Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 47, September, 1861 by Various

V >> Various >> Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 47, September, 1861

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"But He stood sad before the sun
(The peoples felt their fate):
'The world is many,--I am one;
My great Deed was too great.
God's fruit of justice ripens slow:
Men's souls are narrow; let them grow.
My brothers, we must wait.'"

And truly, what Napoleon then failed, from opposition, to accomplish by
the sword, has since been, to a great extent, accomplished by diplomacy.

But though Mrs. Browning wrote her "Tale of Villafranca" in full faith,
after many a mile-stone in time lay between her and the _fact_, her
friends remember how the woman bent and was wellnigh crushed, as by a
thunderbolt, when the intelligence of this Imperial Treaty was first
received. Coming so quickly upon the heels of the victories of Solferino
and San Martino, it is no marvel that what stunned Italy should have
almost killed Mrs. Browning. That it hastened her into the grave is
beyond a doubt, as she never fully shook off the severe attack of
illness occasioned by this check upon her life-hopes. The summer of 1859
was a weary, suffering season for her in consequence; and although the
following winter, passed in Rome, helped to repair the evil that had
been wrought, a heavy cold, caught at the end of the season, (and
for the sake of seeing Rome's gift of swords to Napoleon and Victor
Emmanuel,) told upon her lungs. The autumn of 1860 brought with it
another sorrow in the death of a beloved sister, and this loss seemed
more than Mrs. Browning could bear; but by breathing the soft air of
Rome again she seemed to revive, and indeed wrote that she was "better
in body and soul."

Those who have known Mrs. Browning in later years thought she never
looked better than upon her return to Florence in the first days of last
June, although the overland journey had been unusually fatiguing to her.
But the meeting was a sad one; for Cavour had died, and the national
loss was as severe to her as a personal bereavement. Her deep nature
regarded Italy's benefactor in the light of a friend; for had he not
labored unceasingly for that which was the burden of her song? and could
she allow so great a man to pass away without many a heart-ache? It is
as sublime as it is rare to see such intense appreciation of great deeds
as Mrs. Browning could give. Her fears, too, for Italy, when the patriot
pilot was hurried from the helm, gave rise to much anxiety, until
quieted by the assuring words of the new minister, Ricasoli.

Nor was Mrs. Browning so much engrossed in the Italian regeneration that
she had no thought for other nations and for other wrongs. Her interest
in America was very great,--

"For poets, (bear the word!)
Half-poets even, are still whole democrats:
Oh, not that we're disloyal to the high,
But loyal to the low, and cognizant
Of the less scrutable majesties."

In Mrs. Browning's poem of "A Curse for a Nation," where she foretold
the agony in store for America, and which has fallen upon us with the
swiftness of lightning, she was loath to raise her poet's voice against
us, pleading,--

"For I am hound by gratitude,
By love and blood,
To brothers of mine across the sea,
Who stretch out kindly hands to me."

And in one of her last letters, addressed to an American friend who
had reminded her of her prophecy and of its present fulfilment, she
replied,--"Never say that I have 'cursed' your country. I only _declared
the consequence of the evil_ in her, and which has since developed
itself in thunder and flame. I feel with more pain than many Americans
do the sorrow of this transition-time; but I do know that it _is_
transition, that it _is_ crisis, and that you will come out of the fire
purified, stainless, having had the angel of a great cause walking with
you in the furnace." Are not such burning, hopeful words from such a
source--worthy of the grateful memory of the Americans? Our cause has
lost an ardent supporter in Mrs. Browning; and did we dare rebel against
God's will, we should grieve deeply that she was not permitted to
glorify the Right in America as she has glorified it in Italy. Among
the last things that she read were Motley's letters on the "American
Crisis," and the writer will ever hold in dear memory the all but
final conversation had with Mrs. Browning, in which these letters were
discussed and warmly approved. In referring to the attitude taken by
foreign nations with regard to America, she said,--"Why do you heed what
others say? You are strong, and can do without sympathy; and when you
have triumphed, your glory will be the greater." Mrs. Browning's most
enthusiastic admirers are Americans; and I am sure, that, now she is no
longer of earth, they will love her the more for her sympathy in the
cause which is nearest to all hearts.

Mrs. Browning's conversation was most interesting. It was not
characterized by sallies of wit or brilliant repartee, nor was it
of that nature which is most welcome in society. It was frequently
intermingled with trenchant, quaint remarks, leavened with a quiet,
graceful humor of her own; but it was eminently calculated for a
_tete-a-tete_. Mrs. Browning never made an insignificant remark. All
that she said was _always_ worth hearing;--a greater compliment could
not be paid her. She was a most conscientious listener, giving you her
mind and heart, as well as her magnetic eyes. Though the latter spoke an
eager language of their own, she conversed slowly, with a conciseness
and point that, added to a matchless earnestness, which was the
predominant trait of her conversation as it was of her character, made
her a most delightful companion. _Persons_ were never her theme,
unless public characters were under discussion, or friends were to be
praised,--which kind office she frequently took upon herself. One never
dreamed of frivolities in Mrs. Browning's presence, and gossip felt
itself out of place. _Your_self (not _her_self) was always a pleasant
subject to her, calling out all her best sympathies in joy, and yet more
in sorrow. Books and humanity, great deeds, and, above all, politics,
which include all the grand questions of the day, were foremost in her
thoughts, and therefore oftenest on her lips. I speak not of religion,
for with her everything was religion. Her Christianity was not confined
to church and rubric: it meant _civilization_.

Association with the Brownings, even though of the slightest nature,
made one better in mind and soul. It was impossible to escape the
influence of the magnetic fluid of love and poetry that was constantly
passing between husband and wife. The unaffected devotion of one to the
other wove an additional charm around the two, and the very contrasts
in their natures made the union a more beautiful one. All remember Mrs.
Browning's pretty poem on her "Pet Name":--

"I have a name, a little name,
Uncadenced for the ear,
Unhonored by ancestral claim,
Unsanctified by prayer and psalm
The solemn font anear.

* * * * *

"My brother gave that name to me,
When we were children twain,--
When names acquired baptismally
Were hard to utter, as to see
That life had any pain."

It was this pet name of two small letters lovingly combined that dotted
Mr. Browning's spoken thoughts, as moonbeams fleck the ocean, and seemed
the pearl-bead that linked conversation together in one harmonious
whole. But what was written has now come to pass. The pet name is
engraved only in the hearts of a few.

"Though I write books, it will be read
Upon the leaves of none;
And afterward, when I am dead,
Will ne'er be graved, for sight or tread,
Across my funeral stone."

Mrs. Browning's letters are masterpieces of their kind. Easy and
conversational, they touch upon no subject without leaving an indelible
impression of the writer's originality; and the myriad matters of
universal interest with which many of them are teeming will render them
a precious legacy to the world, when the time shall have arrived for
their publication. Of late, Italy has claimed the lion's share in these
unrhymed sketches of Mrs. Browning in the _negligee_ of home. Prose has
recorded all that poetry threw aside; and thus much political thought,
many an anecdote, many a reflection, and much womanly enthusiasm have
been stored up for the benefit of more than the persons to whom these
letters were addressed. And while we wait patiently for this great
pleasure, which must sooner or later be enjoyed and appreciated, we may
gather a foretaste of Mrs. Browning's power in prose-writing from her
early essays, and from the admirable preface to the "Poems before
Congress." The latter is simple in its style, and grand in teachings
that find few followers among _nations_ in these _enlightened_ days.

Some are prone to moralize over precious stones, and see in them the
petrified souls of men and women. There is no stone so sympathetic as
the opal, which one might fancy to be a concentration of Mrs. Browning's
genius. It is essentially the _woman-stone_, giving out a sympathetic
warmth, varying its colors from day to day, as though an index of the
heart's barometer. There is the topmost purity of white, blended with
the delicate, perpetual verdure of hope, and down in the opal's centre
lies the deep crimson of love. The red, the white, and the green,
forming as they do the colors of Italy, render the opal doubly like Mrs.
Browning. It is right that the woman-stone should inclose the symbols of
the "Woman Country."

Feeling all these things of Mrs. Browning, it becomes the more painful
to place on record an account of those last days that have brought with
them so universal a sorrow. Mrs. Browning's illness was only of a week's
duration. Having caught a severe cold of a more threatening nature than
usual, medical skill was summoned; but, although anxiety in her behalf
was necessarily felt, there was no whisper of great danger until the
third or fourth night, when those who most loved her said they had never
seen her so ill; on the following morning, however, she was better, and
from that moment was thought to be improving in health. She herself
believed this; and all had such confidence in her wondrous vitality, and
the hope was so strong that God would spare her for still greater good,
that a dark veil was drawn over what might be. It is often the case,
where we are accustomed to associate constant suffering with dear
friends, that we calmly look danger in the face without misgivings. So
little did Mrs. Browning realize her critical condition, that, until the
last day, she did not consider herself sufficiently indisposed to remain
in bed, and then the precaution was accidental. So much encouraged
did she feel with regard to herself, that, on this final evening, an
intimate female friend was admitted to her bedside and found her in good
spirits, ready at pleasantry and willing to converse on all the old
loved subjects. Her ruling passion had prompted her to glance at the
"Athenaeum" and "Nazione"; and when this friend repeated the opinions
she had heard expressed by an acquaintance of the new Italian Premier,
Ricasoli, to the effect that his policy and Cavour's were identical,
Mrs. Browning "smiled like Italy," and thankfully replied,--"I am glad
of it; I thought so." Even then her thoughts were not of self. This near
friend went away with no suspicion of what was soon to be a terrible
reality. Mrs. Browning's own bright boy bade his mother goodnight,
cheered by her oft-repeated, "I am better, dear, much better." Inquiring
friends were made happy by these assurances.

One only watched her breathing through the night,--he who for fifteen
years had ministered to her with all the tenderness of a woman. It was a
night devoid of suffering _to her_. As morning approached, and for
two hours previous to the dread moment, she seemed to be in a partial
ecstasy; and though not apparently conscious of the coming on of death,
she gave her husband all those holy words of love, all the consolation
of an oft-repeated blessing, whose value death has made priceless.
Such moments are too sacred for the common pen, which pauses as the
woman-poet raises herself up to die in the arms of her poet-husband. He
knew not that death had robbed him of his treasure, until the drooping
form grew chill and froze his heart's blood.

At half-past four, on the morning of the 29th of June, Elizabeth Barrett
Browning died of congestion of the lungs. Her last words were, "_It is
beautiful!_" God was merciful to the end, sparing her and hers the agony
of a frenzied parting, giving proof to those who were left of the glory
and happiness in store for her, by those few words, "_It is beautiful!_"
The spirit could see its future mission even before shaking off the dust
of the earth.

Gazing on her peaceful face with its eyes closed on us forever, our cry
was _her_ "Cry of the Human."

"We tremble by the harmless bed
Of one loved and departed;
Our tears drop on the lips that said
Last night, 'Be stronger-hearted!'
O God! to clasp those fingers close,
And yet to feel so lonely!
To see a light upon such brows,
Which is the daylight only!
Be pitiful, O God!"

On the evening of July 1st, the lovely English burying-ground without
the walls of Florence opened its gates to receive one more occupant. A
band of English, Americans, and Italians, sorrowing men and women,
whose faces as well as dress were in mourning, gathered around the bier
containing all that was mortal of Elizabeth Barrett Browning. Who of
those present will forget the solemn scene, made doubly impressive by
the grief of the husband and son? "The sting of death is sin," said the
clergyman. Sinless in life, _her_ death, then, was without sting; and
turning our thoughts inwardly, we murmured _her_ prayers for the dead,
and wished that they might have been her burial-service. We heard her
poet-voice saying,--

"And friends, dear friends, when it shall be
That this low breath is gone from me,
And round my bier ye come to weep,
Let one most loving of you all
Say, 'Not a tear must o'er her fall,--
He giveth His beloved sleep.'"

But the tears would fall, as they bore her up the hill, and lowered "His
beloved" into her resting-place, the grave. The sun itself was sinking
to rest behind the western hills, and sent a farewell smile of love
into the east, that it might glance on the lowering bier. The distant
mountains hid their faces in a misty veil, and the tall cypress-trees
of the cemetery swayed and sighed as Nature's special mourners for her
favored child; and there they are to stand keeping watch over her.

"Oh, the little birds sang east, and the little
birds sang west,
_Toll slowly!_
And I said in under-breath, All our life is
mixed with death,
And who knoweth which is best?

* * * * *

"Oh, the little birds sang east, and the little
birds sang west,
_Toll slowly!_
And I 'paused' to think God's greatness
flowed around our incompleteness,--
Round our restlessness, His rest."

Dust to dust,--and the earth fell with a dull echo on the coffin. We
gathered round to take one look, and saw a double grave, too large for
her;--may it wait long and patiently for _him!_

And now a mound of earth marks the spot where sleeps Elizabeth Barrett
Browning. A white wreath to mark her woman's purity lies on her head;
the laurel wreath of the poet lies at her feet; and friendly hands
scatter white flowers over the grave of a week as symbols of the dead.

We feel as she wrote,--

"God keeps a niche
In heaven to hold our idols; and albeit
He brake them to our faces, and denied
That our close kisses should impair their white,
I know we shall behold them raised, complete,
The dust swept from their beauty, glorified,
New Memnons singing in the great God-light."

It is strange that Cavour and Mrs. Browning should have died in the same
month, within twenty-three days of each other,--the one the head, the
other the heart of Italy. As head and heart made up the perfect life,
so death was not complete until Heaven welcomed both. It seemed also
strange, that on the night after Mrs. Browning's decease an unexpected
comet should glare ominously out of the sky. For the moment we were
superstitious, and believed in it as a minister of woe.

Great as is this loss, Mrs. Browning's death is not without a sad
consolation. From the shattered condition of her lungs, the physician
feels assured that existence could not at the farthest have been
prolonged for more than six months. Instead of a sudden call to God,
life would have slowly ebbed away; and, too feeble for the slightest
exertion, she must have been denied the solace of books, of friends, of
writing, perhaps of thought even. God saved her from a living grave,
and her husband from protracted misery. Seeking for the shadow of Mrs.
Browning's self in her poetry, (for she was a rare instance of an
author's superiority to his work,) many an expression is found that
welcomes the thought of a change which would free her from the suffering
inseparable from her mortality. There is a yearning for a more fully
developed life, to be found most frequently in her sonnets. She writes
at times as though, through weakness of the body, her wings were tied:--

"When I attain to utter forth in verse
Some inward thought, my soul throbs audibly
Along my pulses, yearning to be free,
And something farther, fuller, higher rehearse,
To the individual true, and the universe,
In consummation of right harmony!
But, like a wind-exposed, distorted tree,
We are blown against forever by the curse
Which breathes through Nature. Oh, the world is weak;
The effluence of each is false to all;
Add what we best conceive, we fail to speak!
Wait, soul, until thine ashen garments fall,
And then resume thy broken strains, and seek
Fit peroration without let or thrall!"

The "ashen garments" have fallen,--

"And though we must have and have had
Right reason to be earthly sad,
Thou Poet-God art great and glad!"

It was meet that Mrs. Browning should come home to die in her Florence,
in her Casa Guidi, where she had passed her happy married life, where
her boy was born, and where she had watched and rejoiced over the second
birth of a great nation. Her heart-strings did not entwine themselves
around Rome as around Florence, and it seems as though life had been so
eked out that she might find a lasting sleep in Florence. Rome holds
fast its Shelley and Keats, to whose lowly graves there is many a
reverential pilgrimage; and now Florence, no less honored, has its
shrine sacred to the memory of Theodore Parker and Elizabeth Barrett
Browning.

The present Florence is not the Florence of other days. It can never be
the same to those who loved it as much for Mrs. Browning's sake as for
its own. Her reflection remains and must ever remain; for,

"while she rests, her songs in troops
Walk up and down our earthly slopes,
Companioned by diviner hopes."

The Italians have shown much feeling at the loss which they, too, have
sustained,--more than might have been expected, when it is considered
that few of them are conversant with the English language, and that to
those few English poetry (Byron excepted) is unknown.

A battalion of the National Guard was to have followed Mrs. Browning's
remains to the grave, had not a misunderstanding as to time frustrated
this testimonial of respect. The Florentines have expressed great
interest in the young boy, Tuscan-born, and have even requested that
he should be educated as an Italian, when any career in the new Italy
should be open to him. Though this offer will not be accepted, it was
most kindly meant, and shows with what reverence Florence regards the
name of Browning. Mrs. Browning's friends are anxious that a tablet to
her memory should be placed in the Florentine Pantheon, the Church of
Santa Croce. It is true she was not a Romanist, neither was she an
Italian,--yet she was Catholic, and more than an Italian. Her genius and
what she has done for Italy entitle her to companionship with Galileo,
Michel Angelo, Dante, and Alfieri. The friars who have given their
permission for the erection of a monument to Cavour in Santa Croce ought
willingly to make room for a tablet on which should be inscribed,

SHE SANG THE SONG OF ITALY.
SHE WROTE "AURORA LEIGH."

REVIEWS AND LITERARY NOTICES.

_Edwin of Deira._ By ALEXANDER SMITH. London: Macmillan & Co. Boston:
Ticknor & Fields. 16mo.

A third volume of verse by Alexander Smith certainly claims a share of
public attention. We should not be at all surprised, if this, his latest
venture, turn out his most approved one. The volcanic lines in his
earlier pieces drew upon him the wrath of Captain Stab and many younger
officers of justice, till then innocent of ink-shed. The old weapons
will, no doubt, be drawn upon him profusely enough now. Suffice it for
us, this month, if we send to the printer a taste of Alexander's last
feast and ask him to "hand it round."

* * * * *

BERTHA.

"So, in the very depth of pleasant May,
When every hedge was milky white, the lark
A speck against a cape of sunny cloud,
Yet heard o'er all the fields, and when his heart
Made all the world as happy as itself,--
Prince Edwin, with a score of lusty knights,
Rode forth a bridegroom to bring home his bride.
Brave sight it was to see them on their way,
Their long white mantles ruffling in the wind,
Their jewelled bridles, horses keen as flame
Crushing the flowers to fragrance as they moved!
Now flashed they past the solitary crag,
Now glimmered through the forest's dewy gloom,
Now issued to the sun. The summer night
Hung o'er their tents, within the valley pitched,
Her transient pomp of stars. When that had paled,
And when the peaks of all the region stood
Like crimson islands in a sea of dawn,
They, yet in shadow, struck their canvas town;
For Love shook slumber from him as a foe,
And would not be delayed. At height of noon,
When, shining from the woods afar in front,
The Prince beheld the palace-gates, his heart
Was lost in its own beatings, like a sound
In echoes. When the cavalcade drew near,
To meet it, forth the princely brothers pranced,
In plume and golden scale; and when they met,
Sudden, from out the palace, trumpets rang
Gay wedding music. Bertha, among her maids,
Upstarted, as she caught the happy sound,
Bright as a star that brightens 'gainst the night.
When forth she came, the summer day was dimmed;
For all its sunshine sank into her hair,
Its azure in her eyes. The princely man
Lord of a happiness unknown, unknown,
Which cannot all be known for years and years,--
Uncomprehended as the shapes of hills
When one stands in the midst! A week went by,
Deepening from feast to feast; and at the close,
The gray priest lifted up his solemn hands,
And two fair lives were sweetly blent in one,
As stream in stream. Then once again the knights
Were gathered fair as flowers upon the sward,
While in the distant chambers women wept,
And, crowding, blessed the little golden head,
So soon to lie upon a stranger's breast,
And light that place no more. The gate stood wide:
Forth Edwin came enclothed with happiness;
She trembled at the murmur and the stir
That heaved around,--then, on a sudden, shrank,
When through the folds of downcast lids she felt
Burn on her face the wide and staring day,
And all the curious eyes. Her brothers cried,
When she was lifted on the milky steed,
'Ah! little one, 't will soon be dark to-night!
A hundred times we'll miss thee in a day,
A hundred times we'll rise up to thy call,
And want and emptiness will come on us!
Now, at the last, our love would hold thee back!
Let this kiss snap the cord! Cheer up, my girl!
We'll come and see thee when thou hast a boy
To toss up proudly to his father's face,
To let him hear it crow!' Away they rode;
And still the brethren watched them from the door,
Till purple distance took them. How she wept,
When, looking back, she saw the things she knew--
The palace, streak of waterfall, the mead,
The gloomy belt of forest--fade away
Into the gray of mountains! With a chill
The wide strange world swept round her, and she clung
Close to her husband's side. A silken tent
They spread for her, and for her tiring-girls,
Upon the hills at sunset. All was hushed
Save Edwin; for the thought that Bertha slept
In that wild place,--roofed by the moaning wind,
The black blue midnight with its fiery pulse,--
So good, so precious, woke a tenderness
In which there lived uneasily a fear
That kept him still awake. And now, high up,
There burned upon the mountain's craggy top
Their journey's rosy signal. On they went;
And as the day advanced, upon a ridge,
They saw their home o'ershadowed by a cloud;
And, hanging but a moment on the steep,
A sunbeam touched it into dusty rain;
And, lo, the town lay gleaming 'mong the woods,
And the wet shores were bright. As nigh they drew,
The town was emptied to its very babes,
And spread as thick as daisies o'er the fields.
The wind that swayed a thousand chestnut cones,
And sported in the surges of the rye,
Forgot its idle play, and, smit with love,
Dwelt in her fluttering robe. On every side
The people leaped like billows for a sight,
And closed behind, like waves behind a ship.
Yet, in the very hubbub of the joy,
A deepening hush went with her on her way;
She was a thing so exquisite, the hind
Felt his own rudeness; silent women blessed
The lady, as her beauty swam in eyes
Sweet with unwonted tears. Through crowds she passed,
Distributing a largess of her smiles;
And as she entered through the palace-gate,
The wondrous sunshine died from out the air,
And everything resumed its common look.
The sun dropped down into the golden west,
Evening drew on apace; and round the fire
The people sat and talked of her who came
That day to dwell amongst them, and they praised
Her sweet face, saying she was good as fair.

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