SD2777. Edith Bulwer Lytton to Robert Bulwer Lytton
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 31, 322 (in part).
Knebworth
Friday, July 28th, 1865
My own darling Man
… When we went to dinner the Benzons had joined the party; they are Germans and you know them I believe. Mr Benzon took me in and I sat next your Father, who was very chatty and pleasant as he always is; but I could not help grinning inwardly a little about some things; they were so different from your opinions in general conversation. Sir E. said this Parliament was filled with “visionaries” like Mill; and they had more resemblance to the men just before the Revolution than anything else; and poor Mill was conceited etc. Then the Benzons are great Northerners as you know and Sir E. did not spare them, by giving his objections to the slaves being free. …
The Benzons tell me they know Browning very well and that he praised me and my singing very much; it is very good of him to do that second hand, for I suppose someone must have said a good word of me to him, as I have never seen him. The Benzons heard from him the other day the whole plot for another poem he is writing which is to come out in two volumes. I have not heard the story but it is a true one, taken from an old manuscript he found in Florence. …
Text: The Birth of Rowland, ed. Emily Lutyens (London, 1956), pp. 97–99.
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