3319. Robert Bulwer Lytton to EBB & RB
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 20, 55–59.
Florence.
Jany 7th 1853 [sic, for 1854] [1]
My dearest Friends,
I was, indeed, truly rejoiced at sight of your handwriting—and yet more on reading all the kind things written in your most welcome & dear letters: yet you are by no means to measure my delight and gratitude by this very stupid response. I heartily wish Penney a Merry Xmas; after his age such a wish is quite empty of meaning: and truly this new year has opened gloomily enough about you all,—not happily. Yet no wishes, believe me, are more warm and earnest than mine for many many future years with fairer horoscopes than this, for you, and our poor friends [2] also, who are with you.
I had hoped a somewhat better bulletin than that you send: of all our mutual friends here I have made daily enquiries—and some told me that the little girl was doing well: I cannot construe your letter so. Yet hope with all my heart’s hope, for daily improving prospects. It gives me some pleasure—a sad one—to think that this black night of affliction may be perhaps mercifully protracted, that the anxiety for the little living Child may postpone the sharper anguish for the dead—till, at least, the grave is greener—& the flowers have had time to grow. Poor little Edy! My dear Mrs Browning I so feel with your fears for Penny. I was not without such thoughts myself– Each day that brought no news from you added to slowly gathering apprehensions for your sake. Now I feel a great relief—and truly go about with a lighter heart, than I had yesterday.
No. There is no chance whatever[,] I fear, of my seeing you at Rome this winter, so I am afraid of fostering a hope so pleasant. Yet it was not without some selfish pleasure that I read of your unaltered feeling for ‘Our Florence.’
Now I must tell you all the news of it, to keep your interest yet alive. Soon after you left us a Sir Emerson Tennant [sic], who brought me a letter from Forster, came here: and he told me that in Engd, when he left it, there was but one unvaried feeling from length to breadth of the land, of mistrust and disgust of My Lord Aberdeen: and since then you know what political pirrouettes [sic] Ld P___ [3] has been making. The Duke of Wellington, [4] who with numberless other notables is here, confirms this news, and adds Pce Albert’s name to the same oyster shell. I have made acquaintance with Mr Black, [5] and like him cordially: not least for the affection with which he spoke of the Stories and of yourselves. About three weeks ago Mr Shaw [6] called on me; I was not at home; and he left a card with these words in pencil thereon written– “I am going to Egypt to morrow: can I do any thing for you there?” What are time and space coming to? Mr Tennyson says—the Devil! At any rate my projected spiritual investigations are come to nothing you see: Mrs Shaw’s health having been such as to render this flight into Egypt [7] necessary. Marshall Wood is gone, Evangeline, [8] and all, back to Engd for a Mer[r]y Xmas: before going however he asked me to back a bill for him: I was weak enough, after some show of resistance[,] to do so; and I dont much expect to escape the worst consequences of such an act. [9] Frederic Tennyson is back again; and says that a publisher in Engd has made him a good offer for the poems; [10] and Stewart [11] whom I saw t’other day shakes his head forebodingly about it. I have made the acquaintance of Arthur-T. [12] at last. He is not the genius we expected: but in all other respects has fulfilled our wildest anticipations: for he dined with me one Evg: got ! [13] and his brother has since requested that he may never come up here again. [14] I indeed have a sneaking sympathy for this reprobate, who complains that he is chilled and stunted thro the whole nature of him, by the frosty atmosphere and Tenarian gloom [15] of his elder brother, whose exhortations, little conciliatory, and perhaps somewhat pompous, only exasperate and bewilder, missing altogether their honest aim. Truly, I dont doubt but what Frederic regards this wine-bibbing brother of his as one of the lost sheep to be at the last shut out of the Gates of Jerusalem, should not some energetic reform be effected before the year 1866 when the “Human Kingdom” shall be established. [16] All this, however, you are to consider, in the way of a secret.
Have you read the Article in the Examiner, of some weeks back, on Table-turning? [17] Is that Forster’s? I am sorry to see between the Devil-worshippers and the altogether-disbelieving so little honest investigation. Lady Normanby, tells me that she has seen a table follow a person about a room, without any imposition of hands, but as following a will of its own; yet, seeing, she did not believe. Also, Mrs Dyce Sombre, [18] who is here, has told me wonderful stories of tables—of thick clusters of little round sounds like the dropping of sudden rain, upon some—(produced by child spirits) and other details too long to give you here. But my most wonderful news came in a letter from my father, which I have just recd He tells me of a little girl—only 8 years of age—(the daughter of some professor in a London College) [19] who has had her arm seized and guided to write poetry by “a Spirit calling himself Byron” and this poetry my father says he has seen, and has been greatly struck by. The Sense, he says, is rather nonsense—a sort of delirious extravagance, but the mechannical [sic] adroitness evinced in the subtlest combinations of metre, the most melodious poise of words, and euphonious tumult of sound, is such as could only be attained by a “poet of the highest order”, long versed and practiced in the musical arrangement of sound. Altogether, he says what some great Poet, gone mad, might write from Bedlam, preserving in his mental chaos, all the mechanism of the art. I fancy something like Nat Lee’s mad verses. [20]
You ask for news of me; and I have little to say that is satisfactory. In sad truth this old year has been a very very strange one to me. However I do not say yet “nunc fateor: do terga malis” [21] —for virtue & courage I know well were one in the time of heroes—ἀρετἡ [22] —yes! manly endurance O yes: those Lucca days– How from the dark ground of this common grief of ours, must we all deplore the lost sunshine of them! and Prato Fiorito—a blossomed spot indeed. [23] The poems move not at all. My father urged many arguments upon me in favour of publishing first in Blackwood, and afterwards collecting for individual publication: and I resolved to adopt this plan. So he sent the ms. to Blackwood, who is loathe to undertake it. He (Blackwood) sent it to a critic—Ferrier: [24] who gives judgement to this effect– [‘]‘The poems are not without merit but are sadly disfigured by affectations and the worst kind of “modernisms”: moreover many of them are quite unintelligible and wilfully obscure. These unfortunately are the longest. It is all of a false & wayward school &c &c.” This is much what I expected—only more favourable: a fair sign, I think, of what the general verdict would be—one may judge ‘Ex ungue leonem’—the lion from his claw. Blackwood says that he is willing to publish a selection made by himself. [25] This is the final state of the matter as yet. And truly I have lost my old ambition about these things in great measure. ὄ γέγραφα γέγραφα [26] – The publication has already taken place so long in my own head that so far as the records of my own life are concerned it is almost out of print: I consider only that I have put forth, however clumsily, a protest before God, of my Soul’s doings up to this twenty first year [27] of debt for the world which has been lent me to look at and make good use of so far as may be. The protest already sent in to the highest Authority, its fate here is almost immaterial.
I have been very idle lately, but mean to work now in good earnest. I had a thought to write something about Luther and Melancthon: [28] but as yet have hardly looked my own intention in the face. I have been reading for the first time the letters of Abelard & Heloise: [29] and they disappoint me. I had expected something more intense from her: yet there is a noble heart beating and bleeding underneath all the superficial sonorous latinity of these letters.
How glad I am to hear such hearty news of your present labours, in the progress of which as you well know, all my deepest interests lie breathless. Pray, pray write to me when you can spare a moment’s time from higher occupations– I long again for a happiness so great as that your letter brought me. And I am indeed more than anxious for your next news of little Edy.
I would not wish those our dear friends at Rome, to try even to write. I know too well how impossible—at best how painful it is at such a moment to write even to the nearest & dearest ones.
Kiss little Pen twenty times for me, and give him mine dood love; do not forget to say something kind for me to Miss Blagden– I am grateful to be remembered by her, and send my respects to her dog. [30] Your messages to F Ten[n]yson shall not be forgotten. I should like to have met Fanny Kemble.
Remind dear Mr & Mrs Story how warmly and affectionately I daily think of them. Again & again I must tell you that you have now & ever my heart’s holiest & tenderest sympathy & love, and I am
Your devoted friend
R B Lytton
Address, on integral page: Franco distino / Monr / Monr Browning / Via di Bocca di Leone / 43. 3o po / Rome.
Publication: BBIS-10, pp. 55–60.
Manuscript: Armstrong Browning Library.
1. Year provided by postmark.
2. The Storys.
3. i.e., Palmerston. See letter 3313, note 5.
4. Arthur Richard Wellesley (1807–84), 2nd Duke of Wellington, eldest son of Arthur Wellesley (1769–1852), 1st Duke of Wellington.
5. Charles Christopher Black; see letter 3287, note 4.
6. Francis George Shaw; see letter 3283, note 2.
7. Cf. Matthew 2:13–14.
8. A sculpture by Wood of the title character in Longfellow’s Evangeline: A Tale of Acadie (Boston, 1847). It was exhibited at The British Institution, located in Pall Mall, from 3 February to 12 May 1855.
9. Letter 3451 indicates that the bill was for the sum of thirteen pounds, which Lytton was forced to cover and for which he evidently failed to receive full compensation.
10. Days and Hours (1854), published by John W. Parker.
11. Sic, for Stuart.
12. Arthur Tennyson (1814–99), the sixth of eight Tennyson brothers, had been living in Italy since late 1843, apparently residing with his elder brother Frederick all or most of that time. Earlier, in 1843, he had spent several months in an asylum, having committed himself to cure his alcoholism (see The Letters of Alfred Lord Tennyson, ed. Cecil Y. Lang and Edgar F. Shannon, Jr., Cambridge, Mass., 1981–90, I, 217–218).
13. Lytton left a blank space here, presumably for the word “drunk.”
14. To Villa Brichieri, Bellosguardo.
15. Lytton refers to Tænarum, site of an ancient temple to Poseidon, at the southern tip of the Peloponnesus, where a cave was believed to be one of the entrances to Hades.
16. Lytton has in mind the Millennium, the thousand-year reign of Christ that is said to begin with the Second Coming (see Revelation 20:4–1). One of the more insistent prognosticators of the Second Coming at this time was John Cumming, a Presbyterian minister (see letter 3186, note 3). Although he eventually settled on 1867 as the crucial year, he had also offered a range of possibilities between 1864 and 1868. The subject is discussed at length in Dunbar Isidore Heath’s The Future Human Kingdom of Christ (1852–53), which both RB and Frederick Tennyson read and admired (see letter 3172, note 4).
17. “Table-Turning and Table-Talking,” in The Examiner of 26 November 1853 (pp. 754–755), sarcastically noticed Table-Talking, Disclosures of Satanic Wonders and Prophetic Signs by the Rev. E. Gillson, which attributes spiritual phenomena to satanic influences and warns people away from experimenting. We have been unable to determine whether or not the article was written by John Forster.
18. Mary Anne Dyce Sombre (née Jervis, afterwards Lady Forester, 1812–93), daughter of Edward Jervis (né Ricketts), 2nd Viscount Saint Vincent, and his second wife Mary Anne (née Parker). She married in 1840 David Ochterlong Dyce Sombre (1808–51), a wealthy Anglo-Indian who was declared legally insane in 1843, a judgment he fought for the rest of his life.
19. Anne Isabella De Morgan (1845–84), second daughter and fifth child of Augustus De Morgan (1806–71), professor of mathematics at University College, London, and his wife Sophia Elizabeth (née Frend, 1809–92).
20. Nathaniel Lee (ca. 1649–92), playwright and poet, resided in Bethlem Hospital (“Bedlam”) for the insane from 1684 to 1688.
21. Ercole Strozzi (ca. 1473–ca. 1503), “Now I confess: I yield my back to sorrows,” “Epicedium” (1513), line 9.
22. “Virtue”; or “manly endurance,” as translated by Lytton.
23. A memorable excursion from Bagni di Lucca that the Brownings, Storys, and Lytton made together on 15 September 1853 (see SD1683 in vol. 19).
24. James Frederick Ferrier (1808–64), Scottish philosopher who taught moral philosophy and political economy at the University of St. Andrews, had long been connected to Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine through his uncle John Wilson (“Christopher North”). Ferrier had written a positive review of EBB’s Poems (1844) for the November 1844 issue of Blackwood’s (for the full text of this review, see vol. 9, pp. 350–363), for which EBB was grateful (see letter 1750).
25. Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine, of which John Blackwood was the editor (see letter 2753, note 2), published three of Lytton’s poems under the pseudonym of “Trevor”: “Release” and “Too Late” in the May 1854 issue (pp. 609 and 610) and “The Villa” in the June 1854 issue (pp. 687–698). These poems were not included in Lytton’s Clytemnestra, The Earl’s Return, The Artist, and Other Poems (1855).
26. The Greek version of Pilate’s answer to the Jews in John 19:22: “What I have written I have written.”
27. Lytton believed he was born in 1832 rather than 1831. He learned the truth several years later, as he told RB in a letter of 23 October 1861: “After 3 year’s search for it I have at last discovered my Baptismal Certificate, & find I am a year older than I thought—30 years old next birthday” (ms at ABL).
28. Philipp Melancthon (1497–1560) and Martin Luther (1483–1546), the principal figures in the German Reformation upon whose ideas and writings the Lutheran church was founded.
29. Ill-fated lovers of the twelfth century, whose brief correspondence, which occurred sometime after they separated, is still being published in new editions. Pierre Abélard (1079–1142), teacher and philosopher, came to know Héloïse (b. ca. 1101) while tutoring her in her uncle’s house.
30. Frolic (“Fro”), (ca. 1847–58), a King Charles spaniel.
___________________
