4102. EBB to Isa Blagden
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 24, 225–226.
[Florence]
[ca. 5 December 1857] [1]
I scarcely like to send Peni to you, my dearest Isa, hearing from you that yesterday you were more unwell than usual. Dont let him teaze you, dear—he has less right, I feel, than usual, and so, if he does, I shall be doubly vexed.
Tell dear Lytton that Mr Stuart has been here, desiring me to exhort him to go to Bianchardi’s lectures, [2] which are excellent, he says, for any student of the Italian language & literature, & not dear. He promised to send a prospectus to Brecker’s– I hope it is received duly.
Mr Jarves’s book [3] I like very much, after all drawbacks– There are some really noble & touching things—& the whole is suggestive. A little more taste, a little less flippancey here & there—. He stands higher with me however, (when all is said against all) both intellectually & morally than he did before,—and I do not envy the sort of mind which is not touched with respect by some paragraphs or pages– Mrs Jameson is much struck by the book. And she is not easily pleased you know, and is very susceptible of offence in respects of taste.
I write, I know not what—for Peni waits for this, having hurried from his music-lesson much earlier than usual it seems to me.
Dearest Isa, there’s no use in reasoning. I have cut out my tongue—(by a figure.) When the fire burns & one speaks with it, things are worse. [4] In fact, I have abdicated at Casa Guidi, altogether. For the future I shall ask nobody in the evening .. let them be “white” or black—or brown, or whitey browney, which some are.
May God bless you, my dearest dear Isa– Let me hear that you are better today.
Your loving Ba
αει.
Publication: B-IB, pp. 138–139.
Manuscript: Fitzwilliam Museum.
1. Dated by EBB’s remarks on “Jarves’s book,” which echo those she makes in letter 4103.
2. Stanislao Bianciardi (1811–68); see letter 3220, note 25.
3. Why and What Am I? The Confessions of an Inquirer. In Three Parts. Part I. Heart-Experience; or, the Education of the Emotions, published at Boston and London in November 1857.
4. Presumably, EBB alludes to a disagreement with RB over spiritualism.
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