4554. RB to Isa Blagden
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 27, 98.
Rome,
Dec 29. ’59.
Dearest Isa,
The cold is so far a good thing that it gives us the real pleasure of having you where you are: be as comfortable as you can there, and stay as long as you can, & like it as much as you can. Don’t fancy anything uncanny in the clock—the people who sweep & clean the rooms have had plenty of experience of what it wants to be kept going– I always find it ticking rationally after my absences. Don’t be vex’d with dear old Landor,—I daresay he had very dozy & hazy remembrances of you: he complains to me that he should break his neck in descending those stairs “did he not hold by the rail” [1] —which rail, I suppose, is usually the help of old gentlemen of eighty five under such perilous circumstances. Thank you heartily for your trouble about the frame & box [2] —and for the additional trouble to which I am about to give you of reading the next sentence aloud to Wilson “Please pay Miss Blagden all monies [s]he has hitherto disbursed for R B. & put the same to his account, repaying yourself at Philipson’s.” Ba will have told you all the news. Miss Cushman is anxious to have you, as you know: Hatty has been unwell & confined to bed, & afterwards to the house for several unlucky days—but is now better. Goodbye & God bless you, dearest Isa. Love to Miss Field & thanks for her flowers to Landor.
Ever yours affy.
RB.
Publication: B-IB, pp. 265–266.
Manuscript: Armstrong Browning Library.
2. Preparation for shipping Hamilton Wild’s portrait of Pen on his pony (reproduced in vol. 26, facing p. 305) for retouching by the artist. Mrs. Stowe brought it to Rome from Florence in February (see the first paragraph in letter 4607).
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