Life and Letters of Robert Browning [74]
and thought. We go backwards and forwards to tea
and talk at one another's houses.
`. . . Since I began this letter we have had a grand donkey excursion
to a village called Benabbia, and the cross above it on the mountain-peak.
We returned in the dark, and were in some danger of tumbling
down various precipices -- but the scenery was exquisite --
past speaking of for beauty. Oh, those jagged mountains,
rolled together like pre-Adamite beasts and setting their teeth
against the sky -- it was wonderful. . . .'
==
Mr. Browning's share of the work referred to was `In a Balcony';
also, probably, some of the `Men and Women'; the scene of the declaration
in `By the Fireside' was laid in a little adjacent mountain-gorge
to which he walked or rode. A fortnight's visit from Mr., now Lord, Lytton,
was also an incident of this summer.
The next three letters from which I am able to quote,
describe the impressions of Mrs. Browning's first winter in Rome.
==
Rome: 43 Via Bocca di Leone, 3o piano. Jan. 18, 54.
`. . . Well, we are all well to begin with -- and have been well --
our troubles came to us through sympathy entirely. A most exquisite journey
of eight days we had from Florence to Rome, seeing the great monastery
and triple church of Assisi and the wonderful Terni by the way --
that passion of the waters which makes the human heart seem so still.
In the highest spirits we entered Rome, Robert and Penini singing actually --
for the child was radiant and flushed with the continual change
of air and scene. . . . You remember my telling you of our friends the Storys
-- how they and their two children helped to make the summer go pleasantly
at the Baths of Lucca. They had taken an apartment for us in Rome,
so that we arrived in comfort to lighted fires and lamps as if coming home, --
and we had a glimpse of their smiling faces that evening.
In the morning before breakfast, little Edith was brought over to us
by the manservant with a message, "the boy was in convulsions --
there was danger." We hurried to the house, of course,
leaving Edith with Wilson. Too true! All that first day
we spent beside a death-bed; for the child never rallied --
never opened his eyes in consciousness -- and by eight in the evening
he was gone. In the meanwhile, Edith was taken ill at our house --
could not be moved, said the physicians . . . gastric fever,
with a tendency to the brain -- and within two days her life
was almost despaired of -- exactly the same malady as her brother's. . . .
Also the English nurse was apparently dying at the Story's house,
and Emma Page, the artist's youngest daughter, sickened with the same disease.
`. . . To pass over the dreary time, I will tell you at once
that the three patients recovered -- only in poor little Edith's case
Roman fever followed the gastric, and has persisted ever since
in periodical recurrence. She is very pale and thin.
Roman fever is not dangerous to life, but it is exhausting. . . .
Now you will understand what ghostly flakes of death
have changed the sense of Rome to me. The first day by a death-bed,
the first drive-out, to the cemetery, where poor little Joe is laid
close to Shelley's heart ("Cor cordium" says the epitaph)
and where the mother insisted on going when she and I went out
in the carriage together -- I am horribly weak about such things --
I can't look on the earth-side of death -- I flinch from corpses and graves,
and never meet a common funeral without a sort of horror.
When I look deathwards I look OVER death, and upwards,
or I can't look that way at all. So that it was a struggle with me
to sit upright in that carriage in which the poor stricken mother
sat so calmly -- not to drop from the seat. Well -- all this
has blackened Rome to me. I can't think about the Caesars
in the old strain of thought -- the antique words get muddled and blurred
with warm dashes of modern, everyday tears and fresh grave-clay.
Rome is spoilt to me -- there's the truth. Still, one lives through
and talk at one another's houses.
`. . . Since I began this letter we have had a grand donkey excursion
to a village called Benabbia, and the cross above it on the mountain-peak.
We returned in the dark, and were in some danger of tumbling
down various precipices -- but the scenery was exquisite --
past speaking of for beauty. Oh, those jagged mountains,
rolled together like pre-Adamite beasts and setting their teeth
against the sky -- it was wonderful. . . .'
==
Mr. Browning's share of the work referred to was `In a Balcony';
also, probably, some of the `Men and Women'; the scene of the declaration
in `By the Fireside' was laid in a little adjacent mountain-gorge
to which he walked or rode. A fortnight's visit from Mr., now Lord, Lytton,
was also an incident of this summer.
The next three letters from which I am able to quote,
describe the impressions of Mrs. Browning's first winter in Rome.
==
Rome: 43 Via Bocca di Leone, 3o piano. Jan. 18, 54.
`. . . Well, we are all well to begin with -- and have been well --
our troubles came to us through sympathy entirely. A most exquisite journey
of eight days we had from Florence to Rome, seeing the great monastery
and triple church of Assisi and the wonderful Terni by the way --
that passion of the waters which makes the human heart seem so still.
In the highest spirits we entered Rome, Robert and Penini singing actually --
for the child was radiant and flushed with the continual change
of air and scene. . . . You remember my telling you of our friends the Storys
-- how they and their two children helped to make the summer go pleasantly
at the Baths of Lucca. They had taken an apartment for us in Rome,
so that we arrived in comfort to lighted fires and lamps as if coming home, --
and we had a glimpse of their smiling faces that evening.
In the morning before breakfast, little Edith was brought over to us
by the manservant with a message, "the boy was in convulsions --
there was danger." We hurried to the house, of course,
leaving Edith with Wilson. Too true! All that first day
we spent beside a death-bed; for the child never rallied --
never opened his eyes in consciousness -- and by eight in the evening
he was gone. In the meanwhile, Edith was taken ill at our house --
could not be moved, said the physicians . . . gastric fever,
with a tendency to the brain -- and within two days her life
was almost despaired of -- exactly the same malady as her brother's. . . .
Also the English nurse was apparently dying at the Story's house,
and Emma Page, the artist's youngest daughter, sickened with the same disease.
`. . . To pass over the dreary time, I will tell you at once
that the three patients recovered -- only in poor little Edith's case
Roman fever followed the gastric, and has persisted ever since
in periodical recurrence. She is very pale and thin.
Roman fever is not dangerous to life, but it is exhausting. . . .
Now you will understand what ghostly flakes of death
have changed the sense of Rome to me. The first day by a death-bed,
the first drive-out, to the cemetery, where poor little Joe is laid
close to Shelley's heart ("Cor cordium" says the epitaph)
and where the mother insisted on going when she and I went out
in the carriage together -- I am horribly weak about such things --
I can't look on the earth-side of death -- I flinch from corpses and graves,
and never meet a common funeral without a sort of horror.
When I look deathwards I look OVER death, and upwards,
or I can't look that way at all. So that it was a struggle with me
to sit upright in that carriage in which the poor stricken mother
sat so calmly -- not to drop from the seat. Well -- all this
has blackened Rome to me. I can't think about the Caesars
in the old strain of thought -- the antique words get muddled and blurred
with warm dashes of modern, everyday tears and fresh grave-clay.
Rome is spoilt to me -- there's the truth. Still, one lives through