Landor had been for some years in his villa on the Fiesolean slope, not far from Maiano, where Leigh Hunt had wandered, dreaming of Boccaccio. Two scenes of the “Decameron” were laid in this region, and the deep ravine at the foot of one of the neighboring hills was the original of the “Valley of the Ladies.” Not far away had been the house of Machiavelli; and nestling among the blue hills was the little white village of Settignano, where Michael Angelo was born. Leigh Hunt had been on terms of the most cordial intimacy with Landor, whom he described as “living among his paintings and hospitalities”; and Landor had also been visited by Emerson, and by Lord and Lady Blessington, by Nathaniel Parker Willis (introduced by Lady Blessington), by Greenough, Francis and Julius Hare, and by that universal friend of every one, Mr. Kenyon, all before the arrival of the Brownings in Florence. Landor had, however, been again in England for several years, where Browning and Miss Barrett had both met and admired him, as has been recorded.
The Florence on which the Brownings had entered differed little from the Florence of to-day. The Palazzo Pitti, within a stone’s throw of Casa Guidi, stood in the same cyclopean massiveness as now; the piazza and church of San Miniato, cypress-shaded, rose from the sweep of the hills, and the miraculous crucifix of San Giovanni Gualberto was then, as now, an object of pilgrimage. The wonder of the Italian sunsets, that “perished silently of their own glory,” burned away over the far hills, and the strange, lofty tower of the Palazzo Vecchio caught the lingering rays. Beyond the Porta Romana, not far from Casa Guidi, was the road to the Val d’Emo, where the Certosa crowns an eminence. The stroll along the Arno at sunset was a favorite one with the poets, and in late afternoons they often climbed the slope to the Boboli Gardens for the view over Florence and the Val d’Arno. Nor did they ever tire of lingering in the Piazza della Signoria, before the marvelous palace with its medieval tower, and standing before the colossal fountain of Neptune, just behind the spot that is commemorated by a tablet in the pavement marking the martyrdom of Savonarola. The great equestrian statue of Cosimo I always engaged their attention in this historic piazza, which for four centuries had been the center of the political life of the Florentines. All these places, the churches, monuments, palaces, and the art of Florence, were fairly mirrored in the minds of the wedded poets, impressing their imagination with the fidelity of an image falling on a sensitized plate. To them, as to all who love and enter into the ineffable beauty of the City of Lilies, it was an atmosphere of enchantment.
CHAPTER VII
1850-1855
| “I heard last night a little child go singing ’Neath Casa Guidi windows, by the church, O bella libertà, O bella!...” “But Easter-Day breaks! But Christ rises! Mercy every way Is infinite,—and who can say?” |
“Casa Guidi Windows”—Society in Florence—Marchesa d’Ossoli—Browning’s Poetic Creed—Villeggiatura in Siena—Venice—Brilliant Life in London—Paris and Milsand—Browning on Shelley—In Florence—Idyllic Days in Bagni Di Lucca—Mrs. Browning’s Spiritual Outlook—Delightful Winter in Rome—A Poetic Pilgrimage—Harriet Hosmer—Characteristics of Mrs. Browning.
The Brownings were never for a moment caught up in the wave of popular enthusiasm for Pio Nono that swept over Italy. Yet Mrs. Browning confessed herself as having been fairly “taken in” by the Grand Duke of Tuscany. Had Blackwood’s Magazine published Part I of her “Casa Guidi Windows” at the time that she sent it to this periodical, the poem would have been its own proof of her distrust of the Pope, but it would also have offered the same proof of her ill-founded trust in the Grand Duke; so that, on the whole, she was well content to fail in having achieved the distinction of a prophet regarding Pio Nono, as no Cassandra can afford to be convicted of delusion in some portion of the details of her prophecy. To achieve lasting reputation as a soothsayer, the prophecy must be accurate throughout. The fact that there was an interval of three years between the first and the second parts of this poem accounts for the discrepancy between them. In her own words she confessed:
“I wrote a meditation and a dream,
Hearing a little child sing in the street:
I leant upon his music as a theme,
Till it gave way beneath my heart’s full beat
Which tried at an exultant prophecy,
But dropped before the measure was complete—
Alas for songs and hearts! O Tuscany,
O Dante’s Florence, is the type too plain?”