4134. EBB to Isa Blagden
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 25, 43–44.
[Florence]
[?21–22 February 1858] [1]
I have been looking everywhere my much loved Isa for Madeleine Smith, [2] & dont find it because I dont ask I suppose. So I must—& then I will send it back to you directly. Will you, dear, send to me the last number of Thackeray, [3] .. which I never had back, & which the Perkins’s [4] must be vexed with me about–
Dear, so you have Lytton back [5] —but oh, dont tell me so just now—for fear, for fear, lest your letter should .. by chance .. I would not have it known just at this moment that he stands (doing penance in a sheet, I hope) behind your door.
What pains me is that you are not well, Mrs Jameson says; but I do hope it was only agitation & not commencing grippe .. I think of you more than ever I did .. and love you more– You have a large loving heart indeed, with room for all of us & our sins.
Penini has gone to his music-lesson today, so that I am relieved on his account at least. And for the rest, the world does not seem worth the struggle one has to make, to keep a footing on it– For me I am sad & weak & inclined to slip, & there an end. Presently it may be better & brighter, perhaps––and always one has the advantage in having a soul free from much self-reproach. That is the only advantage which a man (or woman) may secure to himself––or herself: then let us look to it that we do. You have done it, in some relations– Yes, you have done it.
Dearest Isa, be consoled therefore, & be sure that while I live I shall love you truly, tenderly, deeply.
Ever your loving Ba–
Monday–
And, dear, I return the poem [6] Mrs Jameson brought me. Too sad to read again– But I liked it almost better I think, than anything I ever read of yours, .. for force & passion.
Publication: B-IB, pp. 146–147.
Manuscript: Fitzwilliam Museum.
1. Conjectural dating suggested by EBB’s reference to Pen’s going “to his music-lesson today,” evidently for the first time since he became ill.
2. In July 1857 Madeline Smith (1835–1928) was acquitted of the charge of poisoning her suitor (see letter 4020, note 10). Numerous accounts of the case began appearing soon after the trial, including John Morison’s A Complete Report of the Trial of Miss Madeline Smith for the Alleged Poisoning of Pierre Emile L’Angelier (Edinburgh, 1857).
3. i.e., of The Virginians, which was published in twenty-four monthly numbers from November 1857 to October 1859.
4. Charles Callahan Perkins and his wife, Frances (see letter 4126, note 2). They had two children at this time: Mary Eleanor Perkins (afterwards Beaumont, 1856–1907), born in Boston, and Edward Clifford Perkins (1858–1902), born in Florence on 17 January. Mrs. Perkins had met Thackeray in 1853 in America (see The Letters and Private Papers of William Makepeace Thackeray, ed. Gordon N. Ray, Cambridge, Mass., 1945–46, 3, 191).
5. Presumably, this was the first time Lytton had called upon Isa Blagden since leaving Bellosguardo at the end of 1857.
6. Unidentified.
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