Page:Elizabeth Barrett Browning (Ingram, 5th ed.).djvu/193

Rh hung with Gobelin tapestry and pictures, and filled with carved furniture and objects of vertù. Everything harmonized—poet, poetess, child, house, the rich air, and the starry night. Pennini was an Ariel, flitting about, gentle, tricksy, and intellectual."

What a picture does not this present to the mind's eye! The Hawthornes and the Brownings, gathered together in that weird old Florentine palace and conversing as only they could. How thoroughly one can sympathise with Mrs. Hawthorne when she exclaims "It rather disturbed my dream! to have other guests come in. Eventually tea was brought and served or a long, narrow table, placed before a sofa, and Mrs Browning presided. We all gathered at this table. Pennini handed about the cake, graceful as Ganymede."

"Little Pennini," says Hawthorne, who appears to have been much interested in young Browning, "sometimes helped the guests to cake and strawberries, joined in the conversation when he had anything to say, or sat down upon a couch to enjoy his own meditations. He has long curling hair, and has not yet emerged from his frock and short hose. It is funny to think of putting him into trousers. His likeness to his mother is strange to behold."

After alluding to there being other guests present, Hawthorne remarked that "Mr. Browning was very efficient in keeping up conversation with everybody, and seemed to be in all parts of the room and in every group at the same moment; a most vivid and quick-thoughted person, logical and common-sensible, as I presume poets generally are in their daily talk."

A pleasant evening was passed by that group of noteworthy persons, who have now nearly all escaped