5645. RB to Isa Blagden
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 32, 9–11.
19 Warwick Crescent,
Upper Westbourne Terrace W.
Oct. 19. ’65.
Dearest Isa, Here we are back again in dear ugly old England:—the fine weather lasted till the very end: Pen bathed 73 times—& I, 60: we left on the 1st Oct—& returned slowly by Angers, Le Mans & Chartres—stayed a week at Paris, & then—to work again. Willy & his mother went three days before us. Pen came back very well, but has a vile cold at this moment—how escape something of the kind? I saw Jarves & his wife at Paris—she is very nice, he seems happy enough and buried in dishes and pictures: I like him, for the old reasons. They go to Florence very soon, to winter—(baby [1] & all,—for there is such a thing) and you will see them. I also saw at Paris the Cornhill & read your very pleasant article [2] —very well written & interesting it is: I shall read it again—but our Athenæum Club is shut up, all but a room or two, for repairs, and I can’t get the magazine yet. Only write carefully and you’ll do, depend on it—& nobody will ever be half so critical on you as I—born to plague my beloved ones, and do the agreeable to people I don’t care twopence about. This black morning is darkened unnecessarily by poor Ld P’s death: [3] & there is the usual amount of insincerity poured forth in the papers,—personally pleasant he was, however. It seems to me that in a week he will be forgotten. Yet I have an ambition that way for Pen, you know: we are getting on—and I begin I think to see light at the end of the wood: he seems making steady progress, and likely to do—of course he gets more manly, for he is sixteen & a half: but I won’t look forward, like a fool. I had last night a letter from dear old Kirkup—full of kindness, & clever—all so full of the old stories about Bibi, [4] the table rising, Dante’s visits, & so on—with the customary reasoning, “Why should she wish to deceive me?” He tells me they have made him a Knight, [5] —K. Victor Emmanuel,—& just sent him the proper authorisation to use that title—& I think such a proceeding does them much credit—for he was a liberal, & open-spoken too, in bad times. You amuse me with the speculations about the new Mrs T: lord love us, how little flattering is woman’s love [6] —that is, the collective woman’s love—the particular, is another matter. It seems he may throw his handkerchief to anybody in Florence. Tell Bice with my love that both Pen & I remember very well the day she mentions—(I can’t pretend to have any but bitter remembrances about it)—but I have a real interest in her, and was very sorry not to see her when she was in London. Yes, Florence will never be her old self now to me, even as to the outside face [7] —but I love her with all my heart: there will be a meeting between us yet, I hope, tho’ I shall not live there. As soon as I can, I shall take to the tent life, & wander about to the last of me. So the Kinneys go—I don’t envy them. [8] Is that poor Made Tassinari dead or alive? [9] Of course, Brini flourishes as an honest man should: I got scent of the virtues of that Philipson establishment from a very early day: et bien m’en trouvai. [10] I wish Ansano well, I am sure with his mate—what is become of Emilia? How you & your letters do pull me out of this English air into the blue! I could chatter away forever. Another thing—I have just been making a selection of Ba’s poems which is wanted [11] —how I have done it, I can hardly say: it is one dear delight to know that the work of her goes on more effectually than ever—her books are more & more read—certainly, sold: a new Edition of Aurora Leigh is completely exhausted within this year. I shall give with it that girl-face [12] which I sent you, because it was exactly like her in her girlhood. Mrs Lewis has it hanging in her room: by the bye she called her[e] on Sunday with her husband—& I showed her some of the things—she said she had seen nothing so interesting since Goethe’s house: [13] I like her very much. Good bye, my own dearest friend: I must finish my work & be with Chapman at 1 oclock: so you want to see Pornic? It would amuse you in some things: fancy (.. shall I be cruel enough to bid you? .. yes, I will—) fancy the buxom servant girl, aged some 20, washing clothes before my window (on the pian-terreno, [14] dressed in a blue gown & nothing else, I can see, just covering the naked legs below the knee—and so kilted, turning her back to me and busying herself with linen she has to stoop for on the ground! Primitive manners! Good bye; I am so sorry that we lose Miss Smith, [15] who goes to live in the country. Pen’s best love,—& always that of
Yours ever affy
RB.
Publication: DI, pp. 226–228.
Manuscript: Armstrong Browning Library.
1. Annabel Jarves (afterwards Kerr, 1865–1954), first child of James Jackson Jarves and his second wife, Isabella (née Hayden, 1835–87).
2. “A Holiday in Venice,” The Cornhill Magazine, October 1865, pp. 441–451, unsigned.
3. Henry John Temple (1784–1865), 3rd Viscount Palmerston, British prime minister (1855–58) and (1859–65), died on 18 October at Brocket Hall, Hertfordshire.
4. Imogene (“Bibi”), (afterwards Cioni, d. 1878, aged 23), daughter of Regina Ronti (see letter 3518, note 10, where she is misidentified as Regina).
5. Kirkup “received a knighthood in the order of Santi Maurizio e Lazzaro” on Dante’s 600th birthday (ODNB); see also letter 5599, note 2.
6. Cf. Henry Taylor (1800–86), Philip van Artevelde (3rd. ed., 1844), Pt. 2, III, 2.
7. See letter 5457, note 5, and letter 5528, note 6.
8. The Kinneys had left Italy in April 1863 and for the next two and a half years divided their time between France and Germany. On 30 September 1865 they sailed from Liverpool for America aboard the China.
9. Mary Amalia Tassinari (née Thornton, 1819–95) was very much alive, as were her husband, Giovanni Tassinari (1805–92), and daughter, Alice (1848–1911).
10. “And it was a good thing I did.”
12. i.e., a photograph of the Artaud drawing of EBB’s head (see letter 5206, notes 14 and 15).
13. At Weimar (see letter 4546, note 21). George Eliot and G.H. Lewes stayed in Weimar from 3 August to 3 November 1854.
14. “Ground floor.”
15. Jane Browning Smith.
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