She rallied nevertheless sufficiently to write to Miss Browning in April,in a tone fully suggestive of normal health and energy.
'...In my own opinion he is infinitely handsomer and more attractive than when I saw him first,sixteen years ago....I believe people in general would think the same exactly.As to the modelling --well,I told you that I grudged a little the time from his own particular art.
But it does not do to dishearten him about his modelling.
He has given a great deal of time to anatomy with reference to the expression of form,and the clay is only the new medium which takes the place of drawing.Also,Robert is peculiar in his ways of work as a poet.I have struggled a little with him on this point,for I don't think him right;that is to say,it would not be right for me ...But Robert waits for an inclination,works by fits and starts;he can't do otherwise he says,and his head is full of ideas which are to come out in clay or marble.
I yearn for the poems,but he leaves that to me for the present....
You will think Robert looking very well when you see him;indeed,you may judge by the photographs meanwhile.You know,Sarianna,how I used to forbid the moustache.I insisted as long as I could,but all artists were against me,and I suppose that the bare upper lip does not harmonise with the beard.He keeps the hair now closer,and the beard is pointed....As to the moony whiteness of the beard,it is beautiful,_I_think,but then I think him all beautiful,and always....'
Mr.Browning's old friend,Madame du Quaire,came to Rome in December.
She had visited Florence three years before,and I am indebted to her for some details of the spiritualist controversy by which its English colony was at that time divided.She was now a widow,travelling with her brother;and Mr.Browning came whenever he could,to comfort her in her sorrow,and,as she says,discourse of nature,art,the beautiful,and all that 'conquers death'.He little knew how soon he would need the same comfort for himself.He would also declaim passages from his wife's poems;and when,on one of these occasions,Madame du Quaire had said,as so many persons now say,that she much preferred his poetry to hers,he made this characteristic answer,to be repeated in substance some years afterwards to another friend:'You are wrong --quite wrong --she has genius;I am only a painstaking fellow.
Can't you imagine a clever sort of angel who plots and plans,and tries to build up something --he wants to make you see it as he sees it --shows you one point of view,carries you off to another,hammering into your head the thing he wants you to understand;and whilst this bother is going on God Almighty turns you off a little star --that's the difference between us.The true creative power is hers,not mine.'
Mrs.Browning died at Casa Guidi on June 29,1861,soon after their return to Florence.She had had a return of the bronchial affection to which she was subject;and a new doctor who was called in discovered grave mischief at the lungs,which she herself had long believed to be existent or impending.But the attack was comparatively,indeed actually,slight;and an extract from her last letter to Miss Browning,dated June 7,confirms what her family and friends have since asserted,that it was the death of Cavour which gave her the final blow.
'...We come home into a cloud here.I can scarcely command voice or hand to name 'Cavour'.That great soul which meditated and made Italy has gone to the diviner Country.If tears or blood could have saved him to us,he should have had mine.I feel yet as if I could scarcely comprehend the greatness of the vacancy.A hundred Garibaldis for such a man!'
Her death was signalized by the appearance --this time,I am told,unexpected --of another brilliant comet,which passed so near the earth as to come into contact with it.
