Part 17 (1/2)

In the autumn of 1878, after seventeen years of absence fro was recaptured by its charm, and henceforward to the close of his life Venice and the Venetian district became his accustomed place of summer refreshment and repose For a time, with his sister as his coen, enjoyed the reat rapidity, says Mrs Orr, his poem of Russia, _Ivan Ivanovitch_ When a boy he had read in Bunyan's ”Life and Death of Mr Badman” the story of ”Old Tod”, and with this still vivid in his hly unidyllic ”idyl” of English life, _Ned Bratts_ It was thus that subjects for poe up as it were spontaneously out of the remote past ”There comes up unexpectedly,” he wrote in a letter to a friend, ”some subject for poetry, which has been dormant, and apparently dead, for perhaps dozens of years A month since I wrote a poem of some two hundred lines ['Donald'] about a story I heardto repeat, wondering how it had so long escaped s”[127] Before the close of Septeo at Asolo, which Browning had not seen since his first Italian journey s,” he writes, ”have begun and ended with es had taken place in the little city; yet much seemed familiar and therefore the more dreamlike The place had indeed haunted hi with a friend, or soer, when suddenly the little town sparkling in the sunshi+ne would rise before hio there!” And always, after the way of dreams, his companions would declare it impossible and he would be hurried away[128] Froain the city that he loved this recurring dreah the well-known places, and seeking for an echo in the Rocca, the ruined fortress above the town, he found that it had not lost its tongue A fortnight at Venice in a hotel where quiet and coolness were the chief attractions, prepared the way for many subsequent visits to what he afterwards called ”the dearest place in the world” Everything in Venice, says Mrs Bronson, charrace and beauty in the _popolo_ whom he paints so well in the Goldoni sonnet The poorest street children were pretty in his eyes He would admire a carpenter or a painter, who chanced to be at work in the house, and say to me 'See the fine poise of the headthose well-cut features You ht fancy that man in the crimson robe of a Senator as you see them in Tintoret's canvas'”

But these are re made the acquaintance of his American friend Mrs Arthur Bronson, whose kind hospitalities added to the happiness of his visits to Asolo and to Venice, who received, as if it were a farewell gift, the dedication of his last volu before her death in 1901, published interesting articles on ”Browning in Asolo” and ”Browning in Venice” in _The Century Magazine_ The only years in which he did not revisit Venice were 1882, 1884 and 1886, and in each of these years his absence was occasioned by some unforeseen mis-adventure In 1882 the floods were out, and he proceeded no farther than Verona Could he have overcoht have been incapable of enjoying it For the first time in his life he was laht,” he says, ”just before leaving St Pierre de Chartreuse, throughwith aopen atthe Iliad, all my excuse!--while clad in a thin summer suit, and snow on the hills and bitterness every where”[129] In 1884 his sister's illness at first forbade travel to so considerable a distance The two companions were received by another American friend, Mrs Bloomfield Moore, at the Villa Berry, St Moritz, and when she was summoned across the Atlantic, at her request they continued to occupy her villa The season was past; the place deserted; but the sun shone gloriously ”We have walked every day,” Browning wrote at the end of Septe--afternoon I should say--two or three hours each excursion, the delicious ed to breathe

My sister is absolutely herself again, and so”[130] Two years later Miss Browning was ailing again, and they did not venture farther than Wales At the Hand Hotel, Llangollen, they were at no great distance from Brintysilio, the summer residence of their friends Sir Theodore and Lady Martin--in earlier days the Lady Carlisle and Colo, Liberal as he declared himself, was now very favourably ientle that class of men!” he exclaimed, ”they are the salt of the earth!” She adds, as worthy of reularly the afternoon Sunday service in the parish church at Llantysilio, where now a tablet of Lady Martin's placingwas not his practice in London; ”but I do not think,” says Mrs Orr, ”he ever failed in it at the Universities or in the country”

At Venice it was his custom to be present with his sister at the services of a Waldensian chapel, where ”a certain eloquent pastor,” as Mrs Bronson describes hi in a letter to Lady Martin recalls the happy season in the Vale of Llangollen--”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”

[Illustration: THE PALAZZO GIUSTINIANI, VENICE

_Fro on to Venice, where repose waswas accustoues of London, in solish tourist, where he could walk for hours in the clear mountain air In 1881 and 1882 it was St Pierre de Chartreuse, froht mass; in 1883 and 1885 it was Gressoney St Jean in the Val d'Aosta--the ”delightful Gressoney” of the Prologue to _Ferishtah's Fancies_, where ”eggs, ”; in 1888 it was the yet more beautiful Primiero, near Feltre In the previous year he had, for the second ti life St Pierre was only ”a wild little clues on a hest of little inns for its hotel; but its pri well and were bravely borne by his sister[132] From Gressoney in September 1885 he wrote: ”We are all but alone, the brief 'season' being over, and only a chance traveller turning up for a fortnight's lodging We take our walks in the old way; two and a half hours before breakfast, three after it, in the most beautiful country I know Yesterday the three hours passed without our le man, woman, or child; one man only was discovered at a distance at the foot of a ust snowstornificence of the ainst the universal white”; it served e in the Iliad, the only book that accolide away uneventfully, _nearly_, and I breathe in the pleasant idleness at every pore I have no few acquaintances here--nay, some old friends--but my intimates are the firs on the hillside, and theof theht not to have been for a fortnight yet”[134] And froth had considerably declined, a letter tells of unabated pleasure; of , in turn, transe; of the valley ”one green luxuriance”; of the tiger-lilies in the garden above ten feet high, every blooaging of little vixens,” who, to Browning's great joy, broke her chain and escaped[135] As each successive volume that he published seemed to him his best, so of his mountain places of abode the last alas the loveliest

At Venice for a ti and his sister well, but when Mrs Bronson pressed them to accept the use of a suite of rooms in the Palazzo Giustiniani Recanati and the kind offer was accepted, the gain was considerable; and the _Palazzo_ has historical associations dating froination It was his habit to rise early, and after a light breakfast to visit the Public Gardens with his sister He had many friends--Mrs Bronson is our informant--whose wants or wishes he bore in aroo, the marmosets, the pelicans, the ostrich; three times, with strict punctuality, he made his rounds, and then returned to his apartment At noon appeared the second and more substantial breakfast, at which Italian dishes were preferred Browning wrote passionately against the vivisection of aniainst the decoration of a lady's hat with the spoils of birds--

Clothed with s

He praised God--for pleasure as he teaches us is praise--by heartily enjoying ortolans, ”a dozen luscious lumps” provided by the cook of the Giustiniani-Recanati palace; to vary his own phrasing, he was

Fed with hed, innocently enough, with his good sister over the delicious ”mouthfuls for cardinals”[136] As if the pleasure of the eye in beauty gained at a bird's expense were ue in lusciousness, curbed by piquancy, gained at the expense of a dozen other birds! At three o'clock caondola, and it was often directed to the Lido ”I walk, even in wind and rain, for a couple of hours on Lido,” Browning wrote when nearly seventy, ”and enjoy the break of sea on the strip of sand as much as Shelley did in those old days”[137] And to another friend: ”You don't kno absolutely well I a, not on the mountains merely, but on the beloved Lido Go there, if only to stand and be blown about by the sea wind”[138] At one ti an unfinished villa on the Lido from which ”the divine sunsets” could be seen, but the dream-villa faded after the manner of such drea's brain ”I will not praise a cloud however bright,” says Wordsworth, although no one has praised them more ardently than he Fros when his life dreards its close, Browning lavished his praise upon the scenery of the sky A passage quoted by Mrs Orr from a letter written a little more than a year before his death is steeped in colour; when _Pippa Passes_ beco editor it will illu at six I see the sun rise My bedrooune, the few sea-gulls 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 riold, and last of all the orb sends before it a long coluulls of which this extract speaks were, Mrs Bronson tells us, a special delight to Browning On a day of gales ”he would stand at theand watch then of heavy storms in the Adriatic” To hi than the doves of St Mark

Sohter, ”the best cicerone in the world,” he said, were through the narrowest by-streets of the city, where he rejoiced in the discovery, or what he supposed to be discovery, of solected stone of Venice Occasionally he examined curiously the th the story of a search in the Church of San Niccol for the to's own _Sordello_ At times he entered the bric-a-brac shops, and made a purchase of some piece of old furniture or tapestry His rule ”never to buy anything without knowing exactly what he wished to do with it” must have been interpreted liberally, for when about to move in June 1887 from Warwick Crescent to De Vere Gardens many treasures acquired in Italy were, Mrs Orr tells us, stoay in the house which he was on the point of leaving And the latest bibelot was always the : ”Like a child with a new toy,” says Mrs Bronson, ”he would carry it hiondola, rejoice over his chance in finding it, and descant eloquently upon its intrinsic merits” Thus, or with his son's assistance, ca in Venetian chapels, the silver Jewish ”Sabbath lamp,” and the ”four little heads”--the seasons--after which, Browning declared, he would not buy another thing for the house[139] Returning froh the little _calli_, he showed that unwise half-disdain, which an unenlightened ht have shown, for the blessedness of five o'clock tea At dinner he was in his toilet what Mr Henry James calls the ”member of society,” never the poet whose necktie is a dithyramb Good sense was his habit if not his foible And why should we deny ourselves here the pleasure of i at these pleasant cereowns of rich and so each day in a different and uests were not present, sometimes a visit to the theatre followed The Venetian co; he went to his spacious box at the Goldoni evening after evening, and did not fail to express his thanks to his ”brother dramatist” for the enjoyment he had received In his _Toccata of Galuppi_ he had expressed the hteenth-century life in Venice; but he could also reladnesses without this sense of melancholy When in 1883 the co to contribute a poem to their Album he immediately co to Mrs Orr, while Professor Mol; it was ready the day after the request reached hiht out before he put pen to paper” It catches, in the happiest temper, the spirit of Goldoni's sunniest plays:

There throng the People: how they coarb--see-- On Piazza, Calle, under Portico And over Bridge! Dear King of Comedy, Be honoured! Thou that didst love Venice so, Venice, and ho love her, all love thee!

The brightness and lightness of southern life soothed Browning's northern strenuousness ofthe crimes of ”the wicked city” as revealed by the reports of the public press--a gondolier's oars had been conveyed away, a piece of linen a-dry had corrupted the virtue of soered Autolycus of the canals![140] Yet all the while much of his heart remained with his native land He could not be happy without his London daily paper; Mrs Orr tells us how deeply interested he was in the fortunes of the British expedition for the relief of General Gordon

In 1885 Browning's son for the first time since his childhood was in Italy With Venice he was in his father's phrase ”simply infatuated”

For his son's sake, but also with the thought of a place of retreat when perhaps years should bring with the entered into treaty with the owner, an Austrian and an absentee, for the purchase of the Manzoni Palazzo on the Grand Canal He considered it the most beautiful house in Venice Ruskin had described it in the ”Stones of Venice” as ”a perfect and very rich exaination of Browning He not only already possessed it in his drea sunshi+ne, and throwing out balconies, while leaving undisturbed the rich facade with its medallions in coloured marble The dream was never realised The vendor, Marchese Montecucculi, hoping to secure a higher price, drew back Browning was about to force hiain, when it was discovered that the walls were cracked and the foundations were untrustworthy To his great mortification the whole scheme had to be abandoned It was not until his son in 1888, the year after his e, acquired possession of the Palazzo Rezzonico--”a stately temple of the rococo” is Mr Henry Jaret of the lost Manzoni At no tin a voluntary abandonland When in full expectation of beco the owner of the Palazzo Manzoni he wrote to Dr Furnivall: ”Don't think I ive up London till it warns row a burden Pen will have sunshi+ne and beauty about him, and every help to profit by these, while I and row too troublesome”

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 119: Some parts of what follows on _La Saisiaz_ have already appeared in print in a forgotten article of mine on that poem]

[Footnote 120: ”An Artist's Reminiscences,” by R Lehmann (1894), p

231]

[Footnote 121: Thus he declais, hich, according to Buchanan, he had little acquaintance]

[Footnote 122: ”Autobiography of a Journalist,” ii 210]

[Footnote 123: From the first of three valuable articles by Mr Rossetti in _The Magazine of Art_ (1890) on ”Portraits of Robert Browning”]

[Footnote 124: Robert Browning, ”Personalia,” by Edmund Gosse, pp 81, 82]

[Footnote 125: Vol ii pp 88, 89]

[Footnote 126: Anna Sick, ”A Memoir by Mary L Bruce,” pp 130, 131