3678. EBB to Isa Blagden
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 22, 1–3.
Paris. 102. Rue de Grenelle Fbg St Germain.
Nov. 16. [1855] [1]
My dearest Isa, You will think me mad about letter-writing, to scamper so today after my letter yesterday, [2] —and really you dont encourage me, neither, in such extravagances. But simply I want you to send me the address of the apartment recommended to you, with “three bedrooms & dressingroom &c &c at £2.10 a week.” Send it at once, will you? The fact is, we have not yet suited ourselves in a house for the winter, chiefly because Robert hates looking about for accommodations of the kind as you know, and also that we are slow about sacrificing the month which has still to be run in the horrible yellow satin. [3] We are scarcely rich enough to sacrifice ten pounds. Think of our aspect being due east, & the draughts flying round like insane birds! It’s wonderful that I should be better [4] .. which I am—though by no means as well as when you saw me. I am just surviving by means of cod’s liver oil, & a permanent place by the fire.
While you write to me by candlelight at noon in that district of Tophet [5] otherwise called London, we had the most brilliant day in honour of the closing of the Exhibition, [6] a little cold, but glorious with sunshine & blue air. I really have no patience with you, Isa, for staying in England, seeing that I know very well you are not on the whole enjoying it much or satisfying any very tender affection. If the latter were the case, I should cry “Stay, stay.” As it is I grumble dreadfully. How much more sensible to spend the winter in Paris, & the summer till June, then return with us for a few summer months in England, & so back to Italy when we go. As to Madrid .. oh I dont approve of it anywise.
It’s true that you will have an apartment in Paris on cheaper terms in a week or two. But why wait beyond the week or two? Why?
We have excellent news of the poems [7] —for which “the trade” subscribed largely. Half the edition (& more) was gone after three days. I am now looking out anxiously for the reviews. Jess[i]e White is a very generous noble-minded girl for whom I have a real affection—but it’s strange (is it not?) that of such should be the judges in Israel, [8] —just as the Kingdom of Heaven?
I have not heard from Florence except by that letter from Sophia Cottrell I told you of in my last. Or did I not tell you? (Yes, I think!) I would give much to see & know what is going on at Florence just now, & what is the precise impression produced by Hume, on certain minds there. [9]
Dearest Isa you are as good as ever in speaking so kindly of those beneficent days of yours, when, as the best and most intelligent of secretaries, you were of so much use to Robert. [10] How large a debt the volumes owe you! You may well look on them with satisfaction.
I only wish you would be as good to me, & send me your address. Again you forget it, and I must throw this into the Vague–
Do you know I had thought of Miss Cushman as the “queen” “In the Balcony” [11] —but the drama might not perhaps be strong enough in incident for the English stage. The French would accept it willingly.
Lytton is easily worked upon—that I observe—with all my liking for him– His politics for instance get modulated by his father’s (or somebody’s) finger & thumb. Still it has seemed to me that he stands on higher ground, has a purer ideal, than the father has– Dont you think so too?
He comes to us & spends an evening now & then. For the rest, though in Paris, I am living the dullest of lives, and, because I am not strong perhaps, I feel dull through & through– Robert has not called on Buloz or any of his friends he could anyhow avoid. M. Milsand is translating the “men & women”, .. for instance, ‘Saul’, ‘In a Balcony’ .. some of the more substantial poems. [12] He considers the work “superhuman.” Which is most satisfactory to my humanity.
I am sure you must feel how dull I feel by my letter. Slowly I sink into idiocy, .. am forgetting my spelling, my stopping, the shape of my letters .. and in time Robert shall send me to the Aztecs for a little congenial society. They write from America to promise me seventy five pounds for my new poem, [13] & I shake my head in impotence. I have forgotten the meaning of new poems. Except Robert’s.
Just alive enough, however, to be glad for the comfortable report of dear Hatty! Any word from Louisa? [14]
As to my Penini, never think he can forget you. Indeed the other day he put Robert out a little by talking of a certain “Isabella” who for a moment seemed to us an unknown personnage. “Isabella told me once” &c &c[.] It’s Peni’s way to delight in a variety & beauty of nomenclature.
Now write to me of the apartment, & tell me what else you can, if you are not lacking in charity. May God bless you dearest Isa. Be happy & well– Mention your knee——and your address, for Heaven’s sake. I wont wait for Robert to come in & read his note, before I despatch this–
Your ever attached friend
EBB–
After “one word more” .. vixi. [15] I need’nt live one day more, need I? far less write?
Publication: B-IB, pp. 88–91.
Manuscript: Fitzwilliam Museum.
1. Year provided by reference to the return address; 1855 was the only year the Brownings resided at 102 Rue de Grenelle.
3. The furniture upholstery in their apartment—the reason Louisa Corkran chose it for the Brownings (see the first paragraph in letter 3658). The apartment proved to be draughty, sunless, and cold.
4. In letter 3674 EBB had written: “Through the last week’s cold, I have not been well.”
5. A place of human sacrifice and desolation outside Jerusalem, described in Isaiah 30:33 and Jeremiah 7:31–32. EBB refers to Tophet in Aurora Leigh, I, 420, and VII, 333.
6. The Exposition Universelle, held in Paris from 15 May to 15 November 1855.
7. Men and Women, published six days before.
8. EBB compares Jessie White to the heroic deliverers of Israel from its enemies the Ammonites, as told in Judges 1–16.
9. Daniel Dunglas Home (EBB habitually spells the last name as it was pronounced) had arrived in Florence on 20 September; see letter 3632, note 8.
11. Sic, for “In a Balcony,” a closet drama published in Men and Women.
12. The French translations were to be incorporated in Milsand’s review of Men and Women, which was intended for the Revue des Deux Mondes. It did not appear there, however, but in the Revue Contemporaine et Athenæum Français, September 1856 (pp. 511–546). Although no verse translations of any of the poems in Men and Women were included, there were significant prose translations from “An Epistle … of Karshish,” “Saul,” and “Any Wife to Any Husband.”
13. In letter 3665 RB indicated to James T. Fields that EBB expected to receive £75 from C.S. Francis for the American edition of Aurora Leigh. Further negotiations between RB and Francis raised the payment to £100.
14. Louisa Alexander had left for India in June; see the fifth to last paragraph in letter 3533.
15. “I have lived.” EBB refers to “One Word More,” the poem dedicating Men and Women to herself. In letter 2015, she used the phrase in response to RB’s declaration of love: “Therefore we must leave this subject—& I must trust you to leave it without one word more.”
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