Chapter 17

1873-1878

London Life--Love of Music--Miss Egerton-Smith--Periodical Nervous
Exhaustion--Mers; 'Aristophanes' Apology'--'Agamemnon'--'The
Inn Album'--'Pacchiarotto and other Poems'--Visits to Oxford and
Cambridge--Letters to Mrs. Fitz-Gerald--St. Andrews; Letter
from Professor Knight--In the Savoyard Mountains--Death of Miss
Egerton-Smith--'La Saisiaz'; 'The Two Poets of Croisic'--Selections from
his Works.

The period on which we have now entered, covering roughly the ten or
twelve years which followed the publication of 'The Ring and the Book',
was the fullest in Mr. Browning's life; it was that in which the varied
claims made by it on his moral, and above all his physical energies,
found in him the fullest power of response. He could rise early and go
to bed late--this, however, never from choice; and occupy every hour of
the day with work or pleasure, in a manner which his friends recalled
regretfully in later years, when of two or three engagements which
ought to have divided his afternoon, a single one--perhaps only the most
formally pressing--could be fulfilled. Soon after his final return to
England, while he still lived in comparative seclusion, certain habits
of friendly intercourse, often superficial, but always binding, had
rooted themselves in his life. London society, as I have also implied,
opened itself to him in ever-widening circles, or, as it would be truer
to say, drew him more and more deeply into its whirl; and even before
the mellowing kindness of his nature had infused warmth into the least
substantial of his social relations, the imaginative curiosity of the
poet--for a while the natural ambition of the man--found satisfaction in
it. For a short time, indeed, he entered into the fashionable routine of
country-house visiting. Besides the instances I have already given,
and many others which I may have forgotten, he was heard of, during the
earlier part of this decade, as the guest of Lord Carnarvon at Highclere
Castle, of Lord Shrewsbury at Alton Towers, of Lord Brownlow and his
mother, Lady Marian Alford, at Belton and Ashridge. Somewhat later,
he stayed with Mr. and Lady Alice Gaisford at a house they temporarily
occupied on the Sussex downs; with Mr. Cholmondeley at Condover, and,
much more recently, at Aynhoe Park with Mr. and Mrs. Cartwright. Kind
and pressing, and in themselves very tempting invitations of this nature
came to him until the end of his life; but he very soon made a practice
of declining them, because their acceptance could only renew for him the
fatigues of the London season, while the tantalizing beauty and
repose of the country lay before his eyes; but such visits, while they
continued, were one of the necessary social experiences which brought