4772. EBB to Isa Blagden
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 28, 209.
[Florence]
[3 November 1860] [1]
Dearest Isa If being “angelic” means pleasing oneself willingly, you should see me directly as an angel of the “celestial sphere” (vide Swedenborg) [2] —but Edith Story is here to dine with Penini, & so your whole kind proposal falls among the impossibilities. What a pity! It’s doubtful to me, after all, whether the air has not a breath of over-keenness in it, in which case I should have been reserved, among other terrible consequences of going to you, (if I had gone) for a conjugal crisis in the evening– I cherish the belief therefore that, even if I could have come, I could’nt, as a consolation after the manner of disappointed foxes– [3] Indeed I stand in need of some such comfort– I should have liked so the “roast beef” & you–
Your disconsolate & loving
EBB–
The Storys go on monday, & we had asked Edith on this last saturday.
Publication: B-IB, pp. 373–374.
Manuscript: Eton College Library.
1. Date provided by EBB’s reference to the Storys’ departure, which took place on Monday, 5 November 1860.
3. An allusion to Aesop’s fable of “The Fox and the Grapes.”
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