5923. Robert Bulwer Lytton to RB
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 32, 217–218.
Grove Mill.
Saturday. [22 June 1867] [1]
Thank you sincerely, my dear Browning, for your kind enquiries & good wishes on behalf of my wife, and little daughter,—and also for the welcome news of yourself: which has given me the greatest pleasure: both because I can suppose many reasons why the honorary M.A. Degree, should be agreeable and advantageous to you,—on acct of Pen, and in other ways too,—independent of the natural and just satisfaction you must derive from a public and collective expression of homage to your worth and genius by the University of Oxford, and also because I am—as an Englishman delighted to know that the Oxford worthies have done honour to themselves in doing honour to one of England’s great men.–
I must apologize for not having sooner returned to you [‘]‘The Life of Jason”; [2] and again, for asking your permission to retain it a few days longer. I have nearly finisht reading it. But my reading of it has been sadly interrupted by many less agreeable employments of time and thought, which have left me in a state of mind and temper very hostile to fair judgement of such a book. I think the book exceedingly clever, and much more than clever, but I dont know whether the unsatisfactory effect which it makes upon me is my own fault, or that of the Poet: and I can only describe it, by telling you of a whimsical misadventure which, when I was at Vienna, befel[l] a member of an itinerant Brass Band in that City. The man was stone deaf, and his function was to play the Kettle drum. He had only to read his notes, count his time, and ap[p]ropriately bang his instrument. On one occasion when the Band was playing in a narrow street, the deaf man was stationed, with his Kettle drum, out of sight of his fellow musicians, in the Court yard of one of the Houses. The music had hardly struck up before the Police interfered, and dispersed the musicians—for obstructing the thoroughfare. Half an hour afterwards, when the neighbourhood was thinking of anything else but the music, it was startled by a tremendous bang on the Kettle drum. The deaf man had been forgotten and left behind by his fellows in their flight. This sort of poetry sounds to me like that bang on the Kettle drum. But tho’ my mind is not in harmony with it, I fancy it must be in harmony with a prevalent taste amongst poetry-readers & writers, more cultivated and competent than myself. I write this from Watford: but I am returning to Town this afternoon, and will post it in London. Is your Sister now with you?
Pray remember me to her, and believe me to be
My dear Browning
Your ever aff
R Lytton
Address: Robert Browning Esqr / &c &c &c / 19 Warwick Crescent / Upper Westbourne Terrace W. / London.
Publication: BBIS-10, pp. 225–226 (as 24 June 1867).
Manuscript: Armstrong Browning Library.
1. This letter is postmarked 24 June 1867, a Monday.
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