Page:Elizabeth Barrett Browning (Ingram, 5th ed.).djvu/158

142 personage present—of a man, also, closely connected with the story of our poetess.

"In the room sat a very large gentleman of between fifty and sixty years of age. His large, rosy face, bald head and rotund body, would have suggested a prosperous brewer, if a livelier intelligence had not twinkled in the bright, genial eyes. This unwieldy exterior covered one of the warmest and most generous of hearts. . . . The man was John Kenyon, who, giving up his early ambition to be known as an author, devoted his life to making other authors happy. . . . His house was open to all who handled pen, brush, or chisel. . . . He had called to say good-bye to his friends, and presently took his leave. 'There,' said Browning, when the door had closed after him, 'there goes one of the most splendid men living—a man so noble in his friendships, so lavish in his hospitality, so large-hearted and benevolent, that he deserves to be known all over the world as Kenyon the Magnificent.

Mrs. Browning now entered the room, and the American visitor says her husband ran to meet her with boyish liveliness. He describes her as "slight and fragile in appearance, with a pale, wasted face, shaded by masses of soft chesnut curls, which fell on her cheeks, and serious eyes of bluish-gray. Her frame seemed to be altogether disproportionate to her soul. . . . Her personality, frail as it appeared, soon exercised its power, and it seemed a natural thing that she should have written The Cry of the Children, or Lady Geraldine's Courtship."

Both the husband and wife, says Taylor, expressed great satisfaction with their American reputation, adding that they had many American acquaintances in Florence and Rome. "In fact," said Mr. Browning,