Dramas ... With an introduction by Oscar Browning

Introduction

B_ OSCAR BROWNING, M.A. Senior Fellow and Assistant Tutor of King's College, Cambridge, and University Lecturer LONDON GEORGE ROUTLEDGE AND SONS, LIMITED BROADWAY HOUSE, LUDGATE HILL 1S9S PRINTED by woodfall and kinder LONG ACRE, LONDON UNIFORM WITH THIS VOLUME POEMS By ROBERT BROWNING AND POEMS By ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING CONTENTS — o— PAGE Introduction ix Paracelsus 9 Pippa Passes. A Drama Ill King Victor and King Charles. A Tragedy . . 153 Colombe's Birthday. A Play 199 A Blot in the 'Scutcheon. A Tragedy . . . 251 The Return of the Druses. A Tragedy . . . 289 Lubia. A Tragedy 337 A Soul's Tragedy 383 Strafford. An Historical Tragedy ....

INTRODUCTION.

. BY OSCAR BROWNING. — o — Robert Browning was born at Hanover Cottage, Southampton Street, Camberwell, on May 7, 1812. The Brownings are one of the oldest families in England ; their name first appears as that of coiners to the Saxon kings. The principal branch of the family was settled in Gloucestershire, where it possessed many manors. In 1399 John Browning, Sheriff of Gloucester, married Elianor, or Alianor, daughter and coheiress of Sir Thomas Fitz-Nicholl, Knight. By this marriage the Brownings became possessed of the Manor of Cowley, or Coaly, in the Cotswold Hills near Dursley, which remained for more than three hundred years their principal place of residence. The chancel is paved with their coat-of-arms. They bore, in its simplest form, a shield barry wavy of six argent and azure, representing the waters of the sea, the arms, according to the old heraldic writers, given to Reuben — " unstable as water, thou shalt not excel."

Browning used to say that these arms were given by Henry V. to the captain of the ship Holy Ghost, who took him over to France before the battle of Agincourt. But they are certainly much older than Henry V. Robert Browning himself for some reason did not use these arms, but the coat of the Bruning family, an anoient Catholic stock settled in Hampshire and Wiltshire. Their blazon is gules, two beadlets wavy, one or, the other argent, which used to be seen on the uniform of the gondoliers ROBERT BROWNING. of the Palazzo Rezzonico at Venice. Some time in the fifteenth century a branch of the Cowley Brownings moved into Dorsetshire, and became possessed of the Manor of Melbury Abbas. The church at Melbury does, or did, contain two canopied tombs, covered with coats-of-arms, with effigies of the departed.

One of these commemorated John, and the other William, Browning, two brothers. The daughter and heiress of William Browning married a Strangways, the ancestor of the present Earls of Ilchester. The new heir not only appropriated the estate, but even the tomb of his wife's family, and it is said in the county history that on one of the monuments the inscription bears only the name of Strangways. Robert Browning undoubtedly came from Dorsetshire, and he may have been descended from the Brownings of Melbury. In that case he would have been a distant cousin of the present writer, who is a lineal descendant of the Brownings of Cowley. We often used to talk over the matter together in the long years of our friendship, but at that time could not establish any connection. But his derivation from this knightly family is at present a matter of conjecture.

So far as we know, the earliest direct ancestor of the poet recorded is Robert Browning, who during the first half of the eighteenth century was butler to Sir John Bankes of Corse Castle. He was undoubtedly the poet's great-great-grandfather. It is said that Robert Browning was fond of speculating whether Micaiah Browning, who, in his ship, the Mountjoy, broke the boom across the Foyle at the siege of Londonderry, was amongst his ancestors. I have made diligent search, and have found no trace of Micaiah in any documents which would determine his connection with any particular branch of the Browning clan. The poet's father was a very remarkable man. He seems from an early period to have discovered not only the strength of his son's genius, but the line of development which it was likely to follow.

He undoubtedly by his wise conduct con tributed largely to his son's success. He may therefore be classed with Giovanni Sanzio, the father of Raffaelle ; Leopold Mozart, the father of Wolfgang ; and Frau Aja, the mother of Goethe. He was for nearly fifty years a clerk in the Consols Dividend Room at the Bank of England, and his salary never exceeded -.275 a year. This will account perhaps for his not having sent Robert to a public school, but it is much to his credit that he did not insist upon his earning his own living, and left him time for unrestrained literary work, which did not for many years produce a return. He had a library of six thousand books, and was passionately fond of reading. He also had a remarkable power of versifying. The "Pied Piper of Hamelin " was tried as a subject for a poem by the father before it was adopted with such success by the son.

He was a good athlete and enjoyed splendid health. He lived to be nearly eighty-five, and it is said that when he was dying he said to his son, " What do you think death is, Robert ? Is it a fainting or is it a pang ? " The poet's mother, Sarah Anne, or Sarianna, was the daughter of William Wildemann, a mariner of Dundee. His father had been a sugar-refiner in the same town, and the family had come originally from Hamburg. Carlyle spoke of her as " the true type of a Scottish gentlewoman," and her son said of her, " She was a divine woman." As a little child Browning went first to a day-school a short distance from his own home. He is said to have left because he was so much cleverer than the other boys. He was then sent to a preparatory school kept by two Mis'ses Ready, and eventually to the superior school at Peckham, of which their brother, the Rev. Thomas Ready, was head master.

At the age of fourteen he left school for ever. As a child he was very fond of animals, and studied their habits with an affectionate sympathy which frequently shows itself in his poems, and indeed is essential to a poet. He kept owls and monkeys, magpies and hedgehogs, an eagle, and even a couple of large snakes. He frequently asked his friends to catch him an eft or a frog. At a later period he had a pet toad, which used to come out of its hole when called, and allowed the poet to scratch his head. When his friends visited him in Warwick Crescent they found a tiny owl was seated on the door lintel. Whilst living at home he was left entirely to himself. He said at a much later period : " It would have been quite unpardonable in my case not to have done my best. My dear father put me in a condition most favourable for the best work ROBERT BROWNING.

I was capable of. When I think of the many authors who have had to fight their way through all sorts of difficulties, I have no reason to be proud of my achievement. My father secured for me all the ease and comfort which a literary man needs to do good work. It would have been shameful if I had not done my best to realize his expectations of me." The house at Camberwell was crammed with books, and Robert read omnivorously. He covered the wide fields of literature and history. One of his most favourite books was Quarles's " Emblems." Walpole's " Letters," Junius, and Voltaire are also mentioned as amongst his earliest studies. His father knew Greek and taught the' son. Byron was at that time his chief master, as he was of all contemporary poets, notably of Tennyson. At the age of twelve, in the year of Byron's death, he collected a number of short poems into a volume and called it " Incondita."

He endeavoured in vain to obtain a publisher. His mother copied the poems out and showed them to her friends, amongst others to a Miss Flower. This lady took a transcript of them and submitted the boyish productions to the well-known Unitarian minister and critic, Mr. W. J. Fox. At a later period both originals and copies were destroyed. Strange to say, their fault is said to have lain in too great splendour of language and too little wealth of thought. About this time Browning came under the influence of Shelley and Keats, books which his mother had great difficulty in procuring, because the ordinary booksellers had never heard of them. He then came to know nearly all Shelley's writings except " The Cenci." He often in after years remembered the night when he first looked into these volumes.

It was in the month of May, and in two neighbouring trees two nightingales were striving for mastery. He felt the thrill of a sudden revelation, and Shelley exercised over him throughout his life the mastery of a guardian spirit. Although Browning was not at school he was still under some educational discipline. A tutor came to the house in the mornings. The afternoons were devoted to singing, music, dancing, riding, boxing, and fencing. He played the piano with a certain amount of skill. The first time I called upon him I found him playing Schumann's " Carnival," not a very easy piece. He even composed songs, and was also to the end of his life an accomplished swimmer. For two years he had a French tutor, and at the age of eighteen he attended the classes of Professor Long, who taught Greek at University College, London.

He is described by a fellow student at this time as "a bright handsome youth with long black hair falling over his shoulders." At this time he deter mined not to devote himself to any of the pursuits by which fortunes are made in life, but to consecrate himself to the serious service of literature. He conceived the idea of a great portrait gallery of typical men and women, but the only portion of the scheme which was completed was " Pauline." I heard an account of Pauline many years ago from the author's own lips, and my recollection of it does not tally precisely with the accounts given in printed narratives. He said that it was written and printed surreptitiously, and that he used to steal out at night to correct the proofs at Richmond, which will account for the place Richmond occurring in the preface.

He also said that the book fell into the hands of Mr. John Stuart Mill, who greatly admired it. Mill had just started the reputation of Alfred Tennyson by a sympathetic review. He desired to do the same for Browning in Tait's Edinburgh Magazine, but on offering to review " Pauline " he was told that it had been already criticised. On minute inspection he found that the last two words of the previous number, attached to the notices of books, were " Pauline — A piece of pure bewilderment." He inquired the reason of this unfavourable criticism, and learnt that the printer, wanting a line more copy, the assistant editor had taken up a thin little book of poetry lying before him, and finding that he could not understand it had condemned it as miintelhgible. " Pauline " appeared anonymously in 1833.

The expense of printing was paid by his aunt, Mrs. Silverstone. " Pauline " consists of a thousand and thirty lines. Allan Cunningham said of it in the Athenæum: "There is not a little true poetry in this very little book. Here and there we have a touch of the mysterious which we cannot admire, and now and then a want of melody which we can forgive, with perhaps more abruptness than is necessary. All that, however, is as a grain of sand in a cup of pure water, compared to the nature, passion, and fancy of the ROBERT BROWNING. poem. We open the book at random ; but fine things abound. Description and sentiment are everywhere beautifully mingled. We hope the author's next strains will be more cheerful and as ariginal as these. To one who sings so naturally poetry must be as easy as music is to a bird, and no doubt it has a solace all its own."

Browning himself thought little of the work. He wrote : " ' Pauline ' — written in pursuance of a foolish plan, I forget, or have no wish to remember, involving the assumption of several distinct characters. The world was also to guess that such an opera, such a comedy, such a speech proceeded from the same notable person ; " and again, " only this crab remains of the shapeless tree of life in my fool's paradise." Rossetti came accidentally across the book in the British Museum, and copied it out, feeling sure that it was written by Browning. A copy was once sold at a public sale for twenty five guineas. The author reprinted it in 1867, fearing that it might be pirated in America. " Pauline " bears date October 22, 1832. In the winter of 1833-34 Browning travelled to Russia and was abroad three months.

He went as Secretary to the Russian Consul-General. He enjoyed the society of the Russian capital, and witnessed the breaking up of the ice in the Neva, and the ceremony of the Czar drinking the first glass of water from the river. On his return he contributed some poems to the Monthly Repository, edited by his friend Mr. Fox. Five of them appeared at intervals, all signed Z. The first was a sonnet, not very successful. The second, " A King lived long ago," included afterwards in "Pippa Passes." Then followed " Porphyria's Lover," " Johannes Agricola," and some lines, " Still ailing, wind ? wilt be appeased or no ? " What afterwards appeared in a revised form is the first six stanzas of " James Lee." Two of these poems, "Porphyria" and " Agricola," were afterwards reprinted in "Bells and Pomegranates," under the title of " Madhouse Cells;" and " Porphyria " is certainly as striking a picture of madness as literature contains.

But Browning's serious occupation during the winter of 1834-35 was the writing of " Paracelsus," which was concluded in the spring of the latter year. This was a truly great work, full of beauties, not only of the more recondite kind hut such as appeal to every one Nothing can be more melodious or more affecting than the lyric song, "Over the sea our galleys went." The book was fully appreciated at the time by Mr. Fox and John Forster. One wrote : " The work before us has truth and life in it, and gave us the thrill and laid hold of us with the power, the sensation of which has never yet failed us as a test of genius." Mr. Forster placed Browning at once by the side of Shelley, Cole ridge, and Wordsworth. Soon after this the Browning family went to live at Hatcham, in a house with a stable and a large garden.

Here the poet made friends with a toad, which followed him about and allowed itself to be stroked. This strange pet was unfortunately killed by the gardener. Here, too, he first became acquainted with Carlyle. In November, 1835, he first met Macready, and made a great impression on him. The actor read " Paracelsus" and thought it a work of great daring, starred with poetry of thought, feeling, and diction. He inferred that the writer could scarcely fail to be a leading spirit of his time. The spring of the following year there was talk between them of Browning writing a tragedy, and in August we hear that the subject of Strafford had been chosen. Macready thought that he could not have hit upon one that would have been more suitable. The reason for this choice was that Browning had been treating the subject in a different manner.

John Forster, whose acquaintance Browning had made in Germany, was writing some fives of the statesmen of the Commonwealth for Lardner's " Cabinet Cyclopædia." He had fallen ill, and not being able to finish the life of Strafford, had requested Browning to complete it for him. Browning did so, and it is believed by competent critics that almost the whole of the existing fife is from Browning's pen. The play of "Strafford" was completed by the end of March. It was accepted with avidity by Mr. Osbaldiston, the manager of Covent Garden Theatre, who agreed to give the author _12 a night for twenty-five nights, and _10 a night for ten nights beyond. It was acted on May 1 and obtained a certain amount of success. Macready was acknowledged to be admirable in the principal character, and Helen Faucit in Lady Carlisle.

But the King was so bad an actor that he ought to have been driven from the stage, and the Queen was not much b better. The performances came to an abrupt conclusion because Vandenhoff, who played the part of Pym, was drawn aside by a better engagement at another theatre. The play was published by Messrs. Longman, but only had a moderate sale. The poet in the original preface described the play as " one of aetion in character rather than character in action," but claimed historical faithfulness for the portraits, excepting that of Lady Carlisle. He tells us also that the Italian boat-song comes from Redi's "Bacco in Toscana." Browning had, according to his own account, been engaged for some time on a poem of a very different nature when he was induced to write " Strafford." This was the poem of " Sordello," perhaps the greatest of his works.

It occupied him for several years, and was not published till 1840. He must have worked at it during the winter of 1837-38, for he writes on Good Friday in the latter year that he is sailing that morning for Venice, intending to finish his poem amongst the scenes it describes. He went through the Bay of Biscay and suffered very much from the rough weather. The Captain supported him on deck as they passed through the Straits of Gibraltar, that he might gaze on the sight. At this time he wrote, " How they brought the Good News from Ghent to Aix." " Under the bulwark of a vessel off the African coast, after I had been at sea long enough to appreciate even the fancy of a gallop on the back of a certain good horse 'York,' then in my stable at home." " Home Thoughts from the Sea," written at the same time, tells us what he saw : — :' Nobly, nobly, Cape St. Vincent to the north-west died away, :' Sunset ran, one glorious blood-red reeking, into Cadiz Bay ■ " Bluish 'mid the burning water, full in face Trafalgar lay ; " In the dimmest north-east distance dawned Gibraltar, grand and gray."

He went to Trieste, then to Venice, then through Treviso and Bassano to the momitains, visiting "delicious Asolo, all my places and eastles you will see." Then to Vicenza, Padua, and Venice again. Then to Verona and Trent, through the' Tyrol to Innsbruck, to Munich, Salzburg, Frankfort, and Mainz ; then down the Rhine to Cologne, and home by Aix -la - Chapelle, Liege, and Antwerp. He returned in the summer of 1838. " Sordello " did not appear till 1840. ROBRET BROWNING. XIX " Sordello " is one of the very greatest of Browning's pro ductions, perhaps his masterpiece. Starting from the casual and mysterious mention of Sordello in Dante, it attempted to tell the story of a soul, and how it gained good out of every thing, in which it seemed only to fail. All the stages and processes are described by which the soul of Sordello comes into play.

It is common to -call " Sordello " obscure ; to relate how Douglas Jerrold once thought that he was mad because he could not understand it, and was relieved to find that everyone else was as mad as himself. With regard to this charge it will be well to quote the remark of another great poet, Mr. Swin burne. He says : "If there is any great quality more per ceptible than another in Mr. Browning's intellect, it is his decisive and incisive faculty of thought, his sureneBs and intensity of perception, his rapid and trenchant resolution of aim. To charge him with obscurity is about as accurate as to call Lynceus purblind, or complain of the slowness of the telegraphic wire. He is something too much the reverse of obscure ; he is too brilliant and subtle for the ready reader of a ready writer to follow with any certainty the track of an intelligence which moves with such incessant rapidity.

The rate of his thoughts is to that of another man's as the speed of a railway to that of a waggon. The very evidence of Mr. Browning's aim and method is such as implies above all other things the possession of a quality the very opposite of obscurity, — a faculty of spiritual illumination, rapid and intense and subtle as lightning, which brings to bear upon its central object, by way of direct and vivid illustration, every symbol and every detail on which its light is flashed in passing." In 1841 appeared " Pippa Passes," as the first instalment of " Bells and Pomegranates." This requires some explanation. This exquisite poem and two tragedies were lying in Browning's desk awaiting a publisher. Just at this time Mr. Moxon said that he was bringing out some editions of the Elizabethan dramatists in a cheap form, and that if Browning liked to use the same cheap type he might have the opportunity of doing so.

It was agreed that each poem should form a brochure of sixteen prges in double columns, which would cost not more than 6.2 XX twelve or fifteen pounds. In this manner eight numbers of " Bells and Pomegranates " appeared between 1841 and 1846, in yellow paper covers. The price was at first sixpence, but it ivas raised to a shilling, which greatly increased the sale, and finally to half-a-crown. These strangely printed pages, of which my elder brother, himself a poet, was very fond, are amongst my earliest recollections. Pippa is a young girl of Asolo, who on her year's holiday from silk-weaving, during the course of her pleasure ramble, unconsciously influences, through her innocent songs, the various groups of human life she passes — the adulterous blood-stained lover, the dreaming artist, the scheming Italian patriot, the crafty Churchman.

An advertise ment to the first edition of this poem says : " Two or three years ago I wrote a play about which the chief matter I much care to recollect at present is that a Pit-ful of good-natured people applauded it. Ever since I have been desirous of doing something in the same way that should better award their attention. What follows I mean for the first of a series of dramatised pieces to come out at intervals; and I amuse myself by fancying that the cheap mode in which they appear will, for once, help me to a call of Pit audience again. Of course such a work must go on no longer than it is liked, and to provide against a too certain and but too possible contingency, let me hasten to say now — what, if I were sure of success, I would try to say circumstantially enough at the close — that I dedicate my best intentions most admiringly to the author of ' Ion,' most affectionately to Serjeant Talfourd."

The second volume of "Bells and Pomegranates " contained a play, " King Victor and King Charles." The King Victor of Sardinia was the Duke of Savoy, well known to Englishmen in the war of the Spanish Succession and the Peace of Utrecht. The play does not seem to have attracted any great attention. The third number, published in the same year, contained, under the title of " Dramatic Lyrics," a number of pieces, now well known, and written on different occasions. Of these, " In a Gondola," was written to illustrate a picture by Maclise exhibited at the British Institution in 1842. "Waring" referred to a friend of Browning's, Alfred Dommett, who went to New Zealand and eventually became Prime Minister there. Some ten years later Browning wrote the poem on the " Guardian Angel at Fano " for him, ending thus : — '■' My love is here.

Where are you, dear old friend? How rolls the Wairoa at your world's far end ? This is Ancona ; yonder rolls the sea." " Cristine," rather an obscure poem, is supposed to refer to someone who fell in love with Queen Victoria. The two poems, in " Madhouse Cells," were written six years before. The last poem in the number is the " Pied Piper of Hamelin," a rhymed version of the story told in Howell's " Letters." It was written for William Macready, the eldest son of Macready the actor who died in Ceylon in 1871. He had a talent for drawing, and asked Browning to write him something to illustrate. Browning wrote a short poem on an account of the death of the Pope's Legate at the Council of Trent. Young Macready's drawings for this were so clever that Browning "tried at a more picturesque subject for him, and wrote the ' Piper,' a thing of joy for ever to all with the child's heart, young and old."

Number IV. of " Bells and Pomegranates " contained " The Return of the Druses," which had been announced in " Sor dello " as " ' Mansor the Hierophant,' in preparation." It was a play in five acts. One of the characters is Karshook, a name which occurs in two other poems of Browning's. The fifth number of " Bells and Pomegranates," published also in 1843, contained a tragedy in three acts, " A Blot on the 'Scutcheon." It was played at Drury Lane, Mr. Phelps, Miss Faucit, and Mrs. Stirling forming part of the cast. The play was revived at Sadler's Wells in 1848. It was written very hurriedly, in four or five days. The production led to a mis understanding, and then to a breach of friendship between Browning and Macready, the dispute turning mainly on the question as to whether Phelps or Macready was to act the principal part.

It is said that Browning, on returning to the green-room after the rehearsal, drove his hat more firmly on to his head and said to Macready, "I beg pardon, sir, hut you have given the part to Mr. Phelps, and I am satisfied that he should act it," and that when Macready heard this he crushed up the manuscript and flung it on the ground. The two friends did not meet again until Browning had returned a widower ROBERT BROWNING. from Italy, and Macready had also lost his wife. They greeted each other with deep emotion. The next instalment of the periodical contained " Colombe's Birthday," a play in five acts. It was not acted until nine years later, when Miss Helen Faucit again took the principal part. The same year, 1844, saw the composition of " The Labora tory," written for Hood's Magazine, also " Claret and Tokay," " Garden Fancies," " The Boy and the Angel," " The Tomb at St. Praxed's," and " The Flight of the Duchess," printed in the same periodical.

Tom Hood, the famous humourist, had been seized with a severe attack of hæmorrhage from the lungs, so that fears were entertained for his life. Monckton Milnes, afterwards Lord Houghton, asked Browning to help in making up some numbers of the magazine for its incapacitated editor, which he did. The seventh number of " Bells and Pome granates " contained these six poems, as well as the four published in the Monthly Repository. In this also appeared " The Lost Leader," an often quoted invective against political renegades. It was aimed at Wordsworth, who had just turned Tory, but other men and incidents were mixed up in the poet's mind. It also contains the great poem of " Saul." In fact this volume contains some of the finest poetry which Browning ever wrote. It appeared in 1845, and in the previous autumn Browning had been to Italy again, sailing direct to Naples.

He stayed some time at Rome, and on his return called upon Trelawney, the friend of Byron and Shelley, at Leghorn. What pleasure to talk with a man who had " seen Shelley plain 1" The "Englishman in Italy" gives us a graphic picture of some reminiscences of this tour. The last number of " Bells and Pomegranates," the eighth, contained "Luria," a tragedy in five acts, and "A Soul's Tragedy," in two parts, one the " Poetry of Chiappino's Life" in blank verse, and the second part, its Prose, in prose. The tone of the poem is, in the main, humorous. Shortly after the publication of this number a great change took place in Browning's life. On September 12, 1846, he married, at St. Marylebone Parish Church, the great poetess Elizabeth Barrett Barrett, he being thirty-four years of age, and she forty.

She was the daughter of a Mr. Moulton, who had married an heiress, Miss Barrett, and added her name to his. She was a great invalid, and lived in two rooms at the top of a house in Wimpole Street. Her father was a wealthy man, but had the peculiarity that he would never hear of his children marrying, but loved to keep them about him. I have heard from relations how " Ba," as Miss Barrett was affectionately called, was always in bed or on the sofa, and how visitors stole up to call upon her by a special staircase. She was regarded as quite unable to move, but one morning the startling news came that she was married and had left her father's house. She had already made a considerable name as a poetess, and had published " Lady Geraldine's Courtship " during Browning's absence from England. Browning expressed admiration of it to Mr. Kenyon, Miss Barrett's cousin, saying that she was a great invalid and saw no one, " but great souls jump at sympathy."