3392. Robert Bulwer Lytton to RB
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 20, 187–189.
Florence
April 18th [sic, for 17] 1854 [1]
My dear Browning,
I truly long to hear from you: you know you owe me a Letter: that is, if—as I heartily hope, my last to you, has ever reached you. I am disconcerted and made anxious by your silence: and fancy things worse than I wish to believe: I pray God you are both well: if so, make haste and come [2] out of that doomed city: make haste & come back to Florence & the warm and cordial welcome of all your friends here. How glad I shall be to see you again!
I hear the Stories are at Naples, but more of them I know not: Do you hear from them? and will you tell me some news of them? and the little girl—little Edy? Forster sends me the Examiner weekly now: and I should like to forward it to you as it comes, that is if you do not get it at Rome, and would care to see it: but, not having heard from you for so long, I fear you may have taken up your tent, and gone—and then my Examiner will only edify the employe[e]s at the Roman Post Office. I think of going to Engd in June: is not that about the time you thought of going there yourself? I hope it is—that we may meet there. You have heard of poor Judge Talfourd’s death: I did not know him: but remember that you did: he has left Golden opinions: [3] that was a Grand way, was it not? to go out of the world: with his ermine about him: and taking it unsullied, as it seems, up to that other higher judgment Hall!
I see Coventry Patmore’s Poems are out at last: [4] mine hang fire a little still. [5] Tell Mrs Browning that I have seen Ld Stanhope: and he has promised to send me a crystal in which I am to see spirits of surpassing beauty “Sometimes”, I suppose
“Like dancers, or unwedded maids,
Shadowing more beauty in their airy brows
Than have the white breasts of the Queen of Love”. [6]
I have also heard from my father about the Psychograph: [7] which, he says, is unsatisfactory. I have been reading Thacker[a]y’s Lectures: have you seen them? But ça va sans dire: [8] I think them the best things he has done: for my part however I think he has too many civil things to say of Addison: [9] I think that man was a cold-blooded Prig: Life touched him just skin deep and no further: and no further than skin deep he touches me when I read his complacent frivolous prose.
When are your Poems coming out? I look in vain among the Advertisements for hints of them. Indeed I hope you will write to me soon, if only one word, to say “We are well: and not in anger with you”: which is what I sometimes fear. Then, your last letter—(how old the date seems now!) spoke of ill health: a billious [sic] attack you talked of: so that I am very anxious: and each day more so: as the Post brings no tidings of you. Give my love, and twenty kisses if you will, which I shall take back when we meet, to master Pen. I trust in God the boy is well. Now do not quite forget the deep affectionate and grateful interest I feel in all that concerns you, & the hearty & humble friendship of your ever attached
R B. Lytton——
Address, on cover sheet: Franco distino / À / Monsr / Monsieur Browning / 43 Via Bocca di Leone / 2o [sic, for 3o] po / Roma.
Publication: BBIS-10, pp. 72–74 (as 18 April 1854).
Manuscript: Armstrong Browning Library.
1. This letter is postmarked 17 April 1854.
2. Dryden’s paraphrase of Horace, Odes (1685), III, 29, 15.
3. Macbeth, I, 7, 33. The “Golden opinions” to which Lytton refers are the eulogies of Talfourd’s contemporaries.
4. Lytton may have glanced at a review of Patmore’s Tamerton Church-Tower, and Other Poems in The Examiner for Saturday, 8 April 1854 (pp. 212–213); however, that book had been “out” since 19 March 1853. The Examiner’s reviewer wrote that he would notice other poetry recently published, but first “we must do justice to one of the brotherhood who was entitled in the year 1853 to our attention” (p. 212). Patmore’s next published work of poetry, The Angel in the House: The Betrothal, appeared in November 1854.
5. Clytemnestra … and Other Poems would be published in March 1855.
6. Cf. Christopher Marlowe, Doctor Faustus (1604), I, 1, 126–128.
8. “That goes without saying.”
9. In the second lecture in The English Humourists of the Eighteenth Century (1853), Thackeray deals with William Congreve and Joseph Addison, writing of the latter: “It is as a Tatler of small talk and a Spectator of mankind, that we cherish and love him, and owe as much pleasure to him as to any human being that ever wrote. He came in that artificial age, and began to speak with his noble, natural voice. He came, the gentle satirist, who hit no unfair blow; the kind judge who castigated only in smiling” (p. 95).
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