第66章 Chapter 14(2)

These incidents so sustain me that I tell them to her beloved ones as their right:there was no lingering,nor acute pain,nor consciousness of separation,but God took her to himself as you would lift a sleeping child from a dark,uneasy bed into your arms and the light.

Thank God.Annunziata thought by her earnest ways with me,happy and smiling as they were,that she must have been aware of our parting's approach --but she was quite conscious,had words at command,and yet did not even speak of Peni,who was in the next room.Her last word was when I asked 'How do you feel?'

--'Beautiful.'You know I have her dearest wishes and interests to attend to AT ONCE --her child to care for,educate,establish properly;and my own life to fulfil as properly,--all just as she would require were she here.I shall leave Italy altogether for years --go to London for a few days'talk with Arabel --then go to my father and begin to try leisurely what will be the best for Peni --but no more 'housekeeping'for me,even with my family.

I shall grow,still,I hope --but my root is taken and remains.

I know you always loved her,and me too in my degree.I shall always be grateful to those who loved her,and that,I repeat,you did.

She was,and is,lamented with extraordinary demonstrations,if one consider it.The Italians seem to have understood her by an instinct.

I have received strange kindness from everybody.Pen is very well --very dear and good,anxious to comfort me as he calls it.

He can't know his loss yet.After years,his will be worse than mine --he will want what he never had --that is,for the time when he could be helped by her wisdom,and genius and piety --I HAVE had everything and shall not forget.

God bless you,dear friend.I believe I shall set out in a week.

Isa goes with me --dear,true heart.You,too,would do what you could for us were you here and your assistance needful.

A letter from you came a day or two before the end --she made me enquire about the Frescobaldi Palace for you,--Isa wrote to you in consequence.I shall be heard of at 151,rue de Grenelle St.Germain.

Faithfully and affectionately yours,Robert Browning.

The first of these displays even more self-control,it might be thought less feeling,than the second;but it illustrates the reserve which,I believe,habitually characterized Mr.Browning's attitude towards men.

His natural,and certainly most complete,confidants were women.

At about the end of July he left Florence with his son;also accompanied by Miss Blagden,who travelled with them as far as Paris.

She herself must soon have returned to Italy;since he wrote to her in September on the subject of his wife's provisional disinterment,in a manner which shows her to have been on the spot.

Sept.'61.

'...Isa,may I ask you one favour?Will you,whenever these dreadful preliminaries,the provisional removement &c.

when they are proceeded with,--will you do --all you can --suggest every regard to decency and proper feeling to the persons concerned?

I have a horror of that man of the grave-yard,and needless publicity and exposure --I rely on you,dearest friend of ours,to at least lend us your influence when the time shall come --a word may be invaluable.If there is any show made,or gratification of strangers'curiosity,far better that I had left the turf untouched.These things occur through sheer thoughtlessness,carelessness,not anything worse,but the effect is irreparable.

I won't think any more of it --now --at least....'

The dread expressed in this letter of any offence to the delicacies of the occasion was too natural to be remarked upon here;but it connects itself with an habitual aversion for the paraphernalia of death,which was a marked peculiarity of Mr.Browning's nature.He shrank,as his wife had done,from the 'earth side'of the portentous change;but truth compels me to own that her infinite pity had little or no part in his attitude towards it.For him,a body from which the soul had passed,held nothing of the person whose earthly vesture it had been.

He had no sympathy for the still human tenderness with which so many of us regard the mortal remains of those they have loved,or with the solemn or friendly interest in which that tenderness so often reflects itself in more neutral minds.He would claim all respect for the corpse,but he would turn away from it.

Another aspect of this feeling shows itself in a letter to one of his brothers-in-law,Mr.George Moulton-Barrett,in reference to his wife's monument,with which Mr.Barrett had professed himself pleased.His tone is characterized by an almost religious reverence for the memory which that monument enshrines.

He nevertheless writes:

'I hope to see it one day --and,although I have no kind of concern as to where the old clothes of myself shall be thrown,yet,if my fortune be such,and my survivors be not unduly troubled,I should like them to lie in the place I have retained there.

It is no matter,however.'

The letter is dated October 19,1866.He never saw Florence again.

Mr.Browning spent two months with his father and sister at St.-Enogat,near Dinard,from which place the letter to Miss Blagden was written;and then proceeded to London,where his wife's sister,Miss Arabel Barrett,was living.He had declared in his first grief that he would never keep house again,and he began his solitary life in lodgings which at his request she had engaged for him;but the discomfort of this arrangement soon wearied him of it;and before many months had passed,he had sent to Florence for his furniture,and settled himself in the house in Warwick Crescent,which possessed,besides other advantages,that of being close to Delamere Terrace,where Miss Barrett had taken up her abode.