My dear George,—It was a great pleasure to get your kind letter; though after some delay. We were not in the Tyrol this year, but have been for six weeks or more in this little place which strikes me,—as it did fifty years ago, which is something to say, considering that, properly speaking, it was the first spot of Italian soil I ever set foot upon— having proceeded to Venice by sea—and thence here. It is an ancient city, older than Rome, and the scene of Queen Catharine Cornaro's exile, where she held a mock court, with all its attendants, on a miniature scale; Bembo, afterwards Cardinal, being her secretary. Her palace is still above us all, the old fortifications surround the hill-top, and certain of the houses are stately—though the population is not above 1,000 souls: the province contains many more of course. But the immense charm of the surrounding country is indescribable—I have never seen its like—the Alps on one side, the Asolan mountains all round,—and opposite, the vast Lombard plain,—with indications of Venice, Padua, and the other cities, visible to a good eye on a clear day; while everywhere are sites of battles and sieges of bygone days, described in full by the historians of the Middle Ages.
We have a valued friend here, Mrs. Bronson, who for years has been our hostess at Venice, and now is in possession of a house here (built into the old city wall)—she was induced to choose it through what I have said about the beauties of the place: and through her care and kindness we are comfortably lodged close by. We think of leaving in a week or so for Venice—guests of Pen and his wife; and after a short stay with them we shall return to London. Pen came to see us for a couple of days: I was hardly prepared for his surprise and admiration which quite equalled my own and that of my sister. All is happily well with them—their palazzo excites the wonder of everybody, so great is Pen's cleverness, and extemporised architectural knowledge, as apparent in all he has done there; why, why will you not go and see him there? He and his wife are very hospitable and receive many visitors. Have I told you that there was a desecrated chapel which he has restored in honour of his mother— putting up there the inscription by Tommaseo now above Casa Guidi?
Fannie is all you say,—and most dear and precious to us all. . . . Pen's medal to which you refer, is awarded to him in spite of his written renunciation of any sort of wish to contend for a prize. He will now resume painting and sculpture—having been necessarily occupied with the superintendence of his workmen—a matter capitally managed, I am told. For the rest, both Sarianna and myself are very well; I have just sent off my new volume of verses for publication. The complete edition of the works of E. B. B. begins in a few days.
The second part of this letter is very forcibly written, and, in a certain sense, more important than the first; but I suppress it by the desire of Mr. Browning's sister and son, and in complete concurrence with their judgment in the matter. It was a systematic defence of the anger aroused in him by a lately published reference to his wife's death; and though its reasonings were unanswerable as applied to the causes of his emotion, they did not touch the manner in which it had been displayed. The incident was one which deserved only to be forgotten; and if an injudicious act had not preserved its memory, no word of mine should recall it. Since, however, it has been thought fit to include the 'Lines to Edward Fitzgerald' in a widely circulated Bibliography of Mr. Browning's Works,* I owe it to him to say—what I believe is only known to his sister and myself—that there was a moment in which he regretted those lines, and would willingly have withdrawn them. This was the period, unfortunately short, which intervened between his sending them to the 'Athenaeum', and their appearance there. When once public opinion had expressed itself upon them in its too extreme forms of sympathy and condemnation, the pugnacity of his mind found support in both, and regret was silenced if not destroyed. In so far as his published words remained open to censure, I may also, without indelicacy, urge one more plea in his behalf. That which to the merely sympathetic observer appeared a subject for disapprobation, perhaps disgust, had affected him with the directness of a sharp physical blow. He spoke of it, and for hours, even days, was known to feel it, as such. The events of that distant past, which he had lived down, though never forgotten, had flashed upon him from the words which so unexpectedly met his eye, in a vividness of remembrance which was reality. 'I felt as if she had died yesterday,' he said some days later to a friend, in half deprecation, half denial, of the too great fierceness of his reaction. He only recovered his balance in striking the counter-blow. That he could be thus affected at an age usually destructive of the more violent emotions, is part of the mystery of those closing days which had already overtaken him.
* That contained in Mr. Sharp's 'Life'. A still more recent
publication
gives the lines in full.
By the first of November he was in Venice with his son and daughter; and during the three following weeks was apparently well, though a physician whom he met at a dinner party, and to whom he had half jokingly given his pulse to feel, had learned from it that his days were numbered. He wrote to Miss Keep on the 9th of the month:
'. . . Mrs. Bronson has bought a house at Asolo, and beautified it indeed,—niched as it is in an old tower of the fortifications still partly surrounding the city (for a city it is), and eighteen towers, more or less ruinous, are still discoverable there: it is indeed a delightful place. Meantime, to go on,—we came here, and had a pleasant welcome from our hosts—who are truly magnificently lodged in this vast palazzo which my son has really shown himself fit to possess, so surprising are his restorations and improvements: the whole is all but complete, decorated,—that is, renewed admirably in all respects.
'What strikes me as most noteworthy is the cheerfulness and comfort of the huge rooms.
'The building is warmed throughout by a furnace and pipes.
'Yesterday, on the Lido, the heat was hardly endurable: bright sunshine, blue sky,—snow-tipped Alps in the distance. No place, I think, ever suited my needs, bodily and intellectual, so well.