Chapter 13

1858-1861

Mrs. Browning's Illness--Siena--Letter from Mr. Browning to Mr. Leighton
--Mrs. Browning's Letters continued--Walter Savage Landor--Winter
in Rome--Mr. Val Prinsep--Friends in Rome: Mr. and Mrs.
Cartwright--Multiplying Social Relations--Massimo d'Azeglio--Siena
again--Illness and Death of Mrs. Browning's Sister--Mr. Browning's
Occupations--Madame du Quaire--Mrs. Browning's last Illness and Death.

I cannot quite ascertain, though it might seem easy to do so, whether
Mr. and Mrs. Browning remained in Florence again till the summer of
1859, or whether the intervening months were divided between Florence
and Rome; but some words in their letters favour the latter supposition.
We hear of them in September from Mr. Val Prinsep, in Siena or its
neighbourhood; with Mr. and Mrs. Story in an adjacent villa, and Walter
Savage Landor in a 'cottage' close by. How Mr. Landor found himself
of the party belongs to a little chapter in Mr. Browning's history for
which I quote Mr. Colvin's words.* He was then living at Fiesole with
his family, very unhappily, as we all know; and Mr. Colvin relates
how he had thrice left his villa there, determined to live in Florence
alone; and each time been brought back to the nominal home where so
little kindness awaited him.

* 'Life of Landor', p. 209.

'. . . The fourth time he presented himself in the house of Mr. Browning
with only a few pauls in his pocket, declaring that nothing should ever
induce him to return.

'Mr. Browning, an interview with the family at the villa having
satisfied him that reconciliation or return was indeed past question,
put himself at once in communication with Mr. Forster and with Landor's
brothers in England. The latter instantly undertook to supply the needs
of their eldest brother during the remainder of his life. Thenceforth an
income sufficient for his frugal wants was forwarded regularly for his
use through the friend who had thus come forward at his need. To Mr.
Browning's respectful and judicious guidance Landor showed himself
docile from the first. Removed from the inflictions, real and imaginary,
of his life at Fiesole, he became another man, and at times still seemed
to those about him like the old Landor at his best. It was in July,
1859, that the new arrangements for his life were made. The remainder
of that summer he spent at Siena, first as the guest of Mr. Story, the
American sculptor and poet, next in a cottage rented for him by Mr.
Browning near his own. In the autumn of the same year Landor removed to
a set of apartments in the Via Nunziatina in Florence, close to the
Casa Guidi, in a house kept by a former servant of Mrs. Browning's, an
Englishwoman married to an Italian.* Here he continued to live