Newspaper Page Text
4 (560) THE I
J Family F
" ' xITE GOOD' 13 THE ENEMY OF
'THE BEST.' "
What is "the Best"? Where is "the Best"?
How is "the Best" attained?
This is the quest?an anxious quest?
By which life's end is gained!
Money is good, it brings us good?
Yet we must count it loss,
If we'd attain that richest gain
Which centers in the cross!
Honor we 'love, good name we love?
Yet we must turn aside,
And give up fame, and bear all blame
For Christ the crucified!
Ourselves of earth, we have the earth?
Yet we must earth deny;
And living here, live in God's fear,
That we may reach the sky.
We all love ease, and comforts please?
Yet "witnessing" and pain
Aiust be our lot, our choBen lot,
If we the crown would gain!
Here ends our quest! This is "the Best,"
To gain eternal life!
From crumbling clod to climb to God?
victorious inrougu sirne:
?Addison.
THE WORLD'S PERFECT LOVE STORY.
"THE BKOWNINGS; THEIR LIFE AND ART."
BY LILLIAN WHITING.
Reviewed by Frances Kingdon.
Once in a while there comes from the publishers
a book so beautiful and full of treasures
that the reader wants to take it away to
some quiet, lovely corner and there simply
hold it close to the heart before beginning to
turn the pages which are to give so much joy.
Such a book has come this season from the
Boston firm of Little, Brown & Co., and it is
the story of "The Browning; Their Life and
Art," by Lillian Whiting, who must have
written it with a tear in her eye and a bird
singing in her heart. To write of the life of
i>-1 A i wi: u.ii. n 4.4.
ivuueri cUiu rjn/.uuuiii iiurrcit Diuwnmg hiiusv:
romance, one of the most beautiful the world
has known, is the pleasant, sacred task that
Miss Whiting has completed so well that literature
is the richer and liner for her record.
"It is difficult to realize," says Miss Whiting,
on the first page of her book, "that this
immortal idyll of poetry, genius and love, this
story which has touched the entire world
"with mystic gleams, like fragments of forgotten
dreams," was less than fifteen years
in duration, out of his seventy-seven and her
fifty-five years of life. The destiny of the
Brownings led them into constantly picturesque
surroundings; and the force and manliness
of his nature, the tender sweetness and
playful loveliness of hers, combined with their
vast intellectual range, their mutual genius
for friendship, their devotion to each other
and to their son, their reverence for art, and
their lofty and rioble spirituality of nature, all
united to produce this exquisite and unrivaled
"romance of life?'A Beauty passing the
Earth's store.'
"In their childhood each of these two beloved
poets lived in an atmosphere of rare culture
and fortunate influences and early were
stimulated and encouraged to warm their
hands at the divine fire. With Browning there
was never any question about his definite vo
1 R E ii E Y T E R I A N OF THE S <
leadings
^
cation as a poet. The first book of Ins own pureiiase
was a copy of Ossian's poems and his
lirst poem, 'Pauline,' published before his
twenty-first birthday, had the same exceptions
of life as those more clearly and fully presented
in 'Paracelsus' and 'Bordello.' Little
Elizabeth Barrett was also born to love books
ami ureams, and assimilated learning as naturally
as she played with her dolls. ISlie was
no prodigy, but an eager, earnest little maid,
who, although she read Homer before she was
eight years old, yet read him with her doll
clasped close in one hand, and who wrote heichildish
rhymes as unconsciously a bird
sings. When she was fifteen years old a fall
from her saddle when trying to mount her
pony caused a life-long delicacy of health, in
spite of legendary traditions that she was a
nervous invalid, Elizabeth Barrett was 'full of
intcnsest life.' '1 have had enough,' she once
wrote to Mr. Browning, 'to tame me, and might
be expected to stand still in mv stall l?nt wnn
Bee 1 do not. Headlong 1 was at first and headlong
1 continue, precipitately rushing forward
through all manner of nettles and briars, instead
of keeping the path; guessing at the
meaning of unknown words instead of looking
in the dictionary, tearing up letters and never
untying a string?and expecting everything to
be done in a minute and the thunder to be as
quick as the lightning."
in the years which had preceded their meeting
the poets had become famous. Aliss Barrett
had "heard the nations praising her fur
otf," but the verdict did not affect her own
high standard. "1 have written these poems,"'
she says, "as well as 1 could, and 1 hope to
write others better. 1 have not reached my
own ideal . . . but I love poetry more
than i love my own success in it."
"Robert Browning was even then 'king of
the mystics,' and had given to the world Pippa
Basses, A Blot in the '.Scutcheon, etc."
Owing to the strange attitude of Miss Barnwlt
'a foflwv- - ? "
.v? o ii>wu in luiuiuuiug any oi ins children
to marry, and her own delicate health, she felt
at lirst that she could not accept the great
trust of his happiness. But in a few months
she confesses to him that she is his ''for everything
but to do you harm, and none except
God and your own will shall interpose between
you and me." And he answers, " When I come
back from seeing you and think over it all,
there is never a least word of yours 1 could
not occupy myself with."
It was in September that the two poets were
wedded, clandestinely, with only two servants
as witnesses, but says Miss Whiting, "in no
act of Mrs. Browning's life did she mr?ro im
pressively reveal her good sense than in this
of her marriage. 'I had long believed such an
act,' she said, 'the most personal of my life,
to be within the rights of every person of mature
age, and I had resolved to exercise that
right in my own case by a resolution that had
slowly ripened. All the other doors of life
were shut to me, and only before this door stood
one whom I loved best and who loved me best,
and who invited me out through it for the good's
sake he thought I could do him!' "
After their marriage the Brownings went to
Italy to live. In Pisa and Florence they lived,
loved and wrote. In Florence their little son
was born and they "caught up" their parental
0 t) T H [May 22, 1912
duties with a sort of rapture. Mr. Browning
would walk the terraces where orange trees and
oleanders blossomed, with the baby in his arms.
It was there one morning after their breakfast
that Mrs. Browning, with shy sweetness, tucked
the pages of the "Sonnets" into her husband's
pocket and swiftly vanished. It is in these she
answers his question?
"How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.
I love thee to the length and depth and height
My soul can reach .
I love thee with the breath,
Smiles, tears of all my life!
And if God choose,
I shall love thee better after death."
ine wonderful friendship that so enriched
the lives of the poets could fill a volume alone.
The Alarchese and Alarchesa d' O'ssoli (Alargaret
Fuller) and their child spent their last evening
in Italy with them and even then expressed
a fear of the voyage that after its fatal termination
was recalled as bemg almost prophetic. At
tue christening ceremony of Tennyson's little
son Browning took the baby in his arms and
tossed him up and down, although his own little
son "disgraced us all by refusing to kiss the
baby." Florence Nightingale was another visitor
to the Brownings when they visited England,
and always followed her calls by a gift
of masses of dowers. Charles Kingsley impressed
them with his genial and tender kindness,
and while they thought some of his social views
rather wild and theoretical, they loved his earnr
estness and originality. Mrs. Carlyle, Mrs.
Browning found, "lull of thought, and feeling
and character." Hans Christian Anderson,
Fanny Kembie, Thackeray's daughter, now Lady
liitchie, Harriet llosnier, Goethe's grandson,
AflpIiiitHA Prnofnv Uoxr.o?wJ
.uu A >vuwi, i/ttjoiu laj'lui, ivaic ? 1C1U,
the Hawithornes and many other of the world's
illustrious, met the Brownings again and again
and shared with them their love of beauty and
pofetry.
During the closing days of Mrs. Browning's
stay on earth, her constant aim was to 4'keep
quiet and try not to give cause for trouble on
my account, to he patient and live on God's
daily bread from day to day." At the close,
for a few hours before she died, she talked with
her husband, passing into a state of ecstancy, expressing
to him in ardent and tender words her
love and happiness. With the glow of a bright
Florentine dawn entering her room and with
the words, "It is beautiful," she passed away.
Browning was too great a spirit to sink into a
recluse, and afterward in London, in Kosetti's
studio, he soon met Millais and by degrees he
responded to friends and the many voices of life,
lie seemed to think there was something morbid
and unworthy in the avoidance of the world of
men and women and no revelation of human
nature could come amiss to him. It was not
until twentv-eicht vears later, when -the world
had again and again given him new honors and
greater fame and homage, tha;t the reunion he
had anticipted in these lines came:
4 4 Then a light, then to my breast,
O thou soul of my soul, I shall
clasp thee again
And with God be the rest."
Robert and Elizabeth drowning would have
been great as man and woman, if they had not
been great poets. They 'lived for something
higher than mere personal ends and their aim
may well he read in the lines of "Aurora Leigh.
"Beloved, let us love so well,
Our work shall be better for our love,.
And still our 'love be sweeter for our work,
And both commended, for the sake of each,
By all true workers and true lovers born."
?The Advance.
4