Life and Letters of Robert Browning [40]
and the rest, are -- now what ARE they?
not to be reasoned on, disputed, laughed at, grieved about:
they are `Fanny's crotchets'. I thank thee, Jew (lia),
for teaching me that word.
I don't know that I shall leave town for a month: my friend Monclar
looks piteous when I talk of such an event. I can't bear to leave him;
he is to take my portrait to-day (a famous one he HAS taken!) and very like
he engages it shall be. I am going to town for the purpose. . . .
Now, then, do something for me, and see if I'll ask Miss M---- to help you!
I am going to begin the finishing `Sordello' -- and to begin thinking
a Tragedy (an Historical one, so I shall want heaps of criticisms
on `Strafford') and I want to have ANOTHER tragedy in prospect,
I write best so provided: I had chosen a splendid subject for it,
when I learned that a magazine for next, this, month, will have a scene
founded on my story; vulgarizing or doing no good to it:
and I accordingly throw it up. I want a subject of the most wild
and passionate love, to contrast with the one I mean to have ready
in a short time. I have many half-conceptions, floating fancies:
give me your notion of a thorough self-devotement, self-forgetting;
should it be a woman who loves thus, or a man? What circumstances
will best draw out, set forth this feeling? . . .
==
The tragedies in question were to be `King Victor and King Charles',
and `The Return of the Druses'.
This letter affords a curious insight into Mr. Browning's mode of work;
it is also very significant of the small place which love
had hitherto occupied in his life. It was evident, from his appeal
to Miss Haworth's `notion' on the subject, that he had as yet no experience,
even imaginary, of a genuine passion, whether in woman or man.
The experience was still distant from him in point of time.
In circumstance he was nearer to it than he knew; for it was in 1839
that he became acquainted with Mr. Kenyon.
When dining one day at Serjeant Talfourd's, he was accosted
by a pleasant elderly man, who, having, we conclude, heard who he was,
asked leave to address to him a few questions: `Was his father's name Robert?
had he gone to school at the Rev. Mr. Bell's at Cheshunt,
and was he still alive?' On receiving affirmative answers,
he went on to say that Mr. Browning and he had been great chums at school,
and though they had lost sight of each other in after-life,
he had never forgotten his old playmate, but even alluded to him
in a little book which he had published a few years before.*
--
* The volume is entitled `Rhymed Plea for Tolerance' (1833),
and contains a reference to Mr. Kenyon's schooldays,
and to the classic fights which Mr. Browning had instituted.
--
The next morning the poet asked his father if he remembered
a schoolfellow named John Kenyon. He replied, `Certainly! This is his face,'
and sketched a boy's head, in which his son at once recognized
that of the grown man. The acquaintance was renewed, and Mr. Kenyon
proved ever afterwards a warm friend. Mr. Browning wrote of him,
in a letter to Professor Knight of St. Andrews, Jan. 10, 1884:
`He was one of the best of human beings, with a general sympathy
for excellence of every kind. He enjoyed the friendship of Wordsworth,
of Southey, of Landor, and, in later days, was intimate with
most of my contemporaries of eminence.' It was at Mr. Kenyon's house
that the poet saw most of Wordsworth, who always stayed there
when he came to town.
In 1840 `Sordello' appeared. It was, relatively to its length,
by far the slowest in preparation of Mr. Browning's poems.
This seemed, indeed, a condition of its peculiar character.
It had lain much deeper in the author's mind than the various slighter works
which were thrown off in the course of its inception.
We know from the preface to `Strafford' that it must have been begun
soon after `Paracelsus'. Its plan may have belonged to a still earlier date;
for it connects itself with `Pauline' as the history of a poetic soul;
with both the earlier
not to be reasoned on, disputed, laughed at, grieved about:
they are `Fanny's crotchets'. I thank thee, Jew (lia),
for teaching me that word.
I don't know that I shall leave town for a month: my friend Monclar
looks piteous when I talk of such an event. I can't bear to leave him;
he is to take my portrait to-day (a famous one he HAS taken!) and very like
he engages it shall be. I am going to town for the purpose. . . .
Now, then, do something for me, and see if I'll ask Miss M---- to help you!
I am going to begin the finishing `Sordello' -- and to begin thinking
a Tragedy (an Historical one, so I shall want heaps of criticisms
on `Strafford') and I want to have ANOTHER tragedy in prospect,
I write best so provided: I had chosen a splendid subject for it,
when I learned that a magazine for next, this, month, will have a scene
founded on my story; vulgarizing or doing no good to it:
and I accordingly throw it up. I want a subject of the most wild
and passionate love, to contrast with the one I mean to have ready
in a short time. I have many half-conceptions, floating fancies:
give me your notion of a thorough self-devotement, self-forgetting;
should it be a woman who loves thus, or a man? What circumstances
will best draw out, set forth this feeling? . . .
==
The tragedies in question were to be `King Victor and King Charles',
and `The Return of the Druses'.
This letter affords a curious insight into Mr. Browning's mode of work;
it is also very significant of the small place which love
had hitherto occupied in his life. It was evident, from his appeal
to Miss Haworth's `notion' on the subject, that he had as yet no experience,
even imaginary, of a genuine passion, whether in woman or man.
The experience was still distant from him in point of time.
In circumstance he was nearer to it than he knew; for it was in 1839
that he became acquainted with Mr. Kenyon.
When dining one day at Serjeant Talfourd's, he was accosted
by a pleasant elderly man, who, having, we conclude, heard who he was,
asked leave to address to him a few questions: `Was his father's name Robert?
had he gone to school at the Rev. Mr. Bell's at Cheshunt,
and was he still alive?' On receiving affirmative answers,
he went on to say that Mr. Browning and he had been great chums at school,
and though they had lost sight of each other in after-life,
he had never forgotten his old playmate, but even alluded to him
in a little book which he had published a few years before.*
--
* The volume is entitled `Rhymed Plea for Tolerance' (1833),
and contains a reference to Mr. Kenyon's schooldays,
and to the classic fights which Mr. Browning had instituted.
--
The next morning the poet asked his father if he remembered
a schoolfellow named John Kenyon. He replied, `Certainly! This is his face,'
and sketched a boy's head, in which his son at once recognized
that of the grown man. The acquaintance was renewed, and Mr. Kenyon
proved ever afterwards a warm friend. Mr. Browning wrote of him,
in a letter to Professor Knight of St. Andrews, Jan. 10, 1884:
`He was one of the best of human beings, with a general sympathy
for excellence of every kind. He enjoyed the friendship of Wordsworth,
of Southey, of Landor, and, in later days, was intimate with
most of my contemporaries of eminence.' It was at Mr. Kenyon's house
that the poet saw most of Wordsworth, who always stayed there
when he came to town.
In 1840 `Sordello' appeared. It was, relatively to its length,
by far the slowest in preparation of Mr. Browning's poems.
This seemed, indeed, a condition of its peculiar character.
It had lain much deeper in the author's mind than the various slighter works
which were thrown off in the course of its inception.
We know from the preface to `Strafford' that it must have been begun
soon after `Paracelsus'. Its plan may have belonged to a still earlier date;
for it connects itself with `Pauline' as the history of a poetic soul;
with both the earlier