4950. Robert Bulwer Lytton to RB
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 29, 207–208.
[Hetzen, near Vienna]
[Postmark: 21 August 1861]
My most dear Friend,
I trust that you will already have recd a letter wh I posted to you from Florence, [1] enclosing one for Isa, for whose news of you & herself I am most hungry. I got back to Vienna 2 days ago & the Bloomfields [2] have hospitably asked me to pass a few days with them here in the country near Hetzen—about half an hour’s drive from the Town—where the air is cool & most refreshing after the suffocating heat of the journey here. The heat was indeed so intense at Bologna, that I never left the hotel, whilst there,—filthy & uncomfortable as it was—& consequently saw nothing of all that is to be seen there except the dirt & squalor of the streets—& the two tumbling chimney pots of world wide fame [3] —whose only claim to attention is, I think—(like that of many other meretricious celebrities) a departure from rectitude. I wonder whether Isa saw her Guidos & Siranis, [4] in that burning fiery furnace. Farrara [sic] is glorious—how much it made me think of Sordello [5] —& you—and– .. Oh my dear Browning all that I see or do sends my thoughts after you– Where are you now? I hope you will be able to get to the Seaside quickly & am afraid lest any thing shd prolong your stay in England—it must be so sad a one. I shall feel greatly relieved to hear that it is over—and that you & Penny are for the present at least settled in some new scene. I cannot say how much I wd give to have you here[.] It is so painful to feel you beyond my reach even for a time, just now—altho’ I think of those words ‘I leave you not alone’ and know them uttered to you, in despite of all change. I am constrained to write hurriedly & briefly as the messenger is waiting to take this letter to the post. It will tell you not half of how much I love you & think of you—but when I get back to Vienna I will write to you more fully please God.
Your ever loving
R Lytton
Address: Robert Browning Esq / 151. R. de Grenelle / Fg St Germains / Paris. Redirected: P à St Enogat. Redirected on verso: Parti à St Enogat par / Dinard Ile et Vilaine / Chez M. Chauvin.
Publication: BBIS-10, p. 177.
Manuscript: Armstrong Browning Library.
2. John Arthur Douglas Bloomfield (1802–79), 2nd Baron Bloomfield, and his wife, Georgiana (née Liddell, 1822–1905). Bloomfield was appointed ambassador to Austria in November 1860 and served in that post until October 1871.
3. Lytton refers to the “2 celebrated leaning towers, called the Torre degli Asinelli and the Torre Garisenda, the most remarkable edifices in Bologna, but so destitute of architectural attractions, that Mr. [Henry] Matthews compares them to the ‘chimney of a steam-engine, blown a little out of the perpendicular’” (Murray’s Handbook for Travellers in Northern Italy, 1860, p. 489). Both towers were built in the twelfth century. Asinelli, at a height of over 300 feet, is twice as tall as its shorter neighbor, though Garisenda has the more pronounced lean.
4. Works by Guido Reni (1575–1642) and Elisabetta Sirani (1638–65), Italian painters born in Bologna.
5. Ferrara is one of the principal settings in RB’s Sordello (1840).
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