4048. EBB to Isa Blagden
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 24, 140–142.
La Villa– Bagni di Lucca
Thursday. [17] Sept. [1857] [1]
Thank you my dearest Isa. How more than good you are! You will have wondered not to have heard me say so before—but I have been answering English letters of the lowering sort [2] .. (nothing new–) and so a post or two have gone by– Now I write to thank you for the comfort it was to see your writing, & to hear the excellent news about dear Lytton. Give him our love and say how we hope to find him expanded & strengthened, & in full colouring of health. The weather here has been lovely,—bright and sparkling as sunshine & fresh air could make it,—no rain, except on the night you left us. I suppose all the tears shed in the hotel & other places, had gone up, & ‘descending watered the earth[’].– [3] What nonsense one gets to write! Major Gillam [sic] was seen on sunday returning from church, pious & piteous– We asked him to come to tea on monday, & invited Mr Greene to meet him,—but the “abomination of desolation” [4] is at the hotel. Robert has attempted once to ride out with him. In ghastly mockery they brought out Annette’s poney for Robert. Think of it!– No more models– No more drawing.
We have been to Barga [5] however. We went there & did our wedding-day there, with that melancholy beefsteak pie which missed its higher destiny. For my part I felt as if my share of the crust was simply an usurpation. The day was beautiful, the view magnificent, & Robert & Peni & I did the best we could for one another—and it would have been all very well if I had not been wearied out so with walking up & down the streets to find some wonderful English Garden of which we had heard most unfortunately, & which turned out at last to be a diminutive patch, twenty feet by ten, planted chiefly in cabbages, & with a black thing like an arbour (of very doubtful appearance) at one end, carefully b[l]acking out the view of the mountains. To find this enchanting place, one guide led us one way & made “uno sbaglio,” [6] & another led us another, up & up, .. & then we found that he was leading us, not to an English garden but to an “English signore” who would be “delighted to discourse with us”– Well, at last we put our imaginations into our pockets & submitted to dine in the ‘arbour’—and Peni, who is a philosopher, thought that “after all” the pie was as good there as anywhere else.
Dearest Isa, if you are not in irony but in earnest, you are very angelical about thinking of going to Naples in the case of our going. But who knows where we are going? Perhaps to the great Desert– Robert leans chiefly to that, just now—& if not there, .. where? We do but dream.
His best love to you– But mark, even if Aize [7] is in Florence, which is unlikely, you are not to call on her, … no, not for all your present influx from the celestial sphere. You are not. It is forbidden, understand. But how kind you are! How I thank you, dear, for all your goodness.
Does Lytton remember that he has left his poems with us? [8] We shall be very careful of them & bring them with us when we come.
My petticoat,—I feel shy about my petticoat. I have’nt courage to send to the Mulocks [9] without leaving a card there– How could I? Now do I wish I had lived contentedly without springs. [10]
How insolent it seems of that hotel to look into my window every morning, & nobody in it!– We do miss you indeed.
I have a letter from Sophia Cottrell which speaks of the new trial of the poor Powers[e]s. [11] Very sorry for them I am indeed– Have you made my peace with Mrs Kinney, & given my love?
Wilson is much better, & talking of getting to Florence in a few days– <***>
Publication: B-IB, pp. 126–128.
Manuscript: Fitzwilliam Museum.
1. Dating provided by EBB’s reference to the Brownings’ wedding anniversary (12 September). The first Thursday following that date was the 17th.
2. Neither these letters nor EBB’s replies have been traced. From remarks made by EBB to her sister Henrietta in August (see 4026), the “letters of the lowering sort” probably concerned the resettling of the Moulton-Barrett family following the death of Edward Moulton-Barrett in April and the subsequent breakup of the house at 50 Wimpole Street. The previous month, a three-day public sale of some of the family’s household effects was “conducted on the premises,” though “it seemingly consisted of items of no great value. Another sale, consisting of highly prized items” had been held in June at Christie’s (Reconstruction, p. 591).
3. In John Wesley’s interpretation of Genesis 2:6 (“But there went up a mist from the earth, and watered the whole face of the ground”): “The water was divided into innumerable drops, which, descending, watered the earth and made it plenteous, without incommoding any of its inhabitants” (“Sermon LXI,” The Works of the Reverend John Wesley, A. M., ed. John Emory, 3rd ed., New York, 1856, 2, 28.) EBB uses this image in A Drama of Exile (1844), where Eve says, “let my tears fall thick / As watering dews of Eden” (1856, lines 1220–1221).
4. Matthew 24:15.
5. Fornaci di Barga, about 10 miles W. of Bagni di Lucca on the Serchio River.
6. “A mistake.”
7. i.e., “AESI,” Adelaide Ironside; see letter 3755, note 13.
8. Doubtless, these were poems that would be included in The Wanderer (1859). In letter 4054, EBB refers to one of them.
9. The family of Thomas Homan-Mulock (formerly Molloy, 1798–1889) and his wife, Frances Sophia (née Berry, 1809–63), which at this time included seven sons and four daughters. The third eldest daughter, Hester Jane (1842–1929), married Alfred Austin in 1865. Their meeting was the result of a chance conversation between him and Isa Blagden; see The Autobiography of Alfred Austin, Poet Laureate 1835–1910 (1911), I, pp. 194–195. The Mulocks, who resided in Florence, were spending the season at Bagni di Lucca in Casa Moni (ICS).
10. Stiff crinoline petticoats of enormous circumference became high fashion in the 1850s. The crinoline petticoat worn beneath the outer garment was shaped by a crinoline “cage” made of flexible sprung steel rings suspended from fabric tape. In letter 3971, written six months earlier, EBB wrote that she resisted the new fashion, although Isa Blagden and Fanny Haworth were “in complete steel.”
11. The Powerses had recently lost their daughter Frances Austin Powers (see letter 4018, note 3). The “new trial” may have been related to James Gibson (1791–1862), Mrs. Powers’s father, who was staying with the family in Florence and who had been in poor health for some time (letter from Hiram Powers to Francis Dury, 15 October 1856, ms at Smithsonian).
___________________
