SD1823. Octavia Walton Le Vert to Sally Minge Walton
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 21, 375 (in part).
[Florence]
[24–] 28 May 1855]
The topic of this night’s tête-à-tête with you, dear Mamma, must form a letter apart from the excessively long one written yesterday.
I have spent the evening [24 May] at the Casa Guidi, with Mr. and Mrs. Browning, whose poems we have read with such earnest pleasure at home. We have mutual and dear friends in England, and soon after my arrival, we called upon them, and have found in their acquaintance another link of enchantment to bind Florence to memory forever.
During all the years of her early life, Elizabeth Barrett was an invalid, shut in from society, and often even from the conversation of friends. While a close prisoner in her chamber, she wrote beautiful and noble poems, which have made the delight of many a household beyond the Atlantic, and the joy of her compatriots. Robert Browning, himself a poet, a man of rare talent and great personal attraction, read these outpourings of her pure and gifted mind, and loved the unseen authoress. After many weary months of entreaty, he was allowed to visit her, as she lay upon the sofa of her boudoir. I need not tell you, the sight of her sweet and gentle face, and her beaming, soul-lit smile, completed the conquest her genius had commenced. He married her, and brought her immediately to Italy, where they have ever since resided. Although her health is still delicate, and requires the unceasing watchfulness of love and friendship, she becomes every year stronger in this delicious clime, and is the happy mother of a lovely little boy.
Robert Browning is an admirable man, frank, cheerful, and charming. He is said to be the most captivating conversationist on the Continent; (however, I think there are some in America quite equal to him). There is a genial warmth, and a sparkling merriment, in his words, which made us friends at once. Then Mrs. Browning I loved directly. Oh! she is indeed a precious gem! With all her varied and profound learning, and high poetic gift, she is as simple and unassuming in manner as a child. What a visit of joy it was to me, in their love-sanctified and art-beautified home. Their union seems perfect in happiness, the mind as well as the heart having met its own affinity. When we parted, after some hours of delightful conversation, wherein the bright and tender nature of Elizabeth Browning shone like soft beams of light, I felt as though years of pleasant acquaintance had passed between us. …
[Sunday, 27 May] Drove to Mrs. Kinney’s, where she had assembled a large party to do honor to my last evening. It was a perfect bouquet of notabilities, of poets and poetesses, of sculptors and painters. In truth, there was not a single uninteresting person in all the gathering. … An enchanting evening we spent, you may suppose, amid such genial, refined, and cordial people. Mrs. Browning, who rarely ever goes out at night, paid me the compliment of coming on my account. I cannot tell you how pained I was to part with these kind friends; it seemed as though I had known and loved them always. But the sad moment came at last; and with tears, and earnest blessings, we separated. …
Publication: Octavia Walton Le Vert, Souvenirs of Travel (New York, 1857), II, 228–239.
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