4627. EBB to Isa Blagden
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 27, 231–234.
28 Via del Tritone
Monday– [19 March 1860] [1]
Whoever’s bad fairy, you may be made to be, you are my good one, dearest dear Isa, & I am delighted always to get your letters. The one yesterday must have come out the end of a wand, for it was sunday when nobody ever gets letters—yet yours came– Yes, His letter [2] seems to me to fulfil itself through all these complications, & therefore helps to stem the current of my anxieties, when, at moments, they are too strong– Dall’Ongaro deserves everything from me for his confidence, and I have immediately set his questions afloat where the accurate answers may be fished up—(& not out of About’s book!) [3]
So far had I written when your second despatch (by Russell) arrives– [4] Oh, thank you, my dear dearest Isa– I could’nt read your letter for tears– I had to stop & give it fairly up– May God bless our Italy. Yes—it is sublime, that loosening of a nation’s individuality into the larger circle– You will see my sense of it in my book– [5] It is a great step in the political advance of humanity, I think– How we wish we had been there––standing in the piazza, Isa, by you & dear Mr Trollope– Clasp his hand for mine in congratulation—and hers too. I am sure we all feel alike.
As to Savoy, Italy, newly constituted into a great nation, would throw off Savoy, as naturally as one throws off one’s clogs in getting home. Savoy’s leanings & sympathies are French—the fact of the Alps goes to separate it from Italy. Let the populations vote, & according to the vote, so let it be– That seems to me what should please us all. My objection is to the time– It has been a premature mooting of the question, in my view of it. Then although I perfectly understand the convenience of a certain official phraseology about “geographical necessities” [6] & the rest, I do hate these phrases, & they come to me as leaving a sort of stain on the lips which have delivered them—such lips as Louis Napoleon’s, the leader of the new order, the comprehender & organizer of the European democracy– At the same time we must make allowances– For a word about the national will & the popular suffrage throw men like Lord Stratford de Redcliffe [7] & his kith & kin among statesmen, into fainting-fits. They would rather, after all, hear of geographical necessities, & siezures of stuff for frontiers: anything is better with them, than the other thing.
When the pope received the English deputation the other day, he melted into tears: the tears ran down his cheeks, poor old man; & the effect was that everybody present cried too. I was told yesterday besides (it did not come from a discreditable source) that the holy father has had an interval of real madness since the news of the Vote, .. walking up & down the room & reproaching the crucifix– “I have cried unto thee, & Thou hast not heard me.” [8] Certainly he is overwhelmed with affliction– Robert says he hopes it may not issue like the afflictions of the sentimental butcher who confided his griefs to Longfellow– “When I gets too melancholy, I goes downstairs, & I slarters and slarters” .... [9]
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Oh, dearest Isa, dearest Isa—what is this?
Mr Cartwright is dragged into the room by Robert to tell me the great news–
News being, that “Napoleon dispenses with the popular vote, marches his troops into Savoy, siezes on the territory”–
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It is impossible, impossible–
But Cartwright swears to it– Its certain, he says– Its in the ‘Nazione’. It has come by a telegram–
On which I draw up, & refuse to believe– A telegram has deceived us before– The logic of men & circumstances forbids the possibility–
Great God—if the Emperor has done a thing like this– Savoy “siezed by the military” & “declared a French prefecture” says Cartwright. It must be impossible. [10]
I was going to speak to you of that Mrs Hawkes, [11] —who, I think, must be Mazzini’s friend whom I fell up against in London at Mr P. Taylor’s [12] .. & was almost broken into bits by– She called Mazzini the Messiah,—I remember.
But if the emperor has done this thing .. I can speak of nothing else,—I can think of nothing else.
Observe– It will be against his own professed intentions—& evidently must be against the will of the Savoy populations, because it proves his fear of appealing to that will.
I am in great anxiety– Twice today I have been in tears about public affairs & only once for joy.
Write to me my Isa, & tell me what you can–
We heard from Chapman today– The book was to be out the next day—& he meant to charge 4s on it– [13] Perfectly ridiculously, I say, & probably fatally, for the sale– Two shillings & sixpence would have been ample—too much even. Chapman is not a genius as a man of business—& if he does not agree about your novel [14] you will lose nothing–
I am very sorry to hear of Miss Cobb’s being so unwell—but here is summer not so far off. Have you heard where the Eckleys are going this summer? I sent by Hatty a very conclusive note, [15] & have not heard since.
I need’nt send my love to Hatty because she will be on the road to Rome before this reaches you, we fancy–
May God bless you– May all your fatigue not have seriously hurt you.
Robert disappeared with Mr Cartwright, when they had had the pleasure of quenching me with their news—but I may certainly send you his true love.
As for me, I shant be happy any more all day—nor after, perhaps
Yours in love of the deepest–
Ba–
Pen was so charmed with your dear letter—thought it so kind of you– The child is worked so hard—or he wd have answered it before.
Publication: B-IB, pp. 308–311.
Manuscript: Fitzwilliam Museum.
1. Dated by EBB’s reference to the vote in Florence for annexation by Piedmont, the results of which were announced 16 March, a Friday.
2. A letter written by Charles Fauvety.
3. La Question Romaine (Brussels, 1859).
5. Poems Before Congress.
6. We have been unable to confirm EBB’s attribution of this phrase to Napoleon III. However, he stated in a speech on 1 March that Savoy was necessary “for the security of” the French frontiers (see letter 4614, note 5).
8. Cf. Psalm 130:1–2.
9. We have been unable to trace this quotation.
10. France had not seized Savoy. EBB communicates her realization of this fact in the following letter.
11. Emilie Hawkes (née Ashurst, afterwards Venturi, 1820–93) had been a close friend and correspondent of Mazzini since the early 1840’s, when he was befriended by her family in London. This friendship with the Ashursts is documented in Mazzini’s Letters to an English Family, 1844–1854, ed. E.F. Richards (1920–22). Mrs. Hawkes, her brother, and his wife travelled to Italy in the autumn of 1859. She was staying at Bellosguardo at the time of this letter. She later published a translation of Mazzini’s The Duties of Man in 1861, and her Joseph Mazzini: A Memoir appeared in 1875. EBB may have met her during the Brownings’ London visit in the summer of 1851 (see the following note).
12. Peter Alfred Taylor (1819–91), radical politician and silk merchant. He met Mazzini in 1845 and chaired the Society of Friends of Italy in 1847. Taylor was an M.P. from Leicester 1862–84 and was active in the Working Men’s Institute. EBB had corresponded with his wife, Clementia Taylor (née Doughty, 1810–1908). In letter 2944 ([13 September 1851]), EBB invited her to pay a visit to the Brownings’ apartment in Devonshire Street.
13. Poems Before Congress was published on 12 March 1860 and sold for four shillings a copy.
14. Agnes Tremorne (1861).
15. This letter has not surfaced, though it seems likely that Mrs. Eckley would have destroyed it.
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