The Complete Works of Robert Browning: Poems, Plays, Letters & Biographies in One Edition. Robert Browning
verses. To Kate Field, who had become a great favorite with the Brownings, Mr. Browning wrote with some bit of verse of Landor’s:
Siena, Villa Alberti, July 18.
Dear Miss Field:—I have only a minute to say that Mr. Landor wrote these really pretty lines in your honor the other day,—you remember on what circumstances they turn. I know somebody who is ready to versify to double the extent at the same cost to you, and do his best, too, and you also know.
Yours Affectionately Ever,
R. B.
The servant waits for this and stops the expansion of soul!
P. S. ... What do you mean by pretending that we are not the obliged, the grateful people? Your stay had made us so happy, come and make us happy again, says (or would say were she not asleep) my wife, and yours also,—
R. B.
Of Landor, while they were in Siena, Mrs. Browning wrote to a friend that Robert always said he owed more to him than any other contemporary, and that Landor’s genius insured him the gratitude of all artists. In these idyllic days Mr. Story’s young daughter, Edith, (now the Marchesa Peruzzi di Medici, of Florence,) had a birthday, which the poetic group all united to celebrate. In honor of the occasion Landor not only wrote a Latin poem for the charming girl, but he appeared in a wonderful flowered waistcoat, one that dated back to the days of Lady Blessington, to the amusement of all the group. From Isa Blagden, who remained in her villa on Bellosguardo, came almost daily letters to Mrs. Browning, who constantly gained strength in the life-giving air of Siena, where they looked afar over a panorama of purple hills, with scarlet sunsets flaming in the west, the wind blowing nearly every day, as now. The Cave of the Winds, as celebrated by Virgil, might well have been located in Siena.
Mrs. Browning and Mrs. Story would go back and forth to visit each other, mounted on donkeys, their husbands walking beside, as they had done in the Arcadian days at Bagni di Lucca. Odo Russell passed two days with the Brownings on his way from Rome to London, to their great enjoyment. Landor’s health and peace of mind became so far restored that he was able to “write awful Latin alcaics.” Penini, happy in his great friends, the Story children, Julian, Waldo, and Edith, and hardly less so with the contadini, whom he helped to herd the sheep and drive in the grape-carts, galloped through lanes on his own pony, insisted on reading to his contadini from the poems of Dall’ Ongaro, and grew apace in happiness and stature. For two hours every day his father taught him music, and the lad already played Beethoven sonatas, and music of difficult execution from German composers.
The Brownings and the Storys passed many evenings together, “sitting on the lawn under the ilexes and the cypresses, with tea and talk, until the moon had made the circuit of the quarter of the sky.” Mrs. Browning’s health grew better, and Story writes to Charles Eliot Norton that “Browning 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