5634. RB to Isa Blagden
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 32, 1–3.
Ste Marie, près Pornic, Loire Inférieure
Septr 19. ’65—and a delicious day, much as
it was when I left England all those years ago, eighteen in number. [1] Well, dearest Isa, one travels and travels & gets the nearer to heaven, I hope. We have had perfect weather since the month began,—before it was cold,—rainy too,—as it is, I quite hate thinking of the return on the 1st October. So far as my sweet self is concerned, no other form of life is worth having now, than shall pass in a southern climate, in retirement, and near the sea: perhaps I may get it some future day,—more likely not,—but the feeling that here is such a good thing still in the world counts for an advantage. I go out less & less,—don’t “explore” at all, confine myself to one & the same walk. I suppose my “poem,” which you say brings me & Pornic together in your mind, is the one about the poor girl [2] —if so, “fancy,” (as I hear you say)—they have pulled down the church since I arrived, last month—there are only the shell-like, roofless walls left, for a few weeks more: it was very old—built on a natural base of rock—small enough to be sure—so they build a smart new one behind it, and down goes this:—just as if they could not have pitched down their bricks and stucco farther away and left the old place for the fishermen. So here—the church is even more picturesque—and certain old Norman ornaments, capitals of pillars and the like, which we left erect in the doorway, are at this moment in a heap of rubbish by the roadside. The people here are good, stupid and dirty, without a touch of the sense of picturesqueness in their clodpoles. The Mayor, and master of this house, [3] —for instance,—is good, and abundantly rich,—has houses & land and other incomings,—yet out of pure preference for piggishness, he sleeps in one room with his son and three daughters, the eldest being fifteen, and—the somewhat less ugly than usual maid servant of about nineteen or twenty,—who is lately taken into service,—four beds in a row—and the notion that such arrangement is queer will not enter a head in the village for the next fifty years. Now for you, Isa: I don’t remember hearing that Miss Wilks [4] & her niece were with you—and hope that their departure won’t inconvenience you. I really sympathise with the Cottrells,—pray tell me particularly how they are, when you write. What you tell me about his intentions is a great comfort—think, it is just a year since the stand-still [5] —and Leighton then hoped that a few weeks work would repair the mischief—one’s life is too short for such delays: I am glad that the place is not to hold any more people: [6] that will not, of course, exclude me,—should I die within easy reach,—as my abode is prepared, and not to find: as to Giovanozzi’s ability, nobody spoke more highly of it than Leighton, who said he could do everything well if he pleased. Thank Cottrell for me very much—or rather continue to help us as I am confident you are doing, you good, dear Isa. You say you “are afraid you can never leave Italy”—and that I am tied to England,—now, certainly—but my spirits rise as I get on toward the time of release, I know—four years have gone by, [7] —I hope, with reward for the pain of passing them. Pen is advancing, observe: after all, at worst it can be but a difference of one year, if I see fit to keep him at home so long, when the time comes for Balliol—and perhaps I make myself unnecessarily nervous—it has always been my fault to have an exorbitant ideal of things, which the reality makes absurd enough. Pen is thoroughly good & honest—and after all, he reads without previous preparation, a hundred lines of Virgil in an hour: does so every day here—we have thus read to-gether the 6th 7th 8th 9th & nearly the 10th book of the Æneid: and then he spends half an hour or more in producing a very fair Greek translation, which I correct: and he has two years more—oh, I am sure he’ll do! Then he is quite well and strong. I told you of his swimming: I saw him swim two days ago for half an hour, by my watch holding an umbrella in one hand:—and a fortnight ago, he & Willy swam from this place to the Noveillard Baths, perhaps a mile & a half, in forty two minutes. (Willy is, I fancy, rather even a better swimmer,—he resists the cold better, which after a time turns Pen’s crimson face into blue-black and makes his teeth chatter unmistakably: also Willy is fonder of diving—which Pen can do but won’t do—for its one of Pen’s hopeful points that you can’t persuade him out of his own feelings,—his character being firm and decided enough. The two tried that long swim sometime before, and Pen felt so cold, after swimming for more than half an hour, that he got into the boat,—thinking that Willy was going to do the same, though he did not, and reached the goal: Pen said to me, “I will do it next time, depend on it,” and so he did.) Here comes Mrs Bracken for my letter and cuts me short.—Let me mention, that by a newspaper I see that poor Miss B. C. died on the 6th ult: [8] by the advertisement I learnt her christian name and where she lived. But I shall not again allude to this lying tittle-tattle. [9] Yes, I occasionally see Mrs Lewis, and like her always: I read her “Mill on the Floss” [10] again the other day—approving the first vol. much, not so the second. I much regret I did not see Trollope & Bice [11] in London: tell him so, with my kind remembrance. Isa, to fill up, you shall have one of my latest photographs [12] —it will save your start at my venerable appearance when you next see me: and I’ll wrap it in an envelope which shall help you to row your servant, if needs be,—or, still better, show you that Isa makes blunders in stamps as well as her ever affectionate RB—whose father & sister & son especially desire their best love to go with his. Direct next time—alas—to Warwick Crescent,—and finally God Bless you!
Publication: DI, pp. 222–225.
Manuscript: Armstrong Browning Library.
1. On 19 September 1846 (nineteen years before), EBB and RB, along with Wilson and Flush, travelled from London to Le Havre on their way to Italy.
2. “Gold Hair” (1864), in which the “Pornic church” occurs in line 71.
3. René Laraison (1817–90), whose wife had died during RB’s stay in 1862 (see letter 5111, note 2).
4. Martha Wilks (1801–84); see letter 4277, note 2. “Her niece” refers to Una Augusta Wilks (afterwards Grosjean, 1838–84), daughter of Francis Maseres Wilks (1810–74), an artist, and his wife, Henrietta.
5. In the construction of the monument over EBB’s grave; see letter 5467.
6. The Protestant Cemetery in Florence remained open until 1877.
7. Since EBB’s death and RB’s subsequent relocation to London.
8. Sic, for inst. Joanna Hilary Bonham Carter (1821–65) died on September 6th. The notice in The Times of 9 September 1865 gives her full name (as above) and place of death as “Carlisle-place” (p. 1). She is listed in RB’s address book of this period (AB-5) at 8 Gloucester Road.
9. Apparently, Miss Bonham Carter was one of the conduits of “nonsensical reports” about RB’s remarrying (see the second paragraph in letter 5632). Compare RB’s comments here with those he made in letter 5449.
10. The Mill on the Floss (1860) by George Eliot. RB sometimes refers to her as Mrs. “Lewis” or Lewes, though she was not legally married to George Henry Lewes.
11. i.e., Thomas Adolphus Trollope (1810–92) and his daughter, Beatrice (“Bice”) Trollope (1853–81).
12. One of the eight photographs taken by William Jeffrey in late June 1865. They are reproduced in vol. 31, facing pp. 272 and 273.
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