SD2181. Diary Entry of Nathaniel Hawthorne
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 25, 357 (in part).
Florence,
June 27th, Sunday. [1858]
I have had a heavy cold and fever almost throughout the past week, and have thereby lost the great Florentine festivity, the feast of St. John …
Last evening, my wife, Una, and I, went to pass the evening with Miss Blagden, who inhabits a villa at Bellosguardo, about a mile outside of the walls. The situation is very lofty, and there are good views from every window of the house, and an especially fine one of Florence and the hills beyond, from the balcony of the drawing-room. It was too far on the edge of evening, however, to see it so distinctly as might be desired. By and by came Mr. Browning, Mr. Trollope, Mr. Boot[t] of Boston and a young daughter, and two or three other gentlemen whom I do not know; and besides there was Miss Blagden’s companion, a very pretty and pleasant young lady. Miss Blagden seems to be a likeable and intelligent person, with literary culture and affinities, being a friend, for example, of Sir Lytton Bulwer. Browning, too, evidently knows her well and likes her proportionably. He was very genial and full of life, as usual; but his conversation has the effervescent aroma which you cannot catch, even if you get the very words that seem to be imbued with it. He spoke most rapturously of a portrait of his wife, which an Italian artist is painting for the wife of an American gentleman, as a present from her husband. The success was already perfect, although there had been only two sittings as yet, and both on the same day; and in this relation, Mr. Browning remarked that Page, the American artist, had had no less than seventy-three sittings of him for a portrait. In the result, every hair and speck of him was represented; yet—as I inferred from what he did not say—this accumulation of minute truths did not, after all, amount to the true whole.
I do not remember much else that Browning said, except in playful abuse of a little King Charles’s spaniel, named Frolic, Miss Blagden’s lapdog, whose venerable age (he is eleven years old) ought to have pleaded in his behalf.—Browning’s nonsense is of very genuine and excellent quality, the true bubble and effervescence of a bright and powerful mind, and he lets it play among his friends with the faith and simplicity of a child. He must be an amiable man. I should like him much (and should make him like me) if opportunities were favorable.
Publication: Hawthorne, 14, 335–339.
Manuscript: Pierpont Morgan Library.
___________________
