Page:Elizabeth Barrett Browning (Ingram, 5th ed.).djvu/152

136 The letter just quoted from intimates a probability of Mrs. Browning's visit to England. Indeed, for all her love for Italy she could not quite forego her affection for the old country and, as she had previously told Horne in 1848, "We haven't given up England altogether—we talk of spending summers there, and have a scheme of seeing you all next year, if circumstances should permit of it." Circumstances did not, however, work together happily for this scheme, and instead of summer in England, the autumn was spent at the Baths of Lucca. An intention to winter in Rome was, also, given up, and Christmas was spent in Florence, where Mr. Browning completed for publication his poem, Christmas-Eve and Easter Day, and his wife wrote the first part of her poem, Casa Guidi Windows, although the second portion of it was not written until two years later, the complete work being published in 1851.

It is, apparently, this restful period of Mrs. Browning's life that is referred to by Mrs. Ritchie, when she remarks, "Those among us who only knew Mrs. Browning as a wife and as a mother have found it difficult to realise her life under any other condition, so vivid and complete is the image of her peaceful home, of its fire-side where the logs are burning, and the mistress established on her sofa, with her little boy curled up by her side, the door opening and shutting meanwhile to the quick step of the master of the house and to the life of the world without, coming to find her in her quiet corner. We can recall the slight figure in its black silk dress, the writing apparatus by the sofa, the tiny inkstand, the quill-nibbed penholder, the unpretentious implements of her work. 'She was a little woman; she liked little things.' Her miniature editions of the classics are, with her name written