nd
I must say that my Robert has generously paid the debt. Robert always
said that he owed more as a writer to Landor than to any contemporary.
At present Landor is very fond of him--but I am quite prepared for his
turning against us as he has turned against Forster, who has been so
devoted for years and years. Only one isn't kind for what one gets by
it, or there wouldn't be much kindness in this world. . . .'

Mr. Browning always declared that his wife could impute evil to no one,
that she was a living denial of that doctrine of original sin to which
her Christianity pledged her; and the great breadth and perfect charity
of her views habitually justified the assertion; but she evidently
possessed a keen insight into character, which made her complete
suspension of judgment on the subject of Spiritualism very difficult to
understand.

The spiritualistic coterie had found a satisfactory way of explaining
Mr. Browning's antagonistic attitude towards it. He was jealous, it was
said, because the Spirits on one occasion had dropped a crown on to his
wife's head and none on to his own. The first instalment of his
long answer to this grotesque accusation appears in a letter of Mrs.
Browning's, probably written in the course of the winter of 1859-60.

'. . . My brother George sent me a number of the "National Magazine"
with my face in it, after Marshall Wood's medallion. My comfort is that
my greatest enemy will not take it to be like me, only that does not go
far with the indifferent public: the portrait I suppose will have its
due weight in arresting the sale of "Aurora Leigh" from henceforth. You
never saw a more determined visage of a strong-minded woman with the
neck of a vicious bull. . . . Still, I am surprised, I own, at the
amount of success, and that golden-hearted Robert is in ecstasies about
it, far more than if it all related to a book of his own. The form of
the story, and also, something in the philosophy, seem to have caught
the crowd. As to the poetry by itself, anything good in that repels
rather. I am not so blind as Romney, not to perceive this . . . Give
Peni's and my love to the dearest 'nonno' (grandfather) whose sublime
unselfishness and want of common egotism presents such a contrast to
what is here. Tell him I often think of him, and always with touched
feeling. (When _he_ is eighty-six or ninety-six, nobody will be pained or
humbled by the spectacle of an insane self-love resulting from a long