4359. RB to Isa Blagden
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 26, 87–88.
[Rome]
[16 March 1859] [1]
Dearest Isa, Here a few words to go with Ba’s,—how good it is to think they have only to go a very little way now and to the dear old place—for you are comfortably installed there, I hope, spite of your plague with those mean people. [2] What you write about to Ba,—the biographical article, [3] must be more provoking to you than it can be astonishing to me who know what gratitude you may look for in such cases: your fault was in being seduced into biographicizing at all. Villeri has written, and I have not read yet, a letter to Ba, the gist of which seems to be that it is an abominable thing for the English to entertain any doubts as to the honesty of Napoleon—whom I remember him abusing, the last time he called on us, as a man in whom he, Villeri, for one, would never place a particle of belief. I have lent Trollope’s pamphlet to Odo Russell, & he called yesterday to ask some questions about it, but I was away—at Ostia, seeing the excavations, Castel Fusano, [4] and the sea. Hatty is better,—Miss Cushman had a party two nights ago, which I was unable to attend. Annette is gone, you know– Mrs Mackenzie I see often,—she is better, I hope. Dearest Isa, it will be a comfort to get back to quiet, beautiful Florence after all this noise.– I look forward to long summer evenings alone with the owls, the fireflies & you. Ba’s last proofs of “Aurora” are just arrived. [5] God bless you,—keep yourself well & do your dear arms good, or what will become of my cast?
Ever yours affectionately RB
Publication: B-IB, p. 201.
Manuscript: Armstrong Browning Library.
1. Dated by RB’s reference to “Ba’s last proofs” of Aurora Leigh (see note 5 below). This letter accompanied letter 4358.
3. On Félicie de Fauveau; see letter 4218, note 4.
4. Located two miles from Ostia, an ancient port about 15 miles S.W. of Rome at the mouth of the Tiber. It is described in Murray’s A Handbook of Rome and Its Environs (1858) as “a castellated casino … prettily situated in the midst of a pine plantation” (p. 398). “The chief interest of Ostia at the present time is derived from the excavations begun among the ruins of the ancient city at the close of the last century” (p. 395).
5. RB returned a list of EBB’s corrections for the fourth edition of Aurora Leigh with letter 4362 (19 March). The corrected proof, from which the list of corrections was made, bears an annotation in RB’s hand on a fly-leaf: “These ‘Proofs’ of the Fourth Edition of ‘Aurora Leigh’ were sent to us at Rome, in the winter of ’59, and have been preserved for Isa Blagden by her affectionate friend, R.B. 43 Bocca di Leone, May 21. ’59.” At some later point, the half-title page from Isa’s copy of the first edition was bound with this set of proofsheets, which is now at Lilly (see letter 3899, note 2). After Isa’s death, the proofsheets came into the possession of Mary Egerton Bracken, who signed her name above RB’s inscription.
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