Verona (Italy again!),
October 2, 1893.
Dear Gussy,—I hope you are not very savage with me for not writing sooner. I've had a tremendous "Hetztour" through Germany—thirty towns in thirty days; a Yankee might be proud of it; and over an area contained between Lübeck (N.), if you please, and Berne (S.), Vienna (E.), and Colmar (W.), and I have made notes everywhere, and I have a game knee, with the result (not so much of the game knee as of the hurried travelling) that I have had little time for writing anything beyond notes of immediate necessity. But you will be savage at hearing that I never received your Munich letter (alluded to in Lina's last), either at the hotel or "Postlagernd"—can you remember at what date you wrote it? I would try to recover it—I hate losing letters, don't you? Thank Lina for her letter, and say that I am concerned at the very poor and shabby account given of her. She was going to send for the doctor; I hope he was able to help her (though I don't know on what plea one expects that of a doctor). By this time you may have recovered from your cure. What a rickety lot we are! At Perugia, where I shall be on Wednesday, I am going under physic for my knee, which, though hardly more than an inconvenience, is a very depressing prospect. I have written to Roberts, who has sent me prescriptions which I shall have made up (to-morrow) by his namesake in Florence. My journey has been, I am bound to say, in a high degree interesting and sometimes delightful. (I wonder whether you were ever at Hildesheim—its amazing picturesqueness, Renaissance houses, carved and painted, are enough to make your hair curl for the rest of your natural life.) But I have not bought a single German novel, after all the trouble you took twice over, except Soll und Haben, which I have just begun; how amazingly altmodisch and stodgy it is, but evidently very clever. I have grown very indolent about reading in trains. Wednesday I reach Perugia—Thursday I shall take a holiday—Friday I shall—but enough! In Berlin I saw dear old Joe (Dr. Joachim)—(the only person I did see, except Malet, the Ambassador, a very old friend of mine—very snug and good little bachelor dinner there—"just as you are"). He (Joe) seemed very fit after "les eaux" somewhere, and sent you kind messages. He was pleased at my calling, and came next day to see me off at the station.
In August 1894 he took his sister, Mrs. Matthews, to Bayreuth. On his rapidly returning to London he completed the panel he presented to the Royal Exchange. He worked hard at this for three weeks. He then went to Scotland, and finished his holiday, as usual, in Italy. On his return, after attending the first Monday Popular concert at St. James' Hall, when walking to the Athenæum he was seized by his first attack of angina pectoris. Dr. Roberts, to whom Leighton was attached, and in whose judgment and skill he had had great confidence for years, writes, "I attended Lord Leighton for over twenty years. I was constantly seeing and watching him. He never was a robust man; but all his organs kept in health till two years before his death, when I discovered the commencement of the trouble that ultimately proved fatal. I never told him of this condition, as I felt its progress would be slow.... He once told me he considered my fees to him were too small, and asked me to increase them." Some years previous to this first attack Leighton would say, "I always see Dr. Roberts every Sunday for him to tell me I am not ill." In November 1894 Sir Lauder Brunton was called in for consultation, and he and Dr. Roberts prescribed a course of Swedish massage; and to this Leighton devoted the later hours of his afternoons for several months that winter. Work continued as vigorously as ever. The pictures—"Lachrymæ," "'Twixt Hope and Fear," "Flaming June," "Listener," "Clytie," "Candida," "The Vestal," "A Bacchante," "The Fair Persian," were the fruit of the last year's labours, besides the sketches which he painted on his last journeys to Algiers, Ireland, and Italy.
"SUMMER SLUMBER." 1894
By permission of Mr. Phillipson[ToList]
SKETCH FOR "SUMMER SLUMBER." 1894
Presented by H.M. the King to the Leighton House Collection[ToList]
Very characteristic was the manner in which Leighton faced his condition. Absolutely natural as he invariably was, without nervousness, and considerate to the last degree in not making his state a burden on others, he never, even at this juncture, concentrated his thoughts on himself. Once when a friend implored him to draw in and not expend his strength unnecessarily, he answered, with almost impatience, "But that would not be life to me! I must go on, thinking about it as little as possible." There was something of the boy about Leighton up to the very end, and in those last months much of the pathos of the boy who is known to be doomed, but who plays his game with just as much eager verve up to the end.