4351. EBB & RB to Isa Blagden
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 26, 77–81.
| [In EBB’s hand] | 43. Bocca di Leone. |
March 4. [1859] [1]
Dear, dearest Isa, there is a letter of Robert’s & mine wandering about Spain for you. [2] I imagine it might have been happy enough to arrive at Madrid the morning you set off—& I only mention it to show that you have not been forsaken utterly either in thought or word. How good of you & how pleasant for me that you should have thought of me again at Marseilles without waiting for this! You are over-generous always, both to me & others—and I, for one, will try and not pay you back in bad money.
Dear, here we are in full carnival, everybody mad except me, who sit at home & only put on the mask in honor of certain visitors!! Well, so I am not mad .. on the contrary sane enough to speak to you of you, & to tell you gravely that I long to have a more satisfactory account of your loved self than any you send me. Plainly you have had no sort of holiday at Madrid, but a hard lesson as usual over other people’s faults & misfortunes—besides which your constitution has been dealt with untenderly in that cold house & unsympathetical climate. Dearest Isa, you must want rest so much that I dont complain over my own disappointment about you not coming to Rome. You are perfectly right to lay yourself up, and to lay in from Mdme Brecker means of grace & satisfaction– Do let me see you bright & tolerably round, Isa—for if you have eaten & digested nothing (except anxiety) all this time, it frightens me to think of what you may be fallen to– Now Isa, remember you are my Isa, & take care of yourself—yes, & write & say how you feel in our beloved Florence. Is’nt it better than Madrid & Rome & all the rest of the world? You seem to think I have changed my mind about Rome—and Annette appears to have sent you magnificent portraits of me .. for which the pretext is rather wanting. True, I have been well (for me) this winter .. have been out three times to drive since Christmas Day, this being the fourth of March– But to winter in Rome always, would be a great deal too often, Isa– Now & then perhaps .. well. In the first place I consider it just as unhealthy as I did .. ask the poor Hawthornes who have never had an hours good health among them all since they came:—fever gastric, fever roman, & other maladies not excluded. Nor are they the sole friends who have suffered. Ourselves, .. thank God, have not, and I am quite aware that to myself personally the climate is in the highest degree favorable. Then, again, .. Rome is the most dissipated of watering-places .. that’s its precise character. Paris is grave by the side of it, and London a retired hamlet. Robert is torn into shreds evening after evening—it’s a problem how he’s to cut himself up—& I only see him by flashes, as Lady W catches him up from Mrs X. As to men & women, instead of doing them, he’s done by them [3] —which does’nt please me quite so much. Oh—but I am contented now. The change & the amusement are excellent for him. The band of his trowsers does’nt meet, & that consoles me for a new laurel-wreath not being prepared to fit. Very well he is, & in very good spirits.
As for me, I do nothing neither, except correct proofs for Aurora, [4] and sit for my picture, to which great public duty I have devoted myself zealously & heroically. Miss Fox has produced & sent to the London Exhibition a representation of me which I wont designate further than that it strikes Annunziata as the likeness of some great “avoccato” [5] —Gordigiani’s large view of things [6] united to the beneficent smirk of a physician I knew once:—roseate & dimpled—with jet-black eyebrows & hair gloriously bewigged. But poor Miss Fox had her sight dazzled by love in the midst, & could’nt be expected to do more than she has actually done … viz .. marry Mr Bridell last Saturday at the English consul’s, (Robert being witness!) and, after spending the afternoon on the Corso, dine with us at half past six, & stay till half past ten at our fire-side–! Only, I should have been sacrificed altogether in this complication of affairs if it had not been for the artist Talfourd .. who, although inspired or commissioned by Miss Heaton .. & with no better subject than myself .. has really produced one of the most exquisite portrait-pictures (in chalk) I ever saw or could desire. It’s an idealization as far as I am concerned now, but with my soul in it as I dare to feel– Very poetical, very sympathetical to me. The only portrait of myself I could bear to look at in fact. I shall give you a photograph, dearest Isa—and I think you will like it .. though I have not seen how they come yet. [7] This portrait too goes today to the exhibition, with one of Gibson which is also happy .. though not as good as mine I think—& people in general have the same opinion. Mr Talfourd told me that he meant to ask Robert to sit to him—and I do hope he may hold to this—his poetical power of conception is so great: & I should like to see such a portrait of Robert as this is of me—the higher subject raising in proportion the expression of Art– [8]
Dearest Isa, I agree in all you say about Annette’s decision. [9] I consider that it will be repented one day, sooner or later, and perhaps sooner. You speak in the large & generous way characteristic of you: that is all I shall say now. Only Villa Bricchieri retains its attraction.
After the trifling & nonsense which has run away from my pen today, you will scarcely guess how deeply & gravely I am disturbed, what anxiety to the point of anguish, I suffer from just now on the subject of Italy. Did I not always look for this from him? [10] But could I look for that from England? Never consider me again as an English-woman, Isa– I am done with England. What with India, [11] Ionian Isles, Principalities, [12] & Italy, she fills her pockets peradventure, but loses for ever her prestige. The words thrown at Piedmont like so much mud, by heads of all parties in our parliament, [13] I feel in the face of my soul. Thank you for the pamphlet, [14] dearest Isa—you knew what would please me. The greater part of it I have read of course. The Italians here pass it secretly, I understand, from hand to hand. Galenga [15] comes sometimes to talk with me—& even his eyes glisten. Isa, it is considered by thinkers here that if a sensible pacific demonstration, a paper signed by moderate men, could be got up now at Florence, simply to remind publicly the Grand Duke of his constitutional promises, [16] Austria could’nt move a finger just now, and the persons implicated in the affair could not be made to suffer .. while the advantage to the general cause would be considerable. Is Mr Stuart in Florence? can you see Villeri? [17] would you speak to Mr Trollope? A word of suggestion from any of these might set the thing in movement. If you can, Isa, .. for my sake .. if not for Italy’s. The Italians during this dread pause should not merely wait for the crisis, but use the interval in drawing the eyes of heaven & earth on the fact of their wrongs.
The Carnival in the meanwhile goes on. Peni has a Pierrot’s costume—would have it. I have not been once on the Corso—but the weather is splendid for sunshine. The Hawthornes are better, I believe,—for Mrs Hawthorne came while we were going to dinner the other day for the first time since our arrival. You are sure to see Hatty this summer– Her health has been by no means steady, & I heard yesterday of her being unwell again. Well or ill, she is a dear little thing. Mrs Macpherson is recovered & on the Corso .. minus her beauty, Robert maintains. I am going to write directly both to Mr Kirkup & to Mr Jarves—tell them, if you see either. The rest I shall leave to Robert– Such heaps of people we know whom you dont .. so that the gossip which you wd care for rather fails. Miss Cushman receives in her new house .. but when I saw her last, she looked harrassed & saddened, I thought. I hope there was no reason for it, worse than the fatigue of settling. Mrs Eckley was here yesterday, & told me to offer you her regards. I shall talk to you some day about her, & explain her to you, & teach you to love her– “This is A, this is B,[”] and so on–
And this is the great L and little
b, which makes your loving Ba
Did Lytton venture to send you his book? [18] It has great beauty, & more power than I cd have supposed. I have written & had it out with him. I told him that I had resolved not to speak, but feeling myself face to face with his nobler nature in the book, I felt constrained to utter out myself against him– Will he answer I wonder—I did not speak bitterly but as one wounded in friendship because disappointed in a friend. [19] There is no reference to you in the book precise enough to strike one–
[Continued by RB]
Dearest Isa,—welcome home with all my heart! You will get one of these days the letter I sent (in Ba’s) to Madrid a fortnight ago: now—what room has she left me? Write to us at once, and don’t fear you will not be written to. I want to tell you about Lytton’s book, in case he has not sent it you—(it is directed to Ba) he has left out all the poems I would have excluded, & put in a quantity of religious repentance in verse, very good of its kind, & which may be sincere enough for aught I know. He is gone to Holland to bring back his love (that peculiarly distinguished lady[)] [20] —so writes Chapman the other day. Ba wrote a note of thanks back, agreeing to his old groan “How little dear Mrs B. knows me”— & I added to my real commendation of his book, the hope that he would only give people cause, for the future, to enjoy his talents without subsequent regret at having done so. [21] I wish him well, and clear out of all our heads for ever. The poems are dedicated to John Forster whom he has always especially adored—the first I ever heard of it. Well, here we are—for three months more I suppose—which will hardly pass so quickly as the last.– Dearest Annette is going away next Friday to Naples <***>
Publication: B-IB, pp. 193–198.
Manuscript: Fitzwilliam Museum.
1. Year provided by EBB’s reference to the marriage of Eliza Fox, which took place on 26 February 1859.
3. i.e., he is not writing poetry.
4. Doubtless, EBB was preparing the second installment of a list of corrections for the fourth edition (see letter 4362, note 1).
5. “Lawyer.”
7. The photographer was James Anderson; see letter 4346, note 12. Of the several photographs of Talfourd’s portrait that survive, none is inscribed to Isa Blagden.
9. Presumably, to no longer live at Florence. She returned there briefly in the spring, then travelled on to Paris and eventually England (see letters 4400 and 4465).
10. Napoleon III.
11. EBB probably refers to the Sepoy Rebellion (1857–58), during which British forces carried out many brutal reprisals, and the consequent transfer of the administration of India from the East India Company to the Crown.
12. The Danubian Principalities (see letter 4311, note 5). For England’s involvement with the Ionian Islands, see letter 4346, note 16.
13. EBB refers to speeches made at the opening session of Parliament on 3 February 1859. Lord Granville (1815–91), the head of the Liberals in the House of Lords, characterized Piedmont’s intentions in Italy as “partly … an ambition for territorial aggrandizement” (The Times, 4 February 1859, p. 6). Lord Derby (1799–1869), Conservative leader and at this time prime minister, expressed his concern that Piedmont was supporting “the warlike propensities of a monarch [Victor Emmanuel II]” which would “lead him into schemes of aggression upon his neighbours under the plea of resisting an attack from them” (p. 6).
14. L’Empereur Napoléon et l’Italie (see letter 4332, note 9).
15. Antonio Carlo Gallenga (1810–95); see letter 4236, note 2.
16. Leopold II, Grand Duke of Tuscany, abolished the liberal constitution he had granted in 1848 when Austria regained control of northern Italy the following year.
17. Pasquale Villari (1827–1917); see letter 3227, note 11. EBB habitually misspells his surname.
18. The Wanderer (1859).
19. EBB’s letter has not surfaced.
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