[Venice—Thursday, 12 November 1885]
Mr Robt Browning came in the eveg with his son, to tell us of his having concluded the purchase of the Palace called Manzoni, or Montecuculi, on the Grand Canal opposite to our Palazzo Barbaro, from the Graf Capitan Corvetten Montecuculi, to whom I had written at Mr Browning’s request to reopen negotiations for buying the Palace for which I had treated five years ago. The Graf came to Venice, with his young wife, and after several interviews the affair was agreed upon today—which will open a new era in Browning’s life.
He said that his father lived to 85—a man of vast knowledge, reading & memory—totally ignorant of the world. <We saw at his house in London a portrait of his father, made by Miss Browning and an excellent piece of work.>[1] His mother a victim to tic-douloureux. His sister, might have married, but devoted her life to her parents—& since to him.
1. Passage in angle brackets appears in Curtis’s edited transcript (ms at ABL).
