3608. EBB to Isa Blagden
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 21, 240–241.
[London]
[Postmark: 31 August 1855]
<***> give you.
Write & cheer me by good news of you, dear. It was sad that Knebworth should have turned out so—but if Sir Edward was ill … illness is apt to distort many persons into an unlikeness to themselves. [1] I am vexed that Lytton shd have been absorbed away from you—because that could not be right. If I had been there we might have amused ourselves. A man who lives in the sensual, without a living consciousness of the spiritual, is only consequential in desiring annihilation, that end of merely sensual creatures– Who lives bestial may die bestial as well. Even Sir Edward’s super-mundane speculations appear entered into in order to compass mundane objects– Think of his asking “the spirits” at Ealing how to get rid of “wrinkles”. So we heard there. Still, I should have liked to have seen him, & I cant but believe that he must be interesting in certain ways–
Mrs Sartoris was here on wednesday evening, having returned to town for a few days .. & we had besides Mr Fox, Mr Forster, Capt Aidè, & Frederick Tennyson with his wife. She is charmed with London—(probably because Frederick has been unremitting in his attentions, taking her to all the shows); & what she particularly singled out for admiration, is .. the police!!—— He, on the other hand, complains of the “clammy atmosphere,” she told me it had not agreed with him this time. In remote corners & parenthesises [sic], he & I murmured about the treasonable spiritualism—not speaking above our breaths–
Two hundred cases of cholera a day in Florence. You cant think of going there this autumn. We go to Mrs Sartoris’s tonight to meet the Tennysons– Frederick enquired earnestly after you .. & where you were, & how you were. Do come to Paris.
I lost my Arabel yesterday, & London is more detestably London than ever to me as a consequence. Wimpole Street has removed for ten weeks to Eastbourne. In ten days, sooner or later, we mean to follow– Arabel is to take a lodging for us by the sea—& there we shall stay a little while on our way to Paris– It will be only a few shillings out of the way, and the change & the sea will be good for Penini. Robert has proceeded some distance in his second volume,—and Messrs Fox & Forster are very encouraging in their opinions upon what they have read in proof. May God bless you. Robert’s love with mine–
Your ever attached friend
Ba.
Address: Miss Blagden. / Stone House / near Ramsgate.
Publication: B-IB, pp. 75–76.
Manuscript: Fitzwilliam Museum.
1. In a letter to Elizabeth Kinney, Isa Blagden wrote that her visit to Knebworth had been shortened to “a few days” because Sir Edward had suffered a “violent attack of inflammation on the chest” and that she had never seen “anyone so altered by illness” (9 September [1855], ms at Columbia).
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