3469. Robert Bulwer Lytton to RB
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 20, 309–313.
Paris
Wedy. 13 Sept 1854
My dear Browning,
I send you some mad verses; only in earnest of prose more to the purport of a thousand things I have to say to you—& in a day or two I hope to send you a long & more satisfactory letter, in token of this present assurance That I am you[r] warm & devoted friend
Robert Lytton.
All day I’ve been writing Dispatches
(You should see them!) … blue papers in batches
As huge as those piles of the Druid
At Stonehenge! … the ink is yet fluid.
And, tired of red tape and scratches,
And labelling, sealing, and docketing,
I sit here at last, dull and heavy,
Like a stick that went up with a rocket in,
Which, while the blue sparks in a bevy
die off thro’ the dark midnight skies there,
Falls down quite good for nothing, and lies there.
I am out of my wits with decyphering
The days news, come so fast (—telegraphic)
That the sense of it’s left quite behind it all.
As a man who, in cho[o]sing his wife a ring,
Spends the day, finding none to her mind at all,
May wish all the goldsmiths to hell (a graphic
And adequate figure of speech?) so I
Wish (could my wishes but reach so high!)
Admiral Dundas [1] and Marshall St Arnaud [2]
Neck and crop into the Seine or the Arno.
2
Till I fall half-asleep—having nothing to do better–
Stretch my legs, light my pipe, close my eyes .. and, by Jupiter,
No end to the horrible visions and fancies
That flit over my brain! … Turk-encampments, strange dances
Of wild Bashi-bazouks [3] round the walls of Sebástopol, [4]
Ships burning by hundreds, and oceans that cast up whole
Shoals of green cholera-corpses and skeletons,
Till the whole world seems driving post haste into hell at once!
Just such damnable notions as choke the last trances
Of opium, or which one conceives that a man sees
In a glare of green water, as down he goes, drowning,
Thro’ cold water-lilies and marsh-weeds Ophelia-wise; [5]
When the water sings loud in the ears, and you feel your eyes
Closed with a clammy & comfortless pressure.
Then, at last, I start up … some new thought, full of pleasure!
And “I wonder now what he’s about, .. Robert Browning?”
3
No doubt some where in the Pitti
(There’s no place that’s half so fit!) he
Lingers thrall’d beneath the eyes
Of Titian’s Flora: [6] artist-wise,
Does he praise that level colour
Whence even Rubens’ self grows duller,? [7]
All the warmth in that white side!
Or does he (seldom comes so pat a line!)
Choose, perhaps, Salvator’s Cataline [8]
For his musing, wonder-eyed?
Nay, ’tis night, and in the Pitti
All is dark. Well, Florence-city
Draws him thro her glimmering streets,
Where, at every turn, he meets
That which shall his steps arrest——
—Some grim Fresco half-effaced
Date and Artist to be guest:
Or some green tablet dimly placed
In dark Borgos, [9] to attest
“Here So and So lived long ago,
“Where the Tower stood:”– or to say
“There such a fray on such a day
Took place”: or “Pater Patriæ [10]
(If the letters one could see)
“Cosmus Dux [11] … he does you it
From the barbar[o]us half-illegible
Latin lines into intelligible
English doubtless … “antiquorum
“Dilectus ille Fiorentorum
“Hoc monumentum posuit.” [12]
No. the moon shines: the lamps quiver
Warmly down the shallow river,
Shining o’er each white Divinity
On the old bridge of the Trinity.
No doubt he wanders now, adagio
Adagio, down that Via Mag[g]io
(For the nights are rich & warm)
Somewhere slowly, arm in arm
With some friend who’d gladly walk
Ten miles more to hear him talk,
And then go supperless to bed
Feeling feasted-full, and fed
With the grand things he hath said.
Or, perhaps, he lounges home
(Where, alas, I shall not meet him!)
With odd scraps of news from Rome …
(Has Gibson daub’d with paint some statue?
How he flings great angers at you!)
Past the door-way he hath come,
In that Tapestried Room [13] he’ll seat him:
—And straight some Muse is there to greet him!
4
For one feels the subtle Presence
Of some spirit fair and wise,
Not mere mortal—the quintessence
Of divinest sympathies,
Whose divineness is most human,
If not Clio from calm skies,
’Tis the noblest sweetest woman
This world’s womanhood supplies.
Search the world thro’ you’ll find none such,
None with such deep-minded powers
Crown’d “to spin her own free hours.” [14]
Nature can but furnish one such,
Labouring fondly to perfect
That imperial Intellect!
5
She hath walked in Grecian bowers:
She hath heard Apollo sing:
Crown’d with parsely [sic] crowns and flowers
Seen Anacreon revelling.
She hath traversed oer & oer
The old mazy Hebrew lore:
Knows what tunes the Psalmist sang
To his harp when he was young
The white sheepfolds all among.
Plato is her friend: all others
Great & wise are her soul’s brothers.
With Vanini [15] in his Prison,
And with Bruno [16] at the stake,
Her fine spirit hath soared & risen:
Yet, for human nature’s sake,
Stays on earth, lest hearts should break.
Gently, she hath often come
From Tully left at Tusculum, [17]
(Or from commune with some Rabbin)
To smile into earth’s lowliest cabin.
And the little children drooping
Like dry flowers, from year-long stooping
In hot English Factories, [18]
Love her. She hath plead for these.
A healing spirit, stored with sanities
Of all warm and wise humanities!
I have time to write no more
—not a word to add to what I’ve written
but that wh you well knew before
How I’m you’re true auld
Robert Lytton.
Publication: BBIS-10, pp. 91–95.
Manuscript: Armstrong Browning Library.
1. Vice-Admiral Sir James Whitley Deans Dundas (1785–1862), commander of the British Mediterranean fleet, was responsible for naval support to the allied troops in the Crimea, in which role he attracted a good deal of criticism in the press (ODNB).
2. Jacques Leroy de Saint Arnaud (1798–1854), Commander-in-Chief of the French army in the Crimean War until his death from cholera on 29 September.
3. “A mercenary soldier belonging to the skirmishing or irregular troops of the Turkish army; notorious for their lawlessness, plundering, and savage brutality” (OED).
4. Sebastopol, or Sevastopol, Russia’s main naval port in the Black Sea, was the prime objective of allied forces in the Crimean War. Their siege of Sebastopol began in mid-October 1854 and lasted until September 1855. French and British troops began sailing from Varna in late August and landed in the Crimean peninsula near Eupatoria (now Yevpatoriya) on 14 September. The departure had been delayed because of cholera, logistics, and poor weather.
5. See Hamlet, IV, 7, 164–183.
6. This painting is in the Uffizi and has been since 1793.
7. Lytton refers to “The Four Philosophers” (ca. 1612) by Peter Paul Rubens (1577–1640), which includes portraits of Rubens himself, his brother Philip, Justus Lipsius, and Hugo Grotius. The painting hangs in the Palatine Gallery of the Pitti Palace.
8. The Oath of Cataline (1663) by Salvator Rosa (1615–73), in the Palatine Gallery of the Pitti.
9. “Neighbourhoods.”
10. “Father of the Nation,” a title bestowed on Cosimo de’ Medici (1389–1464) by the government of Florence after his death and inscribed on his tomb on the floor of the Basilica of San Lorenzo.
11. “Duke Cosimo,” a reference to Cosimo I (1519–74), the second Duke of Florence, and the first Grand Duke of Tuscany.
12. “He, beloved among the ancient Florentines, placed this monument.”
13. The Brownings’ drawing room in Casa Guidi.
14. Ben Jonson, “On Lucy Countesse of Bedford” (Epigrammes, 1616), LXXVI, 16.
15. Lucilio Vanini (1585–1619), Italian philosopher also known as Giulio Cesare, was imprisoned at Toulouse in 1618 for teaching atheism. He was eventually tried and condemned “to have his tongue cut out, and to be strangled at the stake, his body to be afterwards burned to ashes” (EB).
17. Marcus Tullius Cicero (106–43 B.C.), Roman orator and politician. Cicero owned a villa at Tusculum—modern-day Frascati.
18. An allusion to EBB’s “The Cry of the Children” (1843).
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