SD2381. Elizabeth Clementine Kinney to Edmund Clarence Stedman
Published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 28, 352 (in part).
Villino Buccellini Florence
May 19th [1860]
My dear Edmund:
I catch a moment’s lull in the hurry & worry of packing up for the Baths of Lucca to say one word, as I shall not be able perhaps to write again for some weeks. We do not get off as soon as I thought—not before the 29th, insted of the 20th …
One of our near neighbors here is old Walter Savage Landor. He comes in often to see us: the other day sat two hours with me, talking of all the distinguished literary men of the past century. Though eighty-five years old, his wit is as ready, & his sarcasm as keen as in his freshest days. His is in sooth a green old age, all his faculties being in full preservation. He is in short eminently amusing: tells anecdotes of Byron, Hunt, Shelley, Keats, Coleridge, Wordsworth, &c all of whom were his personal friends. Such old men as he, are intelligent links between the past & the present. His only intimate companion now is a yellow spitz dog, who accompanies him where he goes, & stays with him where he stays. Indeed one never sees old Savage without his dog: & a touching sight is it, that gray-haired poet trudging on over these hills, followed by his faithful Spitz, while deserted of all his own family. True, he was not the most devoted of husbands & fathers; but this does not excuse the unconjugal & unfilial treatment he now receives in his old age. But like old Lear, he put his fortune out of his own hands into his children’s, & so, they put him out of house & home. They live in the fine villa which he bought in the environs of Florence; lock up his choice gallery of art lest he should get hold of his own pictures, &, in fact, refuse him admittance to the house. He neglected to educate his children, now they neglect his declining years. Poor old Savage! Strangers minister to his wants; a hired lodging gives him shelter, and his dog all the affection of a canine friend. …
The Brownings are still in Rome, but expected here before the month ends. The Independent has offered Mrs B. a hundred dollars for any original scrap of her poetry, & she has sent already one new piece for them. This is writing poetry to the present purpose! I suppose her “Curse” to America, called forth the generous offer. It would take with H.W. Beecher, of course, & aside from the slavery question is about the best of the “Poems Before Congress.” …
Text: Laura Stedman and George M. Gould, Life and Letters of Edmund Clarence Stedman (New York, 1910), 1, 211–213.
___________________
