[Venice—Monday, 24 September 1888]
Dined at Casa Alvisi. Brownings, Hamilton Aidé, Howes. Aidé said he had written a poem on our garden at Giudecca where he visited us 5 years ago. Sat by Miss Browning, who saw Pianori shoot at Nap. III. who always walked his horse up the incline from Arc de l’Etoile.
Mr Browning said he was in Paris 3 months during Coup d’Etat and daily walked everywhere. He saw nothing of the tuerie,[1] alleged by Kinglake & others, and “don’t believe a word of it!”
Said he paid £5000 for his new house in London.
Browning spoke with emphasis of disgust & contempt for Zola’s writing—wh. many of the younger & ‘advanced’ literary men & women in England at this day do not at all repudiate. ‘Art’ is the pretext for coarseness—& objectors are ‘Philistines.’
1. “Slaughter”; or “carnage.”