working day, it baffles belief when one thinks of it as carried on
in the conditions of a Parisian winter, and the little 'salon' of the
apartment in the Rue du Colisee in which those months were spent. The
poem was completed in the ensuing summer, in Mr. Kenyon's London house,
and dedicated, October 17, in deeply pathetic words to that faithful
friend, whom the writer was never to see again.

The news of his death, which took place in December 1856, reached Mr.
and Mrs. Browning in Florence, to be followed in the spring by that of
Mrs. Browning's father. Husband and wife had both determined to forego
any pecuniary benefit which might accrue to them from this event; but
they were not called upon to exercise their powers of renunciation. By
Mr. Kenyon's will they were the richer, as is now, I think, generally
known, the one by six thousand, the other by four thousand guineas.* Of
that cousin's long kindness Mrs. Browning could scarcely in after-days
trust herself to speak. It was difficult to her, she said, even to write
his name without tears.

* Mr. Kenyon had considerable wealth, derived, like Mr.
Barrett's, from West Indian estates.

I have alluded, perhaps tardily, to Mr. Browning's son, a sociable
little being who must for some time have been playing a prominent part
in his parents' lives. I saw him for the first time in this winter of
1855-6, and remember the grave expression of the little round face,
the outline of which was common, at all events in childhood, to all the
members of his mother's family, and was conspicuous in her, if we may
trust an early portrait which has recently come to light. He wore the
curling hair to which she refers in a later letter, and pretty frocks
and frills, in which she delighted to clothe him. It is on record that,
on one of the journeys of this year, a trunk was temporarily lost which
contained Peni's embroidered trousers, and the MS., whole or in part, of
'Aurora Leigh'; and that Mrs. Browning had scarcely a thought to spare
for her poem, in face of the damage to her little boy's appearance which
the accident involved.

How he came by his familiar name of Penini--hence Peni, and Pen--neither
signifies in itself, nor has much bearing on his father's family
history; but I cannot refrain from a word of comment on Mr. Hawthorne's
fantastic conjecture, which has been asserted and reasserted in
opposition to Mr. Browning's own statement of the case. According to Mr.
Haw