"Your next question is: Am I comfortably settled in Rome? Well, I am happy to say that since the first week or fortnight my prospects have been slowly but steadily brightening, one cloud after another has passed away, and though I do not expect to see the bright sky of fulfilled expectations quite unveiled, yet I look forward to the enjoyment sooner or later of contentment. I wrote my last letter in a tone of considerable disheartenment, which I was indeed labouring under; perhaps it was the triumph of a selfish feeling that made me communicate my woes to you when it was not in your power to mend them; but yet it is such a relief to feel that there are those who are not indifferent to our grievances, who rejoice when we rejoice, and weep when we weep; and then, too, it seemed to me that perhaps a word from you might throw a new light on my position and give me new reason to be comforted. Meanwhile, altered circumstances have reassured me on some points, and my own reason has pacified me on others which I saw to be irremediable; the prospect of emulation of a peculiar kind, such as I found in Steinle, and generally speaking in the German school (I do not mean the emulation of industry which I find amply in Gamba, or in the science of the art which I have lately discovered amongst certain young Frenchmen, but that which affects the animating spirit of the art, the spiritual taste, the tendency of one's thoughts), I have entirely renounced; the visions that I had (God knows why, for I don't think I ever expected to grasp them) of a time like that of Steinle's sojourn in Rome, when so many master-minds were united together in friendly strife, all inspired by the same spirit, all going hand in hand—have all faded away, and only linger in my mind as a sweet regretted image, like the gentle glow of twilight in the western sky when the cold moon is already in the heavens. But I have, on the other hand, seen reason to believe that this will turn out for my good; that it is proper that I should, once for all, and in all things, accustom myself to the idea that I am, or should be, a self-dependent and self-actuated being, accountable to myself for good and for evil; that I must therefore learn to build and rely on my own resources, and remember the most important of truths, that if the growth of my art is to be healthy, lasting, fruit-bearing, it must, though fostered from without, be rooted deeply in, and receive its vital sap from the soil of my own mind. Still, I have thought it good to hang up in my studio a work of Cornelius and one or two of Steinle, to animate myself by dwelling constantly on an idea of excellence (not ideal, I hate such stuff) irrespective of the specific mode in which it is manifested; and in this I think I have chosen the juste milieu—so far my reason. Yet I do not deny that I every now and then feel longings and regrets that make me feel the truth of those lovely words—
"'We look before and after,
And pine for what is not;
Our sincerest laughter
With some pain is fraught.'
"Among the irremediable disappointments on which I have to put the best face, is that of not seeing Oakes here this winter. From a man of warm feelings, of tastes congenial to my own, of a cultivated and liberal mind, I had hoped to derive much pleasure and especially advantage, and thus to have supplied in some measure the void which must arise (and, alas! remain) in my brain from want of time, want of robuster health, want of eyes. A friendship, too, of mutual seeking is so agreeable a thing. Matters stand so: when I was in Florence I received from him a letter full of a kind and friendly spirit, in which he seized with eagerness at the idea of spending a winter with me in Rome; he was already in Paris, where he was in treaty with a travelling servant in order to continue his journey; he had written to you (did you get the letter?) to know where he was most likely to catch me up; he was anticipating the enjoyment we should find together in Venice, or in Florence, or wherever we should meet; this letter has been waiting for me a month at the post. I arrive in Rome, and look anxiously about for Oakes, who, I suppose, must already have arrived; no Oakes—no news—suspense—despair; at last a letter: he has been recalled from Paris; he is obliged, willy nilly, to stand for his borough (Conservative, Ministerial); he is an M.P.
"Another disappointment, hitherto, is the non-arrival of the Laings; I had promised myself great enjoyment in Isabel's society; the footing on which we stand is such an agreeable one: enough familiarity (for old friendship's sake) to make our intercourse easy—a relaxation; enough restraint to refine it and make it improving; she plays, too. Music! How I yearn for music, which I never hear in the land best adapted to foster it; music, that humanises the soul, that calls forth all that is refined and elevated and glowing and impassioned in one's breast, and without which the very lake of one's heart ('il lago del cuore,' Dante) stagnates and is congealed. I express myself extravagantly, but my words flow from my heart.
"Again, the studio, which I at last found, though snug and cheerful, very (let's give the devil his due), is, in its professional capacity, bad beyond description; the light is execrable; I could not dream of painting a picture in it (thank God, I have only taken it till spring), scarcely even a portrait, 'which is absurd,' Euclid, hem. What a list of lucubrations! for goodness' sake, let me look at the gay side of the picture. It has been a great comfort to me all through that all the artists resident here, whom I have spoken to on the subject, felt on first arriving the same kind of disappointment that I did, and that all by degrees have acquired the conviction that, after all, it's the best place in the world for study. I have myself begun to feel what an incalculable advantage it is always to have models at your disposition whenever, and however, you want them; I look forward, too, with the greatest delight to the studies that I shall make this summer in the exquisitely beautiful spots to which the artists always take refuge from the heat and malaria of Rome. I long to find myself again face to face with Nature, to follow it, to watch it, and to copy it, closely, faithfully, ingenuously—as Ruskin suggests, 'choosing nothing, and rejecting nothing.' I have come to the conviction that the best way for an historical painter to bring himself home to Nature, in his own branch of the art, is strenuously to study landscape, in which he has not had the opportunity, as in his own walk, of being crammed with prejudices, conventional, flat—academical. But I am getting to the end of my paper, and I have as yet said but little to the point; I have not yet answered Papa's question about my sketching, and therefore that I may not seem to be shirking the point, I shall just tell you that amongst the sketches that I have made (mostly architectural) are some by far the best I ever did.[24] I have also to justify Marryat about not writing; I got his letters the other day with a kind note to say that he had been ill; that to the Princess Doria has availed me nothing, as she is in mourning for her father, Lord Shrewsbury; that to the Prince Massimo has opened to me at once two of the first and most exclusive houses in Rome, those of his two sisters, the Princess Lancelotti and the Duchess del Drago. Enough for to-day. Good-bye, dearest Mother. Very best love to all. Think often of your dutiful and affectionate son,
"Fred Leighton.
"I am ashamed to think of the time I have taken writing this letter; not from want of ideas, not from any great difficulty in expressing them, but from the great difficulty I have in getting at them, controlling them, holding them fast.
"'A saucepan without a handle.
Soup without a spoon.'
"Via di Porta Pinciana, N. 8."
"Roma, Via di Porta Pinciana, N.V.
(Postmark, Jan. 5, 1853.)