In the early summer of 1884, and again in 1886, Miss Browning had a serious illness; and though she recovered, in each case completely, and in the first rapidly, it was considered desirable that she should not travel so far as usual from home. She and her brother therefore accepted for the August and September of 1884 the urgent invitation of an American friend, Mrs. Bloomfield Moore, to stay with her at a villa which she rented for some seasons at St. Moritz. Mr. Browning was delighted with the Engadine, where the circumstances of his abode, and the thoughtful kindness of his hostess, allowed him to enjoy the benefits of comparative civilization together with almost perfect repose. The weather that year was brilliant until the end of September, if not beyond it; and his letters tell the old pleasant story of long daily walks and a general sense of invigoration. One of these, written to Mr. and Mrs. Skirrow, also contains some pungent remarks on contemporary events, with an affectionate allusion to one of the chief actors in them.
'Anyhow, I have the sincerest hope that Wolseley may get done as soon, and kill as few people, as possible,—keeping himself safe and sound—brave dear fellow—for the benefit of us all.'
He also speaks with great sympathy of the death of Mr. Charles Sartoris, which had just taken place at St.-Moritz.
In 1886, Miss Browning was not allowed to leave England; and she and Mr. Browning established themselves for the autumn at the Hand Hotel at Llangollen, where their old friends, Sir Theodore and Lady Martin, would be within easy reach. Mr. Browning missed the exhilarating effects of the Alpine air; but he enjoyed the peaceful beauty of the Welsh valley, and the quiet and comfort of the old-fashioned English inn. A new source of interest also presented itself to him in some aspects of the life of the English country gentleman. He was struck by the improvements effected by its actual owner* on a neighbouring estate, and by the provisions contained in them for the comfort of both the men and the animals under his care; and he afterwards made, in reference to them, what was for a professing Liberal, a very striking remark: 'Talk of abolishing that class of men! They are the salt of the earth!' Every Sunday afternoon he and his sister drank tea—weather permitting—on the lawn with their friends at Brintysilio; and he alludes gracefully to these meetings in a letter written in the early summer of 1888, when Lady Martin had urged him to return to Wales.
* I believe a Captain Best.
The poet left another and more pathetic remembrance of himself in the neighbourhood of Llangollen: his weekly presence at the afternoon Sunday service in the parish church of Llantysilio. Churchgoing was, as I have said, no part of his regular life. It was no part of his life in London. But I do not think he ever failed in it at the Universities or in the country. The assembling for prayer meant for him something deeper in both the religious and the human sense, where ancient learning and piety breathed through the consecrated edifice, or where only the figurative 'two or three' were 'gathered together' within it. A memorial tablet now marks the spot at which on this occasion the sweet grave face and the venerable head were so often seen. It has been placed by the direction of Lady Martin on the adjoining wall.
It was in the September of this year that Mr. Browning heard of the death of M. Joseph Milsand. This name represented for him one of the few close friendships which were to remain until the end, unclouded in fact and in remembrance; and although some weight may be given to those circumstances of their lives which precluded all possibility of friction and risk of disenchantment, I believe their rooted sympathy, and Mr. Browning's unfailing powers of appreciation would, in all possible cases, have maintained the bond intact. The event was at the last sudden, but happily not quite unexpected.
Many other friends had passed by this time out of the poet's life—those of a younger, as well as his own and an older generation. Miss Haworth died in 1883. Charles Dickens, with whom he had remained on the most cordial terms, had walked between him and his son at Thackeray's funeral, to receive from him, only seven years later, the same pious office. Lady Augusta Stanley, the daughter of his old friend, Lady Elgin, was dead, and her husband, the Dean of Westminster. So also were 'Barry Cornwall' and John Forster, Alfred Domett, and Thomas Carlyle, Mr. Cholmondeley and Lord Houghton; others still, both men and women, whose love for him might entitle them to a place in his Biography, but whom I could at most only mention by name.
For none of these can his feeling have been more constant or more disinterested than that which bound him to Carlyle. He visited him at Chelsea in the last weary days of his long life, as often as their distance from each other and his own engagements allowed. Even the man's posthumous self-disclosures scarcely availed to destroy the affectionate reverence which he had always felt for him. He never ceased to defend him against the charge of unkindness to his wife, or to believe that in the matter of their domestic unhappiness she was the more responsible of the two.* Yet Carlyle had never rendered him that service, easy as it appears, which one man of letters most justly values from another: that of proclaiming the admiration which he privately expresses for his works. The fact was incomprehensible to Mr. Browning—it was so foreign to his own nature; and he commented on it with a touch, though merely a touch, of bitterness, when repeating to a friend some almost extravagant eulogium which in earlier days he had received from him tete-a-tete. 'If only,' he said, 'those words had been ever repeated in public, what good they might have done me!'
* He always thought her a hard and unlovable woman, and I
believe little liking was lost between them. He told a
comical story of how he had once, unintentionally but rather
stupidly, annoyed her. She had asked him, as he was standing
by her tea-table, to put the kettle back on the fire. He
took it out of her hands, but, preoccupied by the
conversation he was carrying on, deposited it on the
hearthrug. It was some time before he could be made to see
that this was wrong; and he believed Mrs. Carlyle never
ceased to think that he had a mischievous motive for doing
it.