Believe me, dear Professor Corson,
Yours Truly Ever,—
Robert Browning.
On Browning’s return to England in 1861, after his wife’s death, he had entered into a most brilliant and congenial social life. Thackeray died soon after his return; but there were Carlyle, Ruskin, Jowett, Millais, Rossetti, Proctor, Matthew Arnold, Woolner, Leighton, Tennyson (whose companionship, as we have seen, was one of his keenest enjoyments), and his publisher, George Murray Smith, of the head of the house of Smith, Elder, and Company, who was one of his chosen friends. Carlyle died in 1881, but many of this group well outlived Browning. On New Year’s Day of 1884 Miss Browning wrote to Mrs. Bronson:
The very first word I write this year is to you, dearest friend, wishing you every good gift the earth below, and Heaven above, can offer. If Robert does not write his own share in these kind feelings, it is only because we have mutually agreed that we shall come more constantly before you if we keep our letters apart.
... You cannot think how incessantly we dwell on the memories of the pleasant past. We are in Casa Alvisi in spirit daily, and I picture to myself all that is going on in the well-loved rooms. I hope Edith works at her guitar. She will find that it will repay the trouble.
Give our kindest love to her, and take yourself our loving hearts.
God bless you this year.
Ever Yours Affectionately,
Sarianna Browning.
In a letter to Mrs. Bronson Browning alludes to the purchase of the new house in DeVere Gardens:
“... I am really in treaty—not too deeply in it for extrication at need—with the land-owner who proposes to build me the house I want,—freehold, if you please! so that it can be Pen’s after me; my notion is to contract just what Sarianna and I require now, leaving it in the said Pen’s power to add and alter according to future advisability.”