Ring and the Book, The. In twelve books. Published in four volumes, each consisting of three books, from 1868 to 1869.
Book I.—When a Roman jeweller makes a ring, he mingles his pure gold with a certain amount of alloy, so as to enable it to bear file and hammer; but, the ring having been fashioned, the alloy is dissolved out with acid, and the ring in all its purity and beauty of pure gold remains perfect. So much for the Ring. For the Book it happened thus:—Mr. Browning was one day wandering about the Square of St. Lorenzo, in Florence, which on that occasion was crammed with booths where odd things of all sorts were for sale; and in one of them he purchased for eightpence an old square yellow book, part print, part manuscript, with this summary of its contents:—
“A Roman murder case;
Position of the entire criminal cause
Of Guido Franceschini, nobleman,
With certain Four the cut-throats in his pay.
Tried, all five, and found guilty and put to death
By heading or hanging as befitted ranks,
At Rome, on February Twenty-Two,
Since our Salvation Sixteen Ninety-Eight:
Wherein it is disputed if, and when,
Husbands may kill adulterous wives, yet ’scape
The customary forfeit.”
As before the ring was fashioned the pure gold lay in the ingot, so the pure virgin truth of the murder case lay in this book; but it was not in a presentable form and such as a poet could use. As the jeweller adds a little alloy to permit the artistic working of the Ring, so the poet must mix his poetic fancy with the simple legal evidence contained in the Book, and in this manner work up the history for popular edification. And thus we have The Ring and the Book. The simple, hard, legal documents opened the story thus. The accuser and the accused said, in the persons of their advocates, as follows:—The Public Prosecutor demands the punishment of Count Guido Franceschini and his accomplices, for the murder of his wife. Then the Patron of the Poor—the counsel acting on behalf of the accused—protests that Count Guido ought rather to be rewarded, with his four conscientious friends, as sustainers of law and society. It is true, he says, that he killed his wife, but he did it laudably. Then the case was postponed. It was argued that the woman slaughtered was a saint and martyr. More postponement. Then it was argued that she was a miracle of lust and impudence. More witnesses, precedents, and authorities called and quoted on both sides:
“Thus wrangled, brangled, jangled they a month,”—
only on paper—all the pleadings were in print. The Court pronounced Count Guido guilty, his murdered wife Pompilia pure in thought, word and deed; and signed sentence of death against the whole five accused. But Guido’s counsel had a reserve shot. The Count, as was the frequent custom in those days, was in one of the minor orders of the priesthood, and claimed clerical privilege. Appeal was therefore made to the Pope. Roman society began to talk, the quality took the husband’s part, the Pope was benevolent and unwilling to take life: Guido stood a chance of getting off. But the Pope was shrewd and conscientious; and having mastered the whole matter, said, “Cut off Guido’s head to-morrow, and hang up his mates.” And it was so done. Thus much was untempered gold, as discovered in the little old book. But we want to know more of the matter, and in four volumes (of the original edition) Mr. Browning satisfies us. Who was the handsome young priest, Canon Caponsacchi, who carried off the wife? Who were the old couple, the Comparini, Pietro and his spouse, who, on a Christmas night in a lonely villa, were murdered with Pompilia? Mr. Browning has ferreted it out for us mixed his fancy with the facts to bring them home to us the better. He has been to Arezzo, the Count’s city—the wife’s “trap and cage and torture place.” He stopped at Castelnuovo, where husband and wife and priest for first and last time met face to face. He passed on to Rome the goal, to the home of Pompilia’s foster-parents. He conjures up the vision of the dreadful night when Guido and his wolves cried to the escaped wife, “Open to Caponsacchi!” and the door was opened, showing the mother of the two-weeks’-old babe and her parents the Comparini. He ponders all the story in his soul in Italy, and in London when he returns home; till the ideas take clear shape in his mind, and the whole story lives again in his brain, and he can reproduce for us the facts as they must have occurred. Count Guido Franceschini was descended of an ancient though poor family. He was
“A beak-nosed, bushy-bearded, black-haired lord,
Lean, pallid, low of stature, yet robust,
Fifty years old.”
He married Pompilia Comparini—young, good, beautiful—at Rome, where she was born; and brought her to his home at Arezzo, where they lived miserable lives. That she might find peace, the wife had run away, in company of the priest Giuseppe Caponsacchi, to her parents at Rome; and the husband had followed with four accomplices, and catching her in a villa on a Christmas night with her parents (putative parents really), had killed the three; the wife being seventeen years old, and the Comparini, husband and wife, seventy. There was Pompilia’s infant, Guido’s firstborn son, but he had previously put it in a place of safety.
Notes.—Line 7, Castellani: a celebrated Roman jeweller (Piazza di Trevi 86), who executes admirable imitations from Greek, Etruscan, and Byzantine models. Chiusi: a very ancient Etruscan city, full of antiquities and famous for its tombs. l. 27, rondure, a round. l. 45, Baccio Bandinelli, a sculptor of Florence (1497-1559). l. 47, “John of the Black Bands”: Father of Cosimo I., Giovanni delle Bande Neri. l. 48, Riccardi: the palace of one of the great families of Florence. l. 49, San Lorenzo, the great church so named in Florence. l. 77, Spicilegium, a collection made from the best writers. l. 114, “Casa Guidi, by Felice Church”: this was the residence of the Brownings at Florence when he bought the little book. l. 223, Justinian, Emperor of the East A.D. 527. His name is immortalised by his code of laws; Baldo, an eminent professor of the civil law, and also of canon law, born in 1327; Bartolo of Perugia, a professor of civil law, under whom Baldo studied; Dolabella, the name of a Roman family; Theodoric, king of the Ostrogoths (c. A.D. 454-526); Ælian, a writer on natural history in the time of Adrian. l. 263, Presbyter, Primæ tonsuræ, Subdiaconus, Sacerdos: these are some of the different steps to the priesthood in the Roman Church—that is to say, First tonsure, subdeacon, deacon, priest. l. 284, Ghetto, the Jewish quarter in Rome. l. 300, Pope Innocent XII. was Antonio Pignatelli. He reigned from 1691 to 1700. He introduced many reforms into the Church, and, after a holy and self-abnegating life, died on September 27th, 1700; Jansenists, followers of Jansen, who taught Calvinism in the Catholic Church; Molinists, followers of Molinos, who taught Arminianism in the Catholic Church; Nepotism, favouritism to relations. l. 435, temporality: the material interests of the Catholic Church. l. 490, “gold snow Jove rained on Rhodes”: as the Rhodians were the first who offered sacrifices to Minerva, Jupiter rewarded them by covering the island with a golden cloud, from which he sent showers of treasures on the people. l. 495, Datura: the thorn apple—stramonium. l. 496, lamp-fly == a fire-fly. l. 868, Æacus, son of Jupiter; on account of his just government made judge in the lower regions with Minos and Rhadamanthus. l. 898, “Bernini’s Triton fountain:” in the great square of the Barberini Palace, the Tritons blowing the water from a conch-shell. l. 1028, “chrism and consecrative work”: Chrism is the oil used in ordination, etc., in the Roman and Greek Catholic Churches. l. 1030, lutanist, one who plays on the lute. l. 1128, “Procurator of the Poor”: a proctor, an attorney who acts on behalf of the poor. l. 1161, Fisc, a king’s solicitor, an attorney-general. l. 1209, clavicinist, one who plays on the clavichord. l. 1212, rondo == rondeau, a species of lively melody with a recurring refrain; suite, a connected series of musical compositions. l. 1214, Corelli, Arcangelo, Italian musical composer; Haendel, Handel the musician. l. 1311, “Brotherhood of Death”: the Confraternity of the Misericordia, or Brothers of Mercy, who prepare criminals for death and attend funerals as an act of charity. l. 1328, Mannai, a sort of guillotine.—This seems a fitting place in which to insert the following note, which serves to explain the origin of the great poem:—
In The Christian Register of Boston for Jan. 19th, 1888, there is an article entitled “An Eagle Feather,” by the Rev. John W. Chadwick, of Brooklyn. This clergyman visited Mr. Browning and asked him, “And how about the book of The Ring and the Book? Had he made up that, too, or was there really such a book? There was indeed; and would we like to see it? There was little doubt of that; and it was produced, and the story of his buying it for ‘eightpence English just’ was told, but need not be retold here, for in The Ring and the Book it is set down with literal truth. The appearance and character of the book, moreover, are exactly what the poem represents. It is part print, part manuscript, ending with two epistolary accounts, if I remember rightly, of Guido’s execution, written by the lawyers in the case. It was an astonishing ‘find,’ and it is passing strange that a book compiled so carefully should have been brought to such a low estate. Mr. Browning did not seem at all inclined to toss it in the air and catch it, as he does in verse. He handled it very carefully, and with evident affection. I asked him if it did not make him very happy to have created such a woman as Pompilia; and he said, ‘I assure you that I found her just as she speaks and acts in my poem, in that old book.’ There was that in his tone that made it evident Caponsacchi had a rival lover without blame. Of the old pope of the poem, too, he spoke with real affection. He told us how he had found a medal of him in a London antiquary’s shop, had left it meaning to come back for it; came back, and found that it had gone. But the shopman told him Lady Houghton (Mrs. Richard Monckton Milnes) had taken it. ‘You will lend it to me,’ said Mr. Browning to her, ‘in case I want it some time to be copied for an illustration?’ She preferred giving it to him; had most likely intended doing so when she bought it. It was in a pretty little box, and had a benignant expression, exactly suited to the character of the good pope in the poem. As a further proof that all is grist that comes to some folks’ mills, there was a picture of the miserable Count Guido Franceschini on his execution day, which some one had come upon in a London printshop and sent to Mr. Browning.”