The Brownings, Their Life and Art

ROBERT BROWNING From a drawing made by Field Talfourd, in Rome, 1855
Copyright, 1911, By Little, Brown, and Company. All rights reserved Published, October, 1911
Printers S. J. Parkhill & Co., Boston, U.S.A.
INSCRIBED TO ROBERT BARRETT BROWNING (CAVALIERE DELLA CORONA D’ITALIA) PAINTER, SCULPTOR, CONNOISSEUR IN ART WITH ENCHANTING REMEMBRANCES OF HOURS IN “LA TORRE ALL’ ANTELLA” AND THE FAITHFUL REGARDS OF LILIAN WHITING Florence, Italy, June, 1911

The present volume was initiated in Florence, and, from its first inception, invested with the cordial assent and the sympathetic encouragement of Robert Barrett Browning. One never-to-be-forgotten day, all ethereal light and loveliness, has left its picture in memory, when, in company with Mr. Browning and his life-long friend, the Marchesa Peruzzi di’ Medici ( náta Story), the writer of this biography strolled with them under the host’s orange trees and among the riotous roses of his Florentine villa, “La Torre All’ Antella,” listening to their sparkling conversation, replete with fascinating reminiscences. To Mr. Browning the tribute of thanks, whose full scope is known to the Recording Angel alone, is here offered; and there is the blending of both privilege and duty in grateful acknowledgements to Messrs. Smith, Elder, & Company for their courtesy in permitting the somewhat liberal drawing on their published Letters of both the Brownings, on which reliance had to be based in any effort to
“Call up the buried Past again,”
and construct the story, from season to season, so far as might be, of that wonderful interlude of the wedded life of the poets.
Yet any formality of thanks to this house is almost lost sight of in the rush of memories of that long and mutually-trusting friendship between the late George Murray Smith, the former head of this firm, and Robert Browning, a friendship which was one of the choicest treasures in both their lives.
To The Macmillan Company, the publishers for both the first and the present Lord Tennyson; To Houghton Mifflin Company; to Messrs. Dodd, Mead, & Company; to The Cornhill Magazine (to which the writer is indebted for some data regarding Browning and Professor Masson); to each and all, acknowledgments are offered for their courtesy which has invested with added charm a work than which none was ever more completely a labor of love.