SD2512. John Forster to Robert Bulwer Lytton
Published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 29, 310–311 (in part).
York
1st September 1861
… It happens strangely enough that the day before your letter reached me I had received one from Browning in which among other things he says (speaking of Landor)—
“Lytton was much struck by his moral decline in the visit he recently paid him. And by the way, I have never told you how affectionately and unremittingly poor Lytton devoted himself to me in those last days at Florence: he came for a holiday and must have found it worse than work. He writes to me that he was on the point of returning to Vienna”– And in another passage he speaks again of the “real feeling of gratitude” he owes you “for true good-heartedness and sympathy.”
His letter is written from
“Chez M. Chauvin—St. Enogat près Dinard
Ile-et-Vilaine
France”
—which address I imagine will find him at least until the middle of this month. I had hoped to get him to stay with us till the opening of October: but he is under promise to his poor wife’s sister. He will however give us the most of his time till we go—and I only wish you were abt to come. …
Browning was obliged to give up his first intention of coming at once to London—now, when he comes, he will stay the winter there. I give you his own words. “I arrived too depressed by the journey” (he means at Paris) “to be able to keep my promise of seeing Arabel Barrett for a few days before returning to France:—it was just as much as I could bear, to go over the old ground, be lodged in the same rooms as three years ago,—& the entry into Paris was unhappy indeed. After a few day’s quiet, as my thoughts began to settle, I began to reason out what I had felt instinctively at first and my plans are now tolerably precise. It will be certainly better to go to London now—that is, for the Winter, & lose no time in giving Pen the thoroughly English education which is wanted: later the matter would be difficult. I propose to stay here & recover what I can, say for a month or six weeks—then to go to London for good”—
That is dated 16 Augt. and I have since had a letter (the one first quoted) dated 25 August confirming this. …
Publication: None traced.
Manuscript: Lord Cobbold.
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