5004. Robert Bulwer Lytton to RB
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 30, 14–16.
Wurzburg
8 Jany. 1862
My dearest Browning,
My silence has been shamelessly long, but I trust that you will not have interpreted it agst the truth of my true affection for you– Indeed, I have been far from quite well for many weeks & harrassed & occupied by disagreeable private business—so thus I have shrunk from thrusting before you idle & unsatisfactory notices of myself–
The sad new year, however comes to claim recognition of all its cold discomfort– I cannot let it go further without bearing you my heart’s deepest invocation of blessings upon you in the times to come– Indeed indeed, God bless you my most dear friend! No one can pray this more fervently than I. The N. Year opens indeed with public & private grief– I never felt so conscious of change and sorrow all round me—the poor Bloomfields are in mourning for one of their own family– [1] And in my own house here there have been two deaths within the last month. [2] But may better times come with the Spring for England & all of us– Thank God we have escaped a terrible war [3] —tho’ I hardly dare think it more than postponed. You will see by the date of this letter that I am at Würzburg– I was so much in want of change that Ld Bloomfield has kindly allowed me a fortnights holiday here—and I am all the better for it, but I return to Vienna in a few days– So that if you can & will write to me again address to the Embassy as usual– I am much pleased with the place, altho’ it is hardly visible thro’ the snow, & the cold paralyzes all sensations– The Mayne, [4] black as Styx & choked with ice looks sadly different from Festus’ description of “the shelving banks hot & steaming in the sun”– [5]
I have made the acquaintance of an old lady here 94 years of age who was at Paris during the Great Revolution & is full of gossip about it. I asked her if the sense of horror was as great, as universally felt, at the time, as books would make one think. She replied ‘I assure you my dear Sir it cannot be exaggerated– So many people of the highest rank were beheaded!” This is “how it strikes a Contemporary [6]
Did you send your works to my father? [7] I have recd two letters from him about them, begging me to express to you his sincere thanks for having done so—and to tell you that he is astonished by the admiration which he has been compelled to feel for the genius & power of a great deal of what he has, as yet read– And that he hopes you will the more believe in the sincerity of this, & take it as the greater compliment, from his frank avowal that his own taste in poetry has been formed and finished in a school of expression so different to yours, that in his perusal of yr works he has to overcome long settled prejudices in the matter of taste, and that his involuntary admiration of the author’s intellect & genius is rendered in despite of his involuntary antagonism to the Author’s style.
I was not aware that you had sent him your works. It was most kind & considerate of you to do so.
With the exception of a few stories from Herodotus I have written little or no poetry since my return here. [8] Do you happen to know if any of the works of Schleiermacher [9] are translated into English? I believe he is the last & best authority in Biblical Criticism– I have been studying St Paul very carefully. My admiration of him encreases every time I reperuse him—but am I audacious in avowing that I cannot think him a logical writer? At least his mode of reasoning is not that, I think, wh any logical writer wd now adopt. And I break my own vessel over that dreadful illustration of the Potter. [10]
The only thing wh seems to realize ‘[‘]perpetual movement” is the German Criticism on Shakespeare: two new works have lately appeared here. One upon Hamlet [11] & one on the Sonnets, wh the Critic gravely asserts to be an al[l]egorical hoax of Shakespeares,—the dedication to W.H. meaning (obviously!) to “William Himself”! [12]
I have seen very little of Mottley– [13] Indeed I avoid him for the present—for he very naturally takes deeply to heart the cause of his Govt and is excited and over zealous like all new Diplomats– I too feel strongly on the subject and therefore avoid all risk of having to discuss it.
If you ever feel inclined to give me news of yourself, my dear Browning, you will make me very happy by so doing. But my letters of course put forth no claim to replies–
And all I trust is that you will never doubt how tenderly & heartily you are beloved & revered by yr ever affy
R Lytton
Publication: BBIS-10, pp. 194–196 (as 5 January 1862).
Manuscript: Armstrong Browning Library.
1. Unidentified.
2. Unidentified.
3. A war that might have occurred between the United States and Great Britain over the Trent affair (see letter 4997, note 3).
4. Former English spelling of the Main, a major river of southern Germany, which flows past Würzburg and empties into the Rhine at Mainz.
5. Cf. RB, Paracelsus (1835), V, 416–417: “Glad the shelving banks to shun, / Red and steaming in the sun.”
6. The title of RB’s poem, published in Men and Women (1855).
7. Preserved at Knebworth House, seat of the Lyttons, is a copy of RB’s Men and Women (1855), inscribed on the title-page of volume one by the author: “The Right Hon. Sir Edward Bulwer Lytton from RB. London, Oct 8. ’61.” Presumably, RB also sent him Poems (1849) and Christmas-Eve and Easter-Day (1850).
8. Three poems based on Herodotus appeared in volume one of Lytton’s Chronicles and Characters (2 vols., 1868): “Opis and Arge,” “Crœsus and Adrastus,” and “Gyges and Candaules.”
9. Friedrich Daniel Ernst Schleiermacher (1768–1834), German theologian and philosopher.
10. Lytton refers to Romans 9:20–21: “… O man, who art thou that repliest against God? Shall the thing formed say to him that formed it, Why hast thou made me thus? / Hath not the potter power over the clay, of the same lump to make one vessel unto honour, and another unto dishonour?”
11. Probably Albert Gerth (1808–64), Der Hamlet von Shakspeare: Acht Vorlesungen (Leipzig, 1861).
12. In William Shakespeare’s Sonette (1862, p. 233), translated and edited by Friedrich von Bodenstedt (1819–92).
13. John Lothrop Motley (1814–77), at this time U.S. minister to Austria (see letter 4965, note 6).
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