Life of Robert Browning [55]
that she had been discomposed not by `a too exuberant financier',
as she had surmised, but by, as "Waring" called Browning,
the "subtlest assertor of the Soul in song."
With the same quick insight as she had perceived Robert Browning's
poetic greatness, Elizabeth Barrett discerned his personal worth.
He was essentially manly in all respects: so manly,
that many frail souls of either sex philandered about his over-robustness.
From the twilight gloom of an aesthetic clique came a small voice
belittling the great man as "quite too `loud', painfully excessive."
Browning was manly enough to laugh at all ghoulish cries
of any kind whatsoever. Once in a way the lion would look round
and by a raised breath make the jackals wriggle; as when the poet
wrote to a correspondent, who had drawn his attention
to certain abusive personalities in some review or newspaper:
"Dear Sir -- I am sure you mean very kindly, but I have had
too long an experience of the inability of the human goose
to do other than cackle when benevolent and hiss when malicious,
and no amount of goose criticism shall make me lift a heel
against what waddles behind it."
Herself one whose happiest experiences were in dreamland,
Miss Barrett was keenly susceptible to the strong humanity of Browning's song,
nor less keenly attracted by his strenuous and fearless outlook,
his poetic practicality, and even by his bluntness of insight
in certain matters. It was no slight thing to her that she could,
in Mr. Lowell's words, say of herself and of him --
"We, who believe life's bases rest
Beyond the probe of chemic test."
She rejoiced, despite her own love for remote imaginings,
to know that he was of those who (to quote again from the same fine poet)
". . . wasted not their breath in schemes
Of what man might be in some bubble-sphere,
As if he must be other than he seems
Because he was not what he should be here,
Postponing Time's slow proof to petulant dreams;"
that, in a word, while `he could believe the promise of to-morrow,' he was
at the same time supremely conscious of `the wondrous meaning of to-day.'
Both, from their youth onward, had travelled `on trails divine
of unimagined laws.' It was sufficient for her that he kept his eyes
fixed on the goal beyond the way he followed: it did not matter
that he was blind to the dim adumbrations of novel byways,
of strange Calvarys by the wayside, so often visible to her.
Their first meeting was speedily followed by a second -- by a third --
and then? When we know not, but ere long, each found that happiness
was in the bestowal of the other.
The secret was for some time kept absolutely private. From the first
Mr. Barrett had been jealous of his beloved daughter's new friend.
He did not care much for the man, he with all the prejudices
and baneful conservatism of the slave-owning planter, the other
with ardent democratic sentiments and a detestation of all forms of iniquity.
Nor did he understand the poet. He could read his daughter's flowing verse
with pleasure, but there was to his ear a mere jumble of sound and sense
in much of the work of the author of "The Tomb at St. Praxed's"
and "Sibrandus Schafnaburgensis". Of a selfishly genial but also
of a violent and often sullen nature, he resented more and more any friendship
which threatened to loosen the chain of affection and association
binding his daughter to himself.
Both the lovers believed that an immediate marriage would,
from every point of view, be best. It was not advisable that it should be
long delayed, if to happen at all, for the health of Miss Barrett was so poor
that another winter in London might, probably would, mean irretrievable harm.
Some time before this she had become acquainted with Mrs. Jameson,
the eminent art-writer. The regard, which quickly developed
to an affectionate esteem, was mutual. One September morning
Mrs. Jameson called, and after having dwelt on the gloom and peril
of another winter in London, dwelt on the