4453. Walter Savage Landor to RB
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 26, 230–231.
[Siena]
[Postmark: 27 July 1859]
It is my destiny, much against my will, to give incessant trouble to my friends, and now I am about to give as much as ever to the kindest of them all. — A shower, a very slight one, yesterday, reminded me that I had only a thin coat on, and not another to change[.] I[n] vain I applied to my family for my cloathes[.] Before you leave Florence, will you apply to the authorities for an order that my son [1] deliver them up, and also my plate, together with whatever may remain out of the 110£ left with him, after paying what he proposed I should pay for my board and other expenses, of which his mother told me he kept an account “to a quattrino.” [2] He promised you and Kirkup that he would do this, and consign the five pictures, out of the 44 sent to me from England. I know you write Italian with perfect ease—so I earnestly wish you wd translate this letter, to show the Commissary, or whoever has the power to do me justice. I have given up to my son property worth thirteen or fourteen thousand scudi a year: it has [been] hard I can not receive from him a change of cloathes and five pictures out of nearly or quite 300, for one of which Mr Day of New-York [3] offers me 300£, and it is not the best by many. The small quantity of plate he offered to take and pay me for, altho there was plenty in the house. And now farewell til we meet. I leave for Viareggio they [sic] day after– Ever most truly and gratefully yours
W. S. Landor
Address: Robert Browning Esqr / Casa Guidi / Florence.
Publication: BBIS-5, p. 20.
Manuscript: Armstrong Browning Library.
1. Arnold Savage Landor (1818–71), Landor’s eldest son.
2. Equivalent to half a farthing.
3. Possibly the Albert B. Day who subscribed to Vieusseux’s reading rooms for two weeks on 13 May 1859. We have been unable to further identify him.
___________________
