3313. EBB to Isa Blagden
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 20, 48–49.
[Rome]
[January 1854] [1]
My dearest Isa, So vexed I was that you did not come on sunday, as the Thackeray girls were here & we might have tried the tables. Come on wednesday—yes, do!–
I return the verses [2] which are full of impulse– Both Robert & I like them much & praise them. There are the MSS too, which you will suspect me of appropriating in the way of authorship—but I will give them to yourself when you come.
Annie Thackeray is in a fit of shyness about returning your card & wanted me to go with her to your house. Robert offered to go as chaperone & was accepted—but you know him how he promises & puts off performing. On his own account he likes visiting you extremely, & has resolved on going ever so many evenings. But engagements come. He was in a triangle of three invitations last night & went to Miss Watkins Wynn’s, [3] where Mr Milnes Gaskell (M.P) [4] told him the last political news by telegraph .. that the queen had sent for Lord Palmerston. [5] I do hope it is true. Less agreeable reports were current on sunday evening about the assassination of Louis Napoleon [6] —in which case, what the end would be, God knows! I dont believe it however.
Not a word about your knee? [7] Miss Wynn comes to us tonight or you would have Robert surely–
How very very kind you are to Penini—& to me therefore!! Thank you, dearest Isa– He has been drinking wine & water ever since your bottles came, day & night. Will Miss Hayes & Miss Hosmer come with you on wednesday? Do as you like about asking them.
Your ever affecte Ba–
Publication: B-IB, pp. 47–48.
Manuscript: Fitzwilliam Museum.
1. Approximate dating based on EBB’s reference to “the Thackeray girls,” who were in Rome with their father from 3 December 1853 to 8 February 1854.
2. Probably “The Church of the Gesù,” which in letter 3462 EBB recalls having read “before in Rome.”
3. Charlotte Williams-Wynn (1807–69).
4. James Milnes Gaskell (1810–73), a Lord of the Treasury, was M.P. for Wenlock from 1832 until 1868. He married Mary Watkin Williams-Wynn (1809–69), Charlotte’s sister, in 1832.
5. In mid-December 1853 Palmerston resigned as home secretary in Aberdeen’s administration; however, within several days he decided that he had acted in haste and returned to his former position by the end of the year. The Queen did not send for Palmerston to form a government as prime minister until February 1855. EBB’s expression of relief that “the queen had sent for Lord Palmerston” is presumably a reference to the tension that had long existed between him and the Crown. According to Lytton Strachey in Queen Victoria (1921), after Palmerston’s resignation in December, it had been “everywhere asserted and believed that the Queen’s husband [Prince Albert] … had forced Palmerston out of the Government,” although this was not the case (p. 242).
6. Napoleon III had not been assassinated. We have been unable to trace any reports of an attempt on his life during this period.
7. An injury to Isa’s knee had evidently occurred not long before the Brownings’ arrival in Rome, as indicated by EBB in letter 3351.
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