4237. RB to Isa Blagden
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 25, 223–224.
Le Hâvre,
Sept. 4. ’58
Dearest Isa,
So many thanks for your kind & dear letters—two,—indeed three,—for the packet addressed to us “poste restante” was delayed some time. Ba will tell you how busy we have been in doing the hospitable to her brothers & sisters—& then Milsand came from Dijon & spent ten days with us—he could stay no longer being forced to return to his sick mother—but they were very precious days. What is to say about such a dull life as this daily one of ours? I go mechanically out & in and get a day through—whereof not ten minutes have been my own—so much for your “quantities of writing” (in expectation)– I began pretty zealously [1] —but it’s of no use now: nor will the world very greatly care. Your letters are the most striking events that befall us, I really believe: why have you been so unwell?—you said nothing about it till this last letter came: are you at Leghorn indeed? I hope so,—the sea being an approved remedy for your illnesses, I remember: pray, of all things, be well and cheerful when we return—& that will be early in October, I hope & pray. We stay here till the 20th but the strange weather,—now cold, now hot, never pleasant,—renders it impossible to calculate on going sooner or later.
You seem to have been passing your time pleasantly,—at least with amusing people: I wonder, did you see Landor that evening? What a bombardment of indignant articles & fusillade of scandalized paragraphs he is enduring just now! I feel more grieved about it all than I choose to tell you. Such writing is wholly indefensible on his part, no doubt: and he is no more in his dotage than you or I—but it pricks the nerve of one to feel that in some quite inexplicable way, the great old man was foolish enough to believe he did God service in so writing: I can’t imagine how he fails to see the cowardice in the act of publication: if he thinks these abominations of anybody, why not be content to stand alone in his belief—why call on us all to help him with our opinion & sympathy?—& yet, as a coward he certainly is not—one ends as one begins—by repeating .. inexplicable. [2] However, I—for one—am profoundly grateful to the author of the “Conversations” [3] and would not abuse him as all these wretched catch-penny “Presses” “John Bulls,” [4] & the like, do just now—if he had libelled me. Have you heard anything more of Hatty? Do the Story’s give sign of life? Any more news of Frederic Tennyson? How is Major Gregorie? Do you still sit round a table & see who will turn it least apparently? And you have patience still to hear the French Spirits speak thro’ a young Lady, while the Flemish spirits stick in her throat? How mournful and old-fashioned it all sounds to me here at this living and veracious Hâvre! I have only left myself room to thank you again, dearest Isa, & bid you once again take all care of yourself.
Yours affy
RB.
Publication: B-IB, pp. 164–165.
Manuscript: British Library.
1. As indicated earlier by EBB, “Robert wrote a man & woman just after his arrival” (see letter 4222, note 9).
3. Walter Savage Landor, Imaginary Conversations of Literary Men and Statesmen (5 vols., 1824–29) and Imaginary Conversations of Greeks and Romans (1853).
4. The John Bull of 28 August 1858 carried an account of the libel action against Landor and reprinted an editorial denouncing him that had run in The Daily News on 25 August (p. 4). The introduction of the reprint began: “The Daily News has spoken powerfully and unanswerably on the Landor case, exploding the poor arguments which have been relied on by those who would palliate the filthy ruffianism of the octogenarian slanderer” (p. 550). The conclusion of the editorial stated that the £1000 in damages would be “the least part of his [Landor’s] punishment. It is right that he should be told, and told plainly, that he has disgraced the literature of his country, and that henceforth his faded laurels can only half hide the stamp of malignant and lecherous slanderer, ineffaceably self-branded on his brow.” Also on 28 August, The Press, in an article entitled “Savage Landor and Savage Slander,” referred to his attacks on Mrs. Yescombe as “cruel and cowardly; they assailed a woman with all the morbid energy of an imagination revelling on the eructating imagery which a diseased brain might delight in” (p. 819).
___________________
