3282. Robert Bulwer Lytton to RB

As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 19, 329–330.

[Florence]

[early November 1853] [1]

Dear Browning,

I was detained all day, & nearly all night at the Legation yesterday, on account of a courier, dispatch’d this morning. And thus I was unable to see you. But I suppose we shall meet, both in the flesh and the spirit, to night. When shall I come?

I send you those unfortunate documents of Vilari [2] which I had quite forgotten all about. I dont think there is the least reason for reading them, if you wd only glance at them, any leasure [sic] moment before you leave Florence.

He was so anxious that you shd see them, that I had not moral courage to refuse his request that I wd ask you to look at them. But I did not mean to entail on you a bore.

I send also the poem [3] which I have alter’d but whether for the better or no, I cant say.

How is Mrs Browning? I think of that Devil’s Elixir of Absinth [4] with a great sinking of the heart.

Your ever fondly attached

RBL

Address, on integral page: R Browning Esq.

Publication: BBIS-10, p. 75.

Manuscript: Armstrong Browning Library.

1. Approximate dating based on Lytton’s reference to the Brownings’ leaving Florence, which they did on 15 November 1853.

2. Perhaps these relate to the book that Villari had proposed to write about spiritualism (see letters 3227 and 3228). We have been unable to trace such a work.

3. Unidentified.

4. We have been unable to explain this reference.

___________________