Autograph letter signed : Florence, to John Kenyon, 1853 January 16.

Discussing the warm winter weather and saying that they have had a letter from Isa Blagden in Rome speaking of "the ruin of the wood-sellers, nobody having as yet needed a fire"; sending news of EBB's health; discussing the renting of their house in Florence and their happy return to it; mentioning that Hiram Powers is moving into a larger house and describing two of his statues, "Washington" and "California"; commenting on the death of Horatio Greenough and a statue of his that remains in Leghorn; telling Knight that they have met Tennyson's older brother Frederick and his Italian wife and family; explaining in detail the course of the case against his father Robert Browning Sr. for breach of promise and defamation of character, brought by Martha von Müller; telling Kenyon that he has advised his father to offer his resignation to the Bank of England, which would allow him to retain two-thirds of his salary; writing that, despite these circumstances, his father and his sister Sarianna are in good spirits in Paris, where they have moved: "In a month or two we shall all see our way clearer, and the worst is past now. I should add that my Father is well as ever; of all his old spirits -- strange, in one sense; not in another. He reads at the Library & draws at the Louvre, having got leave for both; goes book-hunting as of old, 'shaping his old course in a country new,' like Lear's Kent. My child sends him real letters; all his own, conception and execution alike; which gladden his heart..."; concerning friends in London: mentioning that he heard that John Forster was at the dinner given for Charles Dickens in Birmingham on January 6th, sending "affectionate regards" to Kenyon's companion Sarah Bayley, saying that they have had a "not very comfortable letter from Mrs Jameson," and asking Kenyon to remember them to the Procters (Bryan, who wrote under the pseudonym "Barry Cornwall" and his wife Anne); writing of their time in London: "I felt all those spark-like hours in London struck out of the black element I was beset with -- all the brighter for it!"; sending EBB's "truest love" and telling him that he will insist on Kenyon accepting a bust from them, "which you will not like, Ba says. But she cannot know -- I shall find some way of sending it, or Powers will help me."