SD2460. Isa Blagden to Kate Field

Published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 29, 290–291.

[Florence]

[3 July 1861]

Dear Kate

What have you heard from your aunt? I am anxious to know– I feel a profound faith that you will not be troubled by money matters—for none of those belonging to you would allow you to be so in a strange land but it would be satisfactory to know. You must not think I am so absorbed in one friend not to think of another & I did not like the look of your pale face my child. I feel so stupefied & paralyzed when I am not attending upon Mr Browning that I am sure you must think me unfeeling but it is not the case. The living seem drawn nearer to me by this great rent which death has caused. To day I cannot speak from hoarseness. The tightness of head & chest has ended in that & so far so good. Mr Browning said yours was a dear letter. His health seems a little better but it was with the greatest difficulty I got him into bed at half past 12—last night but I really could not sit up any longer. I have been in bed all day but have crawled up now. I do not think I shall be able to go with him. I shall go afterwards. Will you send Christmas Eve to Brecker’s—Lytton is going to try & write a review of Mr Browning’s poems & wants all. The National Guard that is a batallion of 800 men were to have accompanied the funeral but there was some mistake as to time.

If Mrs Trollope would draw up a paper asking for the permission for a tablet to be hung on the walls of Sta Croce I am sure we could get many Italians to sign it. Her last letter & it was unfinished was addressed to Mdme Matteucci.

Love to your Mamma.

Your’s affly

Isa.

Address, on integral page: Miss Field.

Publication: Edward C. McAleer, “Isa Blagden to Kate Field,” Boston Public Library Quarterly, 3 (July 1951), p. 212.

Manuscript: Boston Public Library.

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