3514. EBB to Isa Blagden
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 21, 64–65.
[Florence]
[ca. 7 February 1855] [1]
My dearest Isa[,] Marianne is going sooner than I had supposed, & I scribble in her last minute. Thank you, dear, for all your goodness to me! The papers are very welcome. Understand that the last batch was returned to you instantly unless they evaporated in Rosa’s [2] hands.
What things you do, Isa! Choke yourself with bones! You really cant keep your hands (or knees) from self-destruction! If it had been I, I would not have stayed in bed! I would rather have kept a perpendicular position to facilitate the descent of the undigested substance. Tomorrow may the difficulty be altogether past– I shall send to hear.
As for myself, I am hoping to have leave to enjoy you very soon—but you shant come in the day & have the fatigue of the stairs, for a short visit. I assure you I am getting through it– Last night was my best night, & the coughing-fit in the morning was decidedly less violent. Also, the top of the evil, (the racing of the pulse) has come down most satisfactorily– But I am weak—oh, so weak. In the mornings I feel as if I had been dragged through a horse-pond as a witch—broken & exhausted—really scarcely able to keep up on my feet– Still this will pass– I had a little mutton in my soup today by way of getting strength–
I have the ‘Mystères de Paris’– [3] It’s a struggle with me sometimes to read anything much less write, yet I persist & flog myself up to the leap at my poem most mornings, to do something if ever so little.
Robert is frantic about the Crimea. Never was a ministry so dishonored as the present (or late one) by that astounding majority of a hundred & fifty five! [4] If it were not for the amount of personal suffering, I could find it in my head to be glad at the necessary shock to our hideous feudal system [5] in England—which we should have gone on cobbling & patching at inch by inch, otherwise. This adversity will do more good than fifty years of discussing & parliamenting— .. a little here & a little there. Delighted I am to have such good news of dear Louisa as Robert brought me.
Go on to love me, dear dearest Isa. Indeed I do love you–
Ba–
Address, on integral page: Miss Blagden.
Publication: B-IB, pp. 65–66.
Manuscript: Fitzwilliam Museum.
1. Dating suggested by EBB’s remark: “I am hoping to have leave to enjoy you very soon.” Isa came to tea on 10 February 1855; see the fifth paragraph in letter 3518.
2. Unidentified; but from the context probably a servant.
3. Les Mystères de Paris (5 vols., 1842–43), a novel by Eugène Sue, which enjoyed great success when it was first serialized. EBB had read and discussed it with Mary Russell Mitford in letter 1539.
4. The loss of lives in the Crimea, from fighting, privations, and disease, prompted John Arthur Roebuck, M.P. for Sheffield, to introduce a resolution for an inquiry into the conduct of the war, which passed on 29 January by 305 votes to 148, a majority of 157 (as reported in The Times of 30 January 1855, p. 8). The results of the vote precipitated the resignation of the prime minister, Lord Aberdeen, on 1 February. Four days later Palmerston became the head of government.
5. EBB refers chiefly to the British Army’s policy of commission and promotion by purchase rather than merit and to the preferment given to members of the aristocracy in the military departments of government.
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