Life and Letters of Robert Browning [105]
was
sure of ready acceptance, of just, if not always enthusiastic, appreciation.
The ground had not been gained at a single leap. A passage in another letter
to Miss Blagden shows that, when `The Ring and the Book' appeared,
a high place was already awaiting it outside those higher academic circles
in which its author's position was secured.
==
`. . . I want to get done with my poem. Booksellers are making me
pretty offers for it. One sent to propose, last week,
to publish it at his risk, giving me ALL the profits,
and pay me the whole in advance -- "for the incidental advantages of my name"
-- the R. B. who for six months once did not sell one copy of the poems!
I ask 200 Pounds for the sheets to America, and shall get it. . . .'
==
His presence in England had doubtless stimulated the public interest
in his productions; and we may fairly credit `Dramatis Personae'
with having finally awakened his countrymen of all classes
to the fact that a great creative power had arisen among them.
`The Ring and the Book' and `Dramatis Personae' cannot indeed be dissociated
in what was the culminating moment in the author's poetic life,
even more than the zenith of his literary career. In their expression
of all that constituted the wide range and the characteristic quality
of his genius, they at once support and supplement each other.
But a fact of more distinctive biographical interest connects itself
exclusively with the later work.
We cannot read the emotional passages of `The Ring and the Book'
without hearing in them a voice which is not Mr. Browning's own:
an echo, not of his past, but from it. The remembrance of that past
must have accompanied him through every stage of the great work.
Its subject had come to him in the last days of his greatest happiness.
It had lived with him, though in the background of consciousness,
through those of his keenest sorrow. It was his refuge in that aftertime,
in which a subsiding grief often leaves a deeper sense of isolation.
He knew the joy with which his wife would have witnessed
the diligent performance of this his self-imposed task.
The beautiful dedication contained in the first and last books
was only a matter of course. But Mrs. Browning's spiritual presence
on this occasion was more than a presiding memory of the heart.
I am convinced that it entered largely into the conception of `Pompilia',
and, so far as this depended on it, the character of the whole work.
In the outward course of her history, Mr. Browning proceeded
strictly on the ground of fact. His dramatic conscience
would not have allowed it otherwise. He had read the record of the case,
as he has been heard to say, fully eight times over before converting it
into the substance of his poem; and the form in which he finally cast it,
was that which recommended itself to him as true -- which,
within certain limits, WAS true. The testimony of those
who watched by Pompilia's death-bed is almost conclusive
as to the absence of any criminal motive to her flight,
or criminal circumstance connected with it. Its time proved itself
to have been that of her impending, perhaps newly expected motherhood,
and may have had some reference to this fact. But the real Pompilia
was a simple child, who lived in bodily terror of her husband, and had made
repeated efforts to escape from him. Unless my memory much deceives me,
her physical condition plays no part in the historical defence of her flight.
If it appeared there at all, it was as a merely practical incentive
to her striving to place herself in safety. The sudden rapturous
sense of maternity which, in the poetic rendering of the case,
becomes her impulse to self-protection, was beyond her age and her culture;
it was not suggested by the facts; and, what is more striking,
it was not a natural development of Mr. Browning's imagination
concerning them.
The parental instinct was among the weakest in his nature --
a fact which renders the more conspicuous his devotion to his own son;
it finds little or no expression
sure of ready acceptance, of just, if not always enthusiastic, appreciation.
The ground had not been gained at a single leap. A passage in another letter
to Miss Blagden shows that, when `The Ring and the Book' appeared,
a high place was already awaiting it outside those higher academic circles
in which its author's position was secured.
==
`. . . I want to get done with my poem. Booksellers are making me
pretty offers for it. One sent to propose, last week,
to publish it at his risk, giving me ALL the profits,
and pay me the whole in advance -- "for the incidental advantages of my name"
-- the R. B. who for six months once did not sell one copy of the poems!
I ask 200 Pounds for the sheets to America, and shall get it. . . .'
==
His presence in England had doubtless stimulated the public interest
in his productions; and we may fairly credit `Dramatis Personae'
with having finally awakened his countrymen of all classes
to the fact that a great creative power had arisen among them.
`The Ring and the Book' and `Dramatis Personae' cannot indeed be dissociated
in what was the culminating moment in the author's poetic life,
even more than the zenith of his literary career. In their expression
of all that constituted the wide range and the characteristic quality
of his genius, they at once support and supplement each other.
But a fact of more distinctive biographical interest connects itself
exclusively with the later work.
We cannot read the emotional passages of `The Ring and the Book'
without hearing in them a voice which is not Mr. Browning's own:
an echo, not of his past, but from it. The remembrance of that past
must have accompanied him through every stage of the great work.
Its subject had come to him in the last days of his greatest happiness.
It had lived with him, though in the background of consciousness,
through those of his keenest sorrow. It was his refuge in that aftertime,
in which a subsiding grief often leaves a deeper sense of isolation.
He knew the joy with which his wife would have witnessed
the diligent performance of this his self-imposed task.
The beautiful dedication contained in the first and last books
was only a matter of course. But Mrs. Browning's spiritual presence
on this occasion was more than a presiding memory of the heart.
I am convinced that it entered largely into the conception of `Pompilia',
and, so far as this depended on it, the character of the whole work.
In the outward course of her history, Mr. Browning proceeded
strictly on the ground of fact. His dramatic conscience
would not have allowed it otherwise. He had read the record of the case,
as he has been heard to say, fully eight times over before converting it
into the substance of his poem; and the form in which he finally cast it,
was that which recommended itself to him as true -- which,
within certain limits, WAS true. The testimony of those
who watched by Pompilia's death-bed is almost conclusive
as to the absence of any criminal motive to her flight,
or criminal circumstance connected with it. Its time proved itself
to have been that of her impending, perhaps newly expected motherhood,
and may have had some reference to this fact. But the real Pompilia
was a simple child, who lived in bodily terror of her husband, and had made
repeated efforts to escape from him. Unless my memory much deceives me,
her physical condition plays no part in the historical defence of her flight.
If it appeared there at all, it was as a merely practical incentive
to her striving to place herself in safety. The sudden rapturous
sense of maternity which, in the poetic rendering of the case,
becomes her impulse to self-protection, was beyond her age and her culture;
it was not suggested by the facts; and, what is more striking,
it was not a natural development of Mr. Browning's imagination
concerning them.
The parental instinct was among the weakest in his nature --
a fact which renders the more conspicuous his devotion to his own son;
it finds little or no expression