3538. EBB to Isa Blagden
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 21, 123–124.
[Florence]
[late March 1855] [1]
My dearest Isa I was just going to write– I asked the Wilsons for tuesday evening, & if you dont come I shall be in despair– Try to come on tuesday .. at half past seven at latest. Except the Wilsons, no one here.
I agree with you entirely about the review, and I do think that that angelical feeling of parental jealousy was tenderly considered. [2] The extracts however assert themselves. The ‘porch’ has exquisite things in it. [3] He is a poet, & will be a poet .. as Wordsworth said of himself & made people laugh. [4] He never would make me laugh.
What a time since I saw you!—and you have had such suffering too! But you dont suffer now, I cant see why you should put me off till sunday, or doomsday even. Try to come on tuesday.
Thank you, thank you for the Galignani.
I never write at night .. except a letter at an extremity– Robert romances. Only I do wish I could make three months, of April .. for the time is short.
Penini is perfectly well, with a supererogatory appetite—& he & I are trying a new specific for getting fat which I will tell you of for Louisa– [5] So sorry I am to hear of dear Louisa’s catching cold. Tell her we are hoping for the day of her visit– As to Penini he has been “preparing his room” for a week past, in relation to this grand event–
Ever your most affectionate
Ba–
Oh—Mr Thomas– [6] Dear—Mr Black was here the other day & represented Mr Thomas in such an awful point of view—every evening occupied—(his terms ten guineas an evening!) that in spite of his good nature (talked of also) one shrinks into one’s shell .. & I am inclined to agree with Robert that even you had better not say a word about the harp.
Address, on integral page: Miss Blagden.
Publication: B-IB, pp. 70–71.
Manuscript: Fitzwilliam Museum.
1. Approximate date based on EBB’s wish to “make three months, of April.” She expressed the same thought in letter 3537.
2. Doubtless a reference to John Forster’s largely positive review of Robert Bulwer Lytton’s Clytemnestra … and Other Poems in The Examiner of 17 March 1855, pp. 163–164. Forster was a friend of Lytton’s father and had encouraged the younger Lytton to develop his literary talents.
3. In his review, Forster provided lengthy extracts from “Good-Night in the Porch,” which immediately follows the first title poem in Lytton’s volume, and thought it showed a “subtle power of feeling and expression” (The Examiner, p. 164).
4. We have been unable to trace Wordsworth’s remark.
5. EBB describes the “new specific” in the first paragraph of letter 3539.
6. John Thomas (1826–1913), a Welsh harpist, composer, and conductor, whose presence in Florence was noted by the Brownings’ friend, Mrs. Kinney, in a letter dated 5 April 1855 to the Newark Daily Advertiser: “A God-send to the Florentines was the timely visit of the prince of harpists, Mr. Thomas, of the London Royal Academy, who, bringing letters to half the nobility, and to all the artists and musical amateurs, was taken at once to the bosom of Patronage” (21 May 1855, p. 2). Thomas left Florence for England on 15 April 1855 (see Mrs. Kinney’s Journal, 15 April 1855, ms at Columbia).
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