3488. Robert Bulwer Lytton to EBB & RB
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 21, 3–8.
[Paris]
[ca. 15 November 1854] [1]
My very Very dear Friends,
How long a time have your two dear, priceless letters lain among my Papers—lain among my daily thoughts & lain upon my heart without acknowledgement—expressed acknowledgement at least—for all the comfort & delight they brought me! And how many honest intentions on my part to make amends for this have gone to broaden the Bridge to Hell! [2] And, now, will you pardon all this and receive me with anything of old welcome to your hearts .. even tho’ I come to you … a stray’d Prodigal [3] of a friend, as it seems, … only in such poor rags & weeds of thought, as this wretched restless & profitless life [4] I lead has left me, and with nothing to bring you but, just myself?
In spite of this long, uncheerful silence, trust me, I have thought of you every day, and every evening, .. often, often, in weary hours of trivial toil & heart-sinking, and always in my nightly prayers for the future & Memories of the Past! And, indeed, I have three times begun to write to you, and failed—not in love but in power. For I feel sick at the soul, I dont know how or why: and break down at every thing. I am not moving on my right centre; that is it: & therefore every thing seems eccentric, and makes me dizzy and ill.
You—are throned on your own strength & will scarcely understand this which I shd be ashamed to avow, if I were not so opprest by it. However, I know that Patience conquers all things and I trust in God not less, but more than ever. So of myself enough said.
Will you tell dear Miss Blagden that I had begun & nearly finished a long letter to her—but was prevented from finishing it, first by circumstances & afterward by incapacity, & there it has lain. However, I shall write to her fully, please God, next week, and meanwhile the time gone by has permitted me to read thrice over, & very carefully her Poems, [5] so that I shall be able to send her all my thinkings about them. Of my own, you will I know, be glad to hear that I am halfway thro the Proofs of them, & hope to see them fairly out before Xmas. [6] I hear, from Aubr[e]y de Vere, who passed thro’ here, that Coventry Patmore is bringing out a new Poem, which he says is to be the great Love-poem of the Century. [7] And Tennyson he says is also busy. [8] That gives one some thing to look forward to, and how anxiously and lovingly do I not look to hail your last year[’]s labour when it shall be given to the World. I hope to be permitted to speak my mind about it in the Dublin, [9] not a great Oracle to be sure, but still—if only a wooden tub, something to speak from to others. [10] What does B. think of the War-news? I think it very sad & gloomy. And feel that I ought to be fighting at Sebastopol, where so many high-spirited young men are being shot & sabered daily, [11] & not blotting Paper to small good here in Paris. I answer myself, when this longing comes to me, with the German Proverb.
Gott hat sein plann [sic, for Plan] fur jeden Man[n]. [12]
But so little done here is worth the doing! And there is eternity in this dim dim distance, like a star in some remote Seventh-Magnitude; so faintly & fitfully & doubtfully does it twinkle on in our vision here, that scarcely do I meet a man or woman, who seems to me to realize in that small point of light beyond the limits of life, the vast world which it really represents! This grieves me that I meet no real men & women here—& the very nature, is not vital, as tho’ it were mourning for the want of a human heart to reflect itself upon. I sometimes go to the Play, and am struck at the intellect & immorality of what I see there. Do you observe a strange characteristic of the French Drama, which is not ten years old? For a Play now to succeed, needs seem to be, that the Heroine should be an acknowledged Prostitute! & women who wd hold up their skirts from the Reality weep over the presentation! Strange! and yet is it not the Moral of this beautiful unhappy France? Her King, her nobility, Her church, Her Republic, her Constitution, finally “Liberty Equality & Fraternity,[”] having all been flung into the dust-hole, what has she left to respect or believe in? She has prostituted herself body & soul, as it seems to me; her gai[e]ty makes me sad, her laughter has wine in it, not health. Her finery, her splendid clothing, houses, & equipages, her wit, her beauty, with a touch of rouge in it, what are they all but those of a Femme Entretenue? [13] And at bottom of all this, still is beating & breathing strangely, the warm weak, unsatisfied restless human heart, desiring better things but vainly, for whence can they come? The God-spark in it not quenched but burning feverishly, terribly under all! Yes the Femme Entretenue is the one genuine thing now left in France: hence its expression in her literature & Drama, hence the terrible truth of that expression!
I sent you an American [14] who came back to me & said you had been kind to him. So let me tell you how I thank you, for he was kind to me in the U.S. I had very great doubts about giving him a line to you, & did it with some reluctance, knowing what Yankee homage sometimes is. But he seemed to me so cordial an admirer of yours, & begged so for the letter, that thinking after all, that the Proverb said “licet videre Virgilium” [15] & that [‘]‘a cat may look at a King” [16] & thinking too, his acquaintance with Poor Edgar Poe, might make him interesting to you, I yielded to his request.
The Clock, now striking Three, admonishes to bed, so take this scrawl in earnest only of something better soon to be sent, & believe in the undying love & friendship of
Your ever aff
R. Lytton
My love to Tennyson & if you see Norton Pray tell him I have recd his kind long letter & will soon reply to it. How sad a thing was Poor Lady S.’s death! [17] & the last time I saw her she seemed so full of life & health & beauty!
I hear that the Ns are terribly afflicted: [18] I have written them a few lines to say how shocked I was. I have seen a good deal of Mrs Norton here; & her other son Fletcher Norton, [19] whom I like extremely.
Goodnight.
P.S. I was so stupid last night that I finished this letter without saying one word of that which I had chiefly at heart to speak to you about.
My friends the Wilsons, whom, I think, you already know are gone back to Florence. They have given up their Villa & have taken lodging in the town, the ground floor, I believe, of the Casa Chritani. [20] So that they will now be somewhat nearer neighbours to you.
I know that they are anxious to improve & amplify that acquaintance with you which an evening’s meeting at my house obtained for them, and I am very anxious, for I take a deep interest in them, that they should have the benefit & delight of knowing you some what better than they do at present. I should rejoice to think, therefore, that you will not refuse to hold any hand of friendship or acquaintanceship held out by them. Mrs Wilson is a very dear friend of mine & I have a sincere interest in all that concerns her welfare, for during two years of “that beautiful life-in-death among the Cypresses” [21] at Florence, she shared all my studies & thinkings: and I have told her that the chiefest possible good I now desired for her was the realization of your acquaintance[.] I know that in this acquaintance you will be the Givers & not the Receivers—but are you not always thus? For I dont know any two people in the world capable of measuring back to you the fullness of your costly companionship. But I cannot exaggerate however highly I may estimate the great good, which if it were cordial, the better knowledge of you wd be to my friend: and this is why I thus ardently desire it.
She is not a demonstrative Person & is very shy & diffident & wants drawing out; but I feel quite sure that you wd not know her long without loving & esteeming her. & she has much undeveloped force of intellect which has never had full justice done it, and of which I dread lest it shd dwindle and fail from inanition & the want of encouraging & expansive influences. She suffers herself, I think to live too much in little things & what her mind requires is an abstract interest in some undiurnal [22] calm & elevating subject of mental occupation, apart from the small & worthless cares & employments of Life—that wh the Creative Faculty gives to artists. Now you see what immeasurable benefit it would be to her, to hold more than merely commonplace communion with such minds as yours—and I hope that if they call on you you will reciprocate the visit. Wilson you will find, if you penetrate his outward manner—an honourable thorough gentleman I think, & full of sound good sense—tho not aspirations. I forget, in all that I say, that my eagerness may be inconvenient & disagreeable to you, but if it be so—you will, I hope forget it, and having burnt this letter, consider no more about it. I can no longer watch over & share in the process of a mind in wh I take the heartiest interest, but it would indeed be to me a very deep & lasting happiness if I thought that I had procured for one whose excellence of heart & mind is dear & estimable to me, the precious & a noble happiness of a knowledge of you.
Your ever aff
RL—
Publication: BBIS-10, pp. 96–101.
Manuscript: Armstrong Browning Library.
1. Approximate dating suggested by Lytton’s references to Coventry Patmore’s latest work (see note 7) and to the death of the Countess of Strathmore (see note 17).
2. A reference to Dr. Johnson’s “Hell is paved with good intentions” (James Boswell, The Life of Samuel Johnson, LL.D., 1791, I, 484).
3. An allusion to the story of the prodigal son in Luke 15:11–32.
4. Lytton may have in mind Hamlet, I, 2, 133–134: “How [weary], stale, flat, and unprofitable / Seem to me all the uses of this world!”
6. Lytton refers to Clytemnestra, The Earl’s Return, The Artist, and Other Poems, which was published in March 1855.
7. The Angel in the House: The Betrothal was published anonymously on 28 October 1854. The first of two parts, it was followed by The Angel in the House: The Espousals (1856). Later poems entitled Faithful for Ever (1860) and The Victories of Love (1863) were added to the previous two works and all four were published together as The Angel in the House (1863). Patmore’s authorship was an open secret. Reviews in The Examiner of 28 November 1854 and The Critic of 1 December 1854 identified him as the author.
8. Alfred Tennyson was at work on Maud (1855), “the composition of which occupied him during the last six months of 1854” (Charles Tennyson, Alfred Tennyson, 1949, p. 282). The same source notes that Aubrey de Vere spent ten days visiting Tennyson at Farringford in the late summer of 1854.
9. A review of Men and Women appeared in The Dublin University Magazine for June 1856 (pp. 673–675), as part of a larger article entitled “An Octave of Poets” (pp. 667–681). The article as a whole is attributed to Lytton in The Wellesley Index to Victorian Periodicals on the basis of this letter. But the section that focused on Men and Women (which was generally unsympathetic) could not have been written by him, unless he decided to contradict his own enthusiastic opinion of the work (see vol. 19, pp. 352–353).
10. Lytton alludes to Diogenes (ca. 412–323 B.C.), Greek Cynic philosopher, said to have lived in a tub that he carried around with him.
11. In mid-October, the allies (France, England, and Turkey) laid siege to the Russian port of Sebastopol in the Crimean peninsula (see letter 3469, note 4). Three major battles had occurred by the time of this letter: those of the Alma on 20 September (see letter 3476, note 5); Balaklava on 25 October, during which the famous charge of the light brigade took place; and Inkerman on 5 November. The battles of the Alma and Inkerman resulted in allied victories; that of Balaklava, a port about 8 miles S.E. of Sebastopol, has usually been viewed as a strategic loss for the allies.
12. “God has his plan for every man.”
13. “Kept Woman.”
14. John Reuben Thompson; see letter 3474, note 1.
15. “Vergil is permitted to look.” We have been unable to trace this proverb; perhaps it is completed by “at Caesar.” Lytton uses the Latin phrase in his Orval, or the Fool of Time (1869), IV, 7, 190–191, where the context indicates that it has the same meaning as “a cat may look at a king.”
16. An English proverb meaning that anyone, no matter how grand, is subject to observation by his or her supposed inferiors.
17. Charlotte Maria (née Keppel, 1826–54), Countess of Strathmore, eldest daughter of William Keppel, 6th Viscount Barrington, and his wife the Hon. Jane Elizabeth (née Liddell), died at Villa Normanby, outside Florence, on 3 November. She had married Thomas George (1822–65), 12th Earl of Strathmore, on 30 April 1850.
18. i.e., Lord and Lady Normanby. The latter was the eldest sister of the Countess of Strathmore’s mother.
20. Sic, for Cerretani. The Palazzo Cerretani is situated in the old Piazza di Santa Maria Novella (now Piazza dell’Unità). The Fleetwood Wilsons moved there in 1854 from Villa Ombrellino at Bellosguardo (see Guy Fleetwood Wilson, Letters to Somebody: A Retrospect, 1922, p. 4.).
21. Cf. Twelfth Night, II, 4, 51–52.
22. The two examples of the use of this word that the OED cites are taken from Lytton’s father, the first being “The solemn and undiurnal mood .. was reflected back in hues so gentle” (Eugene Aram, 1832, Book IV, chap. vii).
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