The references to his wife in this poem, in the enthralling “One Word More,” and in the dedication to “The Ring and the Book,” as well as those to be divined in his character drawing of “Pompilia,” are incomparable in their impressiveness and beauty, and must live so long as poetry is enshrined in life. The vital drama, the splendor of movement, the color, the impassioned exaltation of feeling, the pictorial vividness that are in these poems grouped under “Dramatic Romances” and “Dramatis Personæ,” give them claim to the first rank in the poet’s creations. Curiously, during this period, the change in Browning’s habits of work, which his wife used to urge upon him, seemed to gradually take possession of him, so that he came to count that day lost in which he had not written some lines of poetry. Did he, perchance in dreams, catch something of “the rustling of her vesture” that influenced his mind to the change? To Elizabeth Browning poetry was not only a serious calling, but its “own exceeding great reward,” always.
Another change came to Browning, which redeemed him from the growing tendency to become a recluse, and made him a familiar figure in the great world. He seemed to become aware that there was something morbid and unworthy in the avoidance of the world of men and women. Browning’s divinely commissioned work had to do with life, in its most absolute actualities as well as its great spiritual realities, because the life eternal in its nature was the theme on which he played his poetic variations, and no revelation of human nature came amiss to him.
He had already supervised the publication of Mrs. Browning’s essay on “The Greek Christian Poets” and “The Book of the Poets,” and “nothing,” he said, “that ought to be published, shall be kept back.” He had also lent Story considerable assistance in arranging with Blackwood for the serial publication of “Roba di Roma.”
For two or three summers Browning with his father, his sister, and his son, passed the summers at St. Marie, near Pornic, from where in the August of 1863 he wrote to Leighton that he was living on fruit and milk, and that each day he completed some work, read a little with Pen, and somewhat more by himself. St. Marie was a “wild little place” in Brittany, on the very edge of the sea, a hamlet of hardly more than a dozen houses, of which the Brownings had the privilege of occupying that of the mayor, whose chief attraction, apparently, was that, though bare, it was clean. The poet liked it all, and it was there that he wrote “In the Doorway” in “James Lee’s Wife,” with the sea, the field, and the fig-tree visible from his window.
In the late summer the Brownings are all again at St. Marie in Brittany, and the poet writes to Isa Blagden that he supposes what she “calls fame within these four years” has come somewhat from his going about and showing himself alive, “but,” he adds, “I was in London from the time that I published ‘Paracelsus’ till I ended the writing of plays with ‘Luria,’—and I used to go out then, and see far more of merely literary people, critics, etc., than I do now,—but what came of it?” If in the lines following there is a hint of sadness, who can blame him?
During this summer he revised “Sordello” for re-publication, not, however, as he had once contemplated, making in it any significant changes. In the dedication to his friend Milsand, he incorporated so clear an exposition of his idea in the poem that this dedication will always be read with special interest. In London again the next winter, Browning wrote to Isa Blagden that he “felt comfort in doing the best he could with the object of his life,—poetry. I hope to do much more yet,” he continued; “and that the flower of it will be put into Her hand somehow.”
The London spring found the poet much engaged, taking his son to studios, and to the Royal Academy, to concerts, and for long walks, and in a letter to Kate Field not heretofore published is indicated something of the general trend of the days:
London, 19, Warwick Crescent,
Upper Westbourne Terrace, May 5th, 1864.
Dear Kate Field, (so let me call you, please, in regard to old times when I might have done it, and did not,) I know well enough that there is great stupidity in this way of mine, this putting off a thing because I hope to compass some other thing, as here, for had you not asked for some photographs which I supposed I could soon find time and inclination to get, I should have thanked you at once; as I do now, indeed, and with all my heart, but the review article is wavering and indistinct in my mind now, and though it is inside a drawer of this table where I write, I cannot bring myself to look at it again,—not from a motive which is disparaging to you, as I am sure you understand; the general impression is enough for me, also, if you care in the least how I feel toward you. The boy has certainly the likeness to which you refer, and an absolute sameness, almost, in feature as well as in look, with certain old portraits of hers,—here, older and younger; there is not a trace of me in him, thank God! I know that dear, teasing Isa, and how she won’t answer your questions, but sometimes, for compensation, she tells you what you never asked for, and though I always, or very often, ask about you, yet I think it may have been in reply to curiosity about the price of Italian stock, that she lately described to me a photograph of you, yourself, and how you were: what? even that’s over. And moreover, how you were your old self with additions, which, to be sure, I don’t require.
Give my true regard to your mother, and thank her for her goodness in understanding me. But I write only to have a pleasant chat with you, in a balcony, looking for fire-flies in the garden, wider between us than the slanting Pitti façade, now that it’s warm and Maylike in Florence.