3427. EBB to Isa Blagden
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 20, 233–234.
Casa Guidi.
Thursday– [8 June 1854] [1]
If you had not written, my dearest Isa, I should have gone to you today, for I have felt hideously unkind in not having communicated with you yet by voice or face. Certainly you shall have us on saturday, and then you shall fix about Penini whom everybody is condoling with me upon, he is really so pale & thin. Yet as his appetite has become voracious, there is hope in Israel, [2] or Tuscany rather.
It was sad to miss you last night. By the way you did not mean me to invite your company for you—did you? Dearest Isa, I must have seemed to you as obtuse & cold as a stone, not to have attended to your affectionate request for a letter before we left Rome. I waited, because of the extreme uncertainty we were in as to the way & day of going– We decided nothing till the day before the setting out, & then I did’nt take breath from morning till night as you may fancy, & determined to write to you (& M. Biondi) [3] from an inn on the road. One night I reached the halting place with a splitting headache which incapacitated me, & another, just as I was preparing my desk, Robert ascertained on enquiry that we should be sure to arrive in Florence before the letter. I told Virginia [4] to tell you all this, but I cant set it too clearly before you. Last night we had Mr & Mrs Walpole, Mr Tennyson, Capt & Mrs Wilson, [5] & Mr Norton [6] .. not the wife from Capri, whom I should have liked to see––& we all walked home by starlight & fire-fly light, to the song of nightingales. [7]
How I long to see you,—& dear Louisa too, who is said to be looking very well. Wont Virginia come to see us when she comes into Florence? Yes, I know she is pleased to stay, and I am pleased too that she should stay. What happy inspirations your goodness has, Isa!
Well—I must’nt keep your messenger– I am educating myself up to the level of civilized society by back-numbers of Galignani. Presently I shall come to Brecker–
Your ever most affectionate
Ba–
Address, on integral page: Miss Blagden / Villa Moutier.
Publication: B-IB, pp. 54–56.
Manuscript: Fitzwilliam Museum.
1. Dating based on EBB’s expression of guilt over having not yet communicated with Isa after the Brownings’ return from Rome. They left Rome on 26 May 1854 and arrived in Florence on or about 1 June.
2. Ezra 10:2.
3. Lorenzo Biondi (b. 1793) was currently the agent through whom the Brownings were trying to sublet Casa Guidi (see the end of the first paragraph in letter 3227). They had engaged his wife, Maria Anna Biondi (née Bosi, b. 1784?), as a nurse when Pen was born. For this and many other annotations that draw upon Italian sources in the present volume, the editors gratefully acknowledge the scholarly assistance of Simonetta Berbeglia, of Arezzo, Italy.
4. Virginia Vaughan; see letter 3411, note 2.
5. Fleetwood Thomas Hugh Wilson (1817–62), retired army captain, and his wife Harriet Horatia (née Walker, 1826–1907). The Wilsons married in 1849, spending their honeymoon in Italy. They remained there for financial reasons after Captain Wilson’s fortune was lost by his elder brother.
6. Thomas Brinsley Norton (1831–77), son of George Norton, younger brother of the 3rd Baron Grantley, and his poet wife Caroline (née Sheridan). His Church of England marriage to Maria Chiara Elisa (née Federigo, 1834–92) in Florence 1 August 1854 was witnessed by Frederick Tennyson (ICS). Evidently, they had married in a Roman Catholic ceremony in May. In an 18 May 1854 letter to his father, Robert Lytton wrote that Norton “has just married” (ms with Cobbold).
7. The evening was spent at Lytton’s villa; see the third to last paragraph in letter 3429.
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