5023. Walter Savage Landor to RB
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 30, 36–37.
[Florence]
[mid-February 1862] [1]
Dear Browning,
The letter I recieved from you yesterday so affected me that I could not rest one moment in the night. [2] My head seemed to have a watermill in it, turning incessantly– The Countess and her sister came in the evening. [3] I fancy she saw something odd in me, for she staid much longer than usual, and promist to bring her children to see me very soon, and to take me out in her carriage. Alas—I cannot mount even its low step. I think I never have gone downstairs these three months, and never shall again. I hope to live long enough to know from you that Arnold has sent to you the ten pounds. I knew that he, being my heir must pay the expenses of my funeral, and I supposed that he would repay my brother the money advanced for my support. I hope Henry will oblige him to do so.
In case of accident, which may happen soon, from the sudden shock your intelligence has given me, I will order Mrs Romagnoli to take especial care of your Salvator Rosa and Allori [4] for you. The other pictures, which were thrown into the coach-house and into the anteroom of the watercloset at the villa, will bring money enough for making the case which carries me to England and which my son Charles will accompany. I have given orders that, in case of worse, no medical man or medicine be brought to me.
I have taken great pains to write all this plainly, after two earlier attempts. Offer my thanks to my brother Henry for all past kindnesses and assure him that I will beg Mrs West [5] to give me ten pounds. This is humiliation—but what humiliation have I not undergone.
Believe me,
dear Browning,
your affectionate and grateful W. Landor.
P S. It now occurs to me that I must send your letter to Mrs West, in excuse. If Arnold pays the money this will be unnecessary—I will want a few days to know.
Address, on cover sheet: Robert Browning Esq.
Publication: BBIS-5, p. 47.
Manuscript: Armstrong Browning Library.
1. Approximate dating based on Landor’s reaction to RB’s letter (see note 2 below), and the proposal concerning Mrs. West, which is also mentioned in letter 5033.
2. RB’s letter has not surfaced, but, as Landor makes clearer in letter 5033, it must have contained the gist of letter 5015, in which Sophia Landor writes that her uncle’s brothers will not reimburse Sandford for the money he spent on Landor’s grave: “I also hope that it will be the least trouble to you to be able to tell my Uncle Walter once for all, that you have no means of meeting any such requisitions.”
4. Probably, Alessandro Allori (1535–1607), Florentine painter and imitator of Michelangelo, rather than his son Christofano Allori (1577–1621), Florentine portrait painter. Salvator Rosa (1615–73) was a Neapolitan painter and poet.
5. Theresa Cornwallis West (née Whitby, 1806–86), daughter of Capt. John Whitby (1774–1806) and his wife, Mary Ann Theresa (née Symonds, 1783–1850), was the second wife of Frederick Richard West (1799–1862), of Ruthin Castle, Denbighshire. According to R.H. Super, Mrs. West, who had known Landor for “more than thirty years,” visited the old poet in April 1864 (Walter Savage Landor: A Biography, New York, 1954, pp. 504–505).
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