5033. Walter Savage Landor to RB
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 30, 47–49.
[Florence]
Feb: 28 [1862] [1]
Dear Browning,
Among my numberless faults, ingratitude is not one. I owe you much—but I must not be indebted to you for revising the proofsheets of the volume which is now under the press. [2] The Scraps were given to my friend Arthur Walker, to do what he pleased with them; and he is diligent in their revisal. At present I have received only five long slips—perhaps enough for a sheet. You shall certainly have the volume, which I think will be a meager one, as soon as it comes out. I would also send a copy to our friend Story, if I knew where he is– Now I must revert [to] what perplexes me. The 10£5. were paid by Sandford for digging and bricking the grave. Nothing was mentioned by him about the ground. So I begged the clergyman’s acceptance of a Virgin and Child painted (it is said) by Penni, [3] the scholar of Raffael, but very like the master. Care was taken to have the frame richly gilt afresh. You must have thought it odd that I thought of asking a lady, [4] altho an old friend to give me 10£. I wd not ask anyone to lend me what I might not be able, and my son Arnold would certainly not be willing, to repay. To this lady I had given my bust by Gibson, [5] and my daughter[’]s by Bartolini. [6] She would have been horrified to hear that my brothers, one of whom has 2,000£ a year, and the other about half as much, and both unmarried, should have refused 10£ for my funeral. Never would I have recieved a particle of money from them until I had certified that my heir and son must repay it. Never shall I recover from the shock this refusal has given me.
Happy the good Hutton! May my death be like his, as easy and as sudden! Seymour, when he was Minister Plenipotentiary here at Florence, [7] brought him to visit me at my villa, hearing from him that he was the friend of my brother Henry and my sister Elizabeth. He dined with me every week, and came up frequently to the villa in the evening. I now begin to find my eyesight fail me, and my hand so tremble that I must leave off writing more on what is left of my paper: so adieu, my very kind friend.
Ever yours affectionately
W S Landor
Kind regards to Robert the Campeador. [8]
Address, on integral page: Robert Browning Esq.
Publication: BBIS-5, pp. 47–48.
Manuscript: Armstrong Browning Library.
1. Year provided by Landor’s reference to the death of Charles Henry Hutton (see letter 5029, note 2).
2. Heroic Idyls (1863).
3. Giovan Francesco Penni (ca. 1496–ca. 1532), known as “Il Fattore,” was a pupil and assistant to Raphael.
4. Theresa West (see letter 5023, note 5).
6. Lorenzo Bartolini (1777–1850); see letter 2824, note 6. We have been unable to trace such a bust of Landor’s daughter, Julia. A bust of her commissioned by Landor was made by Francesco Pozzi (1779–1844), Florentine neo-classical sculptor, in 1842, but according to R.H. Super, it was given to Joseph Ablett (1773–1848), the man who had commissioned the Gibson bust (see Walter Savage Landor: A Biography, New York, 1954, p. 340).
7. George Hamilton Seymour (1797–1880), served as minister-resident at Florence from 1830 to 1835.
8. “Champion.”
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