Fall under the spell of Florence
Wander the elegant city, retracing the steps of writers Robert and Elizabeth Browning
They were an unlikely couple: he a young writer, dashing and ambitious, she a highly lauded poet six years his senior, a middle-aged invalid whose father kept her housebound.
But when Robert Browning sent Elizabeth Barrett a fan letter in January 1845 — “I love your verses with all my heart, dear Miss Barrett,” he gushed — he ignited a romance that defied not only her weak constitution, but also her controlling father’s prohibition of marriage, as well as the conventions of Victorian England.
After a 20-month courtship — conducted mainly within the sickroom that she hardly ever left — the pair married secretly and ran away, escaping the forbidding chill of London for a city that could feed their poetic souls with warmth and beauty. They moved to Florence, Italy. For nearly 15 years, the Brownings lived under the spell of this elegant Renaissance capital. Inspired by its magnificent architecture and piazzas, embraced by its artistic expatriate community, they produced some of their most famous works — including Browning’s
Men and Women and Barrett Browning’s Aurora Leigh — widely considered the most productive of their lives.
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But more than 150 years after Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s death ended the couple’s Florentine idyll, the pair seems largely forgotten by their muse, overshadowed by Dante, Michelangelo’s David and the city’s other treasures. There is no doubt that Florence left a mark on the Brownings. But during a visit last May, I set out to discover whether the Brownings had left their mark on Florence.
Even in the 19th century, Florence was apopular tourist destination, particularly for upper-crust Victorians who, continuing the previous century’s tradition of the grand tour, flocked here to enhance their knowledge of art and the classics. Indeed, the city’s touristy reputation initially deterred the Brownings — freshly arrived from England, they lingered for months in Pisa, planning only a brief stop in Florence before heading to Rome. But when they arrived in Florence in 1847, they found themselves captured by the city’s sublime beauty. “Florence holds us with a glittering eye; there’s a charm cast round us, and we can’t get away,” Elizabeth wrote in a letter to a friend.
After a few false starts, the couple (along with Elizabeth’s loyal lady’s maid, Wilson, and dog, Flush) settled “six paces from the Piazza Pitti” in a grand suite of rooms they called Casa Guidi. Tuscany’s temperate climate suited her frail health — and Italy’s reasonable prices suited both poets’ slim pocketbooks (which were even slimmer after Elizabeth’s father, furious at her marriage, disowned her).
They quickly made friends within a large community of English-speaking artists and writers who had moved to the city for similar reasons.
Armed with a reprint of an antique map, I set out to find some of the AngloFlorentine haunts of the Brownings and their set. At first glance, the city’s centre — its magnificent, well-manicured architecture shining with eternal beauty — appeared untouched since the Re- naissance. But the particular establishments I sought, once popular among the Brownings and their set, had long ago disappeared.
At Piazza Santa Trinita, I gazed at the Palazzo Bartolini Salembeni, a majestic structure that once housed the Hotel du Nord, popular among well-heeled travellers; today the building is privately owned, its doors firmly shut and bolted.
On the elegant shopping street, Via de’ Tornabuoni, I looked for the ornate, gilded interiors of the Gran Caffé Doney — a British favourite featured in the Franco Zeffirelli film Tea With Mussolini — but instead found a boutique hotel. Even the British Consulate had vanished; I later learned that it closed in 2011, shuttered after 500 years of diplomatic presence in Florence.
At the massive Palazzo Strozzi, I did find the Gabinetto Vieusseux, a private lending library frequented by Robert where, for a hefty membership fee, he read English periodicals and exchanged ideas with other expatriates. But the institute moved to its current location several decades ago, and the collection is open to visitors solely by appointment.
I crossed to the other side of the Arno, pausing to admire the statues on the Ponte Santa Trinita.
The river sparkled before me, edged with pastel-coloured Renaissance buildings, the gap-toothed, medieval clock tower of the Palazzo Vecchio looming above jagged red rooftops.
Still endeavouring to retrace their daily footsteps, I entered the Boboli Gardens from a side gate on Via Romana. Their rent at Casa Guidi included free admission to these manicured grounds of the Palazzo Pitti, and the couple often came here with their son, Pen, a beloved only child who was born in Florence in 1849, after Elizabeth had suffered two miscarriages.
Lined with clipped hedges, dotted with elaborate grottoes and serene reflecting pools, the formal gardens seemed like an odd place for a child to frolic.
Then again, Pen was surely no ordinary child, dressed by his mother to resemble a Renaissance prince.
Back on the Via Romana, I turned toward the Casa Guidi, only a few steps away. Sweeping across the first floor of a 15th-century palazzo, the Brownings’ former apartment is today owned by Eton College, which maintains it as a museum, open three days a week from April to November; the Landmark Trust, a British nonprofit organization, also manages it as a holiday rental.
Inside the imposing, high-ceilinged rooms I gazed at decor replicated from the Brownings’ era, including stiff Victorian furniture, drawing room walls of seafoam green and heavy red curtains. Elizabeth’s desk stands in the centre of the drawing room, facing a bank of tall windows. In this spot, she wrote some of her finest work, including Casa Guidi Windows, a book-length poem inspired by the pageantry unfolding on the street below.
On the exterior wall of Casa Guidi, a plaque honours “Elisabetta Barret Browning/ Who in her woman’s heart reconciled/ a scholar’s learning and a poet’s spirit/ And whose poems forged a golden ring/ between Italy and England,” placed there in 1861 by a “grateful Florence.”
It was just one small sign in a bustling city. But it was a sign, nevertheless, that Florence has not forgotten the Brownings after all.