The Brownings found Paris almost as ineffable in beauty in the early spring as was their Florence. “It’s rather dangerous to let the charm of Paris work,” laughed Mrs. Browning; “the honey will be clogging our feet soon, and we shall find it difficult to go away.”
They had a delightful winter socially, as well; they went to Ary Scheffer’s and heard Madame Viardot, then in the height of her artistic fame; George Sand sent them tickets for the première of “Les Vacances de Pandolphe”; they went to the Vaudeville to see the “Dame aux Camellias,” of which Mrs. Browning said that she did not agree with the common cry about its immorality. To her it was both moral and human, “but I never will go to see it again,” she says, “for it almost broke my heart. The exquisite acting, the too literal truth to nature....” They met Paul de Musset, but missed his brother Alfred that winter, whose poems they both cared for.
The elder Browning retained through his life that singular talent for caricature drawing that had amused and fascinated his son in the poet’s childhood; and during his visit to the Brownings in Paris he had produced many of these drawings which became the delight of his grandson as well. The Paris streets furnished him with some inimitable suggestions, and Robert Barrett Browning, to this day, preserves many of these keen and humorous and extremely clever drawings of his grandfather. Thierry, the historian, who was suffering from blindness, sent to the Brownings a request that they would call on him, with which they immediately complied, and they were much interested in his views on France. The one disappointment of that season was in not meeting Victor Hugo, whose fiery hostility to the new régime caused it to be more expedient for him to reside quite beyond possible sight of the gilded dome of the Invalides.
In June the Brownings returned to London, where they domiciled themselves in Welbeck Street (No. 58), Mrs. Browning’s sisters both being near, Mrs. Surtees Cook having established herself only twenty doors away, and Miss Arabel Barrett being in close proximity in Wimpole Street. They were invited to Kenyon’s house at Wimbledon, where Landor was a guest, whom Mrs. Browning found “looking as young as ever, and full of passionate energy,” and who talked with characteristic exaggeration of Louis Napoleon and of the President of the French nation. Landor “detested” the one and “loathed” the other; and as he did not accept Talleyrand’s ideal of the use of language, he by no means concealed these sentiments. Mazzini immediately sought the Brownings, his “pale, spiritual face” shining, and his “intense eyes full of melancholy illusions.” He brought Mrs. Carlyle with him, Mrs. Browning finding her “full of thought, and feeling, and character.” Miss Mulock, who had then written “The Ogilvies,” and had also read her title clear to some poetic recognition, was in evidence that season, as were Mr. and Mrs. Monckton Milnes, and Fanny Kemble was also a brilliant figure in the social life. Nor was the London of that day apparently without a taste for the sorceress and the soothsayer, for no less a personage than Lord Stanhope was, it seems, showing to the elect the “spirits of the sun” in a crystal ball, which Lady Blessington had bought from an Egyptian magician and had sold again. Lady Blessington declared she had no understanding of the use of it, but it was on record that the initiated could therein behold Oremus, Spirit of the Sun. Both the crystal ball and the seers were immensely sought, notwithstanding the indignation expressed by Mr. Chorley, who regarded the combination of social festivities and crystal gazing as eminently scandalous. Which element he considered the more dangerous is not on the palimpsest that records the story of these days. Lord Stanhope invited the Brownings to these occult occasions of intermingled attractions, and Mrs. Browning writes: “For my part, I endured both luncheon and spiritual phenomena with great equanimity.” An optician of London took advantage of the popular demand and offered a fine assortment of crystal ball spheres, at prices which quite restricted their sale to the possessors of comfortable rent-rolls, and Lord Stanhope asserted that a great number of persons resorted to these balls to divine the future, without the courage to confess it. One wonders as to whom “the American Corinna, in yellow silk,” in London, that season, could have been?
The Brownings were invited to a country house in Farnham, to meet Charles Kingsley, who impressed them with his genial and tender kindness, and while they thought some of his social views wild and theoretical, they loved his earnestness and originality, and believed he could not be “otherwise than good and noble.” It was during this summer (according to William Michael Rossetti) that Browning and Dante Gabriel Rossetti first met, Rossetti coming to call on them in company with William Allingham. On August 30, from Chapel House, Twickenham, Tennyson wrote to Mrs. Browning of the birth of his son, Hallam, to which she replied:
“Thank you and congratulate you from my heart. May God bless you all three.... Will you say to dear Mrs. Tennyson how deeply I sympathize in her happiness....”
To this letter Browning added a postscript saying:
“How happy I am in your happiness, and in the assurance that it is greater than even you can quite know yet. God bless, dear Tennyson, you and all yours.”
Tennyson wrote again to Mrs. Browning, saying, “... How very grateful your little note and Browning’s epilogue made me.” And he signs himself “Ever yours and your husband’s.” There was a brilliant christening luncheon at the home of Monckton Milnes, “and his baby,” notes Mrs. Browning, “was made to sweep, in India muslin and Brussels lace, among a very large circle of admiring guests.” The Brownings were especially invited to bring their little Penini with them, “and he behaved like an angel, everybody said,” continued his mother, “and looked very pretty, I said myself; only he disgraced us all at last by refusing to kiss the baby on the ground of its being ‘troppo grande.’”
To Mrs. Tennyson’s note of invitation to the Brownings to attend the christening of their child, Mrs. Browning replied that they had planned to leave England before that date; “but you offer us an irresistible motive for staying, in spite of fogs and cold,” she continued, “and we would not miss the christening for the world.” At the last, however, Mrs. Browning was unable to go, so that the poet went alone. After the little ceremony Browning took the boy in his arms and tossed him, while Tennyson, looking on, exclaimed: “Ah, that is as good as a glass of champagne for him.”
Florence Nightingale was a not infrequent visitor of the Brownings that summer, and she always followed her calls by a gift of masses of flowers. While “Morte d’Arthur” had been written more than ten years previously, Tennyson was now evolving the entire plan of the “Idylls of the King.” Coventry Patmore, who brought the manuscript copy of his own poems, published later, for Mr. Browning to read, mentioned to the poets that Tennyson was writing a collection of poems on Arthur, which were to be united by their subject, after the manner of “In Memoriam,” which project interested Mrs. Browning greatly. “The work will be full of beauty, I don’t doubt,” she said.
Ruskin invited the Brownings to Denmark Hill to see his Turners, and they found the pictures “divine.” They liked Ruskin very much, finding him “gentle, yet earnest.”
During this London sojourn Mr. Browning’s old friend, William Johnson Fox, who had first encouraged the young poet by praising “not a little, which praise comforted me not a little,” the verses of his “Incondita”; who had written a favorable review of “Pauline”; who had found a publisher for “Paracelsus,” and had introduced the poet to Macready, again appears, and writes to his daughter that he has had “a charming hour” with the Brownings, and that he is more fascinated than ever with Mrs. Browning. “She talked lots of George Sand, and so beautifully, and she silver-electroplated Louis Napoleon!” Mr. Fox adds:[6] “They came in to their lodgings late at night, and R. B. says that in the morning twilight he saw three pictures on the bedroom wall, and speculated as to whom they might be. Light gradually showed