SD2104. Edward Bulwer-Lytton to John Forster
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 24, 266 (in part).
[London]
Aug 30/57
My dear Forster,
Brownings reports have been for the last few days progressively comforting—the kind of fever is not unusual in Italy—& Browning tells me there is no danger except in a relapse. I enclose you his last recd today. — But I am & long have been seriously anxious about him, not for one illness or another but because I think his whole constitution is far from a sound one & that all his habits are opposed to the means absolutely necessary to correct & strengthen a system frail in itself & liable to feverish assaults– His hours his studies, his avoidance of all healthful physical life—out door exercises &c. And, do not smile, if I state my conviction that his indulgence in Poetry is a fatal thing to him– It is not the writing verses that hurts him—but the dawdling, dreamy, lie a bed kind of life that the verse writing induces in him—& the wear & tear of emotion that goes with it– This belief alone withholds me from taking him out of his career & settling him in England. If he had nothing practical to do—the verse making would be worse than ever. — Still I am in doubt. I shall try to get to him as soon as I can. — I should like to see him happily married.
I am most deeply grieved for poor Macready. Pray give him the enclosed note.
I am just today in town having come to it much on the chance of being summoned to Lucca had Brownings acc[oun]ts been less favorable. I think L.L. may have helped to worry Robt She has got hold of a thoro’ Blackguard one Mr. Ironside, Editor of Sheffield Free Press, and he seems resolved on by her own insane violence, & carrying her ‘case’ before the new Divorce Court. I think this harassed Robt much.
Yr affetly
EBL
Publication: None traced.
Manuscript: Lord Cobbold.
___________________
