3614. EBB to Isa Blagden
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 21, 246–247.
13 Dorset Street–
Tuesday– [4 September 1855] [1]
My dearest Isa I have written to you & enclosed a letter to you,—&, not hearing from you, I am getting uncomfortable lest the address I used should be wrong. I addressed to you at Stone House, Ramsgate– Robert thought it was Ramsgate– I inclined to think it was Margate, [2] —where I shall direct this letter– If you have not received my former one, will you apply at the Ramsgate post office, as there was something about your poems in Mr Jerves’s letter (the enclosure) which I should not like you to miss. [3]
We are bringing our visit to England to a close, and perhaps shall be in Paris in a fortnight, without turning to the right or left. [4]
Dear, I must remind you that you have a pair of trowsers of mine– (It would be funny, by the way, to have to telegraph for them.) Do write to me & say how you are– I sent you the medical address too, in that Ramsgate letter—so try for it–
The Tennysons spent last evening with us, to give the Signora the opportunity of seeing the waxwork exhibition. She is charmed with London. Giulio is in Florence—& the cholera! (Ferdinando heard this morning of the death of his cousin .. together with twenty thousand other persons.) [5] Mr Tennyson enquired in the most earnest way about you, where you were, where you were going, and how your health was. He seems rather fluctuating about coming to live in England, under the signora’s influence. Still, I dont myself fancy that he is likely absolutely to do it.
For my part I dislike this country more & more– It may be my own fault perhaps physically & morally—anyway, c’est plus fort que moi– [6]
May God bless you– Dearest Isa, say that you are well & happy, if you can.
Your ever affectionate
Ba
Publication: B-IB, pp. 76–78.
Manuscript: Fitzwilliam Museum.
1. Date provided by EBB’s reference to the Tennysons’ visit, which she also mentioned in letter 3613.
2. The Brownings’ second joint address book (AB-4) correctly gives Stone House at Broadstairs, Kent, which is between Ramsgate and Margate. The house and estate had been purchased in 1816 by Josias Du Pré Alexander. At this time it was used as the country residence of his widow, Mary, and her daughters, one of whom, Ellen, was particularly close to Isa Blagden.
3. Presumably a letter from Jarves to EBB, which has not survived. In a letter to Margherita Albana-Mignaty from London, 2 May 1855, Jarves wrote: “I have sent Miss Blagden’s mss to America by the legation bag; I hope her desires will be fulfilled” (Francis Steegmuller, The Two Lives of James Jackson Jarves, New Haven, Conn., 1951, p. 142).
4. Cf. Proverbs 4:27.
5. A report in Galignani’s Messenger for 3–4 September 1855 noted: “The cholera is at this moment raging in Tuscany. The number of cases throughout the grand duchy averages, according to the Monitore Toscano, seven hundred per day” (p. 3).
6. “It is stronger than I.”
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