4955. Walter Savage Landor to RB
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 29, 214–215.
[Florence]
August 28 [1861] [1]
Dear Browning, your kind letter, and the enclosed one, [2] have reacht me, and I lose not an hour in my answer. I will place Arnold’s in the hands of his brothers, warning them never to let him have it in his hands.
I have borne the heat of summer without any other suffering than extreme weakness, which is incidental to my advanced age. A walk of a hundred paces tires me out, so that I confine it to my room, out of which I have been only thrice since you left Florence. The Fields have gone to America. [3] There is no probability that I shall ever see them again. This grieves me. Kirkup comes to visit me often. He has been dangerously ill. A few days ago he told me he had heard from you. The second time I visit[ed] France, I travelled alone thro’ Britanny, leaving my carriage at St Malos, and passing from St Servan to Dinan. [4]
In the passenger boat, up the beautiful little river, I found the sisters of Chateaubriant. [5] —Dinan, Rennes, and Tours, are the three places I would rather reside in than any on the north of the Alps. It gives me pleasure to feel certain that Robert enjoys his country rides. I rode thro a great part of Britanny and grieved at the devastation made both by republicans and chouans. [6] —I hope to see you here again before I make my last expedition—that upon four men[’]s shoulders–
Ever affectionately
yours
W. S Landor.
Address: France / Robert Browning Esq / 151 Rue de Grènelle / Faubourg St Germain / Paris. Redirected: Chz Chauvin / a St Enogat / par Dinard / Ille et Vilaine. Redirected, on verso: Ch M Chauvin / St Enogat / près Dinard / Ile et Vilaine.
Publication: BBIS-5, p. 44.
Manuscript: Armstrong Browning Library.
1. Year provided by postmark.
2. A letter from Arnold to his father, written in the past, which John Forster recently sent to RB (see letters 4944 and 4956).
3. Kate Field and her mother left Florence for America at the end of July. They “paused a few weeks in Paris and sailed for the United States in late August” (Gary Scharnhorst, Kate Field, Syracuse, New York, 2008, p. 34).
4. Dinan, on the Rance river, is about 10 miles south of St. Servan, which lies across the Rance from Dinard.
5. François René de Chateaubriand (1768–1848), French statesman and writer, was born in St. Malo, as were his four sisters: Marie Anne Françoise de Marigny (née Chateaubriand, 1760–1860), Bénigne Jeanne de Châteaubourg (née Chateaubriand, 1761–1848), Julie Marie Agathe de Farcy (née Chateaubriand, 1763–99), and Lucile Angélique de Caud (née Chateaubriand, 1764–1804).
6. “A name applied to smugglers and dealers in contraband salt, who rose in insurrection in the west of France at the time of the Revolution and joined the royalists of La Vendée. … The Chouans … waged a guerrilla warfare against the republicans and, sustained by the royalists and from abroad, carried on their assassinations and brigandage with success. … In August 1795 they were dispersed” (EB).
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