4959. Robert Bulwer Lytton to RB
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 29, 221–225.
Vienna
1 Sepr 1861
Your letter [1] (how welcome it is!) reaches me this moment my dear friend. I will not stop to thank you, as I should thank you, for writing to me, and writing, too, so fully and so kindly; you will know, I think, that I [2] know, and know to value all which that effort implies. It is a great comfort to know that you are, for the present at least, quietly with those who are of you and dear to you,—and by the sea. The sea is perhaps your best companion just now—but oh how I wish I could sometimes clasp your hand & hear your voice in these fast-shortening Autumn Evenings! The sight of your handwriting brings back everything. My dearest, how heartily and constantly I pray God to be with you in strength and comfort, I cannot say. What you tell me of your journey I half foreboded. I followed your track to Bologna with a very heavy heart, feeling all the while that the sword was set before the gate behind us, [3] and that I could never look back for the sight of your face there. But this is not what I should be saying now to you, and I have so much to talk about as to present & future matters.
All that you say of dear Pen is no more than I remarked in him, myself, before we parted: and I cannot possibly say how glad I am, (and how right I think it) that you are resolved to begin at once for him English life and training– If I dare express the result of my own experience in that matter (wh is yet fresh, at least) I would strongly counsel the usual process both of Public School & University life. Eventually that is. For I would certainly not begin the Public School before he is better acquainted with England & the ways of it. Nor till his attainments in Latin & Greek are such as to enable him to take at once, on entering school, a place in the upper forms so as to be, by the end of his first or second quarter there in a position of independence & responsiblity with every possible incentive before him to read– In that case, I think that his public school experience is likely to be a very agreeable one both materially & intellectually– At Harrow, and I believe at Eton, there are, if I recollect right Scholarships to be won, which at once open to a boy the best colleges at Oxford or Cambridge, & secure him, I think, a certain income at the University. I had the misfortune to go to Harrow youngish & with no more scholarship than that of an ordinary idle schoolboy so that it was not till my last days there (wh were cut short suddenly by a disagreeable family event) [4] that I began to grow aware of the great advantages of even school distinction– But I have never ceased thro’ life, both to feel most thankful for having been to a public school, and also to regret more & more every year, that I did not go to an English University.
I am glad to have been at a Public School—not for any scholarship I got there, for I was an idle boy (tho’ I think sound scholarship is to be easily attained now at our public schools) nor yet for any friendships I made there, for of my few old school friends—many are gone for ever—some shot down in the Crimea, and from the rest I have been long separated by my way of life wh lies so wide from England– But because the unconscious social education which boys give each other has been especially valuable to me thro’ life—my temperament is sufficiently sensitive to have given me thro’ life much causeless suffering, if it had not been early attempered and fortified more or less for general use by so large a contact with other boys–
And I am just the sort of man to have quite un-Englished myself in so long a residence abroad, but for certain Saxon foundations laid at Harrow wh never quite give way and are always satisfactory to fall back on– Certainly I owe to those school days on the whole a greater facility of life, a greater sympathy with its gregarious conditions, and a greater diminishment of discomfort in comming [sic] occasionally into contact with some of the world’s stone walls, than I think I cd possibly have obtained by any other process. But I fancy the University is yet more important than the public school, and if Pen dont go to a public school I rather hope he wont go to school at all. I got nothing but bad from the private schools, & hated & hate them still with all my heart. I must own that I learned more from a Private Tutor in one year than I learned in 12 years of school life—but then I was older.
I think so much of the University because I see on all sides that those three years of college life are among the most pleasant in the life of an Englishman, because I myself miss so immensely that strong framework for future reading & thought, & that direct sympathy & close companionship with the collective movement of the English mind which, I suspect is to be got at college, that if I were free to do so, & the college laws wd allow of it, I think I shd be tempted even now to matriculate in England– And because of one thing I am quite sure, viz: that University-distinction of any kind prepares for all future efforts a much readier & more general recognition than is to be wrung from years of solitary and unwitnessed labour– I am convinced that Tennyson owes his quickly-come reputation to University traditions & University friends who for 30 years have been writing him up and whose self esteem is flattered by his success– So that if I should ever have the blessing of a son I think I wd give him this additional chance with the world. But what a deal I am taking on myself to speak of! I am sure however you have that kindness for me which will help you to ascribe my prolixity on this subject to nothing but an intense interest in you & yours, wh makes me risk even the appearance of presumption. Forster told me in his last letter that he was looking out for a house for you– I am myself changing my shell, and sit now in a room full of packing cases and all the dusty symptoms of approaching departure– For the res anguistæ domus [5] compels me into cheaper quarters– I may say that, after a sort (tho’ not as I cd wish) I am living chiefly with you my dear Browning– For your books are my constant companions. I have without compu[n]ction appropriated your story of the buried treasure (do you remember that gift of yours to me?) and there with made a poem for Dickens wh I shall send to All the Year Round by & bye. [6] Mr Cartwright—goes away this evening– He has been busily making (as I imagine) his diagnosis of the disease of Austria—and I shall miss when he goes the pleasure (rare at Vienna) for an occasional chat with an intelligent well informed man, and (what is best) a friend of yours– I hear more marvels of the Bloomfield’s wonderful serpent– He is said to be 200 years old—at least, it is asserted that traditions of him exist wh are 200 years old– He lives in the walls of the House, and has great reverence & worship from all the German Dienershaft [7] who regard him as a sort of tutelary Δαιμων. [8] Evidently a second Cadmus—but, as it appears at present, without an Harmonia– [9] Perhaps he will survive the Austrian Empire—wh seems fast falling in. Schmerling [10] (the wizard who was to rejuvenate it in his Medæan cauldron of a constitution) is not, I think, a clever man. Rather, I shd say, a German theorist of the school of Joseph II. [11] It is expected that the Poles & Czechs will withdraw from the Reichsrath [12] in about three weeks– If this happens there will remain only the rump of a rump; I imagine that such a parliament cannot either guarantee a loan of any great extent upon a mere fraction of the Empire, nor continue to sit in an Imperial capacity. If so, I presume that Schmerling must resign, and I suppose we shall have something very like bankruptcy. I suspect that the true source of the Austrian Empire was an instinct of self-preservation on the part of those heterogeneous populations from the agglomeration and union of which it arose, an instinct of self-preservation, I mean, against the overweening power of the Turks– If so, the dissolution of the Mahometan Empire, or at least the col[l]apse of the Mahometan power, is perhaps what is indirectly causing the extinction of the vitality of Austria– ‘I talk as a child’ [13] tho– And indeed only speak of these things from a wish to prolong my letter to you—and a disinclination to attempt, on this fourth page of it any expression of my feelings—save such as is deeply grateful for all you say—on the subject of my own past & present work—so kindly and affectionately alluded to in yr letter to me– I will only say, on that subject, however, that I am not altering anything already written (with the exception of a very few verbal corrections) for I dont think that fair; but only omitting much—not because it is immature, but because it is imitative & ought never to have been published– Unfortunately however the old editions are still on hand—staring me horribly in the face—and I have not yet money enough to buy them up– I must wait, & that is the worst of it. But I have a fear that ‘freshness of the dawn’ [14] is faded or is fading out– I neither hear the call, nor see the way, quite as clearly and surely as once—tho’ perhaps my ears are sharper, & my legs stronger, than at first. All that I seem to be sure of is the duty & propriety of waiting as patiently as any Quaker at a meeting till the Spirit moves me—praying, too, that it may do so—but if it does not, I hope God will give me Grace to keep silent.
I write you a strange rigmarole—but ‘O dear Horatio, I am ill at these Epistles!’ [15] I wish my most dear friend that I could always keep my heart open before you, so that you should ever be sure how entirely it is yours—and what a great yearning is there for something better than all I possess to render you, if it might be, in recompense of the much much more than you know or guess, that I must ever be owing to you. But I miss the use of all such words as might help me here, and must leave trust all that great debt into the keeping of your faith in an affection which is more than I can tell or show, even when I say as I like to do again and again—how fondly and gratefully you are loved by yr
Robt Lytton.
Will you let me be remembered to yr Father & Sister, whom I knew at Paris? Many loves to Pen.
Chez Mr Chauvin
St Enogat près Dinard,
Ile et Vilaine, France.
I find that I have left so much in yr letter unanswered, and so much in mine unsaid, that I want to say, that I must write more fully this weak [sic]–
O what a wretched means of communication is pen and paper!
Address: Franco. / Robert Browning Esqr / Chez Mr Chauvin. / St Enogat / près Dinard / Ile et Vilaine / La France.
Publication: BBIS-10, pp. 180–185.
Manuscript: Armstrong Browning Library.
2. Underscored twice.
3. Cf. Genesis 3:24.
4. The death of his sister, Emily Elizabeth Bulwer Lytton (1828–48) of typhoid fever, after which Lytton was sent to Bonn to study modern languages in anticipation of a diplomatic career.
5. Cf. Juvenal, Satires, III, 165, trans. Susanna Morton Braund: “Res augusta domi” (“Cramped personal resources”).
6. “Rabbi Ben Ephraim’s Treasure” appeared in All the Year Round on 19 October 1861, pp. 80–84.
7. “Servants.”
8. “Godlike power.”
9. In Greek mythology, the wife of Cadmus, sower of the dragon’s teeth (see letter 4699, note 10). In their old age, husband and wife were turned into serpents.
10. Anton von Schmerling (1805–93) served as Austrian minister of the interior from 1860 to 1865.
11. Joseph II (1741–90), King of Germany and Holy Roman emperor, was a liberal idealist who failed to achieve his goals. After the death of his mother, Maria Theresa (1717–80), who had ruled jointly with him, “he immediately directed his government on a new course, full speed ahead. He attempted to realize his ideal of a wise despotism acting on a definite system for the good of all. … He strove for administrative unity with characteristic haste to reach results without preparation” (EB).
12. The Austrian parliament. On 26 February 1861, a new constitution was proclaimed in Austria. “Elaborated by Anton von Schmerling,” it was “far from satisfying the national aspirations of the races within the empire” (EB).
13. Cf. I Corinthians 13:11.
14. See the penultimate paragraph in letter 4954.
15. Cf. Hamlet, II, 2, 120.
___________________
