BROWNING IN HIS LETTERS

Press, Volume LXIX, Issue 21034, 9 December 1933, Page 17

BROWNING IN HIS LETTERS

* Letters of Robert Browning. Collected by Thomas J. Wise. John Murray. 389 pp. (18/- net.) [Reviewed by R. G. C. McN'Aß.] The correspondence between Robert Browning and his wife was published in 1899. Those letters were significant in showing their mutual devotion and the chivalry and delicacy of the man. Mrs Browning died in 1861, in the fifteenth year of their married life. The letters collected by Mr Wise were written between 1830 and 1889, and are significant in many respects. Tears made the poet gentler and more tolerant without stealing his intellectual energy or his abundant physical vitality. After the death of his wife he remained intensely loyal to her memory, but made many warm friendships, especially with women, to whom he was able very readily to confide his feelings. He retained his impetuous passion to the end of his life, and remained implacably scornful of what he conceived to be littleness or meanness. As his fame was extended and the Browning cult established itself, there grew an adulation which would have deprived most men of sincerity and simplicity. Browning lost neither of these qualities. He was polite to his worshippers, but no more, and they must often have thought him singularly unresponsive. It is desirable to comment, however slightly, upon some of these remarks. There are four more oxless sensational episodes in Browning's ilife on which these letters cast some light. The quarrel with Macread.y in 1843 over " The Blot on the Scutcheon" did not predispose Browning immediately against the stage and had little influence on his dramatic writings. It convinced him, however, that "the poorest man of letters (if really of letters) I ever knew, is of far higher talent than the best actor I ever expect to know." To Alfred Austin he was irreconcilably hostile, and the reproduction in the notes of the documents dealing with their chief difference supports Browning, though hardly to such an extent as to justify Austin's being called "a literary cad," "a filthy little snob," and "a grotesque monkey-image." The famous stanzas spitting in the face of Fitzgerald were due to the amazing carelessness of the editor of Fitzgerald's memories. The obscurest of Browning's troubles was the rejection, in 1869, of his offer of marriage to Lady Ashburton. Although she was a striking and attractive woman, it seems that Browning's offer was not unaccompanied by a thought of her great possessions and the security he would gain for his son. The rejection caused bitterness in the friends of both, and hostilities that have been inexplicable before the examination of Mr Wise's letters. (The only jarring sentence in the book ' concerns Lady Ashburton's wealth. "At her death in 1903, at the age of 76, her will probated over £285,000 gross.") This disappointment, like his other worries, was communicated to his women friends, of whom the chief were Miss Isa Blagden and Miss Egerton Smith. There was little that was mawkish in his letters. He needed a confidant, but, having made his confidence, usually briefly, he went on to speak about his work, his travels, his son, and his social adventures. The natural and frank relations he had with them is emphasised by the improper stories he related —stories that will seem remarkably improper to those who regard the 'seventies and 'eighties as the heyday of Victorian reticence. Few men have had so strong a sense of family unity. His devotion to his father and mother was complete and lifelong ; to his son, who for some years seemed feckless and incapable of effort, he was uniformly helpful, generous, and indulgent. About the golden tradition of his memory of Elizabeth Barrett there is little need to speak. A few days after her death he wrote : My life is fixed and sure now I shall live out the remainder in her direct influence, endeavouring to complete mine, miserably imperfect now, but so as to take the good she was meant to give me. He did so. He went more into society, "dining himself out" as it was said, and saw much of other writers. The intimacy among Victorian writers was close. Browning knew well Landor, Lytton, Trollope, Jowett. He was on affectionate terms with Tennyson, and was all his life proud and happy in his friendship with Carlyle. He was conscious of his own personality and wished it to be his own, so that he could not suffer his casual, spontaneous impulses and reflections to be carefully preserved for later publication. Browning's letters have many interesting sidelights, the sad old age of Landor, the successful hallucination of Baron Seymour Kirkup, the exposure of the medium, Home, and the last words of Margaret Fuller before she took ship for her tragic voyage. The more formal letters such as those first written to Gosse and Furnivall, the indefatigable cyclist and founder of the Browning Society, have the strength and sincerity of Johnson's letters. Of his celebrated obscurity he wrote in 1868: I have but little doubt that my writing has been, in the main, too hard for many I should have been pleased to communicate with; but I never designedly tried to puzzle people, as some of my critics have supposed. On the other hand, I never pretended to offer such literature as should be a substitute for a cigar, or a game of dominoes to an idle man. This book of letters is as fine as piety and scholarship could make it forty-seven years ago. Their collector, Mr Wise, was a friend of Browning and now lives to see the appearance of this testimony to his devotion. The admirably arranged introduction and notes were the work of Mr T. L. Hood, Dean of Trinity College, Yale.