3689. EBB to Isa Blagden
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 22, 26–28.
Paris,
Sunday– [9 December 1855] [1]
My dearest Isa
Your verses are extraordinary for newspaper poetry—dont you think so, yourself?—or are we flattered into the thought, I and Robert, by their great kindness? Really they seem to us very good– Thank you for sending them. [2]
Dear, I am beginning to feel as if it might be possible after all, to live to get back to my Florence. We have taken an apartment & shall remove into it about next thursday. It is not your apartment (which is too far) but one in the Rue du Colysée, number three, just turning the corner from the Avenue des Champs Elysées, & keeping the view of that beautiful situation– The back rooms look on gardens– It is half way down the Avenue, so as to be centrical. Three bedrooms, drawingroom, dining room & kitchen in the apartment, & a good bedroom for Ferdinando up stairs. First floor– Two pounds, ten shillings a week. Carpeted & comfortable. I have not seen it, but can trust Robert, who is difficult yet admits of no drawback except that the rooms are small– We shall have Dickens & his family almost opposite—and Lytton is in the next street [3] which is of more consequence. Or might be—I dont know. Lytton never comes to see me, as it is, & may not find it worth while under the circumstances. Perhaps he is really overwhelmed with work, as he assures Robert. Now, dear Isa (not to think of anybody else) you can have your trees & be near us too—& probably Mrs Castle will choose your rooms in our future neighbourhood, where there are many more apartments for letting. I retain my leaning to this Faubourg St Germain which is out of the press of English & Americans—but it is harder here to suit oneself in rooms, because of the resident French not liking to let their houses. You have much less choice—and then, my poor Robert has a sort of mania of reluctance about looking for rooms, and I, (impotently shut up from helping him) have quite suffered from his annoyance in being thrust upon this uncongenial work. Thank God, we need not think of it any more– I had begun to consider how it was likely to feel in a Parisian gutter on winter evenings—and little Penini moralized, “Some people tan do whatever they lite,—but we tant, you see.”
It will be easy to find you what you require on your own terms. For my part I should be much inclined, if I were you, to have a servant for five & twenty francs the month– The restaurateurs are excellent where you can go to them; but where they supply you, they are very apt to fall off to your great discomfort– Still you might begin by trying them. Robert & I did in Italy,—& repented in chicken bones & starvation. It might be better here, however.
Dearest Isa, if you have sight of Garth Wilkinson’s letter [4] & it strikes you as interesting, and if you can get leave of Miss Cushman, do send me some extracts from it– I have the highest opinion of that man’s intellect– He is one of the men in England whom I desired to know particularly, having been deeply impressed by his great book, “Man in connection with the body.” I heard in London that he thought of lecturing on the manifestations—& then I heard nothing more– His views would be important to me. Mrs Kinney says “What we have witnessed, I say without hesitation cannot be accounted for by any sort of trickery nor by any known natural law.” I must tell you one experience of her’s .. extracting the passage—because it is something peculiar & new. The spirits through the medium in trance, desired her to take Odic water for her health—& desired all present to see the process of preparation. “The evening came & we met according to appointment (at Mr Powers’s) when the alphabet was called for and I reproved for not having done as the spirits desired.” (She had neglected to provide the pure water.) “They refused to communicate further with us until a quart of double distilled water was procured in a peculiar bottle described, & placed in the centre of the table. I was requested then to taste it– The flavour was only that of rain-water. The table then commenced shaking the bottle by vibrating motions, & pretty soon (I should say the lamp was first removed & placed on the floor) a vapour was seen by all to surround & rise from the bottle. I was told to taste again. This time there was an aromatic flavour, which all perceived. We were told to hold our hands close to the bottle. A cold air was felt by each. The whole process occupied half an hour– Another half had been spent in getting the water, which was brought by Mr Powers Junr [5] from Roberts’s, & placed by me on the table. I was told to place the bottle in a dark place & take a teaspoonful of the water every morning & night. Would you believe it? I the sceptic do this. The Cottrells were last evening at Mr Powers, & experienced more wonderful things than these, of which Sophia will write to you herself. We have been present when accordions went through the air without visible hands, playing as they flew.”
I was wrong in telling you that Home is living with Mr Powers– [6] He occupies rooms opposite the Kinneys,—& is very ill, I fear, just now. Otherwise they meet at Mr Powers’s house nearly every evening–
On Galignani’s table lie six or seven different notices of Robert’s poems this week. He is much abused—but the largest admissions of his originality & power are made on all hands, & I think we have reason (considering the density of the world’s skulls) to be satisfied. Think of my not having seen even the Examiner– [7] Lytton has it, and he promised Robert to let me see it four or five days ago—but it does not come. [8] Have you seen the Leader & Critic? [9]
Oh you naughty Isa, to dream still of Madrid! We must talk reason about that. Meanwhile may God bless <***>
Publication: B-IB, pp. 94–97.
Manuscript: Fitzwilliam Museum.
1. Dated by EBB’s reference to the Brownings’ removal to 3 Rue du Colysée, which occurred on Thursday, 13 December 1855.
2. We have been unable to trace this or any poem by Isa Blagden published in newspapers about this time.
3. At 34 Rue de Montaigne (now Avenue Franklin Delano Roosevelt). Dickens and his family stayed at 49 Avenue des Champs-Élysées from October 1855 until the end of the following April (though he made frequent trips to London). Both addresses are listed in the Brownings’ address book for this period (AB-3).
4. James John Garth Wilkinson (1812–99), physician and spiritualist, was the author of The Human Body and Its Connexion with Man (1851), a copy of which sold in an unspecified lot in Browning Collections; see Reconstruction, A2465. From the context here, it appears that Wilkinson wrote Charlotte Cushman a letter detailing events in London, which EBB describes in letter 3724.
5. i.e., Nicholas Longworth Powers.
6. Home and his travelling companion, Wilkie Rymer, had arrived in Florence on 20 September (see letter 3632, note 8). According to Patrick Waddington, on or before 16 November they moved into rooms provided by Hiram Powers in Via della Fornace that were not in his house but “in a separate building: their number in the street was 2538, whereas the Powerses lived at no. 2539 and the sculptor had his studio at no. 2528” (Waddington, p. 307). The Kinneys’ house, Casa del Bello, was number 2578.
8. Lytton had lent the issue containing the review “to a friend” who had failed to return it (see SD1899).
9. The review in The Critic was published on 1 December 1855 (pp. 581–582); that in The Leader, in two parts on 1 December (pp. 1157–58) and 8 December (pp. 1182–83). For the full text of these reviews, see Appendix III.
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