 75→] article on Mrs. Browning in the September Atlantic, we gather, that disappointment in her high hopes for Italy, and sorrow occasioned by the loss of a dear sister, joined issue with a severe cold to break down her physical strength; and after a feeble half-illness of three or four months, on the morning of the 28th of June, 1861, she died. We of America mourn her loss no less than her own English countrymen, or the Italian countrymen of her adoption.
The picture which Miss Mitford—who was a close friend of Mrs. Browning—gives of our authoress in girlhood is this: “Of a slight, delicate figure, with a shower of curls falling on either side a most expressive face, large, tender eyes, richly fringed by dark eyelashes, a smile like a sunbeam,” and a look of entire youthfulness. The article in the Atlantic gives us a later picture, thus: “To those who loved Mrs. Browning (and to know her was to love her) she was singularly attractive. Hers was not the beauty of feature; it was the loftier beauty of expression. Her slight figure seemed hardly large enough to contain the great heart that beat so fervently within, and the soul that expanded more and more as one year gave place to another...... But it was Mrs. Browning’s face upon which one loved to gaze,—that face and head which almost lost themselves in the thick curls of her dark brown hair. That jealous hair could not hide the broad, fair forehead, ‘royal with the truth,’ as smooth as any girl’s, and
Too large for wreath of modern wont.
Her large brown eyes were beautiful, and were in truth the windows of her soul. They combined the confidingness of a child with the poet-passion of heart and of intellect; and in gazing into them, it was easy to read why Mrs. Browning wrote.”
Mrs. Browning has been justly accused of frequent mannerisms and obscurities of style. She has some pet expressions which jar on the ear; such as “past compare,” to “fine down her beauty”;—a few Greek terms, of which “nympholeptic” and “chrism” are her favorites;—and the use of the adjective as an abstract noun; as, “looking down from my Human,” and like phrases.
The Miltonic subjects of “The Seraphim” and the “Drama of Exile” have brought her under the charge of imitating Milton; but, whatever opinion the reader may hold as to the success of these dramas, he will absolve them from any fault or merit of such an imitation. But although her learning and her art may be exhibited in these poems, and in the “Prometheus Bound,” it is not here we [p. 76→] are to look for proof of her poetic power. As a scholar and an authoress she wrote these; “Aurora Leigh,” and the “Sonnets from the Portuguese” especially, came from a woman’s warm heart. Over them we linger fondly, as over the simple, burning, shorter poems scattered here and there through her works.
Critics accused Mrs. Browning, moreover, of imitation of Tennyson, and there are some who hint at plagiarism upon Poe! If we grant a certain resemblance to Tennyson, it will still be in question whether the age in which both live has not affected both alike, more than one of them has influenced the other. As to Poe, we are at a loss to see how his blindest admirers could trace his ideas in Mrs. Browning’s works, except in “Lady Geraldine’s Courtship,” where this stanza is suggestive of the “Raven”:—
“Eyes,” he said, “now throbbing through me! are ye eyes that did undo me?
Shining eyes, like antique jewels, set in Parian statue-stone!
Underneath that calm white forehead, are ye ever burning torrid
O’er the desolate sand-desert of my heart and life undone?”
These are all the charges laid against her, except the absurd accusation of impiety in treating sacred subjects:—one reviewer considers her more worthy than Shelley of poor Shelley’s persecution.
Mrs. Browning has written, as no other woman has, a record of her deepest experiences. We can follow her life in her poems, especially from the time when she first fully awoke to the vitality of life, and loved. As we read, we chance rarely on an allusion to her childhood; oftener she speaks of the long years of her sickness, with its attendant despondence, and its consolations. The first burning poetry she has written is in the Sonnets, veiling under the name “From the Portuguese” the deep emotions of her heart in its doubting, yearning, hoping, trusting love for the talented poet, three years her junior, who had come to rescue her from the grave for a vigorous and useful life of many years. These Sonnets alone would crown her poetess. Again, we meet passages instinct with maternal affection,—witness this exquisite picture, from “Aurora Leigh,” of a sleeping babe:—
There he lay, upon his back,
The yearling creature, warm and moist with life
To the bottom of his dimples,—to the end
Of the long, tumbled curls about his face;
For since he had been covered over-much
To keep him from the light-glare, both his cheeks
Were hot and scarlet as the first live rose [p. 77→] The shepherd’s heart-blood ebbed away into,
The faster for his love. And love was here
As instant! in the pretty baby-mouth,
Shut close as if for dreaming that it sucked;
The little naked feet drawn up the way
Of nestling birdlings; everything so soft
And tender,—to the little holdfast hands,
Which, closing on a finger into sleep,
Had kept the mould o’t.
Could this have been so pictured unless from life?
The devoted attachment she felt towards beautiful Italy did not affect her love for England. The two are mingled in her prayers. See how she paints a rural scene in the country from which she has so long been exiled:—
A ripple of land; such little hills, the sky
Can stoop to tenderly, and the wheat-fields climb.
Such nooks of valleys, lined with orchises,
Fed full of noises by invisible streams;
And open pastures where you scarcely tell
White daisies from white dew,—at intervals
The mythic oaks and elm-trees standing out
Self-poised upon their prodigy of shade,—
I thought my father’s land was worthy too
Of being my Shakespeare’s.
“Aurora Leigh,” of her more sustained efforts, is the work by which she will chiefly live. In it is recorded the ideal experience—if so we may name it—of her life. She has knit herself into her heroine, and breathes along every page. Aurora, the Italian child of an English father and an Italian mother, is early orphaned, and taken from her Italy to England, there to live under the cold guardianship of her father’s sister. Her cousin, Romney Leigh, a Fourierite, Socialist, Agrarian, is drawn towards the warm southern heart of the young poetess,—for such she promises to grow,—and loves her. She refuses him, and, although unconscious love struggles in her then, and grows in her for years, for years she is kept from him by misconceptions and mischances, until, after long separation, he comes to her, now in Italy,—comes to her, in the dark; when, as he sadly turns to go, after a long, bitter conversation of cross purposes, she finds him to be blind. Her love, so long checked and denied, bursts forth, and her woman’s nature pours itself out in a flood of sympathy and affection. We involuntarily think of Jane Eyre and Rochester.
Among her shorter poems there are many of great beauty; such as the “Lay of the Brown Rosary,” with its fiendish [p. 78→]
Forbear that dream! forbear that dream!—
the “Romaunt of the Swan’s Nest,”—the strong “Rhyme of the Duchess May,” a ballad-tale into which the refrain, “Toll slowly!” is woven like the boom of a tolling bell. It would be pleasant to quote at length from these, and from such poems as “The Cry of the Human” and “Cowper’s Grave,” but we must refer readers to the volumes themselves, which they can peruse at will.
We will quote one or two passages which have struck us in reading, and then have done. In “Casa Guidi Windows” Mrs. Browning speaks of Italy as
the poet’s pensioner,
With alms from every land, of song and dream,—
and after describing the Florentine procession of thanksgiving to the Grand Duke for some trifling liberty granted the people, she thus paints the throng of spectators:—
Rude men, unconscious of the tears that kept
Their beards moist, shouted; some few laughed aloud,
And none asked any why they laughed and wept.
Friends kissed each other’s cheeks, and foes long vowed
More warmly did it,—two-months’ babies leapt
Right upward in their mothers’ arms, whose black,
Wide, glittering eyes looked elsewhere; lovers pressed
Each before either, neither glancing back;
And peasant maidens, smoothly ’tired and tressed,
Forgot to finger on their necks the slack
Great pearl-strings; while old blind men would not rest,
But pattered with their staves, and slid their shoes
Along the stones, and smiled as if they saw.
Here are a few strong sentences:—
I could just hear thrill
The drowsy silence of exhausted day.
.... and my pulse
Would shudder along the purple-veined wrist
Like a shot bird.
A holiday of miserable men
Is sadder than a burial-day of kings.
.... a sick child, from an ague fit,
Whose wasted right hand gambled ’gainst his left
With an old brass button, in a blot of sun.
We lay these volumes of hers upon the shelf more carefully, now that the authoress is dead. Let her own words appeal against such few critics as have condemned her:—
Deal with us nobly, women though we be,
And honor us with truth, if not with praise.
Reviewed:
General Review Essay (EBB).
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