SD2299. Walter Savage Landor to Sophia Landor
Published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 27, 336 (in part).
[Florence]
[7 November 1859]
My dear niece, Tomorrow I go to reside in a small lodging in a quiet street, No 2671 Via Nunziatina. Nothing can exceed the kindness shown me constantly by Mr Browning. A tenth of it from my wife and children would have satisfied me. But finding that I could add little or nothing to their income, they were resolved to drive me out of the house by every imaginable ill treatment. Two days before I left, I requested Arnold to allow me to remove the whitewash from the lions’ head[s] over the garden-gate. I spoke civilly and imploringly—his reply was “I wont! I wont.” Two days after, I rang the bell of my bedroom, which I had seldom done when suddenly Mrs L burst into the room and cried “What do you want.” My only reply was “Only civility”. I spoke calmly. I now found it was a settled plan to annoy me. I took up the book I was reading, and left the house. I wanted the contadino to bring away my things as far as St Dominico, about a quarter of a mile off. Mrs L followed me, and brought the contadino’s wife with her, using such language, in this woman’s presence as no bawd in the worst street of London would use toward a pickpocket. Even to this I made no reply, but went off. Her female associates are this contadina, the cook, whom she jokes about her eyes being like a cat’s, and Arnold’s woman by whom he has a child, which child and mother he brings every day into the villa. As for the male friends, four or five of them consecutively have been admitted in her bedrioom. This I knew before I left Tuscany 23 years ago, and which forced me away, not wishing to disgrace the name of my family by exposure. No English lady would ever visit the house. …
Here in Florence I receive many visits, but my health and extreme weakness excuse me from returning them. Seldom shall I go down the steep stairs of my lodgings. They were taken by a most attentive woman, now married, who had lived in Browning’s family 13 years. The house is in Via dell’Annunciatina, no 2671. Remember me to Mrs Paynter—and believe me ever your affectionate uncle
W.S. Landor
Publication: None traced.
Manuscript: Huntington Library.
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