5146. RB to Isa Blagden
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 30, 167–169.
19 Warwick Crescent, Harrow Road
Dec. 19. ’62
Dearest Isa,
I shall only be able to write a short letter to-day from a press of business; don’t talk about my being good in writing long ones—it is altogether a selfish thing—I even know while I do it that I could amuse you perhaps a little by putting down some of the incidents in my life here, accounts of the people I see, & so on—just as you tell them to me—but I can’t help going on and talking about Florence & the friends or acquaintance there—the other matters absolutely go out of my head—& I should have to dig into it uncomfortably deep to get at what was said & done only last week. As for your letters, if you knew how I count on them, wait for them, & this time vex myself because the arrival is three days after time (postage-mark, “Firenze 15. Dicembre”!)—you would see on whose side the obligation was. I have hardly such an other pleasure as the hearing from you. Well, I gather that you are well, comfortable & as gay or grave—i.e, solitary—as you like. I was quite pleased to see that Chapman publishes your novel: [1] he certainly is select in his novelists, & you will not come out & go in again unnoticed, depend upon it, even were your book’s merit less than Miss Smith assures me it is: I shall be happy indeed in its success,—and, next time, you can treat directly with Chapman, you know, & make all the better bargain, as of course Bradbury has to make his separate profit. [2] I believe Chapman is good & honest & not ungenerous—but he is mortally slow & in want of jogging every now & then—I had to discipline him on my own account the other day & made him wake up & rather rub his eyes: we have considerable dealings to-gether just now– I am going to print the “Essay on the Later Greek Poets” which appeared in the “Athenæum” twenty years ago: [3] it was brought with us to Italy for correction & augmentation—there having been applications to print it in America—yet, after sixteen years, I open the doubled-up papers here & so! There follows an Essay on the English Poets, a light running criticism, which I shall also print: if I did not, it would be eventually done: & there are fine, & beautiful passages every where. My own selections come out to-day or to-morrow: I will send you a copy—tho’ there is nothing new in it: in the spring I print the new poems, [4] & a new edition of my things in four vols, uniformly with Her’s: [5] what I feel in not having you to help & copy! Never mind, it is all the harder & the better.
Pen continues quite well, quite good—just as I wish, errors and all: & I don’t think it is my failing to be over credulous of goodness. He is certainly happy, too: I asked him two days ago, as we were at dinner alone,—“what would you like at Christmas—you ought to tell me if there’s anything in particular that would please you”– He answered—“Oh no—don’t get me anything: you have given me so many things lately, & beside you have been put to so many expenses about the house.” I replied “Oh, I must give you some trifle, for all that”—“Well” he said “then do let it be some very little thing, just for your sake”—adding presently—“I really want nothing—you get me all I want—I could not have more things”– —That was nice & good of him, I thought: indeed he is very moderate in any want for himself, & only asks me to give away to other people. He is much taken up with reading & buys books with his own money: Arabel is still away, so we are much together: I went out far too much lately—not being able to help myself—& became unwell a fortnight ago: now I refuse invitations on that ground. I went the other evening to see Mrs Lewis [6] —he having called on me & been very kind in another matter: I liked her much: dined with Ruskin on Tuesday: [7] with Fanny Kemble, Ly W. Russell, the Fitzpatrick’s (Gertrude’s married, I’m glad to say,) [8] with Julian Fane’s mother [9] —(the most thorough lover of Florence, where she was sixteen years when her husband was ambassador)—: Lytton is almost despaired of,—his visit, I mean: I must write, if he don’t come. J. Fane I like extremely.
I am very sorry you don’t like the Design: I cannot pretend to look at it steadily & critically, but I am satisfied with it and, having deliberately accepted it, shall either have that or none: Leighton intended to make something of his own, and not take a composition out of the examples of this or the other “style” which you may find in books by the hundred: he did not think pure Gothic or pure Grecian would be appropriate in this case, and tried to invent and not merely appropriate: in such an endeavour he of course lays himself open to the charge of mixing styles,—how else could anything new ever be done? If I disapproved of the design I should put it aside altogether and get an entirely new one—though, to be sure, changing the pillars to cariatides, and changing the arca [10] into gothic, and other changes mentioned, would come to the same thing: the proper way would be to ask M. Mathas [11] to make a design of his own. But this is another man’s design and it is but justice to him to see that it is rigourously carried out. With respect to the relative size of the arca & columns that was the difficulty of the design: Mr Kirkup wrote to me twice very kindly & forcibly advising me not to have an arca supported by pillars at all—as he considered such an erection unsafe: he had helped to put up such a monument (to Napier’s wife) [12] and seen it give way thro’ the over weight of the arca: & Leighton was at great pains to proportion the pillars to their office—they will bear that arca & not a larger—so a larger it cannot be. Even as it was, the one fault Hatty found with it (to me, at least) was that the arca was too heavy: but Leighton understands all this: I have asked him to express on paper his own intentions & reasons for them, because he is quite capable of that, and will send them to Cottrell—whose behavior in the matter has been kindness itself– I understand all he thought would be to my advantage, and trust he knows it: I shall write to him—not to-day I fear—but to-morrow. Poor Leighton, he suffers enough from the interpreters of his drawings for “Romola” [13] —I daresay they seem to every body hideous: I could not have believed unless I had seen the photographs from the originals that so they were drawn on the wood, and so cut into it & turned out by the engraver—who goes over all the beautiful, refined work & expresses by a cut here & a rub there what he considers the essential part: of course other artists understand the subsequent process better, draw for the engraver better, and get better treated: his tunes don’t grind well on the organ, in fact: but when you look at the drawings themselves you won’t find Ruskin far wrong in saying, as he did to me on Friday, that the spirit of beauty & grace is in him above all his contemporaries.
I am so particularly glad that you saw & spoke of my feeling to Tommaseo. [14] <***>
Publication: DI, pp. 141–145.
Manuscript: Armstrong Browning Library.
1. The Cost of a Secret (1863), advertised by Chapman and Hall in The Athenæum of 13 December 1862 as ready “next week” (no. 1833, p. 757). Their advertisement in the issue of 27 December announced publication “this day” (no. 1835, p. 834).
2. As later correspondence indicates, the printing firm of Bradbury and Evans (see letter 3766, note 7) commissioned Chapman and Hall to publish The Cost of a Secret, which, in the years ahead, would lead to the question of who owed Isa her royalties. Presumably, she had approached Bradbury and Evans because of the relationship she had established as a contributor to their magazine Once a Week.
3. See the preceding letter, note 3.
4. Dramatis Personæ (1864).
5. EBB’s Poems (6th ed., 4 vols., 1864). RB’s “new edition,” The Poetical Works of Robert Browning (1863), was issued in three volumes.
6. Sic, for Lewes; i.e., George Eliot (1819–80), whose partner was George Henry Lewes (1817–79). The latter is listed in the Brownings’ address book of this period (AB-4) at “16. Blandford Square, N.W.”
7. The 16th.
8. Gertrude FitzPatrick (see letter 5089, note 4) married on 9 September 1862 Edward Skeffington Randal Smyth (1831–97), of Mount Henry, Queen’s County, Ireland.
9. Priscilla Anne Fane (née Wellesley-Pole, 1793–1879); see letter 4949, note 5.
10. “Sarcophagus.”
11. Niccolò Matas (1799–1872), Italian architect who designed the polychrome Gothic façade of the Church of Santa Croce, Florence (1857–63).
12. Caroline Napier (née Bennett, 1805–36), wife of Henry Edward Napier (1789–1853), naval officer and historian. Mrs. Napier died in Florence and was buried in the Protestant cemetery.
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