4667. EBB to Isa Blagden
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 27, 321–322.
[Rome]
[ca. 12 May 1860] [1]
Dearest Isa, Robert says my name is Headlong rather than Ba. It runs in my head that in the last stanza of the poem I sent, I made some mistakes– Alter the second line of it to
The deed unfinished will weigh on the doer:
Then, read the last line but one thus,
That the King shall reign where oppressors fall [2]
Poor Isa– This poem is not worth so much trouble & talk about it–
It is said that the pope has had a special vision of St Agnes, [3] (with my eyes, Isa?) [4] to cheer him up with a promise of having Romagna again. I champ with the teeth of my soul against the fact of Lamoriciere & his party being here– The very worst they can do, will be to counsel reforms, & I am really frightened at the difficulties which might follow that piece of common sense on the part of the Holy Father–
The Monitores come regularly. Sicily seems to struggle on– Now if there could be a move in the Neapolitan states! Prince Napoleon & his wife at Turin– And do you ‘learn & inwardly digest’ [5] that Cavour dined with them on the day after their arrival–
Write to me my Isa–
The Oldest of the old world is the oddest of odd names—but Mr Bentley [6] selected it, she says, from her list of names– Its remarkable altogether. I shall certainly be curious to see the book.
Now—this is only a word– And I want a thousand from Isa–
Ever in love–
& now in the dark–
Ba–
Publication: B-IB, pp. 344–345.
Manuscript: Fitzwilliam Museum.
1. This letter falls shortly after letter 4664, with which EBB sent a copy of her poem “King Victor Emanuel Entering Florence, April, 1860.”
2. The two lines of the last stanza of “King Victor Emanuel Entering Florence,” published in The Independent (New York) of 16 August 1860, appear as EBB gives them here.
3. Patron saint of virgins. Said to have been martyred ca. 303 at the age of 13. Citing “a letter from Rome of the 14th [April], in the Monde,” Galignani’s Messenger reported: “The day before yesterday was one which afforded immense consolation to the Sovereign Pontiff. At an early hour in the morning, his Holiness went to the Church of St. Agnes extramuros, to return thanks to God and the Immaculate Virgin for the extraordinary protection which had preserved his life, and that of a numerous assembly on the 12th April, 1853. As it was also the anniversary of his return from Gaeta in 1850, it was a double fête” (20 April 1860, p. 3).
4. Presumably an allusion to EBB’s “Where’s Agnes?” which she may have shown Isa in November 1859 (see letter 4523, note 2). EBB refers to St. Agnes in the fifth stanza:
My Agnes false? such shame?
She? Rather be it said
That the pure saint of her name
Has stood there in her stead,
And tricked you to this blame.
5. Cf. Collect for the Second Sunday in Advent, The Book of Common Prayer.
6. Richard Bentley (1794–1871); see letter 1214, note 4.
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