4836. Walter Savage Landor to RB
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 28, 336–337.
[Florence]
Feb. 22 [1861] [1]
Dear Browning,
Yesterday I had the pleasure of conducting Mrs and Miss Field to Fuller’s Studio. The young lady told me that you, among your ambitions (excuse the ungrammatical plural) are resolved to say anch’io sono scultore. [2]
She also told me your opinion that I must adorn myself with a new hat. Suffice it that I have given my old one to Carolina [3] for her father’s hat. In fact, I had worn it only three years. I have now mounted a grey cap given me by Napier [4] —the only thing I ever matched him in. His was a blue one, which I admired. It is not always that my admiration has been followed by possession. I could almost wish for a future life were it only to meet again such men as Southey, [5] Hare, [6] and Napier. But wisdom says
Mitte levos [sic, for levis] spes– [7]
Turning back to the hat—I am resolved never to put on another article of dress. You know my unremarkable extravagance. A whole suit in three years—two pair of shoes, two of gloves—then pictures, frames, Garibaldi’s wounded &c amounting to twentyfive of the same– I have kept copies of my later poems for you and Story. It will not be a violent exercise of patience to wait for them until you come back to Florence– I wonder I have continued well—nobody else could endure the smoke of my stove, which has almost blinded me, and has even discolored the cieling, tho I left one window and both doors open. Now goodbye
Ever yours
W S L
Address: Robert Browning Esq / 126 Via Felice / Roma.
Publication: None traced.
Manuscript: Armstrong Browning Library.
1. Year provided by postmark.
2. “I’m a sculptor too.”
3. Unidentified; perhaps Wilson’s maid.
4. William Francis Patrick Napier (1785–1860); see letter 4545, note 4.
5. Robert Southey (1774–1843).
6. Julius Charles Hare (1795–1855); see letter 3269, note 4.
7. “Dismiss airy hopes” (Horace, Epistles, I, v, 8, trans. H. Rushton Fairclough).
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