SD2779. Robert Bulwer Lytton to Edith Bulwer Lytton

As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 31, 323 (in part).

Cintra

Saturday, Aug. 5 [1865]

… I know your fellow guests the Benzons—they are immensely rich (he is a merchant banker or something of that sort). They are, I know, great friends of the Brownings—especially Mrs Benzon which I can hardly understand, for she is to me exceedingly antipathetic—and I think her a frivolous, pretentious little flirt. I suppose she toadies and flatters him and I never yet knew a literary man (with the exception of dear old Forster) who was not amenable to that sort of thing. I like the husband however, what I know of him. I know him to be a thoroughly good, modest, and conscientious man, who does a vast deal of good, secretly and without ostentation, very charitable, and very thoughtful for the wants and feelings of others. He is therefore a man whom I respect. …

Text: The Birth of Rowland, ed. Emily Lutyens (London, 1956), pp. 99–101.

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