3523. Robert Bulwer Lytton to EBB
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 21, 82–83.
Paris B. Embassy
Feb 23d 1855
My very dear Friend,
Am I trusting too largely to your ancient kindness when I ask you to forgive my long silence, and to believe what real sadness and pain it has given me to receive from Florence such mournful intelligence of the health of one whose well being and happiness can never cease to be at the source of my most earnest hopes and wishes?
Since they told me, my dear Mrs. Browning, how greatly you have been a sufferer during this dreary and dreadful winter, I have not, believe me, ceased to blame and reproach myself for having given you time to suppose that I could be for a moment indifferent to that knowledge. But I assure you that it was only last week that I heard from Miss Blagden & Mrs Wilson how unwell you had been. ‘Had been’ I hope I am right in saying, and I trust heartily that, altho’—here at least,—the snow & frost still linger with this Winter of our discontent, [1] strength & health will have come back to you ere this letter can reach you.
I can scarce fancy that your cypress walks and olive yards can be so sunless as these streets of Paris which are almost as foggy as those of London and thrice as dirty. It is the gloomiest Winter I have yet seen, and what with disasterous [sic] War abroad and all but revolution at home, there is little enough to cheer away the cold from any heart. I met Dickens the other evening at dinner here, and he told me that he never saw England in so critical and dangerous a state. The People he says have grown sullen and have lost all faith & interest in their Leaders. The Parliament he says is sinking daily below the contempt and indifference of the Country. And who can wonder at it? My Father, viewing things from quite a different point, nevertheless confirms this statement of the danger. The fact is the standard of intelligence and character within the House seems to be rapidly sinking below that which is outside, and consequently legislation is beginn[in]g to be carried on—out of—and not in—Parliament. Just such an ominous phenomenon as preceded the first french Revolution.
Ld John is here, staying at the Embassy, retarded on his way to Vienna by this last Crisis in the Cabinet. [2] For myself, I am in plans & prospects quite stationary, and remain, amidst this whirl of politics about me, much like those inhabitants of Eleusys who watcht the Olympian Contest[s] without taking part in them. [3] I have little to tell you of myself but what I hope needs not to be told,—how unchanged I am in love to you all.
I believe my chief news of ‘self’ & doings must be that I and my book are at last in the Advertisements– [4] I under the name of Owen Meredith. But what a time for singing songs! and who will listen to any thing that does not begin with “Arma Virumque”? [5]
Why are your books not yet out? Pray tell me of little Pen and if he is quite well—without cold or cough or any other cause of care to you.
I cannot enough thank Browning for his kindness to the Wilsons nor tell him how warmly I feel abt it. I know that he has been often to see them. Does the Spring bring you here? I hope so with all my heart. They tell me that Ten[n]yson—Alfred I mean—is writing for present publication. [6]
Now this is nothing of a letter, but its brevity—if it be not the Soul of Wit, [7] is at least a compensation for stupidity, so I beg of you to take the willing affection in place of the poor accomplishment and let me ever have the happiness & pride of feeling that you number among your friends & lovers
R Lytton.
Address: Affranchie / Madame / Madame Browning / Casa Guidi– / Florence / En Toscane / Italie.
Publication: BBIS-10, pp. 101–103.
Manuscript: Armstrong Browning Library.
1. Cf. Richard III, I, 1, 1.
2. According to the ODNB, the new prime minister, Lord Palmerston, “wondered what to do with Lord John, and decided to send him to Vienna, where the Austrian government was about to host a conference which, it was hoped, would lead either to a negotiated peace or to Austria’s entering the war upon the allied side. In February 1855, when he was on his way, the Peelites resigned from the ministry, and Palmerston offered him the post of colonial secretary. Lord John accepted the office and continued to Vienna.”
3. Eleusis, an ancient city—now a village—14 miles N.W. of Athens, was the site of the ancient initiation ceremonies known as the Eleusinian Mysteries. According to Donald G. Kyle, it was also the site of a quinquennial festival that “included athletic games said to be very ancient. Evidently contests were held at Eleusis in the sixth century and Pindar records victories there. Athenians definitely competed in these games, and Aristotle shows that Athenian hieropoioi made arrangements for the festival” (Athletics in Ancient Athens, reprint ed., Leiden, The Netherlands, 1993, p. 47). Kyle goes on to say that it began as a “regional festival” but “was taken over or nationalized by Athens and incorporated into its program of civic athletics” (p. 47).
4. The Athenæum of 17 February 1855 carried a Chapman and Hall advertisement announcing that Clytemnestra, The Earl’s Return, The Artist, and Other Poems “By Owen Meredith” would be issued “in a few days” (no. 1425, p. 211). This advertisement appeared on the same day in The Examiner (p. 112).
5. “Arms and the man,” the opening words of the Æneid.
6. Maud, and Other Poems, published in July 1855.
7. Cf. Hamlet, II, 2, 90.
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