4550. Walter Savage Landor to RB
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 27, 88–89.
[Florence]
[17 December 1859] [1]
And so, my Hellenics are come out at last. [2] God forbid they should be popular for several years to come—indeed there is little danger of this; for people who have the taste of brandy in their mouths can have none for the flavour of claret. I desired Nichol to send four copies of my new volume to me. If it is left to Mr Forster I may get one– If only one, you shall have it. But do not expect it soon. Several months have past away since I requested of Mr F. the favor of procuring from Moxon my last two works. [3] Every week there are conveyances to Italy. I know the value of his promises and professions. Pray, never write to him on my account; I never shall.
Last night (friday night) we had a fall of snow. Perhaps your Soracte stet nive candidum, [4] altho in 18 centuries the climate of your country must have become warmer by the hot-stoves underground for hundreds of miles. —I know not when the curtain will be raised for the farce entitled Congress. It must be hissed off the stage, and I hope the principal actor [5] will be pelted. Italy would have been free without what is wickedly called the Treaty of Peace[.] [6] The Duumvirate is more disastrous than the Triumvirate of Lepidus, Antonius, and that other more coldblooded hypocrite, the idol of poets. [7] Italy at least was left to one, and municipalities were unviolated. But Garibaldi is remaining, neither maimed nor poisoned yet—a man uniting all the virtues in one brave heart, capacious of Italy, of Hungary, of the World. I shall slide back into poetry if I go on– Indeed, here is a scrap of it.
“Unus homo Romæ cunctando restituit Rem”,
Restituet non cunctando (Deus adjuvet!) alter. [8]
Now do not allow your young brave Dragoon to ride into the Campagna unattended. There are thieves in gaiters as well as in red stockings—and you have not half enough money to pay the value of his ransom. —I recieve a vast number of visits, and several from strangers. I hope nobody expects me to return them, I dare not wait at a door or on a staircase. No man, woman, or child, is so liable to take cold. I am reading Les Cho[u]ans of Balzac. In P. 184 is a figure which I often have dreamt of, and dream of stil[l]. Tantôt le jour, &c. [9] I will write to her on her birthday, the 19 of next month, and <te>ll her so. [10] Her smile will <be> as gracious as ever, but more melancholy.
Absence and death are the same—only that in death there is no suffering.
Address: Robert Browning Esq / 28 Via del Tritone / Roma.
Publication: BBIS-5, pp. 39–40 (without assigned date).
Manuscript: Armstrong Browning Library.
1. The day, a Saturday, is based on Landor’s reference to “last night (friday night).” The month and year are provided by postmark of 19 December 1859, a Monday.
4. “Soracte stands there shining with its blanket of deep snow” (Horace, Odes, I, 9, 1–2, trans. Niall Rudd).
5. Napoleon III.
6. Signed at Zurich on 10 November 1859, the treaty formalized the terms of the peace made at Villafranca on 11 July 1859.
7. Gaius Octavius, later Emperor Augustus (63 B.C.–14 A.D.). The triumvirate, which included Marcus Antonius—Mark Antony (ca. 82–30 B.C.) and Marcus Aemilius Lepidus (89–13 B.C.), was formed in November 43 B.C., a year and a half after the assassination of Julius Caesar. Presumably, the “duumvirate” refers to Napoleon III and Franz Josef, Emperor of Austria, who had made the peace at Villafranca, which ended the second war of Italian independence. Landor, along with most Italian patriots, deplored the terms of the peace; see letter 4445, note 3 and letter 4447, note 2.
8. The first line is from Ennius: “One man by delaying restored the state to us” (Annals, 12, 1, 363, trans. Sander M. Goldberg). The second line is Landor’s: “Now, with God’s help, may another save it without delay” (The Latin Poetry of English Poets, ed. J.W. Binns, Abingdon, England, and New York, 2014, p. 164).
9. Les Chouans, Balzac’s first successful novel, was published in 1829. The scene Landor mentions takes place in a coach, where a young naval officer studies the face of the novel’s female protagonist, Mlle. de Verneuil: “Sometimes the daylight [‘Tantôt le jour’] brought out the transparent rose-hues of her nostrils, and the double curves that lie between the nose and the upper lip; or a faint sunbeam would shed its light upon every shade of color in her face, on the pearly white about her mouth and eyes … and the rose-red in her cheeks. He watched admiringly the contrasts of the light and shadow underneath the masses of dark hair about her face, which lent to it one more transient grace; for everything is transient about woman, her yesterday’s beauty is not her beauty of to-day, and this is lucky, perhaps, for her” (The Chouans, trans. Ellen Marriage, Boston, 1901, p. 107).
10. Landor refers to Rose Caroline Graves Sawle (née Paynter, 1818–1914), half-niece of Landor’s great love, Rose Aylmer (1779–1800), and youngest daughter of David Runwa Paynter and his wife, Sophia Katherine (née Price, formerly Aylmer). “Her birthday, the nineteenth of January, became a saint’s day on his [Landor’s] calendar, to be celebrated with a letter or a poem every year until the very last of his life” (R.H. Super, Walter Savage Landor: A Biography, New York, 1954, p. 289).
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