5894. RB to Isa Blagden
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 32, 193–194.
[London]
Tuesday, Apr: 23. ’67.
Dearest Isa, it is no use my waiting any longer—get the book [1] as yet I cannot: people promise it me and send me something else: of course it is always just coming, so I don’t take it up at the Club [2] where I never spend more than a few minutes once a week: what can I say—it seems as if I were indifferent, and I am certainly not that: if I could put up with my pride and ask Chapman to send it! But that would be too bad, poor fellow. Let me say no more—only implore you to believe in me and wait till next time. I don’t mean to say I am not very engaged: I am—with not a spare quarter of an hour. Still, I wish I had done the impossible, and been able to tell you how I like your novel, since you are good enough to care about that.
I sent the cheque to Wilson’s Sister, [3] and got an impertinent, improper letter in reply, saying Wilson was quite able to take care of herself, and had been found so as long as she was of any use,—“when worn out in the service she was to be thrown on other people,” and more of this sort of thing. I told her exactly what I thought of her, in reply, and said that with her would the [sic] remain the responsibility of what would be sure to happen in Florence. The next day brought Wilson herself—to my mind, mad now—so utterly irrationally did she talk. “Ferdinando must keep her, or why did he marry her?”– I asked what she was going to do? Now this, now that, “keep a shop, lodgings, take in needlework”: with what? “Nothing—all the money was spent.” She did not deny that her sisters, whose trade is doing needlework, would have nothing to do with her. The fact is, they have been determined she should do for herself,—just what she can’t do,—never did nor will. It is all deplorable, and I expect the worst will come of it in every way.
I am very grieved at what you tell me of the poor Cottrells: he wrote to me the other day and I am going to answer his letter very soon: it was a doleful one, as you might expect,—yet perhaps not altogether as much,—he seemed pleased at Hal’s doings, [4] talked of coming to London with him, & so on. I wish I could sell his picture, [5] with all my heart: but nobody does more than say it is good of its kind. How hard it is for people to get money! I don’t wonder they grow misers: It is so terrible to have to leave all your soul’s business and set about getting fifty pounds—even your sorrows you would have to give up.
I am far from being as much at my ease about Pen’s matriculation as you so complacently suppose: it comes of my knowing the shoe, and where it pinches or may pinch. Pen had, on the whole, a very successful visit to Jowett: it was not for matriculation that he went,—that is for May 2: Jowett gave him Latin & Greek, that he had never seen, to translate without a dictionary, English to turn into Latin, & so on. In the matters where Pen is strongest, as Latin verse making, he would not try him. He wrote very kindly about him to me,—said he was up to the mark in Latin, hardly in Greek. So I got nervous and wrote to the Master [6] asking leave to delay the Matriculation, appointed for May, till the real time of residence, October,—for what is the use of throwing away five months, likely to be more profitably employed than almost as many of the last years? The Master graciously assented, and it is now in Pen’s own power to do what is wanted or leave it undone: he seems quite awake, at last, to the necessity of coming to a determination. Jowett spoke highly of his ways—said he got on very well with the undergraduates (whom he invited to meet him) and would be quite able to hold his own at College.
I have seen no more of Lytton. I want to get done with my Poem,—sixteen thousand lines! [7] Booksellers are making me pretty offers for it. One sent to propose, last week, to publish it at his risk, give me all the profits, and pay me the whole in advance—“for the incidental advantage of my name.” Oh, RB who for six months once did not sell one copy of the poems! I ask £200 for the sheets to America and shall get it [8] —or rather, Pen will. Good bye, ever dearest Isa: my sister sends her kindest love: she will go to Paris for a few weeks, but not I.
Pen is well (save a cold, caught in rowing) & sends his best love too. I had a letter from dear old Kirkup, [9] which I shall answer when I can. Ever affy yrs
RB.
Publication: DI, pp. 261–264.
Manuscript: Armstrong Browning Library.
1. Nora and Archibald Lee (1867).
2. i.e., the Athenæum Club.
4. Henry (“Hal”) Edward Plantagenet Cottrell (1851–1938).
5. The Botticelli painting of the Holy Family mentioned in letter 5676.
7. The Ring and the Book (4 vols., 1868–69) came to well over 20,000 lines.
8. RB offered the work to his American publisher Ticknor and Fields. For their acceptance, see letter 5904.
9. In late 1865, Browning asked Kirkup to lend his Landor letters and papers to John Forster for his biography of the late poet (see SD2799). In the letter RB mentions (not extant), Kirkup asked that the Landor material be turned over to Swinburne (see SD2892). Kirkup was a bit muddled. Forster still required the material (the biography was published in 1869), and Swinburne had no use for it, since he knew of Forster’s biography. Kirkup continued to bother RB about the Landor papers over the next few years. See his letter to Isa, 23 January 1871, ms at ABL.
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