of his escort, till even Charlotte Cushman, sitting at the side of Mrs. Browning, watching the spectacle, declared this to be “fine.” The “young Florentine” was in a state of ecstasy, which he expressed in mingled French and Italian.
They journeyed to Florence by the Mont Cenis, stopping a week in Genoa, where Mrs. Browning lay ill on her sofa; but the warmth of the Italian sunshine soon restored her, and for two days before they left, she was able to walk all about the beautiful old city. They visited together the Andrea Doria palace, and enjoyed sauntering in a sunshine that was like that of June days dropped into the heart of November. They were delighted to hear the sound of their “dear Italian” again, and proceeded by diligence to Florence, where they took possession of their Casa Guidi home, which looked, wrote Mrs. Browning to her sister-in-law, as if they had only left it yesterday. The little Penini was “in a state of complete agitation” on entering Florence, through having heard so much talk of it, and expressed his emotion by repeated caresses and embraces. Mrs. Browning shared the same amazement at the contrast of climate between Turin and Genoa that twentieth-century travelers experience; Turin having been so cold that they were even obliged to have a fire all night, while at Genoa they were “gasping for breath, with all the windows and doors open, blue skies burning overhead, and no air stirring.” But this very heat was life-giving to Mrs. Browning as they lingered on the terraces, gazing on the beautiful bay encircled by its sweep of old marble palaces. She even climbed half-way up the lighthouse for the view, resting there while Browning climbed to the top, for that incomparable outlook which every visitor endeavors to enjoy. In Florence there were the “divine sunsets” over the Arno, and Penini’s Italian nurse rushing in to greet the child, exclaiming, “Dio mio, come e bellino!” They “caught up their ancient traditions” just where they left them, Mrs. Browning observes, though Mr. Browning, “demoralized by the boulevards,” missed the stir and intensity of Parisian life. They found Powers, the sculptor, changing his location, and Mr. Lytton (the future Earl), who was an attaché at the English Embassy, became a frequent and a welcome visitor. In a letter to Mr. Kenyon Mrs. Browning mentions that Mr. Lytton is interested in manifestations of spiritualism, and had informed her that, to his father’s great satisfaction (his father being Sir E. Bulwer Lytton), these manifestations had occurred at Knebworth, the Lytton home in England. Tennyson’s brother, who had married an Italian lady, was in Florence, and the American Minister, Mr. Marsh. With young Lytton at this time, Poetry was an article of faith, and nothing would have seemed to him more improbable, even had any of his clairvoyants foretold it, than his future splendid career as Viceroy of India.
The Ponte Vecchio and the Arno, Florence.
Mrs. Browning was reading Prudhon that winter, and also Swedenborg, Lamartine, and other of the French writers. Browning was writing from time to time many of the lyrics that appear in the Collection entitled “Men and Women,” while on Mrs. Browning had already dawned the plan of “Aurora Leigh.” They read the novel of Dumas, Diane de Lys, Browning’s verdict on it being that it was clever, but outrageous as to the morals; and Mrs. Browning rejoiced greatly in Mrs. Harriet Beecher Stowe’s “Uncle Tom’s Cabin,” saying of Mrs. Stowe, “No woman ever had such a success, such a fame.” All in all, this winter of 1852-1853 was a very happy one to the poets, what with their work, their friends, playing with the little Wiedemann (Penini), the names seeming interchangeably used, and their reading, which included everything from poetry and romance to German mysticism, social economics, and French criticism. Mrs. Browning found one of the best apologies for Louis Napoleon in Lamartine’s work on the Revolution of ’48; and she read, with equal interest, that of Louis Blanc on the same period. In April “Colombe’s Birthday” was produced at the Haymarket Theater in London, the role of the heroine being taken by Miss Helen Faucit, afterward Lady Martin. The author had no financial interest in this production, which ran for two weeks, and was spoken of by London critics as holding the house in fascinated attention, with other appreciative phrases.
Mrs. Browning watches the drama of Italian politics, and while she regarded Mazzini as noble, she also felt him to be unwise, a verdict that time has since justified. “We see a great deal of Frederick Tennyson,” she writes; “Robert is very fond of him, and so am I. He too writes poems, and prints them, though not for the public.” Their mutual love of music was a strong bond between Browning and Mr. Tennyson, who had a villa on the Fiesolean slope, with a large hall in which he was reported to “sit in the midst of his forty fiddlers.”
For the coming summer they had planned a retreat into Giotto’s country, the Casentino, but they finally decided on Bagni di Lucca again, where they remained from July till October, Mr. Browning writing “In a Balcony” during this villeggiatura. Before leaving Florence they enjoyed an idyllic day at Pratolina with Mrs. Kinney, the wife of the American Minister to the Court of Turin, and the mother of Edmund Clarence Stedman. The royal residences of the old Dukes of Tuscany were numerous, but among them all, that at Pratolina, so associated with Francesco Primo and Bianca Capella, is perhaps the most interesting, and here Mrs. Kinney drove her guests, where they picnicked on a hillside which their hostess called the Mount of Vision because Mrs. Browning stood on it; Mr. Browning spoke of the genius of his wife, “losing himself in her glory,” said Mrs. Kinney afterward, while Mrs. Browning lay on the grass and slept. The American Minister and Mrs. Kinney were favorite guests in Casa Guidi, where they passed with the Brownings the last evening before the poets set out for their summer retreat. Mrs. Browning delighted in Mr. Kinney’s views of Italy, and his belief in its progress and its comprehension of liberty. The youthful Florentine, Penini, was delighted at the thought of the change, and his devotion to his mother was instanced one night when Browning playfully refused to give his wife a letter, and Pen, taking the byplay seriously, fairly smothered her in his clinging embrace, exclaiming, “Never mind, mine darling Ba!” He had caught up his mother’s pet name, “Ba,” and often used it. It was this name to which she refers in the poem beginning,
“I have a name, a little name,
Uncadenced for the ear.”
Beside the Pratolina excursion, Mr. Lytton gave a little reception for them before the Florentine circle dissolved for the summer, asking a few friends to meet the Brownings at his villa on Bellosguardo, where they all sat out on the terrace, and Mrs. Browning made the tea, and they feasted on nectar and ambrosia in the guise of cream and strawberries.
“Such a view!” said Mrs. Browning of that evening. “Florence dissolving in the purple of the hills, and the stars looking on.” Mrs. Browning’s love for Florence grew stronger with every year. That it was her son’s native city was to her a deeply significant fact, for playfully as they called him the “young Florentine,” there was behind the light jest a profound recognition of the child’s claim to his native country. Still, with all this response to the enchantment of Florence, they were planning to live in Paris, after another winter (which they wished to pass in Rome), as the elder Browning and his daughter Sarianna were now to live in the French capital, and Robert Browning was enamored of the brilliant, abounding life, and the art, and splendor of privilege, and opportunity in Paris. “I think it too probable that I may not be able to bear two successive winters in the North,” said Mrs. Browning, “but in that case it will be easy to take a flight for a few winter months into Italy, and we shall regard Paris, where Robert’s father and sister are waiting for us, as our fixed place of residence.” This plan, however, was never carried out, as Italy came to lay over them a still deeper spell, which it was impossible to break. Mr. Lytton, with whom Mrs. Browning talked of all these plans and dreams that evening on his terrace, had just privately printed his drama, “Clytemnestra,” which Mrs. Browning found “full of promise,” although “too ambitious” because after Æschylus. But this young poet, afterward to be so widely known in the realm of poetry as “Owen Meredith,” and as Lord Lytton in the realm of diplomacy and statesmanship, impressed her at the time as possessing an incontestable “faculty” in poetry, that made her expect a great deal from him in the future.
