Life of Robert Browning [53]
she dreamt much of Agamemnon.
In the same year, in suburban Camberwell, a little boy was often wont
to listen eagerly to his father's narrative of the same hero, and to all
the moving tale of Troy. It is significant that these two children,
so far apart, both with the light of the future upon their brows,
grew up in familiarity with something of the antique beauty.
It was a lifelong joy to both, that "serene air of Greece".
Many an hour of gloom was charmed away by it for the poetess
who translated the "Prometheus Bound" of Aeschylus, and wrote "The Dead Pan":
many a happy day and memorable night were spent in that "beloved environment"
by the poet who wrote "Balaustion's Adventure" and translated the "Agamemnon".
The chief sorrow of her life, however, occurred in her thirty-first year.
She never quite recovered from the shock of her well-loved brother Edward's
tragic death, a mysterious disaster, for the foundering of the little yacht
`La Belle Sauvage' is almost as inexplicable as that of the `Ariel'
in the Spezzian waters beyond Lerici. Not only through the ensuing winter,
but often in the dreams of after years, "the sound of the waves
rang in my ears like the moans of one dying."
The removal of the Barrett household to Gloucester Place,
in Western London, was a great event. Here, invalid though she was,
she could see friends occasionally and get new books constantly.
Her name was well known and became widely familiar when
her "Cry of the Children" rang like a clarion throughout the country.
The poem was founded upon an official report by Richard Hengist Horne,
the friend whom some years previously she had won in correspondence,
and with whom she had become so intimate, though without
personal acquaintance, that she had agreed to write a drama
in collaboration with him, to be called "Psyche Apocalypte",
and to be modelled on "Greek instead of modern tragedy."
Horne -- a poet of genius, and a dramatist of remarkable power --
was one of the truest friends she ever had, and, so far as her literary life
is concerned, came next in influence only to her poet-husband.
Among the friends she saw much of in the early forties was a distant "cousin",
John Kenyon -- a jovial, genial, gracious, and altogether delightful man,
who acted the part of Providence to many troubled souls, and, in particular,
was "a fairy godfather" to Elizabeth Barrett and to "the other poet",
as he used to call Browning. It was to Mr. Kenyon -- "Kenyon,
with the face of a Benedictine monk, but the most jovial of good fellows,"
as a friend has recorded of him; "Kenyon the Magnificent",
as he was called by Browning -- that Miss Barrett owed her first introduction
to the poetry of her future husband.
Browning's poetry had for her an immediate appeal. With sure insight
she discerned the special quality of the poetic wealth
of the "Bells and Pomegranates", among which she then and always
cared most for the penultimate volume, the "Dramatic Romances and Lyrics".
Two years before she met the author she had written,
in "Lady Geraldine's Courtship" --
"Or from Browning some `Pomegranate' which, if cut deep down the middle,
Shows a heart within blood-tinctured, of a veined humanity."
A little earlier she had even, unwittingly on either side,
been a collaborateur with "the author of `Paracelsus'."
She gave Horne much aid in the preparation of his "New Spirit of the Age",
and he has himself told us "that the mottoes, which are singularly
happy and appropriate, were for the most part supplied
by Miss Barrett and Robert Browning, then unknown to each other."
One thing and another drew them nearer and nearer. Now it was a poem,
now a novel expression, now a rare sympathy.
An intermittent correspondence ensued, and both poets became anxious
to know each other. "We artists -- how well praise agrees with us,"
as Balzac says.
A few months later, in 1846, they came to know one another personally.
The story of their first meeting, which has received a wide acceptance,
is apocryphal.
In the same year, in suburban Camberwell, a little boy was often wont
to listen eagerly to his father's narrative of the same hero, and to all
the moving tale of Troy. It is significant that these two children,
so far apart, both with the light of the future upon their brows,
grew up in familiarity with something of the antique beauty.
It was a lifelong joy to both, that "serene air of Greece".
Many an hour of gloom was charmed away by it for the poetess
who translated the "Prometheus Bound" of Aeschylus, and wrote "The Dead Pan":
many a happy day and memorable night were spent in that "beloved environment"
by the poet who wrote "Balaustion's Adventure" and translated the "Agamemnon".
The chief sorrow of her life, however, occurred in her thirty-first year.
She never quite recovered from the shock of her well-loved brother Edward's
tragic death, a mysterious disaster, for the foundering of the little yacht
`La Belle Sauvage' is almost as inexplicable as that of the `Ariel'
in the Spezzian waters beyond Lerici. Not only through the ensuing winter,
but often in the dreams of after years, "the sound of the waves
rang in my ears like the moans of one dying."
The removal of the Barrett household to Gloucester Place,
in Western London, was a great event. Here, invalid though she was,
she could see friends occasionally and get new books constantly.
Her name was well known and became widely familiar when
her "Cry of the Children" rang like a clarion throughout the country.
The poem was founded upon an official report by Richard Hengist Horne,
the friend whom some years previously she had won in correspondence,
and with whom she had become so intimate, though without
personal acquaintance, that she had agreed to write a drama
in collaboration with him, to be called "Psyche Apocalypte",
and to be modelled on "Greek instead of modern tragedy."
Horne -- a poet of genius, and a dramatist of remarkable power --
was one of the truest friends she ever had, and, so far as her literary life
is concerned, came next in influence only to her poet-husband.
Among the friends she saw much of in the early forties was a distant "cousin",
John Kenyon -- a jovial, genial, gracious, and altogether delightful man,
who acted the part of Providence to many troubled souls, and, in particular,
was "a fairy godfather" to Elizabeth Barrett and to "the other poet",
as he used to call Browning. It was to Mr. Kenyon -- "Kenyon,
with the face of a Benedictine monk, but the most jovial of good fellows,"
as a friend has recorded of him; "Kenyon the Magnificent",
as he was called by Browning -- that Miss Barrett owed her first introduction
to the poetry of her future husband.
Browning's poetry had for her an immediate appeal. With sure insight
she discerned the special quality of the poetic wealth
of the "Bells and Pomegranates", among which she then and always
cared most for the penultimate volume, the "Dramatic Romances and Lyrics".
Two years before she met the author she had written,
in "Lady Geraldine's Courtship" --
"Or from Browning some `Pomegranate' which, if cut deep down the middle,
Shows a heart within blood-tinctured, of a veined humanity."
A little earlier she had even, unwittingly on either side,
been a collaborateur with "the author of `Paracelsus'."
She gave Horne much aid in the preparation of his "New Spirit of the Age",
and he has himself told us "that the mottoes, which are singularly
happy and appropriate, were for the most part supplied
by Miss Barrett and Robert Browning, then unknown to each other."
One thing and another drew them nearer and nearer. Now it was a poem,
now a novel expression, now a rare sympathy.
An intermittent correspondence ensued, and both poets became anxious
to know each other. "We artists -- how well praise agrees with us,"
as Balzac says.
A few months later, in 1846, they came to know one another personally.
The story of their first meeting, which has received a wide acceptance,
is apocryphal.