In the early weeks of 1855 Mrs Browning was seriously ill; through feverish nights of coughing, she had in her husband a devoted nurse.  His sleepless hours were troubled not only by anxiety on her account but by a passionate interest in the heroisms and miseries, of his fellow countrymen during the Crimean winter:  “when he is mild he wishes the ministry to be torn to pieces in the streets, limb from limb.”  Gradually his wife regained health, but she had not long recovered when tidings of the death of Miss Mitford came to sadden her.  Not until April did she feel once more a leap into life.  Browning was now actively at work in anticipation of printing his new volumes during the approaching visit to England.  “He is four hours a day,” his wife tells a correspondent, “engaged in dictating to a friend of ours who transcribes for him.”  And a little later she reports that they will take to England between them some sixteen thousand lines of verse, “eight on one side, eight on the other,” her husband’s total being already completed, her own still short of the sum by a thousand lines.  Allowance, as she pleads, had to be made for time spent in seeing that “Penini’s little trousers are creditably frilled and tucked.”  On the whole, notwithstanding illness and wrath directed against English ministerial blunders, this year of life in Florence had been rich in happiness—­a “still dream-life, where if one is over-busy ever, the old tapestries on the walls and the pre-Giotto pictures ... surround us, ready to quiet us again."[59] London lodgings did not look inviting from the distance of Italy; but the summons north was a summons to work, and could not be set aside.

The midsummer of 1855 found Browning and his wife in 13 Dorset Street, London, and Browning’s sister was with them.  The faithful Wilson, Mrs Browning’s maid, had married a Florentine, Ferdinando Romagnoli, and the husband also was now in their service.  The weeks until mid-October were occupied with social pleasures and close proof-reading of the sheets of Men and Women[60] Browning took his young friend the artist Leighton to visit Ruskin, and was graciously received.  Carlyle was, as formerly, “in great force, particularly in the damnatory clauses.”  But the weather was drooping, the skies misty, the air oppressive, and Mrs Browning, apart from these, had special causes of depression.  Her married sister Henrietta was away in Taunton, and the cost of travel prevented the sisters from meeting.  Arabella Barrett—­“my one light in London” is Mrs Browning’s word—­was too soon obliged to depart to Eastbourne.  And the Barrett household was disturbed by the undutifulness of a son who had been guilty of the unpardonable crime of marriage, and in consequence was now exiled from Wimpole Street.  In body and soul Mrs Browning felt strong yearnings for the calm of Casa Guidi.