4750. EBB to Isa Blagden
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 28, 163–165.
[Siena]
[25 September 1860] [1]
Dearest dear Isa, indeed it vexes me to think that you should be unwell & I shut out from you. Mrs Story was here just now, & was afraid to try her carriage in your lane, she said, on account of some tree, which presents an obstacle, it is averred, to carriages—or I should be struggling to get to you today, Peni being convalescent though kept in bed for precaution. Mr Walker has been very, very kind to him– Isa, .. talking of you, he said of his own impulse, .. “I never prescribe of course, unless I am asked—but I could have stopped that pain & put her to rights quickly–” He added that your calomel dose was infinitely too strong– Why dont you let me send him to you, Isa of mine? He is not homœpathical ‘sang pur’ [2] —that is, he does’nt give globules, but essences—& he has had a regular medical education– Certainly Peni’s fever fell flat before him–
Of course your affection must be of the liver– He is going to cure Anunziata of a liver-complaint (& hers is a bad case) in six weeks. His fame is great, I assure you, among the contadini .. & even to Siena & her citizens– Let me send him to you–
Isa, I am perturbed far more than you are. Do you call it nothing, that Garibaldi goes mad [3] .. like Ajax [4] .. rather than Masaniello [5] .. & takes to slaughtering the sheep instead of the enemy? I call it very sad, very bitter. And so on us, just at the last, falls the curse of Italy—the curse of internal divisions—& we are threatened at the best (for the attack upon the French would be the worst in its monstrous ingratitude) at the best with a fratricide war between the national party & the Garibaldians– If such things must be, I lay my face in the dust, not to see–
As to Napoleon, he is coming out grandly––& even the Times (in one article) has had a glance at him full-length– [6]
But surely Mrs Freeman [7] & Mrs Crawford will never think of Rome at such a moment– They must wait–
Your loving Ba–
Publication: B-IB, pp. 364–365.
Manuscript: Fitzwilliam Museum.
1. Dating based on EBB’s reference to Pen’s “being convalescent” and his “fever.” In letter 4749, EBB wrote that he was in bed with a fever. She more fully discusses his illness and indicates when it occurred in letter 4753.
2. “Exclusively.”
3. Garibaldi had not gone mad, though Cavour and his party wanted Italy and Europe to think he had, which would further justify the Piedmontese advance through the Papal States in order to intercept the general before he marched on Rome.
4. Following the death of Achilles, his arms were presented to Odysseus, who had been chosen by Agamemnon and Menelaus over Ajax as most worthy. The latter was driven mad by his disappointment and began slaughtering sheep, believing them to be soldiers. When he regained his reason, he killed himself in shame.
5. Tommaso Aniello (1622–47), better known as Masaniello, was a fisherman who led a successful revolt against Spanish rule in Naples in 1647. Shortly after being appointed “captain-general of the Neapolitan people” by the Spanish viceroy, he went mad, acting “like a frenzied maniac,” and was “murdered while haranguing a mob on the market-place” (EB). Masaniello is mentioned in Casa Guidi Windows, I, 822.
6. EBB probably refers to an editorial in The Times for 13 September 1860 (p. 8) that dealt somewhat sympathetically with Napoleon III’s intentions in Europe: “The Emperor Napoleon must be well aware that his lightest word is a matter of European interest and will be construed as strictly as a State paper. Knowing this, he seems resolved to pledge himself deeper and deeper to a policy of peace.” After supporting this statement with quotations from a recent speech the emperor had delivered at Marseille, the editorial continued: “It is not for us to forecast the train of consequences that may hereafter prove to have flowed from the annexation of Savoy; but we shall not disguise our conviction that the Emperor of the French has now the peace of Europe in his own hands. He alone is master of the spell that can lay the spirits which he has raised.”
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