Which indeed,is,in my own mind,very becoming to him,the argentine touch giving a character of elevation and thought to the whole physiognomy.This greyness was suddenly developed --let me tell you how.He was in a state of bilious irritability on the morning of his arrival in Rome,from exposure to the sun or some such cause,and in a fit of suicidal impatience shaved away his whole beard ...whiskers and all!!I CRIED when I saw him,I was so horror-struck.I might have gone into hysterics and still been reasonable --for no human being was ever so disfigured by so simple an act.Of course I said when I recovered heart and voice,that everything was at an end between him and me if he didn't let it all grow again directly,and (upon the further advice of his looking-glass)he yielded the point,--and the beard grew --but it grew white --which was the just punishment of the gods --our sins leave their traces.
'Well,poor darling Robert won't shock you after all --you can't choose but be satisfied with his looks.M.de Monclar swore to me that he was not changed for the intermediate years....'
The family returned,however,to Siena for the summer of 1860,and from thence Mrs.Browning writes to her sister-in-law of her great anxiety concerning her sister Henrietta,Mrs.Surtees Cook,then attacked by a fatal disease.
'...There is nothing or little to add to my last account of my precious Henrietta.But,dear,you think the evil less than it is --be sure that the fear is too reasonable.I am of a very hopeful temperament,and I never could go on systematically making the worst of any case.
I bear up here for a few days,and then comes the expectation of a letter,which is hard.I fight with it for Robert's sake,but all the work I put myself to do does not hinder a certain effect.
She is confined to her bed almost wholly and suffers acutely....
In fact,I am living from day to day,on the merest crumbs of hope --on the daily bread which is very bitter.Of course it has shaken me a good deal,and interfered with the advantages of the summer,but that's the least.Poor Robert's scheme for me of perfect repose has scarcely been carried out....'
This anxiety was heightened during the ensuing winter in Rome,by just the circumstance from which some comfort had been expected --the second postal delivery which took place every day;for the hopes and fears which might have found a moment's forgetfulness in the longer absence of news,were,as it proved,kept at fever-heat.
On one critical occasion the suspense became unbearable,because Mr.Browning,by his wife's desire,had telegraphed for news,begging for a telegraphic answer.No answer had come,and she felt convinced that the worst had happened,and that the brother to whom the message was addressed could not make up his mind to convey the fact in so abrupt a form.The telegram had been stopped by the authorities,because Mr.Odo Russell had undertaken to forward it,and his position in Rome,besides the known Liberal sympathies of Mr.and Mrs.Browning and himself,had laid it open to political suspicion.
Mrs.Surtees Cook died in the course of the winter.
Mr.Browning always believed that the shock and sorrow of this event had shortened his wife's life,though it is also possible that her already lowered vitality increased the dejection into which it plunged her.Her own casual allusions to the state of her health had long marked arrested progress,if not steady decline.We are told,though this may have been a mistake,that active signs of consumption were apparent in her even before the illness of 1859,which was in a certain sense the beginning of the end.
She was completely an invalid,as well as entirely a recluse,during the greater part if not the whole of this last stay in Rome.
