4250. RB to Isa Blagden
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 25, 243–244.
[Paris]
[2 October 1858] [1]
Dearest Isa,
If I was sorry for you before, & very sincerely sorry—how do I understand your grief now—yet in a certain sense, you, of all others, should be less grieved, for all the poor dear thing had of happiness, or indeed, of life itself was your gift, I believe. What you could not do for her, God has done. Poor dear little thing!
For the rest, you are unduly desponding—you must know that at bottom of your heart. If you would try & work earnestly with what faculties you have the reward would come as promptly to you as to any one,—but you do not—and you fancy that some people get their reward without such labour,—which I do not know an instance of. There are a few cases of girls & boys seeming for a year or two flowers, lilies of the field, that neither toil nor spin, and yet outshine Solomon [2] —but that’s for a day at most. Don’t do anything rashly, dearest Isa, for you have so far succeeded in one thing that you appear to attach value to, that you will always have a friend in poor me whom you may make unhappy at any time by being yourself groundedly unhappy. That is true—and all else untrue that I may ever have said, or even thought, in moments of impatience. Above all, dearest Isa, don’t let me teaze you when I would so gladly do all the good in my very little power.
Here we stay till Monday week at furthest—then, if weather serves, I think we shall return by Chambery—& be with you therefore some five or six days after setting out. How vile & strange it seems to look for you up at the Villa & miss you: write again—we get letters on the fourth clear day after you post them—& we will write & bid you look out for us– Be well & happy, dear Isa,—let us find you so, or it will be too sad.
Here are the Thackeray girls: [3] I can hardly say more now. Their grandmother has had a bad accident,—been knocked down in the street, and “broken her hip” they say. [4] Thackeray is close by. [5] Good bye, dearest Isa, I shall be overjoyed to see you again.
Yours ever affectionately
Robert Browning
Publication: B-IB, pp. 173–174.
Manuscript: Armstrong Browning Library.
1. RB’s condolences over the death of Louisa Alexander indicate that this letter was sent with letter 4249.
2. Cf. Matthew, 6:28–29.
3. Anne and Harriet Thackeray were in Paris at this time, staying with their paternal grandmother.
4. Anne Carmichael-Smyth (1792–1864), Thackeray’s mother, was on the way to visit her son, who was ill, when she was “knocked down by some gamins close to her own door,” broke “a bone in the hip somewhere and is to be lame for life” (The Letters and Private Papers of William Makepeace Thackeray, ed. Gordon N. Ray, Cambridge, Mass., 1945–46, IV, 113).
5. Thackeray was staying at the Hotel Bristol, Place Vendôme (see Thackeray, IV, 110), a few doors away from the Brownings. RB called there one morning, as recorded by William Allingham (see SD2207).
___________________
