Part 20 (1/2)

As old Philipson said to me once of Jerusalem--”No, I don't want to go there,--I can see it in my head.” ... Well, goodbye, dearest Isa. I have been for a few minutes--nay, a good many,--so really with you in Florence that it would be no wonder if you heard my steps up the lane to your house... .'

Part of a letter written in the September of '65 from Ste.-Marie may be interesting as referring to the legend of p.o.r.nic included in 'Dramatis Personae'.

'... I suppose my ”poem” which you say brings me and p.o.r.nic together in your mind, is the one about the poor girl--if so, ”fancy” (as I hear you say) they have pulled down the church since I arrived last month--there are only the sh.e.l.l-like, roofless walls left, for a few weeks more; it was very old--built on a natural base of rock--small enough, to be sure--so they build a smart new one behind it, and down goes this; just as if they could not have pitched down their brick and stucco farther away, and left the old place for the fishermen--so here--the church is even more picturesque--and certain old Norman ornaments, capitals of pillars and the like, which we left erect in the doorway, are at this moment in a heap of rubbish by the road-side. The people here are good, stupid and dirty, without a touch of the sense of picturesqueness in their clodpolls... .'

The little record continues through 1866.

Feb. 19, '66.

'... I go out a great deal; but have enjoyed nothing so much as a dinner last week with Tennyson, who, with his wife and one son, is staying in town for a few weeks,--and she is just what she was and always will be--very sweet and dear: he seems to me better than ever. I met him at a large party on Sat.u.r.day--also Carlyle, whom I never met at a ”drum” before... . Pen is drawing our owl--a bird that is the light of our house, for his tameness and engaging ways... .'

May 19, '66.

'... My father has been unwell,--he is better and will go into the country the moment the east winds allow,--for in Paris,--as here,--there is a razor wrapped up in the flannel of suns.h.i.+ne. I hope to hear presently from my sister, and will tell you if a letter comes: he is eighty-five, almost,--you see! otherwise his wonderful const.i.tution would keep me from inordinate apprehension. His mind is absolutely as I always remember it,--and the other day when I wanted some information about a point of mediaeval history, he wrote a regular bookful of notes and extracts thereabout... .'

June 20, '66.

'My dearest Isa, I was telegraphed for to Paris last week, and arrived time enough to pa.s.s twenty-four hours more with my father: he died on the 14th--quite exhausted by internal haemorrhage, which would have overcome a man of thirty. He retained all his faculties to the last--was utterly indifferent to death,--asking with surprise what it was we were affected about since he was perfectly happy?--and kept his own strange sweetness of soul to the end--nearly his last words to me, as I was fanning him, were ”I am so afraid that I fatigue you, dear!” this, while his sufferings were great; for the strength of his const.i.tution seemed impossible to be subdued. He wanted three weeks exactly to complete his eighty-fifth year. So pa.s.sed away this good, unworldly, kind-hearted, religious man, whose powers natural and acquired would so easily have made him a notable man, had he known what vanity or ambition or the love of money or social influence meant. As it is, he was known by half-a-dozen friends. He was worthy of being Ba's father--out of the whole world, only he, so far as my experience goes. She loved him,--and _he_ said, very recently, while gazing at her portrait, that only that picture had put into his head that there might be such a thing as the wors.h.i.+p of the images of saints. My sister will come and live with me henceforth. You see what she loses. All her life has been spent in caring for my mother, and seventeen years after that, my father. You may be sure she does not rave and rend hair like people who have plenty to atone for in the past; but she loses very much. I returned to London last night... .'

During his hurried journey to Paris, Mr. Browning was mentally blessing the Emperor for having abolished the system of pa.s.sports, and thus enabled him to reach his father's bedside in time. His early Italian journeys had brought him some vexatious experience of the old order of things. Once, at Venice, he had been mistaken for a well-known Liberal, Dr. Bowring, and found it almost impossible to get his pa.s.sport 'vise'; and, on another occasion, it aroused suspicion by being 'too good'; though in what sense I do not quite remember.

Miss Browning did come to live with her brother, and was thenceforward his inseparable companion. Her presence with him must therefore be understood wherever I have had no special reason for mentioning it.

They tried Dinard for the remainder of the summer; but finding it unsuitable, proceeded by St.-Malo to Le Croisic, the little sea-side town of south-eastern Brittany which two of Mr. Browning's poems have since rendered famous.

The following extract has no date.

Le Croisic, Loire Inferieure.

'... We all found Dinard unsuitable, and after staying a few days at St. Malo resolved to try this place, and well for us, since it serves our purpose capitally... . We are in the most delicious and peculiar old house I ever occupied, the oldest in the town--plenty of great rooms--nearly as much s.p.a.ce as in Villa Alberti. The little town, and surrounding country are wild and primitive, even a trifle beyond p.o.r.nic perhaps. Close by is Batz, a village where the men dress in white from head to foot, with baggy breeches, and great black flap hats;--opposite is Guerande, the old capital of Bretagne: you have read about it in Balzac's 'Beatrix',--and other interesting places are near. The sea is all round our peninsula, and on the whole I expect we shall like it very much... .'

Later.

'... We enjoyed Croisic increasingly to the last--spite of three weeks' vile weather, in striking contrast to the golden months at p.o.r.nic last year. I often went to Guerande--once Sarianna and I walked from it in two hours and something under,--nine miles:--though from our house, straight over the sands and sea, it is not half the distance... .'

In 1867 Mr. Browning received his first and greatest academic honours.

The M.A. degree by diploma, of the University of Oxford, was conferred on him in June;* and in the month of October he was made honorary Fellow of Balliol College. Dr. Jowett allows me to publish the, as he terms it, very characteristic letter in which he acknowledged the distinction. Dr.

Scott, afterwards Dean of Rochester, was then Master of Balliol.

* 'Not a lower degree than that of D.C.L., but a much higher honour, hardly given since Dr. Johnson's time except to kings and royal personages... .' So the Keeper of the Archives wrote to Mr. Browning at the time.

19, Warwick Crescent: Oct. 21, '67.