4097. Robert Bulwer Lytton to EBB
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 24, 215.
[Florence]
[mid-November 1857] [1]
My very dear Friend–
I remember that the last words you said to me were … “Let us see more of you” … and now it is nearly three weeks, I think, since I have seen you! But I hope you know that this is not my fault. I have not left the house since I last saw you. [2] Isa tells me that she is going to drink tea with you on Saturday, & I confidently count upon coming with her.
I have just finished reading F. Newman’s book the “Phases of Faith”. [3] I had never read it before. It is the only book of this kind that has made a deep impression on me .. because it is the only one in wh it does not seem to me that the ‘Spirit in the heart’ [4] has been made subservient to the criticism of the letter. I am sorry that I have read the book now: not because I shrink from intercourse with any candid mind from the fear of a change of conviction: but because I have not now time to test fairly & maturely the question wh it opens– And, under such circumstances the reading of such books occasions an imperfect revolution of thought wh places the mind in a state of [‘]‘Provisional Govt” to wh the most rigid tyranny of any single idea wd be practically preferable– I shall read the book again in a very different way. Pray give Penini many kisses from me, & believe me, dear Mrs Browning to be your always affectionate and grateful friend
R B Lytton.
Address: Mrs Browning / Casa Guidi / Via Maggio.
Publication: BBIS-10, pp. 74–75.
Manuscript: Armstrong Browning Library.
1. Conjecturally dated based on Lytton’s protracted illness since his return from Bagni di Lucca. He wrote to John Forster on 12 November 1857 that “my confinement to the house prevents me from seeing much of her [EBB]: but him I see often at the Villa” (see SD2118).
2. Lytton’s health problems continued, with complications. He wrote to John Forster on 28 October 1857: “I am still in the Doctor’s hands—an old Enemy—from the Army of disease—has returned after a flight of many years” (see SD2112). The “old enemy” was syphilis, which had first attacked Lytton at Rome five years earlier (see vol. 19, pp. 354–355).
3. As “antidote” to spiritualism—as RB put it—the Brownings had read The Phases of Faith by Francis William Newman in 1853. For EBB’s evaluation of the book, see letter 3217.
4. Newman does not use the phrase “Spirit in the heart,” but he repeatedly denies the “law” or “religion” of the letter and concludes with the observation that religion is created by “the inward instincts of the soul” (Francis William Newman, Phases of Faith, 1850, p. 232). Because of the discrepancies, inaccuracies, and immoralities of scripture, Newman denies Biblical infallibility, and he contends that religions erect new walls of partition between God and human children when they create new laws of the letter.
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