5489. Robert Eyres Landor to RB
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 31, 177–178.
Birlingham
Pershore.
Novr 26 [1864] [1]
Dear Sir
Your very obliging letter containing the Packer’s Account arrived this morning—and, no doubt the Pictures will soon follow it. When my Niece informed me that these Pictures had been consigned to your Care,—for a Lady whose Husband declined their acceptance, [2] she also told me that various expenses had been incurred by you on their Account– I think she specified seven or eight pounds—and I hoped that I might discharge this debt due to you at the same time with the Packer’s bill. However reluctant to give you this additional trouble, I must request that you will oblige me by naming the whole amount of both debts—and as there is a receipt to the Packers bill, I return it.
I can hardly consider my Brother so unfortunate or unhappy as he is supposed to have been—for surely no other Man ever found two such Friends as yourself and Mr Forster—friends whose generous cares continued to the last, after almost every one else had forsaken him. In much more than eighty years, I have known nothing of the kind—even when there were some such claims on forbearance through affection, as had no existence here. Let me consider that some part of the same good-fortune extends also to me—as it has procured for me, from both, such gratifying expressions of regard. Believe me—dear Sir—to be ever very truly and gratefully yours
Robert E Landor
Address: Robert Browning Esqre / 19 Warwick Crescent / Upper Westbourne Terrace / London.
Publication: None traced.
Manuscript: Yale University.
1. This letter is a reply to letter 5488.
2. Referring to William James Linton (1812–97) and his wife, Elizabeth (née Lynn, 1822–98). The latter, as RB explains in letter 5501, refused the painting because she had no “place for it.”
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