United States or Israel ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
"His conversation," says Hawthorne, speaking of a visit to Miss Blagden at Bellosguardo, "has the effervescent aroma which you cannot catch even if you get the very words that seem to be imbued with it.... His nonsense is of very genuine and excellent quality, the true babble and effervescence of a bright and powerful mind; and he lets it play among his friends with the faith and simplicity of a child."
And to Miss Blagden after the publication of his poem: "I thought badly of him at the beginning of his career, et pour cause; better afterward, on the strength of the promises he made, and gave indications of intending to redeem. I think him very weak in the last miserable year."
Browning would speak of a visit to the Pyrenees, if not a residence among them, as one of the restful possibilities of his later and freer life. He wrote to Miss Blagden: Biarritz, Maison Gastonbide: Sept. 19, '62.
We begin to see that by no possible means can one spend as much money to so small an end and then we don't work so well, don't live to as much use either for ourselves or others. Isa Blagden bids us observe that we pretend to live at Florence, and are not there much above two months in the year, what with going away for the summer and going away for the winter. It's too true.
Miss Blagden was a resident in Florence for many years, and was a prominent member of English society there. Her friendship, not only with Mrs. Browning, but with her husband, was of a very intimate character, and was continued after Mrs. Browning's death until the end of her own life in 1872. To Miss I. Blagden Siena: September . Here I am keeping my promise, my dear Miss Blagden.
These visits were afterwards, at her urgent request, continued to Mr. Procter's widow. Pornic 'James Lee's Wife' Meeting at Mr. The most constant contributions to Mr. Browning's history are supplied during the next eight or nine years by extracts from his letters to Miss Blagden.
Although not prone to superstition, he had noted in July 1863 a dream of Miss Barrett in which she imagined herself asking her dead sister Elizabeth, "When shall I be with you?" and received the answer, "Dearest, in five years." "Only a coincidence," he adds in a letter to Miss Blagden, "but noticeable."
Word Of The Day