4890. EBB to Isa Blagden
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 29, 112–114.
126 Via Felice.
[ca. 11 May 1861] [1]
Ever dearest Isa, you are certainly rather naughty, & want a sister of charity instead of being qualified for being so. Even now Robert has not done reading your book, & I shall leave to him the onus of expressing his opinion– I have a few passing criticisms, though he considers your style at least as good as Anthony Trollope’s—but it ought to be “dovetailing in” instead of “with”– Let him say his own say. Only pray dont think the delay, the slowness, a proof of indifference. He has quite forgotten how to read—spells all the long words, I dont doubt, & throws me into agonies, when Cornhills & the like (which everybody is waiting for) are left on the table here from one day to another. Because he’s reading Isa, a tale of Anthony Trollope in an American newspaper, & the last Cornhill are gathering dust on tables– People must be swearing at us I am certain,—& seeing that I mildly remonstrated this morning about the Cornhill, he told me I cared for everybody’s convenience more than his!–
His whole being goes out in clay in the morning .. besides the going out in white cravats in the evening. You cant guess how it is, my Isa– And really he has brought me a most beautiful little torso of a Venus after the antique [2] —quite perfectly brought out– He can do everything he pleases you know,—everything—and the passion for the clay is justified by the success—so that it’s hard not to be pleased with him after all.
And to do him justice he went off to Hatty at once to get an answer to your question. And Hatty said she would be content with Florence and you– Only I do think that a summer at Siena would be better for both of you. The Story’s villa is to be ascertained about from the man of Siena, to whom we all apply. [3]
You are right, I dare say, my dear dear Isa—but your publisher [4] should not have left out your scene– That was .. what I should qualify as insolence. On the other side, Imogene’s mistake would have been, naturally dissipated in the clairvoyant trance– I think so.– I have just had a letter from Arabel in which she speaks of having had one of my aunts to stay with her &c– [5] Then she continues thus– “My visitors & Miss Blagden’s book have cheered me. The latter has very much interested me. A clever book with a great deal of good feeling, but somewhat improbable in many of its events. The portrait she draws of Giacinto answers exactly to Peni. [6] Of course she meant to represent him. As I read it I saw Penini before me.”– I send you this for what it is worth of course—& not for more. She is not struck, observe, by any impropriety. She got the book from Mudie.
The curious thing is that though Giacinto reminded me too of Pen, I never thought you did mean it consciously– Thank you my Isa. That adds a flower to my nosegay of pleasure in the book.
Robert saw the Saturday Review at the reading room—& did not think it as bad as I was afraid it was from what you told me– Your letter to Bowen was far too meek & generous at once. I never would be meek to a Bowen– If ever again you dissented from a criticism of his, he wd be sure to call you a “renegade”.! (As he did me, remember!) [7] I admire his brilliant abilities, but his ways of thought I dont like & never shall. Still there’s room in the world to live & let live, for many ways of thought.
Pen did’nt wear a ‘costume’ at the French embassy’s– No, I simply meant his dress. It was a splendid reception, not exclusively enough a child’s. Everybody there. Pen was presented to heaps of small princes– There were Colonnai, Piombino, [8] —and Ginore de Grammont, [9] the eldest boy, was very kind to Pen, who talked French & was not shy. There was a full-length picture of Napoleon III which he admired immensely of course– The magnificence was quite royal—at least twenty servants, Robert says, in full dress liveries. Pen said “a hundred”—but then Pen … “never exaggerates”. <***>
Publication: B-IB, pp. 462–464.
Manuscript: Fitzwilliam Museum.
1. EBB’s remark that “Robert has not done reading your book” and her reference to Pen’s attendance at the French embassy children’s party place this letter between letters 4889 and 4894.
2. This may be the statuette of a female torso on a table at the left in Mignaty’s painting of the drawing room at Casa Guidi, which is reproduced as the frontispiece to this volume. The present whereabouts of the statuette is unknown; RB habitually destroyed his sculptures.
3. i.e., Nencini.
4. Smith, Elder & Co.
5. Arabella Sarah Graham-Clarke (“Bummy”) is listed at 7 Delamere Terrace in the 1861 England census, which was taken on 7 April.
6. The “portrait” of Giacinto, a character in Agnes Tremorne, occurs in volume two, pp. 165–166:
On Monday Giacinto resumed his sittings, and at ten o’clock he was duly stationed in the studio. He had washed his face, combed out his long brown curls, and stuck a carnation in his round felt hat, which was his idea of making a toilette.
He was a very pretty boy, not so much from regularity of feature as general beauty of countenance. He had a broad full forehead, on each side of which his hair fell in long thick curls, and his eyes were large and bright, and set wide apart. The dark eyelashes gave them an expression of great sweetness as well as intelligence. His mouth was well-cut, though somewhat large, and his teeth were white and even. The profile was not so good as the full face. There was a peculiarity in his features such as one sometimes sees in the faces of children not destined to live till manhood; an entire completion, as it were, of the infantine beauty. There is no room for the growth of the flower in that symmetrical and finished bud; or rather the flower itself has bloomed prematurely, and must fall from the stem. This expression always gives a peculiar interest to the face on which it is seen.
There was something precocious in every way about Giacinto. His early associations with artists, and the insensible effect of listening to their conversation and witnessing their habits, might have produced this in some respects. An extremely sensitive organization was another reason. His love for Agnes was something extraordinary in its depth and exclusiveness, and some would have smiled and some would have sighed in observing it.
7. Charles Synge Christopher Bowen had reviewed Poems Before Congress in The Saturday Review of 31 March 1860 (pp. 402–406). Quoting from “Italy and the World,” he observed, “There is much fitness and coherency in the portraiture of the illogical renegade, who persuades himself that the England which he calls ‘his’ has no alternative between an unprovoked war with Austria and a total abandonment of all preparations for self-defence.” For the full text of this review, see vol. 27, pp. 367–370. In his review of Agnes Tremorne, Bowen describes the novel as “fanciful and slight. The plot is rather unreal, and the curious connexion subsisting between the leading characters in it is so unworldly and imaginative, that one feels in reading it that a pure fancy rather than knowledge of the world is the well from which the author has drawn. But the very unworldliness of the book suits, perhaps, its Italian dress” (The Saturday Review, 27 April 1861, p. 428).
8. Probably Ugo Boncompagni-Ludovisi (1856–1935), son of Rodolfo, Duke of Sora (1832–1911), afterwards Prince of Piombino; and Maffeo Barberini-Colonna di Sciarra (1850–1925), son of Urbano Barberini-Colonna di Sciarra (1771–1849), 7th Prince of Carbognano. Another prince, later named, was probably Francesco Doria (1856–1916), son of Marcantonio Doria, Duke of Eboli (1824–70), and grandson of Francesco Doria (1797–1874), 9th Prince of Angri.
9. Antoine Agénor de Gramont (1851–1925) succeeded his father as the 11th Duc de Gramont in 1880.
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