Life of Robert Browning [54]
The meeting was brought about by Kenyon.
This common friend had been a schoolfellow of Browning's father,
and so it was natural that he took a more than ordinary interest
in the brilliant young poet, perhaps all the more so
that the reluctant tide of popularity which had promised to set in
with such unparalleled sweep and weight had since experienced a steady ebb.
And so the fates brought these two together. The younger was already
far the stronger, but he had an unbounded admiration for Miss Barrett.
To her, he was even then the chief living poet. She perceived
his ultimate greatness; as early as 1845 had "a full faith in him
as poet and prophet."
As Browning admitted to a friend, the love between them
was almost instantaneous, a thing of the eyes, mind, and heart --
each striving for supremacy, till all were gratified equally in a common joy.
They had one bond of sterling union: passion for the art
to which both had devoted their lives.
To those who love love for love's sake, who `se passionnent pour la passion,'
as Prosper Merimee says, there could scarce be a more sacred spot in London
than that fiftieth house in unattractive Wimpole Street,
where these two poets first met each other; and where, in the darkened room,
"Love quivered, an invisible flame." Elizabeth Barrett was indeed,
in her own words, "as sweet as Spring, as Ocean deep."
She, too, was always, as she wrote of Harriet Martineau,
in a hopeless anguish of body and serene triumph of spirit.
As George Sand says of one of her fictitious personages,
she was an "artist to the backbone; that is, one who feels life
with frightful intensity." To this too keen intensity of feeling
must be attributed something of that longing for repose,
that deep craving for rest from what is too exciting from within,
which made her affirm the exquisite appeal to her of such Biblical passages as
"The Lord of peace Himself give you peace," and "He giveth His Beloved Sleep,"
which, as she says in one of her numerous letters to Miss Mitford,
"strike upon the disquieted earth with such a FOREIGNNESS of heavenly music."
Nor was he whom she loved as a man, as well as revered as a poet,
unworthy of her. His was the robustest poetic intellect of the century;
his the serenest outlook; his, almost the sole unfaltering footsteps
along the perilous ways of speculative thought. A fair life,
irradiate with fairer ideals, conserved his native integrity
from that incongruity between practice and precept so commonly exemplified.
Comely in all respects, with his black-brown wavy hair, finely-cut features,
ready and winsome smile, alert luminous eyes, quick, spontaneous,
expressive gestures -- an inclination of the head, a lift of the eyebrows,
a modulation of the lips, an assertive or deprecatory wave of the hand,
conveying so much -- and a voice at that time of a singular
penetrating sweetness, he was, even without that light of the future
upon his forehead which she was so swift to discern, a man to captivate
any woman of kindred nature and sympathies. Over and above these advantages,
he possessed a rare quality of physical magnetism. By virtue of this
he could either attract irresistibly or strongly repel.
I have several times heard people state that a handshake from Browning
was like an electric shock. Truly enough, it did seem as though
his sterling nature rang in his genially dominant voice, and, again,
as though his voice transmitted instantaneous waves of an electric current
through every nerve of what, for want of a better phrase,
I must perforce call his intensely alive hand. I remember once how a lady,
afflicted with nerves, in the dubious enjoyment of her first experience of
a "literary afternoon", rose hurriedly and, in reply to her hostess' inquiry
as to her motive, explained that she could not sit any longer
beside the elderly gentleman who was talking to Mrs. So-and-so,
as his near presence made her quiver all over, "like a mild attack
of pins-and-needles," as she phrased it. She was chagrined to learn
This common friend had been a schoolfellow of Browning's father,
and so it was natural that he took a more than ordinary interest
in the brilliant young poet, perhaps all the more so
that the reluctant tide of popularity which had promised to set in
with such unparalleled sweep and weight had since experienced a steady ebb.
And so the fates brought these two together. The younger was already
far the stronger, but he had an unbounded admiration for Miss Barrett.
To her, he was even then the chief living poet. She perceived
his ultimate greatness; as early as 1845 had "a full faith in him
as poet and prophet."
As Browning admitted to a friend, the love between them
was almost instantaneous, a thing of the eyes, mind, and heart --
each striving for supremacy, till all were gratified equally in a common joy.
They had one bond of sterling union: passion for the art
to which both had devoted their lives.
To those who love love for love's sake, who `se passionnent pour la passion,'
as Prosper Merimee says, there could scarce be a more sacred spot in London
than that fiftieth house in unattractive Wimpole Street,
where these two poets first met each other; and where, in the darkened room,
"Love quivered, an invisible flame." Elizabeth Barrett was indeed,
in her own words, "as sweet as Spring, as Ocean deep."
She, too, was always, as she wrote of Harriet Martineau,
in a hopeless anguish of body and serene triumph of spirit.
As George Sand says of one of her fictitious personages,
she was an "artist to the backbone; that is, one who feels life
with frightful intensity." To this too keen intensity of feeling
must be attributed something of that longing for repose,
that deep craving for rest from what is too exciting from within,
which made her affirm the exquisite appeal to her of such Biblical passages as
"The Lord of peace Himself give you peace," and "He giveth His Beloved Sleep,"
which, as she says in one of her numerous letters to Miss Mitford,
"strike upon the disquieted earth with such a FOREIGNNESS of heavenly music."
Nor was he whom she loved as a man, as well as revered as a poet,
unworthy of her. His was the robustest poetic intellect of the century;
his the serenest outlook; his, almost the sole unfaltering footsteps
along the perilous ways of speculative thought. A fair life,
irradiate with fairer ideals, conserved his native integrity
from that incongruity between practice and precept so commonly exemplified.
Comely in all respects, with his black-brown wavy hair, finely-cut features,
ready and winsome smile, alert luminous eyes, quick, spontaneous,
expressive gestures -- an inclination of the head, a lift of the eyebrows,
a modulation of the lips, an assertive or deprecatory wave of the hand,
conveying so much -- and a voice at that time of a singular
penetrating sweetness, he was, even without that light of the future
upon his forehead which she was so swift to discern, a man to captivate
any woman of kindred nature and sympathies. Over and above these advantages,
he possessed a rare quality of physical magnetism. By virtue of this
he could either attract irresistibly or strongly repel.
I have several times heard people state that a handshake from Browning
was like an electric shock. Truly enough, it did seem as though
his sterling nature rang in his genially dominant voice, and, again,
as though his voice transmitted instantaneous waves of an electric current
through every nerve of what, for want of a better phrase,
I must perforce call his intensely alive hand. I remember once how a lady,
afflicted with nerves, in the dubious enjoyment of her first experience of
a "literary afternoon", rose hurriedly and, in reply to her hostess' inquiry
as to her motive, explained that she could not sit any longer
beside the elderly gentleman who was talking to Mrs. So-and-so,
as his near presence made her quiver all over, "like a mild attack
of pins-and-needles," as she phrased it. She was chagrined to learn