is in good spirits about her, and Pen is well, and as I write,” he continues, “I hear him laughing and playing with my boys and Edith on the terrace below.”
It was late in October before they returned to Florence, and then only for a sojourn of six weeks before going to Rome for the winter. The Siena summer had been a period of unalloyed delight to Mrs. Browning, whose health was much improved, and not the least of the happiness of both had been due to the congenial companionship of the Storys, and to their delicate courtesies, which Mrs. Browning wrote to Mrs. Jameson that she could never forget. Browning wrote to Mrs. Story saying to her that she surely did not need to be told how entirely they owed “the delightful summer” to her own and Mr. Story’s kindness. “Ba is hardly so well,” he adds, “as when she was let thrive in that dear old villa and the pleasant country it hardly shut out.”
Mrs. Browning’s small book, the “Poems before Congress,” only eight in all, was published in this early spring of 1860, and met with no cheering reception. She felt this keenly, but said, “If I were ambitious of any thing it would be to be wronged where, for instance, Cavour is wronged.” With Mrs. Browning a political question was equally a moral question. Her devotion to Italy, and faith in the regeneration of the country, were vital matters to her. She was deeply touched by the American attitude toward her poem, “A Curse for a Nation,” for the Americans, she noted, rendered thanks to the reprover of ill deeds, “understanding the pure love of the motive.” These very “Poems before Congress” brought to her praises, and the offer of high prices as well, and of this nation she said it was generous.
A letter from Robert Browning written to Kate Field, who was then in Florence with Miss Blagden, and which has never before been published, is as follows:
Rome, Via del Tritone, 28,
March 29th, 1860.
Dear Miss Field, —Do you really care to have the little photograph? Here it is with all my heart. I wonder I dare be so frank this morning, however, for a note just rec’d from Isa mentions an instance of your acuteness, that strikes me with a certain awe. “Kate,” she says, “persists that the ‘Curse for a Nation’ is for America, and not England.” You persist, do you? No doubt against the combined intelligence of our friends who show such hunger and thirst for a new poem of Ba’s—and, when they get it, digest the same as you see. “Write a nation’s curse for me,” quoth the antislavery society five years ago, “and send it over the Western sea.” “Not so,” replied poor little Ba, “for my heart is sore for my own lands’ sins, which are thus and thus,—what curse assign to another land when heavy for the sins of mine?” “Write it for that very reason,” rejoined Ba’s cheerer, “because thou hast strength to see and hate a foul thing done within thy gate,” and so, after a little more dallying, she wrote and sent over the Western seas what all may read, but it appears only Kate Field, out of all Florence, can understand. It seems incredible. How did you find out, beside, the meaning of all these puzzling passages which I quote in the exact words of the poem? In short, you are not only the delightful Kate Field which I always knew you to be, but the sole understander of Ba in all Florence. I can’t get over it....
Browning, the husband, means to try increasingly and somewhat intelligibly to explain to all his intimates at Florence, with the sole exception of Kate Field; to whose comprehension he will rather endeavor to rise, than to stoop, henceforth. And so, with true love from Ba to Kate Field, and our united explanation to all other friends, that the subject matter of the present letter is by no means the annexation of Savoy and Nice, she will believe me,
Hers very faithfully
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,
