Letters of E.B.B., ii. 388, note. Mr Kenyon suggests A Death in the Desert as at least possibly meant. The Ring and the Book "certainly had not yet been begun."
Halting at Siena, whence Browning wrote an account of the journey to Story: Henry James's W.W. Story, ii. pp. 50-52.
H. James's W.W. Story, vol. ii. pp. 111, 113.
Henry James tells of a children's party at the Palazzo Barberini, Rome, of several years earlier, when Hans Andersen read "The Ugly Duckling," and Browning, "The Pied Piper"; which led to "a grand march through the spacious Barberini apartment, with Story doing his best on a flute in default of bagpipes." W.W. Story, vol. i.p. 286.
The circumstances of Mrs Browning's death are described as above, but with somewhat fuller detail, in a letter of Browning to Miss Haworth, July 20, 1861, first printed by Mrs Orr. Many details of interest will be found in a long letter of Story, Henry James's W.W. Story, vol. ii. pp. 61-68: "She talked with him and jested and gave expression to her love in the tenderest words; then, feeling sleepy, and he supporting her in his arms, she fell into a doze. In a few minutes, suddenly, her head dropped forward. He thought she had fainted, but she had gone for ever." A painful account of the funeral service, "blundered through by a fat English parson," is given by Story.