Queer Places:
Cimitero Acattolico, Piazzale Donatello, 38, 50132 Firenze, Italy
Isa or Isabella Jane Blagden (30 June 1816 or 1817 – 20 January 1873) was
an English-language novelist and poet born in the East Indies or India, who
spent much of her life among the English community in Florence. She was
notably friendly with the Browning, Bulwer-Lytton and Trollope families.
Blagden was friends with Charlotte
Cushman and Emma Stebbins; one
of the women’s many pets became the subject of a eulogy by Isa Blagden, “To
Dear Old Bushie. From One Who Loved Her.” In its emphasis on the true devotion
of a passionate love that remains tacit, the poem signals Blagden’s genuine
affection for Bushie and her appreciation for the “lifelong love” between the
two women with whom the dog lived.
Blagden's father's first name is given as Thomas in the records of the
Florentine Protestant cemetery and her nationality as Swiss, but she was
widely thought to be the illegitimate offspring of an English father and an
Indian mother. This seemed to be confirmed by an Oriental appearance.[1]
There is circumstantial evidence that she was born in Calcutta, the natural
daughter of one Thomas Bracken and of a Eurasian, possibly named Blagden.[2]
Little is known firmly about her before she arrived in 1850 in Florence, where
she soon became a feature of the English community. She was probably educated
at Louisa Agassiz's Ladies School near Regent's Park, London, which was
favoured by English parents in India.
In Florence Blagden had a comfortable income (possibly an allowance from
her father and later his estate) and was remembered as a kind, generous
friend, notably to the Browning, Bulwer-Lytton and Trollope families.[3]
She is said to have occupied "a unique place in the Brownings' circle by
virtue of her intimacy with both poets."[2]
She may have been romantically involved with Robert Bulwer-Lytton, the poet
son of the novelists Edward Bulwer-Lytton and his wife Rosina, after nursing
him in 1857.[1]
Some of the surviving letters to Blagden from
Elizabeth Barrett Browning
and Robert Browning are demonstrably affectionate. (Unfortunately Blagden's
letters to them have not survived.)
"Isa, perfect in companionship, as in other things," Elizabeth Barrett
Browning wrote of her. In one letter to Isa in the summer of 1859, she wrote:
"My ever dearest, kindest Isa, I can't let another day go without writing just
a word to say that I am alive enough to love you." In another from Paris a
year earlier, Elizabeth Barrett Browning states that they had arrived "having
lost nothing – neither a carpet-bag nor a bit of our true love for you."[7]
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- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isa_Blagden
- Marcus, Sharon. Between Women (p.198). Princeton University Press.
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