4965. RB to Robert Bulwer Lytton
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 29, 233–234.
St Enogat,
Sept 20. ’61.
My dear Lytton,
I leave this place to-morrow for Paris where I stay only a few days before going to London. I shall hardly be able to do more than thank you for your very kind & exceedingly interesting letter—the long one, [1] I say gratefully: I meant to try and say something, or many things, that occurred to me about the matters mentioned in it—but I delayed, & you see—or do not see!– Your experience & feelings about the advantages of a public school are valuable to me just now, & coincide with my own conjectures. I have been turning the good & the harm over & over in my mind, & am pretty well resolved on the course it will be best to pursue. Too abrupt an initiation into the rough rule at such establishments might disgust the poor little fellow too much: I shall begin with a private Tutor—& use him to the academical harness first of all—when he warms in the traces, it might be a good step to put him in the Junior School of King’s College or London University, as Forster suggests, where you get good teaching, plenty of boy companionship & class emulation, and yet have home to fall back upon daily. When sufficient progress has been made, Harrow or Eton may be tried with a good chance, just as you say,—when he is qualified to take superior standing at once. I don’t mean to hurry any of the stages but take as much time as is consistent with losing nothing: and I have a grounded hope that Pen will do well in a School—much better than his previous life would lead one to expect. He is very socially inclined, best wrought upon by rivalry, & by no means of an over-nervous or sensitive temperament. He is getting strong, too, healthy as I could wish—you would really have difficulty in recognising him—it is indeed one of the wonders that, in my own round of feelings, I keep waking up to, & acquiescing in,—to think that three months ago he wore a velvet tunic & short trousers, and had long hair under the hat & feather. All gone! Well, he helps me to look forward, as nothing else could. He is much the better for the thirty five duckings he has got in the sea, in five weeks,—and swims now well enough for a beginner.
I shall be very glad to have the “Donne” you promise me: I can get it from any place you please, Paris or London: but, pray, cut out your own book—& I will rebind mine. [2] I am glad, but not surprised, that you liked Cartwright who is full of individuality & worth of many kinds, with as little of the latter on the outside as can well be. He had just as kindly an impression of you, I may add. I had a letter from the Storys yesterday of no very cheering sort. Story was unwell & out of spirits: the lucklessness of the Northern States involved his own prospects—the Trustees of a fund for a statue to Quincy, [3] of which the commission had been given to him (and which statue is three-parts finished in marble) announce “no effects”—(what became of them?)—another patron renounces a “Beethoven”, [4] done absolutely: & his bust of Theodore Parker, he much fears, is lost at sea! [5] These are sad announcements and made just when there is an inevitable clipping of incomes, uncertainty of receipts & the rest of it. However he has springiness of mind & will not break for a little.
Thank you for your kind thought of my father & sister: the former, in his eightieth year, is nothing short of extraordinary– I can discern no change in him to speak of—absolutely none in any of the senses or faculties—his memory, for instance. He & Peni delight each other. Goodbye, dear Lytton—none of your goodness is lost on me, do believe. Write as you promise, though I do so little in return. You are to have my friend Mr Motley as Minister at Vienna [6] —do make his acquaintance, if you have not done it already. There is a very amiable Mrs M: & a very pretty young lady.
Ever yours affectionately
R Browning.
Publication: BBIS-10, pp. 186–188.
Manuscript: Lord Cobbold.
3. In 1859, William Wetmore Story received a commission from Harvard for a statue of Josiah Quincy (1772–1864), president of the university from 1829 to 1845. Story completed the work in marble by the late winter of 1861, but Harvard failed to pay the balance of the $7,500 price. Consequently, the statue remained in Story’s Rome studio until 1878, when Harvard raised the sufficient funds (see Jan M. Seidler, “A Critical Reappraisal of the Career of William Wetmore Story (1819–1895), American Sculptor and Man of Letters,” Ph.D. thesis, Boston University, 1985, pp. 423–429).
4. Perhaps a copy of a statuette that Story completed in 1854 (see letter 3278, note 5).
5. The bust of Parker survived (see letter 4664, note 3).
6. In August, John Lothrop Motley (1814–77) was appointed minister to Austria by President Abraham Lincoln. Motley and his wife, Mary (née Benjamin, 1813–74), had three daughters, all of whom were unmarried at this time: Elizabeth Cabot Motley (afterwards Ives, later Harcourt, 1838–1928); Mary Lothrop Motley (afterwards Sheridan, 1844–1918); and Susan Margaret Stackpole Motley (afterwards St. John Mildmay, 1848–1918). Only the eldest accompanied her parents to Vienna in 1861 (see John Lothrop Motley and His Family, ed. Susan St. John Mildmay and Herbert St. John Mildmay, 1910, p. 118.)
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