4469. EBB to Isa Blagden
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 26, 252–256.
Villa Alberti.
Monday [15 August 1859] [1]
Thank you, dear dearest Isa mine, for your interesting loving letter. Now sit down & write me another. I am better—getting a little strength, but slowly, & having recourse at last to asses milk to help me– I take chicken—but with it all, the strength comes very slowly– To walk across the room is heavy work. But the cough’s conquered, & so the rest is nothing at all– Certainly we received Dr Grisonowsky’s note—& are not ungrateful enough to forget it– Robert answered it too.— [2]
Ah—Lytton– We sent you our letters– [3] He was sincere when he wrote, I do not doubt, but I shall not on that account accept the part of spiritual adviser, not I– Was ever a sinner who coquetted so with his sins? Poor Lytton– Strong enough for neither vice nor virtue. Recommend to him my asses milk from the moral ‘plane’–
It refreshes my soul to read of the first doings of our Tuscan assembly! [4] I do thank God for all– Yes, we shall do it—we shall do it this time– Consider for a moment what Italy was before the war & what Italy is now– The guns of Magenta & Solferino carried farther than was obvious– Every shot broke a bond.
For the emperor he is deep as the sea– He said as far back as when we were in Rome, to the French ambassador .. ‘If the Tuscans choose to recall their Grand-duke, “qu’est ce que cela me fait?”[’] [5]
In fact at Villafranca or elsewhere, he was willing to assent to any such recall on the part of the people—but I believe that at bottom he is glad, satisfied with the actual position of things,—satisfied to be able to meet Europe with these facts– It is not he who has made the revolution—it is the revolution which has made itself– The withdrawal of the Piedmontese commissaries sustains Piedmont against accusation—& the elections sustain him. [6]
Observe—the Times had the infamy to say the other day, that of course universal suffrage would be the emperor’s means of carrying his point in favor of the prince’s—a few French prefects & so on! He knew how to manage universal suffrage—!! [7]
Events disprove this charge as they will disprove other charges–
Here at Siena I understand the flags French & Italian express together the aspiration towards Vittorio Emanuele nostro re– [8]
I am glad that that just man, dear Mr Trollope keeps up his French colors. Because a great intention is truncated by a difficulty, there is no reason that we should cease to honor it– And then I believe Napoleon has only changed the arena, not ended the conflict– There is more behind—more to wait for––in diplomacy if not in war–
Do you observe that the armistice is prolonged & the French troops stopped in their withdrawal from Piedmont in consequence of difficulties already at Zurich? The interest is almost too painful– [9]
The potent fact is, as a murmuring Times correspondent remarked the other day, that Austria is suddenly paralyzed throughout the Peninsula–
How is Mr Trollope? is he better? Her paper was clever & excellent, I thought, .. only I agree with you as to the drawback. I have had a kind note from M. Villeri enquiring after me– (By the way, Mrs Trollope hit my case exactly—‘l’amour’ .. and ‘fluxion de poitrine’. [10] ) I shall write to Villeri, who seems in better spirits. [11]
Have you attentively read the last debate in the House of Commons. I like none of the men—Russell, Palmerston,—it’s all unworthy, more or less. If there’s a congress they’ll speak to the length of their letter I suppose—but there were things said & admitted which ‘riled’ me, even while they were professing their liberalism. Of Piedmont, so much– Of Austria’s ‘imprudence’, so much– And something, at last, about the French offered terms which England would not break her neutrality by recommending to Austria—only communicated. If she had recommended them, the Villafranca peace would have been otherwise, says Ld Palmerston [12] ——
Oh—I am sick, sick, sick, of these statesmen.
Do you understand a moral neutrality in the face of a position which must be either right or wrong?
The heat is great still, but we have plenty of air .. & wind in the evenings. I like this villa– I like the blue hills, & the sunsets—but there’s no getting out yet– I creep from one room to another—& want silence & solitude to an unnatural degree. Never mind. I shall ripen presently & want my Isa. Now I could’nt enjoy her properly.
I have heard from Fanny Haworth who seems wrapt in a fog & enquires whether we go to Paris in the autumn or winter??
There’s that darling Robert vexing himself over Pen’s lessons. So kind of him! but I am impatient to spare him a little of all this work on my account.
I see there have been Mazzinian agents arrested at Bologna– Is Jessie among them, I wonder. [13]
Tell me how Dr Grisanowsky goes on to think on politics, & give him our kind regards–
Robert astounds me by saying that he has not written after all– He said he was going to write by a certain day’s post, & I relied on that word–
Love to Miss Field–
And pray why, Isa, cant you bring your heroine here & marry or slay her? [14] You shall have a room to yourself. And I dare say my voice wont have grown to a distracting thunder by that time.
Now it is a sucking dove’s [15] & coos only ‘I love you, I love you’.
In tender love
Ba–
Publication: B-IB, pp. 227–231.
Manuscript: Berg Collection and Fitzwilliam Museum.
1. Dated by EBB’s reference to the “first doings” of the Tuscan Assembly (see note 4).
3. These letters have not been traced. The one from Robert Lytton to RB was given to Kate Field (see letter 4465).
4. The opening session of the newly-elected Tuscan Assembly was held on 11 August 1859. The Times of 19 August carried news of the assembly’s “first doings” in a dispatch dated 13 August: “The die is cast, and the house of Hapsburg-Lorraine has virtually ceased to reign in Tuscany. Yesterday’s session and part of to-day’s were spent in the election of vice-presidents, secretaries, and quæstors. … Upon the newly-elected President … and his assistants taking their seats, the Marquis Lorenzo Ginori Lisci rose, and in plain but dignified words proposed the déchéance of the self-exiled dynasty. … The whole assembly, without the exception of one man, rose in support of the motion” (p. 8). It was further reported that the proposal would be put to a vote on 16 August.
6. In a letter to The Athenæum for 13 August 1859, Theodosia Trollope reported that the Piedmontese Commissary, Carlo Boncompagni (1804–80), left Florence with other Piedmontese officials on 3 August—his withdrawal before the plebiscite being designed to avoid charges of “undue Piedmontese influence” (no. 1659, p. 210).
7. The “Foreign Intelligence” column in The Times of 5 August 1859 stated that “External agitation may or may not be subsiding in Italy, but it is certain that her political complications are on the increase. People may suppose that it will tax to the utmost the liberators of that country to carry out the clause in the Villafranca Treaty respecting the restoration of the dethroned Princes. It will, no doubt, be affected by means of the most powerful mechanism ever invented for the establishment of absolute authority—namely, universal suffrage” (p. 8). Universal suffrage in France had resulted in two landslide plebiscite victories for Napoleon III. The first, in December 1851, validated the recent coup d’état, which gave him absolute power (see letter 2988, note 2). The second, in November 1852, confirmed his official title, “Emperor of the French” (see letter 3150, note 1).
8. “Our king.”
9. EBB is referring to the meeting of representatives from France, Austria, and Piedmont in Zurich in early August to begin formation of the peace treaty that would resolve preliminary issues raised at Villafranca. However, there were serious problems from the outset, and some of the parties were absent from the proceedings.
10. “‘Love’ .. and ‘pneumonia’.” EBB refers to Theodosia Trollope’s letter in The Athenæum for 6 August 1859 (no. 1658, pp. 177–178). In describing the Florentines’ response to the news of Villafranca, she wrote: “The Tuscan character is very susceptible of emotion, and equally quick in the rebound as soon as the immediate weight of trouble is removed. A Tuscan is one of the most unlikely creatures on earth to die of grief, love-grief or other, unless it have the additional complication of that ‘fluxion de poitrine,’ which a popular French writer conceived to be the necessary completion of a hopeless love fit, for the due finishing off of an interesting victim, when he said, ‘Il est mort d’amour ...... et d’une fluxion de poitrine!’ The Florentines had no such complication to contend with.”
12. In response to queries raised by Benjamin Disraeli during the debate of 28 July on affairs in Italy, Palmerston explained that “there was a period of the war at which the French Ambassador at this Court gave my noble friend [Lord John Russell] a small bit of paper, upon which there were certain terms of arrangement, stated very generally, asking that the British Government would transmit them to the Government of Austria, and would recommend the terms as the bases upon which a treaty of peace might be concluded. My noble friend, in concert with his colleagues, felt that on the one hand it would be unbecoming on the part of this Government, anxious as we must naturally have been for the cessation of the war, to refuse altogether to be the channel of communications which one of the parties thought might be conducive to a peaceful settlement, and which the other party might or might not accept. We did not think it necessary absolutely to decline to be the channel of such a communication; on the other hand, we felt that the state of the two contending parties in the war was not such as, in our opinion, justified us in interposing by any communication on our own part. We, therefore, took the course which, I think, was the proper one. We said, ‘We will communicate the proposals to the Austrian Minister; they contain your notions, not ours; but we will not accompany them by any advice or opinion, and we shall distinctly say that it is not a communication from us, but from you’” (The Annual Register … of the Year 1859, 1860, p. 176).
13. The Daily News of 12 August 1859 (p. 4) reported that “several agents of Mazzini had been arrested and expelled” at Bologna. Jessie White Mario was not mentioned. However, her arrest was announced in The Daily News of 22 August: “Bologna, August 19. Signor Albert Mario and his wife (late Miss Jessie White) have been arrested” (p. 5). Further news of the Marios appeared in the issue of 24 August: “A letter from Bologna, in the Opinione of Turin, says that Signor Alberto Mario and his wife … were travelling under the name of Martinez when arrested. They have been treated with respect, and will be set at liberty on condition of their quitting the country” (p. 5). According to Elizabeth Adams Daniels, the Marios were released in September. “They went to Lodi and then Lugano, Switzerland, where they remained from September, 1859 to May, 1860 in an apartment above the post office” (Jessie White Mario: Risorgimento Revolutionary, Athens, Ohio, 1972, p. 89).
14. Doubtless an allusion to Isa Blagden’s novel in progress, Agnes Tremorne (1861).
15. Cf. A Midsummer Night’s Dream, I, 2, 82–83.
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