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Updated: May 1, 2025
He talked English with no further accent than served to add a raciness to the flavour of his conversation; and every morning of one fixed day in the week he used to come to Ricorboli for what he called a tobacco parliament. I used frequently to spend the evening at his villa, where one met a somewhat extraordinary cosmopolitan gathering.
One morning at the villa I then possessed, at Ricorboli, close to Florence, a maid-servant came flying into the room, where I was still in bed at six o'clock in the morning, crying out in the utmost excitement, "C'è il Generale! c'è il Generale; e chiede di lei, signore!" "Here's the General! here's the General! And he is asking for you, sir!"
She had by that time, I cannot but think, reached a brighter outlook and happier frame of mind. We had as neighbours at Ricorboli, although on the opposite bank of the Arno, our old and very highly-valued friends, Mr. G.P. Marsh, the United States Minister, and his charming wife, to whom for the sake of both parties we were desirous of introducing our distinguished guests.
In 1869-70, George Eliot and Mr. Lewes visited Italy for the fourth time. I had since the date of their former visit quitted my house in Florence, and established myself in a villa and small podere at Ricorboli, a commune outside the Florentine Porta San Niccolò. And there I had the great pleasure of receiving them under my roof, assisted in doing so by my present wife.
A really magnificent carriage-road, ornamented with gardens on either side of it, was led in well-arranged curves up to San Miniato, and down on the other side of the hill till it reaches the Arno at the village of Ricorboli. The entire course of this road commands a series of varied views of the city and the Vale of Arno than which nothing can be conceived more charming.
Lewes to my house at Ricorboli that I and my wife visited them at The Heights, Witley, in Surrey. I found that George Eliot had grown! She was evidently happier. There was the same specially quiet and one may say harmonious gentleness about her manner and her thought and her ways. But her outlook on life seemed to be a brighter, a larger, and as I cannot doubt, a healthier one.
Neither she nor Lewes had ever passed a night under my roof until I received them in the villa at Ricorboli, where I lived with my second wife. What was the subject of the "antagonism" to which the above letter alludes, I have entirely forgotten. In all probability we differed on some subject of politics, by reason of the then rapidly maturing Conservatism which my outlook ahead forced upon me.
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