If all goes well, I will arrive in Frankfurt on the 23rd of this month; does that fit in with your plans?
How delighted I am to see you again, my good Master!
To our speedy meeting!—Your grateful pupil,
Fred Leighton.
Leighton had felt his failure keenly, though, with his usual consideration, he had tried to lessen the disadvantages of it in writing to his mother. The friend who enjoyed constant intercourse with him at the Bagni de Lucca in 1854 wrote at the time of his death: "Leighton longed for and desired success; but only in so far as he deserved it. When he was sharply checked in his upward career, he accepted the rebuke with humility, for he was a modest man." Mrs. Browning writes to Mrs. Jameson, May 6, 1896, from Paris: "Leighton has been cut up unmercifully by the critics, but bears on, Robert says, not without courage. That you should say his picture looked well, was comfort in the general gloom." Though those critics who were spokesmen for the envious among the artists seemed to revel in Leighton's disaster, he had many friends who took perhaps a too favourable view of the unfortunate picture. But neither excess of abusive ridicule, nor a too favourable view taken by intimate friends, could unduly influence Leighton himself—Leighton the actualist. He had a firm faith that in the actual it is man's lot to find the true and the really helpful. These words of his master, Steinle's, written to him in 1853, doubtless recurred to him, and he felt he must return to the Eternal City to be reinspired after his fall:—
I would rather remember that you will receive these lines in the Eternal City, that you are with our friend Rico, and that you are settling to work with renewed vitality and a pocketful of studies. In Cornelius, besides much that is stubborn, you will find so much that is admirable, and so much truly artistic greatness, that you will soon love him, for he is also of a truly childlike disposition, and much too good for Berlin, for which reason he has left the place. You lucky men who have crossed the Tiber—the Vatican of St. Peter, the Courts of St. Onofrio, the Villa Pamfili—where in the world is there anything like them? Where is there a town in which every stone has greater, more splendid things to tell us of every period? Where is there a place where the artist could soar higher than in Rome? Forget that you are practically in an island, and study your Rome; it is invaluable for one's whole life, which is otherwise so commonplace and so small. Your youth and courage—"the sparrow among the beans" ("Triton among the minnows")—need not be injured thereby; but, dear friend, you must become a man, and there is nothing great in the world that has been achieved except by taking pains. Addio, carissimo; greet Rico and the friends most heartily. My wife reciprocates your friendly greetings, and I remain, your devoted friend,
Steinle.
He travelled there viâ Frankfort to see Steinle, with whom he went to Meran, thence to Venice and Florence, then on to Rome.
Frankfurt, Brauseler Hof,
August 24.
Dearest Mamma,—Being at last in Frankfurt, and having seen Steinle and his works, and, en revanche, shown him mine, I sit down to write to you. You will, I am sure, be glad to hear that he was much pleased with my drawings, that he liked the compositions, and what is more, gave me good advice about them. He also suggested to me to paint the little "Venus" rising out of the sea (from Anacreon), of which I have already made a sketch. My studies he seemed to think excellent; I gave him three of them; I was so charmed to see his dear face again, looking just the same as he always did, and when he showed me what he had been doing, I fairly set up the pipes. He took me in the afternoon to the Guaitas, who have a series of drawings by him from Clemens Brentano's poems; they are perfectly exquisite; the richness and variety of his imagination is something marvellous. Mr. Guaita, who is about to have them photographed for his friends, has kindly promised me a copy. To-morrow morning I am off for the Lake of Constance, whence through the Finstermünz to Meran, where I and Steinle part, though not till I have stayed there two or three days. To-day I shall go to Mr. Bolton and to Madame Beving to deliver your letter. Altogether Frankfurt has improved in appearance; it looks much more like a capital than it did formerly; new shops have sprung up, old ones are improved, and the whole town looks gay and busy; all this does not prevent it from being highly antipathetic to me, which is, I daresay, in some measure attributable to the hideous jargon that one hears wherever one turns. I have seen Gogel and Koch, who were both very civil, the former asking me to dine with him, which, however, I could not do, being already engaged to Steinle. And you, dearest Mamma, how are you? and Papa and the girls? Tell me all about them—write Venice p. restante.