rl sculptor and placed on
her finger a ring of diamonds surrounding a ruby. Browning's early friend,
M. de Ripert-Monclar, to whom he had dedicated his "Paracelsus," and
Lockhart, were also in Rome; and Leighton was completing his great canvas
of Cimabue's Madonna carried in procession through the streets of
Florence.

The Brownings were domiciled in the Bocca di Leone, while the Storys were
in the Piazza di Spagna; Thackeray and his two daughters were close at
hand, in and out at the Brownings', with his "talk of glittering dust
swept out of salons." There were Hans Christian Andersen, and Fanny
Kemble, with her sister, Mrs. Sartoris, and Lady Oswald, a sister of Lord
Elgin. Thackeray's daughter, Miss Anne Thackeray (now Lady Ritchie), still
finds vivid her girlish memory of Mrs. Browning,--"a slight figure in a
thin black gown and the unpretentious implements of her magic," by her
sofa, on a little table. Lady Ritchie turns back to her diary of that
winter to find in it another of her early impressions of Mrs. Browning,
"in soft, falling flounces of black silk, with her heavy curls drooping,
and a thin gold chain around her neck." This chain held a tiny locket of
crystal set in coils of gold, which she had worn from childhood, not at
all as an ornament, but as a little souvenir. On her death Mr. Browning
put into it some of her hair, and gave the treasured relic to Kate Field,
from whom it came later into the possession of the writer of this book.
Lady Ritchie recalls one memorable evening that season in the salon of
Mrs. Sartoris, when the guests assembled in the lofty Roman drawing-room,
full of "flowers and light, of comfort and color." She recalls how the
swinging lamps were lighted, shedding a soft glow; how the grand piano
stood open, and there was music, and "tables piled with books," and
flowers everywhere. The hostess was in a pearl satin gown with flowing
train, and sat by a round table reading aloud from poems of Mr. Browning,
when the poet himself was announced, "and as she read, in her wonderful
muse-like way, he walked in." All the lively company were half laughing
and half protesting, and Mrs. Kemble, with her regal air, called him to
her side, to submit to him some disputed point, which he evaded. Mrs.
Sartoris had a story, with which she amused her guests, of a luncheon with
the Brownings, somewhere in Italy, where, when she rose to go, and
remarked how delightful it had been, and the other guests join