The Love Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning & Robert Browning. Robert Browning

Robert Browning.

      To Kate Field Mrs. Browning wrote, the letter undated, but evidently about this time, apparently in reply to some request of Miss Field’s to be permitted to write about them for publication:

      My Dear Kate,—I can’t put a seal on your lips when I know them to be so brave and true. Take out your license, then, to name me as you please, only remembering, dear, that even kind words are not always best spoken. Here is the permission, then, to say nothing about your friends except that they are your friends, which they will always be glad to have said and believed. I had a letter from America to-day, from somebody who, hearing I was in ill health, desired to inform me that he wouldn’t weep for me, were it not for Robert Browning and Penini! No, don’t repeat that. It was kindly meant, and you are better, my dear Kate, and happier, and we are all thanking God for Italy. Love us here a little, and believe that we all love and think of you.

      Yours ever affectionately,

       E. B. B.

      The American appreciation of Mrs. Browning constantly increased, and editors offered her an hundred dollars each for any poem, long or short, that might pass through their publications on its way to final destiny.

      Theodore Parker had passed that winter in Rome, and Mrs. Browning felt that he was “high and noble.” Early in May he left for Florence, where his death occurred before the return of the Brownings.

      The education of Penini during these months was conducted by an old Abbé, who was also the instructor of Mr. Story’s only daughter, Edith, and the two often shared their lessons, the lad going to Palazzo Barberini to join Miss Edith in this pursuit of knowledge. Certain traditions of the venerable Abbé have drifted down the years, indicating that his breviary and meditations on ecclesiastical problems did not exclusively occupy his mind, for the present Marchesa Peruzzi has more than one laughing reminiscence of this saintly father, who at one time challenged his pupil to hop around the large table on one foot. The hilarity of the festivity was not lessened when the Reverendo himself joined in the frolic, his robes flapping around him, as they all contributed to the merriment. The Marchesa has many a dainty note written to her by Penini’s mother. Once it is as Pen’s amanuensis that she serves, praying the loan of a “‘Family Robinson,’ by Mayne Reid,” to solace the boy in some indisposition. “I doubt the connection between Mayne Reid and Robinson,” says Mrs. Browning, “but speak as I am bidden.” And another note was to tell “Dearest Edith” that Pen’s papa wanted him for his music, and that there were lessons, beside; and “thank dear Edith for her goodness,” and “another day, with less obstacles.” The intercourse between the Brownings and the Storys was always so full of mutual comprehension and perfect sympathy and delicate, lovely recognition on both sides, that no life of either the sculptor or the wedded poets could be presented that did not include these constant amenities of familiar, affectionate intercourse.

      Many English friends of the Brownings came and went that winter, and among others was Lady Annabella Nöel, a granddaughter of Lord Byron, and a great admirer of Mr. Browning. A new acquaintance of the Brownings was Lady Marion Alford, a daughter of the Earl of Northampton, “very eager about literature, and art, and Robert,” laughed Mrs. Browning, and Lady Marion and “Hatty” (Miss Hosmer) were, it seems, mutually captivated.

      The Palazzo Barberini, via Quattro Fontane, Rome.

       The home of William Wetmore Story and his family for nearly forty years.

      Some of the English artists came to Rome, Burne-Jones and Val Prinsep among them, and they with Browning wandered about the classic byways of the city and drove to see the Coliseum by moonlight.

      In June the Brownings left Rome, by way of Orvieto and Chiusi. They crossed that dead, mystic Campagna that flows, like a sea, all around Rome—a sea of silence and mystery; with its splendid ruins of the old aqueducts and tombs, its vast stretches of space that were all aglow, in those June days, with scarlet poppies. They stopped one night at Viterbo, the little city made famous since those days by Richard Bagot’s tragic novel, “Temptation,” and where the convent is interesting from its associations with Vittoria Colonna, who in 1541 made here a retreat for meditation and prayer.

      In Orvieto they rested for a day and night, and Mrs. Browning was able to go with her husband into the marvelous cathedral, with its “jeweled and golden façade” and its aerial Gothic construction. Mr. Browning, with his little son, drove over to the wild, curious town of Bagnorgio, which, though near Orvieto, is very little known. But this was the birthplace of Giovanni da Fidenza, the “Seraphic Doctor,” who was canonized as St. Buonaventura, from the exclamation of San Francesco, who, on awakening from a dream communion with Giovanni da Fidenza, exclaimed, “O buona ventura!” Dante introduces this saint into the Divina Commedia, as chanting the praises of San Domenico in Paradise:

      “Io san vita di Bonaventura Du Bagnorgio, che ne grandi uffici, Sempre posposi la sinistra cura.”

      Bagnorgio is, indeed, the heart of poetic legend and sacred story, but it is so inaccessible, perched on its high hill, with deep chasms, evidently the work of earthquakes, separating it from the route of travel, that from a distance it seems impossible that any conveyance save an airship could ever reach the town.

      By either route, through the Umbrian region, by way of Assisi and Perugia, or by way of Orvieto and Siena, the journey between Rome and Florence is as beautiful as a dream. The Brownings paused for one night’s rest at Lake Thrasymene, the scenes of the battlefield of Hannibal and Flaminius, with the town on a height overlooking the lake. “Beautiful scenery, interesting pictures and tombs,” said Mrs. Browning of this journey, “but a fatiguing experience.” She confessed to not feeling as strong as she had the previous summer, but still they were planning their villeggiatura in Siena, taking the same villa they had occupied the previous season, where Penini should keep tryst with the old Abbé, who was to come with the Storys and with his Latin.

      They found Landor well and fairly amenable to the new conditions of his life. Domiciled with Isa Blagden was Miss Frances Power Cobbe, who was drawn to Florence that spring largely to meet Theodore Parker, with whom she had long corresponded. Mr. and Mrs. Lewes (George Eliot) were in Florence that spring of 1860, the great novelist making her studies for “Romola.” They were the guests of the Thomas Adolphus Trollopes.

      Landor, too, came frequently to take tea with Miss Blagden and Miss Cobbe on their terrace, and discuss art with Browning. Dall’ Ongaro and Thomas Adolphus Trollope were frequently among the little coterie. His visits to Casa Guidi and his talks with Mrs. Browning were among the most treasured experiences of Mr. Trollope. “I was conscious, even then,” he afterward wrote in his reminiscences of this lovely Florentine life, “of coming away from Casa Guidi a better man, with higher views and aims. The effect was not produced by any talk of the nature of preaching, but simply by the perception and appreciation of what Elizabeth Browning was: of the purity of the spiritual atmosphere in which she habitually dwelt.”

      Miss Hosmer came, too, that spring, as the guest of Miss Blagden, and she often walked down the hill to breakfast with her friends in Casa Guidi. Browning, who was fond of an early walk, sometimes went out to meet her, and on one occasion they had an escapade which “Hatty” related afterward with great glee. It was on one of these morning encounters that Miss Hosmer confessed to the poet that the one longing of her soul was to ride behind Caretta, the donkey, and Browning replied that nothing could be easier, as Girolamo, Caretta’s owner, was the purveyor of vegetables to Casa Guidi, and that they would appropriate his cart for a turn up Poggia Imperiale. “Di gustibus non,” began Browning. “Better let go Latin and hold on to the cart,” sagely advised the young sculptor. In the midst of their disasters from the surprising actions of Caretta, they met her owner. “Dio mio” exclaimed Girolamo, “it is Signor Browning. San Antonio!” Girolamo launched forth into an enumeration of all the diabolical powers possessed by Caretta, and called on all the saints to witness that she was a disgrace to nature. Meantime the poet,