5112. RB to Isa Blagden
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 30, 124–128.
Ste Marie, près Pornic, Loire Inf:
Sept 19. ’62
My dearest Isa,
Here is your letter, to my great delight, & there you are—to be happy, I hope with all my heart. I could not open your letter for some minutes, took it upstairs & waited awhile before I made up my mind to read it. So all has gone well hitherto, journey & difficulties & the getting into a house, all over. You do not tell me which Villa yours is [1] —I fail to recognize it by its name but fancy it to be the one where the Kinneys stayed for a time, at the top of the steeper ascent between that to Villa Brichieri & the Columbaja– [2] I have also a confused notion of a new entrance having been made on the side near the Hairdresser’s Villa—I forget even his name. [3] Remember to set me right about this. With respect to Florence, I cannot tell how I feel about it, so do I change in my feelings in the course of a quarter of an hour sometimes: particular incidents in the Florence way of life recur as if I could not bear a repetition of them—to find myself walking among the hills, or turnings by the villas, certain doorways, old walls, points of sight, on a solitary bright summer Sunday afternoon—there, I think that would fairly choke me at once: on the other hand, beginning from another point of association, I have such yearnings to be there! Just now, at the approach of Autumn, I feel exactly like a swallow in a cage,—as if I must go there, have no business any where else, with the year drawing in,—How thankful I am that all these foolish fancies never displace for a moment the solid fact that I can’t go but have plain duty to do in London,—if there could be a doubt about that, I should drift about like a feather: at times (to give you a notion of what I might do if free to be foolish) I seem as if I should like, by a fascination, to try the worst at once,—go straight to the old rooms at Casa Guidi, & there live & die! But I shake all this off—& say to myself (sometimes aloud) “Don’t be afraid, my good fellow, you’ll die too, all in good time”: so I go on. It is a great sustainment that I think I see clearly success in my management of Pen—that he is doing well, on the whole, with me. The health & strength of him are extraordinary, & indeed, perfect. Mrs Bracken’s surprise at his growth, you may imagine—three years ago, Willy was nearly a head taller—now, Pen is exactly as tall, spite of Willy’s having continued progress also—indeed Pen is taller legitimately—Willy’s head & neck being rather unduly slender perhaps. He swims daily, quite well, in the deep sea—with a baigneur [4] swimming beside, for my assurance—so that he has gained a good thing. Willy bathes too, begins to swim a little, and looks infinitely the better for his absence from Paris—his mother is delighted and says he never derived such immediate & evident benefit from any excursion. The weather has been admirable—it is so fine to-day that one could not wish a change for the better, and I determine to stay a fortnight longer—till the end of the month—in order to use such advantages to the utmost. The air, neighbourhood of the sea, extreme solitariness of the place, suit us all—Pen having Willy & my father to his heart’s content. At the end of Septr we shall go to Paris, stay a few days, & return to London. You will find me there with your next—to 19. Warwick Crescent, Upper Westbourne Terrace—and there I hope to be for many a month to come. Pen has never opened a book since we left—I don’t at all care.
Now, dearest Isa, to the other matters—I hear with no surprise at all that the tablet has never been put up—though Villari wrote to me more than six months ago, that the Decreto [5] had either passed or was to pass immediately, and that, in the mean time, the tablet was actually in the course of being engraved. He will, I am sure, take some step in the matter—& you, at least, can understand how I feel about it. One cannot expect everybody to have your dear & great heart,—but this might be done without an extraordinary effort, surely. One word to the Torrearsas [6] will probably help us—and you are there, which is saying everything.
I am very glad to hear of any symptom of amendment in health on the part of poor Mrs Trollope—but! Give my truest regards to Trollope: he and his brother were most kind to me in London, and I seem to myself to have cut (as usual) an ungracious figure in not accepting their invitations—but my very head, heart & limbs were tired at that time. I will not lose A. Trollope’s company by any fault of my own for the future. How is Beatrice, [7] —grown & well? How is Trotman?,—who was ill.
If you see Mrs Baker, tell her that I was quite unable to call on her during the day or two she was at Bayswater, & that I am sorry for it. Another thing,—she promised to lend me a m.s account of the trial of Count Francesco Guidi for the murder of his wife, [8] —which I am anxious to collate with my own collection of papers on the subject: she told me she had lent it to Trollope, along with other documents which she thought might interest him, and that he had found nothing in this subject to his purpose. Can you ask him if there was no mistake in her statement,—if the account really related to my Count Francesco Guidi of Arezzo? Because, in that case, with her leave (which I shall beg of your kindness to ask) I should greatly like to see it—would find some friend to bring me the papers and would return them safely and expeditiously. Say a word of kind remembrance for me to Mrs Crossman & Miss C. [9]
With respect to my box—the missing one [10] —I never dreamed of asking you to take any trouble about it—dearest Isa: I will speak about it to Cottrell—who, poor fellow, must have something else than my matters to think about [11] or he would hardly “have an idea it was left at Casa Guidi & therefore sold with the rest of the things”—seems that it was packed up and sent off to Madlle de Fauveau’s with the other boxes: it contained the glass that used to stand on the old bureau—in carved walnut-wood,—the glass from over the stove in the little dining-room, and the little inlaid table at which I used to write. Of course Ferdinando can know nothing about the box—it has either been lost in the way to Mlle de F’s—or is there—or was lost in the way to Leghorn: Cottrell must ask the Packer, who best knows. I am glad to hear a good account of Wilson—I saw Oreste in London. Did you not see Mr Landor? He continues to do his utmost at teazing—sends me a picture to sell for him to “pay for his grave” &c I had four letters from him last week! I write myself to Mr Kirkup—you will see him, I suppose. Never forget me when you write to dear Kate Field & her Mother. How are the Mignatys, the Kinneys? I wish I knew something about Annunziata—Wilson always “looked down on her”, & will not be likely to have news of her. Do you know anything about Lytton? I believe I have seven letters of his unanswered [12] —shame to say! But I will write in a day or two. Do you go on with the old people—the Breckers or Vieusseux? Who lives in Casa Guidi, I wonder!
Remember, Isa, that I am in London, & that what I can do for you, in any way, I shall be happy to do. I believe I shall be at comparative leisure this winter: Pen can & will do more by himself,—I like much what I observe in his moral character as it develops itself—he may be depended on, is very undemonstrative and very sensitive—has good sense & self command. You don’t know what a sad thing happened here three weeks ago: Made Laraison, [13] the wife of our landlord,—with whom, indeed, we only had to do, caught cold, had an attack of pleurisy, kept her bed nine days, and died—in the room next to mine & Pen’s—leaving four little children beside the husband. The matter was most painful– Never was truer grief than that of the neighbours,—her sisters came too—the husband did everything (& the doctor, I suspect, only too much) & so it ended. It was sad to see the children dragged upstairs to “bid goodbye”—for she was delirious, & in pain– The body remained in the house the next night—& Mrs Bracken, who wisely declared nothing would induce her to stay in the house with it, offered us all (kindly enough) such accommodation as she could give: you may suppose, we declined that—but I thought Pen’s nerves might be younger & told him how easy it would be for him to go away for a night—his room being only divided by a thin partition from the other: I said, when we were alone, “It would be better perhaps for you to avoid the thoughts.” He replied—“I go away? As if I shall not be more comfortable knowing she is out of her pain to-night than I was last night when she was in such pain.” I told him he was quite right and that I felt exactly so.
So now—there will be another month to wait till I hear again from you: may you do well– God bless you, dearest friend! As I told you, if the monument can be completed by next summer, I will go over & superintend the erection—but I hardly think it possible: Leighton wrote to me yesterday that the designs were completed—it is my own idea carried out—and beautifully, I think– I can’t talk about it, and have not mentioned the thing to anybody (here), even Pen. Hatty however saw the design and approved it,—as you will, I believe.
Have I not written a long letter,—for me—who hate the sight of a pen now—& see a pile of unanswered things on this very table. Do you tell me, in turn, all about yourself—I shall be interested in the minutest thing you put down. What sort of weather is it? You cannot but be better at your new Villa than in the large, solitary one—all the more if the congenial people, under you once, would have been in the old place. [14] There I am again, going up the winding way to it, and seeing the herbs in red flower & the butterflies on the top of the wall under the olive-trees! Once more, goodbye! Pen sends his best love to you—bade me give it this morning at breakfast. My Father & sister are quite well, happy to hear of your safe arrival, & return your kind regards. My father is quite well, & my sister also. I bathe every day & like it increasingly, to my wonder. Mrs Bracken told me to give her love when I next wrote to you–
Ever yours most affectionately, dearest Isa–
Robert Browning.
What is your precise address? Villa Giglioni, & what else?
I don’t even run over this scribble, you must understand & forgive. [15]
Publication: DI, pp. 122–127.
Manuscript: Armstrong Browning Library.
1. Villa Giglioni in Bellosguardo.
3. Unidentified.
4. “Swimmer.”
5. “Decree.”
6. Vincenzo Fardella, Marchese di Torrearsa (1808–89), and his wife, Giuletta (1821–88); see letter 4770, note 7.
7. Beatrice (“Bice”) Trollope; see letter 3189, note 13.
8. This is the first mention in the Brownings’ correspondence of the seventeenth-century murder story that RB would retell and reshape as The Ring and the Book (1868–69). In his next letter to Isa (letter 5124), he announces his intention “to make a regular poem of it.” The “m.s account” is Morte dell’ Uxorcida Guido Franceschini Decapitato, which RB would “collate” with his “own collection of papers on the subject,” his primary source that he called the “old yellow Book” (The Ring and the Book, I, 33). It contains a collection of documents relating to the trial of Count Guido Franceschini (1657–98) for the murder of his wife, Pompilia (née Comparini, 1680–98). RB discovered his source in a Florence street-seller’s booth. As to the date of discovery, the editors of The Poems of Browning, after weighing much conflicting evidence, conclude that RB “acquired OYB at some point during 1858–60” (The Poems of Browning, Vol. 5, ed. John Woolford, Daniel Karlin, and Joseph Phelan, 2022, p. 8). They also note that the mistake RB makes in the Count’s name “suggests a less-than-perfect recollection of the contents of OYB, as well as an unconscious reminiscence of Shelley’s play The Cenci, an important literary source for the poem” (p. 9).
9. Anne Crossman and her mother, Anne Crossman (née Oakes, b. 1789); see letter 3711, note 4.
11. His wife, Sophia, who was recovering from surgery (see letter 5105, note 2).
12. Between RB’s last letter to Robert Lytton, 5026, and the next, 5115, two letters from Lytton to RB have surfaced: 5031 and 5064. However, in the months following EBB’s death, Lytton wrote many times and was seldom answered.
14. Villa Brichieri.
15. This sentence is written in the top left corner of the first page.
___________________
