“... 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.
I love thee to the depth and breadth and height
My soul can reach,...
... I love thee with the breath,
Smiles, tears, of all my life!—and, if God choose,
I shall but love thee better after death.”
Returning to Florence in October, Browning soon began the preparation for his poem, “Christmas Eve and Easter Day,” and Mrs. Browning arranged for a new one-volume edition of her poems, to include “The Seraphim,” and the poems that had appeared in the same volume, and also the poems appearing in 1844, many of them revised.
Marchesa d’Ossoli, whom the Brownings had heretofore known as Margaret Fuller, surprised them by appearing in Florence with her husband and child, the private marriage having taken place some two years before. The Greenoughs, the Storys, and Mr. and Mrs. Christopher Pearse Cranch were all in Florence, and were all habitués of Casa Guidi. Mr. Cranch, poet, painter, and musician, was the kindly friend of Longfellow and of Lowell in their Cambridge homes, and the Greenoughs and Storys were also of the Cambridge circle. To friends at home the Marchesa wrote of going to the opera with the Greenoughs, and that she saw the Brownings often, “and I love and admire them more and more,” she continued. “Mr. Browning enriches every hour passed with him, and he is a most true, cordial, and noble man.”
The Florentine days have left their picturings: Mr. Story opens a studio, and while he is modeling, Mrs. Story reads to him from Monckton Milnes’s Life of Keats, which Mr. Browning loaned them. Mrs. Story drives to Casa Guidi to carry Mrs. Browning her copy of “Jane Eyre,” and Mrs. Greenough takes both Mrs. Story and Mrs. Browning to drive in the Cascine. Two American painters, Frank Boott and Frank Heath, are in Florence, and are more or less caught up in the Casa Guidi life; and the coterie all go to Mrs. Trollope’s to see fancy costumes arranged for a ball to be given at Sir George Hamilton’s. In one of the three villas on Bellosguardo Miss Isa Blagden was now domiciled. For more than a quarter of a century Miss Blagden was a central figure in English society in Florence. She became Mrs. Browning’s nearest and most intimate friend, and she was the ardently prized friend of the Trollopes also, and of Miss Frances Power Cobbe, who shared her villa during one spring when Florence was in her most radiant beauty. “Isa was a very bright, warm-hearted, clever little woman,” said Thomas Adolphus Trollope of her; “who knew everybody, and was, I think, more universally beloved among us than any other individual.” Miss Blagden had written one or two novels, of little claim, however, and after her death a small volume of her poems was published, but all these had no more than the mere succès d’estime, as apparently the pen was with her, as with Margaret Fuller, a non-conductor; but as a choice spirit, of the most beautiful and engaging qualities of companionship, “Isa,” as she was always caressingly called, is still held in memory. Madame Pasquale Villari, the wife of the great historian and the biographer of Machiavelli and of Savonarola, well remembers Miss Blagden, who died, indeed, in her arms in the summer of 1872.
The intimate friendship between Mrs. Browning and Miss Blagden was initiated in the early months of the residence of the Brownings in Florence; but it was in this winter of 1849-1850 that they began to see each other so constantly. The poems of Matthew Arnold were published that winter, among which Mrs. Browning especially liked “The Deserted Merman” and “The Sick King of Bokkara,” and about this time the authorship of “Jane Eyre” was revealed, and Charlotte Brontë discovered under the nom-de-plume of Currer Bell.
During the time that Mrs. Browning had passed at Torquay, before her marriage, she had met Theodosia Garrow, whose family were on intimate terms with Mr. Kenyon. Miss Barrett and Miss Garrow became friends, and when they met again it was in Florence, Miss Garrow having become the wife of Thomas Adolphus Trollope. Hiram Powers in these days was domiciled in the Via dei Serragli, in close proximity to Casa Guidi, and he frequently dropped in to have his morning coffee with the Brownings.
The Palazzo Vecchio, Florence.
Landor had been for some years in his villa on the Fiesolean slope, not far from Maiano, where Leigh Hunt had wandered, dreaming of Boccaccio. Two scenes of the “Decameron” were laid in this region, and the deep ravine at the foot of one of the neighboring hills was the original of the “Valley of the Ladies.” Not far away had been the house of Machiavelli; and nestling among the blue hills