2074. Elizabeth Clementine Kinney to Edmund Clarence Stedman
Published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 24, 259–260 (in part).
Casa del Bello, Florence,
May 6th 1857.
My darling Son:
No tardiness of mine shall stretch you on that rack of torture—waiting! …
My dear friend Mrs. Browning has just had a blow in the death of her father, which has quite prostrated her. She is such a frail thing nervously, that any such shock nearly finishes her: she was insensible for twelve hours after the news arrived, & tho’ a fortnight has passed since, does not yet see her nearest friends. Yet this father—a rich old reprobate—cast off his angel-daughter for marrying Mr. Browning! She has always hoped for a reconciliation, & now that he has died unrelentingly, she can scarcely bear it. Mr Browning once told us the story of their courtship & marriage, while we were lounging in the enchanted gardens of Pratolino, the summer villa of Francesco Primo of Tuscany, where he idled the rosy hours of love with his beautiful mistress (afterwards wife) Bianca Cappello. We four—Mr & Mrs B. Mr K. & I—had gone out there together to pass the day; had dined under the venerable trees, & were looking forth on as lovely a view as was ever bounded by these glorious Apennines, when the story was whispered “under the rose.” But tho’ it was entré nous—for the Brownings dread getting their private affairs into newspapers—I will tell it again to you in confidence. It was in brief on this wise: Mr B. had fallen in love with Miss Barrett’s poems and wrote requesting an introduction to herself. This, she at first refused, as she had scarce ever seen the face of man, &, like Miranda, knew by sight only her father, having been always confined to the sofa, a desperate invalid. However, a second letter brought consent to the interview. He came, & declared his love at first sight: she resented the offer, which seemed to her to mock her helpless state. So he left under her frown; but sent back his poems & a letter. While she read & mused, the fire burned! She believed him true, and again received him. He asked the father’s consent, & was peremptorily refused. So, with hers, he took her in his arms, put her in a carriage, carried her to a parson, & <the> poets’ love-knot was tied. Till then he <did not> even know that she could stand on her feet! He bore her—as tenderly as one would an infant—to Italy, where love & milder airs revived at once her drooping frame. In a year or so, she gave birth to their spiritual-eyed boy, whose poetic beauty failed even to touch the hard heart of the grandsire, & who is now seven years old. Mrs B’s life is love, & the world owes much to Robert Browning besides what is due for his own poems. They (the poet-pair) are the two extremes which meet harmoniously. She is something older perhaps than he (who is about forty, & she 45) but to him she lacks nothing of youth, beauty, or genius. Yet she is half Swedenborgian, & believes in “the Spirits”; he a Presbyterian, & protests them a humbug. They have spirited discussions; but they “love one another” in the true sense. I have often spoken of you to them. Mrs B. told Mr K. the other day that he was positively cruel not to let me go and see you. Yet she admires him, as all here do. …
Publication: “Mrs. Kinney’s Italian Reminiscences,” ed. Laura Stedman and George M. Gould, Neale’s Monthly, 1 (January 1913), 106–107 (in part).
Manuscript: Columbia University.
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