3746. EBB to Isa Blagden
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 22, 148–149.
[Paris]
[ca. 6 March 1856] [1]
My dearest Isa I am so sorry! But Robert is so unwell, .. was taken so seriously unwell after coming home from you yesterday .. (.. did you poison him par hasard? [2] put strychnine into pies?) that there will be nothing for us tonight, as last night, but to go to bed at nine, & hope for an improvement tomorrow. Yesterday I had a miserable day—was quite frightened. There was fever—affection of the throat!– I look on it as a complication of a bilious nature & violent cold. He has been lying on the sofa the whole day—& has touched nothing since your breakfast except tea .. & a little soup just now. Oh—he is certainly better– But I shall persist in the calomel tonight.
I have been .. we have been .. very much pleased with your part of the Entresol [3] —only I mean to hold to your face, Isa, that you have altered your own phrases for the worse,—many of them. I consider it one of your happiest efforts, in spite of this.
Lytton’s is beautiful– There’s the poetic idiom in him—the accent! unmistakeable.
Now I must’nt keep Fanny [4] I suppose—or I had more to say–
Your ever affectionate
Ba
Be good to us & let us have you when we can–
Dont put us off. Robert is so vexed to miss you tonight.
And I !——
Address, on integral page: A Madlle / Mademoiselle Blagden.
Publication: B-IB, pp. 102–103.
Manuscript: Eton College Library.
1. Dating suggested by EBB’s reference to RB’s illness. In letter 3755, RB declares that he has “kept the house these three weeks, thro’ a bilious fit.”
2. “By chance.” EBB alludes to William Palmer (1824–56), the Rugeley poisoner, who, in November 1855, murdered John Parsons Cook by lacing his food and drink with strychnine. EBB refers to Palmer’s execution in letter 3800.
3. Apparently, Isa Blagden and Robert Lytton were writing poems on the same subject; hers is not extant. Lytton’s, called “À l’Entresol,” was published in The Wanderer (1859).
4. Perhaps Isa’s maid.
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