4647. EBB to Isa Blagden
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 27, 273–274.
[Rome]
Saturday. [14 April 1860] [1]
My dearest dear Isa, not well! That must be the first word “by return of post.”
Dear, let me have a better letter, to say that you are well and bright again, .. a brilliant Isa as customary.
And now, join me in admiration of the “husband Browning”. Is’nt he “a miracle”, whoever else may be? The wife Browning, not to name most other human beings, would have certainly put the ‘Monitore’ receipt into the fire, or, at best, lost it– In fact whisper it not in the streets of Askelon, [2] but she had forgotten even the fact of its having been sent, & was quietly concluding that Wilson had lost it in a fog & that we should have patiently to pay twice. Not at all. Up rises the husband Browning, superior to his mate, & with eyes all fire, holds up the receipt like an heroic rifleman looking to a French invasion at the end of a hundred years. Blessed be they who keep receipts. [3] It is a beatitude beyond my reach.
Only I do hope my Tuscan friends of the Monitore are only careless & forgetful in their business habits, and that they did’nt think of “annexing”.... eh, Isa!– No, I dont believe it was dishonesty: it might have so very well been oblivion–
May the paper come today—that’s all– We get the Galignani, but cant afford to miss our Italian news– Then, not only we ourselves, but half a dozen Tuscan exiles here in Rome who are not allowed to read a freely breathed word, come to us for that paper—friends of Ferdinando’s living in Rome. First he lent them the paper—then they got frightened for fear of being convicted through some spy of reading such a thing, & prayed to come to this house to read it– There have been six of them sometimes in the evening. We keep a sort of café in Rome, observe, & your Monitore is necessary to us.
You have seen by this time Lamoriciere’s address to the papal army. [4] It’s extraordinary, while the French are still here, that such a publication should be permitted,—obvious, as the position taken, must be to all—& personally displeasing to the emperor, as the man is known to be– Magnanimity is certainly a great feature of Napoleon’s mind. And now what next? The French are going of course–. You would suppose an attack on Romagna imminent– And better so– Let us have it out at once–
I have the papers– I am much the better for some things in them. There’s to be the universal suffrage, the withdrawal of troops—whatever I wanted. Cavour’s despatch to the Swiss is also excellent. [5] Those injured martyrs wanted the bone in their teeth—that’s all–
The wailing in England for Swiss & Savoyards, while other nationalities are to be trodden under foot without intervention except what’s called aggression, is highly irritating to me.
Dearest Isa, Robert tore me from my last sentence to you. I was going to say that I cared less for the attacks of the press on my book than I care for your sympathy. Thank you for feeling “mad” for me. But be sane again, Dear,—its not worth being mad for–
In the advertised Blackwood, do you see an article called “Poetic Aberration”. [6] It came into my head that it might be a stone thrown at me,—& Robert went to Monaldini’s [7] to glance at it– Sure enough it is a stone. He says, .. a violent attack. And let me do him justice– It was only the mis-statement in the Athenæum which overset him—only the first fire which made him wink. Now he turns a hero’s face to all this cannonading. He does’nt care a straw he says,—& what’s more he does’nt really. So I who was only sorry for him, cant care– Observe, Isa,—if there had been less violence & more generosity, the poems would obviously have been less deserved.
The English were not always so thin-skinned– Lord Byron & Moore [8] have <***>
Publication: B-IB, pp. 325–327.
Manuscript: Fitzwilliam Museum.
1. Date provided by EBB’s reference to the “‘Monitore’ receipt.” In letter 4652, RB writes that she sent it “last Saturday.”
2. Cf. II Samuel 1:20.
3. Cf. the beatitudes listed in Matthew 5:3–11.
4. “In his first order of the day,” delivered to the papal troops on 11 April 1860, Lamoricière “declared his work to be a new crusade: ‘Catholic Christianity is the life of civilization. Europe is threatened by revolution as it formerly was by Islamism. The cause of the Pope is that of civilization and liberty’” (C.T. McIntire, England Against the Papacy, 1858–1861, Cambridge, 1983, p. 191).
7. Monaldini’s reading rooms, in the Piazza di Spagna, where periodicals of the day could be read for a subscription fee (see Murray’s A Handbook of Rome and its Environs, 1864, p. xxi).
8. Both Thomas Moore and Lord Byron published popular works that satirized the English. See for example Moore’s The Fudge Family in Paris (1818) and Byron’s Don Juan (1819–24).
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