How glad I shall be if it is true that Tennyson is married! I believe in the happiness of marriage, for men especially.
Through the greater part of the summer of 1850 the Brownings held fast in Florence, and it was not until September, when Mrs. Browning was recovering from a rather sharp attack of illness, that they took a short holiday, going for a few weeks to Siena, a place which they were again to visit some years later, during the last two summers of Mrs. Browning's life. The letter announcing their arrival is the first in the present collection addressed to Miss Isa Blagden. Miss Blagden was a resident in Florence for many years, and was a prominent member of English society there. Her friendship, not only with Mrs. Browning, but with her husband, was of a very intimate character, and was continued after Mrs. Browning's death until the end of her own life in 1872.
Siena: September [1850].
Here I am keeping my promise, my dear Miss Blagden. We arrived quite safely, and I was not too tired to sleep at night, though tired of course, and the baby was a miracle of goodness all the way, only inclining once to a rabbia through not being able to get at the electric telegraph, but in ecstasies otherwise at everything new. We had to stay at the inn all night. We heard of a multitude of villas, none of which could be caught in time for the daylight. On Sunday, however, just as we were beginning to give it up, in Robert came with good news, and we were settled in half an hour afterwards here, a small house of some seven rooms, two miles from Siena, and situated delightfully in its own grounds of vineyard and olive ground, not to boast too much of a pretty little square flower-garden. The grapes hang in
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