[Rome: about March, 1854.]

My dearest Sarianna,--We are all well, and so is the weather, which is
diviner. We sit with the windows wide open, and find it almost too warm,
and to-day Robert and I have been wandering under the trees of the
Pincio and looking to the Monte Marino pine. Let the best come, I don't
like Rome, I never shall; and as they have put into the English
newspapers that I don't, I might as well acknowledge the barbarism. Very
glad I shall be to see you and Paris, even though my beloved Florence
shall be left behind. Dearest Sarianna, after a short rest at Paris, we
go on to London for the printing of Robert's book (mine won't be ready
till later in the year), and for the sight of some dear English faces
while the weather shall admit of it, before we settle for the winter in
France. Well, you will go with us to England, won't you? The dear
nonno[33] will spare you to go with us? It will do you good, and it will
do us good, certainly.

I quite agree with you that there's no situation like the Champs
Elysees--really, there is scarcely anything like it in Europe, if you
put away Venice--for a situation in a city.

The worst of the Champs Elysees is that it is out of the way, and
expensive on the point of carriages when you can't walk far. People tell
you, too, that the air is sharper at the end of the avenue; yet the sun
is so brilliant as to make amends for the disadvantage, if it exists.
Then you pay more for houses on account of the concourse of English. And
what if I object a little to the English besides? If I do, the
desirableness of the pure air and free walking for Penini
counterbalances them.

The Thackeray girls have had the scarlatina at Naples, and have been
very desolate, I fear, without a female servant or friend near them.
They probably were indisposed towards Naples by their own illness (which
was slight, however; the scarlet fever is always slight in Italy they
say), and by their father's more serious attack, for I have heard very
different accounts of the Neapolitan weather. Still, it has been an
abnormal winter everywhere, and there are cold winds on that coast on
certain months of the year always. Lockhart has gone away with the Duke
of Wellington, who was in deep consideration how he should manage his
funeral on the road. Robert was present when the question was mooted on
the Duke's last evening. _Should_ he send the body to England or bury
it? Would it be delicate to ask Lockhart which he preferred? Somebody
said: 'Suppose you were to ask what he would do with your body if you
died yourself.' I am afraid poor Lockhart is really in a dangerous state
of health, and that it would have been better if he had had something
tenderer and more considerate than a dukedom travelling with him under
his circumstances. He called upon us, and took a great fancy to Robert,
I understand, as being 'not at all like a damned literary man.'

Penini is overwhelmed with attentions and gifts of all kinds, and
generally acknowledged as the king of the children here. Mrs. Page, the
wife of the distinguished American artist, gave a party in honor of him
the other day. There was an immense cake inscribed '_Penini_' in sugar;
and he sat at the head of the table and did the honors. You never saw a
child so changed in point of shyness. He will go anywhere with anybody,
and talk, and want none of us to back him. Wilson is only instructed not
to come till it is 'velly late' to fetch him away. He talks to Fanny
Kemble, who 'dashes' most people. 'I not aflaid of nossing,' says he, in
his eloquent English. Mr. Fisher's cartoon of him is very pretty, but
doesn't do him justice in the delicacy of the lower part of the face.
Yet I can't complain of Mr. Fisher after the admirable likeness he has
painted of Robert. It is really _satisfying_ to me. You will see it in
London. Oh, how cruel it is that we can't buy it, Sarianna; I have a
sort of hope that Mr. Kenyon may--but zitto, zitto![34] Arabel will be
very grateful to you for the drawings....

[_Endorsed by Miss Browning_, '_Part of a letter_']

      * * * * *


The plans, thus confidently spoken of, for a visit to Paris and London
in the summer of this year, did not attain fulfilment. The Brownings
left Rome for Florence about the end of May, intending to stay there
only a few weeks; but their arrangements were altered by letters
received from England, and ultimately they remained in Florence until
the summer of the following year. Whether for this reason, or because
the poems were not, after all, ready for press, the printing of Mr.
Browning's new volumes ('Men and Women') was also postponed, and they
did not appear until 1855; while 'Aurora Leigh' was still a long way
from completion.