4759. Walter Savage Landor to RB
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 28, 192.
[Florence]
[?12] [October 1860] [1]
My dear Browning,
This morning I am about to send an Imag. Conversation, to be printed. It is of Savonarola and the Prior of San Marco. [2] Walker has enquired about the expenses, and finds the printing will cost about twelve francesconi—the copies one thousand in number, all for the wounded Tuscans. I must beg of you to furnish me with twenty francesconi. [3] I owe about seven or eight to the gilder.
After these twenty, I shall want only a dozen more for christmas-boxes—and none whatever for all the remainder of next year–
Very truly yours
WSL
Address, on integral page: R. Browning Esq.
Publication: BBIS-5, p. 59 (without assigned date).
Manuscript: Armstrong Browning Library.
1. Conjectural dating suggested by Landor’s references to Arthur Walker, printing an imaginary conversation, and “twenty francesconi.” In Landor’s financial accounts, RB noted that “Mr W. [i.e., Walker] left 13” October. The entry for 15 October reads: “Cash to Mr Landor, 20 francesconi for printing & pictures, frames &c” (see vol. 26, p. 385). We have placed this letter between the Brownings’ and Landor’s return to Florence from Siena, 11 October, and Walker’s departure from Florence.
2. Printed in Italian as Savonarola e il Priori di San Marco. R.H. Super states that “its dedication ‘Al Liberatore d’Italia’ was dated ‘7 Settembre 1860’” (Walter Savage Landor: A Biography, New York, 1954, p. 608). The English version was later published in Letters and Other Unpublished Writings of Walter Savage Landor, ed. Stephen Wheeler (1897).
3. Equivalent to about two and a half pounds.
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