3474. Robert Bulwer Lytton to RB
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 20, 319.
Paris
Octr 3d 1854
My dear Browning
Will you allow me to introduce to you, a very intimate Friend of Edgar Poe, and also an old friend of mine, Mr Thompson [1] of Virginia, for whom Poor Poe wrote his last Poem of An[n]abel Lee—. [2] He will tell you much about that lost Pleiad– [3]
Ever fondly yr
R. Lytton
Address, on integral page: By Mr Thompson / Robt Browning Esqre / Casa Guidi / Via Maggio / Firenze.
Publication: BBIS-10, pp. 95–96.
Manuscript: Armstrong Browning Library.
1. John Reuben Thompson (1823–73), owner and editor of The Southern Literary Messenger (1847–60).
2. In a tribute to Edgar Allen Poe, published in The Southern Literary Messenger of November 1849 (pp. 694–697), Thompson included “Annabel Lee” with the following comments: “The day before he [Poe] left Richmond, he placed in our hands for publication in the Messenger, the ms. of his last poem, which has since found its way … into the newspaper press, and been extensively circulated. As it was designed for this magazine, however, we publish it, even though all our readers may have seen it before” (pp. 696–697).
3. In a letter to Sarah H. Whitman, dated 23 April 1858, James Wood Davidson (1829–1905) quoted from a letter to him from Thompson, in which the latter recalled: “I had a long conversation in Florence with Robert and Elizabeth Barrett Browning concerning Poe. This brace of poets, like yourself, had formed an ardent and just admiration of the author of the ‘Raven,’ and feel a strong desire to see his memory vindicated from moral aspersion” (ms at Virginia).
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