Casa Guidi: May 16 [1853].

My dearest Mr. Kenyon,--You are to be thanked and loved as ever, and
what can we say more? This: Do be good to us by a supererogatory virtue
and write to us. You can't know how pleasant it is to be _en rapport_
with you, though by holding such a fringe of a garment as a scrap of
letter is. We don't see you, we don't hear you! 'Rap' to us with the end
of your pen, like the benign spirit you are, and let me (who am
credulous) believe that you care for us and think kindly of us in the
midst of your brilliant London gossipry, and that you don't disdain the
talk of us, dark ultramontanists as we are. You are good to us in so
many ways, that it's a reason for being good in another way besides. At
least, to reason so is one of the foolishnesses of my gratitude.

On the whole, I am satisfied with regard to 'Colombe.' I never expected
a theatrical success, properly and vulgarly so called; and the play has
taken rank, to judge by the various criticisms, in the right way, as a
true poet's work: the defects of the acting drama seemed recognised as
the qualities of the poem. It was impossible all that subtle tracery of
thought and feeling should be painted out clear red and ochre with a
house-painter's brush, and lose nothing of its effect.[22] A play that
runs nowadays has generally four legs to run with--something of the
beast to keep it going. The human biped with the 'os divinior' is slower
than a racehorse even. What I hope is, that the poetical appreciation of
'Colombe' will give an impulse to the sale of the poems, which will be
more acceptable to us than the other kind of success....

Yes, dearest Mr. Kenyon, we mean, if we can, to go to Rome in the
autumn. It is very wrong of you not to come too, and the reasons you
give against it are by no means conclusive. My opinion is that, whatever
the term of your natural life may be, you would probably have an
additional ten years fastened on to it by coming to the Continent, and
so I tease you and tease you, as is natural to such an opinion. People
twirl now in their arm-chairs, and the vitality in them kindles as they
rush along. Remember how pleased you were when you were at Como! Don't
draw a chalk circle round you and fancy you can't move. Even tables and
chairs have taken to move lately, and hats spin round without a giddy
head in them. Is this a time to stand still, even in the garden at
Wimbledon? 'I speak to a wise man; judge what I say.'

We tried the table experiment in this room a few days since,
by-the-bye, and failed; but we were impatient, and Robert was playing
Mephistopheles, as Mr. Lytton said, and there was little chance of
success under the circumstances. It has been done several times in
Florence, and the fact of the possibility seems to have passed among
'attested facts.' There was a placard on the wall yesterday about a
pamphlet purporting to be an account of these and similar phenomena
'scoperte a Livorno,' referring to 'oggetti semoventi' and other
wonders. You can't even look at a wall without a touch of the subject.
The _circoli_ at Florence are as revolutionary as ever, only tilting
over tables instead of States, alas! From the Legation to the English
chemist's, people are 'serving tables' (in spite of the Apostle)
everywhere. When people gather round a table it isn't to play whist. So
good, you say. You can believe in table-moving, because _that_ may be
'electricity;' but you can't believe in the 'rapping spirits,' with the
history of whom these movements are undeniably connected, because it's
'a jump.' Well, but you will jump when the time comes for jumping, and
when the evidence is strong enough. I know you; you are strong enough
and true enough to jump at anything, without being afraid. The tables
jump, observe--and _you_ may jump. Meanwhile, if you were to hear what
we heard only the evening before last from a cultivated woman with
truthful, tearful eyes, whose sister is a medium, and whose mother
believes herself to be in daily communion with her eldest daughter, dead
years ago--if you were to hear what we hear from nearly all the
Americans who come to us, their personal experiences, irrespectively of
paid mediums, I wonder if you would admit the possibility of your even
jumping! Robert, who won't believe, he says, till he sees and hears with
his own senses--Robert, who is a sceptic--observed of himself the other
day, that we had received as much evidence of these spirits as of the
existence of the town of Washington. But then of course he would
add--and you would, reasonably enough--that in a matter of this kind
(where you have to jump) you require more evidence, double the evidence,
to what you require for the existence of Washington. That's true.

[_Incomplete_]