5711. RB to Isa Blagden
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 32, 55–56.
The Athenæum
Monday. Feb. 19. ’66.
Dearest Isa,
First of all, I am very sorry you are unwell,—you don’t say precisely how; from what cause,—but to know that you write from your bed, and require nursing is anything but good news to me: I hope, with all my heart, that you are yourself again by this time.
True thanks for your intelligence: I heard from Sir C. Lyell the other day that all cause for apprehension was nearly at an end. [1] After my own life, I shall leave things to God,—while I am here, I will do what I can, & ought, in resisting such an outrage: let us think it settled now, however.
I have nothing to tell you,—I love gossip from you, to hear what you do & whom you see,—but my own doings and seeings are out of my head the day after they have been accomplished. I go out a great deal; but have enjoyed nothing so much as a dinner last week with Tennyson [2] who, with his wife & one son, [3] is staying in Town for a few weeks: she is just what she was and always will be—very sweet and dear: he seems to me better than ever. I met him on [sic] large party on Saturday—also Carlyle, whom I never met at a “drum” in my whole life, till now: I met, by the bye, your friend Miss Elliot [4] and told her you were unwell. Miss Smith is here for about a month, she comes and overlooks Pen’s drawing, three times a week: Pen is drawing our Owl [5] —a bird that is the light of our house, for his tameness and engaging ways. I went some weeks ago to see the Mackays,—for I like them very much and was determined not to lose sight of them: I shall go again soon. The Lewises [6] I sometimes see—not often: A. Trollope has invited me to a dinner of the Proprietors & Staff of the Fortnightly Review, [7] —I don’t know why—for I never gave them a line in my life. Their Review or Magazine is very good and respectable, but hardly successful, I should fear, as a speculation. The “Pall Mall,” [8] which was in a sorry condition, is now in high vogue; so do things alter.
I was sorry about the death of poor Gibson, [9] —a simple good man, with great talent and little genius enough, secondo me: [10] I don’t like—nor was prepared for—his not leaving Hatty .. so far as I hear .. a ring or an old set of modelling-tools: she has quite enough of her own, but there is too abrupt a descent from the high expectations [11] <***>
Publication: DI, pp. 230–231.
Manuscript: Armstrong Browning Library.
1. In regard to the closing of the Protestant Cemetery in Florence (see letter 5689).
2. On the 10th.
3. Lionel Tennyson (see letter 5704).
4. Margaret Elliot (see letter 4371, note 1).
5. An oil painting by Pen entitled “Owl on a Perch” sold as part of lot 52 in Browning Collections (see Reconstruction, K66; in the possession of Helen Rossetti Angeli in 1948).
6. i.e., George Eliot and George Henry Lewes.
8. The Pall Mall Gazette, an evening daily newspaper founded by George Murray Smith and first issued on 7 February 1865. According to the ODNB, “the paper was not an immediate financial success. … Over the next two years, however, sales gradually began to improve.”
9. John Gibson (1790–1866) died at Rome on 27 January.
10. “In my opinion.”
11. Harriet Hosmer had been a pupil and friend of Gibson (see vol. 25, p. 330), but he left all of his estate to the Royal Academy (see letter 5506, note 4).
___________________
