for a play of that kind. It was a "succes d'estime" and something more,

which is surprising perhaps, considering the miserableacting of the men.
Miss Faucit was alone in doing us justice. . . .'

==
Mrs. Browning did see `Miss Faucit' on her next visit to England.

She agreeably surprised that lady by presenting herself alone,
one morning, at her house, and remaining with her for an hour and a half.

The only person who had `done justice' to `Colombe' besides contributing
to whatever success her husband's earlier plays had obtained,

was much more than `a great actress' to Mrs. Browning's mind;
and we may imagine it would have gone hard with her

before she renounced the pleasure of making her acquaintance.
Two letters, dated from the Baths of Lucca, July 15 and August 20, '53,

tell how and where the ensuing summer was passed, besides introducing us,
for the first time, to Mr. and Mrs. William Story, between whose family

and that of Mr. Browning so friendly an intimacy was ever afterwards
to subsist.

==
July 15.

`. . . We have taken a villa at the Baths of Lucca after a little holy fear
of the company there -- but the scenery, and the coolness,

and conveniencealtogetherprevail, and we have taken our villa
for three months or rather more, and go to it next week

with a stiff resolve of not calling nor being called upon.
You remember perhaps that we were there four years ago

just after the birth of our child. The mountains are wonderful in beauty,
and we mean to buy our holiday by doing some work.

`Oh yes! I confess to loving Florence, and to having associated with it
the idea of home. . . .'

==
==

Casa Tolomei, Alta Villa, Bagni di Lucca: Aug. 20.
`. . . We are enjoying the mountains here -- riding the donkeys

in the footsteps of the sheep, and eating strawberries and milk by basinsful.
The strawberries succeed one another throughout the summer,

through growing on different aspects of the hills. If a tree is felled
in the forests, strawberries spring up, just as mushrooms might,

and the peasants sell them for just nothing. . . . Then our friends
Mr. and Mrs. Story help the mountains to please us a good deal.

He is the son of Judge Story, the biographer of his father,
and for himself, sculptor and poet -- and she a sympatheticgraceful woman,

fresh and innocent in face and thought. We go backwards and forwards to tea
and talk at one another's houses.

`. . . Since I began this letter we have had a grand donkeyexcursion
to a village called Benabbia, and the cross above it on the mountain-peak.

We returned in the dark, and were in some danger of tumbling
down various precipices -- but the scenery was exquisite --

past speaking of for beauty. Oh, those jagged mountains,
rolled together like pre-Adamite beasts and setting their teeth

against the sky -- it was wonderful. . . .'
==

Mr. Browning's share of the work referred to was `In a Balcony';
also, probably, some of the `Men and Women'; the scene of the declaration

in `By the Fireside' was laid in a little adjacent mountain-gorge
to which he walked or rode. A fortnight's visit from Mr., now Lord, Lytton,

was also an incident of this summer.
The next three letters from which I am able to quote,

describe the impressions of Mrs. Browning's first winter in Rome.
==

Rome: 43 Via Bocca di Leone, 3o piano. Jan. 18, 54.
`. . . Well, we are all well to begin with -- and have been well --

our troubles came to us through sympathy entirely. A most exquisite journey
of eight days we had from Florence to Rome, seeing the great monastery

and triple church of Assisi and the wonderful Terni by the way --
that passion of the waters which makes the human heart seem so still.

In the highest spirits we entered Rome, Robert and Penini singing actually --
for the child was radiant and flushed with the continual change

of air and scene. . . . You remember my telling you of our friends the Storys
-- how they and their two children helped to make the summer go pleasantly

at the Baths of Lucca. They had taken an apartment for us in Rome,
so that we arrived in comfort to lighted fires and lamps as if coming home, --

and we had a glimpse of their smiling faces that evening.
In the morning before breakfast, little Edith was brought over to us

by the manservant with a message, "the boy was in convulsions --
there was danger." We hurried to the house, of course,

leaving Edith with Wilson. Too true! All that first day
we spent beside a death-bed; for the child never rallied --

never opened his eyes in consciousness -- and by eight in the evening
he was gone. In the meanwhile, Edith was taken ill at our house --

could not be moved, said the physicians . . . gastric fever,
with a tendency to the brain -- and within two days her life

was almost despaired of -- exactly the same malady as her brother's. . . .
Also the English nurse was apparently dying at the Story's house,

and Emma Page, the artist's youngest daughter, sickened with the same disease.
`. . . To pass over the dreary time, I will tell you at once

that the three patients recovered -- only in poor little Edith's case
Roman fever followed the gastric, and has persisted ever since

in periodical recurrence. She is very pale and thin.
Roman fever is not dangerous to life, but it is exhausting. . . .

Now you will understand what ghostly flakes of death
have changed the sense of Rome to me. The first day by a death-bed,

the first drive-out, to the cemetery, where poor little Joe is laid
close to Shelley's heart ("Cor cordium" says the epitaph)

and where the mother insisted on going when she and I went out
in the carriage together -- I am horribly weak about such things --

I can't look on the earth-side of death -- I flinch from corpses and graves,
and never meet a common funeral without a sort of horror.

When I look deathwards I look OVER death, and upwards,
or I can't look that way at all. So that it was a struggle with me

to sit upright in that carriage in which the poor stricken mother
sat so calmly -- not to drop from the seat. Well -- all this

has blackened Rome to me. I can't think about the Caesars
in the old strain of thought -- the antique words get muddled and blurred

with warm dashes of modern, everyday tears and fresh grave-clay.
Rome is spoilt to me -- there's the truth. Still, one lives through

one's associations when not too strong, and I have arrived
at almost enjoying some things -- the climate, for instance,

which, though pernicious to the general health, agrees particularly with me,
and the sight of the blue sky floating like a sea-tide through the great gaps

and rifts of ruins. . . . We are very comfortably settled in rooms turned
to the sun, and do work and play by turns, having almost too many visitors,

hear excellent music at Mrs. Sartoris's (A. K.) once or twice a week,
and have Fanny Kemble to come and talk to us with the doors shut,

we three together. This is pleasant. I like her decidedly.
`If anybody wants small talk by handfuls, of glittering dust

swept out of salons, here's Mr. Thackeray besides! . . .'
==

==
Rome: March 29.

`. . . We see a good deal of the Kembles here, and like them both,
especially Fanny, who is looking magnificent still, with her black hair

and radiant smile. A very noble creature indeed. Somewhat unelastic,
unpliant to the age, attached to the old modes of thought and convention --

but noble in qualities and defects. I like her much. She thinks me
credulous and full of dreams -- but does not despise me for that reason --

which is good and tolerant of her, and pleasant too, for I should not be
quite easy under her contempt. Mrs. Sartoris is genial and generous --

her milk has had time to stand to cream in her happy family relations,
which poor Fanny Kemble's has not had. Mrs. Sartoris' house

has the best society in Rome -- and exquisite music of course.
We met Lockhart there, and my husband sees a good deal of him --

more than I do -- because of the access of cold weather lately
which has kept me at home chiefly. Robert went down to the seaside,

on a day's excursion with him and the Sartorises -- and I hear
found favour in his sight. Said the critic, "I like Browning --

he isn't at all like a damnedliterary man." That's a compliment,