[Footnote 76:  On Browning’s action in the affairs of Landor see Forster’s Life of Landor, and the letters of Browning in vol. ii. of Henry James’s Life of Story (pp. 6-11).]

[Footnote 77:  See, for this residence at Siena, an interesting letter of Story to C. Eliot Norton in Henry James’s W.W.  Story, vol. ii. pp. 14, 15.]

[Footnote 78:  Condensed from information given by Prinsep to Mrs Orr, Life and Letters of R.B., pp. 234-37.]

[Footnote 79:  Letters of E.B.B., ii. 388, note.  Mr Kenyon suggests A Death in the Desert as at least possibly meant. The Ring and the Book “certainly had not yet been begun.”]

[Footnote 80:  Halting at Siena, whence Browning wrote an account of the journey to Story:  Henry James’s W.W.  Story, ii. pp. 50-52.]

[Footnote 81:  H. James’s W.W.  Story, vol. ii. pp. 111, 113.]

[Footnote 82:  Henry James tells of a children’s party at the Palazzo Barberini, Rome, of several years earlier, when Hans Andersen read “The Ugly Duckling,” and Browning, “The Pied Piper”; which led to “a grand march through the spacious Barberini apartment, with Story doing his best on a flute in default of bagpipes.” W.W.  Story, vol. i.p. 286.]

[Footnote 83:  The circumstances of Mrs Browning’s death are described as above, but with somewhat fuller detail, in a letter of Browning to Miss Haworth, July 20, 1861, first printed by Mrs Orr.  Many details of interest will be found in a long letter of Story, Henry James’s W.W.  Story, vol. ii. pp. 61-68:  “She talked with him and jested and gave expression to her love in the tenderest words; then, feeling sleepy, and he supporting her in his arms, she fell into a doze.  In a few minutes, suddenly, her head dropped forward.  He thought she had fainted, but she had gone for ever.”  A painful account of the funeral service, “blundered through by a fat English parson,” is given by Story.]

Chapter XI

London:  Dramatis Personae

The grief of the desolate man was an uncontrollable passion; his heart was strong and all its strength entered into its sorrow.  Miss Blagden, “perfect in all kindness,” took motherly possession of the boy, and persuaded his father to accompany Penini to her villa at Bellosguardo.  When all that was needful at Casa Guidi had been done, Browning’s first thought was to abandon Italy for many a year, and hasten to London, there to have speech for a day or two at least with Mrs Browning’s sister Arabel.  “The cycle is complete,” he said, looking round the sitting-room of Casa Guidi.  “I want my new life,” he wrote, “to resemble the last fifteen years as little as possible.”  Yet while he stayed in the accustomed rooms he held himself together; “when I was moved,” he says, “I began to go to pieces."[84] Yet something remained to sustain him.