"He is four hours a day," his wife tells a correspondent, "engaged in dictating to a friend of ours who transcribes for him." And a little later she reports that they will take to England between them some sixteen thousand lines of verse, "eight on one side, eight on the other," her husband's total being already completed, her own still short of the sum by a thousand lines.

Allowance, as she pleads, had to be made for time spent in seeing that "Penini's little trousers are creditably frilled and tucked." On the whole, notwithstanding illness and wrath directed against English ministerial blunders, this year of life in Florence had been rich in happiness--a "still dream-life, where if one is over-busy ever, the old tapestries on the walls and the pre-Giotto pictures ...

surround us, ready to quiet us again."[59] London lodgings did not look inviting from the distance of Italy; but the summons north was a summons to work, and could not be set aside.
The midsummer of 1855 found Browning and his wife in 13 Dorset Street, London, and Browning's sister was with them.

The faithful Wilson, Mrs Browning's maid, had married a Florentine, Ferdinando Romagnoli, and the husband also was now in their service.

The weeks until mid-October were occupied with social pleasures and close proof-reading of the sheets of _Men and Women_[60] Browning took his young friend the artist Leighton to visit Ruskin, and was graciously received.