The person of whom he saw most was his sister-in-law,whom he visited,I believe,every evening.Miss Barrett had been a favourite sister of Mrs.Browning's,and this constituted a sufficient title to her husband's affection.But she was also a woman to be loved for her own sake.Deeply religious and very charitable,she devoted herself to visiting the poor --a form of philanthropy which was then neither so widespread nor so fashionable as it has since become;and she founded,in 1850,the first Training School or Refuge which had ever existed for destitute little girls.It need hardly be added that Mr.and Miss Browning co-operated in the work.The little poem,'The Twins',republished in 1855in 'Men and Women',was first printed (with Mrs.Browning's 'Plea for the Ragged Schools of London')for the benefit of this Refuge.It was in Miss Barrett's company that Mr.Browning used to attend the church of Mr.Thomas Jones,to a volume of whose 'Sermons and Addresses'he wrote a short introduction in 1884.
On February 15,1862,he writes again to Miss Blagden.
Feb.15,'62.
'...While I write,my heart is sore for a great calamity just befallen poor Rossetti,which I only heard of last night --his wife,who had been,as an invalid,in the habit of taking laudanum,swallowed an overdose --was found by the poor fellow on his return from the working-men's class in the evening,under the effects of it --help was called in,the stomach-pump used;but she died in the night,about a week ago.There has hardly been a day when I have not thought,"if I can,to-morrow,I will go and see him,and thank him for his book,and return his sister's poems."Poor,dear fellow!...
'...Have I not written a long letter,for me who hate the sight of a pen now,and see a pile of unanswered things on the table before me?
--on this very table.Do you tell me in turn all about yourself.
I shall be interested in the minutest thing you put down.
What sort of weather is it?You cannot but be better at your new villa than in the large solitary one.There I am again,going up the winding way to it,and seeing the herbs in red flower,and the butterflies on the top of the wall under the olive-trees!Once more,good-bye....'
The hatred of writing of which he here speaks refers probably to the class of letters which he had lately been called upon to answer,and which must have been painful in proportion to the kindness by which they were inspired.But it returned to him many years later,in simple weariness of the mental and mechanical act,and with such force that he would often answer an unimportant note in person,rather than make the seemingly much smaller exertion of doing so with his pen.
It was the more remarkable that,with the rarest exceptions,he replied to every letter which came to him.
The late summer of the former year had been entirely unrefreshing,in spite of his acknowledgment of the charms of St.-Enogat.
There was more distraction and more soothing in the stay at Cambo and Biarritz,which was chosen for the holiday of 1862.
Years afterwards,when the thought of Italy carried with it less longing and even more pain,Mr.Browning would speak of a visit to the Pyrenees,if not a residence among them,as one of the restful possibilities of his later and freer life.He wrote to Miss Blagden:
Biarritz,Maison Gastonbide:Sept.19,'62.
'...I stayed a month at green pleasant little Cambo,and then came here from pure inability to go elsewhere --St.-Jean de Luz,on which I had reckoned,being still fuller of Spaniards who profit by the new railway.This place is crammed with gay people of whom I see nothing but their outsides.The sea,sands,and view of the Spanish coast and mountains,are superb and this house is on the town's outskirts.I stay till the end of the month,then go to Paris,and then get my neck back into the old collar again.
Pen has managed to get more enjoyment out of his holiday than seemed at first likely --there was a nice French family at Cambo with whom he fraternised,riding with the son and escorting the daughter in her walks.His red cheeks look as they should.For me,I have got on by having a great read at Euripides --the one book I brought with me,besides attending to my own matters,my new poem that is about to be;and of which the whole is pretty well in my head,--the Roman murder story you know.
'...How I yearn,yearn for Italy at the close of my life!...'
The 'Roman murder story'was,I need hardly say,to become 'The Ring and the Book'.
It has often been told,though with curious confusion as regards the date,how Mr.Browning picked up the original parchment-bound record of the Franceschini case,on a stall of the Piazza San Lorenzo.
We read in the first section of his own work that he plunged instantly into the study of this record;that he had mastered it by the end of the day;and that he then stepped out on to the terrace of his house amid the sultry blackness and silent lightnings of the June night,as the adjacent church of San Felice sent forth its chants,and voices buzzed in the street below,--and saw the tragedy as a living picture unfold itself before him.These were his last days at Casa Guidi.It was four years before he definitely began the work.
