Chapter 14

1861-1863

Miss Blagden--Letters from Mr. Browning to Miss Haworth and Mr.
Leighton--His Feeling in regard to Funeral Ceremonies--Establishment
in London--Plan of Life--Letter to Madame du Quaire--Miss Arabel
Barrett--Biarritz--Letters to Miss Blagden--Conception of 'The Ring and
the Book'--Biographical Indiscretion--New Edition of his Works--Mr. and
Mrs. Procter.

The friend who was nearest, at all events most helpful, to Mr. Browning
in this great and sudden sorrow was Miss Blagden--Isa Blagden, as she
was called by all her intimates. Only a passing allusion to her could
hitherto find place in this fragmentary record of the Poet's life; but
the friendship which had long subsisted between her and Mrs. Browning
brings her now into closer and more frequent relation to it. She was
for many years a centre of English society in Florence; for her genial,
hospitable nature, as well as literary tastes (she wrote one or two
novels, I believe not without merit), secured her the acquaintance of
many interesting persons, some of whom occasionally made her house their
home; and the evenings spent with her at her villa on Bellosguardo live
pleasantly in the remembrance of those of our older generation who were
permitted to share in them.

She carried the boy away from the house of mourning, and induced his
father to spend his nights under her roof, while the last painful duties
detained him in Florence. He at least gave her cause to deny, what has
been so often affirmed, that great griefs are necessarily silent. She
always spoke of this period as her 'apocalyptic month', so deeply poetic
were the ravings which alternated with the simple human cry of the
desolate heart: 'I want her, I want her!' But the ear which received
these utterances has long been closed in death. The only written
outbursts of Mr. Browning's frantic sorrow were addressed, I believe, to
his sister, and to the friend, Madame du Quaire, whose own recent loss
most naturally invoked them, and who has since thought best, so far as
rested with her, to destroy the letters in which they were contained. It
is enough to know by simple statement that he then suffered as he did.
Life conquers Death for most of us; whether or not 'nature, art,
and beauty' assist in the conquest. It was bound to conquer in Mr.
Browning's case: first through his many-sided vitality; and secondly,
through the special motive for living and striving which remained to
him in his son. This note is struck in two letters which are given me to
publish, written about three weeks after Mrs. Browning's death; and we
see also that by this time his manhood was reacting against the blow,
and bracing itself with such consoling remembrance as the peace and
painlessness of his wife's