SD2102. Robert Bulwer Lytton to John Forster
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 24, 265–266 (in part).
Bagni di Lucca.
6 August 1857.
My dearest Friend,
I hope to have heard from you before now: but it occurs to me that I probably did not, in my short letter from Rotterdam, give you any indication as to my address.
From me you should assuredly have heard long ere this, had I not been ever since my arrival in Italy extremely unwell, with a great deal of fever—& for some days indeed, not without great fear of a more serious & protracted illness. I am now better. This is the first day I have been able to put pen to paper for about a fortnight, & to you I dedicate the earliest effort of convalescence.
The substantial result of my brief visit to Holland you already know.
On leaving the House I wrote to Mde. G. three lines to say that I thought C had acted with great frankness & that thro’ out her conduct with me she had nothing to reproach herself with—but that I thought it juster & wiser—in order that C’s future might remain perfectly free—that all correspondence between myself & Mde G. shd. now cease—to wh. Made. G replied .. “C desires me to thank you for these generous & considerate words … Shd you on reflection, find no other reason for ceasing our correspondence than delicacy towards C., I think I may fairly say that the perfect truth & uprightness of her character are a stronger safeguard of her independence than any wh our precaution might wish to raise.
She wd regret your silence unless it were kept for your own sake.
More than ever we may think of you as a friend.
Subsequent to the recpt of the letter, I saw C herself who came to Rotterdam with her mother to see me on the Eve of my departure—& she then asked me not to discontinue my correspondence with her mother. That correspondence therefore continues—but if I do not return to the Hague, it will probably die a natural death—& the more I reflect upon the matter the less I think those feelings of friendship & |silence| wh C may now possess for me—ever likely to assume that deeper character, without wh marriage wd be certain misery. I am therefore at this moment inclined to relinquish all thoughts of this—as regards the future. I have had a momentary struggle—& a sharp one before doing so—and at first it seemed difficult to begin life de vovo—without that hope on wh I had suffered myself to have the security—but I am now beginning to recognize, in what is past and act rather of Salvation than of condemnation on the part of providence—& I think that things are thus ordered for the wisest. …
I am here at the Bagni with the dear Brownings, who both send you their affectionate love & ask you to write, & with Miss Blagden who adds her compliments. Oh, if I could tell you one tithe of her unselfish & thoughtful kindness to me. I have been so ill—& she has been to me throughout many days of suffering a real soeur de charité; I believe that I wholly owe to her care my escape from protracted fever. …
Publication: None traced.
Manuscript: Lord Cobbold.
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