4817. Walter Savage Landor to RB
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 28, 291–293.
[Florence]
Jan. 22 [1861] [1]
Dear Browning,
It is impossible for me to delay, another hour, answer to your kind letter. I began to think you had resolved to drop our correspondence, and was deeply grieved! The severity of the winter has kept me within-doors seven days. Yesterday I received intelligence that you had ordered a dozen photographs to be sent me. [2] I have not a dozen friends surviving upon earth. Indeed it could hardly be expected. In nine days I enter on my eightyseventh year, and all my contemporaries have left the world. A few of the younger (not very young either) have written me the usual letters on Christmas and newyear’s day. This is a comfort—and Giallo is my playfellow, inviting me to spar with him on the sofa. He grows horribly fat, because I am unable to walk out with him– You see I am entering on my second childhood. You are perfectly right in abstaining from politics. Never were they so little encouraging. War must inevitably break out again in the spring. When the Empress went to Scotland I heard from a lady much in the fashionable world of some inquietudes which caused this movement. [3] Certainly Scotland at this season is not exactly the climate for an invalide.
I have been writing the Trial of Joan of Arc [4] —and I sent it to my friend Mrs Linton to do what she pleases with it. Probably it may appear in some periodical within a fortnight. Whenever it does, I will forward it to you. I have kept for you a copy of my last publication, [5] and another for Story– It is not worth the carriage to Rome—beside, it may not come with Privileges Superiorum. [6]
I forgot to mention the most important and pleasant event that has lately occurred to me. The Count and Countess Cotterel made me a visit. The next day came Captain Smythe and his lady. [7] He will soon be an Admiral in due course. My friend Admiral Erskine now commands the channel fleet. His firmness and conciliation have reduced to order and obedience some of the refractory. My friend Sandford [8] writes to me from Constantinople– He has gone thro Egypt and Siria, and has written a small pamphlet to show the advantage and the possibility of raising cotton there. He appears to be unaware that there are two Powers which will not at any time let the populations be long at peace. [9] Lord Palmerston knows that the Druses were not in blame during these last outbreaks– Christians and Turks are equally hostile to them. Catholics and Greeks were never on any occasion so nearly in accord as against these brave mounta[i]neers. The earlier religions were not so mischievous and sanguinary as the later.
About ten years ago an old friend of ours was somewhat unwell– I told him I did not intend to write his epitaph just at present. He laughed and replied “I wonder what you would say about me.[”] He was amused at this, given to him after dinner.
Hospes! jocosi relliquias viri
Tuere, Bacchuan qui coluit pius
Non ille cum vulgo est humatus
Pâmpineâ potiatur umbrâ!
I am happy to hear that you are all well. Remember me to the hospitable Storys, and especially to the pretty, the good, and wise Edith. I do not believe that in the next twelvemonth she will write a better Epitaph on the old greybeard Landor[.]
Address: Robert Browning Esq / 126 Via Felice / Rome.
Docket by RB on top of page one: From Florence to Rome.
Publication: BBIS-5, pp. 35–36.
Manuscript: Armstrong Browning Library.
1. Year provided by postmark.
2. The photographs, of Landor, were meant for RB, which he explains in letter 4825. The copy that EBB placed in her carte-de-visite album is reproduced on p. 400.
3. The Empress Eugénie had arrived in London on 15 November 1860 and then travelled by train to Scotland, where she was the guest of the Duke and Duchess of Hamilton at Hamilton Palace in Lanarkshire (see The Daily News, 17 November 1860, p. 4). She visited other places in Scotland and England before returning to France on 13 December. According to The Morning Post of 15 December, “a number of the most unkind and false reports have circulated … as to the cause of her Majesty’s late tour. … The cause … is very simple, and one which ought to drown the voice of scandal and merit our sympathy. … The Empress never recovered the shock which her sister’s death produced. On her return to Paris a nervous and desponding humour appeared continually to possess her. A change of scene was advised, and a complete change of habit of life deemed necessary by her medical advisers” (p. 5).
4. Probably the imaginary conversation “Joan of Arc and Her Judge,” first published in Letters and Other Unpublished Writings of Walter Savage Landor, ed. Stephen Wheeler (1897).
5. Presumably Savonarola e il Priori di San Marco (see letter 4759, note 2).
6. Landor alludes to official Papal permission to print, which, in various forms, began appearing on title pages published in sixteenth-century Italy. Some of the early forms were cum licentia and cum privilegio. “Under Gregory XIII, it soon became common to see the phrase … ‘Con Licentia de’ Superiori’ or ‘Con Licenza de’ Superiori’ or ‘Cum Licentia de’ Superiorum.’ It might also take the form ‘Permissu Superiorum’” (Christopher L.C.E. Witcombe, Copyright in the Renaissance, Leiden, 2004, p. 74).
7. William Henry Smyth (1788–1865), naval officer, surveyor, and astronomer who served with distinction in the naval campaigns of the Napoleonic Wars. In 1846 he accepted retirement from the Navy and ultimately advanced to the rank of admiral on 14 November 1863. He had married Eliza Anne “Annarella” (née Warington, 1788–1873) at Messina in 1815.
8. William Graham Sandford (1834–84); see letter 4329, note 2.
9. France and the Ottoman Empire (see letter 4751, note 27).
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