1260. Benjamin Robert Haydon to EBB

As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 7, 150–151.

London

May 26 1843

You know Rumohr’s Italienesche?—he is a first rate critic– I send you a Sketch of his own–

I am laid up with a burnt foot—in steaming my cartoons for the last time the Water bubbled out whilst I was looking intensely at it– [2] My Motto on Adam & Eve is

Desert me not O Lord in my grey hairs, untill I have shewn Thy strength unto this generation and Thy power unto that which is to come. [3]

on Edward

I called on the Lord out of my low dungeon; thou camest near & said “Fear Not[.]” [4]

This is Confidential.

I have printed the 1st Vol of my Memoirs[;] you will read it breathlessly as soon as I have revised it—

Yours ever

B R Haydon

My kindest regards to Mary Mitford–

My daughter, is the same—her pulse indicates nothing pulmonary—

[ART]

Address, on integral page: Miss B. Barrett / 50 Wimpole St.

Publication: EBB-BRH, pp. 102–103.

Manuscript: University of Vermont.

1. Haydon enclosed sketches of two faces, reproduced above; beneath them, in Haydon’s hand, is written “Baron Rumohr.” It seems likely that the sketches were copies drawn by Haydon. Karl Friedrich Ludwig Felix von Rumohr (1785–1843), an art collector and critic with whom Haydon corresponded, was the author of Italienische Forschungen (3 vols., 1826–31).

2. Haydon recorded in his diary for 20 May: “Laid up with a burnt foot from steaming the Cartoons the last time”; on 27 May: “My foot not well” and on 29 May: “My Foot better but still not able to stand to paint” (Pope, V, 275–278).

3. Cf. Psalms, 71:18.

4. Cf. Lamentations, 3:55, 57.

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