SD2624. Theodosia Trollope to The Athenæum
Published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 30, 355–356.
[Florence]
16 January 1863
A commemorative tablet, of the kind so frequently used in the cities of Italy to mark the birthplace or the once dwelling of the illustrious dead whom the nation delights to honour, has recently been let into the façade wall of one of the sternest and dreariest looking of the old palazzi of Florence, and marks it henceforward for all time as among the “holy places” of pilgrimage to be visited reverently by the yearly tribe of strangers, especially of English, who set up their temporary rest in Florence.
The house in question is the last in the Via Maggio on the right hand going from the river towards the Porta Romana. It is grey and grim, of the true old Florentine build, with deep projecting eaves and a cavernous dark portone or entrance-door, showing an inner courtyard and an iron gate at the foot of the broad staircase. The front of the house looks into a small piazzetta, sunny, irregular, and cheerful enough. From this side of the building there is a view of one corner of the Pitti Palace, and of part of the area before it. On the other side of the house, which is turned towards an adjacent narrow street and faces a blank church-wall, part of the first floor projects slightly over the basement storey, as may often be seen here in the old palazzi; and the projecting portion is supported on a row of small arches or machicolations, and forms a quaint stone balcony on which the principal sitting-rooms of the house open. This sombre old mansion is the Casa Guidi,—a name for several years past as well known in England as in Florence, even to such as have never crossed the Channel. One of the latest departed from among the elect of England’s poets, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, has consecrated the name of the house she resided in for many years, by bestowing it upon a poem which contains some of her noblest veins of thought and most living pictures of vivid Southern life. It was, in very truth, from the queer old arch-supported side balcony mentioned above, that the authoress of ‘Casa Guidi Windows,’ looking out from the studious seclusion imposed upon her by year-long suffering, saw the great national festa of 1847, when Tuscany, like all Italy, was trying to satisfy her yearnings after national independence by the vain promise of the dream that a reforming Pope and an Austrian Archduke could be her pioneers in the march of freedom. It was here that the English poetess watched the long procession of that “feast of banners” stream upwards to the Pitti Square, filling every thoroughfare with shouts and vivas and fluttering tricolor; and while catching up the confused utterances of the people’s aspiration and harmonizing them into the triumphant music of her song, her prophetic foreboding of Grand-Ducal treachery and tyranny a-head struck in with a sad minor chord through the pauses of rejoicing.
Mrs. Browning, as all know, was a staunch and life-long lover of Italy; and the beautiful land where she lived so long, and where her last breath was drawn, repaid with fervent gratitude the generous championship of her powerful pen, displayed at a time when hard words and taunts were the too frequent recognition of Italy’s earnest though, in some respects, mistaken efforts towards self-deliverance.
The Municipality of Florence has lately testified the feeling of the nation for the memory of the great and good woman gone to her rest, by the memorial tablet of white marble, the first, I believe, through the length and breadth of Italy, erected in honour of any but an Italian. It bears the following inscription, which is as unaffected as it is a true expression of affectionate regret, respect and admiration:—
“Here wrote and died Elizabeth Barrett Browning, who in her woman’s soul united the learning of a sage to the genius of a poet, and created by her song a golden link between Italy and England. To her Florence in gratitude erects this memorial.”
Th. T.
Text: The Athenæum, 31 January 1863, p. 153.
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