3928. EBB to Isa Blagden
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 23, 139–140.
[Florence]
[late November 1856] [1]
My dearest Isa, Just before your note came I had the pleasure of burning my own to you yesterday, which was not called for as I expected. You would have seen from that, that Robert was going to you of his own accord & mine. Also, you would have received an invitation in it from Miss Haworth, who was too unwell to go to you as you asked, but who supplicated you to transfer yourself to her tonight, you & we together. Well—you do not come. I do not cry out. It is wiser so, perhaps. You cannot bear over-tiring (that is plain) and rest is necessary for you. Dearest Isa, keep on the sofa at least, & try to be well enough to come to us as soon as possible– Perhaps you may be revived tomorrow—who knows?—perhaps, more certainly, on monday. Come, when it does’nt hurt you, dearest Isa. [2]
I am rather glad you have not seen the Athenæum, the analysis it gives of my poem, is so very unfair & partial. You would say the conception was really null. It does not console me at all that I should be praised & overpraised,—the idea given of the poem remaining so absolutely futile. Even the outside shell of the plan is but half given,—and the double-action of the metaphysical intention entirely ignored. I protest against it. Still, Robert thinks the article not likely to do harm. Perhaps not. Only one hates to be misrepresented. [3]
So glad I am that Robert was good last night– He told me he had been defending Swedenborg & the spirits,—which suggested to me some notion of superhuman virtue on his part. Yes, love him– He is my right ‘glory’—& the ‘lute & harp’ [4] would go for nothing beside him—even if Athenæums spelled one out properly–
Dearest Isa, may God bless you. Let me hear by a word when Ansano [5] passes, how you are.
Your loving EBB
Publication: B-IB, pp. 115–116.
Manuscript: Fitzwilliam Museum.
1. Dating suggested by EBB’s reference to the review of Aurora Leigh in The Athenæum of 22 November, which at the earliest would have reached Florence on the 27th, and by the implication in the second paragraph that Isa had not yet begun reading the poem. She received her copy from EBB on 2 December (see letter 3899, note 2).
2. We take this as a reference to Isa Blagden’s knee complaint, which would have been exacerbated by the extreme cold weather.
3. In his “brief sketch of the argument” of Aurora Leigh, Henry Chorley (see letter 3926, note 4) missed the point of Marian Erle’s story and described the moral of the poem as “the insufficiency of Fame and Ambition, be either ever so generous, to make up for the absence of Love:—a class-vindication wound up by an appeal against class-separation” (The Athenæum, 22 November 1856, no. 1517, p. 1425). Nevertheless, he wrote: “Not one of her former works is richer in passages of power and beauty, in noble lines and lofty thoughts” (p. 1426), which he illustrated with numerous extracts. For the full text of this review, see pp. 275–279.
4. Cf. The Book of Common Prayer, Psalm 57:9.
5. Ansano Romain, Isa’s man-servant. Frances Power Cobbe describes him in her autobiography as “being always clean and respectably dressed,” serving “with uniform quietness and success” (Life of Frances Power Cobbe, by Herself, 1894, II, 14). He and his wife Maddalena, whom he married in 1865, went into service for Mary Egerton Bracken following Isa’s death in 1873. In her will, Mrs. Bracken bequeathed the Romains a legacy of £160.
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