Rome, May 25, 1854.
(Received June 5.)
Very dearest Mamma,—Your letter (which I received the day before yesterday, and should have answered the next day but for an engagement I had made to go into the country) caused me great pain; if you have known me hitherto for a dutiful and loving son, believe that in this case nothing has been further from me than the least umbrage at the advice and suggestions that you always offer me with kindness and delicacy, and that I am much distressed at the idea of having in any way aggravated the discomforts which an English winter make you suffer; let me rather attribute, and beg yourself to refer, to the depressed state of your spirits any misconstruction you have laid upon a letter in which, if there was any constraint, it arose only from a desire to answer satisfactorily and systematically such questions as you asked me; I will endeavour in future to present my report in a more ornamental form. The delay, too, of my last letter arose from a misconception on my part of your expectations, for I was waiting and eagerly waiting for your answer to intervene, and, considering the irregularity of Roman posts, you can hardly have a day on which you particularly expect to receive news of me. Let me hope, dear Mamma, that on these points, as on the others that I am going to touch, you will be able in future to think more cheerfully, in spite of the distorting medium of British fogs. I fear from the tone of alarm I detect in your letter that I (myself perhaps, at the time, under the influence of the scirocco) must have conveyed to you an idea of greater ill-health than I labour under: my eyes, certainly, are not strong, so that I avoid using them at nights, and I am, as I ever was, incorrigibly bed-loving, but this is "the whole front" of my ailments; meanwhile I work all day with little or no annoyance. I am of good cheer and contented, and altogether more free from rheumatism than I have been for a long time; that, thus deprived of the means of reading, such little information as I ever had should have effectually made its escape from a noddle that never had the capacity of fixing itself on any one thing at a time, is deplorable, but not to be wondered at; let us hope for a better day. Nor is spending the hot months of the summer here in Rome so dreadful a thing as it appears to your tender anxiety; with proper precautions and a regular life I shall no doubt go through it as well as so many of my friends that have tried the experiment; the more so that the worst part of the summer is in September and early October, at which period I shall be enjoying the particularly cool and healthy air of Bagni di Lucca. How could you be surprised, dear Mamma, at my having begun the pictures? did I not tell you the size of them? do you not know the quantity of figures in the composition? do you not know that it will be considered a piece of extraordinary rapidity if I finished them in time for the Exhibitions, i.e. by the beginning of next February? You perceive the necessity of my staying here, willy nilly. The Sartoris seem to you too prominent a motive in my desire to stay; alas! and again alas! they are off to Lucca in a few days, and I shall be left alone. Judge whether I am eager to get off, and whether anything but necessity of the most urgent kind will keep me here, for I am warmly attached to both, and her I dearly love. Be quite at ease about the amount of advice I can get here, I do not lack that if I want it; but as it is, the compositions were so completely sifted by Steinle before I left Frankfurt, that I have nothing left but the material execution, in which you know every artist must fumble about for himself. Cornelius is very kind and amiable to me, has been to see me twice, and speaks well of me behind my back; he told Mrs. Kemble (Fanny) that there was not another man in England that could paint such a picture as my "Cimabue" threatens to be, and the same was unhesitatingly asserted by Browning, the poet, who is also a connoisseur. Such details as these from my mouth savour of intolerable vanity; they are not meant so, and I give you them simply because I think they will fall pleasantly on the ear of the mother of the daubster. To show you the revers de la médaille about advice from influential men, I will just tell you that I received the other day from Cornelius some advice which was diametrically opposed to that of Steinle, arrangez vous! Gamba and I are still capital friends, and he is making great progress, which is the well-earned fruit of his talent and assiduity.
Now, dear Mamma, you see how letters come to be dry; by the time you have shaken off the responsibility of question answering, and begin to breathe a little, you have got to the end of time and paper, and have no margin left for a little dessert; the fact is, your only chance is this: next time you write, ask me no questions, and then I'll devote my epistle to telling you a most thrilling story which, though it far surpasses in strangeness the common run of works of fiction, is perfectly and literally true, as I have it almost from headquarters; them's your prospects!—Meanwhile, with very best love to all, I remain, your affectionate and dutiful son,
Fred Leighton.
ORIGINAL SKETCH OF COMPLETE DESIGN FOR "CIMABUE'S MADONNA"
Drawn in 1853
Leighton House Collection[ToList]
Translation.]
Rome, Via Felice 123,
May 29, 1854.
Dearest Friend,—Delightful as it always is to me to receive any news of you, yet your last letter, along with pleasure, caused me some pain, for I could not help fearing that my long silence had annoyed you a little; if this should be indeed the case I must express my extreme regret, and beg you to believe that my gratitude and love can only cease when my memory ceases; how could it possibly be otherwise?