3713. EBB to Isa Blagden
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 22, 77–78.
[Paris]
[mid-January 1856] [1]
Dearest Isa you never will persuade me. You could have managed for a few days in the rooms you occupied first, & looked about, & seen whether the apartment down stairs was to be entered comfortably. If not, there was a choice elsewhere– There are plenty of rooms now at your price. It’s lamentable. Lytton was here last night & agreeing with me upon the dearness of your terms altogether. The coldness is something worse than dearness, because you pay with your health rather than your purse. He talked of going to you today, & of giving up his own rooms to you. I am desperate about you, & now I do fear you are ‘fastbound’, with Styx [‘]nine times round you’ [2] for a month.
The rue de la Paix, is one of the most expensive streets in Paris, [3] but, that there is access to any quarter at this time on moderate terms, I dont doubt–
What our concierge’s wife asked for her services & kitchen fuel did not seem to me dear– Still, what is done is done—& I really wont torment you out of spite–
Dear, dear, mind you come this evening. Miss Blackwell [4] will tell you much about Parisian economies—also, she is literary, a poetess, & a writer for the Daily news & other English papers, by means of which she supports herself entirely. Then you will see her sister the famous Dr Elizabeth [5] —& if you dont come, you wont see her, for she is on the point of disappearing from the world into the ‘Maternitè,’ [6] where the inmates are not suffered to emerge.
Dearest Isa, try to be in better spirits– I am so very very vexed about you–
Your ever attached
Ba–
Address, on integral page: À Madlle / Mademoiselle Blagden.
Publication: B-IB, pp. 100–101.
Manuscript: Fitzwilliam Museum.
1. Approximate dating suggested by EBB’s reference to Isa Blagden’s apartment. In letter 3712 RB writes: “Isa arrived two days ago.”
2. Cf. Pope, “Ode for Musick. On St. Cecilia’s Day” (1713), lines 90–91.
3. Murray’s A Handbook for Visitors to Paris (1864) describes Rue de la Paix as “a handsome street … the shops … are amongst the most elegant in Paris, and the upper parts of the houses form fashionable residences and furnished hotels” (p. 200).
4. Anna Blackwell (1816–1900); see letter 3569, note 2.
5. EBB is confusing Anna Blackwell’s sisters: Elizabeth (1821–1910) and Emily (1826–1910), both of whom became physicians. Elizabeth attended medical college in Geneva, New York, where she graduated in 1849. Disallowed because of her gender from serving an internship at British or American hospitals, she went to Paris in 1850 to obtain practical experience. While studying at La Maternité, she contracted purulent ophthalmia and lost sight of one eye, which prevented her from becoming a surgeon but not from practicing medicine. She soon went back to America and did not return to Europe until 1858–59. Emily graduated from Western Reserve Medical School in early 1854. That same year she sailed for Great Britain and was accepted as an assistant to Edinburgh surgeon James Young Simpson (1811–70), who was the first to use anesthetics in obstetric operations. After working briefly at the Children’s Hospital and St. Bartholomew’s in London, Emily entered La Maternité, completing its full course of study in 1856. Together she and Elizabeth founded the New York Infirmary for Indigent Women and Children, which opened on 12 May 1857. See Elinor Rice Hays, Those Extraordinary Blackwells (New York, 1967).
6. La Maternité was a school and hospital in Paris that received women in their last month of pregnancy and offered training in midwifery. Interns were not allowed to leave the premises during the duration of their study.
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