Her most intimate friend at Florence was a Miss Isabella Blagden, who lived for many years at Bellosguardo, in a villa commanding a lovely view over Florence and the valley of the Arno from the southern side, looking across it therefore to Fiesole and its villa-and-cypress-covered slopes.  Whether the close friendship between Mrs. Browning and Isa Blagden (we all called her Isa always) was first formed in Florence, or had its commencement at an earlier date, I do not know.  But Isa was also the intimate and very specially highly-valued friend of my wife and myself.  And this also contributed to our common friendship.  Isa was (yes, as usual, “was,” alas, though she was very much my junior) a very bright, very warm-hearted, very clever little woman, who knew everybody, and was, I think, more universally beloved than any other individual among us.  A little volume of her poems was published after her untimely death.  They are not such as could take by storm the careless ears of the world, which knows nothing about her, and must, I suppose, be admitted to be marked by that mediocrity which neither gods nor men can tolerate.  But it is impossible to read the little volume without perceiving how choice a spirit the authoress must have been, and understanding how it came to pass that she was especially honoured by the close and warm attachment of Mrs. Browning.  I have scores of letters signed “Isa,” or rather Sibylline leaves scrawled in the vilest handwriting on all sorts of abnormal fragments of paper, and despatched in headlong haste, generally concerning some little projected festivity at Bellosguardo, and advising me of the expected presence of some stranger whom she thought I should like to meet.  Very many of such of these fragmentary scribblings, as were written before the Brownings left Florence, contain some word or reference to her beloved “Ba,” for such was the pet name used between them, with what meaning or origin I know not.

Dear Isa’s death was to me an especially sad one, because I thought, and think, that she need not have died.  She lived alone with a couple of old servants, and though she was rich in troops of friends, and there were one or two near her during the day or two of her illness, they did not seem to have managed matters wisely.  Our Isa was extremely obstinate about calling in medical advice.  It could not be done at a moment’s notice, for a message had to be sent and a doctor to come from Florence.  And this was not done till the second day of her illness.  And I had good reason for thinking that, had she been properly attended to on the first day, her life might have been saved.  She would not let her friends send for the doctor, and the friends were unable to make her do so.  Unhappily, I was absent for a few days at Siena, and returned to be met by the intelligence that she was dead.  It seemed the more sad in that I knew that if I had been there I could have made her call a doctor before it was too late.  Browning could also have done so; but it was after the death of Mrs. Browning and his departure from Florence.