---- ----: ‘Elizabeth Barrett Browning,’ _Atlantic Monthly_.
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[Sidenote: Appearance in her late days.]
[Miss Mitford’s] description of twenty-five years ago[6] is true, every word, of a photograph now lying on our table, copied from Macaire’s original, made at Havre in 1856, and which Robert Browning esteems a faithful likeness of his wife. The three-quarter length shows the comparative stature of the figure, which is here so delicate and diminutive that we can easily imagine how the story come to be told (although not true) that her husband drew this same portrait in ‘The Flight of the Duchess’ when he sketched
----“The smallest lady alive.”
But the one striking feature of the picture is the intellectual and spiritual expression of the face and head; for here, borne up by pillars of curls on either side, is just such an arch as she saw in ‘The Vision of Poets’:
“A forehead royal with the truth.”
A photograph, taken in Rome only a month before she died, wears a not greatly changed expression, except in an added pallor to cheeks always pale; foretokening the near coming of the shadow of death.
THEODORE TILTON: _Memorial Preface_ to ‘Last Poems of Mrs. Browning.’
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[Sidenote: “The beauty of expression.”]
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. It was difficult to believe that such a fairy hand could pen thoughts of such ponderous weight, or that such a still, small voice could utter them with equal force. 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.... Her large brown eyes were beautiful, and were in truth the windows of her soul.
---- ----: ‘Elizabeth Barrett Browning.’ _Atlantic Monthly._
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[Sidenote: Her characteristic modesty.]
The resemblance between the Brownings, although many exist, are often more fancied than real. They did not revise each other’s writings. Neither knew what the other had been doing until it was done. ‘Aurora Leigh’ was two-thirds written before her husband saw a word of it. Nor did he know of the existence of the ‘Portuguese Sonnets’ till a considerable time after the marriage, when she showed them to him for the first time, and he, in his delight, persuaded her to put them in print. Otherwise they might never have been published; for with her characteristic modesty she at first thought them unworthy even of his reading, to say nothing of the whole world’s. She felt so doubtful of the merit of ‘Aurora Leigh’ that at one time she laid even that aside with the idea never to publish it.
[Sidenote: Method of writing.]
Her method of writing was to seize the moment when the mood was upon her, and to fix her thought hurriedly on the nearest slip of paper. She was sensitive to interruption while composing, but was too shy to permit even her friends to see her engaged at her work. When the servant announced a visitor, the busy poet suddenly hid her paper and pen, and received her guest as if in perfect leisure for the visit. Giving her mornings to the instruction of her little son, and holding herself ready after twelve o’clock to give welcome to any comer, it was a wonder to many how she could find the needed time to study or write.
[Sidenote: Her revisions.]
She made many and marked changes in her poems in successive editions. These show her fastidious taste. She was never satisfied to let a stanza remain as it was. Most of these amendments are for the better, but some for the worse, as orators who correct their printed speeches sometimes spoil the best parts. In many cases she substituted not only new rhymes but new thoughts, turning the verses far out of their old channels; in others she struck out whole lines and passages as superfluous; in others she made fitter choice of single words, so adding vividness to the expression.
THEODORE TILTON: _Memorial Preface_ to ‘Last Poems of Mrs. Browning’.
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[Sidenote: How ‘Aurora Leigh’ was written.]
I am still too near ‘Aurora Leigh’ to be quite able to see it all; my wife used to write it, and lay it down to hear our child spell, or when a visitor came,--it was thrust under a cushion then. At Paris, a year ago last March, she gave me the first six books to read, I never having seen a line before. She then wrote the rest, and transcribed them in London, where I read them also. I wish, in one sense, that I had written and she had read it.
ROBERT BROWNING: _Letter to Leigh Hunt_. ‘Correspondence of Leigh Hunt,’ edited by his son.
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[Sidenote: Landor’s delight in ‘Aurora Leigh.’]
I am reading a poem full of thought and fascinating with fancy--Mrs. Browning’s ‘Aurora Leigh.’ In many pages there is the wild imagination of Shakespeare. I had no idea that any one in this age was capable of so much poetry. I am half drunk with it. Never did I think I should have a good hearty draught of poetry again: the distemper had got into the vineyard that produced it. Here are indeed, even here, some flies upon the surface, as there always will be upon what is sweet and strong.
WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR: _Letter to J. Foster_, 1857. ‘Walter Savage Landor: A Biography,’ by John Forster. Boston: Fields, Osgood & Co., 1869.
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[Sidenote: George Eliot’s enjoyment.]
We are reading ‘Aurora Leigh,’ for the third time, with more enjoyment than ever. I know no book that gives me a deeper sense of communion with a large as well as beautiful mind.
MARIAN EVANS LEWES: _Letter to Sara Hennell_, 1857. ‘George Eliot’s Life,’ edited by J. W. Cross. New York: Harper & Bros., 1885.
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[Sidenote: Sympathetic criticism of the ‘Portuguese Sonnets.’]
I am disposed to consider the ‘Sonnets from the Portuguese’ as, if not the finest, a portion of the finest subjective poetry in our literature. Their form reminds us of an English prototype, and it is no sacrilege to say that their music is showered from a higher and purer atmosphere than that of the Swan of Avon. We need not enter upon cold comparison of their respective excellences; but Shakespeare’s personal poems were the overflow of his impetuous youth: his broader vision, that took a world within its ken, was absolutely objective; while Mrs. Browning’s ‘Love Sonnets’ are the outpourings of a woman’s tenderest emotions, at an epoch when her art was most mature, and her whole nature exalted by a passion that to such a being comes but once and for all. Here, indeed, the singer rose to her height. Here she is absorbed in rapturous utterance, radiant and triumphant with her own joy. The mists have risen and her sight is clear. Her mouthing and affectation are forgotten, her lips cease to stammer, the lyrical spirit has full control. The sonnet, artificial in weaker hands, becomes swift with feeling, red with a “veined humanity,” the chosen vehicle of a royal woman’s vows. Graces, felicities, vigor, glory of speech, here are so crowded as to tread each upon the other’s sceptred pall. The first sonnet, equal to any in our tongue, is an overture containing the motive of the canticle; “not Death, but Love” had seized her unaware. The growth of this happiness, her worship of its bringer, her doubts of her own worthiness, are the theme of these poems. She is in a sweet and, to us, pathetic surprise at the delight which had at last fallen to her:
“The wonder was not yet quite gone From that still look of hers.”
Never was man or minstrel so honored as her “most gracious singer of high poems.” In the tremor of her love she undervalued herself,--with all her feebleness of body, it was enough for any man to live within the atmosphere of such a soul! In fine, the ‘Portuguese Sonnets,’ whose title was a screen behind which the singer poured out her full heart, are the most exquisite poetry hitherto written by a woman, and of themselves justify us in pronouncing their author the greatest of her sex.... An analogy with ‘In Memoriam’ may be derived from their arrangement and their presentation of a single analytic theme; but Tennyson’s poem, though exhibiting equal art, more subtile reasoning and comprehensive thought, is devoted to the analysis of philosophic grief, while the ‘Sonnets’ reveal to us that love which is the most ecstatic of human emotions and worth all other gifts in life.
E. C. STEDMAN: ‘Victorian Poets.’ Boston: Houghton, Mifflin & Co., 1881.
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[Sidenote: Her timidity.]
It was my privilege to live for years near by, and in intimate intercourse with, the divinity of Casa Guidi, her whose genius has immortalized the walls as well as the windows of that antique palace; for a tablet has been inserted by the grateful Italians, whose cause she so eloquently espoused, in the grand entrance hall, recording her name, deeds, and long residence there, with the tribute of their thanks and love. Yet I had not known the Brownings personally, in the more intimate sense of acquaintanceship, till that blessed day, when in the balm of a June morning, we started together in an open carriage for Pratolino, taking with us a manservant, who carried the basket containing our picnic dinner, of which only four were to partake. A larger party would have spoiled the whole. A more timid nature was never joined to a bolder spirit than in Elizabeth Browning. She fairly shrunk from observation, and could not endure mixed company, though in her heart kind and sympathetic with all. Her timidity was both instinctive and acquired; having been an invalid and student from her youth up, she had lived almost the life of a recluse; thus it shocked her to be brought face to face with inquisitive strangers, or the world in general. On this very account, and because her health so rarely permitted her to make excursions of any kind, she enjoyed, as the accustomed do not, and the unappreciative cannot, any unwonted liberty in nature’s realm, and doubly with a chosen few sympathetic companions, to whom she could freely express her thoughts and emotions. Like most finely strung beings, she spoke through a changeful countenance every change of feeling.