"What a curious place to select!" was my first thought as I stood at the door of the old house. I walked up twelve or fifteen hard stone steps, grasping the banister to guide myself in the dark, and was soon warmly welcomed by Signora Nina Tabacchi, as, passing through the kitchen, I was ushered into the sitting-room. "Scrupulously clean and neat," was my next impression, but how plain! The room was only a piece of the kitchen partitioned off, a glass door and window separating the two. The thin cotton curtain might possibly screen the mysteries of the culinary process from the poet's eye, but his ear must have been caught by occasional sounds of hacking and chopping, and certainly no kettle could have boiled, no wood could crackle, or incense arise from that adjacent hearth without making itself distinctly noticeable. Such was his study and his drawing-room, a multum in parvo about twelve feet square.
I had ample time to study my surroundings, for I spent some weeks in the rooms vacated by the poet. The furniture was of the good old lodging-house type. In the centre of the little sitting-room was a round pedestal table, half of which was devoted to Browning's papers; on the other half, luncheon was served for himself and his sister. A full-length sofa, uncompromisingly hard, took up the greater part of one wall, and a kind of sideboard stood opposite. On the chiffonnier, between the two windows, rested the looking-glass, and half-a-dozen mahogany chairs, cane-bottomed and severe backed, completed the arrangements. On the flesh-coloured walls hung a series of prints, illustrating the history of Venice. Doges disporting themselves in most conventional attitudes, the vanquished kneeling before the victors, gave one the impression that history involves a great amount of bowing and scraping. In pleasant contrast with such triumphs were the domestic joys as depicted by the photographer. Looking up from his papers, Browning's eye must have rested on that shell-adorned frame which encircled the usual specimens of family portraits. There were the inevitable aunts and uncles, the young man pressing into the focus, to meet the clever dog seated on the table by his side, and a typical presentment of the mother and child as conceived by the lens.
To Luigi, the landlady's son, Browning was from the first very friendly; but how this lad, ever on the alert to make himself useful, could have kept any length of time in his good graces, is a mystery to me. He owns that on one or two occasions the sturdy master sent him flying, when he would imprudently insist on opening the door for him, or on lighting him down the dark staircase.
On his arrival Browning had bought a plain glass inkstand and a few wooden penholders; they were still there, on a blue-patterned china plate, just as he had left them. I reverently put them aside, but I might as well have used them; for just as he would never allow me to make the slightest fuss of him, the living friend, so he would not have expected me to stand on ceremony with the inanimate objects that survived him. A pen was just a pen, as "A flower is just a flower."
Asolo boasted of a theatre, and the performances must have been none of the worst, for, out of twenty, Browning only missed three. He would sit in his friend Mrs. Bronson's box, and follow the actors as they told the story of Hamlet, Othello, or Mary Queen of Scots, or as they played Goldoni's popular comedies. The performance usually wound up with a short farce. From that he would escape, leaving Gigi (that is Luigi), who was his frequent companion, to do the screaming laughter. About half-past eleven or twelve he got home, and by five or six in the morning he was up again. His bedroom was about 16 feet by 9, and 10 feet high. A really good rococo design, speaking of an artistic past, embossed and picked out in grey, decorated the whitewashed walls. Rafters brought out the irregularities of the ceiling, and bricks, very much wrinkled and worn with age, paved the floor. Signora Tabacchi had offered to procure a carpet, but had met with an energetic refusal. There was a funny little looking-glass, and a wash-hand stand with a diminutive basin, and over the glass door a towel was neatly tacked to insure privacy.
And what in this land of vistas greeted the poet's eye as he opened his shutters? A blank wall and another set of shutters. They would be opened presently to be sure when the sun left the neighbour's wall, and then a flood of light would burst into the centre corridor of his house, and the reflections from the marble floor would carry the quivering rays along to another window beyond, through which you caught a lovely glimpse of the hills on the other side of the valley. In that particular glimpse Browning delighted. When his son came to Asolo, he was struck, as I was later, by the uncongenial outlook.
"Wait, Pen, till they open those shutters," Browning had said. Pen waited and was duly impressed and pleased. It was well so, for had it been otherwise, his father's pleasure would have been incomplete.
The people of Asolo are of the kindliest nature; simple, peaceful folk, hard-working and contented. Perched on high in their picturesque dwellings, they seem raised above at least some of our terrestrial troubles. They live sheltered by solid masses of mediæval stone, and surrounded by the gardens they cultivate; the vine is here, there, and everywhere, zig-zagging along rough stone terraces and gliding down the slopes, or creeping into the windows. A tangle of massive foliage springs from one knows not where, large leaves that dwarf all else elbow their way to the front, and here and there in their midst a big yellow gourd comfortably rests on a stone cornice or on an artificial prop.
The fig leaves, though certainly overshadowed by their bulky neighbours, hold their own in the universal struggle for air and space. And somewhere in the distance is a little graceful figure stretching upward to train the vine in the way it should go, and right or wrong you straightway jump to the conclusion, if you are an artist, that that figure belongs to a beautiful girl.
The children are out of doors; so are the pigs. Whilst the latter always seem grumbling and dissatisfied, the former are as happy as sunshine and polenta can make a child. The sight of an approaching stranger carrying the artist's paraphernalia, at once suggests to a sturdy urchin the idea that he should rush for a chair, and to the woman at her door, that she should offer you a hearty welcome. No wonder if some of these good people were destined to entertain an angel or a poet unawares. Browning might not have manifested himself as such, but there was something about him that endeared him to all he met. Faces brightened as I spoke of him; voices deepened as they answered, "Ah poveretto! how kind he was—proprio buono! Here he used to sit and chat with us;" or, "I showed him the way to the Rocca eleven years ago." This last remark came from the postmaster, who took the deepest interest in everything concerning Browning. He was very anxious that I should paint a picture of the post-office, as being the historical place the poet had many a time visited. "It was over that counter of mine," he said, "that his last work, the immortal 'Asolando,' was handed. On me he relied to transmit it with the greatest care, for he assured me he had kept no copy of it. Yes, it went per book-post, registered and addressed, I well recollect, to the publisher Mr. Smith, of London, and he was surprised it should cost so little—only seventy centimes; it weighed 450 grammes, you see, and so that was the postage."