5190. RB to Isa Blagden
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 30, 215–216.
Paris, 151. Rue de Grenelle.
March 19. ’63.
Dearest Isa,
I am here, you see, since last Saturday—& cannot consequently have received your letter which I am sure is waiting for me at home. Should there be anything in it requiring an answer before the time, you shall hear from me. By the way, you know it could be nothing but one of my stupid fits of forgetfulness which prevented me sending the Photograph to Made Torrearsa in reply to your request for one: you shall have it when I return. As for our visit here, Pen was attacked by such a vile cold that travelling proved impossible: I compounded the matter by engaging to give him a fortnight instead of a week’s holiday. We find my Father very well, just as usual, & my sister quite well also. The weather is surprisingly cold—far below the temperature of London, as we left it: but the clear, bracing, exciting character of the air has a great effect on me, & I have got rid of a sort of cough which plagued me for weeks.
I find Willy Bracken very well, though palish—Annette left last week, & I was sorry to miss her—she establishes herself, at least for a year, at Genoa, with Made Beati: [1] Mrs Bracken is all her old self.
Just before we left, I had the satisfaction of getting Pen entered on the books of Balliol “for residence in 1867”—this was done simultaneously by both the Master [2] & Jowett, who, each of them, wrote most kind letters to the two friends of mine who had applied about the matter. [3] Balliol is immeasurably the best College for Pen—if he will but resolve to rise to their high standard of scholarship, as I hope & trust he will. He engages, after this holiday to set to work energetically. Milsand find[s] him “much more mature”—he certainly is so. He is much liked & kindly treated by various friends—enjoys himself, I think, and, on the whole, I venture to say satisfies me. We saw the sights, I ought to tell you—he, from the War Office in Pall Mall, [4] I from Devonshire House: the illuminations I went to see with Dickens—we left Waterloo Bridge in a Van at 7 oclock—were to go by a by-way to Southwark Bridge in order to do this thing superiorly: spent five miserably cold & black hours in trying vainly to do so, got out again in despair, & walked back—by which means I saw a little—far more, however, than was worth seeing: the English can’t manage anything of the kind—I notice every night that the illuminations here of the Place de la Concorde & all round are so strangely superior that I can’t understand how people with the love of fireworks & lights in their large souls don’t go to Paris & return—at less expense than Dickens’ Van which cost £5! [5]
I am going to night with Milsand, my sister, Pen & Willy Bracken to see Macbeth at the Odéon: [6] I write in the greatest haste & amid talking—but you will understand that come what come will you must have your letter. When I get to England I will at once send you the little book [7] just about to come out when I left London: I thought it my duty to print it, of course–
I will leave off now, my dearest Isa,—for I am too teazed by the noises—this will do moreover: as soon as I get your letter, on my return at the end of the month, I will write again. That will be a good reason for my doing so. Goodbye, & God bless you a thousand times, my own friend. My Father & Sister & Milsand send their true love at this minute—all three being round the table: my Sister says you promised her a photograph of your dear self—I sympathise with her in abusing you for not doing so.
Ever your own, affectionately,
R Browning.
Publication: DI, pp. 155–158.
Manuscript: Armstrong Browning Library.
1. Mary Beati (d. 1914, aged 76), singing teacher, graduated from the Milan conservatory and later taught classes in London through the 1880’s.
2. Robert Scott.
3. One of these was Edward Twisleton (see letter 5183).
4. Through Lady de Grey, whose husband, the 2nd Earl de Grey (see letter 5177, note 10), was Under Secretary of State for War at this time; he became Secretary on 28 April 1863.
5. Dickens describes the adventure in a letter of 31 March to William Charles Macready; see SD2632.
6. With Paul-Felix-Joseph Taillade (1826–98) playing the lead in a verse translation by Jules Lacroix (1809–87).
7. The Greek Christian Poets and the English Poets.
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