I daresay she will have told you how we trudged together,this morning to Possagno --through a lovely country:how we saw all the wonders --and a wonder of detestability is the paint-performance of the great man!--and how,on our return,we found the little town enjoying high market day,and its privilege of roaring and screaming over a bargain.It confuses me altogether,--but at Venice I may write more comfortably.You will till then,Dear Friend,remember me ever as yours affectionately,Robert Browning.
If the tone of this does not express disappointment,it has none of the rapture which his last visit was to inspire.
The charm which forty years of remembrance had cast around the little city on the hill was dispelled for,at all events,the time being.
The hot weather and dust-covered landscape,with the more than primitive accommodation of which he spoke in a letter to another friend,may have contributed something to this result.
At Venice the travellers fared better in some essential respects.
A London acquaintance,who passed them on their way to Italy,had recommended a cool and quiet hotel there,the Albergo dell'Universo.
The house,Palazzo Brandolin-Rota,was situated on the shady side of the Grand Canal,just below the Accademia and the Suspension Bridge.
The open stretches of the Giudecca lay not far behind;and a scrap of garden and a clean and open little street made pleasant the approach from back and side.It accommodated few persons in proportion to its size,and fewer still took up their abode there;for it was managed by a lady of good birth and fallen fortunes whose home and patrimony it had been;and her husband,a retired Austrian officer,and two grown-up daughters did not lighten her task.Every year the fortunes sank lower;the upper storey of the house was already falling into decay,and the fine old furniture passing into the brokers'or private buyers'hands.
It still,however,afforded sufficiently comfortable,and,by reason of its very drawbacks,desirable quarters to Mr.Browning.
It perhaps turned the scale in favour of his return to Venice;for the lady whose hospitality he was to enjoy there was as yet unknown to him;and nothing would have induced him to enter,with his eyes open,one of the English-haunted hotels,in which acquaintance,old and new,would daily greet him in the public rooms or jostle him in the corridors.
He and his sister remained at the Universo for a fortnight;their programme did not this year include a longer stay;but it gave them time to decide that no place could better suit them for an autumn holiday than Venice,or better lend itself to a preparatory sojourn among the Alps;and the plan of their next,and,though they did not know it,many a following summer,was thus sketched out before the homeward journey had begun.
Mr.Browning did not forget his work,even while resting from it;if indeed he did rest entirely on this occasion.He consulted a Russian lady whom he met at the hotel,on the names he was introducing in 'Ivan Ivanovitch'.It would be interesting to know what suggestions or corrections she made,and how far they adapted themselves to the rhythm already established,or compelled changes in it;but the one alternative would as little have troubled him as the other.
Mrs.Browning told Mr.Prinsep that her husband could never alter the wording of a poem without rewriting it,indeed,practically converting it into another;though he more than once tried to do so at her instigation.But to the end of his life he could at any moment recast a line or passage for the sake of greater correctness,and leave all that was essential in it untouched.
Seven times more in the eleven years which remained to him,Mr.Browning spent the autumn in Venice.Once also,in 1882,he had proceeded towards it as far as Verona,when the floods which marked the autumn of that year arrested his farther course.
Each time he had halted first in some more or less elevated spot,generally suggested by his French friend,Monsieur Dourlans,himself an inveterate wanderer,whose inclinations also tempted him off the beaten track.The places he most enjoyed were Saint-Pierre la Chartreuse,and Gressoney Saint-Jean,where he stayed respectively in 1881and 1882,1883and 1885.
Both of these had the drawbacks,and what might easily have been the dangers,of remoteness from the civilized world.But this weighed with him so little,that he remained there in each case till the weather had broken,though there was no sheltered conveyance in which he and his sister could travel down;and on the later occasions at least,circumstances might easily have combined to prevent their departure for an indefinite time.He became,indeed,so attached to Gressoney,with its beautiful outlook upon Monte Rosa,that nothing I believe would have hindered his returning,or at least contemplating a return to it,but the great fatigue to his sister of the mule ride up the mountain,by a path which made walking,wherever possible,the easier course.
They did walk DOWN it in the early October of 1885,and completed the hard seven hours'trudge to San Martino d'Aosta,without an atom of refreshment or a minute's rest.
One of the great attractions of Saint-Pierre was the vicinity of the Grande Chartreuse,to which Mr.Browning made frequent expeditions,staying there through the night in order to hear the midnight mass.
Miss Browning also once attempted the visit,but was not allowed to enter the monastery.She slept in the adjoining convent.
The brother and sister were again at the Universo in 1879,1880,and 1881;but the crash was rapidly approaching,and soon afterwards it came.
The old Palazzo passed into other hands,and after a short period of private ownership was consigned to the purposes of an Art Gallery.
