5109. Walter Savage Landor to RB
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 30, 120–121.
[Florence]
1 September [1862] [1]
Dear Browning, my landlady [2] has just this instant brought to me your kind and most valued letter. [3] Three days ago I directed one to you at London, telling you that I had despa[t]ched, at the same time, my long picture of the Last Judgement which I requested you to ask Boxall to look at and see how it may be sold. I retain the Salvator Rosa for you, together with the Van Eyk [4] painted on the pannels of a cabinet of cedar. Doubtless you will have recieved my other letter ere now. [5] I am delighted to have so good an account of you and Robert, and that he swims. Let him practice fencing– I once brought down to the ground a rude and stout scoundrel who attempted to rush between me and Mrs Willoughby [6] at Bath– A thrust of my cane did it. No man alive can resist a thrust—blows do little, and can be returned more easily.
I saw nothing of the coast of Britanny beyond Granville, [7] but very much of the interior. Hundreds of chateaux in ruins, and forests being cleared for small farms. I stopt my poney, on which I travelled alone thro’ the department, to converse with the proprietor of a farm bought by his father for ninety-two louis in some thousands of assignats, which could not be refused as payment under pain of death. The quantity of land could not be less than 400 acres, the greater part covered with high broom, but about fifty or sixty acres of low wood. The soil was such as Mr Cook’s of Norfolk [8] for which he recieves a rent of 40 shillings the acre—it is exactly fit for turnips, carrots and barley. I wish I could remember the locality.
My new volume will not come out before the middle of next month. [9] You shall recieve the first copy that is bound. Newby promist it early in May. He sent to me part of the third sheet six months after he had the manuscript, and three after the remainder of the halfsheet. Walker, to whom I have given the property, has begun to employ another printer, but hitherto I have had no particle of his performance– He lives in the country.
My friend Mrs West has promist me a visit this month. Admiral Erskines brother [10] came again to see me–
I expect Walker and Sanford—I wish I could say the same of you. We shall never meet again, but I shall always be mindful of your kindness and remain faithfully and affectionately yours,
W S Landor
Publication: BBIS-5, pp. 58–59.
Manuscript: Armstrong Browning Library.
2. i.e., Wilson.
3. This letter has not surfaced.
4. Jan van Eyck (ca. 1395–1441), Netherlandish painter. According to Annie Adams Fields, Landor showed her and her husband “a Van Eycke [sic] of remarkable beauty. It was painted upon the hardest kind of black oak so hard indeed that the workmen ruined their planes in working upon it. Until I heard this story, he continued, I had thought ten pounds a large sum for the cedar lining I had had put in” (Diary of Annie Adams Fields, 7 February 1860, ms at MHS).
6. Harriet Lucas Willoughby (née Boys, 1800–68), school mistress at 16 Camden Place, Bath. In 1827 she married George Thomas Railton Willoughby (1798–1836). After his death she moved, with her two daughters, to London.
7. Granville is in Normandy on the eastern side of the Gulf of St. Malo, 14 miles north of Mont St. Michel.
8. Perhaps Landor has in mind Captain James Cook (1728–79), who discovered Norfolk Island in 1774.
9. Heroic Idyls would not be published until the autumn of 1863.
10. Rev. Hay Macdowell Erskine (1810–96), younger brother of John Elphinstone Erskine (1806–87), Rear Admiral, R.N. (see letter 4329, notes 3 and 4).
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