Browning’s message in its completeness was invariably that which is imaged, too, in these lines from Mrs. Browning’s “Aurora Leigh”:
“And take for a worthier stage the soul itself,
Its shifting fancies and celestial lights.”
For it is only in this drama of the infinite life that the spiritual man can be tested. It was from the standpoint of an actor on this celestial stage that Browning considered Shelley. In the entire range of Browning’s art the spiritual man is imaged as a complex and individualized spark of the divine force. He is seen for a flitting moment on his way toward a divine destiny.
Professor Hall Griffin states as his belief that Browning’s paper was to some degree inspired by that of Joseph Milsand on himself, which appeared in August, 1851, in the Revue des Deux Mondes in which Milsand commended Browning’s work “as pervaded by an intense belief in the importance of the individual soul.”
To Browning this winter was enchanted by the initiation of his friendship with Milsand, the distinguished French scholar and critic, who had already made a name as a philosophic thinker and had published a book on Ruskin (L’Esthétique Anglaise), and who was a discerner of spirits in poetic art as well. About the time that “Paracelsus” appeared, Milsand had seen an extract from the poem that captivated him, and he at once sent for the volume. He had also read, with the deepest interest, Browning’s “Christmas Eve and Easter Day.” He was contributing to the Revue des Deux Mondes two papers on La Poésie Anglaise depuis Byron, the first of which, on Tennyson, had appeared the previous August. Milsand was about completing the second paper of this series (on Browning), and it happened just at this time that Miss Mitford’s “Recollections of a Literary Life” was published, in which, writing of the Brownings, she had told the story of that tragic death of Mrs. Browning’s brother Edward, who had been drowned at Torquay. In these days, when, as Emerson rhymes the fact,
“Every thought is public,
Every nook is wide,
The gossips spread each whisper
And the gods from side to side,”
it is a little difficult to quite comprehend, even in comprehending Mrs. Browning’s intense sensitiveness and the infinite sacredness of this grief, why she should have been so grieved at Miss Mitford’s tender allusion to an accident that was, by its very nature, public, and which must have been reported in the newspapers of the day. Mrs. Browning was always singularly free from any morbid states, from any tendency to the idée fixe, to which a semi-invalid condition is peculiarly and pardonably liable; but she said, in an affectionate letter to Miss Mitford:
“I have lived heart to heart (for instance) with my husband these five years: I have never yet spoken out, in a whisper even, what is in me; never yet could find heart or breath; never yet could bear to hear a word of reference from his lips.”
It is said there are no secrets in heaven, and in that respect, at least, the twentieth century is not unlike the celestial state; and it is almost as hard a task for the imagination to comprehend the reserve in all personal matters that characterized the mid-nineteenth century as it would be to enter into absolute comprehension of the medieval mind; but Mrs. Browning’s own pathetic deprecation of her feelings regarding this is its own passport to the sympathy of the reader. To Miss Mitford’s reply, full of sympathetic comprehension and regret, Mrs. Browning replied that she understood, “and I thank you,” she added, “and love you, which is better. Now, let us talk of reasonable things.” For Mrs. Browning had that rare gift and grace of instantly closing the chapter, and turning the page, and ceasing from all allusion to any subject of regret, after the inevitable reference of the moment had been made. She had the mental energy and the moral buoyancy to drop the matter, and this characteristic reveals how normal she was, and how far from any morbidness.
Milsand, with a delicacy that Robert Browning never forgot, came to him to ask his counsel regarding the inclusion of this tragic accident that had left such traces on his wife’s genius and character (traces that are revealed in immortal expression in her poem, “De Profundis,” written some years later), and Browning was profoundly touched by his consideration. Grasping both Milsand’s hands, he exclaimed, “Only a Frenchman could have done this!” A friendship initiated under circumstances so unusual, and with such reverent intuition of Mrs. Browning’s feelings, could not but hold its place apart to them both.