3340. Robert Bulwer Lytton to EBB & RB
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 20, 105–111.
Florence.
Feby 13th 1854.
I feel so stupid, vapid, and listless, that I should shrink from writing to you, my dear Mrs Browning, were it not that so many days are already past thanklessly away without my having told you what cordial pleasure it was to me to get your last long kind & thrice welcome letter. The glow of that gladness is still at my heart—but indeed I feel some coals of fire on my head [1] when I think how tardy & poor is this return. In worth, at least, it is so: but not in love, as I hope you will believe. I have been a Prisoner to the house—and changing between bed & sofa—for now more than three weeks—first with a sharp grip in the throat of this bitter Tramontana, and last with a sprain in my ancle which still crip[p]les me: and whether it be from so long an in-door idleness or other causes I know not, but if I had a head of wool—it could not feel more stupid inconvenient inane and good for nothing than mine does just now. As for spirits, I feel as tho’ my own had slipt slyly away—and if it is still with me, I am sure it is not worth ‘a rap’. However I have had just enough sense left, to find great delight in reading all your poems over again—and many too, for the first time, which I had not seen before. Mr Tennyson has brought back with him from Engd two great green volumes: [2] which I have pounced upon—and here is your name in gold letters on my table reminding me every morning of what a long letter I owe you. And indeed I could say much if I spoke of the poems alone.
How beautiful is the “Lay of the Early Rose”! There is in this volume, a poem which I had not seen before—and which has greatly struck me—a short one—called, I think, “Confessions” or “The Confessional” [3] —full of intense thought vibrating down a vigorous music. But I do not dare to praise—I can only speak unaffectedly of my own delight.
I am sorry that you have not been working hard lately—selfishly so—tho’ at this moment I can but too well sympathise with any body’s idle humour. But I long to see your poem out, and if I thought that my correspondence trenched in time upon that other nobler occupation, I shd grudge myself the joy I find in your letters.
I can not say how delighted I am, by your criticism upon what I last sent you: and the reason is that all you say exactly expresses, & accords with, my own feeling about the verses. [4] It is all glare—no repose—no shadow—no pathos—nothing suggestive, no half revelations. I think—hope at least, that there is the poetical element—but it is not a poem. Yet there is not sufficient substance for any elaborate alteration, and I think that I shall either send it to the Press as it is—or suppress it altogether. Please God I shall never write anything again on the principle of this– I am satisfied with the experiment. I must tell you all about the Dedication, however. I unhesitatingly admit the turgid exaggeration of this: and I never meant to publish it. It all came about in this way, tho’ I am ashamed to confess it. I have just finished reading ye life of Magt Fuller: [5] I and another person, we read it together; and had a battle about the subject of the book. My friend—attacked terribly, I defended perversely; we struck no Treaty: it was a drawn engagement; and half for spite’s sake I wrote this Dedication, just to anger one person. I did’nt know that I had sent it you. It is only “sound & fury signifying nothing” [6] —or little at least worth the significance. On the contrary I must confess to some disappointment on reading these memoirs[.] Mgt Fuller was doubtless a woman of very superior & uncommon intellect—but with how little result! Her style is often strained: if one is prepared for wonder, her letters will not take away one’s breath. But what really interested me in the book was more in the abstract than the individual, and belongs perhaps to the biography of Human nature as much as to that of Mdm Ossoli. In the first Era of the biography—with all her culture, with all her man-minded grasp of thought, and power of work, Margaret Fuller, is yet not a woman, and scarce a human being– She does not live– She is only a petticoated Pedant after all, with now and then blind motions of a restless heart tumbling & beating uneasily beneath a heap of books and dry dust of erudition;—Till at last she cries out “Enough of books! I must have human beings or suffocate!” And at last she fulfills & developes her nature far more grandly in marrying that goodnatured, adoring, uncultivated count, than in explaining Plato, [7] or puzzling out the German “Ideer’[’]. [8] All on the sudden—she blossoms & bursts out full woman– This at least struck me, perhaps falsely. But I was more interested in Mdm Ossoli than in Magt Fuller.
I have had some passing vexations, about my own work: but nothing worth recording. Blackwd is going to make a selection and publish it, (I have only stipulated that he shall not garble what he prints) and I shall afterwards, I hope, publish a separate Volume, anonymously. I have refused to fall down & worship Aytoun, & therefore cannot expect to recv the kingdom from Blackwood. Much of my interest in the poems I have lost; they must take their chance. I hope to do better things in time to come, “Quis est, enim, qui, totum diem jaculans, non aliquando collineet?” [9]
You will not, I hope, forget to give my warmest & most affectionate love to the Stories. I wish they wd give up Rome. You are quite right: it is notoriously Pest-ridden.
I have been reading a novel—called ‘Nathalie’ by a lady—Miss Julia Kavenah? [10] Have you ever read it, or known any thing of the Authoress. Powers has sent me several U.S. Newspapers, abt the spirits, but I have heard nothing new on this subject except the “Memorial” addressed to Congress, which you will have seen in the Galignani, requesting that a committee may be appointed to investigate the subject. “Nous verrons des grandes choses!” [11]
The most wonderful thing I have lately heard of is a notice which I read t’other day in the Galignani that among the Patents lately issued in Engd is one to a German of the name of Wagner, for an instrument or machine which he calls a Psychograph and which is to enable the possessor of it, by means of Electro-magnetism to read the thoughts of others!!! “Ecce iterum Diabolus!” [12] I am sure Mr. Tennyson would exclaim. But who says this is not a miracle age? I wonder what the price of Psychographs will be. I shall lay by Scudi, I think, to buy one. Every Diplomat ought undoubtedly to be furnished by Govt with one of these invaluable instruments. Fancy how a Psychographic Dispatch from Vienna wd help the difficulties of the Eastern question! Certainly if Psychographs get into fashion society will undergo wonderful changes[.] What will become of the great Tall[e]yrand Dogma that “God gave us speech to disguise our thoughts”? [13] [‘]‘And the Devil gives us Psychographs”, [14] I suppose it will be said “just for opposition’s sake,[”] [15] that truth-telling may not “shame him” [16] so! Well, I must leave a scrap of paper to thank Browning for his kind letter, and send him my best love in; I hope that you will never need any Psychograph my dear friend to know how warmly & tenderly I think of you both, or how how gratefully I keep in my heart the fragrance of your valued friendship and the pleasant days we have passed together. With all heart-truth, I am dear Mrs Browning,
Your faithful friend–
R. B. Lytton.
To Rbt Browning Esqr.
My dear dear Friend,
I am truly grieved to hear from you that you have been suffering, and I fervently trust that long ere this letter reaches you, your indisposition will have wholly left you. [17] I think that you are just one of those who ought never to feel unwell, for if all who know you, feel as I do, they must ever seem drawn to lean on you, and draw life & warmth from your great-hearted presence. But how kind of you to write to me! There is nothing to my mind so abominable as bile, tho’ I dont often suffer from it. It makes the very sunshine look like coffin varnish. I have told Mrs Browning all my personal news—and have not much other news to tell. You are a much kinder Critic than the person I heard of the other day who, as he was just leaving his house upon business, met a young poet on the door step, with two sonnets in his hand. The author said that as the two sonnets were each written on the same subject he would be glad to have his friend’s advice as to which he had better select for publication. The man seized the paper, and having hurriedly read over the first sonnet “Oh, the other, by all means!” said he–
Well, here is the Wolf at last, in good earnest. A telegraphic Dispatch has just reached Florence to all Officers Military & Naval, in HM. Service, requiring them to return without loss of time to their respective ships and Regiments; and one of these gentlemen has been directed to repair, not to Engd but to Malta, there to join his regiment en route for Constantinople. [18]
Here is a pun—“c’est toujours en tirant que l’Empereur Nicholas ôte ses bottes!” [19]
By the way, I want much to ask your advice in behalf of my friend Vil[l]ari. He has been called upon by his family who are codini [20] —(& consist I believe of two paternal Uncles) to return to Naples, give up literature, and embrace the profession of Avocat, [21] which is one that he very properly detests & shrinks from. His refusal to do this will leave him without any means of subsistence whatever, but that of his own brains, and he tells me that for editing a large two vold work (—a labour wh he has just completed) with copious notes the result of many month’s laborious reading, he can only get 60 Dolls: [22] —and that even this is a God-send not to be counted on often. Under these circumstances, the metier of a Tuscan litterateur being out of the question, and that of a Neapolitan avocat, odious on many accounts, he thinks of going to Engd or America; but is anxious first to know whether there wd be any chance of getting on in any way there. An essay which he wrote sometime ago on the “Philosophy of History” I had translated & sent to my father, who was so struck by the ability of it, that he sent it to the Quarterly. [23] And I have not yet heard whether it has been recd or not. Hugo Foscolo [24] certainly wrote for the ‘Edinbro’ in this way, first in Italian & having that translated. But do you think he cd get on in Engd or America—if he went there, & wd you ask Story if there is any opening in the U.S.? I am most interested in Vilari, but I dont know enough of either country to trust my own judgement[.] You know just wt Vilari is—he talks English fluently but not correctly, and he does not write sufficiently well to write in English; nor do I know whether he wd ever be able to master our difficult idiom sufficiently to do that. An Italian Professorship if there were such a thing at any college or large school wd be the thing. Italians certainly have got on in Engd Wd he have any chance of obtaining a connection with the British Museum or any other public institution of that kind? I talk ignorantly, but I am sure you will not refuse me the benefit of your counsel in this matter.
I have just recd a pleasant reminiscence of Master Marshal Wood [25] —the Bill I backed has been protested.
Knowledge—comes, but wisdom lingers–
Obligations are a bore–
And one’s satisfaction dwindles:
And the debt is more and more. [26]
Demidoff is going to give a fancy ball. I wish that all the English here would go as Turks.
What do you think of this prayer of a Laurette? [27]
“O Marie, toi qui a conçu sans pecher,
fais que je peche sans concevoir!” [28]
More practical than proper certainly. I hear that the Roman Govt is on the eve of bankruptcy—is it so?
Goodbye my dearest friend & forgive my stupidity. I think of you more fondly & gratefully than I can say, and admire & love you from my heart[.]
Your ever attachd R∙B∙ Lytton.
Yes: how true that is; what you say about Shell[e]y’s improvement on a degrading Myth! [29] It is just one with his super metaphysical explanation of the fall– Do you remember that he says in a note to Qun Mab–
“The allegory of Adam & Eve eating of the tree of Evil, and entailing on their posterity the wrath of God, and the loss of everlasting life, admits of no other explanation than the disease and crime that have flowed from unnatural diet!!!” [30]
R B L
Address, on integral page: Franco <distino> [31] / À Madamme / Madamme Browning. / Via Bocca di Leone. 43. 2o po / Roma.
Publication: BBIS-10, pp. 61–68.
Manuscript: Armstrong Browning Library.
1. Cf. Proverbs 25:22.
2. EBB’s Poems (3rd ed., 1853).
3. “Confessions” and “A Lay of the Early Rose” appear in volume two of Poems (1853).
4. Unidentified.
5. Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, ed. J.F. Clarke, R.W. Emerson, and W.H. Channing (2 vols., Boston, 1852).
6. Cf. Macbeth, V, 5, 27–28.
7. In Memoirs one of Margaret Fuller’s letters is introduced that contains her “criticism on some of the dialogues of Plato” (I, 115). Her editors ask readers to treat it not “as a finished or deliberate opinion” but “as an illustration of the method in which her mind worked” (I, 116).
8. Margaret Fuller writes concerning the life of Sir James Mackintosh: “It is quite gratifying … to find Sir James, with all his metaphysical turn, and ardent desire to penetrate it, puzzling so over the German philosopy, and particularly what I was myself troubled about” (Memoirs, I, 165).
9. Sic, for colliniet. “For who, if he shoots at a mark all day long, will not occasionally hit it?” (Cicero, De Divinatione, II, 59, 121, trans. William Armistead Falconer). In this and subsequent quotations from, or references to, Greek and Latin classical authors, citations are from the Loeb Classical Library unless otherwise indicated.
10. Nathalie; A Tale (1850) by Julia Kavanagh (1824–77), an Irish novelist and biographer. Her best-known work, Nathalie “draws on the familiarity with French life for which she was noted and admired” (ODNB).
11. “We will see great things.” Lytton refers to an article in Galignani’s Messenger for 9 February 1854 entitled “The American ‘Spirits’ to Congress” which begins by recounting an article from the Weekly News: “The American ‘Spiritualists,’ whose antics we have more than once chronicled, have got up a memorial to Congress” (p. 2). According to Catherine L. Albanese, the memorial was largely the effort of Nathaniel Tallmadge, which he “persuaded General James Shields to present to the United States Senate on behalf of Tallmadge himself and 13,000 others. With Samuel B. Brittan involved in its composition, according to Tallmadge, the memorial requested that Congress appoint a commission of scientists for the purpose of investigating ‘Spiritual Manifestations.’ … The fact that Congress tabled the memorial suggests that many in high places, like most in the scientific community, remained unconvinced” (A Republic of Mind and Spirit: A Cultural History of American Metaphysical Religion, New Haven, Conn., 2007, pp. 262–263).
12. “Here’s that Devil again!” (cf. “Ecce iterum Crispinus!” “Crispinus once again!” Juvenal, Satires, IV, 1, trans. G.G. Ramsey). Extracted from The Atlas, a short notice entitled “Novel Patent” appeared in Galignani’s Messenger for 8 February 1854 and reported that “among the new patents announced is one to Adolphus Theodore Wagner, of Berlin, in the kingdom of Prussia, professor of music, for the invention of ‘a psychograph or apparatus for indicating [a] person’s thoughts by the agency of nervous electricity’.” (p. 2). The London Journal of 18 March 1854 provided a more detailed description of the psychograph: “The principal parts of the apparatus consist of a tracer, a disc upon which the operator is to lay his hand, and of an alphabet and set of numerals. Upon a person possessing nervous electricity placing his hand upon the disc referred to, the instrument immediately commences to work, and the tracer spells upon the alphabet what is passing in the operator’s mind” (p. 33). We have been unable to discover any further information about Wagner.
13. Various versions of this saying exist, but it originated with Voltaire. See his “Dialogue du chapon et de la poularde” (1763).
14. Cf. John Dryden’s “Prologue” to Cæsar Borgia (1680) by Nathaniel Lee: “But mark their Feasts, you shall behold such Pranks, / The Pope says Grace, but ’tis the Devil gives Thanks” (lines 41–42).
15. Cf. the ironic advice given in Nathaniel Thomas Haynes Bayly (1797–1839), “Answer to the Candidate’s Second Letter” (from Parliamentary Letters, [1818]), lines 105–110: “Avoid all those who party views reject, / Who always vote as conscience may direct; / But worship those who, kings and realms to shake, / Boldly oppose, for opposition’s sake; / And, to obtain the sanction of the throng, / Vociferate ‘whatever is,—is wrong’.”
16. Cf. I Henry IV, III, 1, 57–61.
17. In letter 3392, Lytton writes: “Then, your last letter … spoke of ill health: a billious [sic] attack you talked of.”
18. Under the heading “The Preparations for War,” The Times of 13 February 1854 carried the following report: “The announcement has been already made that the Government had resolved, and were taking the necessary steps, to send out to Malta, as the first division of the British contingent destined for the defence of Turkey, a body of infantry 10,000 strong, and a proportionate force of cavalry and artillery. … The division will consist of 3 battalions of the Guards—the 4th, 28th, 33d, 50th, 77th, and 93d Regiments of the line, and the 2d battalion of the Rifle Brigade” (p. 12).
19. “It is always in pulling them off, or as a tyrant, that the Emperor Nicholas removes his boots.”
20. Members of the reactionary party; so named for the small pony-tail (“codino”) affected by members of the Piedmontese court in imitation of the one worn by King Victor Emmanuel I after his return from exile in 1815.
21. “Lawyer.”
22. Equivalent to about twelve pounds; see letter 3180, note 11.
23. Villari’s essay, entitled Sull’origine e sul progresso della filosofia della storia [On the Origin and Progress of the Philosophy of History] was published in Florence in 1854. No version of it appeared in The Quarterly Review.
24. Niccolò Ugo Foscolo (1778–1827), Italian patriot and author of the Ultime Lettere di Jacopo Ortis (1802), left Italy in 1816 and remained in London for the last eleven years of his life. He is listed as the author of four articles on literary and political subjects in The Edinburgh Review in The Wellesley Index to Victorian Periodicals. All four were (as Lytton suggests) first written in Italian and then translated into English.
26. Tennyson, “Locksley Hall” (1842), lines 141–142, intentionally misquoted.
27. Sic, for Lorette, “a courtesan of a class which at one time had its headquarters in the vicinity of the Church of Notre Dame de Lorette in Paris” (OED).
28. “O Mary, you who conceived without sinning, let me sin without conceiving!”
29. A reference to Shelley’s Prometheus Unbound (1819), which “improves” on Aeschylus’s Prometheus Bound.
30. Shelley’s note to Queen Mab, VIII, 212, slightly misquoted.
31. The word in angle brackets is covered by a postage stamp.
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