5119. Robert Bulwer Lytton to RB
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 30, 133–137.
| Private | Nussdorf |
4 Oct 1862.
My very very & ever dear friend!
How delightful a surprise is this to see once more your long missed and beloved hand-writing! [1] And then too, this letter in which you heap upon the head & front of my long offending all the fines of such too kind forgiveness! How can I come before you, dearest friend, except in the sackcloth & ashes of sincerest self-accusation? My heart has been daily reproaching me for not writing to you … (be assured that no solitary reproach to you has ever crossed my mind … how can you think I should be such a brute & beast as to “bouder” [2] you for my own sense of dejection in the consciousness of how wretchedly inadequate have been all my attempts to deserve your friendly permission—that I should write fully & often to you?) — But indeed, indeed dear Browning the failure here has not been of the heart—that, which can never change (never! be sure of this) has always been full quite full of true, and grateful, and enduring love for you—and God knows how many daily hourly thoughts of you go by unchronicled– But when I try to put this love in any intelligible shape for you to care for—I seem to fail so miserably that I grow angry & half careless of results that so ill interpret their intentions, and a sort of dull mistrust in myself that I can ill explain, has grown over me, so that I have trusted my heart rather to your confidence in its contents than to any utterance into which I can ever hope to put them– And so, not willingly but helplessly it seems, this gap of silence has grown wide & wider between us.
Now it seems that I am properly punished by the undeserved kindness of your letter, for having left you within reach of any such supposition as that I was waiting for return of what so little deserved it. However I am too happy in the possession of this best proof that you do not doubt how dear you are to me.
Love is a commodity which one cannot well wrap up in paper and send by post—but I keep for you a heartful of it here– This absence conceals too much of what it weighs upon so heavily & friendship lies under the chill of it like a garden in the snow—full of roots and germs and silently working forces that cannot show themselves. But may I see you soon! And you shall see dear friend that no root of all that you have planted in my heart is killed or cankered.
You ask me if I have been working? Yes. On the whole I have been working assiduously I hope: tho’ more in the way of acquirement, I think, than of production. My work seems desultory enough when I look back upon this year’s employment—but it is all part of a purpose which I lack rather the means than the will to complete. I have been nibbling a little at science reading, not very conscientiously some Greek authors with which I was unacquainted—widening a little my knowledge of German literature & studying with something like concentration the forms & principles of Drama—to which I am more & more strongly drawn– The highest elevation I can yet see approach to in art, seems to be under the dominion of Tragedy. The moment you enter that realm everything becomes noble & important nothing mean, nothing casual– The tiniest sandgrain on the top of an alp may cause an avalanche—but stir the mud as you will, mud it will ever remain– So I see a mere nothing in itself capable of producing the sublimest results in tragedy provided it be loftily placed by the artist. What but a sandgrain produces the entire tragedy of the Illiad [sic], & the Niebellungenlied? [3] But then these sandgrains are perched upon Alps indeed! I often think that those natures are peculiarly privileged by Providence in which a single small fault becomes the tragedy of a life– Considering how many men’s lives are a mass of small evil that passes without importance under the notice of Destiny, and how many seemingly fail even by some immense misdeed to be singled out for the representatives of retribution, one would say that the Devil must think to himself “Let all this Vulgarity do as it pleases. It is mine safe and sure, by inheritance, & cannot be otherwise. I need not trouble about that. But there is a grain of sin almost out of my reach in that lofty soul yonder, that I must & will secure, tho’ I have to burrow or to creep for centuries to get it. With that grain of sin I can make a tragedy with all these heaps of unworthiness I can do nothing.”
My work however, such as it is, has been sadly broken in upon of late. I am but just returned from Belgrade, whither I was suddenly sent by the Govt to keep the peace between the Turks & Servians till the close of the Conference at Constantinople. [4] I have been lucky enough to suc[c]eed & get thro’ a disagreeable mission with credit—having been “highly approved” both here & at home, whence I have recd “the thanks of H M Govt” I hope to be able to get to England this Winter about the new year, where Forster kindly offers me hospitalities of all kinds, and where I trust you will let me see much of you. I have an infinite quantity of things to say to you, which I have no hope of ever being able to write. Meanwhile, I shall send by our next Messenger to your London address, a photograph of my abode here on the Danube, as well as of myself that these (till we meet) may seem at least to bring my whereabouts nearer a little to yours. How I wish that some part of this Summer might have seen you here with me– I had almost hoped from something Fo[r]ster said months ago, that this might have been. I have a large old Country house here, on the Danube, which flows under the garden wall between twenty little green islands towards Vienna wh is at half an hours distance from me– Behind me, abounding in delicious Country walks, thro’ green lanes breaking into slopes of corn, meadow, & vineyard two high hills, clothed about the ridges with a fine pine forest, and crowned upon the peaks with two old convents, my customary walk—before this cold set in– From these heights you see across the Danube into Hungary & Bohemia, a boundless many coloured plain fainting out of sight on the extreme edge of the sky into a fringe of purple hills. Then a world of wildflowers all about the neighbourhood—& before the house, a desolate old garden built and laid out on the scale of a long departed grandure [sic], in Italian style, with terrace & fountain—now full of infusoria & lovely only to the Eye of science!
How often, in these lonely walks, have I turned round with a strong sad yearning for your hand to press! But now I shall soon be driven like a wolf into the town by cold & hunger.
Last Spring I went to Venice for a few days, and picked up one or two pictures. Julian Fane was lucky enough to secure a real prize—a Gian Bellini [5] wh I think priceless—untouched and the loveliest specimen I have yet seen of the dawn of his second style, Titian’s influence just apparent without any loss of the pure intensity of the older master.
I am expecting my Uncle here from Constantinople where he has just covered himself with glory. [6] He comes to pass a few days with me.
how glad I am that you like my dear Father—did I tell you how he wrote to me of you? [7] I meant to send you his letter in wh he spoke of you with the highest & warmest appreciation. I am most grateful for the picture you send me of your French retreat, wh enables me to realize your present life a little. Were it not for the hope of soon joining you there I shd be very sorry to change this picture in my mind’s eye for that in wh you will appear to me surrounded by London’s wintry gloom– If you have any opportunity to do so I shall be grateful if you will kindly recall me to the remembrance of your Father & Sister whose acquaintance I made in Paris.
I suppose that Pen must be much grown– What is he doing besides bathing? Have you read Les Miserables? [8] I have done so with admiration so great that I am angry to find it mixed with any other feeling—but on the whole the book makes upon me the impression of a Magnificent Cathedral Organ playing Strauss’s Wa[l]tzes. [9] All the English criticisms of it however are miserable things. There is no criticism in England, and none, so far as I see to be hoped for—only a plethora of penny-a-lining. What is the reason of the little consideration shown in Engd, so far as I know, to Victor Hugo? Compare it with the reception of Mrs Beecher Stow[e]!!
It is rather amusing however that a man shd get 20000£ for writing a book against “the deceitfulness of riches”. After all Xian Communists in France seem to argue upside down. Xianity says to the rich ‘give’, & Communism says to the poor [‘]‘take”– I am far from sure that social systems wh are bound to complete themselves here, and establish their το καλον [10] in this life, can be safely fix’d on to a system of ethics wh removes man’s completion from this life, & places the το καλον altogether beyond it. One hardly dare broach such a doubt, yet so far as I see the worst failures of legislation seem thus far due to attempts to base it upon some such ground.
How can govt whose business is only to enforce the common sense of the state, legislate for moralities which arise out of the changing conceptions of that intellect which is in advance of the State?
Well, Horace says that there is one vice common to singers—they wont sing when they are wanted to sing but when they do sing, they sing from the egg to the apple– [11] And I who can so rarely force myself to write can now hardly force myself to stop writing– Forgive alike both my long silence & this long infraction of it & believe me, heart & soul
Ever most lovingly
Your faithful & grateful friend
R Lytton
Pray tell me something about Isa—her angel will rise agst me in the Day of Judgment for I came here meaning to write constantly to her, & our correspondence, entirely thro my own fault has dropped altogether. If you see her, however, entreat her to believe, that this is thro’ sheer incompetency as a correspondent, & from no sort of change of feeling as a friend. I must hope she will forgive me. I cast all my short comings upon the fact of Original Sin, under which I was born– I hope you & my father will be friends.
R B L
Only think of my getting possession of three m.s. notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci, [12] with his diagrams & memoranda on mechanics, perspective &c and some sketches in chalk evidently taken on the moment of faces passing in the street &c where he might have been walking at the time. The m s is written after his usual fashion from Right to left & only to be read by means of a lookingglass.
Mill was here this summer but I unfortunately missed him, being at Belgrade when he came. I am great friends with a friend of his here who has translated his works.
Whenever you write to me, pray tell me the name of the Preraphaelite Poet whose Poems you showed me
(“three Red Roses across the moon” &c) [13]
I should much like to get the book & cant remember the name of it.
Your ever loving
R Lytton
Publication: BBIS-10, pp. 204–210.
Manuscript: Armstrong Browning Library.
2. “Cold-shoulder.”
3. The Nibelungenlied, an epic poem of the thirteenth century in Middle High German.
4. According to Harold W.V. Temperley, in Belgrade “on 15th June 1862 two Serbians were killed by two Turks, and the Serbian police, who were conveying the Turks to a Turkish gaol, were fired on from the police-station. Their fall was the signal for the Serbian crowd to arise, and for a looting of Turkish bazaars to begin. … Arrangements for ensuring tranquillity had been made, when on the 17th the pasha suddenly opened fire with big guns from the citadel, and bombarded the city for five hours. … A conference of the Powers was summoned at Constantinople to decide the matter” (History of Serbia, 1917, p. 245). For his efforts in Belgrade, Lytton was promoted to secretary of the legation at Copenhagen, the posting to begin in 1863.
5. Giovanni Bellini (d. 1516), Venetian painter.
6. William Henry Lytton Earle Bulwer (1801–72), later Baron Dalling and Bulwer (1871), was British ambassador to the Ottoman Empire from 1858 to 1865.
7. See the end of letter 5064 and its enclosure.
8. Victor Hugo, Les Misérables (10 vols., 1862). The first two volumes were published simultaneously on 4 April in Paris, Brussels, London, Leipzig, and St. Petersburg.
9. Johann Strauss (1804–49), conductor and composer, known for his waltzes.
10. “Noble thing” or “beautiful thing.”
11. i.e., from the first course to the last. Cf. Horace, Satires, I, 3, 1–7, trans. H. Rushton Fairclough.
12. Lytton later gave these notebooks to John Forster, who bequeathed them to the South Kensington, now Victoria and Albert, Museum.
13. Sic, for “Two Red Roses across the Moon,” a poem that appeared in The Defence of Guenevere, and Other Poems by William Morris (1858).
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