4991. Walter Savage Landor to RB
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 29, 261–262.
[Florence]
[Postmark: 23 November 1861]
Dear Browning, your letter, like all your letters, is considerate and kind. Assure my brother [1] that I will do nothing at any time contrary to his wishes. What I wrote about the avoidance of expense to him was suggested by what I concieved to be a sense of duty to him. At no time have I for a moment felt an inclination to remove from my present quarters, being perfectly content with wife and husband equally. [2] Whatever I have expended beyond the necessaries of life, since the eight pounds two years ago for the repurchase of those pictures which my son Arnold sold, [3] came out of ten pounds sent to me by the Editor of the Examiner, [4] who made me a visit last week. In regard to cloathes, it is now above 4 years since I have spent beyond twenty five shillings, and not five shillings more will ever be required. I am suffering from rheumatism and sciatica, and am unable to mount a carriage-step even with help. My grave is being made at Widcombe, where the good clergyman, now leaving the place, [5] reserved a place I pointed out, fixt upon sixty years ago by a lady who loved me to her last hour. [6] Tears spring out at the memory of her, so adieu.
Ever most affectionately yours
W. S. Landor
Robert Browning Esq
Address: Angleterre / Robert Browning Esq / 1 Chichester Road / Upper Westbourne Terrace / London.
Publication: BBIS-5, pp. 45–46.
Manuscript: Armstrong Browning Library.
1. Henry Eyres Landor.
2. i.e., Wilson and Ferdinando.
3. Presumably the pictures Landor bought in June 1860 (see letter 4706, note 2).
4. Henry Morley (1822–94), a friend of John Forster, was editor of The Examiner at this time. The “ten pounds” was doubtless in payment for Landor’s poem “The Resurrection of Sicily,” which appeared in the issue of 4 August 1860 (p. 485).
5. George Edward Tate (1818–1900), vicar of Widcombe Parish church, Bath. In letter 4983, Landor writes that since Tate is leaving his position, a grave must be dug in the Widcombe churchyard before the new vicar arrives. But according to R. H. Super, the grave had to be dug because “the burial ground was being closed” (Walter Savage Landor: A Biography, New York, 1954, p. 490). Landor “ordered the work to be done … and a stone-walled grave was made under the south wall of the Widcombe old church tower” (p. 490). In the end, he was buried in Florence in the Protestant Cemetery.
6. Unidentified.
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