SD1457. Charles Eliot Norton to Catherine Eliot Norton
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 16, 305–306 (in part).
Florence. No 4599 Piazza Sta Maria Novella
Saturday eveg. Nov’r 16th [–19] 1850.
My dearest Friends
I cannot let my birthday pass without writing a word of love to you …
I find also here many other acquaintances more or less agreeable … Captain Burton who was at Venice last spring, & of whom I then told you is also here …
As I returned to my rooms stopping by the way at a bookstore, and giving myself a birthday present of Vasari and Machiavelli, I sat down at my table to write a letter to Child, and had not finished it when I heard a knock at my door and opening it saw my friend Mr. Black of whom I wrote you from London. I had no idea that he was in Florence and I was very glad to see him for he is a very agreeable and cultivated man, and having spent many years in Italy is one of the most valuable acquaintance I could have here. He had heard of me from Mr Browning, and had most kindly come at once to see me. … He had hardly gone when there was another knock and in came Mr Browning himself. I left Mr Kenyon’s letter for him yesterday, and he told me that he had been to see me this morning & not having found me had come again this afternoon. This was certainly very kind. He has little the appearance of a poet, but I must see him again and talk more with him before I tell you of him. Our conversation this afternoon was principally about his American friends; both he & Mr Black, like many cultivated Englishmen, are fond of Amricans and profess to prefer those whom they have known to the great majority of their own countrymen. Mr Browning told me that his wife’s health was so delicate that they exercised only the simplest hospitality, but that they would be glad to see me on any evening and whenever I liked to come. I shall go to see them on Monday or Tuesday. So you see I shall have a very pleasant time in Florence with such acquaintances. …
Monday afternoon. [18 November 1850]
Two pleasant days have almost passed since I wrote those last words …
I have to tell you of a visit yesterday to Santa Croce; of a charming dinner with Mr and Mrs Black and their children at their villa out of town; of a forenoon to-day at the unsurpassable gallery of the Pitti Palace, and now (for it is five hours later than when I began to write) of a very pleasant eveg with Mr and Mrs Browning. It is indeed too late for me to tell you of all these tonight, and I will only write a little about the Brownings of whom you will care to hear more than of anything else. I had formed as you have imaginations with regard to both of them from their works and from the accounts which we have heard of them,—but I confess my imaginations were much at fault so far as I can judge from this first time of seeing them. They live in a house, which is decorated with the name of the Palazzo Guidi though it has nothing palatial in its character except its size, not far from the Pitti palace. I found them to-night sitting in a pleasant home-like room, surrounded with pictures and books, with an open fire shedding a genial light through it. I had hardly entered when a Mr Stuart an Englishman, accompanied by an Italian gentleman, came in. This I regretted for of course the conversation became more general and less interesting to me than if I had been alone with Mr and Mrs Browning. Browning himself has a pleasant open expression and manner, and neither in his looks or conversation resembles the idea one would receive of him from his poems. There is nothing obscure, nothing different from what you would expect from any man of taste & letters in his conversation. His manners are quite simple, he claims nothing for himself, and does not suggest or call upon you to recognize in any way that he is a poet. Mrs Browning is even more slight and delicate in her appearance than I had supposed. Her manners are reserved and timid, her voice is low and she joined but little in the conversation. You feel as if she were so distrustful of herself that she kept back the expression of her sentiments & thoughts from all but those with whom she was familiar,—and, knowing what those thoughts and sentiments must be you long so to win her confidence as to lead her to express them to you. Her face is pleasing, but like her voice and manner is melancholy and quiet, but full of sensibility. You would not believe from it that she had written as she has. You would believe her to have been the most delicate & sensitive of poets, not one to have written poems which show as hers do very great intellectual strength and power of expression. — These are my first impressions—two or three weeks hence I will write you later ones. …
Publication: Letters of Charles Eliot Norton, ed. Sara Norton and M. A. DeWolfe Howe (Boston, 1913), 1, 73–75 (in part).
Manuscript: Harvard University.
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