Life and Letters of Robert Browning [63]
are better already, and his appetite improved.
Certainly little Babe's great cheeks are growing rosier and rosier.
He is out all day when the sun is not too strong, and Wilson will have it
that he is prettier than the whole population of babies here. . . .
Then my whole strength has wonderfully improved -- just as
my medical friends prophesied, -- and it seems like a dream
when I find myself able to climb the hills with Robert,
and help him to lose himself in the forests. Ever since my confinement
I have been growing stronger and stronger, and where it is to stop
I can't tell really. I can do as much or more than at any point of my life
since I arrived at woman's estate. The air of the place
seems to penetrate the heart, and not the lungs only: it draws you,
raises you, excites you. Mountain air without its keenness --
sheathed in Italian sunshine -- think what that must be!
And the beauty and the solitude -- for with a few paces
we get free of the habitations of men -- all is delightful to me.
What is peculiarly beautiful and wonderful, is the variety of the shapes
of the mountains. They are a multitude -- and yet there is no likeness.
None, except where the golden mist comes and transfigures them into one glory.
For the rest, the mountain there wrapt in the chestnut forest
is not like that bare peak which tilts against the sky --
nor like the serpent-twine of another which seems to move and coil
in the moving coiling shadow. . . .'
==
She writes again:
==
Bagni di Lucca: Oct. 2 ('49).
`. . . I have performed a great exploit -- ridden on a donkey five miles deep
into the mountain, to an almost inaccessible volcanic ground not far
from the stars. Robert on horseback, and Wilson and the nurse (with Baby)
on other donkies, -- guides of course. We set off at eight in the morning,
and returned at six P.M. after dining on the mountain pinnacle,
I dreadfully tired, but the child laughing as usual, burnt brick colour
for all bad effect. No horse or ass untrained for the mountains
could have kept foot a moment where we penetrated, and even as it was,
one could not help the natural thrill. No road except the bed
of exhausted torrents -- above and through the chestnut forests
precipitous beyond what you would think possible for ascent or descent.
Ravines tearing the ground to pieces under your feet. The scenery,
sublime and wonderful, satisfied us wholly, as we looked round
on the world of innumerable mountains, bound faintly with the grey sea --
and not a human habitation. . . .'
==
The following fragment, which I have received quite without date,
might refer to this or to a somewhat later period.
==
`If he is vain about anything in the world it is about my improved health,
and I say to him, "But you needn't talk so much to people,
of how your wife walked here with you, and there with you,
as if a wife with a pair of feet was a miracle of nature."'
==
==
Florence: Feb. 18 ('50).
`. . . You can scarcely imagine to yourself the retired life we live,
and how we have retreated from the kind advances of the English society here.
Now people seem to understand that we are to be left alone. . . .'
==
==
Florence: April 1 ('50).
`. . . We drive day by day through the lovely Cascine,
just sweeping through the city. Just such a window where Bianca Capello
looked out to see the Duke go by -- and just such a door
where Tasso stood and where Dante drew his chair out to sit.
Strange to have all that old world life about us, and the blue sky
so bright. . . .'
==
==
Venice: June 4 (probably '50).
`. . . I have been between Heaven and Earth since our arrival at Venice.
The Heaven of it is ineffable -- never had I touched the skirts
of so celestial a place. The beauty of the architecture,
the silver trails of water up between all that gorgeous colour and carving,
the enchanting silence, the music,
Certainly little Babe's great cheeks are growing rosier and rosier.
He is out all day when the sun is not too strong, and Wilson will have it
that he is prettier than the whole population of babies here. . . .
Then my whole strength has wonderfully improved -- just as
my medical friends prophesied, -- and it seems like a dream
when I find myself able to climb the hills with Robert,
and help him to lose himself in the forests. Ever since my confinement
I have been growing stronger and stronger, and where it is to stop
I can't tell really. I can do as much or more than at any point of my life
since I arrived at woman's estate. The air of the place
seems to penetrate the heart, and not the lungs only: it draws you,
raises you, excites you. Mountain air without its keenness --
sheathed in Italian sunshine -- think what that must be!
And the beauty and the solitude -- for with a few paces
we get free of the habitations of men -- all is delightful to me.
What is peculiarly beautiful and wonderful, is the variety of the shapes
of the mountains. They are a multitude -- and yet there is no likeness.
None, except where the golden mist comes and transfigures them into one glory.
For the rest, the mountain there wrapt in the chestnut forest
is not like that bare peak which tilts against the sky --
nor like the serpent-twine of another which seems to move and coil
in the moving coiling shadow. . . .'
==
She writes again:
==
Bagni di Lucca: Oct. 2 ('49).
`. . . I have performed a great exploit -- ridden on a donkey five miles deep
into the mountain, to an almost inaccessible volcanic ground not far
from the stars. Robert on horseback, and Wilson and the nurse (with Baby)
on other donkies, -- guides of course. We set off at eight in the morning,
and returned at six P.M. after dining on the mountain pinnacle,
I dreadfully tired, but the child laughing as usual, burnt brick colour
for all bad effect. No horse or ass untrained for the mountains
could have kept foot a moment where we penetrated, and even as it was,
one could not help the natural thrill. No road except the bed
of exhausted torrents -- above and through the chestnut forests
precipitous beyond what you would think possible for ascent or descent.
Ravines tearing the ground to pieces under your feet. The scenery,
sublime and wonderful, satisfied us wholly, as we looked round
on the world of innumerable mountains, bound faintly with the grey sea --
and not a human habitation. . . .'
==
The following fragment, which I have received quite without date,
might refer to this or to a somewhat later period.
==
`If he is vain about anything in the world it is about my improved health,
and I say to him, "But you needn't talk so much to people,
of how your wife walked here with you, and there with you,
as if a wife with a pair of feet was a miracle of nature."'
==
==
Florence: Feb. 18 ('50).
`. . . You can scarcely imagine to yourself the retired life we live,
and how we have retreated from the kind advances of the English society here.
Now people seem to understand that we are to be left alone. . . .'
==
==
Florence: April 1 ('50).
`. . . We drive day by day through the lovely Cascine,
just sweeping through the city. Just such a window where Bianca Capello
looked out to see the Duke go by -- and just such a door
where Tasso stood and where Dante drew his chair out to sit.
Strange to have all that old world life about us, and the blue sky
so bright. . . .'
==
==
Venice: June 4 (probably '50).
`. . . I have been between Heaven and Earth since our arrival at Venice.
The Heaven of it is ineffable -- never had I touched the skirts
of so celestial a place. The beauty of the architecture,
the silver trails of water up between all that gorgeous colour and carving,
the enchanting silence, the music,