A Rich Full Death

‘Did I?’ he queried.

‘Use DeVere’s name? Certainly.’

Browning looked utterly blank.

‘Mr Booth, you may believe this or not, as you choose-and I should hardly blame you if you do not-but the fact of the matter is that I have not the slightest recollection of having mentioned Mr DeVere-whom, as I say, I hardly know-nor the remotest notion why I should have done so!’

This response was so hopelessly inadequate that I did not doubt its veracity for a second; a man as gifted as Robert Browning, had he wished to lie, could certainly have invented a more satisfactory explanation than this ingenuous shrug of the shoulders. The mystery, however, remained.

We arranged to meet the following morning at nine o’clock, at the south end of the Ponte Vecchio-DeVere’s house lies hard by this venerable structure. Then, with a second glance at his watch, Mr Browning left.

It may have been that excessive interest in the time that did it, or perhaps I remembered how he had strangely contradicted himself in the reasons he had given for having to leave a few minutes before. As soon as he had gone, at all events, I rushed to the window and looked out. What I saw so intrigued me that I ran back to the hall, grabbed my cloak and hat, and hurried downstairs after him.

6

When I got out into the darkening streets Browning was already lost to sight, but I hurried off in the direction I had seen him go, towards the Cathedral. It had been this that had caught my attention, for Casa Guidi is in the district the Florentines call the Oltrarno, south of the river; wherever Browning was so urgently bound, it was not there.

He was not going home, then-at least not directly. And yet he had justified his abrupt departure with talk of his wife’s illness. I had noticed at the time, but without remarking its significance, that this rather failed to tally with his mention of an ‘appointment’ he was prepared to postpone in order to see DeVere. There was no reason to suppose that the Brownings’ marriage was upon such terms that husband and wife were in the habit of making appointments to see each other.

At this point you may be forgiven for thinking that the atmosphere of continual mystery and intrigue I had been breathing since Isabel’s death had quite turned my head, so that I saw riddles in everything. Might Browning not be going quite simply to an appointment with a doctor, or a pharmacist, or lawyer, on any ordinary everyday business, before returning to his wife’s side? That indeed was what I asked myself as I hurried along over the great treacherous gleaming flagstones of the street, which was emptying earlier than usual owing to the onset of a light drizzle. All I found by way of justification for my impulse was that I was surrounded by so many mysteries that the possibility of finally resolving even one of them was not to be missed.

By the time I reached the Cathedral I had almost despaired of catching up with Browning, who is an almost aggressively brisk walker-one of those you fancy might actually tear themselves to pieces were they tied to a chair for twenty-four hours together, so necessary to their spiritual and intellectual economy does the relief that walking affords them seem to be. I was in fact on the point of giving up the chase when I suddenly caught sight of him, buying something from a street-trader. I approached, taking good care that he did not spot me, and waited until he had concluded his purchase. I then made a slight detour past the huckster’s stall, and discovered that his principal stock-in-trade appeared to consist of embroidered lace handkerchiefs.

Browning had meanwhile got ahead of me again, striding away down Via De’ Calzaioli. We were now heading south, and I thought that he must be going home after all, having picked up a little keepsake for his wife. The street runs straight into the very centre of Florence: a mess of mediaeval squalor grown like congestion in a lung upon the clear grid of the ancient Roman city. This area is a maze of the narrowest and crookedest alleys you will ever see, lined with that typical Florentine assortment of wretched tumbledown tenements with more inhabitants than a dog has fleas; ancient palaces whose rock-like walls seem to ooze the memories of evil deeds; quaint churches, half- amalgamated with the rest, preserving primitive frescoes as faded as the piety of their parishioners; the truncated stumps of the tall towers built by proud Guelf or Ghibelline to pour scorn and boiling pitch on their opponents; and little squares, like clearings in the forest, where men lounge and smoke cigars, children play noisy games, women gossip and make eyes, appear and disappear at windows.

When we left the Piazza del Duomo Browning was some hundred yards ahead of me, a lead which by dint of breaking almost into a run I had gradually reduced to half that distance. I dared not approach closer, after the incident of the police spy, for if he had noticed my presence he must have become suspicious. Thus I was obliged to hang back to some extent, and when Browning suddenly turned left into a side-street I was some fifty yards behind him.

I increased my pace directly, and on reaching the corner was just in time to see him cross into the next street. I could tell by the sound of his footsteps that he had turned neither right nor left, but continued straight on, and I hastened on through the gloom towards the feeble oil-lamp at the next street-corner.

When I reached it I paused: all was still. The only sound was the steady hush of the rain, which had grown more persistent.

The next street, named after Dante Aligheri, whose house stands there, was too long for Browning to have reached the other end before I gained the corner where I now stood. He must therefore have entered one of the buildings in it. But which? There was no way of telling, save by keeping watch until such time as he might emerge-which is what I determined to do.

I was counting on his reappearing almost immediately. ‘He has gone to call on a friend on his way home’ I thought. ‘He will stay but a few minutes-is not his wife ill and anxiously awaiting his return?’

So I reasoned; but I was mistaken. I crouched in a doorway for more than three quarters of an hour, but in vain; of Mr Browning there was no further sign. Meanwhile the rain grew ever heavier, until my clothes were quite soaked. In the end, cold and dispirited, I abandoned my vigil.

Perhaps you think that I was foolish to risk my health like that-despite the fact that my lungs are quite mended now, and I feel younger and healthier than ever-to risk it for nothing, for a mere whim of curiosity, an unseemly nosiness about matters that are none of my business. And so before going on to describe what happened the next day, let me explain; let me give you the good news I spoke of at the beginning of this letter, since without it you will be unable to understand even what I do — never mind these other mysteries.

First, though, you must understand me more deeply-must understand, above all, that I have been one who, while still young, knew-blew, mind! — that he had been born to excel greatly.

At what, I could not say-nor did it seem important. I dabbled in writing, because I could write, but often it seemed to me that my soul might worship more aptly at some other altar. Music moved me very greatly, and Art- but as I could never tell a crotchet from a minim, or draw a passable likeness, I stuck to words, over which, though poor things, I had at least some power. It mattered little what I achieved: that was for the future, of which I knew only that it would be glorious. For the moment it was enough, and more than enough, just gloriously to be; to feel, think, plan, dream …

Oh Prescott, those days! I walked, I talked, I sang and danced and laughed and wept with spirits! The rhythms of the Universe sometimes whispered, at others roared through me, at the behest of rules so ancient and all-embracing that it is absurd to speak of rules at all, as of something that might be broken.

Such, then, is what I was at five, at ten, at fifteen. Much, though by no means all, survived, surprisingly intact, into my twenties-a mere decade ago! It might be a century. But then the rot set in: slowly at first, and by fits and starts, I began to have doubts. What had I achieved? True, my room was full of paper-as full of paper as my life was empty of anything else, for I had sold my soul and kept my end of the bargain-but was all that paper covered in my scribbles worth any more than it had been blank, fresh from the stationers at a dollar a ream? Was it not rather worth less? I had spoiled it, and added nothing. That was the terrible truth which, over the course of several years, I gradually came to admit to myself.

Note the point-it was not the world’s judgment which sank me, but my own. I was quite prepared to be ignored, despised, rejected by my contemporaries. It was, indeed, almost a requirement; for what, after all, did they know? Was true greatness ever recognised or rewarded? Their contempt would, all other things being equal,