4983. Walter Savage Landor to RB
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 29, 251–252.
[Florence]
November [sic, for October] 27 [1861] [1]
Dear Browning,
Yesterday Count Cotterel [sic] came to see me. Among other things he told me he had recieved a letter from you. I forgot to ask him whether you write from England or had returned to France, which country I was happy, to hear from my friend Kirkup, you found very pleasant. In this uncertainty, I shall direct to you in London.
About the beginning of the month, feeling an urgent and painful desire to know the extent of my expenditure– As a man of honour and honesty, I would not weigh less heavily on the shoulders of my brother Henry. So I wrote to him, saying I should be quite contented with 150£ a year. He has not answered my letter, which is the reason I trouble you with this. Perplext about the rent of my lodgings, I mentioned the matter to my son Charles, who informed me that, if I left them, he was offered a pleasant position, joining the Piazza dell’ Independenza, for 200 crow[n]s a year, and perhaps could get it for less. It would grieve me to leave mine. So I told Mrs Romagnoli I would willingly pay sixty pounds, which I am informed is a large rent for this quarter of the town. Doubtless, she has written or will write to you on the subject. Whatever you decide on I will do.
If you return to France for a residence, it must be troublesome to you to manage, as you have so kindly done these two years, my petty accounts. If my brother does not answer my letter, I shall be in deadly fear of losing my best friend. Yet his health, I do hope, is better than mine. I feel no pains, but I am unable to walk these recent years, or to stand on my legs five minutes, or three. I doze twenty times in the day when I am reading, which I continue nine hours in the twentyfour and until the lines run into one another, and the letters are some larger and some smaller. I neither wish nor expect to live throughout the winter. So, if you can endure a continuance of your old trouble about me for the whole of next month, and Henry will send me one quarter on the 1st of January, I shall be satisfied.– Mr Tate the clergyman [2] of Widcombe is leaving. He tells me he has kept for me the place in the church-yard, but the grave must be made before another incumbent comes. This I have ordered, and have in reserve three pounds to pay the mason and grave-digger.– I am always glad to hear of your manly Robert .. let me never hear that post Equitem sedet atra Cura. [3]
Ever affectionately yours
W. S. Landor
Address: Engleterre [sic] / Robert Browning Esq / 1 Chichester Road / Upper Westbourne Terrace / London.
Publication: BBIS-5, pp. 44–45.
Manuscript: Armstrong Browning Library.
1. Year and correct month provided by postmark.
3. “Black Anxiety sits behind the Horseman” (Horace, Odes, III, 1, 140, trans. Niall Rudd).
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