4815. EBB to Isa Blagden
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 28, 286–291.
[Rome]
[22 January 1861] [1]
Robert said your letter would cross mine—but I could’nt wait, ever dearest Isa, when I knew you were unwell. Obey the Grisonowsky & be good in all things, & take care of your “feet,” dear, dear. Yes, you were “always an idiot” as you say—obtuse really & seriously on a certain point– You believe the babies come from the strawberry-beds—or “out of those very large lilies” .. as Peni does, making a more violent effort towards the probability of things. The worst is that sin & misery come, whether one believes or suspects, .. & here is poor Emilia with her life torn to rags because one man more is unscrupulous & selfish. Then I do not doubt that the pain of it all has affected you, my Isa,—& that the warmth of your heart rather than the cold of your feet has had to do with this illness of yours. I feel it is so. Never shake your head– It’s comfort to hear of your getting out to drive at least, because shutting up does not do for you. Now be good & go down to Casa Guidi, where you can use a carriage more cheaply & conveniently than on the hill. I shall be easier when you are at Casa Guidi.
What does this novel of Mr Trollope’s mean, Isa? What Mr Trollope?—& what novel? [2] You never mentioned such a thing to me before surely. Has ‘the Just’ been writing a novel, to win a new name in losing the old? It will be strange if another member of that family proves to have that rare inventive faculty.
Now while I remember it let me tell you what I quite forgot yesterday– If through Kate’s dealing with American papers you get to hear of a lyric of mine called “De profundis,” [3] you are to understand that it was written by me nearly twenty years ago .. before I knew Robert—you will observe it is in my “early manner,” as they say of painters. It is a personal poem of course, but was written even so in comparatively a state of retrospect .. catching a grief in the rebound a little. (You know I never can speak or cry—so it is’nt likely I should write verses–) The poem, (written however when I was very low,) lay unprinted all those years,—till it turned up at Florence just when poor Mrs Howard’s bereavement [4] & Mr Beecher’s funeral sermon in the Independent suggested the thought of it [5] —on which, by an impulse, I enclosed it to the editor who wanted more verses from me. Now you see it comes out just when people will suppose the motive to be an actual occasion connected with myself– Dont let anyone think so, dear Isa– In the first place there would be great exaggeration … and in the second its not my way to grind up my green griefs to make bread of. But that poem exaggerates nothing—represents a condition from which the writer had already partly emerged .. after the greatest suffering—the only time in which I have known what absolute despair is.
Dont notice this when you write–
You must thank Mr Trollope for us, for his note with Sir John Bowring– Sir John is a “full man,” [6] —& full of things interesting to hear. I wish you had seen him. The lady is still on her knees before him, as is good for women & for wives! [7] Robert made very merry because she said to somebody at a soirée, .. “Let us go & see him take his tea”. As if Sir John’s tea-cup was a phenomenon of universal interest. I rather liked that naiveté. And, after all, when he takes his tea in her eyes like other people, they will both have lost something good—the best thing in the world perhaps.
I have seen Hatty only once, but I dare say she would like Mr Fuller’s [8] or any other person’s photograph– Robert has given me beautiful ones of the Pope & Antonelli– [9]
Yes, I do agree with you about Lytton’s fidelity to Robert—but Robert is a little hardhearted about it all. Does the absurdity in respect to the Chinese, mean that Lytton disapproves of the war, .. because I go with him there– There, Napoleon has been wrong, if Mr Trollope pleases– I loathe all this brute force & cruelty in the name of civilization & Christianity … meaning the shop. [10]
By the way did you observe how the English papers were outraged by the spoiling & burning of the summer palace when they thought the French had done it alone,—& how meanly silent they were afterwards when corrected? Such things disgust me–
As to the burning, it seems that we have the whole glorious responsibility. It’s a laurel for us–
I will improve your saying, which made me smile … (that, “if anybody was to be murdered, you were not sorry at it’s being a Times correspondent.” [11] ) by adding, that if any Time’s correspondent was to be murdered, I wish it had been Gal[l]enga– Do you mark, Isa, how he is writing now about Italy & about Napoleon? If a man could do harm by lying, he would do it–
Robert considers him “really wicked.” How must I feel then?
It is cold today, & I am feeling rather wretched in the body of course—with a heart that comes & goes– Still I am up & about, & hope to keep so.
Tell Mdme Torrearsa if you see her soon again, that I like to hear of her, am giving my warmest sympathy to the Marchese in his difficult position– [12] Oh Isa .. between you & me strictly, is not Garibaldi weak? I fear too, & so does Robert, that he has a taste for flattery– Look at that letter of his to the King about Dumas– [13] Really it might have been written by Dumas himself– Perhaps it was—who knows? That is a sudden hope.
There is a reaction in my mind about Garibaldi– He has done almost as much harm as good, taking one thing with another,—& though a brave man, a patriot, & not selfish, he wants magnanimity altogether, & generosity too in the higher sense– He is much over-praised—& the over-praise has hurt his nature, I fear, I fear. Mr Dicey who admires him immensely, as young Englishmen are apt to do, said to me spontaneously .. “What I liked least in Garibaldi was his going about openly to borrow ten scudi before he went to his island. It would have been more generous if he had not thrown that reproach on the King–” [14]
For everything was offered to him, observe, that King or government could lavish on an individual—everything except the irresponsible power which a constitutional King could not lawfully give–
Then I cannot forgive the words about Cavour–
“Cavour or Cattaneo—& better Cattaneo–” [15]
How different has been the bearing of Cavour–
As to the emperor Napoleon, his virtue is magnanimity– He is not only magnanimous to his own enemies,—but to the enemies of his friends .... which is less easily understood & appreciated from without–
At the American minister’s the other evening were various attachés who had just been at Gaeta & maintained that “(French fleet or not) King Francis might hold out three months longer”– (I dont believe a word of it of course–)—“hold out three months longer”, said they, “and by that time the reaction will be ripe everywhere in the Neapolitan States, so that his restoration is certain.” Absurd, surely!
Did you say that Zibi [16] was Sicilian? Is Amari in Florence? & do you see Dall’Ongaro?
What do you think now, Isa, of Austria? does’nt it look like war insurrectional & otherwise? [17]
How happy somebody must be in having to cure you, Isa .. I can fancy that. My regards to him. [18]
You amused me very much by the story about Azeglio. I like Azeglio for that. And if you knew what a grand man he is in his ideas,—& how noble, & refined in his bearing altogether—the sort of man who might “adorare le frittate” [19] with impunity. I wish it had been my album– This is a mere post[s]cript to yesterday’s letter. Dear, I insist on reading your novel among the first– I cant wait– But they wont bring it out just now I fancy.
Write– Take the love of us three. Persuade Sophia Cottrell about her eyes. She ought to see someone. Yes, I love you dearest Isa, & shall for ever.
Ba–
No third Ahn has come—never mind. Save me from Miss Elliot rather. [20]
How horrible this sweeping away of the Don Carlos brood at Trieste!– [21]
Address: Toscana / Miss Blagden / Villa Bricchieri / Bellosguardo / Firenze.
Publication: B-IB, pp. 393–398.
Manuscript: Fitzwilliam Museum.
1. Dated by EBB’s reference to Emilia and Dr. Gryzanowski, both subjects being mentioned in letter 4813, and by the remark at the beginning of the third paragraph: “let me tell you what I quite forgot yesterday.”
2. La Beata (1861), Thomas Adolphus Trollope’s first novel, was issued by Chapman and Hall the following May. It is a story of studio life, set in contemporary Florence.
3. Originally entitled “The Despair & Rebuke,” the poem was written some time after her brother Edward’s death in 1840. It was published in The Independent (New York) on 6 December 1860 and in Last Poems (1862).
4. The death of her daughter Annie; see letter 4721, note 3.
5. Probably the sermon that Henry Ward Beecher delivered on the evening of 24 June, soon after learning of Annie’s death, which was published in The Independent of 24 August 1860, (p. 1). On 26 June 1860, John Howard Raymond, Annie’s uncle, wrote to his wife from Brooklyn: “The sad intelligence of dear Annie’s death will, I fear, have made you almost ill. I wish you could have heard Mr. Beecher’s sermon Sunday evening, on the ‘anchor sure and steadfast,’ a hope in God the soul’s refuge, then most precious when most severely tried, in the hour of terrible storms, in the exigencies when all other things fail. It was glorious and most consolatory, and I felt for the first time how possible it was for our dear afflicted ones not merely to be sustained, but to triumph over this grief through the all-sufficient grace of our Divine Lord” (Life and Letters of John Howard Raymond, ed. Harriet Raymond Lloyd, New York, 1881, pp. 377–378).
6. “Reading maketh a Full Man,” from “Of Studies” in The Essays of Francis Bacon (1597).
7. After the death of his first wife in 1858, John Bowring married Deborah Castle (1816–1902) on 8 November 1860.
8. Charles Francis Fuller (1830–75), English sculptor in Florence.
9. Reproduced on p. 390.
10. At the close of the Second Opium War (also known as the Arrow War) in October 1860, combined British and French forces numbering in the thousands entered Peking and looted the Summer Palace before burning it to the ground on 18 October (see Jack Beeching, The Chinese Opium Wars, 1975, pp. 312–326). As EBB suggests, the war was fought for “the shop”; that is, trade. Great Britain achieved through violence what they failed to achieve through diplomacy: the opening of Chinese markets for British goods, particularly opium which they grew in India. One of the terms of China’s capitulation in 1860 was the forced legalization of opium (see J.Y. Wong, Deadly Dreams: Opium and the Arrow War (1856–1860) in China, Cambridge, 1998, p. 35).
11. Thomas William Bowlby (1817–60), The Times correspondent attached to the Franco-British team negotiating with the Chinese, died in Chinese captivity on 22 September 1860.
12. Marchese di Torrearsa had recently been appointed minister of finance in the “new Lieutenancy Council for Sicily” (The Times, 12 January 1861, p. 7).
13. We have been unable to trace this letter.
15. Carlo Cattaneo (1801–69), a Milanese republican and university professor, favored a confederation of Italian states, as opposed to the united Italy under King Victor Emmanuel that Cavour had worked for.
16. Antonio Zobi (1808–79), born in Tavarnelle, near Florence, was the author of several historical works, including a five-volume history of Tuscany from 1737 to 1848.
17. Responding to continued Hungarian unrest, Austria in October 1860 had granted some degree of autonomy. Ferencz Deák (1803–76) led the Hungarian nationalists in demanding greater freedom, but during this period they were pursuing their aims through political pressure.
18. Dr. Gryzanowski.
19. “Adore omelettes.”
20. Margaret Elliot (1827–1901); see letter 4371, note 1.
21. According to a report in The Times for 21 January 1861 (p. 9), “the fearfully sudden deaths of the head of the Spanish branch of the House of Bourbon, the Count de Montemolin and of his consort, at Trieste, on the 12th and 13th inst., has given a shock to the imagination of men.” The notice also recorded the death of the Count’s brother, Don Fernando de Bourbon (b. 1824), who had died of measles. The Count de Montemolin (b. 1818) was the son of the Infante Don Carlos (1788–1855), late pretender to the throne of Spain, and the Countess was sister of the late King Ferdinand II of Naples. Both died “from a virulent attack of scarlatina.”
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