5031. Robert Bulwer Lytton to RB
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 30, 43–45.
Vienna.
22 Feby 1861 [sic, for 1862] [1]
Thank you so much my dearest Friend for your kindest of Letters! [2] How glad I am to hear from you, you cannot doubt. But pray dont take my honest request that you will not consider it necessary to answer my letters, or to write to me save when the impulse takes you, as any façon de parler. [3] I really mean what I say. I know too well the weary effort of speaking,—even to those we oftenest & most fondly think of sometimes—and Friendship is not worth a rush, if it cannot understand in silence.
I was very anxious for news of you however: because of late, & for long I had heard nothing of you from our mutual friends in Engd Isa or Forster. If you are likely to be in England in May, I trust I shall see much of you, as I hope to be over there about that time, and that you will then, if possible, give way to a wish I have long had, that I may see yourself and my dear father brought into such communion as will enable you both to feel how much ground for sympathy & pleasant intercourse there really is between you. I think that there is much both in your intellect & in his that belongs to a common, or at least a kindred, order of Genius, tho’ much else that has of course all the difference of strong individuality.
I have had an extremely interesting correspondence with my father lately upon credos and non-credos of many kinds, and have been startled to find in his letters so many thoughts that resembled & reminded me of yours. Nothing could possibly be better than all you tell me about Pen. Oh by all means do not let him miss these years of golden facility for the acquisition of all that completes a man’s nature, and adds beauty and enjoyment to life in the way of music art, & modern languages. Day by day I groan louder over this hole in my own education.
The Athenæum has conferred a high honour on itself, and I congratulate it thereon.
I am getting quite sick of Tennyson & Tennysonian critics– There must come a vast reaction to all this worship of alabaster images, and men will come in time to prefer the roughest block of marble to all the chimney ornaments now in fashion.
My stories from Herodotus are only the fillings up of a time of waiting on my part—a sort of holiday task—for I am in hopes that I have at last broken ground where gold is to be got. Meanwhile perhaps I shall make a little vol: of these tales– I have only written two as yet,—the story of Adrastus & Atys, [4] which I believe to be virgin, and that of Gyges & Candaules [5] —an awkward subject: of wh I am told that there is exists [sic] an indifferent German Play. I have not seen the Play—but I understand it is founded on Plato’s version of the story—that with the horse & the ring. [6] I follow Herodotus strictly– I am at work on a drama of the mystical kind from which I hope great things—but all is vague as yet. Pray pray send me the book [7] as soon as possible. Chapman will know how to send it– But in case of mistake, here is the address:–
R. Lytton
Care of Geo. Lenox Conyngham Esq [8]
For. Off:
To be forwarded to Vienna
by next Messenger.
If you send the parcel thus addressed to the F.O. it will reach me safely. We have had frightful inundations of the Danube here– I went last week to see a whole village wh is totally submerged—an extraordinary sight. I fear there has been great ruin, as well as some loss of life from this deluge—which burst suddenly, & overwhelmed many places in the course of a single night. I have become the haunter of some weekly concerts here, where I hear quatuors of Beethoven executed marvellously & often wish you were sitting beside me.
There have also been some very interesting concerts here lately historical, beginning with the songs & airs of the old minnesingers,—specimens of troubadour virelays &c & ending with Rubenstein! [9] Vienna appears to be the Home of Music–
I have sometimes thought that the fact in music represented by Sebastian Bach, would be worth the attempt to explain it in poetry– Do you agree? I wish I knew more of music. I am beginning to think it the only possible language remaining to man, for much that in this present day he most needs to utter & hear, & to me it is a language unknown.
God bless you my very very dear Browning– Pray give my best love to Penny, & count among those that love you deeply, & think of you often
Yours affect
R. Lytton
PS
My father has sold his house in town, and is now, I believe living at 35. St James Place London– [10]
Address: Franco / Robt Browning Esq / care of / John Forster Esq / 46 Montagu Square / London.
Publication: BBIS-10, pp. 197–199.
Manuscript: Armstrong Browning Library.
1. Correct year provided by postmark.
3. “Manner of speaking.”
4. In Herodotus, I, 35–45 (trans. A.D. Godley), Adrastus is banished from Phrygia for accidentally killing his brother. He journeys to Sardis, where he is befriended by Croesus, King of Lydia. The king has dreamt that his son, Atys, will be killed by a spear but reluctantly allows him to take part in a boar hunt with Adrastus as his guard. During the hunt Adrastus accidently spears Atys, killing him. Although Croesus forgives Adrastus, the latter commits suicide at the tomb of the king’s son. In this and subsequent quotations from, or references to, Greek and Latin classical authors, citations are from the Loeb Classical Library unless otherwise noted.
5. Kings of Lydia in the early seventh century B.C. As told in Herodotus, I, 7–14 (trans. A.D. Godley), King Candaules wishes to show his wife naked to a trusted bodyguard, Gyges, in order to convince him of her great beauty. Consequently, Gyges hides in the queen’s bedroom and watches her disrobe, but he is seen by her just as he leaves. The queen vows revenge for this humiliation. She offers Gyges two options: face immediate execution for his act or assassinate the king and take his place on the throne. Gyges chooses the latter.
6. In “Plato’s version,” an “ancestor of Gyges” (treated by scholars as Gyges himself), a shepherd, came upon “a chasm in the place where he was tending his flock. Amazed at the sight he climbed down and … saw a bronze horse which was hollow and had small openings in it.” Inside the horse is a corpse wearing only a gold ring, which Gyges removes. He soon discovers that the ring can make him invisible. With this knowledge, “he immediately arranged to become one of the messengers who went to the king, and when he got there he seduced his wife and with her help attacked the king, killed him and took possession of his kingdom” (The Republic, II, 359d–360b, trans. Christopher Emlyn Jones and William Preddy). The “indifferent German Play” is doubtless Gyges und sein Ring (1854) by Friedrich Hebbel (1813–63).
7. Last Poems.
8. George Lenox Conyngham (d. 1866, aged 69), chief clerk of the Foreign Office from 1841.
9. Anton Rubinstein (1829–94), Russian pianist and composer.
10. The Brownings’ address book of this period (AB-4) lists Edward Bulwer-Lytton’s previous London address as 1 Park Lane.
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