Life and Letters of Robert Browning [92]
discovered grave mischief at the lungs, which she herself had long believed
to be existent or impending. But the attack was comparatively,
indeed actually, slight; and an extract from her last letter to Miss Browning,
dated June 7, confirms what her family and friends have since asserted,
that it was the death of Cavour which gave her the final blow.
==
`. . . We come home into a cloud here. I can scarcely command voice or hand
to name `Cavour'. That great soul which meditated and made Italy has gone
to the diviner Country. If tears or blood could have saved him to us,
he should have had mine. I feel yet as if I could scarcely comprehend
the greatness of the vacancy. A hundred Garibaldis for such a man!'
==
Her death was signalized by the appearance -- this time, I am told,
unexpected -- of another brilliant comet, which passed so near the earth
as to come into contact with it.
Chapter 14
1861-1863
Miss Blagden -- Letters from Mr. Browning to Miss Haworth and Mr. Leighton
-- His Feeling in regard to Funeral Ceremonies -- Establishment in London --
Plan of Life -- Letter to Madame du Quaire -- Miss Arabel Barrett --
Biarritz -- Letters to Miss Blagden -- Conception of `The Ring and the Book'
-- Biographical Indiscretion -- New Edition of his Works --
Mr. and Mrs. Procter.
The friend who was nearest, at all events most helpful, to Mr. Browning
in this great and sudden sorrow was Miss Blagden -- Isa Blagden,
as she was called by all her intimates. Only a passing allusion to her
could hitherto find place in this fragmentary record of the Poet's life;
but the friendship which had long subsisted between her and Mrs. Browning
brings her now into closer and more frequent relation to it.
She was for many years a centre of English society in Florence;
for her genial, hospitable nature, as well as literary tastes
(she wrote one or two novels, I believe not without merit),
secured her the acquaintance of many interesting persons,
some of whom occasionally made her house their home;
and the evenings spent with her at her villa on Bellosguardo
live pleasantly in the remembrance of those of our older generation
who were permitted to share in them.
She carried the boy away from the house of mourning,
and induced his father to spend his nights under her roof,
while the last painful duties detained him in Florence.
He at least gave her cause to deny, what has been so often affirmed,
that great griefs are necessarily silent. She always spoke of this period
as her `apocalyptic month', so deeply poetic were the ravings
which alternated with the simple human cry of the desolate heart:
`I want her, I want her!' But the ear which received these utterances
has long been closed in death. The only written outbursts
of Mr. Browning's frantic sorrow were addressed, I believe, to his sister,
and to the friend, Madame du Quaire, whose own recent loss
most naturally invoked them, and who has since thought best,
so far as rested with her, to destroy the letters in which
they were contained. It is enough to know by simple statement
that he then suffered as he did. Life conquers Death for most of us;
whether or not `nature, art, and beauty' assist in the conquest.
It was bound to conquer in Mr. Browning's case: first through
his many-sided vitality; and secondly, through the special motive
for living and striving which remained to him in his son.
This note is struck in two letters which are given me to publish,
written about three weeks after Mrs. Browning's death;
and we see also that by this time his manhood was reacting against the blow,
and bracing itself with such consoling remembrance as the peace
and painlessness of his wife's last moments could afford to him.
==
Florence: July 19, '61.
Dear Leighton, -- It is like your old kindness to write to me
and to say what you do -- I know you feel for me. I can't write about it --
but there were many alleviating circumstances that you shall know one day