==
New Cross, Hatcham, Surrey: Tuesday morning.

Dear Miss Flower, -- I am sorry for what must grieve Mr. Fox;
for myself, I beg him earnestly not to see me till his entire convenience,

however pleased I shall be to receive the letter you promise on his part.
And how can I thank you enough for this good news -- all this music

I shall be so thoroughly gratified to hear?
Ever yours faithfully,

Robert Browning.
==

His last letter to her was written in 1845; the subject being
a concert of her own sacred music which she was about to give;

and again, although more slightly, I anticipate the course of events,
in order to give it in its natural connection with the present one.

Mr. Browning was now engaged to be married, and the last ring
of youthful levity had disappeared from his tone; but neither

the new happiness nor the new responsibility had weakened his interest
in his boyhood's friend. Miss Flower must then have been slowly dying,

and the closing words of the letter have the solemnity of a last farewell.
==

Sunday.
Dear Miss Flower, -- I was very foolishly surprized at the sorrowful

finical notice you mention: foolishly; for, God help us, how else is it
with all critics of everything -- don't I hear them talk and see them write?

I dare-say he admires you as he said.
For me, I never had another feeling than entire admiration for your music

-- entire admiration -- I put it apart from all other English music I know,
and fully believe in it as THE music we all waited for.

Of your health I shall not trust myself to speak: you must know
what is unspoken. I should have been most happy to see you

if but for a minute -- and if next Wednesday, I might take your hand
for a moment. --

But you would concede that, if it were right, remembering what is now
very old friendship.

May God bless you for ever
(The signature has been cut off.)

==
In the autumn of 1844 Mr. Browning set forth for Italy, taking ship,

it is believed, direct to Naples. Here he made the acquaintance
of a young Neapolitan gentleman who had spent most of his life in Paris;

and they became such good friends that they proceeded to Rome together.
Mr. Scotti was an invaluable travelling companion, for he engaged

their conveyance, and did all such bargaining in their joint interest
as the habits of his country required. `As I write,' Mr. Browning said

in a letter to his sister, `I hear him disputing our bill in the next room.
He does not see why we should pay for six wax candles

when we have used only two.' At Rome they spent most of their evenings
with an old acquaintance of Mr. Browning's, then Countess Carducci,

and she pronounced Mr. Scotti the handsomest man she had ever seen.
He certainly bore no appearance of being the least prosperous.

But he blew out his brains soon after he and his new friend had parted;
and I do not think the act was ever fully accounted for.

It must have been on his return journey that Mr. Browning went to Leghorn
to see Edward John Trelawney, to whom he carried a letter of introduction.

He described the interview long afterwards to Mr. Val Prinsep,
but chiefly in his impressions of the cool courage which Mr. Trelawney

had displayed during its course. A surgeon was occupied all the time
in probing his leg for a bullet which had been lodged there some years before,

and had lately made itself felt; and he showed himself absolutely indifferent
to the pain of the operation. Mr. Browning's main object in paying the visit

had been, naturally, to speak with one who had known Byron
and been the last to see Shelley alive; but we only hear of the two poets

that they formed in part the subject of their conversation.
He reached England, again, we suppose, through Germany --

since he avoided Paris as before.
It has been asserted by persons otherwise well informed, that on this,

if not on his previous Italian journey, Mr. Browning became acquainted
with Stendhal, then French Consul at Civita Vecchia, and that he imbibed

from the great novelist a taste for curiosities of Italian family history,
which ultimately led him in the direction of the Franceschini case.

It is certain that he profoundly admired this writer,
and if he was not, at some time or other, introduced to him

it was because the opportunity did not occur. But there is abundant evidence
that no introduction took place, and quite sufficient proof

that none was possible. Stendhal died in Paris in March 1842;
and granting that he was at Civita Vecchia when the poet made

his earlier voyage -- no certainty even while he held the appointment --
the ship cannot have touched there on its way to Trieste.

It is also a mistake to suppose that Mr. Browning was specially interested
in ancient chronicles, as such. This was one of the points on which

he distinctly differed from his father. He took his dramatic subjects
wherever he found them, and any historicalresearch which

they ultimately involved was undertaken for purposes of verification.
`Sordello' alone may have been conceived on a rather different plan,

and I have no authority whatever for admitting that it was so.
The discovery of the record of the Franceschini case was,

as its author has everywhere declared, an accident.
A single relic exists for us of this visit to the South --

a shell picked up, according to its inscription, on one of the Syren Isles,
October 4, 1844; but many of its reminiscences are embodied

in that vivid and charming picture `The Englishman in Italy',
which appeared in the `Bells and Pomegranates' number for the following year.

Naples always remained a bright spot in the poet's memory;
and if it had been, like Asolo, his first experience of Italy,

it must have drawn him in later years the more powerfully of the two.
At one period, indeed, he dreamed of it as a home for his declining days.

Chapter 9
1844-1849

Introduction to Miss Barrett -- Engagement -- Motives for Secrecy --
Marriage -- Journey to Italy -- Extract of Letter from Mr. Fox --

Mrs. Browning's Letters to Miss Mitford -- Life at Pisa --
Vallombrosa -- Florence; Mr. Powers; Miss Boyle --

Proposed British Mission to the Vatican -- Father Prout -- Palazzo Guidi --
Fano; Ancona -- `A Blot in the 'Scutcheon' at Sadler's Wells.

During his recent intercourse with the Browning family
Mr. Kenyon had often spoken of his invalid cousin, Elizabeth Barrett,*

and had given them copies of her works; and when the poet returned to England,
late in 1844, he saw the volume containing `Lady Geraldine's Courtship',

which had appeared during his absence. On hearing him express
his admiration of it, Mr. Kenyon begged him to write to Miss Barrett,

and himself tell her how the poems had impressed him;
`for,' he added, `my cousin is a great invalid, and sees no one,

but great souls jump at sympathy.' Mr. Browning did write,
and, a few months, probably, after the correspondence had been established,

begged to be allowed to visit her. She at first refused this,
on the score of her delicate health and habitual seclusion,

emphasizing the refusal by words of such touchinghumility and resignation
that I cannot refrain from quoting them. `There is nothing to see in me,

nothing to hear in me. I am a weed fit for the ground and darkness.'
But her objections were overcome, and their first interview

sealed Mr. Browning's fate.
--

* Properly E. Barrett Moulton-Barrett. The first of these surnames
was that originally borne by the family, but dropped on the annexation

of the second. It has now for some years been resumed.
--

There is no cause for surprize in the passionateadmiration with which
Miss Barrett so instantly inspired him. To begin with, he was heart-whole.

It would be too much to affirm that, in the course of his thirty-two years,
he had never met with a woman whom he could entirely love;

but if he had, it was not under circumstances which favoured
the growth of such a feeling. She whom he now saw for the first time

had long been to him one of the greatest of living poets; she was learned
as women seldom were in those days. It must have been apparent,

in the most fugitivecontact, that her moral nature was as exquisite
as her mind was exceptional. She looked much younger than her age,

which he only recently knew to have been six years beyond his own;
and her face was filled with beauty by the large, expressive eyes.

The imprisoned love within her must unconsciously have leapt to meet his own.
It would have been only natural that he should grow into the determination

to devote his life to hers, or be swept into an offer of marriage