SD2739. Thomas Adolphus Trollope to Kate Field
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 31, 314–315 (in part).
Florence
Christmas day. 1864
Dearest Kate,
… Isa tells me that she has written to you all she could tell of Landor’s last hours. I met by chance old Mrs. Landor the other day. She was very furious about the will which he had made. There is no mention in it of any of his children. What little he had to leave he has left to his nieces. But you know that he had long since given up to his eldest son the bulk of his property. She told me, what I did not know before, that her son had been obliged to pay the damages—£1000—awarded by the Jury in the case of libel to Mrs. Gastcome [sic, for, Yescombe]. I presume that she had been able to put her hand on some property in England, to which the son had a claim. She was very furious against Browning, who is executor to the will;—it seemed to me unreasonably. She told me that when he, Landor, when he heard that Mrs. Gastcome [sic, for, Yescombe] had succeeded in getting this money, had tried to stab himself.
… Landor’s dog remains at present with the English woman who was his landlady. He was buried in the English burying ground here in the ordinary manner, his two sons alone following him to the grave. I should assuredly have done so, had I been in Florence, at the time.
Mrs. Browning’s monument has not yet been erected; but will shortly be so. Leighton, who was entrusted by Mr. Browning with the designing of it, was exceedingly and very reasonably angry, on coming here in the Autumn to superintendent [sic] the erection of the monument, to find that the sculptor had most unwarrantably changed diverse parts of the design. Some of these departures from his plan, Leighton insisted on having restored as far as was possible to what he had intended. And this has led to considerable delay. And I should fear that the monument when it is put will not be wholly satisfactory to Mr. Browning or Mr. Leighton.
… Give my kindest love to your dear mother;—and be sure dearest Kate that I am and shall be always very affectionately yours
T. A. Trollope
Publication: More Books: Being the Bulletin of the Boston Public Library, July 1927, pp. 141–143.
Manuscript: Boston Public Library.
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