SD2560. Isa Blagden to Margherita Albana-Mignaty
Published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 30, 344 (in part).
[Lee, Kent]
March 16th [1862] [1]
My dear Margaret, I have been going to answer your letter, some two or three weeks but my pen never seems out of my hand, and yet I do not write to half the people I ought. I was very glad to have your letter & to hear from yourself you were better. Has Mrs Baker returned to Florence? Did I tell you that two days before I left London I had a note from her telling me she was at Bath & was coming to town,? did I know of any lodgings? I told her mine would be vacant—they were very nice & reasonable and only one other lady in the house but I have never heard again. I went to these lodgings to be quiet and write but I was beset the whole three months & scarcely wrote at all but I have got on since I have been here & hope two or three weeks will see the end of my work and then I shall begin to turn my face Italywards. I have two or three visits to pay. I shall want to see the Exhibition and then I shall leave England. I like England excessively for many things but for others I prefer Italy much. In England there is such a dearth of men in Society, all the men are too occupied to go out, and in England if a man talks twice to the same lady he is thought engaged to her. It makes me so mad—for of course one can talk to men to all eternity without thinking or dreaming of anything but what one is saying, without any reference to the sex of the individual. I dare say several men in England have thought I wished to make love to them, just because I talked and laughed with them, for their sisters or their friends have immediately praised them up to the skies as if it mattered what they were, beyond the minute to an old stager like me. I shall perhaps be settled not far from you if I succeed in taking part of the terreno in Casa Fraschetti but I am sorry about the garden I would rather have the garden half I think. I posted your letter the day I received it. How is Aspasia? Give her my love. Does Mr Jarves write to you? I suppose half the Americans have left Florence. I wish the Alexanders would have Villa Brichieri– How did Blumental get on this year & was that Madame with him. Mr Browning is very good and sends me the Nazione and writes very often. He went over for a week to see his sister & father in Paris. He is quite absorbed in Pen’s education scarcely ever leaves him, but he sometimes talks of returning to finish his days in Italy when Penini is grown up. The new vol of Poems is coming out in a few days. What do you think of the affairs in Italy. I am sorry Garibaldi is putting himself forward again. It sounds like war and that would not do. I hope you admired Prince Napoleon’s speech. He is surely a good friend to Italy. I think Princess Clotilde must have been pleased. There is a new novel come out by a countryman of yours Hamilton Aïdé. Do you know him. How is Mons le Professeur Villari. Remember me to him. Will you kindly give the enclosed to Countess Cottrell? My address the next 3 weeks or month is 20 Blessin[g]ton Road, Lee, Kent. I told you I saw Elizabeth Black, did I not? She was looking very thin. I like Annette’s husband, but she is rather affected still, though pretty. Kindest regards to your husband and much love from your affecte Isa—
Publication: None traced.
Manuscript: Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale di Firenze.
1. Year determined by Isa’s reference to RB’s visit with RB Sr and Sarianna in Paris (late February 1862) and by Isa’s writing from England, which she left on her return to Italy before March 1863.
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