5261. RB to Isa Blagden
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 30, 277–279.
19. Warwick Crescent,
Upper Westbourne Terrace, W.
July 19. ’63.
Dearest Isa,
We are here, you see, and mean to leave London as we did last year, on the 1st August—for the same place, Pornic or rather Ste Marie, two miles off—if we can get the same house there—for which my sister has written. There are many advantages,—not the least being that we know the place. Mrs Bracken & Willy mean to accompany us in all probability—we stay there two months, I suppose—and I shall much enjoy the silence & fresh air, little picturesque as the country is. You must write to my sister’s next time & till the end of September,—“R.B, 151. Rue de Grenelle, Faubourg St Germain”—in your most legible hand, if you please.
Annunziata called here last sunday—I was out unluckily: she promised to come again to-day, and I shall see her with very mixed feelings. Here she is, and now she is gone, poor dear thing. She looks very well, seems very comfortable,—may stay in England a long time. She was amazed at Pen’s growth,—he was as happy to see her as I. Just let me tell you a characteristic thing while it is in my mind: sweet Sophy E. has published a volume of verses [1] —of which I only came across one specimen in a review the other day—the “Press”: [2] this critic, evidently knowing nothing of the author, whom he called “Miss Eckley”—said—“respect for the ‘mighty dead’ should have kept this lady from touching those poems of Heine’s which were the last translation of Mrs. B”—and he quoted the attempt [3] —actually the first of that last translation of all. It strikes me as more repulsive than any instance of Eckleyism even I ever came across—and really completing, by one black touch, the picture of that remarkable lady. You can hardly fancy a stranger doing it—unless he were translating the whole of Heine: but in a collection of rubbish, to stuff in just this!– All I can say is, I would not have believed it of her!
I shall not write much, for seeing A. has given me a headache. I received your note about Mrs Freeman [4] and called on her the next day. Her works show how decidedly artistic a turn she has, and what a deal she might have done with cultivation. Her vase, and other little things have everything but what, I suppose, it is too late for her to acquire. I hope she may succeed in selling them. She looked very well, & spoke in high praise of London, preferring it (as I understood) to Rome. It will be long before I read Mrs Brotherton’s book, [5] —but the review[s] praise it, I am glad to find. I cannot get Romola—spite of my repeated applications at Mudie’s—& shall give up subscribing to him in consequence: his humbug is too much. I found Tennyson, however, reading it in bed last Thursday [6] —he has got an eruption—suppressed hay fever or irregularly-acting vaccination, he thinks. I dined with him the week before, and found him very pleasant: he has poems ready,—one, in particular, called “Enoch the sailor,”—which I wish he would make haste & print. Yes, you may be sure I saw Mr Conway’s unwise piece of picturesque narration: he means well, of course. He said I was very intimate with the Lewes’s—i.e, I dined once, & spent two evenings there. [7] Kate Field wrote a nice letter to me the other day with reference to some article she had written & sent [8] —but which I have not yet received– I can’t fancy she would do anything to give me pain, so shall not anticipate it. By the bye, I met Mr Adams, the A. Minister, in a railway this mg & he told me Vicksburg was taken [9] —no news to you by the time you read this. Annunciata [sic] never got the book of certificates [10] —& I forget to whom you sent it: was it to Lucca? You told me, but I can’t remember. Cottrell wrote about the contract he had signed [11] —it seems a very moderately-termed & judicious one, & if the sculptor is honest & careful, I shall be very satisfied—as I have told him. I never had any doubt as to his kindness. What do you mean by saying, that Pen “with his new friends & new objects of interest, cannot remember you much?”– All I can say is, his delight at seeing A. just now—was edifying—he kissed her, got her wine &c, went with her to Miss Barrett’s, & part of the way home, & wanted to go further—in short, was just as he should have been.
You must have enjoyed Vallombrosa—Cottrell mentioned your going there. Are you going to stay at the Villa now, or go elsewhere, to Leghorn, or Siena? Tell me. I hear the weather has been very hot at Florence, & Rome: here it was oppressive, certainly—but for these last few days I have felt actually cold. My dinners, & all that, are nearly at an end—to my immense relief. I saw A. Trollope the other night at my new club, the Cosmopolitan [12] —he told me of his brother’s arrival, & wanted to arrange for our meeting but it was not to be—they went to Torquay, I believe, & will return when I am far away. I had a letter from Lytton the other day [13] —I believe he is coming to England in August. His novel seems an absolute failure [14] —but he has got the money for it: he said, it might be surprizing, but he had really expected the thing to be an advance on all he had done before. I only observed two reviews of it—two contemptuous notices. He should act differently if he wants to get any permanent hold of people worth securing.
Good bye, now, dearest Isa: I fancy you were in a hurry when you got over these two half sheets I last received—all the same, I am always glad & grateful for never so little a scrap of writing, & sometimes you are very generous. Pen came into the room just now “Are you writing to Isa? Give her my best love!”—I would not tell him you suspected him of forgetting you. Whenever I have an opportunity, I will send the photograph & the little book. [15] I won’t forget you to my Father & sister—& do you remember me to the Cottrells & other friends.
Ever yours affectionately
Robert Browning.
Publication: DI, pp. 166–171.
Manuscript: Yale University.
1. Sophia Eckley’s Poems (1863), published the previous month by Longman, Green, Longman, Roberts, and Green.
2. Mrs. Eckley’s Poems was reviewed with works by Walter P.J. Purcell and Matthew Brydie in The Press, 4 July 1863, p. 643.
3. Concerning Mrs. Eckley’s translations of Heine, the Press reviewer wrote: “If any woman could translate Heine, it was Mrs. Browning. But that meeting of cynical satire and strangely-tender pathos … which characterized Heine, does not belong to women. Hence the utmost we can say of Mrs. Browning’s translations is that they are not unsatisfactory. But why should Miss Eckley dare comparison with the mighty hand that sleeps in earth?” (p. 643). The poem both women translated was Heinrich Heine’s “Aus meinen großen Schmerzen.” Mrs. Eckley’s translation was given first, the reviewer taking great exception to the phrase “with ringing plumage,” followed by EBB’s version. The latter, “Out of my own great woe,” appeared as the first of six “Paraphrases on Heine” in Last Poems (1862), p. 137.
4. Horatia Augusta Freeman (née Latilla, 1824–97); see letter 4332, note 15.
5. Respectable Sinners (1863) by Mary Brotherton (née Rees, 1817–1910)—see letter 3222, note 6—was issued by Hurst and Blackett at the end of May.
6. i.e., the 16th. However, in letter 5260 RB indicates that he saw Tennyson on Wednesday, the 15th.
7. An article entitled “A Visit to Robert Browning” by Moncure Daniel Conway appeared in The Commonwealth (Boston), an anti-slavery weekly, on 29 May 1861 (p. 2). Conway described his meeting with RB on 30 April (see letter 5234, note 5) and noted: “Browning goes very little into London society, and stays at home a great deal. He is fond of visiting Lewes, author of the ‘Life of Goethe,’ and his wife the author of Adam Bede,—who on account of their irregular marriage are not ‘in Society.’ But Browning is eagerly sought for in circles, and is by all regarded as brilliant in presence and conversation.”
8. Kate Field reviewed EBB’s Essays on the Greek Christian Poets and the English Poets (New York, 1863) in The Christian Examiner (Boston) of July 1863 (pp. 24–43). For the full text of this review, see pp. 369–376. Tear-sheets of the review sold as part of lot 931 in Browning Collections (see Reconstruction, A648).
9. Vicksburg, the key city and fortress on the Mississippi, fell to Union forces, led by Gen. U.S. Grant, on 4 July 1863. This victory, coupled with the Confederate defeat at Gettysburg the day before, turned the tide of the Civil War in the Union’s favor.
10. The “book & testimonials” mentioned in letter 5124.
11. For the construction of EBB’s monument.
12. The Cosmopolitan Club was founded in 1852 at 49 Bond Street, moving two years later to 30 Charles Street, Berkeley Square, former studio of Frederick Watts. The club met on “Wednesdays and Sundays from 10 p.m. to 2 a.m.” (ODNB). Its 150 members included artists, writers, politicians, and civil servants. “Conviviality and conversation” were encouraged. RB resigned from the club in 1883, telling fellow member W.C. Cartwright that he had not “attended a single meeting … for years” (letter, 1 June 1883, ms at ABL).
14. The Ring of Amasis (1863).
15. The Greek Christian Poets and the English Poets (1863). For the photograph, see the third paragraph in letter 5206.
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