4531. Walter Savage Landor to RB
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 27, 50–51.
[Florence]
[?December 1859] [1]
My dear friend, If I knew the residence of Mr Gallenga [2] I would confer with him personally. Meanwhile I request of you to send him what I enclose– [3] One copy of the printed paper is for yourself. I hope for your approbation both of the printed and the written below.
If Mr. Gallenga says anything about me, it may be well to give the reason for my return to my estate in Tuscany.
I was condemned to pay 1000 lire sterline to a woman [4] for a loss of character. This 1000 lire sterline are less than a third of the income from my estates in England, and I live within it. I would rather have died in Siberia, at 84 years old, than have given one shilling more to a woman who had obtained from me 123£ under the false pretence of saving a young lady from perdition. [5] She had been accused by one tradesman of altering a figure in a money-account, which he showed to me; and by another of taking 8 shillings off his counter in his momentary absence. In a trial, two years ago, she claimed 5000£ for damages, and obtained one farthing from a Jury, the judge having exprest his disbelief of her testimony on oath.– It was I who ought to have been the prosecutor, but it would have compromised the young lady who, for cogent reasons had been forbidden by her mother to enter the woman’s house. Surely this statement which I am prepared to verify, would occupy but a small space in a Preface, and would eternally oblige me, as you have done already. [6]
Publication: BBIS-5, pp. 32–33 (without assigned date).
Manuscript: Armstrong Browning Library.
1. Conjecturally dated by the stationery, which matches that of letter 4549.
2. Antonio Gallenga is listed in the Brownings’ address book of this period (AB-4) at “Casino de’ Strozzi. 4.A Via de’ Strozzi.” Apparently, Landor was unaware of the Brownings’ low opinion of Gallenga at this time.
3. Affixed to the bottom of the sheet, by six adhesive wafers, is a printed page. See note 6 below.
4. Mary Jane Yescombe (née Crosbie); see letter 4214, note 4.)
5. Geraldine Hooper (afterwards Dening, 1841–72), daughter of Thomas Clarence Hooper and his wife, Catharine. According to R.H. Super, Landor was taken in by Miss Hooper, “one of those vicious and accomplished liars who seem scarcely credible outside the pages of a novel” (Walter Savage Landor: A Biography, New York, 1954, p. 434).
6. The letter concludes with page proof from Mr. Landor Threatened (Bath: privately printed, 1857), which has been copy-edited by Landor to read:
On Sunday, 21st of June, at about ten minutes after 1 o’clock, I was going into St. James’s Square, when I was joined by Mr. Hare, one of the jury on the late cause, who asked me whether it was true that Mrs. Yescombe entreating me “not to ruin her” actually threw herself on her knees before me, or whether it was a figure of speech. I told him it was a fact. He then said he had conversed with Mr. Yescombe, who asserted to him that it was altogether a falsehood; not a word of truth in it.
Now it happened in the presence of Mrs. Menteath, who was at my side. When I burst away from the woman and went into the carriage, within five or six minutes Mr. Yescombe came and leaned against the door, and was about to speak. I looked sternly; and my only words were, Sir, I have nothing to say to you.
On Saturday, June 20th, I received a citation from the Court of Common Pleas, to appear before it within eight days. It is now three years since I have travelled two miles from Bath, excepting on two occasions; once I spent a morning at Sir H. Strachey’s, and once at Mr. Wilson’s, Secretary to the Treasury. I have had warnings of apoplexy, which withheld me from accepting invitations to Manchester on the grandest Exhibition since the Creation, and others from intimate friends in London for the Handel Festival. The wretches who prosecute me, and whom I am now forced to prosecute, know my inability to obey the summons or to reach London. The third quarter between 80 and 90 is near its close, and in these late hours of life the quarters sound very audibly.
W.S. Landor.
June 23rd, 1857.
___________________
