Life and Letters of Robert Browning [94]
-- but my root is taken and remains.
I know you always loved her, and me too in my degree. I shall always
be grateful to those who loved her, and that, I repeat, you did.
She was, and is, lamented with extraordinary demonstrations,
if one consider it. The Italians seem to have understood her by an instinct.
I have received strange kindness from everybody. Pen is very well --
very dear and good, anxious to comfort me as he calls it.
He can't know his loss yet. After years, his will be worse than mine --
he will want what he never had -- that is, for the time
when he could be helped by her wisdom, and genius and piety --
I HAVE had everything and shall not forget.
God bless you, dear friend. I believe I shall set out in a week.
Isa goes with me -- dear, true heart. You, too, would do
what you could for us were you here and your assistance needful.
A letter from you came a day or two before the end --
she made me enquire about the Frescobaldi Palace for you, --
Isa wrote to you in consequence. I shall be heard of at 151,
rue de Grenelle St. Germain.
Faithfully and affectionately yours,
Robert Browning.
==
The first of these displays even more self-control, it might be thought
less feeling, than the second; but it illustrates the reserve which,
I believe, habitually characterized Mr. Browning's attitude towards men.
His natural, and certainly most complete, confidants were women.
At about the end of July he left Florence with his son;
also accompanied by Miss Blagden, who travelled with them as far as Paris.
She herself must soon have returned to Italy; since he wrote to her
in September on the subject of his wife's provisional disinterment,*
in a manner which shows her to have been on the spot.
--
* Required for the subsequent placing of the monument designed by F. Leighton.
--
==
Sept. '61.
`. . . Isa, may I ask you one favour? Will you, whenever these
dreadful preliminaries, the provisional removement &c.
when they are proceeded with, -- will you do -- all you can --
suggest every regard to decency and proper feeling to the persons concerned?
I have a horror of that man of the grave-yard, and needless
publicity and exposure -- I rely on you, dearest friend of ours,
to at least lend us your influence when the time shall come --
a word may be invaluable. If there is any show made,
or gratification of strangers' curiosity, far better that I had left
the turf untouched. These things occur through sheer thoughtlessness,
carelessness, not anything worse, but the effect is irreparable.
I won't think any more of it -- now -- at least. . . .'
==
The dread expressed in this letter of any offence to the delicacies of
the occasion was too natural to be remarked upon here; but it connects itself
with an habitual aversion for the paraphernalia of death,
which was a marked peculiarity of Mr. Browning's nature. He shrank,
as his wife had done, from the `earth side' of the portentous change;
but truth compels me to own that her infinite pity had little or no part
in his attitude towards it. For him, a body from which the soul had passed,
held nothing of the person whose earthly vesture it had been.
He had no sympathy for the still human tenderness with which
so many of us regard the mortal remains of those they have loved,
or with the solemn or friendly interest in which that tenderness
so often reflects itself in more neutral minds. He would claim
all respect for the corpse, but he would turn away from it.
Another aspect of this feeling shows itself in a letter
to one of his brothers-in-law, Mr. George Moulton-Barrett,
in reference to his wife's monument, with which Mr. Barrett
had professed himself pleased. His tone is characterized
by an almost religious reverence for the memory which that monument enshrines.
He nevertheless writes:
==
`I hope to see it one day -- and, although I have no kind of concern
as to where the old clothes of myself shall be thrown,
I know you always loved her, and me too in my degree. I shall always
be grateful to those who loved her, and that, I repeat, you did.
She was, and is, lamented with extraordinary demonstrations,
if one consider it. The Italians seem to have understood her by an instinct.
I have received strange kindness from everybody. Pen is very well --
very dear and good, anxious to comfort me as he calls it.
He can't know his loss yet. After years, his will be worse than mine --
he will want what he never had -- that is, for the time
when he could be helped by her wisdom, and genius and piety --
I HAVE had everything and shall not forget.
God bless you, dear friend. I believe I shall set out in a week.
Isa goes with me -- dear, true heart. You, too, would do
what you could for us were you here and your assistance needful.
A letter from you came a day or two before the end --
she made me enquire about the Frescobaldi Palace for you, --
Isa wrote to you in consequence. I shall be heard of at 151,
rue de Grenelle St. Germain.
Faithfully and affectionately yours,
Robert Browning.
==
The first of these displays even more self-control, it might be thought
less feeling, than the second; but it illustrates the reserve which,
I believe, habitually characterized Mr. Browning's attitude towards men.
His natural, and certainly most complete, confidants were women.
At about the end of July he left Florence with his son;
also accompanied by Miss Blagden, who travelled with them as far as Paris.
She herself must soon have returned to Italy; since he wrote to her
in September on the subject of his wife's provisional disinterment,*
in a manner which shows her to have been on the spot.
--
* Required for the subsequent placing of the monument designed by F. Leighton.
--
==
Sept. '61.
`. . . Isa, may I ask you one favour? Will you, whenever these
dreadful preliminaries, the provisional removement &c.
when they are proceeded with, -- will you do -- all you can --
suggest every regard to decency and proper feeling to the persons concerned?
I have a horror of that man of the grave-yard, and needless
publicity and exposure -- I rely on you, dearest friend of ours,
to at least lend us your influence when the time shall come --
a word may be invaluable. If there is any show made,
or gratification of strangers' curiosity, far better that I had left
the turf untouched. These things occur through sheer thoughtlessness,
carelessness, not anything worse, but the effect is irreparable.
I won't think any more of it -- now -- at least. . . .'
==
The dread expressed in this letter of any offence to the delicacies of
the occasion was too natural to be remarked upon here; but it connects itself
with an habitual aversion for the paraphernalia of death,
which was a marked peculiarity of Mr. Browning's nature. He shrank,
as his wife had done, from the `earth side' of the portentous change;
but truth compels me to own that her infinite pity had little or no part
in his attitude towards it. For him, a body from which the soul had passed,
held nothing of the person whose earthly vesture it had been.
He had no sympathy for the still human tenderness with which
so many of us regard the mortal remains of those they have loved,
or with the solemn or friendly interest in which that tenderness
so often reflects itself in more neutral minds. He would claim
all respect for the corpse, but he would turn away from it.
Another aspect of this feeling shows itself in a letter
to one of his brothers-in-law, Mr. George Moulton-Barrett,
in reference to his wife's monument, with which Mr. Barrett
had professed himself pleased. His tone is characterized
by an almost religious reverence for the memory which that monument enshrines.
He nevertheless writes:
==
`I hope to see it one day -- and, although I have no kind of concern
as to where the old clothes of myself shall be thrown,