Again the Brownings sought their favorite Siena, where Miss Blagden joined them, finding a rude stone villino, of two or three rooms only, the home of some contadini, within fifteen minutes’ walk of Mrs. Browning, and taking it to be near her friend. But for the serious illness of Mrs. Browning’s sister Henrietta (Mrs. Surtees Cook) the summer would have been all balm and sunshine. The Storys were very near, and Mr. Landor had been comfortably housed not far from his friends, who gave the aged scholar the companionship he best loved. Browning took long rides on horseback, exploring all the romantic regions around Siena, such rides that he might almost have exclaimed with his own hero, the Grand Duke Ferdinand,—
“For I ride—what should I do but ride?”
Penini, too, galloped through the lanes on his pony, his curls flying in the wind, and read Latin with the old Abbé. The lessons under this genial tutor were again shared with Miss Edith Story, one of whose earliest childish recollections is of sitting on a low hassock, leaning against Mrs. Browning, while Penini sat on the other side, and his mother talked with both the children. Mr. Story’s two sons, the future painter and sculptor respectively, were less interested at this time in canvas and clay than they were in their pranks and sports. The Storys and Brownings, Miss Blagden and Landor, all loaned each other their books and newspapers, and discussed the news and literature of the day. The poet was much occupied in modeling, and passed long mornings in Mr. Story’s improvised studio, where he copied two busts, the “Young Augustus” and the “Psyche,” with notable success.
In the October of that year both the Brownings and the Storys returned to Rome, the poets finding a new apartment in the Via Felice. Mrs. Browning’s sister Henrietta died that autumn, and in her grief she said that one of the first things that did her good was a letter from Mrs. Stowe. She notes her feeling that “how mere a line it is to overstep between the living and the dead.” Her spiritual insight never failed her, and of herself she said: “I wish to live just so long, and no longer, than to grow in the spirit.”
In the days of inevitable sadness after her sister’s death, whatever the consolations and reassurances of faith and philosophy, Mrs. Browning wrote to a friend of the tender way in which her husband shielded her, and “for the rest,” she said, “I ought to have comfort, for I believe that love, in its most human relations, is an eternal thing.” She added: “One must live; and the only way is to look away from one’s self into the larger and higher circle of life in which the merely personal grief or joy forgets itself.”
Penini and his friend, Miss Edith, continued their studies under the old Abbé; his mother heard him read a little German daily, and his father “sees to his music, and the getting up of arithmetic,” noted Mrs. Browning. The lad rode on his pony over Monte Pincio, and occasionally cantered out on the Campagna with his father. But Mrs. Browning had come to know that her stay on earth was to be very brief, and to her dear Isa she wrote that for the first time she had pain in looking into her little son’s face—“which you will understand,” she adds, but to her husband she did not speak of this premonition. She urged him to go out into the great world, for Rome was socially resplendent that winter. Among other notable festivities there was a great ball given by Mrs. Hooker, where princes and cardinals were present, and where the old Roman custom of attending the princes of the church up and down the grand staircase with flaming torches was observed. The beautiful Princess Rospoli was a guest that night, appearing in the tri-color. Commenting on the Civil War that was threatening America, Mrs. Browning said she “believed the unity of the country should be asserted with a strong hand.”
Val Prinsep, in Rome that winter, was impressed by Mr. Browning into the long walks in which they both delighted, and they traversed Rome on both sides the Tiber. The poet was not writing regularly in those days, though his wife “gently wrangled” with him to give more attention to his art, and held before him the alluring example of the Laureate who shut himself up daily for prescribed work. Browning had “an enormous superfluity of vital energy,” which he had to work off in long walks, in modeling, and in conversations. “I wanted his poems done this winter very much,” said Mrs. Browning; “and here was a bright room with three windows consecrated to use.... There has been little poetry done since last winter.” But in later years Browning became one of the most regular of workers, and considered that day lost on which he had not written at least some lines of poetry. At this time the poet was fascinated by his modeling. “Nothing but clay does he care for, poor, lost soul,” laughed Mrs. Browning. Her “Hatty” ran in one day with a sketch of a charming design for a fountain for Lady Marion Alford. “The imagination is unfolding its wings in Hatty,” said Mrs. Browning.
In days when Mrs. Browning felt able to receive visitors, there were many to avail themselves of the privilege. On one day came Lady Juliana Knox, bringing Miss Sewell (Amy Herbert); and M. Carl Grun, a friend of the poet, Dall’ Ongaro, came with a letter from the latter, who wished to translate into Italian some of the poems of Mrs. Browning. Lady Juliana had that day been presented to the Holy Father, and she related to Mrs. Browning how deeply touched she had been by his adding to the benediction he gave her, “Priez pour le pape.”
Penini had a choice diversion in that the Duchesse de Grammont, of the French Embassy, gave a “matinée d’enfants,” to which he received a card, and went, resplendent in a crimson velvet blouse, and was presented to small Italian princes of the Colonna, the Doria, Piombiono, and others, and played leap-frog with his titled companions.
Mrs. Browning reads with eager interest a long speech of their dear friend, Milsand, which filled seventeen columns of the Moniteur, a copy of which his French friend sent to Browning.