Chapter 19 - Page 2

Campbell.

Although nothing could be more unpretending than the action of this
Browning Society, or in the main more genuine than its motive, it did
not begin life without encountering ridicule and mistrust. The formation
of a Ruskin Society in the previous year had already established a
precedent for allowing a still living worker to enjoy the fruits of his
work, or, as some one termed it, for making a man a classic during his
lifetime. But this fact was not yet generally known; and meanwhile a
curious contradiction developed itself in the public mind. The outer
world of Mr. Browning's acquaintance continued to condemn the too great
honour which was being done to him; from those of the inner circle he
constantly received condolences on being made the subject of proceedings
which, according to them, he must somehow regard as an offence.

This was the last view of the case which he was prepared to take. At
the beginning, as at the end, he felt honoured by the intentions of the
Society. He probably, it is true, had occasional misgivings as to its
future. He could not be sure that its action would always be judicious,
still less that it would be always successful. He was prepared for its
being laughed at, and for himself being included in the laughter.
He consented to its establishment for what seemed to him the one
unanswerable reason, that he had, even on the ground of taste, no just
cause for forbidding it. No line, he considered, could be drawn between
the kind of publicity which every writer seeks, which, for good or
evil, he had already obtained, and that which the Browning Society was
conferring on him. His works would still, as before, be read, analyzed,
and discussed 'viva voce' and in print. That these proceedings would
now take place in other localities than drawing-rooms or clubs, through
other organs than newspapers or magazines, by other and larger groups
of persons than those usually gathered round a dinner-or a tea-table,
involved no real change in the situation. In any case, he had made
himself public property; and those who thus organized their study of him
were exercising an individual right. If his own rights had been assailed
he would have guarded them also; but the circumstances of the case
precluded such a contingency. And he had his reward. How he felt towards
the Society at the close of its first session is better indicated in the
following letter to Mrs. Fitz-Gerald than in the note to Mr. Yates which
Mr. Sharp has published, and which was written with more reserve and, I
believe, at a rather earlier date. Even the shade of condescension which
lingers about his words will have been effaced by subsequent experience;
and many letters written to Dr. Furnivall must, since then, have