BIB_ID
107662
Accession number
MA 3695.1
Creator
Blunt, Wilfrid Scawen, 1840-1922.
Display Date
1889 December 18.
Credit line
Gift of Frederick A. Melhado 1980.
Description
1 item (8 pages) ; 20.9 x 13.7 cm
Notes
Written from "Sheykh Obeyd."
Maria Theresa Villiers Earle was the eldest daughter of Edward Ernest Villiers (1806-1843) & Elizabeth Charlotte Liddell Villiers (1807-1890) and sister of Edith Villiers Bulwer-Lytton, wife of Lord Robert Bulwer-Lytton.
This letter was acquired with another letter from Blunt to Mrs. Earle dated December 4, 1906 (MA 3695.2)
Maria Theresa Villiers Earle was the eldest daughter of Edward Ernest Villiers (1806-1843) & Elizabeth Charlotte Liddell Villiers (1807-1890) and sister of Edith Villiers Bulwer-Lytton, wife of Lord Robert Bulwer-Lytton.
This letter was acquired with another letter from Blunt to Mrs. Earle dated December 4, 1906 (MA 3695.2)
Provenance
Purchased as the gift of Frederick A. Melhado, 1980.
Summary
Commenting on his friendship with Lord Lytton, offering a lengthy criticism of Lord Lytton's early poetry and explaining his attitudes towards Ireland and his reasons for giving up politics; saying "To me he has always been the most interesting of men, and I value his friendship as the best possession I have had in the way of men's friendships (for I think that the relations possible between a man & a woman are more perfect still). Lord Lytton however has much of a woman's generosity of affection - and he is without the spirit of rivalry which stands so perpetually between man & man. Thus he is loveable, & no one grudges him his successes in life or refuses sympathy with his failures. I do not however consider that as a poet he has failed. I have been reading over his older poems lately, & I am surprised to find how good they are. There are many things in the Wanderer which I am sure will live - and who can say more than that of any poet's work? Also I cannot believe but that they & Lucille [sic] are now popular - I constantly hear women talk rapturously ab't them, & that is the best test - I am convinced that the poet's public at the present day is more with women than men, & I think it will be yearly more so. With regard to Lytton's later works, I find fault with his choice of subjects and not with the workmanships. He seems to have perversely chosen uninteresting lines of thought. I know he considers his fables his best work, and, as far as form goes, he is probably right - but there is a lack of human feeling in them which leaves the reader dissatisfied with the dry fare of wit. The only poem of Lytton's which has really disappointed me is 'Glenaveril' - This sins by prolixity & by an intricacy of plot which w'd be puzzling even in a prose novel & which makes it almost impossible reading in verse. It enraged me to find so much skill employed to so little purpose and over so many pages. It is the greatest misfortune for a poet to choose his subject badly, for, feeling there is something wanting, he is often prodigal of his best work on it, & after all finds it thrown away in a poor result. I fancy this failure of 'Glenaveril' is what Lytton has felt most keenly in his poetical life & it is certainly what I have felt most for him. But whose life is not full of such mistakes? You ask me why I have given up politics? It is not, I can assure you from any change of opinion ab't Home Rule; but from a growing conviction that I can do nothing to further it at all in proportion to what it costs me. If it had been possible for me to continue my work in Ireland as an Irishman I w'd willingly have done so, & I sh'd have been delighted to go on fighting a losing or a winning battle. But the life of the English party platform is repugnant to every sense I have of what is right & decent & profitable to the soul. I am no believer either in the Liberal Party or the Grand Old Man or any of his successors and without a profession of faith in these one cannot stand up before any political audience. I hate the life of a public speaker, that of a successful one more than any; and however good the end may be I am sure the means are bad. It cannot be otherwise than degrading to appear night after night passing false arguments for good ones, & flattering the foolish buyers. My reasons for desiring Home Rule in Ireland are quite different over from any I c'd put forward on liberal platforms & the Liberal leaders w'd not thank me for so pleading their cause, even if the Liberal masses w'd listen to me - I have consequently withdrawn gradually from political meetings, but I had no intention of doing so in any formal or public manner except that it was necessary for me to let the people at Kidderminster know that they must not count on me as a Gladstonian candidate. I have neither severed nor do I intend to sever myself from the possibility of taking up either the Irish or any other just cause if the occasion sh'd occur of my doing so again in my own way. But I was not made (I think I may say it without vanity) to dance to Schnadhorst's fiddling - This really is the truth of it, whatever else may be said;" adding, in a postscript, "What I have said in this letter ab't Lytton is of course between ourselves I w'd not criticise his later work to anyone [illegible] attached to him - and I see no reason he sh'd not yet do something quite worthy of his genius. He ought, after Browning, to be our next laureate."
Catalog link
Department