5485. RB to Isa Blagden
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 31, 172–174.
London,
Nov 19. ’64
Dearest Isa,
Your letters are never “stupid,” and are more or less welcome exactly as they are longer or shorter: I expect them a long while before hand, and remember them as long: and so it will always be. It is useless saying anything more about the monument: [1] only I ought to mention in justice to everyone that Leighton does not think the workman [2] incompetent by any means—on the contrary he says that one morning’s explanation—(which could only be an injunction) was enough, & that on his return in a fortnight he found the models for the capitals of the pillars re-made & perfectly done: he is sure, that if the man pleases he can execute the same as well: and had I fancied it was so difficult for Cottrell to insist on the things being performed exactly, I would have tried to find somebody else—you, for instance. As for doing the work in London,—Leighton would hardly have gone to see whether any body else was advising the man to change particulars in the design, if the work had been in progress a mile off. You gave me a ring [3] (which I shall wear to my dying-day) and gave orders for it at Rome: suppose Castellani [4] had sent it with the motto improved by Mrs Eckley to “Phyz tua” [5] —you would rather blame them than the general practise of Roman jewellers.
Since I wrote to you, I think, I dipped into Miss Cobbe’s book, at the Club: she feels kindly and means not ill,—indeed I feel grateful to her for thinking and speaking as she does of one she could easily have misunderstood. The introductory “fact” about Azeglio’s being ignorant of the very name [6] —I should think you could have instructed her about: there must have been some allusion in letters to the visit Azeglio paid her, “out of his own head,” during the little time he was at Rome: she was much gratified by it: I came in and met him going out of the door & he told me that he had considered it his duty to call on one who loved Italy so: I suppose Miss Cobbe’s Italian is not always clear, and that, just as I might tell an Italian with great sincerity that I had never heard of Miss “Cob-bè”—might D’Azeglio affirm with respect to “Brow ning”– I also am sorry that such unwarrantable a notice as that about Kirkup should appear. [7] But what more than all surprizes me is the appreciation of Passaglia [8] —because it was through his assuring her that under no circumstances he would ever marry—while she knew he was under an engagement to do so, at that moment,—Miss C. having never let him guess that she was a friend of A’s,—through information of this it was, according to Mrs McKenzie, that A. came to a decision about him. Still there seem clever things in the book,—for she is clever.
I feel particularly sorry that you should fear disturbance in your pleasant Villa: perhaps the Padrone may prefer your quietness & prompt payment to uncertainties: that’s the way with my Sister’s Landlady at Paris [9] —who has long since raised the rents of every room in the house but hers—which she says she shall never do. The years are going, Isa,—and in three years I may begin to hope for a realization of the snake-metamorphosis: [10] I shall not keep house when Pen is at Oxford—to what use? He will enjoy his vacations best in travelling. I yearn for Italy again: the kindness of people is excessive here—but I am “done for,” can’t take root again. Pen is very well,—a good boy—with dreadfully incipient mustachios! He came here just now, and said “Give my best love to Isa”—so, there you have it. Lytton is in Athens: [11] Sir E. “behaved like a brute” in money & other matters,—says an adequate authority. The very devil in [sic, for is] in that stinginess of his. Mrs. Sartoris has just undergone a most dangerous operation with the utmost fortitude,—unknown to every body: she will probably regain her old health, I earnestly hope: she was two hours under the surgeon’s hands—(having taken chloroform)—and not out of danger for a week after. Good bye, dearest Isa: don’t be bilious, but take care of yourself for better reasons than the sake of your brother-snake that is to be, & always most affectionately,
R Browning.
Publication: DI, pp. 198–200.
Manuscript: Armstrong Browning Library.
1. Over EBB’s grave in Florence.
2. Presumably the sculptor Francesco Giovannozzi (b. 1802).
3. See letter 3950, note 2, and letter 4205.
5. “Your face.”
7. Although unnamed, Kirkup is clearly the subject of Miss Cobbe’s description of “an old man with long white beard and glittering eye,” who lives in “an old palazzo close over the Arno in Florence,” and who “greeted us … with the courtesy of an English gentleman” (Italics, 1864, pp. 394–396). RB would have been particularly displeased with her account of Kirkup’s interest in spiritualism: “Bye and bye, he began to talk of spirits, then to show sketches he had made in water-colours of the visions seen by himself and friends. One, I remember, represented a great grey veiled apparition rising out of the ground. Another was of a woman lately dead, a ‘Medium,’ who had been his friend, flying above the old man and guarding him with outstretched rainbow wings” (p. 396).
8. Carlo Passaglia (1812–87), a Jesuit priest whom Annette Bracken had hoped to marry (see letter 5032, note 3), is given his own chapter, “Padre Passaglia,” in Italics (pp. 288–308). Miss Cobbe writes of his rise in the Jesuit hierarchy and his favorable position with Pope Pius IX (Passaglia had provided him with scholarly justification for the Immaculate Conception) until Passaglia sided with the Italian government in restricting the temporal power of the pope. At the conclusion of the chapter Miss Cobbe declares: “Altogether, there are not a great many men in the world more remarkable in various ways than Don Carlo Passaglia” (p. 308).
9. Unidentified.
11. On 18 May 1864, Robert Bulwer Lytton was transferred from Copenhagen to Athens, where he served as 1st Secretary of Legation. “Sir E.” refers to Lytton’s father, Edward Bulwer-Lytton, who, evidently, was less than generous to his son and new daughter-in-law upon their marriage the previous month (see letter 5440, note 2).
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