“Eviva! Eviva!” Browning, however, distrusted Pio Nono, thinking him weak, and events proved that his opinion was justified.
The winter of 1847-1848 was passed by the Brownings in Casa Guidi. “I wish you could see what rooms we have,” wrote Mrs. Browning to her husband’s sister, Sarianna: “what ceilings, what height and breadth, what a double terrace for orange trees; how cool, how likely to be warm, how perfect every way!”
The poets were constantly engaged in their work. Mrs. Browning began her long poem, “Casa Guidi Windows,” and many of Browning’s lyrics that appeared in the collection called “Men and Women” were written at this period. They passed much time in the galleries and churches. They drove in the beautiful environs of Florence. The pictures, history, and legends entered into their lives to serve in later days as poetic material. In the brief twilight of winter days they often strolled into the old gray church of San Felice, on which their windows looked out, where Browning would gratify his passion for music by evolving from the throbbing keys of the organ some faint Toccata of Galuppi’s, while his wife smiled and listened, and the tide of Florentine life flowed by in the streets outside. Casa Guidi is almost opposite the Palazzo Pitti, so that Mrs. Browning had easy access to her beloved Madonnas in the Pitti gallery, which to her husband, also, was so unfailing a resource.
One of Mrs. Browning’s American admirers, and one of the reviewers of her poems, George Stillman Hillard, visited Florence that winter, and passed more than one evening in Casa Guidi with the Brownings. Of Mrs. Browning he wrote:
“Mrs. Browning is in many respects the correlative of her husband.... I have never seen a human frame which seemed so nearly a transparent veil for a celestial and immortal spirit. She is a soul of fire enclosed in a shell of pearl.... Nor is she more remarkable for genius and learning than for sweetness of temper, tenderness of heart, depth of feeling, and purity of spirit.... A union so complete as theirs—in which the mind has nothing to crave, nor the heart to sigh for—is cordial to behold and cheering to remember.”
Of all Italy Mr. Hillard perhaps best loved Florence, finding there an indescribable charm, “a blending of present beauty and traditional interest; but then Florence is alive,” he added, “and not enslaved.” It was probably Hillard who suggested to William Wetmore Story that he should meet Browning. At all events this meeting took place, initiating the friendship that endured “forty years, without a break,” and that was one of the choicest social companionships.
The spring of 1849 brought new joy to Casa Guidi, for on March 9 was born their son, who was christened Robert Wiedemann Barrett, the middle name (which in his manhood he dropped) being the maiden name of the poet’s mother. The passion of both husband and wife for poetry was now quite equaled by that for parental duties, which they “caught up,” said Mrs. Browning, “with a kind of rapture.” Mr. Browning would walk the terraces where orange trees and oleanders blossomed, with the infant in his arms, and in the summer, when they visited Spezzia, and the haunt of Shelley at Lurici, they wandered five miles into the mountains, the baby with them, on horseback and donkey-back. The child grew rounder and rosier; and Mrs. Browning was able to climb hills and help her husband to lose himself in the forests.
The death of Browning’s mother immediately after the birth of his son was a great sadness to the poet, and one fully shared by his wife, who wrote to Miss Browning: “I grieve with you, as well as for you; for though I never saw her face, I loved that pure and tender spirit.... Robert and I dwell on the hope that you and your father will come to us at once.... If Florence is too far off, is there any other place where we could meet and arrange for the future?”
The Brownings went for the summer to Bagni di Lucca, after the little détour on the Mediterranean coast, where they lingered in the white marble mountains of Carrara. In Lucca they passed long summer hours in the beautiful Duomo, which had been consecrated by Pope Alexander II in the eleventh century. The beauty and the solitude charmed the poets; the little Penini was the “most popular of babies,” and when Wilson carried the child out in the sunshine the Italians would crowd around him and exclaim, “Che bel bambino!” They had given him the pet Italian name “Penini,” which always persisted. The Austrians had then taken possession of Florence, and Leopoldo, “L’intrepido,” as the Italians asserted, remained quietly in the Palazzo Pitti. Browning, writing to Mrs. Jameson, says there is little for his wife to tell, “for she is not likely to encroach upon my story which I could tell of her entirely angel nature, as divine a heart as God ever made.” The poet with his wife and Wilson and the baby made almost daily excursions into the forests and mountains, up precipitous fays and over headlong ravines; dining “with the goats,” while the baby “lay on a shawl, rolling and laughing.” The contrast of this mountain-climbing Mrs. Browning, with her husband and child, and the Miss Barrett of three or four years before, lying on a sofa in a darkened room, is rather impressive. The picture of one day is suggested by Mrs. Browning’s description in a letter to Miss Mitford, where she writes:
“... I have performed a great exploit, ridden on a donkey five miles deep into the mountains, to an almost inaccessible volcanic ground not far from the stars. Robert on horseback, Wilson and the nurse with baby, on other donkeys; guides, of course. We set off at eight in the morning and returned at six p. m., after dining on the mountain pinnacle.... The scenery, sublime and wonderful,... innumerable mountains bound faintly with the gray sea, and not a human habitation.”
Monument To Dante, in the Piazza di Santa Croce.
Stefano Ricci.
“....The architect and hewer Did pile the empty marbles as thy tomb.”
Casa Guidi Windows.
It was during this villeggiatura that Mrs. Browning, one morning after their breakfast, with shy sweetness, tucked the pages of the “Sonnets” into her husband’s pocket and swiftly vanished. Robert Barrett Browning, who, as already noted, gave the history of this poetic interlude viva voce, has also recorded it in writing, as follows:
What earthly vocabulary can offer fit words in which to speak of celestial beauty? How these exquisite “Sonnets” tell the story of that romance of Genius and Love,—from the woman’s first thrill of interest in the poetry of an unknown poet, to the hour when he, “the princely giver,” brought to her “the gold and purple” of his heart
“For such as I to take or leave withal,”
and she questions
“Can it be right to give what I can give?”
with the fear that her delicacy of health should make such gifts
“Be counted with the ungenerous.”
But she thinks of how he “was in the world a year ago,” and thus she drinks
“Of life’s great cup of wonder! Wonderful,
Never to feel thee thrill the day or night
With personal act or speech,—
······
... Atheists are as dull,
Who cannot guess God’s presence out of sight.”
And the questioning,—
“How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.
