tened circumstances, which were ultimately relieved, in part, by a
subscription among her friends and the admirers of her works.

[42] Dr. Braun's _Ruins and Museums of Rome_ (1854).

[43] The late Lord Leighton, P.R.A.

[44] The picture of Cimabue's Madonna carried in procession through the
streets of Florence. It was exhibited in the Royal Academy Exhibition of
1855, and was bought by the Queen.

[45] In 1852.

CHAPTER IX

1855-1859

About a month after the date of the last letter, Mr. and Mrs. Browning
left Italy for the second time. As on the previous occasion (1851-2),
their absence extended over two summers and a winter, the latter being
spent in Paris, while portions of each summer were given up to visits to
England. Each of them was bringing home an important work for
publication, Mr. Browning's 'Men and Women,' containing much of his very
greatest poetry, being passed through the press in 1855, while Mrs.
Browning's 'Aurora Leigh,' although more than half of it had been
written before she left Florence, was not ready for printing until the
following year. They travelled direct from Florence to London, arriving
there apparently in the course of July, and taking up their quarters at
13 Dorset Street. Their stay there was made memorable, as Mrs. Browning
records below, by a visit from Tennyson, who read to them, on September
27, his new poem of 'Maud;' and it was while he was thus employed that
Rossetti drew a well-known portrait of the Laureate in pen and ink. But
in spite of glimpses of Tennyson, Ruskin, Carlyle, Kenyon, and other
friends, the visit to England was, on the whole, a painful one to Mrs.
Browning. Intercourse with her own family did not run smooth. One sister
was living at too great a distance to see her; the other was kept out of
her reach, for a considerable part of the time, by her father. In
addition, a third member of the Barrett family, her brother Alfred,
earned excommunication from his father's house by the unforgivable
offence of matrimony. Altogether it was not without a certain feeling of
relief that, in the middle of October, Mrs. Browning, with her husband
and child, left England for Paris. The whole visit had been so crowded
with work and social engagements as to leave little time for
correspondence; and the letters for the period are consequently few and
short.

* * * * *

_To Mrs. Martin_

13 Dorset Street, Baker Street:
Tuesday,