I am sincerely rejoiced for you and for the disposition which it shows of future encouragement. I really think the time is not far distant when we shall be able to settle in our native land with profit as well as pleasure. Boston seems struggling in labor to bring forth an institution for the arts, but it will miscarry; I find it is all forced. They can talk, and talk, and say what a fine thing it would be, but nothing is done. I find by experience that what you have often observed to me with respect to settling in Boston is well founded. I think it will be the last in the arts, though, without doubt, it is capable of being the first, if the fit would only take them. Oh! how I miss you, my dear sir. I long to spend my evenings again with you and Leslie. I shall certainly visit Italy (should I live and no unforeseen event take place) in the course of a year or eighteen months. Could there not be some arrangement made to meet you and Leslie there?
He lived, but the "unforeseen event" occurred to make him alter all his plans. Further on in this same letter he says:—
"My conscience accuses me, and hardly too, of many instances of pettishness and ill-humor towards you, which make me almost hate myself that I could offend a temper like yours. I need not ask you to forgive it; I know you cannot harbor anger a minute, and perhaps have forgotten the instances; but I cannot forget them. If you had failings of the same kind and I could recollect any instances where you had spoken pettishly or ill-natured to me, our accounts would then have been balanced, they would have called for mutual forgetfulness and forgiveness; but when, on reflection, I find nothing of the kind to charge you with, my conscience severely upbraids me with ingratitude to you, to whom (under Heaven) I owe all the little knowledge of my art which I possess. But I hope still I shall prove grateful to you; at any rate, I feel my errors and must mend them."
Mr. Allston thus answers this frank appeal for forgiveness:—
MY DEAR SIR,—I will not apologize for having so long delayed answering your kind letter, being, as you well know, privileged by my friends to be a lazy correspondent. I was sorry to find that you should have suffered the recollection of any hasty expressions you might have uttered to give you uneasiness. Be assured that they never were remembered by me a moment after, nor did they ever in the slightest degree diminish my regard or weaken my confidence in the sincerity of your friendship or the goodness of your heart. Besides, the consciousness of warmth in my own temper would have made me inexcusable had I suffered myself to dwell on an inadvertent word from another. I therefore beg you will no longer suffer any such unpleasant reflections to disturb your mind, but that you will rest assured of my unaltered and sincere esteem.
Your letter and one I had about the same time from my sister Mary brought the first intelligence of the sale of my picture, it being near three weeks later when I received the account from Philadelphia. When you recollect that I considered the "Dead Man" (from the untoward fate he had hitherto experienced) almost literally as a caput mortuum, you may easily believe that I was most agreeably surprised to hear of the sale. But, pleased as I was on account of the very seasonable pecuniary supply it would soon afford me, I must say that I was still more gratified at the encouragement it seemed to hold out for my return to America.
His friend Leslie, in a letter from London of May 7, 1816, writes: "Mr. West said your picture would have been more likely than any of them to obtain the prize had you remained."
In another letter from Leslie of September 6, 1816, occurs this amusing passage:—
"The Catalogue Raisonné appeared according to promise, but is not near so good as the one last year. At the conclusion the author says that Mr. Payne Knight told the directors it was the custom of the Greek nobility to strip and exhibit themselves naked to the artists in various attitudes, that they might have an opportunity of studying fine form. Accordingly those public-spirited men, the directors, have determined to adopt the plan, and are all practising like mad to prepare themselves for the ensuing exhibition, when they are to be placed on pedestals.
"It is supposed that Sir G. Beaumont, Mr. Long, Mr. Knight, etc., will occupy the principal lights. The Marquis of Stafford, unfortunately, could not recollect the attitude of any one antique figure, but was found practising having the head of the Dying Gladiator, the body of the Hercules, one leg of the Apollo, and the other of the Dancing Faun, turned the wrong way. Lord Mulgrave, having a small head, thought of representing the Torso, but he did not know what to do with his legs, and was afraid that, as Master of the Ordnance, he could not dispense with his arms."