3945. Robert Bulwer Lytton to EBB & RB

As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 23, 166–170.

Hague

26 Der/56.

My two very dear and ever dear Friends.

Tho’ this letter will not reach you till after Christmas, The many warm wishes for your happiness now and ever, of which I wish it to bear you the assurance, will not cool by the delay. I saw notice of the death of your friend, Mr Kenyon in the Paper, while his name was yet fresh in my mind, from the perusal of that affectionate Dedication of Aurora Leigh, and I know that it must have been a consolation & comfort to you, as it must have been grateful and touching to him, that the words of that noble record of affection should have reached him, ere his eyes were closed. You have everlastingly and with costliest care, dear Mrs Browning, embalmed your Friend. Ah Milton’s sonnet makes no idle Boast! [1] The true Poet is never so poor, but what his affection has gifts to give beyond all price. I do trust that this is also true which I heard from Ld Maidstone [2] last night, .. that Mr Kenyon’s will contains a bequest to you both of 10,000£. [3] Let me have that pleasant assurance from yourselves, when you write, that I may with the more confidence tell you how glad I am to hear it.

I did not read your too-kind criticism of the 2 first Books of “the Abbess” [4] without a pang of shame in thinking that you should have so minutely occupied yourselves with its consideration. For I was yet glowing with Aurora Leigh, and had the radiance & splendour of that high communion still upon the forehead of every thought when your letter reached me. Ah, that letter, how it touched, how it gladdened me! “If a flower were flung you out of heaven now & then” says Marian Earle [sic] (.. she is a Creation worthy of Goethë) “You wd soon get the trick of looking up.” [5] And I think I shd walk all the more erectly & firmly over the ploughshares of life, if there oftener fell there in my way, such flowers as these letters of yours—these dear letters! I have finished Aurora Leigh but I can no more exercise judgement upon it than I can upon Homer. Dear Isa Blagden says “it is a Revelation,” and I think so too. I have read it as a child, not as a critic, and it has passed into my soul, ... . for my soul’s lasting good, as I hope. I dont see what you are to write, henceforth. You have achieved the top of art. Will you care to know that Mr Aïdé, who sends me “The Cagot”, [6] observes on that occasion “Aurora Leigh is the Poem of the Age” ..? It is a true Aurora, and will leave lasting light with us ἐόsφεροs! [7]

Friday Evening.

I began this, in the afternoon: but was interrupted. I am just come home from dining with the Abercrombys. [8] Lady Mary came into the Chancery with the Paper in her hand when I was making up the Bag [9] to tell me the news of your Legacy which I had already heard from Maidstone– So that I now fully believe in it, and warmly congratulate you thereon. Wherever I may be, you will always have more friends than myself, for I cant help talking of you often, and we were all very glad tonight at this good news. How glad it made me, you will not need to be assured … tho’ I fear that, with you, it will for the moment only augment the tenderness of your regret for the loss of your friend and relative.

The want of individuality & substance which you remark in the 2 Books of the Abbess is I, myself, feel far greater than your kind feelings dear friends al[l]owed you to tell me– Were I to continue the work however I shd count upon the last three Books both for the historical and ethical effect so to speak: and I have even voluntarily subdued the character of Helen in the 2 first books to mediocrity in order to bring out with greater force her subsequent picture, as the gloomy, solitary, pale Abbess with the aching secret & sin, shut up in her cold silent convent life–

I am however almost decided on abandoning the work—the result at best wd be doubtful, and the labour great[.] I feel too from the feebleness and dependance [sic] of what is already done that I am not yet strong enough in art to undertake so long a subject– What you have by you, was written at a period of great physical ill health & lassitude,—and in a desultory way—the traces of this are too evident throughout–

There are two whole stanzas which on a late perusal I found to be (tho’ an unconscious one) little less than a theft from Browning– I dare say I shd find others if I looked again. At any rate I have put aside the work for the present—and if I shd ever recommence it a great portion of those 2 Books will be rewritten[.] There is no real wealth in a man’s mind if he cant afford to fling away & burn the half of what he writes.

“Art requires the whole man” [10] you say. Ah, how well I know that! how bitterly I feel it. But why do you say it to me, who am doomed to be a Dilettante for life? If there is a word of truth in what we are always saying & admitting when said, about the dignity of Poetry as an art, its high task on the faculties of the Poet, and its sublime benefits to mankind, why in heaven’s name, should we say that the devotion of the Poet to his art, seriously earnestly, exclusively, .. as a Profession & a most honourable one, is a waste of time, .. a sleep in a garden of roses? Why should he not follow his calling as exclusively as the Lawyer the Law, or a statesman Politics?

But it is just with Poetry as with religion, .. we say one thing & straightway do another[.]

The endless humbug of the “video meliora, proboque, pejora sequor.” [11]

Religion tells us that the world is wicked & worthless, that we must come out of it at any risk & any price, leave it to the Devil to whom it belongs, have no dealings with it—no shame in poverty, no subserviency to wealth, & yet good people say ‘Amen’ to this every week in church, & perhaps every day at home, and yet go buy forth-with, in the dear market to sell in the cheap, & wear out their shoes, & their souls too, in run[n]ing after the world’s chariot wheels in the dust, till they drop! Vanitas vanitatum! [12] I am sick of this inconsistency of my own life, I am sick at heart and angry. Oh, if—if—but no matter!—I keep that word “if” for my epitaph, and will not abuse it now.

I have some Lyrics wh I think you wd like better than the Abbess[.] They are more original. But I am idle, desultory, & do no thing with heart, I feel all the insufficiency & pain of that “ἐχθίστην ὀδονήν, πόλλὰ φρονέοντα, μηδενὸς κρατέειν.”! [13]

I trust in God’s permission to get to Italy this winter—about March– It is the chief thing which I now desire, and I hope to return from Florence .. (and from you) better in health & in hope. O Florence, quando te aspiciam! [14]

Not the least thing which astonished me in Aurora Leigh was the great knowledge of life, and the deep insight into the very heart of the Age, which you from your little fire side sofa have so silently acquired, .. and therein so eloquently developed. The History of Marian Earle, is a sublime episode .. I know not its equal in Art. I feel at every page, as I read your Book, the deep truth of that assertion of Strabo’s οὐχ οἷόν τε άγαθὸν γενέσθαι ποιητὴν, μὴ πρότερον γενηθέντα ἄνδρα ἀγαθόν. To be a good Poet one must be first a good man. [15]

How often, in reading ‘Aurora’ did I recall the many times when I found you, on that same little sofa, book in hand, & you let me (so quietly & kindly) interrupt you, .. (perhaps in the break of a six line cadence!) & put away the book to talk to me, instead of sending me away, as—had you been less great an Artist you would have done—and now, if your book were not perfect, I should have all its flaws on my conscience—but it is perfect & I have nothing wherewith to reproach myself, tho’ much whereof to be grateful to you.

Do you know, I have been putting your blank verse to a severe test .. I have been translating large portions of it into French Prose, for a Friend who cant read English, & who, despite my bad translation, is enchanted with it. So you see, Sibyl as you are, that you are perfectly “intel[l]igible” [16] … in the teeth of all the Aytoun’s [17] in the world’s Dunciad!

You may almost guess from these scraps of attic, that come across my mind in writing to you now, that I have been looking again at my Greek .. tho’ alas, only in a Dilettante sort of way, as with all I do! But I think Greek a wholesome medicine for ‘a mind diseased’ [18] .. & more so when the Patient ‘ministers to himself’– [19]

Greek is the only knowledge which I do not regret the time I spent in acquiring– I never return to its pure cool fountains without feeling the better for it. I much wish that I had time to look at many authors of which I am still quite ignorant .. Perhaps they will keep for my old age .. when it comes.

I have had no heart to look again at the dear Tragœdians—& when I opened the Æschylus I first read at Bon[n], with all my old notes in it, I felt litteraly [sic] heartbroken.

But I have been reading—(for the second time with my eyes—but the first time with my heart & understanding[)]—the P[h]ædon, [20] & some other of the Dialogues.

Ah, what a noble monument of mans’ intellect! Could any soul but an immortal one have written that? And what a pity that so perfect and costly a chain of argument should all hang by a mere postulate of Plato’s—the pre-existence of the soul, which those who deny the soul’s existence here, must necessarily deny by implication!

I have much to talk about when ever we meet, and in the trust that I may not be defrauded of that hope, I beg you my very dear Browning & Mrs Browning, to bear me yet in your mind, as your devoted Friend

Robert Lytton

I open this to enclose you this copy of a few lines wh close a letter from Forster just recd … He says …

“Mrs Browning’s Aurora Leigh is a great success—and deservedly so. There has not been such a gush of real poetry—such a continuous, sustained, flight I mean,—for a long long time!” [21]

Oh how masterly is that biography of Marian Erle!

You are at the very top of Art now .. a perilous eminence[.] May you long keep there, for the benefit of all who know & love true art

Vale et sis memor mei [22]

RBL

Address: Affranchie / Mrs Browning. / Casa Guidi. / Florence / Italie.

Publication: BBIS-10, pp. 131–136.

Manuscript: Armstrong Browning Library.

1. See Milton’s sonnet VIII (1645), “Captain or Colonel, or Knight in Arms,” lines 5–8.

2. George James Finch-Hatton (1815–87), 11th Earl of Winchilsea and 6th Earl of Nottingham, was styled Viscount Maidstone until 1858, when he succeeded his father, George William Finch-Hatton.

3. Sic, for £10,500.

4. See letter 3937.

5. Cf. Aurora Leigh, III, 1009–1111.

6. The Cagot; or, Heart for Heart. A Play in Five Acts ([1856]) by Edmund O’Rourke (pseud. Edmund Falconer, d. 1879, aged 66). It was first performed at the Lyceum in London on 6 December 1856.

7. Sic, for “Ἔωσφόρς,” (“Lucifers”), with a macaronic pun on “Aurora,” Latin for “dawn,” and “ἔως,” Greek for “dawn.”

8. Sir Ralph Abercromby (see letter 3799, note 10) and his wife, Mary Elizabeth (1811–74), eldest daughter of 2nd Earl of Minto.

9. i.e., the diplomatic pouch.

10. Lytton quotes EBB; see letter 3937.

11. “I see the better and approve it, but I follow the worse” (cf. Ovid, Metamorphoses, VII, 20–21, trans. Frank Justus Miller).

12. “Vanity of vanities;” from the Vulgate (Latin) version of Ecclesiastes 1:2.

13. Cf. Herodotus, IX, 16. trans. A.D. Godley: “Ἐχθίστη δὲ ὀδύνη ἐστὶ τῶν ἐν ἀνθρώποισι αὕτη, πολλὰ ϕρονέοντα μηδενὸς κρατέειν.”; “And it is the hatefulest of all human sorrows to have much knowledge and no power.”

14. “O Florence, when shall I see you!” Cf. “O rus, quando ego te aspiciam!” “O rural home: when shall I behold you!” (Horace, Satires, II, 6, 60, trans. H. Rushton Fairclough).

15. Cf. Strabo (b. ca. 63 B.C.), Geography, I, 2, 5, trans. Horace Leonard Jones.

16. Lytton may have in mind a comment from the review of Aurora Leigh in The Morning Post of 15 December 1856: “We have occasionally found persons who affected to admire her, but when we asked them to vindicate their admiration they were invariably unable to do so. The passages which we requested them to explain to us they declared to be sublime, but they failed to make them intelligible.” For the full text of this review, see p. 323.

17. Lytton refers to William Edmonstoune Aytoun (1813–65), a frequent reviewer for Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine. His notice of Aurora Leigh appears in the January 1857 issue (for the full text of this review, see pp. 336–347). Aytoun was known for his old-fashioned and conservative views; so it is no surprise that he was among the few critics who disliked EBB’s poem. He was also a minor poet, respected in some circles. The Times thought well of his Lays of the Scottish Cavaliers (see letter 3231, note 6), but it was not to Lytton’s taste. He considered Aytoun’s work dull and worthless, and Aytoun himself a candidate for a modern Dunciad, the poem in which Alexander Pope satirized the second-rate writers of his day.

18. Cf. Macbeth, V, 3, 40.

19. Cf. Epictetus (ca. 55–ca. 135), Discourses, I, 19, 5, trans. W.A. Oldfather.

20. More properly, Phædo, the dialogue in which Socrates argues for the immortality of the soul and in which his death is described.

21. See SD1998.

22. “Live long, farewell, and be mindful of me!” (cf. Horace, Epistles, I, vi, 67, trans. H. Rushton Fairclough).

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