Browning came to the rescue of the fiery old gentleman, and helped by Seymour Kirkup put him under very definite obligations by a course of very generous conduct.  He was fully repaid in his own mind for his trouble by the mere presence and friendship of Landor, for whose quaint and volcanic personality he had a vast admiration, compounded of the pleasure of the artist in an oddity and of the man in a hero.  It is somewhat amusing and characteristic that Mrs. Browning did not share this unlimited enjoyment of the company of Mr. Landor, and expressed her feelings in her own humorous manner.  She writes, “Dear, darling Robert amuses me by talking of his gentleness and sweetness.  A most courteous and refined gentleman he is, of course, and very affectionate to Robert (as he ought to be), but of self-restraint he has not a grain, and of suspicion many grains.  What do you really say to dashing down a plate on the floor when you don’t like what’s on it?  Robert succeeded in soothing him, and the poor old lion is very quiet on the whole, roaring softly to beguile the time in Latin alcaics against his wife and Louis Napoleon.”

One event alone could really end this endless life of the Italian Arcadia.  That event happened on June 29, 1861.  Robert Browning’s wife died, stricken by the death of her sister, and almost as hard (it is a characteristic touch) by the death of Cavour.  She died alone in the room with Browning, and of what passed then, though much has been said, little should be.  He, closing the door of that room behind him, closed a door in himself, and none ever saw Browning upon earth again but only a splendid surface.

CHAPTER V

BROWNING IN LATER LIFE

Browning’s confidences, what there were of them, immediately after his wife’s death were given to several women-friends; all his life, indeed, he was chiefly intimate with women.  The two most intimate of these were his own sister, who remained with him in all his later years, and the sister of his wife, who seven years afterwards passed away in his presence as Elizabeth had done.  The other letters, which number only one or two, referring in any personal manner to his bereavement are addressed to Miss Haworth and Isa Blagden.  He left Florence and remained for a time with his father and sister near Dinard.  Then he returned to London and took up his residence in Warwick Crescent.  Naturally enough, the thing for which he now chiefly lived was the education of his son, and it is characteristic of Browning that he was not only a very indulgent father, but an indulgent father of a very conventional type:  he had rather the chuckling pride of the city gentleman than the educational gravity of the intellectual.