CHAPTER II

ROME

1852-1855

The first group of letters from Leighton to his family from Rome tells of his instalment, his projects, his disappointments, his indifferent health, and his eye-troubles. But more important are the views he expresses on his "_artistic_ impressions," and the ideas which force themselves on his mind, resulting from these impressions; the increased anxiety with which he regards the task he has set before him; the "paralysing diffidence" which he feels with regard to "composing." In the letter he wrote on January 5, 1853, he enters more intimately into his own feelings in addressing his father than in any previous letter I have seen. This letter is in answer to one from his father, which Leighton describes in writing to his mother[20] as "the longest I ever got from him, at all events it was the first in which he said anything beyond what was necessary to business; it gave me sincere pleasure. I was touched; it seemed to me that distance had brought me nearer to him." Leighton was evidently eager to respond to any advance from his father towards possible intimacy on the ground of his art-interests. In "Pebbles" he writes that he opens the "introductory chapter of the second volume" of his life, "a volume on the title-page of which is written 'artist'"; in these first letters from Rome he begins the second volume itself. The letter to his younger sister, on her "coming out," contains at its close memorable advice on the subject of the development of her musical taste.[21] "You must descend into yourself, and draw at the fountain of your own natural taste, but mind you go very deep, that you may really get at your _genuine, natural_ taste, and I think you won't go far wrong. He who knows how to hear the voice of nature has found the safest guide, and he only is a good master who opens the mind of his pupil to that voice." At the age of twenty-one, Leighton had realised, and was himself pursuing, the only right course in studying any art. By invariably drawing deeply from the fountain in his own nature, he ever remained true and sincere as an artist. It is evident that, if there is no fountain to draw from in a nature, any study of art becomes useless, and Leighton, when consulted in later years, never encouraged false hopes in those who possessed no natural endowments. When he wrote,[22] "being very receptive and prone to admire, I have learnt, and still do, from innumerable artists, big and small; Steinle's is, however, the indelible seal," he referred to the fact that in Steinle he had fortunately found the master who opened his mind to the voice of his own nature. Leighton felt a great necessity to sift the various influences which played upon his receptive nature, on account of his ready sympathy with all that was admirable. He had constantly to seek for that inner light, that "genuine, natural taste," which his revered master had led him to search for and find, and to act from the dictates of that light, and from no other.

The commencement of the first letter from Rome to his mother is missing; the date of the post-mark is November 25, 1852, Rome.

"...unnoticed, and which now requires to be woven in with the rest. I mean, of course, my more directly and practically _artistic_ impressions, and their results. I take them up 'ab ovo.' To an artist an occasional change of scene is of the greatest advantage, if not importance; for, generally speaking, when he has stayed long in one place, surrounded day after day by the same objects, his eye becomes, by the deadening effect of constant habit, indifferent to what he sees around him, and often even inaccessible to the impressions which a newcomer might receive from the same natural beauties; most things that please the eye or the imagination, do so (in my case, at least) by some peculiar association; indeed I should imagine it must be so with all things, for even when one cannot (as one often can) define precisely the association which creates the echo within of the impressions received, it seems to me that one is instinctively aware of a kind of indefinable _innate relationship_ to the beauties manifested in nature, to which, by-the-bye, I think, all other associations might ultimately be traced through different degrees of consanguinity. It is in being unexpectedly reminded (however indirectly or unwittingly) of this affinity, that lies all the pleasure that we experience by the means of sight; indeed, it strikes me, although I am too ignorant to explain why, that the 'feu sacre' of the artist is a kind of inward, spontaneous, ever active, instinctive _impulse_, blind and involuntary, to manifest and put forth this his pedigree--as it were a yearning of son to father, an attraction of a part to the whole, which is, as it were, the living _motive_ and condition of his existence, and which sometimes infuses in his works 'un non so che' that is felt by others, but for which he would be at a loss to account, and of which he is perhaps barely aware; it is a manifestation of a _truth_ which is felt to be _fit_, and called _beautiful_. These reflections, which have often involuntarily forced themselves on me, suddenly remind me of an expression I once heard Papa quote from some German philosopher, I think Hegel: 'Der Mensch ist das Werkzeug der Natur.' Good gracious, where am I running to? and how far out of my depth! and yet one feels the want to empty one's head a little now and then; latterly, especially, these ideas have been stirred up in me by the perusal of fragments on the theory, philosophy, of Art, &c., by Eastlake, which gave rise in me to some painful feelings. At the first onset I was amazed and bewildered at the quantity and great versatility of Eastlake's acquirements, a man who has yet found time to cultivate his art with success. I was filled with regret and mortification when I looked at myself and considered how little I know, and how little, comparatively, my health and eyes will allow me to add to my meagre store. As I got further into the subject, my feelings altered; it seemed to me to grow more and more vast and comprehensive, but not more _intricate_, for it appeared by degrees to embrace and involve in itself (and be involved in) all human knowledge, so that I felt that there must be only one key to all mystery, the _non_-possession of which key is the characteristic, the condition _des Menschseins_. Then it struck me as utterly absurd for anybody to pretend to know anything about anything; but it also struck me that it is not given to man to be a neutral spectator, that he must advance or recede; and that beautiful saying of Lessing's, which Papa read to us, occurred to my mind: 'Wenn der Allmaechtige' (I quote from memory, and therefore probably not quite correctly) 'vor mich hin traete in der Rechten die vollkommene Erkenntnis, in der Linken ein ewiges Streben nach Wahrheit, ich wuerfe mich flehend in seine Linke und sagte: Vater, gieb! die reine Wahrheit ist doch nur Dir allein!'[23] I hardly meant to say all this, especially as it must seem horridly weak to a philosopher of Papa's calibre, but I really could not help it; I wish such thoughts would never come into my head, for I am painfully aware that I have not the grasp of mind to investigate any abstract subject deeply, and I wish that I had a mind, simple and unconscious, even as a child. I hurry back to the point with my tail between my legs; I was saying, was not I? that habit deadens us (read _me_) to the _suggestive_ qualities of nature, and that change of scene is sometimes required to make us again _aware_ of nature; after such change she speaks a more eloquent language than ever; I have heard her voice, ever since I left Frankfurt, ring more powerfully than ever before, and it has been the key to all that I have done, and to all that I have omitted. But there are some cases in which this numbing effect of habit has more lasting, almost irrevocable consequences; when one has been for a long space of time _utterly_ familiarised with an object (a work of art in particular) of which one did not, when the acquaintance or _liaison_ was contracted, appreciate all the beauties, though in process of time the _understanding_ may become fully aware of these qualities, the _heart of the mind_--if I may use such an expression--can never feel that ingenuous fulness of admiration which would penetrate a sensitive and cultivated spectator on seeing it _for the first time_. This I have felt more particularly in the case of the 'Transfiguration' here in the Vatican; I am so utterly familiar with it from a child, when I could in no way understand it, that I find it impossible to judge of it _objectively_; I see colossal merit in it, and yet, when I have looked at it for a few minutes, I turn away and walk on; I am deadened to it. Thank God, it is not so with his (Raphael's) divine frescoes, which are so maimed and profaned in the engravings that the originals were _new_ to me. But I am at the end of my paper, and as you do not wish me to cross, I must this time close by just telling you what my disappointments have been, that you may not form a false idea of them. First, I expected to find an _atmosphere_ of high art, and every possible 'guenstige Anregung' for its cultivation; in this I have been completely disappointed; of the numberless artists here, scarcely any can call themselves historical painters, and Gamba and I, who hoped for emulation, are thrown completely on ourselves; Overbeck is the only remains of that much to be regretted period when he and Cornelius and Veit and Steinle and others were labouring together in friendly strife; he will, however, never be to us what Steinle was. The next greatest sore point was the difficulty of getting a studio. When we arrived in Rome the first thing we heard was that all the _ateliers_ were taken; and it was only after some days despondent search that I got a little bit of one most skimpingly furnished, that I should have sneered at when I first arrived. I have no _secretaire_; I am obliged to lock up my papers with my shirts; I have been obliged to buy a lamp, for the one they gave me tried my eyes; and if I want any article of furniture I must buy it, because I understand that at the end of the year hiring costs as much here as buying. My _atelier_ for next winter I shall take in the spring, as a good many become vacant at that time. Rome is twice, nearly three times, dearer than Florence in some respects; I am in despair; Gamba, who has just half what I have, absolutely starves himself in his food, and can hardly keep himself cleanly dressed; yet he has fewer expenses than I, who have calls to make now and then, and must dress accordingly. Oakes, too, who had sent me a charming letter to Florence, saying that he delighted in the idea of coming to spend the winter with me in Rome, was suddenly prevented; this was a bitter disappointment; I had expected a great deal of improvement from his conversation. I am in the bleak position of one who stands in immediate contact with _no_ cultivated and superior mind. The Laings have not come yet; I hope to goodness they won't disappoint me also.--I remain, dearest Mamma, your dutiful and affectionate son,

"FRED LEIGHTON."

(_La suite a un prochain numero._)

"1852.

"DEAREST GUSSY,--As a gallant brother, I can't well do less than answer separately your postscript to Mamma's letter. I shall make a point, if I meet with it, of reading Andersen's 'Dichterleben'; your recommendation is sufficient to predispose me favourably. I perfectly understand what you say about St. Paul's, and quite agree with you on that subject. What suits a salmon-coloured ribbon? By George, that's a weighty question, and requires mature reflection; it would look _best_ on a white dress with blue flowers or spots; a sea-green would not look bad, and on black silk it would be _distingue_; a bluish violet would not be bad either. I am sincerely sorry that I am not able to 'assister' at your triumphal entry into your eighteenth year; I am afraid the spell is beginning to fall by degrees from the greatest of days. If my directions have been attended to, I was present by proxy on the memorable occasion. Do you fully appreciate the immense importance of the epoch? Do you sufficiently feel that you are on the brink of being _OUT_? You are very much mistaken in supposing that I hear much good music here; there is little or none to hear; the theatres, at least, are all bad. I sincerely hope that you cultivate assiduously the talent with which you are blessed; especially the vocal part I am very anxious about; of course you will take lessons in Bath. I sympathise very much with you on the want of Rosenhain's guiding influence; I fully appreciate your difficulty; you must descend into yourself, and draw at the fountain of your own natural taste, but mind you go very deep, that you may really get at your _genuine, natural_ taste, and I think you won't go far wrong. He who knows how to hear the voice of nature has found the safest guide, and he only is a good master who opens the mind of his pupil to that voice.--Believe me, with many kisses, your very affectionate brother,

"FRED.

"If Gussy _did_ want to be a charitable Christian, she would copy in her pretty handwriting five lines a day of my horrid scrawl, for I am ashamed that my Pebbles should remain in such a state."

"BATH, _Sunday, November 29, 1852_.

"MY BELOVED CHILD,--I need not tell you how close an account I keep of the day of the month, nor how my heart beats as the foreign post hour approaches, because you know how tenderly I love you, and what it cost me to part from you, and consequently how anxiously I look for the consolation for your absence which your letters afford me, and I had hoped you would supply this balm liberally. Of course while you were actually travelling I made every allowance for weariness, &c. &c., but if you have carried out your intentions, you must have been in Rome quite ten days, and though I said in my last I hoped for the future you would leave only three weeks between each of your letters home, it is now more than a calendar month since I had last the great happiness of seeing your handwriting. I would not, my love, be unreasonable, but you must remember that, in addition to the natural desire to hear how you manage for yourself, my maternal anxieties have been awakened by the indisposition you spoke of as not serious, it is true, but which has started up before me, explaining your delay in writing, and which, in spite of reason's suggestion that a slight illness would not hinder your work, whilst Gamba would prevent the addition of suspense to the trouble a serious attack would cause us, has brought the evil of separation very bitterly before me. The goodness of your heart, my child, will teach you how you can soften this to me; it is one of the few occasions remaining to you to exercise self-denial, as you live alone and have no one to please but yourself. I now and then wonder a little anxiously whether you ever think of my exhortations, so much have I wished that you should be in the retirement of your house as gentlemanly as you are in company. But then I recollect sentences in your letter, proving such right views in important matters, such a clear understanding of your responsibilities, that I resolve to believe that you will strive to do right in small matters as well as in great ones; indeed, my child, I have remarked with deep satisfaction your appreciation of the blessings that are allotted to you, and indeed you do right to enjoy them with all humility, for I cannot flatter you in opposition to the dictates of my conscience that you are _so_ well deserving of happiness as your poor sister. She is deserving of the highest respect of all, bearing all her trials with admirable patience. The persevering rain, which has caused a great deal of illness in Bath, has had a very bad effect on her, throwing her back just as she was beginning to mend, so that she has a great deal of rough ground to go over again. We revel in literary abundance, even German and French books are in the circulating libraries, and _I_ often wish the days longer to read and to work. Gussy says she hopes you will not think her ill-natured if she declines copying your letters, for, indeed, were she willing to undertake this difficult task, I should forbid it, as her eyes, always delicate, are unusually weak; whether this comes from too long confinement to the house, or from crying, I cannot say; the latter is produced by _Heimweh_! what do you think of this for an English girl? Thank God, she employs the best remedy against regretful feelings, as she is occupied from morning till night. Are you equally industrious? I read the other day the following assertion by Southey, which I copy for you, in case you should _still_ have the habit, so common amongst young people, of wasting during the day occasional quarter-hours or ten minutes, because, they ask, only such a few minutes, how often have I heard that excuse. This is the portion: 'Ten minutes' daily study, for seven years, will give the student sufficient knowledge of seven languages to read them with ease, and even to travel without an interpreter in the respective countries.' Is not this an encouragement to industry? We imagine you by this time settled in your lodging and beginning to feel at home. God grant that you may have your health there and meet with kind friends; we are curious to know what your letters will do for you. In the meantime you will, I doubt not, have met some old acquaintances--the Henry Walpoles, the Laings, Mr. Petre, the Isembourgs, and Princess Hohenlohe; to what amount the latter will condescend, I know not, but remember, I entreat you, my advice. The two former families you will most likely have first met at church; let me hope at least that you will not abandon the habit; it may at last bring a blessing upon you. The intentions of your Frankfurt acquaintances we learnt in a letter from Mme. Beving; she had heard from M. Fenzi that he had given you a general invitation to his villa, and that you had dined with him, or been asked to do so; I do not know whether he made any comment on you. Did your organ of _veneration_ do its duty? Forgive my hints, dear son; all your good qualities are pictured in lively colours before my eye, but I do not even try to forget your faults, lest I should neglect my duty to you; with the best resolutions we all occasionally require a fillip to our conscience. Next Friday is your birthday. It will be the first on which you have not received your parents' blessing in person. We shall not forget you, my darling. God bless you, my own dear Freddy; in this prayer your father joins most fervently; think often of the advice and love of your devoted mother,

"A. LEIGHTON."

1 BROCK STREET, BATH, _December 13, 1852_.

DEAR FREDERIC,--I need not say that we had all of us great pleasure in receiving your letter from Rome, though not before your dear mother had suffered great anxiety from the delay--the greater, because your former letter did not give a very encouraging account of your health. It gave us also great pain to hear of the vexatious disappointments which have attended your first entrance into the Eternal City, but this was, perhaps, to be expected, as the sanguine expectations of youth are seldom realised, and we may hope that by this time you will have found in other advantages and opportunities for improvement a sufficient compensation for the loss of those you had expected. What you say about the weakness of your eyesight is far more serious, and, indeed, would have occasioned us alarm if we did not hope and believe that you meant no more than we already knew at Frankfort, that your eyes were weak, and not that they had continued to grow weaker. But when I consider that your only means of acquiring an honourable independence and gratifying your laudable ambition depends upon your eyesight, I surely need no arguments to urge you in the strongest manner to use all those precautions for its preservation which your own good sense must suggest--to throw aside your brush or pencil the first moment that your eyes begin to smart or water, not to draw on white paper or by candlelight (or lamp or any artificial light), nor read except large print, nor small print even by daylight, except for a few minutes occasionally in a book of reference, and to acquire as much knowledge as you can, independently of books, by conversation with well-informed men, if you are so fortunate as to meet with them; when you cannot paint, talk, or observe, exercise your memory, it will store and cultivate your mind more and try your eyes less than reading, which in your case cannot be systematically pursued. You may perhaps meet some well-informed young men amongst the German artists. Above all, draw your compositions as large as possible (or rather as necessary for your eyes) and not such as your architectural drawings, "Four Seasons," &c., which contain so many objects minutely drawn. I suppose, likewise, that chalk and charcoal must be better than pencil, and the paint-brush better than either. You have no reason to complain either of want of ideas or of power of expressing them (at all events with your pen), however deficient you may think yourself in a command of language for conversation; but the fact is that, considering the distance that separates us, it is of much more importance to us to know _how_ you are, what you do, and what you observe, than what you think. Your letters remind me of my friend, Dr. Simpson of York, who, when we sat down for dinner, would enter into some abstract discussion, say, of the nature and varieties of fish, or, _a propos_ of the aitch-bone, on the homologies of the skeleton, while in the meantime fish and beef were growing cold and my appetite impatiently vivacious; so in your letters, while we are burning with impatience to know how you are, what progress you are making, or at all events what are your opportunities of progress in the art, you indulge us with abstract reflections on the theory of art in general. Your last letter, it is true, begins and ends with interesting matter, but with an interpolation of some three pages of disquisition on the nature of genius in art, &c., &c., which, however well thought or expressed, would be more in place in an essay than in your letter to us who are so much more interested in what immediately concerns yourself. The consequence is that, although with a praiseworthy wish to please us you have tried your eyes with a long letter, you have omitted much we were anxious to know--whether, for instance, you were conscious of having made any progress, or derived any advantage from the many pictures both in art and nature you have had so many opportunities of seeing; whether you had been making many, and what sketches or copies, for we are quite convinced that you have not been losing your time; whether you have been comparing what you can do with what other artists of about your age and standing in Italy can do, and whether the result is satisfactory; whether there are any among them from whom you can take any useful hints; whether Overbeck or any other competent artist is willing to assist you; whether, above all, you saw Power at Florence, and what he thought of your compositions; whether you find in Rome the material advantages you expected in the way of models, &c., and whether you will think it advisable to draw from the antique--the Apollo, Torso, &c.; in short, I cannot too strongly impress upon you that one fact is of more value to us than a volume of reflections. Of course, I would not have you infer that the progress of your mind, your thoughts and feelings, are by any means a matter of indifference to us, but after all they can be only imperfectly shown in occasional letters, and must necessarily exclude information of a more positive and, for the present, of a more important nature. Let me caution you, too, against reading any of the modern German works on aesthetics; they can be only imperfectly understood without a knowledge of the philosophies, of which they form a part, and any advantage you may derive from them will not be at all commensurate to the time and trouble, especially for you who have so much positive knowledge to acquire. If, however, any of your German friends can convey to you in conversation any clear ideas on the subject (and if they have them themselves there is no reason why they should not), well and good, but do not let them impose upon you, as they so often do upon themselves, with words either without any well-defined meaning, or one different from, or even the direct contrary, of the usual one. According to Hegel, for instance, 'das Schoene, ist das _scheinen_' (Schoene from scheinen) 'der _Idee_ durch ein sinnliches Medium.' Now every artist knows without Hegel that his idea, or, if he prefers to think so, nature's idea within and through him, appears or manifests itself in the sensuous material, in colours if he be a painter, or stone if he be a sculptor, but this would be worse than trite, it would be intelligible to a plain understanding. _Idee_ has a far deeper meaning. If you hear a German flourishing away with the magic word, ask him what he means. He will tell you, perhaps, that it is das Absolute or der objective Geist as distinguished from the Begriff or subjectiver Geist, or rather the indifference of both, and that is neither one nor t'other, but potentially either, or the _an sich_, or _an und fuer sich_, or rather the _an, fuer, ueber sich_; at last after much _hin und herreiten_ you get some faint glimmering of what is meant; perhaps what some people call the soul in nature, or in still plainer English, nature, or the unknown cause of all we see, not an abstraction but a real entity, impersonal, however, and therefore not a god, acting according to certain laws, unconsciously in external nature (in ihrem Anders'sein) coming to itself--acting consciously in man, but more reflectively in science, more instructively in art. Well, you have caught the _Idee_ at last (perhaps!) through its many Proteus-like changes and recognise an old friend after all--scratch your head, and ask whether you are any wiser than before. 'Das scheinen der Idee durch ein sinnliches Material'--in the Madonna of Raphael, for instance--'ist das Schoene.' Why then, says Punch, not equally so in the pork-pie and the mustard-pot, since the _Idee_ manifests itself equally in both. The German solves the difficulty by "Sie sind ein practischer Englaender, und haben keinen speculativen Geist." In the meantime, let us hope that nature will use you as her tool to carry out in colours and canvas some of her beautiful ideas, and leave it to the German to find out how the practical Englishman who has not read Hegel's "AEsthetics" has set about it. That you may accomplish this to the utmost extent of your wishes is the sincere wish of, dear Fred, your affectionate father,

FREDC. LEIGHTON.

_P.S._--"Werkzeug der Natur" is an idea by no means peculiar to Hegel.

"_Your_ birthday--

"Dearest Mamma, may it be a right happy one--one that may serve, and be used, as a pattern to cut out others on. Judging by your accounts, there is one among you who will contribute mirth to your enjoyment--one who takes as many shapes as Proteus, and is always the most welcome of guests; his name is _Bettering_. In this world confident expectation is a greater blessing, almost, than fruition. I too, if my directions have been followed (as I confidingly hope), shall have appeared to you on the great day _as good as gold_.

"How grieved I was, dearest Mother, to hear that I had given so much pain to the kindest of hearts! My excuse, such as it was, you got in my last letter, which reached probably the day after you posted your epistle to me; I was sincerely sorry; I had not, I must confess, any idea of anxious suspense on your part, as you were not in expectation of any _particular_ news; I shall in future try to be more deserving of your solicitude; this time, you see, I am punctual.

"Health Report. Taking all in all, tol. sat., owing, no doubt, to the unusually magnificent weather which we have had since I arrived here; rheumatism, average; colds, not more than usual; eyes?... hum ... might be better; I suppose macaroni 'al burro' are not unwholesome--I and Gamba and several others eat it nearly every day.

"I now turn to your letter. Little Gussy an authoress! dear child, it gives one unfeigned pleasure to hear of her successful _debut_. I have myself had no opportunity of judging of her talent for writing, but feel convinced that with her warm heart, impressionable soul, sterling understanding, and quick powers of observation, whatever she writes will please a healthy taste. She has my very best wishes. And yet, what slight cloud was that, I felt pass over my pleasure, casting (I could not help it) an undefined shadow on my heart? Did not I feel startled at being so palpably reminded that the _child_ Gussy no longer exists? Did I not seem to feel, disagreeably, that the bridge was cut down behind us, that the last tie was broken that, in Gussy's person, still linked us to childhood, the buoyantly confiding age, the irresponsible age? Did not I become, through her, painfully aware that when I took leave of you, you all sealed with your kiss the first volume of my life, that I am indeed launched into the second, that the rehearsal is indeed over and the curtain drawn up?

"And do I not feel, even now, a _hypocrite_, _to know_ my path, and yet so often to deviate from it? Write often, dear Mother!

"The hint you gave me about husbanding my time, I shall take to heart; it is a thing of which I myself full well feel the necessity and know the unfailing benefit; but I confess that when I read your quotation from 'Bob,' I felt irresistibly reminded of the question once put to sage and wise courtiers by the facetious monarch 'who never said a foolish thing, and never did a wise one,' viz. Why is a tub of water with a goose in it lighter than one without?

"'God help thee, Southey, and thy readers too!' (Byron).

"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._)

"DEAR PAPA,--When I received, the other day, your kind and most interesting letter, and felt the appropriateness of your admonitions--felt, too, how foolish it is for me, who am ignorance personified (in certain matters, at least) to waste _my_ time in speculations on subjects beyond my grasp, and to exhaust _your_ patience by twaddling them out to you, whilst your own penetrating and comprehensive mind takes, in preference, a practical view of the subject--a question suddenly presented itself to me: Bless my soul! what will he say to the epistle I have just sent off? For, as you, by this time, know yourself, it is, though perhaps less groggy than the last, still insufficient in point of practical purport; a _messed-up_ dish, not a joint. I hasten, if possible, to make 'amende honorable' by communicating to you in language as concise as possible whatever information you either express or hint a desire to have.

"One word only, a farewell one, on the subject of my _ci-devant_ digressions; no, _three_ words; I must say in my own justification. 1st. That when I sat down to write, it was always with an idea of telling all (or nearly), and all in detail, too, from which I was prevented by invariably getting to the end of my paper, my time, and my eyes (as it would try them to cross) before I had accomplished my object; 2nd. That I have been discursive with an idea of entertaining for a time the suffering members of the family; 3rd. That all my abstract drawl, though it in some cases abutted in tenets that I had at different times heard you let fall, was _altogether_ my own; indeed it was, perhaps, the consciousness of the instinctive _self-suggestedness_ of such thoughts that made me turn round on myself and take an objective view of ditto. A philosopher is very like a dog trying to catch his own tail.

"Now to business. You speak of my eyes; I cannot conceal from you that they are worse than they were at Frankfurt, but I do not know whether I can say that they are _getting gradually_ worse; everybody takes some time in getting _acclimatise_ to Rome; my sufferings may perhaps be ascribed to that. I intend for some months to give up the nude in the evening. Your advice about gathering information from the conversation of men of cultivated mind I would most gladly follow, but, alas, I only know _two_ really well-informed people here, and one is an old man I hardly ever see. There is no fear of my drawing my compositions too small, for (I shall tell you why presently) I am drawing _none at all_, and probably shall draw none for a considerable time; but close and minute study of Nature in its details is, as I now see more plainly than ever, of paramount importance. I come to another point which it is difficult to touch with conciseness: have I made any progress? Perhaps I am not entitled to answer positively in the affirmative till I shall have painted some portrait or picture better than anything I have yet produced; this I have not yet had an opportunity of doing; but if, from superlative confidence, having fallen to a more beseeming diffidence, if having improved and chastened my taste, if having become more anxiously aware of the extent of my task and more deeply humbled by those who have fulfilled it, may be called progress, then I can answer: Yes, I have made a step.

"I was deeply impressed with the glorious works of art I saw in Venice and Florence, and was particularly struck with the exquisitely _elaborate_ finish of most of the leading works by _whatever_ master; the highest possible finish combined with the greatest possible breadth and grandeur of disposition in the principal masses; art with the old masters was full of love, refined, utterly sterling. I had got during my journey through the Tyrol into a frame of mind that rendered me particularly accessible to such impressions; I had been dwelling with unwearied admiration on the exquisite grace and beauty of the details, as it were, of Nature; every little flower of the field had become to me a new source of delight; the very blades of grass appeared to me in a new light. You will easily understand that, under the influence of such feelings, I felt the greatest possible reluctance to _sketch_ in the hasty manner in which one does when travelling; I shunned the idea of approaching Nature in a manner which seemed to me disrespectful, and the consequence was that until I got to Verona I did not touch a pencil. In Venice and Florence, however, I made several drawings, some of which are most highly finished, and afforded me, whilst I was occupied on them, that most desirable kind of contentment, the consciousness of endeavour. Of course I was obliged to conquer to a certain extent my aversion to anything but finished works, and accordingly I made a considerable number of _sketches_ 'proprement dits.' With regard to composing, however, I still feel the same paralysing diffidence, I cannot make up my mind to draw compositions like those I have hitherto produced, but, at the same time, I feel that I am as yet incapable of drawing any in the manner I should wish, and as I see no prospect of such a desirable state of things till I have spent a summer in the mountains and drawn landscape, men and animals for several months, it is very unlikely that I shall put my hand to anything original till next winter; then I shall pour myself out with a vengeance. When I left Frankfurt I asked Steinle whether I should compose the first winter; he answered: '_Oh, wenn Sie moegen._' He foresaw how it would be. It gives me great comfort to feel that I am quietly settled to study for some years in one place, and that I am able to make plans for the future without having to reckon on removals and changes. Meanwhile, this winter I take models, I have been studying the anatomy of the horse, I shall draw at the Vatican from Raphael and Michael Angelo (_perhaps_, too, from the antique), &c. &c. A digression, whilst I think of it: I think that the pains in my eyes are in some measure nervous, for mentioning them invariably brings them on, in broad daylight. About the little emulation I find here I have spoken in my last letter. The general tone here (of course with some exceptions) is one of public toadying mediocrity. There is here one young Frenchman, remarkable for correctness but coldly scientific (only in his art), without that warmth and spontaneity which give such a peculiar charm to works of genius. Overbeck was endlessly courteous and praised me very highly, talked of the artists in Rome acquiring in us 'einen aechten Zuwachs' ('a real addition'), but the half century between our respective ages and his pietistical manner make me sure that we shall derive but little advantage from him; I neither expected nor wished to find a second Steinle.

"As for Powers, though he was very polite to me in his own sort of way, I am pretty certain that he had entirely forgotten, nor did he ask me to show him anything. You may console yourself on that score--a sculptor, especially one who can do little but busts (however pre-eminently good they may be, and _his_ are), can very seldom judge well of pictures. Gibson, the great sculptor, whom I know very well, and who shows me great kindness by-the-bye, has about as little judgment in painting as a man well can. That I _do_ find models here, and many other material advantages, I told you in the letter that you lately received.

"I have now, dear Papa, answered all your questions; it only remains for me to thank you for your poignant and admirably practical remarks on the German philosophers--remarks, I assure you, which have quite answered their purpose; both they and the kind wishes you have expressed concerning my future advancement shall not have been thrown away on your grateful and affectionate son,

"FRED LEIGHTON."

(_Postmark, Jan. 5, '53._)

"DEAREST MAMMA,--To your appendix an appendix. Paper and time force me to laconism.

"My personal discomforts, for which you show such kind sympathy, are, I am happy to say, now only very slight; the only thing I suffer annoyance from is my stove, which makes my head ache; with regard, however, to beating a retreat, I must candidly tell you that I see my only chance of coming to anything is studying here steadily for _some three_ years; the more so that it is by all accounts only at the end of the first year that one feels all the advantages which Rome affords. My plans seem to be these: this winter, studies; next summer, ditto, in the mountains, or wherever it is coolest; next winter, pictures, portraits, compositions; summer after, Paris, see the large Veronese (which was invisible the last time I was there); from Paris to Bath to see all you darlings again, spend two or three weeks in England studying its character under the ciceroneship of Oakes, that thorough Briton, and collecting materials for some large (in meaning if not in size) picture to be painted in Rome during the third winter, and to be my firstling in an English exhibition; I feel that one day my painting will have a strongly national bias. That autumn I should probably return to Rome _via_ Spain to see the Murillos, &c.

"When you next write to Lady Pollington, pray remember me very kindly to her; her merry face and facetious ways are still before me. Lord Walpole, whom you mention as coming to Rome, and whom I shall know if he does, is indeed, I believe, a very agreeable and clever man. The Henry Walpoles have been very civil to me; Mrs. Walpole told me that if I wrote to you I was to give her best--I think she said, _love_--for that you were a great favourite of hers.

"Here I must absolutely close, though I have plenty more to say. My very best thanks to Papa and you all for the kind presents, but I don't see why you won't allow me the pleasure of giving you anything. As I have written this letter immediately after the other, I cannot promise to write again soon. To yourselves, very best love from your dutiful and affect.

"FRED LEIGHTON."

The following letters from Steinle are evidently the first Leighton received in Rome from his master. No comment on them is necessary. Every line is evidence of the affectionate quality and beauty of the nature that so permanently influenced Leighton's for good.

_Translation._] "FRANKFURT AM MAIN, _January 6, 1853_.

"MY VERY DEAR FRIEND,--Although I do not know your address, and am uncertain whether this will reach you, yet I can no longer withstand the urging of my heart; I only know that you and Gamba are in Rome, that you have visited Overbeck, as he himself has written me; assuming, however, that you also visit the Cafe Greco, I will risk that address. Your spirited lines from Venice reached me safely, and I can truly say that since then my thoughts and my good wishes for you and for Gamba have daily accompanied you. A report which has been circulated here, that you, Gamba, and Andre had been attacked by robbers, made me anxious for a time, and I expected from day to day that you would yourself write me something about this adventure--in vain. Overbeck writes me now that it would give him particular satisfaction to be able to help or serve you in any way during your stay in Rome, and cordially wishes that you and Gamba would give him the opportunity to do so, but unfortunately he knew nothing else about you to tell me. What Schaeffer writes me is also so extremely scanty, that for all that concerns you and Rico I am thrown back on my own thoughts and suppositions. That you are both absent from me is unfortunately a painful truth; as to whether the ideal life which from old and dear habit I still live with you, be also true, the future, I hope, may show. I have an idea that you, dear friend, and perhaps also your faithful comrade, already suffer from the artistic fever of Rome, which every one feels in the first year. It is that glorious old Rome, with her wealth, and the multitude of her impressions, which works so powerfully upon the receptive mind, that it can retain nothing in contradiction, and cannot escape her influence; this period is one of discomfort, because we feel ourselves oppressed; but though it is of the greatest value, and no doubt bears rich fruit, the work of artists of to-day is neither in a position to offer you anything important, nor to deceive you in sight of the old masters; if the multitude of impressions is first gradually assimilated, if everything is assigned its place, if we take a wide survey, and can stride forward freely in pursuit of the goal set before us, then only does that wonderful spirit which hovers over Rome rise up in us strong and inspiring, and then we are able to recognise what we have actually won in the fight with discomfort. Thus, and in similar circumstances, I fancy that my dear friends are in the same case as the bees, which swarm, and toil with all the load they collect, but cannot make honey by perpetual sucking. That is inconvenient and oppressive, but ah! when this time is past, what wealth will they unfold, with what comfort will they look upon the well-filled satchel, how quickly they will recognise that such wealth pays interest for the whole life! But if it is otherwise, dear friend, then laugh at the all-wise Steinle, and resolve finally to free him from such delusions, and to set the matter before his eyes as it really is, and be you assured of one thing, that he always wishes that everything may be good and prosperous for you, that all that you are longing to attain you may attain, and that Almighty God may guard you and Rico from all ill! You can have had no idea with what feelings your friend would read your vigorous, spirited lines from Venice. I received them, on my return, from Gamba, a very dear lad, and could not help being sorry that you, who have become so dear to me, should know absolutely nothing of what distressed your friend. We are men; hear, then, the news. Returning from Switzerland, I heard of the illness of my daughter Anna, in Metz, and I and my wife hurried to her, and spent six sorrowful days by the death-bed of my little sixteen-year-old daughter. After the funeral, I came back here, and finished 'The Raising of Jairus' Daughter.' The real pleasure of my art I felt shrink from me day by day in Metz; and now all my pleasure depends upon the beloved art, for happiness is more and more confined within the four walls of my _atelier_. Do not read any complaint in this; I have learnt much sadness, but have also found rich cause to thank God from my heart. What manner of children should we be, if we would not kiss the rod when we are chastised? And now, dear friend, with all my heart a greeting to Rome, and to all who remember me kindly. All friends here send greetings to you and Gamba, including Casella il Professore; Senator Nay is in Rome. I hope with all my heart that you have good news of your dear ones, and remain, always and altogether yours,

"STEINLE."

_Translation._]

"MOST ESTEEMED HERR STEINLE,--When you receive these lines I shall have already been long in the lovely land wherein I lack nothing but your presence; I beg you to accept from me the accompanying translation of the first volume of the works of the Father of English Poetry as a little remembrance; whether it is a good rendering of the great master I cannot judge, as at the moment of writing it has not arrived; but one thing I can answer for: it is the only volume of the only translation of Chaucer into the German language in existence; I only regret that there is also no Italian version; may it serve you as a souvenir of your devoted and grateful pupil,

"FRED LEIGHTON."

"FRANKFURT A/M."

_Translation._] "ROME, VIA DELLA PURIFICAZIONE No. 11, _January 11_.

"MY VERY DEAR FRIEND,--At last I am able to write you a few words, and (although very late) to send you my very best good wishes and congratulations for the New Year. I am sure that you will be kind enough to forgive my long silence, and will believe me when I tell you that I absolutely could not help it. I hope with all my heart that in the meantime you have been well and strong, and that your beautiful works have progressed in accordance with your wishes. How has the experiment with the new ground turned out? Have you already started on the other cartoon? I, for my part, have experienced the fact that to make plans and to carry them out are two different things; for nothing has come of the pictures which I set myself to paint. I have already told you in Frankfurt, dear Master, how painfully my deficiency pressed upon me, and how clearly I felt that my works lacked a highly genuine finish in the form, an intimate knowledge of nature; this consciousness had so increased when I arrived in Rome that without more ado I determined to employ myself during the whole winter exclusively upon school tasks, and by all means to endeavour to rid my artistic capacity a little of this defect; so now I continually paint study heads, which I try to finish as much as possible, and in which I especially have good modelling in view; that I have achieved this, unfortunately I cannot yet assert, but I derive great enjoyment from the attempt, and hope that my efforts will not remain unrewarded; I shall then next year, if I come to the painting of pictures again, go to work with greater knowledge and clearness, and shall be able, I hope, to clothe my ideas more suitably.

"I have nothing further to report of myself. I hope, my dear Friend, to receive a few lines from you, telling me what you are doing, for you know well how deeply interested I am.

"Will you be so kind as to tell Mr. Welsch that my trouble to find the Palazzo Scheiderff was in vain, and I have also unluckily not seen his brother? If I pass through Florence again in spring, I will try my luck once more. And now, adieu, dear Master. Kindest remembrances to your wife and children, and to you the warmest greeting, from your grateful pupil,

"LEIGHTON."

_Translation._] "FRANKFURT AM MAIN, _March 24, 1853_.

"MY VERY DEAR FRIEND,--My desire for news of you and Gamba was certainly great, but I possessed my soul in patience, for I was convinced that it would come at last; you and Rico have given me so many proofs of your love and friendship, that I was able to face with perfect calm and confidence all the numerous and impatient questions for news of you which came to me. Now, however, I see by your welcome lines, to my inward regret, that some restrained anxiety about you is justified, and while on one hand I greatly regret the weakness of your eyes and in a manner suffer with you, yet I have also my consoling argument that the Roman climate, at a better time of year, will certainly be good for your ailment, and that my Leighton can rise up again, that he will not lose courage. But whatever joy I had when you and your noble friends bore such splendid witness of one another, I cannot express myself as very easily satisfied; that you, in your efforts, would stand alone in Rome, I knew well, I am sure you are cut out for it, and it appears to me, even, as if every good heart that rises to a happy independence nowadays, must feel his loneliness, I might even say, that it must in order to give skill and power of conviction. The better you get to know Rome, the more you will learn to love her, and much will be freely given, when once the year of struggle is past, that could never be seized by force. How much I have rejoiced over all that you write of your and Rico's studies, how I should like to see them! Cling now to nature, you are quite right, you will not lose the art of composition, for it is not a thing that can be acquired: it is a gift, and one that you and Rico possess. Now, indeed, it always seems to me, when I consider the highest aims of art, and indeed the greatest capacities of man, that there should be a certain equalisation of the various powers, and it strikes me as indispensable, if we are not to become one-sided, that we should by such equalisation balance these various powers so as to achieve a _complete harmony_. Thus, however great a delicacy goose-liver may be, it always indicates a diseased goose, the monstrous enlargement of an organ, &c.; I do not say this by way of blame, and am thinking perhaps too much only of my own feeble powers, but merely as a little warning that it may be well to keep in view. Do not think that it is the Professor asserting himself, I say this only as a matter of experience and because you and Rico lie very close to my heart, and are associated with my own feeling of the sacredness of art. I have, however, no anxiety; you have good and noble natures, and will not lose the tracks of truth. Spare and save your eyes, I hope that you will soon be quite free from this ill, and then--forward! What you write me of the friends is certainly quite correct, and I myself thought no otherwise; Overbeck is the purest and noblest man that I have ever met; moreover a genius--therefore I rejoice that you and Rico know him; he speaks with feeling and judgment of his art. Excuse, dear Leighton, my forgetfulness; I have not thought of the dear and lovely present which with your note surprised me so pleasantly on my return--I mean the powerful and rich Chaucer; I find the prologue splendid, rather knotty, but the Germans of that time are still knottier. I thank you heartily. Of myself, I can inform you, that I daily rejoice more over the grey canvas; I have worked two months on my picture of the 'Whitsun-sermon,' and now in three weeks have painted half the picture, and am, even though somewhat exhausted, not altogether discontented with the result. This picture, which grows daily more like a fresco, is getting on fast, but much still remains to be done, and I have the progress of the whole picture in hand. Of the friends here, I can tell you that all speak of you and Gamba with love and sympathy, and that you are kindly remembered by all. Thank Rico cordially for his welcome note; if you and Rico always call me 'master,' a title which abashes me, we shall be friends, and I hope that as I grow old in years, at least I shall remain young in art. Tell Rico that I had a visit from his grandmother, who loves him dearly; with a few lines he would give her extreme pleasure. Now, adio, dear friend; equip yourself with patience and courage, and keep sad thoughts far from you. Greet all friends from me most heartily, also I have to send to you and Gamba warmest greetings from all here, including my wife, Frau Ruth Schlosser, and Casella. Let me hear sometimes how you get on. Always and altogether yours,

"EDW. STEINLE."

(_Postmark, March 28, 1853. Received April 6._) (_On cover_--Mrs. Leighton, 1 Brock Street, Bath, England.) "ROME, VIA DE PORTA PINCIANA 8.

"DEAREST MAMMA,--If I did not, as was naturally my first impulse, answer your letter directly I received it, it was because Isabel's[25] portrait has of late taken up all the time, or rather eyes, that I can dispose of; this being, however, a _drying_ day, I seize the opportunity of making up for lost time. As I have mentioned the portrait, I may as well say _en passant_ that I expect it to be a very successful likeness, and as decent a painting as a thing done in so desultory a manner can be expected to be; Gamba admires it very much, and intends to copy some parts. I was much touched at the affectionate sympathy you show for me in my visitation, and am as glad for you as for myself to say that there is a decided improvement in the state of my eyes, so that, although they are by no means _well_, it would hardly be worth while to go to a doctor for a written account of my symptoms; the more so as Dr. Small, who is a man very well thought of, thinks it all depends on the weather, and will go away when fine weather sets in, which God give! Add to this that several people of my acquaintance, _i.e._ Mrs. Sartoris and Mrs. Walpole, who never had anything the matter with their eyes, find them affected now. About two months ago I went to consult Dr. Small, or rather, on calling on him one day he _had me up_ professionally, for I felt a delicacy about going myself, as he had told me that he would be very happy to be of service to me _without_ any remuneration. Finding that Dr. Small's prescription had done me no perceptible good, I determined at last to go to a homoeopathic physician, of whom I heard great things. He was originally the apothecary of Hahneman (do I spell the name rightly?) the father of Homoeopathy. Under his hands I certainly improved rapidly; but it so happened that, just as I went to him, the rains, which had lasted without interruption for six weeks, ceased, and we had some days of glorious weather--now, who cured me, Jove or the apothecary? The weather is now as bad again as ever; but though less well, I have not _relapsed_ with it. Most days I can paint three or four hours (I don't think I could draw), and the other evening I even read half an hour with a lamp without feeling pain; what a pass things have come to that that should be a boast! I confess that the little I do, I do without energy or great enjoyment. I have not yet given my eyes the fair trial of complete rest which, when the Laings go, I shall be able, through your kind promise of a piano and singing lessons, to do for a fortnight or three weeks. My sincere thanks to Papa for his kindness and liberality. I shall begin immediately after the holy week, for until the _forestieri_, of which there are a fabulous number, have gone to their respective summer quarters, neither piano nor masters are in any way come-at-able.

"Having now spoken of my health, I return to your letter, for I find that the only way of writing at all to the point, is to answer sentence for sentence the questions and remarks you ask and make, and in the same order.

"I indeed count myself fortunate in having the acquaintance of Mr. and Mrs. Sartoris; it is a source of the greatest enjoyment to me; they show me the most marked kindness, which I value all the more because it is for my own sake, and not for that of a dinners-demanding letter of introduction. I am never there less than three times a week, and often more; I have dined with them _en famille_ four times, and it is only seven weeks since I made their acquaintance. Although I have a good many friends here, it is the only house which it is improving to me to frequent; her conversation is most agreeable to me, not from any knowledge she displays, but from her great refinement of feeling and taste; her husband is an enthusiastic amateur painter. I also meet there a young man of the name of Cartwright, a very old friend of theirs, who seems to me to possess an extraordinary amount of information, a mine which I have already begun to 'exploiter' to my own profit.

"I have made a considerable number of acquaintances, and have had more than enough parties, for people have a habit here of receiving once a week, so that, especially towards the end of the season, there never was an evening when I could not have gone somewhere, and often I had two or three places for one night; I used often to stay away from them, till I was afraid of offending people, which one does not wish to do when one experiences kindness from them. Then came a long series of arrears, which I found most monotonously tiring, for I am more lazy about dressing for a party than ever; more than once, when I have gone to my room to go through that hateful operation, I have slipped into bed instead of into my glazed boots; and yet, if I had taken the steps a great many young men do take, I should have gone to twice the number of places. Now all this was very well for this winter, as I could do nothing else on account of my eyes, but next year I shall turn over quite a new leaf; in the first place, give up dancing altogether--it is too fatiguing; and in the next, go nowhere but to my old acquaintances (of this winter, I mean).

"I have lionised Isabel all over Rome, and devoted to her nearly all my afternoons since she came; it is the luckiest thing in the world, her coming here at a time when I am not able to paint; she is going in a few days; you may easily imagine that I have not slept in the afternoons since she has been here.

"Gamba is, as you rightly suggested, far too straitened to go into society; however, he no way requires it, he has good health and untiring industry, and requires no such relaxation. As my paper is coming to an end, I must pass over the rest of your letter more rapidly. I fully feel with you that it is better in many respects that I should not go to Frankfurt, but I confess that when I saw it was out of the question, I felt painfully having to wait another year before seeing you; however, it is for the best. I am interested in hearing that you have bought a house in Bath; it looks as if you had at last found an anchor in your own country; is the society of Bath really agreeable? I always hear it spoken of in a jocular tone. What becomes of the Frankfurt house? You won't sell it, will you? Pray remember me most kindly to Kate Chamberlayne, and thank her for giving such an unworthy a corner in her memory.

"And now, dear Mamma, I must close. Pray write very soon, and give me a quantity of news about all your doings; tell me how dear Lina gets on and Gussy's Pegasus."

The preceding letter contains the first mention that I have seen of Leighton's friends, Mr. and Mrs. Sartoris, who were to be so much to him during twenty-five years of his life. He had known them seven weeks when he wrote it, and already Rome had become a happier place. All that most interested him in social intercourse was satisfied in their companionship, and in that of the intimate circle of friends who frequented their house. It soon became a second home, a home doubly welcome, as Leighton felt keenly being separated from his family. Mr. Sartoris was a fairly good amateur artist, and was considered by his friends to be a first-rate critic of painting. To Leighton's reasoning mind, ever prone to analyse and to give expression to the results of his analysis, it must have been inspiringly interesting to discuss art in general and his own in particular with one who had a natural gift for criticism.

Again, music was ever a joy to Leighton, a joy only equalled by that inspired by his own art. Mrs. Sartoris (Adelaide Kemble), imbued with the noble dramatic instincts and traditions of the Kembles, was not only a great singer, but a great musician, and had in all matters a fine taste, bred of true and deep feeling united with keen natural perceptions. In Miss Thackeray's "Preface to a Preface" to Mrs. Sartoris' delightful story, "A Week in a French Country House," she quotes the description of one who had known the two sisters, Fanny and Adelaide Kemble, from their youth: "Mrs. Kemble is essentially poetic and dramatic in her nature; Mrs. Sartoris, so much of an artist, musical, with a love for exquisite things and all that belongs to form and colour." (Some of us remember hearing Lord Leighton say that, though Mrs. Sartoris did not paint, she was a true painter in her sense of beauty of composition, in her great feeling for art.) Another old friend, referring to Mrs. Sartoris, with some show of reason deprecated any attempt to record at all that which was unrecordable: "Would you give a dried rose-leaf as a sample of a garden of roses to one who had never seen a rose?" she exclaims, recalling, not without emotion, the golden hours she had spent, the talks she had once enjoyed in the Warsash Pergola. "You have only to speak of things as they are," said a great critic who had known Mrs. Sartoris in her later years. "Use no conventional epithets: those sisters are beyond any banalities of praise." Again, take another verdict: "That fine and original being, so independent and full of tolerance for the young; sympathising even with _misplaced_ enthusiasm, entering so vividly into a girl's unformed longings. When I first knew her, she seemed to me to be a sort of revelation; it was some one taking life from an altogether new and different point of view from anything I had ever known before." Such are the descriptions given by those who knew her intimately of the lady who held out so kind a welcoming hand to Leighton when, as a youth of twenty-two, he started for the first time alone on the journey of life. I saw Mrs. Sartoris only two or three times at the house of our mutual friends, Mrs. Nassau Senior and Mrs. Brookfield. It was during the last years of Mrs. Sartoris' life, when illness and sorrow had marked her noble countenance with suffering. A friend of mine, however, who was greatly attached to Mrs. Sartoris, would often talk to me of her. My friend had had exceptional opportunities of coming in contact with the most distinguished minds in Europe. She told me she had never met with any personality who naturally, and apparently without effort, so completely dominated all others who were present. However distinguished the guests might be at a dinner, Mrs. Sartoris, she said, was invariably the centre of interest to all present.

The Sartoris children were another source of delight to Leighton in this home. No greater child-lover ever existed. He writes, moreover, that all social pleasures which he enjoyed during the three years he lived in Rome he owed to these friends.

With life brightened and inspired by their sympathy, and by all the sources of interest and culture which their society included, Leighton began brooding over the work which he meant should embody the best of his attainments so far as they were then developed. Florence and her art had cast a spell on his spirit very early in his existence. He had become especially enamoured of Giotto, the half-Catholic, the half-Greek Giotto. Pheidias had not yet touched him intimately; but his loving, spontaneous appreciation of this Florentine master, whose work in one sense echoes the secret of the noble, serene sense of beauty to be found in that of the Greeks, proves that in very early days Leighton's receptive powers were alive to it. The subject which inspired his first great effort appealed especially to Leighton from more than one point of view. In the historical incident which he chose was evinced the great reverence and appreciation with which the early Florentines regarded art, even when expressed in the archaic form of Cimabue's painting. The fact of his picture of the Madonna causing so much public enthusiasm was in itself a glorification of art; a witness that in the integral feelings of these Italians such enthusiasm for art could be excited in all classes of the people. One of the doctrines Leighton most firmly believed, and most often expressed, was that of the necessity of a desire for beauty among the various classes of a nation, poor and rich alike, before art of the best could become current coin.[26] In painting the scene of Cimabue's Madonna being carried in triumph through the streets to the Church of Sta. Maria Novella, Leighton felt he could record not only his own reverence for his vocation, but the fact that all who follow art with love and sincerity find a common ground, whatever the class may be to which they belong. To Steinle, religion and art were as one, and his pupil had so far been inoculated with his master's feeling that, as his friend and brother artist, Mr. Briton Riviere, writes: "Art was to Leighton almost a religion, and his own particular belief almost a creed." As no difference of class should be recognised in church, so neither should any be accentuated between artists, when such are worthy of their calling, a belief which Leighton carried into practice all his life in his relations with his brother artists. He makes Cimabue, the noble, lead by the hand the shepherd boy Giotto, who was destined to outstrip his patron in the race for fame, and to become so great an influence in the history of his country's art. The magnates of the city are represented in Leighton's procession as forming part of it, while Dante, standing in a shadowed corner, is watching it pass.

Again, Leighton was afforded an opportunity, in the accessories of the design, of painting the things which had entranced him in those days when he first fell in love with Italy; the mediaeval costumes in the old pictures, the background to the _Citta dei Fiori_ of hills, spiked with cypresses pointing dark, black-green fingers upwards to the sky, and the beautiful San Miniato crowning one of their summits, the stone pines, the carnations, the _agaves_--all these things that had appealed to his native sense of beauty as such wonderful revelations, when, at the age of ten, he was transported to the sunlit land of art and beauty, after being accustomed to the sights and surroundings of a dingy region in fog-begrimed London.

The subject of Leighton's early _opus magnum_ was indeed no bare historical fact to his mind; it was a symbol of everything to which, in his enthusiasm for his calling, he attached the most earnest meaning, and which was also steeped in the radiant glamour cast over his spirit from childhood by the land that inspires all that is most ardent in the aesthetic emotions of an artist.

The subject decided on, in the spring-time of 1853 he began working, as hard as the trouble in his eyes would permit, at the cartoons for the design. His intention of remaining in Italy during the summer was frustrated, partly by the unsatisfactory state of his eyes and health generally, partly by the decision of his family to return to their home in Frankfort for the summer, before finally settling in Bath. This change of plans is first mentioned in a letter to Steinle received February 23, 1853:--

_Translation._] ROME, VIA DI PORTA PINCIANO 8.

DEAR MASTER AND FRIEND,--How gladly I seize the opportunity to answer your delightful letter, and to connect myself again through the post with a man and a time round whom and which so many dear remembrances cling; that I did not do this immediately on receipt of your lines, I hope you have not set down to a possible negligence or to any sort of cooling of my grateful attachment to you, but that you have thought,--something has happened, Leighton has not forgotten me; and so it is; I suffer with my eyes. How sorry I am to begin a letter by giving you such news, for you expected only to hear from me of industrious making of progress; therefore exculpation of my silence is my first duty. The disorder of my eyes is not painful; I do not suffer with it; I am only incapacitated. Oh, that I were again in Frankfurt, then I should be well! Otherwise I am fairly well, and am intensely eager to do a great deal--and dare not; I am not altogether incapacitated, only my wings are clipped; I work for two or three hours every day, but as I cannot accomplish all that I desire, the little I can affords me the less pleasure; what, however, particularly damps my ardour is the lack of intellectual stimulus, because for _nearly six weeks_ I have not _looked at a book_, for in the evening I simply dare not do _anything_. I have driven myself out into society, till I absolutely prefer going to bed. If I could only compose in my head! but first this was always difficult for my unquiet head, and secondly I have, in consequence of this moral _Sirocco_, been blown upon by such a _svoglia-tezza_ that it is quite impossible; it only remains for me to think sadly of my, and I may say to you, most sympathetic friend, of our hopeful expectation, and to vex myself with the recollection of the zeal and joy with which I had commenced to put my plans into execution in Venice and Florence. My optic ailment is partly of the nerves, but principally rheumatic. You can imagine whether it has been improved by four weeks of unbroken wet weather! But enough of these complaints. I will now turn to your letter and answer the points on which you touch. What a refreshment your lines were to me! They are a mirror of your warm, rich soul; I read with unfeigned emotion how sympathetically you still think of your two pupils; you have not been out of our minds for a moment; see how it is in my atelier here: in your portrait you are bodily, in your writings you are spiritually, present with me daily. That I did not write to you immediately on my arrival was certainly wrong of me, for then I had not begun to suffer with my eyes; but my head was in such a maze that I always put off and thought, I will wait till I hear if he has received my first lines, quite forgetting that you did not know my address in Rome. I am sure you will forgive me. What you imagined about my impressions, agrees at the first blush with the facts, but as regards the "gathered honey" it has unfortunately turned out quite differently. I feel as if blighted, and until I have the full use of my eyes it will not be otherwise. Of Rico I will say nothing, for he will write himself either to-day or to-morrow; I can only tell you that so far we have travelled through Italy in perfect concord and friendship; but there is one thing that he will not tell you himself, he is indefatigably industrious, and has made marked progress in both drawing and painting. One word about my own development. Since I left Frankfurt, my observations on nature and art, in all beyond what is technical, have produced in me a curious shyness, a peculiar and uncomfortable distrust of myself. When on my journey I saw Nature unfold before my eyes in her teeming summer glory, and saw how each flower is like a miracle on her richly worked garment, when I saw how golden threads wound everywhere through the whole fabric of beauty, then it seemed to me that the artist could not without sacrilege pass over the least thing that is sealed with the love of the Creator; when, later on, I noticed in Venice and Florence with what love and truth the great Masters had rendered the smallest, then my feelings arose; I knew only too well that I, until I should have drawn a multitude of studies, could not possibly complete a composition in the sense that I should wish, and otherwise I would not; and the consequence of this knowledge is that I have not attempted a stroke of composition, and I often anxiously ask myself whether I could; thus far it has worked to paralyse me, but on the other hand it has led me to draw some very complete studies which would certainly not displease you, dear Master. Finally, I touch upon a point which, on account of its painfulness, I would gladly pass over. I heard in Florence from Andre of your severe loss, and my first impulse was to write to you to express my sympathy; but when I set about it, I found it so infinitely difficult to say anything suitable without irritating your wound, that in the end I forbore. Your consolation you draw from a higher source than human friendship.

We have visited Overbeck several times, and have found him a dear and estimable old man, but naturally the difference of age and of aims is too great between us for him to supply your place with us; besides, I do not wish that he should in any way supplant Steinle in my memory or affection.

Flatz and Rhoden have welcomed us both most cordially; your name is a charm with them; as regards their art, both are _thoroughly able_, but unfortunately such _literal copyists_ of Overbeck's style that absolutely no difference is perceptible; consequently they are quite insipid to me, for I consider a real independence indispensably necessary in an artist. From all three I send you most cordial greetings.

Much as I could still tell you, my dear friend, I must hasten to a close on account of my eyes. I beg you not to repay my silence in kind, but when you have a moment, put a few lines on paper for the encouragement of your distant pupil. I long also to know how your works prosper, particularly the large one on the grey canvas with the light from above.

Accept the assurance of the unalterable, devoted attachment of your grateful pupil,

FRED LEIGHTON.

It is not impossible that I might come to Frankfurt for a short time this summer.

A Monsieur Frederic Leighton, Frankfort a/M. Poste Restante. BATH, _May 15, 1853_.

MY BELOVED SON,--I have hardly the courage to tell you how intense is our joy at the prospect of meeting you, so much sooner than we had hoped, knowing that our pleasure is obtained, or will be, at the expense of a grievous disappointment to your long cherished and quite reasonable hopes. Your father was quite depressed the whole evening after the receipt of your last letter. I am sure I need not tell you how willingly I would relinquish my expected happiness to promote yours. I shall write but a short letter, as we hope to be in Frankfort soon after this reaches its destination. Surely I told you in my last epistle we mean to spend the summer at home, for the last time to bear that name, alas! I fear I shall never, in England, feel as I do in Germany when tolerably well. The climate makes it impossible for me to feel that springiness of spirit so nearly allied to youthful feelings which I have often enjoyed at Frankfort and for no particular reason. It was in the air, but never notice these observations in your father's presence. He is sufficiently troubled at the thoughts of depriving me of my beloved house and garden, which, after all, is done by my own desire. I have just been reading an extract from a letter to Miss Pakenham from Mrs. Maquay, partly at that lady's request, that we might know the agreeable impression you made on her and your acquaintances at Rome. I will not gratify your vanity by repeating words of praise that have sunk deep into my mother's heart; "for the matter of that," I think your father and sisters are equally pleased at the tribute to your attractive qualities.

I will no farther fatigue your eyes as we hope so soon to embrace you. We fervently hope your eyes will be obedient to the treatment, which shall enable you to return to Rome for the winter. You cannot doubt that your father desires as much as you that you may be in a fit state to return.

God bless you, my dearest, all unite in this wish, if possible, more than the others.--Your tenderly attached Mother,

A. LEIGHTON.

Leighton went for medical treatment to Bad Gleisweiler, bei Landau, and writes to Steinle from there on July 25, 1853:--

_Translation._]

HONOURED AND DEAR FRIEND,--What can you think of me for leaving you so long without news of me! It certainly did not occur through forgetfulness, but because I always deferred in the hope of being able to announce some marked improvement in my condition, but that is still impossible, although my general health (particularly in respect of the hardening against cold-catching) is much stronger, though unfortunately the improvement in my eyes is not great; this, however, requires time, and especially patience. I shall be here another fortnight, then my medical treatment will proceed in a so-called after-cure (Nachkur); I shall be dieted, take many baths, work in moderation--ouf! But I will conform to it all willingly, if only I may very soon return to my adored Italy. How I cherish the beloved image in my heart! how it comforts me! how many idle hours it beautifies for me! how mightily it draws me! The remembrance of the beautiful time spent there will be riches to me throughout all my life; whatever may later befall me, however darkly the sky may cloud above me, there will remain on the horizon of the past the beautiful golden stripe, glowing, indelible, it will smile on me like the soft blush of even. In the meantime, I impatiently await the moment when I shall see you again, my dear friend, and when I shall be permitted to set before your eyes the work which we have already discussed together; I shall seek so to deal with my affairs that you shall not be ashamed of your grateful and devoted pupil,

FRED LEIGHTON.

_P.S._--I beg to be remembered most kindly to your wife, and to all my friends.

(_On envelope_--A. Madame Leighton, 50 Frankfurt a/M.) BAD GLEISWEILER, BEI LANDAU. (_Postmark, July 30, 1853._)

I had the first quarter last year; so that I shall still be where I started; however, I can say nothing more myself to Papa, since he has given me to understand that his reason is want of confidence in me, for, having rejected the obstacle which I myself suggested--that he could not afford it--he leaves no other reason possible. I confess I do not feel much flattered that this feeling should have so penetrated him as to make him fall back from me on an occasion so momentous as the painting of my first exhibiting picture, a moment critical in my career, and on the immense importance of which nobody can, at other times, dwell with more disheartening eloquence than himself; how, he says, do I know that your picture will succeed? Is it this doubt that makes him throw obstacles in my way? Nobody is better persuaded than myself of the kindness of Papa's heart, and of the sincerity of his desire for my welfare, but he does not seem in any way to realise the importance of the occasion. Now, if I, like so many other young men, had gone into the army, he would not--for what father does?--have hesitated for a moment to provide me with my complete outfit as required by the rules of the regiment, for he would have felt that I could not canter about on parade without a coat; but now that I am girding myself for a far greater struggle, now that I am about, single-handed, to face the bitter weapons of public criticism, does he withhold the sword with which he might arm me, for fear I should waste my blows on the butterflies that pass me as I march into the field? At two and twenty I am still in his eyes a schoolboy whose great aim is to squeeze as much "tin out of the governor" as he can by any ingenuity contrive.

Will you remember me most kindly to my uncle, aunt, and cousins, and take for all yourselves the best love of your dutiful and affectionate son,

FRED LEIGHTON.

Leighton took the cartoons for his picture of Cimabue's Madonna to Frankfort to discuss the designs with Steinle and obtain from him his criticism and advice. In the autumn of 1853, the home in Frankfort was finally given up, and the family returned to Bath. Leighton, on his journey back to Rome, stopped some weeks at Florence, to steep himself afresh in her mediaeval art, and to gather fresh material for the details of his picture. During this visit, he drew the group of figures painted _al fresco_ by Taddeo Gaddi on the walls of the Capella Spagnola of Sta. Maria Novella, which included the portraits painted from life of Cimabue and Giotto. In this portrait Leighton found the costume for the hero of his picture. He also repeated the dress in painting the cartoon for Cimabue's portrait executed in mosaic in the Victoria and Albert Museum. The pencil sketch (see List of Illustrations) is wonderful as a drawing, considering the conditions under which it was made. It was secured for the Leighton House Collection, and in the preface for the catalogue it is described (see Appendix). While at Florence he wrote the following letter:--

FLORENCE, 386 VIA DEL FASSO, _November 13, 1853_.

[MY VERY DEAR MAMMA],--How could you for one instant suppose that I could suspect you of coldness towards me? I was quite distressed that you should have entertained such an idea, and had I followed my first impulse should have written at once to tell you so; but, as it so easily happens when one is newly arrived in a strange place, first one thing and then another made me defer writing, till at last I made up my mind to stay at home all this morning, and not to get up till the letter should be finished; I am, however, still several days within my month. With regard to my health, I made no especial mention of it, probably because, as I have a treatment before me when I get to Rome, I attached little importance to my feelings in this state of interim; however, as you mention it, I am happy to say that my faceache makes its appearance decidedly less often than it did in Frankfurt, and that my eyes seem to me, if anything, better since I have got to Italy. One thing is certain, and that is that my spirits are very much improved since I have got back to the dear land of my predilection; I felt it as soon as ever I arrived in Venice; I felt a heavy cloud roll away from over me, the sun burst forth and shone on my path, and a thousand little springs, stifled and half-forgotten fountains of youth and joyousness, gurgled up in my bosom and buoyed up my heart, and my heart bathed in them and was glad--happy Fred! that he has such sources of joy and happiness! Unlucky Fred! for he will never be able to live but where the heavens always smile--and where he can economise on umbrellas!

I have had many happy hours within the last three weeks, but I think that the happiest time of all was the afternoon of our descent on to Florence from the mountains of the Romagna; even the morning of that day was very enjoyable, for although the sky was murky and cross, and it rained as far as you could see, yet I knew that that very evening, in that very coach, I should be rattling along the streets of dear, dear Florence, and that bore me up, and I made light of the rain, and whistled out of tune in order to take off the wind, who, in spite of his fine voice, has certainly no ear for music. Then, too, we had a most amusing coachman, who did nothing but tell stories and crack jokes the whole time. One episode is worth transcribing: "Seen to-day's paper, sir?" (turning sharply round). "Well, no" (says I); "anything in it?" "Ah!" (says he), "very interesting correspondence from the moon." The article seems to have been as follows: "Our correspondent in the moon tells us of rather a discreditable affair which has just taken place in a high quarter. It seems that the other night St. Peter, having spent the evening with a few friends, by whom he was entertained with the distinguished hospitality which his high position entitled him to expect, left them in such a state of excitement and, in short, intoxication, that he lost his way, and was missing at his post till ten o'clock the next morning. Unfortunately, too, he had taken the keys with him. About two o'clock in the morning a batch of souls, with passports for heaven, came up to the gates and requested admittance, but finding all knocking in vain, they were obliged to spend the night behind a cloud in a very exposed situation, which was made doubly disagreeable by their having put on in anticipation the very slight costume habitually worn in the abode of eternal happiness; several severe colds were caught." "But all this," he added (mysteriously producing a key from his waistcoat pocket), "does not affect me--letters, you know, despatches." I have myself subsequently consulted the papers in question, and find that St. Peter, in the confusion of his ideas, had taken up his seat at the other Sublime Porte, and had inadvertently let a lot more Russians into the Danubian Principalities. So the papers say. However, I confess that I rather question the whole affair.

I close with the old, yet ever new refrain. Pray, write very soon! if at once, to Florence, Poste Restante; if not, to Rome, Poste Restante.--With very best love to all, I remain, dearest Mamma, your dutiful and affectionate son,

FRED LEIGHTON.

BATH, _August 13, 1854_.

MY DEAREST FREDDY,--We are delighted to know you are out of Rome, for it is possible to have too much of a good thing; and much as you delight in "seeing the streets flooded with light and glittering under a metallic sky" (how beautiful it must be!), the pure air of the country, a less fierce heat, and a total change of scene, will, I trust, make a new man of you. How long a holiday shall you take, and did you mean that you are staying with the Sartoris family as a visitor? under all circumstances you will be a great deal with them, and as for the happiness you would so affectionately share with me, I would not, if I could, deprive you of a morsel of it; you are enjoying such unusual social advantages that it is a solace to me to know that you are capable of appreciating them. Thank God, you have no taste for what so many men of your age call pleasure, and that in spite of your sociable disposition, you always show good taste in the choice of your companions. I wish we could have a little of your society. The ---- are still familiar and dear friends, but their minds are so different, so conventional, that many sides of your sisters' minds are closed, even to them.

The next letter from Leighton to his mother was written after he returned to Rome:--

(_On cover_--Mrs. Leighton, ROME, VIA FELICE 123, No. 9 Circus, Bath, England.) _January 19, 1854_. (_On cover--Arrived Jan. 6, '54._)

DEAREST MAMMA,--When I received your long expected letter, which, by-the-bye, took sixteen days reaching me, I was just winding myself up to write and tell you that I was sorely afraid some letter of yours must have been lost; I need hardly tell you that I was relieved of a considerable anxiety when I found that all was right, and that your letter, not mine, had been detained in that most slovenly of all institutions, the Roman post.

And now that I have taken up my pen, what a quantity I have to make up for in the way of congratulations, and greetings, and good wishes relative to days often and felicitously to recur! what jolly birthdays loom in the imagination, what Christmas Eves and Christmas Days, and old years going out and new ones coming, with a punctuality never known to fail! Alas! that I cannot send you some outward and visible sign of my inward sympathies and hearty yearnings; here would be a fine opportunity of enumerating an extensive catalogue of blessings which I sincerely wish to see showered down upon you, but that they can all be returned in one compendious, all-embracing word--Health! I therefore laconically but heartily wish you all _that_, positive or relative; and this leads me to _mine_. Well, let me confess it (unromantic as it undoubtedly is); I feel there is no shirking the avowal that, stamping all things down into an average, and squinting at little annoyances, I--must I say it?--_am about as happy as the day is long_: may my happiness reflect a little of its light on your days, dearest and best of mothers! I have begun my report of health by an average of my spirits; I think there is more _a propos_ in this than one might at first sight imagine. I proceed to the other details which differ widely from your probable expectations; you ask me whether I leech myself with conscientious regularity. Now I don't leech myself at all! My reason for abstaining when I first came was that I feared so strong a measure till my spectacles should arrive that I might therewithal screen and protect my exhausted blinkers. It is only the other day that the said barnacles arrived, and as I have meanwhile gone on working day after day without great inconvenience to my eyes, I really think I might do myself more harm than good by drawing blood, the more so that I am by no means a person of full habit that I could spare much of that article.

On turning to your letter, I find the next point you touch is my music. I did indeed try my voice at the Hodnett's as you anticipated, but unfortunately I never by any chance had anything like a decent note in my voice during the whole time that I was in Florence; indeed at the very best of times it is the merest "fil de voix" that I have, which, however, would not prevent my cultivating it for my own private enjoyment, but for a circumstance which will astound you perhaps, but is nevertheless a great fact--to wit, that I can't afford it! The expenses of my pictures are far too considerable to allow of it this winter; next winter I hope to make up for lost time and still to be able to chirp some little ditty when I once more skim by the paternal nest. A piano I have, such a hurdy-gurdy! I fear, alas! I am an inveterate blockhead; I daily lament that you did not _drub_ music into me when I was a child; I should then have broken my fingers in time; my youngsters shall most assuredly learn it with a stick in their minds' eye. As we were just talking of the ----s, I must mention that I founded my opinion less on what they say than on what _I_ think and see; they could not either of them be happy if they could not have their bonnets and dresses from the most fashionable _modiste_, turn out drag of their own, and in every way be "the thing"; that they like me, I know, but I believe they would not have me if they liked me twice as much; I am not exactly poor, I admit, but I seem something like it in Florence, where it is the custom for young men to drive to the Cascine in elegant broughams or phaetons, to find their riding-horses at the round piazza, to prance and amble round the ladies, and then to drive home again in the style they went. But let me speak of more important things; you will be pleased to hear that my compositions have been highly approved of by all those whose opinion has weight with me. Cornelius said, the first time he saw them, "Ich sehe Sie sind weiter als alle Englaender ausgenommen _Dyce_;" that is a great compliment from such a man. I have made one alteration in my plans, of which Papa, I think, will not disapprove; I found, on more accurate calculation, that, in order to paint my Cimabue of such a size as to be admissible to the London Exhibition, the figures would be far smaller than my eyes would tolerate; I have therefore reversed the order of things, and am painting it on a large scale for the great Exhibition in Paris (spring, '55), in which all nations are to be represented, and where size is rather a recommendation than an obstacle. My "Romeo" I shall send to London in the same year; it will be a foot each way smaller than Lady Cowley's portrait; thus I also have the advantage of giving the Florentine picture a size more commensurate to the art-historical importance of the event it represents. With regard to the sale of it, I hug myself with no vain delusions. I paint it for a name; I could not have a finer field than is offered by the great International Exhibition in question. I must come to a close, for I expect a model immediately, and do not wish to miss to-morrow morning's post. _La suite au prochain numero._

Pray write soon, dearest mother, and tell me all I long to know about yourselves, the house, the furniture, your friends, and your dinner-party; meanwhile, having first largely helped yourself, pass up to all the dear ones very best love and kisses from your dutiful and affectionate boy,

FRED LEIGHTON.

(_On cover_--Mrs. Leighton, ROME, VIA FELICE 123, 9 Circus, Bath, England.) _March 22, 1854_. (_Received March 31._)

DEAREST MAMMA,--As I see no chance of finding time to write to you in the ordinary course of things by merely waiting for it, I lay down my brush for this afternoon, and "set to" regularly pen in hand to answer your last, dated the fifth (let us be business-like), but which did not reach me till a few days ago. According to the egotistical practice which you have wished me to adopt, I begin with an account of myself: I am very much at a loss to tell you anything of my eyes that shall convey to you a correct idea of their state; one thing is certain, which is that their weakness bears no regular proportion to the work done; sometimes when I do little or nothing my eyes feel uncomfortable, and at others, when I do a great deal, I suffer nothing. For instance, yesterday, having a great deal of work cut out for the day, I worked eleven hours, with barely half an hour's respite at twelve, and, _pour comble de mefaits_, I did what I rarely venture on--I read at night; and yet I feel little or no inconvenience. The fact is, my eyes are the humble servants of my head, which is particularly sensitive; at the same time I hesitate to adopt leeches (unless, of course, Papa adheres to his opinion), because I don't feel as if I were over-troubled with blood; what do you think? My _otherwise_ health is, thank God, very decent. I am not a robust man, but I jog on very comfortably, and feel very jolly, and I am sure I have a good many reasons to be so. About the hours I spend inactive, I don't feel that so severely as I did last winter, by any means; in the first place, I work till five or so (from seven or eight in the morning), then, you know, I dine at six, which I make rather a long job; then, in the evening, instead of tiring my eyes as I did last winter with dancing, _which_ I have totally forsworn (there are more "whiches" in my letter than in the whole tea-party on the Blocksberg in "Faust"), I spend nearly all my time at the house of my dear friends, the Sartoris, where, I assure you, to pass to another point in your letter, I neglect no opportunity to cultivate my poor unlettered mind. It is indeed my _only_ opportunity, for to study, alas, I have neither time, health, nor eyes, and the hopes to which you allude, and which I myself once entertained, must, I fear, be given up. The worst feature in my mental organisation is my utter want of memory for certain things, a deficiency of which I am daily and painfully reminded by the mention in my presence of books which I have read and enjoyed, and which I have _utterly_ forgotten. My only consolation I find in the hope that I shall be able to devote myself with double energy to the art "proprement dit," and in the reflection that hardly any of the modern artists (alas, what a standard!), that have possessed extensive knowledge and varied accomplishments, have had them as a super-addition to the gift of art, but _at the expense_ of their properly pictorial faculties; to every man is dealt a certain amount of _calibre_--in one man's brain it breaks out in a cauliflower of variegated bumps, in another's it flows into one channel and irrigates one mental tree, and "sends forth fruit in due season"--hem! Thus, whilst _I_ paint, _others_ shall know all about it; _I_ shall be an artist, let _them_ be connoisseurs. What did poor Haydon (for I _have_ read the book) get by his mordant gift of satire and his devouring thirst for ink? He embittered old enemies, made new ones, estranged his friends, encouraged the fierce irascibility of his own temperament, allowed himself to cuddle the phantoms of undeserved neglect which always haunted him, distorted his own perceptions, and cut his throat! Without that pernicious gift, Haydon would not have written, the Academy would have hung his pictures as they deserved, for his early works were full of promise, they would have stood by him in the hour of need; had everything that he saw and heard not fallen in distorted images on the troubled mirror of his mind, he would, no doubt, have produced better works. Haydon might have been a happy man! With regard to the practical lesson to be drawn by myself, this painful book undoubtedly shows in a strong light the absurdity of _always_ painting large pictures--a practice in which, I assure you, I have not the remotest idea of indulging. To one thing, however, which you observe, dear Mamma, I must beg to take exception, as involving a very important question: you say Haydon persisted in following the historic style, to the exclusion of pictures of a saleable size; now this would only avail as precedent against historical art on the supposition that that walk necessarily implies colossal proportions, than which idea (though Haydon seems to have entertained it) nothing can be more false. Is it necessary to mention Raphael's "Vision of Ezekiel," "Madonna della Seggiola," or a thousand other pictures, by him and others, which utterly confute any such notion? But even were it so, we must also not overlook the fact that the unsaleability of Haydon's pictures had its cause as much in their quality as in their quantity, and I will hold up to you, in contrast to his sad story, the case of Mr. Watts, who gives a sketch of the artistical character at the end of the autobiography, and who has as many orders for _fresco_ as he can execute for a considerable number of years.

BATH, _April 17th_.

MY VERY DEAR FRED,--I have left a longer interval than usual between this letter and my last, for your convenience and my advantage; that is to say, that by arriving close on the time for your writing to me, the contents of this sheet, or anything in it needing comment, may not have escaped your memory till no longer wanted, for, with the best possible wish to be contented with the epistles for which I look forward so anxiously, I cannot help feeling a little disappointed when you do not answer inquiries. I do not wish to be unreasonable, my darling, in my demands on your time, but I cannot bear that your letters should be mere unavoidable monthly reports, and not what mine are to you, that is, in intention; though I make every allowance for natural infirmity. Could we but have foreseen your weakness of sight, I should have felt a great inclination to thrash you into exercising your memory more than you did, though I am not at all sure that the result would have been satisfactory; and with respect to music, I am convinced you would not have made a satisfactory return for any knowledge acquired by dint of birch, but--if it were not useless--I would enlarge upon the imprudence of having neglected your father's admonitions at a more recent period to store your memory; remember it for the sake of your own young people when you are the venerable papa of an obstreperous youth like yourself. I think upon the whole it is satisfactory that the uneasiness in your eyes depends on your general health. Papa thinks the sensation you describe when drinking must be nervous, and connected with the narrow swallow you inherit from me, a peculiarity which has shown itself in four generations. We do not feel so certain as it would be comfortable to do that the climate of Rome is the one best suited to a nervous person; but of course you will seek a healthy change of place as soon as the heat makes it desirable. I must remind you of the unpleasant fact that your constitution very much resembles mine; remember what I have come to, and do not trifle with yourself; do not say to yourself: What a bore Mamma is! I am constantly thinking of my precious absent son, and long, as only a mother can, to see you; when I look at your picture, I feel quite wretched sometimes that I cannot, though you seem alive before me, stroke your cheek and lean my head on your chest. The other day we were startled by the appearance in the drawing-room of Andrew, Lizzy, and the girls; and the first greeting over, "That's my saucy Fred," burst out of your aunt's mouth; "dear fellow, what a likeness;" and Lina was equally admired, and we all agreed in deploring Gussy's absence from the wall. I wish I could see your studies, for I suppose you have a great many for your great undertaking. Models are probably cheaper than in Germany--are you conscious of improvement? This seems an odd question, but it is suggested by the fact that while Gussy practises most diligently, she seldom seems conscious of the improvement I perceive distinctly. Do you see Cornelius from time to time, and gain anything from him? You never mention if you have any friends amongst the artists distinguished in any way.

ROME, _April 29, 1854_.

I have of late, since the underpainting of my large picture (at which I worked like a horse) given myself rest and recreation in the way of several picnics in the _Campagna_ under the auspices of Mesdames Sartoris and Kemble. We are a most jovial crew; the following are the _dramatis personae_: first, the two above-mentioned ladies; then Mr. Lyons, the English diplomatist here (whom your friend probably meant); he is not ambassador, nor is he in any way supposed to represent the English people here, he is only a sort of negotiator; however, a most charming man he assuredly is, funny, dry, jolly, imperturbably good-tempered; then Mr. Ampere, a French savant, a genial, witty, amusing old gentleman as ever was; then Browning, the poet, a never-failing fountain of quaint stories and funny sayings; next Harriet Hosmer, a little American sculptress of great talent, the queerest, best-natured little chap possible; another girl, nothing particular, and your humble servant who, except when art is touched, plays the part of humble listener, in which capacity he makes amends for the vehemence with which he starts up when certain subjects are touched which relate to his own trade; in other things, silence, alas! becomes him, ignorant as he is, and having clean forgotten all he ever knew![27] I shall not be able to leave Rome more than a month in the summer, as the work which I have carved out for myself makes it utterly impossible. You must know, however, that the hot months (July and August) are not the dangerous ones, but September, when the rains set in. During that month I shall give myself a complete rest from work, and shall go to the baths of Lucca, the healthiest spot in Italy, where I shall enjoy cool air, country scenery, and, better than all, the society of the Sartoris, who are going to spend the summer there; meanwhile, I shall take what precautions I can; I shall live as the Italians do, getting up early, and sleeping in the middle of the day, and shall resume flannel, if you do not advise the contrary, as I see reason to believe that it is a great preservative against fever. As for the general climate of Rome, I don't give it much consideration, as there is not the least probability of my ever _residing_ here; I think there is not a worse place for a rising artist to set up his abode in than Rome, on account of the want of emulation as compared, for instance, to a place like Paris, where there are hundreds of clever men, all hard at work, and where an artist is always exposed to comparisons. It is impossible for me to give you any decisive answer about my progress, for you know I have been busy all the winter drawing studies; I shall see when I come to the picture itself what steps I have made forwards; I reckon on its being the best thing I shall have done, I can say no more. I believe Sartoris, whose judgment in all the arts is excellent, considers me the most promising young man in Rome; but that does not mean much--we shall see!

Of my daily life and occupations, I have little or nothing to say, as they are monotonous to a degree; parties, of course, have ceased, and I am just about to leave p.p.c.'s everywhere, as I don't mean to go into the world at all next year. I don't remember whether I told you that some little time back Mrs. Sartoris gave some tableaux and charades in which your humble servant co-operated; the whole thing was, I believe, very successful. The greatest treat I have had lately has been hearing Mrs. Kemble read on different occasions Julius Caesar, Hamlet, and part of Midsummer Night's Dream; I need not tell you how delighted I was.

(_Cover_--Mrs. Leighton, ROME, _May 25, 1854_. Circus, Bath, England.) (_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 medaille_ 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.

_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?

You paint me a very melancholy picture of the situation in Frankfurt; it is certainly a most unpleasant state of things, all this quarrelling and dissension! When I, at this distance, think of such a regular hermit-like way of going on, I feel quite disgusted; it is fortunate that you, dear Friend, have in the ecstasy of creation a resource that can never fail you. But how comes it that Hommel and Hendschel, formerly your enthusiastic pupils, have now cooled down? That is very incomprehensible; they do not know their own interests. I congratulate you most heartily on the completion of your large picture, which I am very sorry not to have seen finished, and I am especially glad to hear what you tell me about the shield-bearer, for that breathes to me of _industrious study of nature_! Believe me, that you, the mature master, who still consents to play the part of a student, will not be without your reward.

What you have written me about my work has put me into a most terrible dilemma, a dilemma which I am still very deep in. It is a presumption that I should set up _my_ ideas, and a disobedience that I should take the advice of other friends, against your judgment; but I have gone so carefully into this manner of representation, that I beg you, dear Friend, to reconsider the matter, and see whether I am not right. These are my reasons: it seems to me that the action in my pictures, if ostensibly a triumph of the artist, yet, at the same time, as an historical event, is just as much the consecration of a Madonna, for which reason I (as you know) have placed the masterpiece which is being carried upon a small decorated altar; that such a solemn event probably took place on a church festival (as was the case with the consecration of the Chapel) may very well be assumed; would not such a festival in the _thirteenth century_ be important enough to justify the presence of the bishop? But much more important than this question of historical probability, appears to me the consideration that the conception of a bishop is only made tangible to the general mass of spectators by certain symbolic articles of apparel, which are in some degree inseparable from it; a bishop's presence in the procession is most probable. Why should I not put him there? Amongst others, this opinion was also held by Cornelius, to whom, as an experienced Catholic, I naturally applied at the outset, and who told me candidly that he would leave it. I hope you will not accuse me of being too stiffnecked; in other respects I am certainly docile.

Since I last wrote to you I have been fairly industrious on an average. I have now under-painted "Romeo and Juliet" in grey (grau untermalt), made both the colour sketches, and have now fairly got into the over-painting, or rather second under-painting, of "Cimabue"; but I have not been always within four walls; on the contrary I have profited by the beautiful spring weather, and have often gone out into the divine Campagna with a party of dear friends, male and female, and I need not tell you that we have enjoyed it. I wish with all my heart you could be with us, my dear Master. Rico, the ever-industrious, for he does twice as much as I, sends you warm greetings. I must now close. I wish I could tell rather than write to you how you are loved and esteemed by your devoted pupil,

FRED LEIGHTON.

Please remember me most kindly to your wife.

_Translation._] FRANKFURT AM MAIN, _August 6, 1854_.

MY VERY DEAR FRIEND,--You have heaped coals of fire upon my head, for I have not answered your last dear note, brought me by Andre, and now I have received by Miss Farquhar the lovely study of Vincenzo's head, which you so kindly wish to present to me. I am almost dumfounded to find that you could believe I was angry with you because you have not written me for so long, and that you believe that the indignation had been ignored in my last note. That, dear friend, was a complete delusion, for there is nothing to which I am more partial than to artists' letters, and nothing to which I am more insensible than to such flattering praise as you lavish upon me, while I know only too well how unfortunately little I have deserved it. In earnest, dear friend, call me no more master, but rather regard me as your true and sincere friend, who only out of friendship for you and love of art, far removed from despicable dissimulation, faithfully shares with you his opinions and experience, and never regards them as the pronouncements of an oracle. I know very well what a difference there is between the description of a work of art and the sight of it; the first, at best, only gives one side, one part, whilst seeing places before our eyes the whole soul of the artist, from all sides, and then much is made mutually clear which in the former case appeared either not understood or misunderstood. Miss Farquhar could not tell me enough about you and your work, and greatly kindled my curiosity and desire to be in your _atelier_ for once; I was only sorry that she had nothing to tell me about Gamba; indeed, on the whole, she knew nothing about him. If I am to express my thoughts of the very beautiful head of Vincenzo, it seems to me that Leighton ought to guard against striving for excessive fineness, for works of art can only be produced by quite the contrary method. A certain roughness must bring out fineness, but if everything is fine, nothing remains fine, &c. But believe, though this head half displeases me, especially on account of these theories, I think it beautiful and masterly in drawing, and am consequently proud to possess it, as I am of all that I have from your hand. I thank you a thousand times for this fresh proof of your friendship. About this place, let me be silent; you are right to say that art is my refuge, and that I find in it my compensation for much that goes ill here and everywhere; I must also not allow this asylum to be profaned by the trifles of the very human things that surround us in this world.

Greet from me Rome, Gamba, Cornelius, and all the friends who remember me; and to yourself, dear friend, heartfelt greetings from your true and unchanging friend,

EDW. STEINLE.

Before leaving Rome Leighton received the following characteristic letter from Mr. Cartwright, one of his truest life-long friends:--

CARLSBAD, _July 11, 1854_.

MY DEAR LEIGHTON,--You will be astonished to see a letter from me. I can assure you that I have often thought of you, and meant to indite you an epistle in the hope of eliciting a reply full of Roman tale from you, and lately, when through Papeleu I heard of your great canvass labors, my yearning got a new twinge which at last has been pinched into expression by the start at Pollock's resuscitation. I had heard of his death in Paris and had mourned his fate most sincerely, when the first man whom I met tramping health out of the hot water of Carlsbad was Pollock himself. He is himself again every inch of him; indeed a most wonderful recovery; and, after deep and valorous potations of hot water, we take long walks in the hills. He goes from here to Marienbad and Prague, and means to be back in Rome by the end of October. And I also mean to return there. Like a true drunkard, I can't forswear my bottle, and I must have another pull at it. We shall be there, I hope, in the beginning of October, and I hope, my dear Leighton, that you will not grudge me the pleasure of letting me have a few lines, so that I may know whether you will be there in the winter and what are the changes in Rome since my time. Are the Sartorises to be there next winter, and where are they now? Pray answer me this, as I particularly wish to know where they are. I have heard that there were such crowds of strangers at Rome last winter that quarters were not to be had; and for this reason I wish to be there early. Do you happen to know what is the price of the floors in the house on the Pincio which was built by Bystroem the sculptor? Next to the Trinita, immediately after the sculptor's studio, there is a small house inhabited when I was last in Rome by some French officers (at least a sentinel was at the door) and years ago by Mrs. Sartoris. Pollock tells me it is now to be let. Would you be kind enough to give me any information you can about it. It is a house I have often coveted on account of the view. I beg your pardon for my coolness; I hope you will bear kindly with it; if I can do anything for you in Paris, command me: but anyhow pray write to me, if only a few lines, for in my heart I wish to have some news about you and old Rome. The other day I saw at the Louvre our old friend the very questionable _Vittoria Colonna_ which was at Minardis. It was for Exhibition there in the Gallerie d'Apollon: what the picture is I cannot pretend to pronounce, but I do not like it: it is a picture in which I have no confidence. I think that if not a made picture, it is at all events a tame one. This year there was no Salon as it has been put off till next year's great Exhibition. Robert Fleury has sold a picture to the Luxembourg which is not so good as his former ones; but the man who I think is the most _marked_ one of the day is Conture. Excuse my scrap, and pray take pity on my longing and write me, were it only _a line_. I should be grievously disappointed were you to refuse me the pleasure. I shall be _here till the 7th August_; until the _25th August_, after that date letters will find me Frankfurt Poste Restante; and after that in Paris Poste Restante. If you write here, put Carlsbad--Boehmen--and in a corner, _Austria_. And now farewell; with a real ... I am longing for a letter. The kindest regards to my Caffe Greco and other friends.--Yours most sincerely,

W.C. CARTWRIGHT.[28]

After his stay at the Bagni di Lucca, in the summer of 1854, Leighton went to Frankfort, Venice, and to Florence, returning to Rome in October.

In the following letter to Steinle are sentences it might be well to print in finest gold, for the benefit of students who try to run before they walk, who aim at the freedom and glorious inevitability of a Velasquez touch without taking the pains to equip themselves worthily to enter the lists with the giants; not realising that skipping over the underpinning, necessary in creating any work of art, must result in the shakiest of edifices. The sentence refers to the criticism in Steinle's letter of August 6, 1854, on the drawing of "Vincenzo" (called by Leighton "the prettiest and wickedest boy in Rome") which Leighton had sent him.

_Translation._] ROME, VIA FELICE 123, _October 22, 1854_.

As I am making a short pause to-day in my work, I cannot employ it better than in writing a letter to you, my very dear Friend. It was a very great comfort to me to see by your last lines that you had not construed my former long silence as a cooling of my friendship and gratitude, and I therefore hope that you will also this time meet me with the same forbearance. You will certainly be interested to hear, my dear Friend, that both my pictures are by this time fairly forward, and I expect to finish them within three months. How much I wish that you could see them here, and that I could put in the finishing touches under your supervision! I would give you an account of my work, but, bless me, what is there to _tell_ about my picture, except that it has given me a fearful amount of trouble, and that in the end one perceives how circumstantially one has gone to work on the whole matter; the "Cimabue" goes to London and the "Romeo" to Paris. While I am speaking of my works, I take this opportunity to touch gratefully upon your kind remarks about the study head of Vincenzo, and to inform you, however, that my opinion of it takes rather more the form of a question than that of an objection. I have often considered the question of the self-guidance of an artist who is left to his own devices, and it has often struck me how many wander in evil by-paths through an unorganised, may I say _unprogressive_, development of their gifts; and now it seems to me that most of them are wrecked because they maturely study _the object to be attained_, while the _means_ are not considered which should lead to such results. For example, a young man sees a Raphael, a Titian, a Rembrandt, all in their latest manner, and hears people say: See how broad, how full, how round, how masterly! And the student naturally conceives the wish that he also might produce broad and masterly works, and _so far_ he is right; but from that point he goes aside. He goes home and _strives_ and _strains_ after masterly breadth; he succeeds (apparently), and he is lost. The soap-bubble is quickly blown; he rejoices in its gay colours; it flies up and breaks in the air. And the cause is simple; the true, genuine mastership is not an _acquired quality_ but an _organised result_. As with art itself, so is it also with the individual artist. If we cast an eye over the progress of art-history, we see how the full, conscious, free, has developed itself out of the meagre, timorous, scrupulous, dry. Similarly if we compare the first efforts of the individual with his last, we perceive the same thing: place M. Angelo's "Pinta" beside the decorations of the Sixtine, one of Raphael's works at Perugia beside the "Stanzen," Rembrandt's "Lecon d'anatomie" beside the "Nightwatch," and it will be evident in the most striking manner that not one of these men had risen by means of his talent to full breadth in his youth, or had been in any way studious to do so, but on the contrary that they have attained mastery by natural growth. In order, therefore, to reach the same altitude, the young artist must proceed in the same manner as his exemplars, and must endeavour so to direct his studies that he, according to his gifts, may achieve a similar result. He who would fill his threshing-floor must not _glean_, but rather he must _sow_ that he may richly harvest; he who would have rare fruits all his life must plant and cherish the tree; even so should the young artist seek to plant a tree the normal fruit of which is called "artistic perfection." You will easily understand how by the application of these maxims my preliminary works go forward rather _timorously_. Entire conscientiousness is now the chief thing to me. I _am laying_ the foundation on which I hope to rely firmly later on; I am amassing capital and am not yet in enjoyment of the interest. "How many objections to a couple of words?" you will laughingly remark; dear Friend, I must feel myself indeed well equipped before I permit myself to oppose anything against your judgment.

Of Gamba I will say nothing, for he is going to enclose a few lines in this.

I have made a trip to Florence this summer, and again thoroughly enjoyed the art-treasures. I think I have spoken to you of the wall-paintings by Giotto which were discovered two years ago in Santa Croce; one of them, which represents the death of St. Francis, is the literal prototype of the celebrated fresco by Ghirlandajo (on the same subject) in the Sta. Trinita, and I really prefer it.

Time, eyes, paper fail me, and I must close. I hope that, if you write to me again, you will tell me exactly what you are doing.--Meantime, dear Master, accept the heartfelt greeting of your grateful pupil,

FRED LEIGHTON.

Please remember me most kindly to your wife and to all my friends.

Leighton's eye trouble having become a constant anxiety and hindrance to him, he resolved to consult Graefe, the great German oculist. From Florence, on his return journey, he writes his impressions of Berlin to Steinle. In this letter he repeats again the sense of happiness which he always experienced in Italy.

_Translation._] FLORENCE, 386 VIA DEL POSSO, _November 13_.

MY VERY DEAR FRIEND AND MASTER,--At last I am able to write to you. In the hurry and bustle of travelling, and even in the short sojourns that I have made here and there, it has been impossible for me to sit quietly down and compose a letter. Even to my parents I have written this morning for the first time since I left Vienna. But you will readily believe that during this time I have often travelled in thought to Frankfurt in loving remembrance of you, my dear Friend.

Strange things have happened to me since I saw you. I had not even reached Berlin when I was informed by a "jebildeten" (cultivated) Prussian that Graefe, on whose account exclusively I was travelling to the "geistreichen" (clever) capital, had gone away for an indefinite period; imagine my dismay! Luckily on my arrival I found an old friend who was acquainted with the family of Geheimerath von Graefe, and who found out through them that Graefe must arrive at the Golden Lamb (Leopoldostadt) in Vienna on such and such a day. I met him, and had a consultation at which he examined my eyes with the ophthalmoscope, and told me to be of good cheer, my trouble was certainly obstinate but in no way dangerous, and I might hope for a complete cure. He prescribed me a course for Rome, which consists principally of local blood-letting and wearing spectacles, and will be very tedious; but I will gladly conform to anything in order to get my eyes back again. One thing is certain, since I have been in Italy they have been quite markedly better, which I attribute for the most part to the diminution of my hypochondria. Yes, since I have been in Italy I have become a new man; I breathe, my breast throbs higher; heavy clouds have rolled away from me; the sun shines again on my path, and my heart is once more full of youth and love of life; if only you were also here, dear Friend!

But I must tell you something about my German travels, and I will begin with Berlin. There is certainly something special about that town. At the first glance it is somewhat imposing, and the prodigious quantity of new buildings, which evidently aim at architecture, gives (one may hold one's own opinion as to the taste of the buildings) the appearance of great artistic activity and of a widespread taste for art; but I have since found reason to regard this apparent love of art as something feigned or forced. One gets quite sick of _education_ in Berlin; would you believe that now _every girl_ has to pass an _examination as governess_?[29] Kaulbach understands the Berliners well; in Raeginski's house a study of a Roman piper hangs in great honour, which he has purchased from the _great master_ on account of a doggerel verse which is written on it in large letters, and runs thus:--

"Upon my travels in Italy, This little boy I found, but he, Although my brush may his form repeat, Remains to my sorrow incomplete."[30] --W. KAULBACH.

Divine! eh? I knew a counterpart in the Belgian art-world. When I visited Gallait in Brussels some years ago, before the door stood a ragged, most picturesque Hungarian rat-catcher, who asked me if an artist did not live there. Recently I saw my Slav again, with a violin under his arm, in a window, very finely lithographed, I believe even an "artistes contemporains"; in the corner was "Louis Gallait pinx"; underneath, "Art et Liberte"! Thus do pictures originate!

In Berlin everything is valued extrinsically. One sees that most strikingly in the new Museum. When it is finished, it will be, in proportion to the means of the town in which it stands, the most splendid that I know; moreover, it cannot be denied (unsuitable as a three-quarters Greek building may be on the banks of the Spree) that much in the architecture is even very beautiful. But what is the good of it all? With the exception of some Egyptian antiquities, in all these lavishly gilded and painted rooms there are only _plaster casts_! Yes, and, I must not forget it, the great tea-service of Kaulbach. A wretched thing, made, moreover, with superfluous productiveness; simple allegory carried out without any fine sense of form, with utter denial of all individuality, and painted--well, of that one would rather say _nothing_; and yet "Kaulbach has the Hellenic art," &c. &c., and all the rest that is in the papers. One would like to exclaim with Cassius: "Has it come to this, ye gods!"

Unfortunately I cannot praise the Cornelian things in the _old_ Museum much either. I must confess they displeased me greatly; when I consider them from a distance in their connection with the building, I find them disproportioned; in a long, very simple colonnade, built on a large scale, I require of a fresco painting that it shall show in form and colour large, quiet, plastic masses; instead of that I see here a gay, unquiet, confused _fricassee_ of thought and allegory that makes one dizzy; ideas in such profusion that nothing remains with the spectator; he goes away without having received anything; nor is the mental impression plastic. If, however, one goes nearer to see the execution, again one finds nothing pleasing--a constrained, unlovely drawing--positions that could only be attained by complete breaking on the wheel--a general appearance as if the figures had no bones, but muscles made of brick instead. The colour is not much better than Kaulbach's. The end-piece on the right, an allegorical representation of the death of man (or something of the kind), gives the most ordinary and at the same time most awkward sudden impression that I have yet seen. Cornelius may look at the Vatican in Rome and see if he can find anything like it there. Altogether the once certainly great artist seems to have somewhat deteriorated; the Cartoons at the Campo Santo are not by a long way so good as the design (which I find charming in parts); they are here and there, which greatly surprised me, disgracefully _out of drawing_; and then the theatrical attitudes, conventional clothes, &c. &c. In the Museum itself there are few pictures of the first rank, but so much the more beautiful are those by masters of the second rank. What a Lippi! what a Basaiti! what a Cos Rosetti! I was entranced; that is art, character, form, colour, all in beautiful harmony. The "Daughter of Titian" does not deserve its celebrity; it is weak and dull.

But my paper is exhausted, as are also my eyes; I will therefore defer the rest to another letter, and only mention that in Vienna Kuppelwieser, Fuehrich, and Roesner received me like a son of the house, and all sent hearty greetings to you. Do write to me very soon, dear Friend, and keep in kind remembrance your grateful, devoted pupil,

FRED LEIGHTON.

My address is, Poste Restante, Rome.

Please remember me most kindly to your wife, and generally to all friends.

When tracing the ever-swaying ebb and flow in the tides of joy and sorrow in a life, we come to times which seem to accumulate in their days the whole strength of feeling and vitality of which a nature is capable; prominent summits that rise triumphant out of the troublous waves, up to which the past existence has seemed to climb, and the memory of which retains a dominating influence in the descent of the future.

"I--h'm--must I say it?--am just as happy as the day is long." So wrote Leighton to his mother when at the age of twenty-three he was spending his days in and about Rome--that wonderful Rome with her world of ghosts, her solemn eventful past skimmed over and made faint by her actual sunlit present. To Leighton that sunlit present became vividly, excitingly alive. Fountains of joy were springing up in the artist-nature, catching as they sprang golden rays from all that is most beautiful in youth's dominions. Leighton writes to Steinle (July 25, 1853): "The remembrance of the beautiful time spent there (Rome) will be riches to me throughout my life; whatever may later befall me, however darkly the sky may cloud over me, there will remain on the horizon of the past the beautiful golden stripe, glowing, indelible; it will smile on me like the soft blush of even."

When, in the late autumn of 1852, he first arrived in Rome, he had just stepped from the position of being one in a family to that of being an independent unit; and, though accompanied by his brother artist, Count Gamba, he felt greatly the loss of what he had left behind--the inspiring companionship of Steinle, compared to which nothing in Rome was worthy to count as an art influence. Obliged to work in a small, inconvenient studio, the only one obtainable--expected friends, whose society he valued, failing him--he felt the want of so much that he could hardly enjoy what he had. In those first days (as we gather from his letters) the Eternal City cast no fresh glamour over his spirit.

Spring came, and the tune changed with the entrancement of Persephone's release in the balmy warmth of the South. The spring air twinkles with sunshine, and the fruit-trees are again alive with gay blossom, of fluttering petal, frail as the soft moth wing; the villa gardens are again bedecked with grand, more solid petalled flowers--brilliant-hued camellias--and later,--the noble magnolia's ivory white goblets; while the ground is carpeted with violets and varied-hued anemones. All over the wild spaces of the Campagna spring up grasses and lovely unchequered growth, spreading a green and golden fur, bristling in the bright light for miles and miles under a cloudless sky away to the faint blue line of mountains on the horizon. On one summit--golden in the sunlight--the old town of Subiaco is poised; on nearer slopes--summer haunts of the ancient Roman world, Tivoli, Frascati, Albano: the wastes of budding herbage between checked only here and there by some spectre of old days, some skeleton of a broken archway, some remnant of a ruined wall.

It was on these strange wilds of the Roman Campagna that the life-long friends, Giovanni Costa and Leighton, first met. Here is the description of the delightful scene of their meeting, and of Leighton's previous introduction to Costa's work at the famous Cafe Greco, written by Costa after his friend's death:--

"In the year 1853, the Cafe Greco at Rome was a world-renowned centre of art, a rendezvous for artists of all nationalities, who had flocked to Rome to study the history of art as well as the beauties of nature surrounding the sacred walls of the Eternal City.

"At the Cafe Greco[31] there was a certain waiter, Rafaello, a favourite with all, who had collected an album of sketches and water-colours by the most distinguished artists, such as Cornelius, Overbeck, Francais, Benonville, Brouloff, Boecklin, and others, and I felt much flattered when I too was asked to contribute, with the result that I gave him the only water-colour I have ever done in my life. Leighton was also begged by Rafaello to do something for the album, and having it in his hands, he saw my work, and asked whose it was. On being told, he advised Rafaello to keep it safely, saying that one day it would be very valuable. When I came later to the Cafe, Rafaello told me how a most accomplished young Englishman, who spoke every language, had seen my water-colour, and all he had said about it. I was very proud of his criticism, and it gave me courage for the rest of my life.

"That same year, in the month of May, the usual artists' picnic took place at Cervara, a farm in the Roman Campagna. There used to be donkey races, and the winner of these was always the hero of the day. We had halted at Tor de Schiavi, three miles out of Rome, and half the distance to Cervara,[32] for breakfast. Every one had dismounted and tied his beast to a paling, and all were eating merrily.

"Suddenly one of the donkeys kicked over a beehive, and out flew the bees to revenge themselves on the donkeys. There were about a hundred of the poor beasts, but they all unloosed themselves and took to flight, kicking up their heels in the air--all but one little donkey, who was unable to free himself, and so the whole swarm fell upon him.

"The picnic party also broke up and fled, with the exception of one young man, with fair, curly hair, dressed in velvet, who, slipping on gloves and tying a handkerchief over his face, ran to liberate the poor little beast. I had started to do the same, but less resolutely, having no gloves; so I met him as he came back, and congratulated him, asking him his name. And in this way I first made the acquaintance of Frederic Leighton, who was then about twenty-two years old; but I was not then aware that he was the unknown admirer of my drawing in Rafaello's album. I remember that day I had the great honour of winning the donkey race, and Leighton won the tilting at the ring with a flexible cane; therefore we met again when sharing the honour of drinking wine from the President's cup, and again we shook hands. When I heard from Count Gamba, who was a friend and fellow-student of Leighton's, what great talent he had, I tried to see his work and to improve our acquaintance; for as I felt I must be somewhat of a donkey myself, because of the Franciscan education I had received, and because I was the fourteenth in our family, I thought the companionship of the spirited youth would give me courage."

And again it was on the Campagna that that choice and delightful company picnicked in the spring-time of the year, of which company Leighton wrote on April 29, 1854 (see p. 146).

Who knows but that it was at one of these notable picnics that Browning was inspired to write his wonderful little poem on the Campagna?

"The Champaign, with its endless fleece Of feathery grasses everywhere, Silence and passion, joy and peace, An everlasting wash of air-- Rome's ghost since her decease.

Such life there, through such lengths of hours, Such miracles performed in play, Such letting nature have her way, While Heaven looks from its towers."

Life was full to overflowing in those inspiring days, and Leighton was indeed "as happy as the day was long." Friendships grew apace. Many were made which were lasting, notably that with Mr. Henry Greville, the most intimate man-friend of Leighton's life. His friendships with Sir John Leslie, Mr. Cartwright, George Mason, Mr. Aitchison, Sir Edward Poynter, all began in those early happy days in Rome. Artists living there, who included this gifted brother-painter in their comradeship, showed more and more sympathy towards his work as they became more intimate with the delightful nature. Leighton had arrived so far forward on the threshold of his success that anxiety about his pictures was outweighed by hopeful expectancy; but it was while still standing on the threshold--that really most inspiring of all stages in the journey, during the two years from 1853 to 1855, before the great triumph of signal success crowned him--that we catch the happiest picture in Leighton's life. To use his own words, "In this world confident expectation is a greater blessing, almost, than fruition."

In a letter he wrote to Fanny Kemble on February 1, 1880, Leighton refers to a conversation he had with her at this "outset of his career"--a conversation which recurred to him, he tells her, when he first addressed the Royal Academy students from the presidential chair in 1879. He offers a copy of his discourse for her acceptance, ending his letter by the words: "If you remember that conversation, you may perhaps feel some interest in reading the Lecture, of which I ask you to accept a copy. If you do not remember it, nevertheless accept the little paper for the sake of old days which were not as to-day."[33] How much can a few words say! If gratified ambition could ever make an artist-nature happy, how transcendently happy Leighton ought to have been in 1880! But the fibre which strung the highest note in his nature never vibrated to worldly success. Though his ambition may have sought success, and his passion for fulfilling to the utmost his duty towards his fellow-creatures may have greatly welcomed it, he remained to the end of his life ever on the threshold of that kingdom, the possession of which could alone have satisfied what he "_cared for most_."

The following letters mention the progress of the _opus magnum_ to its completion, also of the "Romeo" picture, and his visits to Florence and the Bagni di Lucca. The first begins by his expressing his ever-growing dislike of general society.

[_Commencement missing._]

Miss ---- is no less than ever, and no less agreeable, as far as I can judge; I have only called once as yet, I have an ungovernable horror of being asked to tea; my aversion to tea-fights, muffin-scrambles, and crumpet-conflicts, which has been gathering and festering for a long time, has now become an open wound. The more I enjoy and appreciate the society and intercourse of the dozen people that I care to know, the more tiresome I find the commerce of the others, _braves et excellentes gens du reste_; the Lord be merciful to the overwhelming insipidity of that individual whose name is Legion--the _unexceptionable_--the _highly respectable!_ My great resource is, of course, Mrs. Sartoris, whom I see at some time or other every day, for it would be a blank day to me in which I did not see her; God bless her! for my dearest friend. I warm my very soul in the glow of her sisterly affection and kindness. Little baby is the same sunbeam that he always was; did I tell you I painted his likeness in oils as a surprise for his father? as a picture it is not unsuccessful, but any attempt at a portrait of that child is a profanation, and will be till we paint with the down of peaches and the blood of cherries, and mix our tints with golden sunlight; still, it pleased _them_, and that ought to be enough; but I am an artist as well as a friend. A very interesting acquaintance I have here in the shape of Rossini, the great Rossini! Poor Rossini, what a sad fate is his, to have lived to see the people on whom the glory of his splendid genius has shone turn away from him in forgetfulness, neglecting his classical beauties to listen to the noisy trivialities of a ----, who has made the Italian name in music a by-word of ridicule; with the music of course, the singers have degenerated also; a singer no longer requires to be an _artist_, it is no longer necessary that he or she should study his or her part till every note has a meaning and a character expressive of the words of the libretto, and accompanied by musical and impassioned _mimica_; no, let the _prima donna_ only squall out her never-ending _fioriture_ with sufficient disregard for the safety of her lungs, or the _primo tenore_ shake the stage with a _la di petto_, and all is right. This is a digression, but as an artist I can't help taking it to heart, and wanted to have it out. Amongst Mrs. Sartoris' few "intimes" at this moment is a Neapolitan lady, la Duchessa Ravaschieri, daughter of Filangieri the minister, who has given her himself an education almost unique amongst Italian noblewomen, who are insipid and ignorant beyond anything.

FLORENCE, HOTEL DU NORD, _September 20, 1854_.

DEAREST MAMMA,--I was much surprised, as we very naturally measure time past by the number of events that have taken place in it, the interval between this your last letter and the previous one seemed to me doubly long, for I have changed scene so often during these last four or five weeks, and have moved so much from place to place, that it seems to me an age since I last despatched a letter to England; from which you will naturally and correctly infer that it was a very great pleasure to me once more to see your handwriting. Your kind anxiety and advice about the cholera I shall remember when I get to Rome (which will be in a week or ten days), where that disease prevails, although mildly, for what are thirty cases a day in a town of that size? In the meantime, both at the baths where I have been, and at Florence, where I am, the cholera has not dared to show its face; indeed, such a prestige of salubrity attaches to the name of the baths of Lucca that eight days' sojourn at that place is considered tantamount to a "_quarantaine_!" It is a very strange thing, this exemption from disease, for in a number of the surrounding villages the number of people carried off has been frightful. As for that after apprehension of yours, dearest Mamma, about my being alone and uncared for in case of illness, I am happy to say that nothing can be more unfounded; I have in Mrs. Sartoris that genuine friend, and, especially, genuine _woman friend_ that in such a case would leave nothing undone that you, the best of mothers, and my own dear sisters, would do for me. It is her habit, when any of her bachelor and homeless friends are poorly, to go and sit with them and nurse them, and do you think that I, who have become one of her most intimate circle, should need to fear neglect? In the friendship of that admirable woman I am rich for life. Poor thing, she has lately received a great blow in her own family from the sudden calamity which has befallen her. This shocking news reached me here, at Florence, where I had come on from the baths, and ascertaining that her husband was gone off to England to inquire into the matter, and that by a chance her boy's tutor was absent at the same time, I instantaneously went off to Lucca, where I stayed a week (till the return of the tutor), taking care of her boy, hearing him his lessons, and especially keeping him out of the way; in the evening I used to walk or drive with her, and to my infinite gratification was able to be some little comfort and distraction to her; my only regret in the whole business was that I was making no material sacrifice of my own time and pleasure, so that I had not the satisfaction of comforting her at my own expense. In adopting the resolution, which I have communicated to you, of retiring from society, I have taken into consideration all that you say, dear Mamma, and more too, for I feel I have of my nature a very fair share of the hateful worldly weakness of my country-people; still, I have found no sufficiently great advantage or compensation for the tedium of going out; the Roman _grand monde_, a small part of which I know, and which, had I chosen to push a little, I might have known all, is of no _use_ whatever in reference to my future career; added to which I believe I told you that I never by any chance got introduced to anybody, so that whomever I know, I know by chance, or by their own wish. For instance, last winter I met the Duke of Wellington constantly, both at the Sartoris' (he is a very old friend of hers) and at the Farquhars', and though he is the most accessible of men, I made no attempt to make his acquaintance, and so it is with everybody. But for the _tableaux charades_ which Mrs. S. gave last winter, in which I was joint-manager with herself, and was therefore brought into contact with her numerous co-operating friends, I should probably have known few or none of those who were at her house every week; always excepting our own intimate circle, to wit, Browning, Ampere, Dr. Pantaleone, Lyons, Count Gozze, Duke Sermoneta, &c. You know, when I say I shan't go out, it is in so far a _facon de parler_, that, as I shall be at least every other day at Mrs. Sartoris', I shall not be at home, trying my eyes. I quite agree with you in thinking this business of ----'s a most awkward thing; I cannot understand a man having once gone into the army and made his profession to be honourably killed for his country, should not jump at the idea of going to the scene of war; I have felt a very strong desire to lend a hand myself, but one cannot drive two trades. My singing (in particular, and music in general) I have avoided mentioning, because, dear Mamma, it is a subject on which I have _no_ reason to dwell very complacently; my first disappointment was finding my voice, instead of strengthening in an Italian climate, getting if possible weaker than it was. It is the merest "fil de voix." I have therefore as the onset very insufficient "moyens"; this is owing, not only to the insufficiency of my "organe," but also to an unpleasant visitation in the shape of swollen and irritated tonsils, the very ailment, I believe, under which Gussy labours. This symptom, which I have carried about some time, is, I fancy, not likely ever to leave me permanently; add to this that as soon as I sit down to thump with elephantine touch a most ordinary accompaniment, the little voice I have vanishes; thus between two stools ... you know the rest. Still, I am bound to add that Mrs. Sartoris (who could not flatter) has great pleasure in hearing me coo a little song or two that I know, and says I have what is better than voice, which is a musical "accent," and that (she is pleased to add) to a rather remarkable degree; my voice is weak and powerless, but true and facile. I will tell you exactly what to expect when you see me again. I shall be able to sit down to the piano and whine some half-dozen pretty little ballads, with a rum-tum-tum accompaniment of affecting simplicity. Gussy dreams of me as "very handsome" and "are my whiskers growing?" I am _not_ very handsome, none of my features are really _good_. My whiskers _have_ grown, they are undeniable, there is no shirking them, or getting out of the way of them; _I wear whiskers_ though you were short-sighted; _but_ they are modest ones; as for moustaches, the seven hairs which I have (and wear) are not worth mentioning, but still I have none of that delicacy which you profess on the subject. In my opinion, _if_ gentlemanhood is a thing dependent on the scraping of four square inches of your face, and residing only in the well-shaved purlieus of a (probably) ugly mouth, I feel equal to going without it, in that shape at all events. A moustache, and even a beard, if kept short enough to be in keeping with a not very flowing costume, is both becoming and convenient, and I fear that the whole prestige of respectability hovering around Mr. and Mrs. ----, or the withering contempt of the irreproachable Sir John and Lady ----, would not make me shave, unless, indeed, I felt too hot about the chin. I have gone through your letter, and shall wind up with a few words about my doings, which, by-the-bye, might be compendiously characterised by one word: _nothing_. My holidays are drawing to a close, and I shall be in Rome, working very hard to get my pictures done for the Exhibitions. Meanwhile I am enjoying Florentine sunsets, the gorgeousness of which defies description. The other day, in particular, I was on the heights near the Miniato, I thought I had never seen anything like it. I remembered Papa's fondness for that spot, and wished he had been there to share my enjoyment; the lanes were cool and pearly grey; over them hung in every fantastic shape the rich growth of the orchards and gardens that crowned the lengthened walls; the olives, strangely twisted, flaming with a thousand tongues of fire; the wreathing vine flinging its emerald skirts from tree to tree; the purple wine flashing in the fiery grape; the stately _mais_ flapping its arms in the breath of the evening; the solemn cypress; the poetic laurel; the joyous oleander--all glorified in the ardour of the setting sun, that flung its rays obliquely along the earth; you would have been enchanted.

ROME, VIA FELICE 123, _February 10, 1855_.

DEAR PAPA,--I hasten to answer your kind letter and to thank you for the willingness you express to advance such a sum of money as I shall require to cover the heavy expenses I am incurring. I forgot to mention in my last letter that my picture will be directed straight to the frame-maker's who undertakes the exhibiting of it.

In approaching the other points which you touch in your letter, I feel that my letter will unavoidably have a combative colouring, which I sincerely hope you will not misconstrue, and beg that you will consider whether the reasons I advance for not conforming to your suggestions are not sound ones. If I particularly object to accompanying my picture, it is because I think that the small advantages that might accrue from so doing would in no way make up for all I should lose; whatever can be done to my picture on its arrival in England will be kindly done for me by my friend, Mr. T. Gooderson, who is in the habit of receiving and varnishing Buckner's works on similar occasions; with respect to the interest to be made amongst the Academicians in behalf of my op. magn., I have neglected _that_ on the _express advice_ of Buckner, who has great experience in those matters and is a most kind and honest man; he says, such is the party spirit of R.A.'s, that the best chance of securing impartial treatment (in the case of a work of merit) is to be _completely unknown_ to all of them, a condition which I am admirably calculated to fulfil. You are also perhaps not aware that my picture will reach England _five weeks_ before the opening of the Exhibition, so that by accompanying it I should completely lose all the best part of the year here in Rome. There are a great number of things which I propose doing now that my pictures are about to be off my hands. There are here several very remarkable heads of which I wish to make finished studies, and especially also I am loth to go without having drawn anything from Michael Angelo and Raphael, which is one of the chief objects for which one comes to this city of the past; but, I do not hesitate to say, the principal task which I propose to myself is a half-length portrait of Mrs. Sartoris, to which I wish to devote my every energy that it may be worthy of perpetuating the features of the last Kemble; irrespective of the enormous artistic advantage to be derived from the study of so exceptional a head, you will easily understand my eagerness to give some tangible form to my gratitude towards those whose fireside has been my fireside for so long a time; nothing would grieve me more than missing so good an opportunity. I confess, too, that I wished to see a little more leisurely the glorious scenery that lies all round Rome, and which I have hitherto hardly glanced at, and partly indeed not seen at all. I had indeed contemplated before leaving Italy, making a trip to Naples, Capri, Oschia, Amalfi, and all the spots about which artists rave. This, however, will I fear be under all circumstances a financial _chateau en Espagne_.

_Translation._] ROME, VIA FELICE 123, _February 12_.

HONOURED AND DEAR FRIEND,--That you, who know me so well and are so well aware of how I carry your image in my heart, could misinterpret my silence I did not fear for a moment, for rather will you have thought to yourself that the stress of my occupations in the course of the day, and my incapacity to do anything at night, have hitherto prevented me from writing; and so it is; for, be you assured, dear Friend, that, as long as I pursue art, you will be ever present with me in the spirit, and that I shall always ascribe every success which I may possibly attain in the future to your wise counsel and your inspiriting example, for "as the twig is bent the tree's inclined."

First I will tell you about my health; thank Heaven, as regards my general health, I have nothing to complain of; if not exactly strong, still I am lively and in good spirits, and look out upon the world quite contentedly. My eyes--well, yes, they might be better; otherwise I am always in a condition to work my seven or eight hours a day without over-exertion, in return for which I dare not do anything in the evenings. To tell the truth, my position is not an agreeable one; I am not bad enough to follow the course prescribed for me by Graefe, but on the other hand not well enough to be able to feel quite tranquil....

Time has slipped away in stress of work since I commenced this letter. I throw myself again upon your goodness, dear Master, and beg you will not measure my love by my readiness in writing, for then I should certainly come off a loser. I told you that my affairs have pressed upon me; I have finished my "Cimabue." I am dreadfully disappointed, dear Friend, that I cannot, as I hoped, send you a photograph, but it has been impossible for me to have one taken, since the picture is so large that it could not be transported to a photographic loggia without fearful ado and unnecessary risk to the canvas; I will therefore exert myself to write you what it looks like. First you must know that I changed my intention as to the respective sizes of the two pictures, for I perceived that my eyes could not possibly permit the Florentine composition to be carried out on the proposed scale. I therefore took a canvas of 17-1/2 feet (English measure), in consequence of which my figures have become half life size (like Raphael's "Madonna del Cardellino"), and do not look at all ill. The other picture (which I shall send to London) will be something over 7 feet long by 5 feet. If I am to get them both finished by next January, I must set to work in earnest. I have made the following alterations: first, those prescribed by you, viz. I have made the picture which is being carried larger, the chapel smaller, and have suppressed the flower-pots on the walls. A further alteration I have made by the advice of Cornelius; he said to me that the foremost group (the women strewing flowers with children) seemed to him somewhat to disturb the simplicity of the rest of the composition, and suggested that I should put in a couple of priests, especially as the portrait is of a Madonna and is being taken to a church; he further advised me, in order to prevent the picture from being too frieze-like, to allow this foremost group to walk up to the spectator. It now looks something like this:

(Slight sketch of the design for "Cimabue's Madonna.")

I hope with all my heart that you will approve these alterations. I have drawn a quantity of heads and hands, which are all finished, like the "Chiaruccia" which I gave you; drapery is not lacking. How I regret, dear Friend, that I cannot show them to you. Gamba also is very industrious; he has made endless studies, and has also got his record ready. He sends you most hearty greetings. Of his diligence there is always plenty to tell, and you will not be surprised when I tell you that he has made very gratifying progress.

I could still tell you a great deal, my dear Master, of what I have seen and experienced! but time and, alas! especially eyes compel me to be laconic, or this oft-begun letter will never be finished. Therefore I will only briefly narrate what happened to me in the imperial city; my goodness! how long ago that seems. My first impression, as I alighted from the train, was very pleasant. A lovely autumn morning, the Prater with its beautiful trees, the Jaegerheil in the sunshine, all together welcomed me gaily. I alighted in the Leopold suburb, and set off on foot the same morning in quest of Kuppelwieser, a cordial, charming man. Through him I became acquainted with Fuehrich and Roesner, who both received me no less kindly. They all remembered with warm affection their dear comrade, Steinle, and sent most hearty messages to him. Of their works (for to you, best of friends, I write frankly) I cannot, candidly, speak very highly, but perhaps I might of the tenacious maintenance of their opinion in spite of the boundless, oppressive indifference of the Viennese towards high art. Now, the dear friends are somewhat ascetic representatives of their mode of thought--a mode of thought which can be combined, as we have seen in the great days of art, with the greatest charm of representation; but this quality is unfortunately too often absent from our friends. Of the two, Kuppelwieser is the less offensive; he is perhaps rather antiquated, but not without cleverness; Fuehrich is far too ornamental for me, and as a painter, God save the mark! Good gracious! what is nature there for? What can the people make of all this! how is it possible that one can get so far in spite of a perverted training! that people do not perceive their fearful arrogance! They plume themselves upon piety and humility, and in God's beautiful creation nothing is right for them; do they then ever admit, these gentlemen, that they do not want nature any more because they are aware that they no longer know how to use her? Would they feel happy if they saw a Masaccio, a Ghirlandajo, a Carpaccio? But they in their drawings are pretentious and puffed up, but there is no learnedness in them, and that which God has made so lovely with all the brilliancy of colour, they daub with any dirt, and call it a picture; some even (that was still lacking) shrug their shoulders spitefully and mock--at the unattainable. And whence does all that arise? How is it that even sensible, clever men are so ill equipped? It is due solely and alone to the topsy-turvy, involved principle of education, to the fact that the people, while they are still young, labour and worry day and night at the representation of unrepresentable ideas, instead of drawing from nature and from nothing else for ever and ever amen, till they are in close harmony with her; that would be a soil from which the tree of their art could grow upwards, fresh, powerful, ever-herbescent; that they might not stand there in their old age as high, proud, upward-aspiring trunks without leaves, without sap. Naturally all this is not aimed at the good Fuehrich, but in general against all those who in their infatuation allow themselves, behind the shield of severe sentiments and high efforts, to throw overboard all the difficulties of art. How gladly my thoughts turn away from such unpleasing reflections to you, dearest Friend, who take nature for your model in every part of your pictures, and with your high degree of ability are always the devoted pupil of _nature_! Keep, I beg you, _your_ grateful pupil in sympathetic remembrance, and never doubt the devotion of your loving friend,

FRED LEIGHTON.

Please remember me most kindly to your wife; also to my other friends. If you see Schalck, will you kindly say to him that I have received his letter, and will answer it when my eyes permit. I am longing to hear what pictures and drawings you are making! Will you forgive my silence, and write to me?

My picture is under-painted grey-in-grey (_grau in grau_); I finished it in a week; it was a great effort.

ROME, VIA FELICE, _February 19, 1855_.

DEAREST MAMMA,--As the body of the letter I have just received is written by Papa, I have thought well to address to _him_ the important part of mine; you will therein see all the business news that I have to give, and will, I know, be much pleased to hear that my picture has had great success here; I hope it may not have less in London. As the picture is of a jovial aspect and contains pretty faces, male and female, I think the public will find _leur affaire_; the "Romeo and Juliet" (also nearly finished) will, though perhaps a better picture, probably be less popular from its necessarily serious and dingy aspect. Dear Mamma, I am much tickled at your comparison between the Campagna and the environs of Bath; it is like saying that strawberries and cream are equal and perhaps superior to a haunch of wild boar! _l'un n'empeche pas l'autre_, but they can never be compared, nor can they answer the same purpose. The Sartoris are well; I am there every evening of my life.

The next page is Papa's. Good-bye, dear Mamma. Best love from your affectionate and dutiful son,

FRED LEIGHTON.

_P.S._--My resolution not to dance I have kept (excepting in the case of quadrilles), and have avoided making new acquaintances, as I intend next winter not to go out at all; but if I have no longer agitated the fantastic toe, and have acquired a cordial dislike to balls, I have been all the oftener to my dearest and best friends, the Sartoris, to whom I go about four times a week, and of whose sterling worth it is impossible to speak too warmly; at their house also I have made several interesting acquaintances; Fanny Kemble (as you know), Thackeray, Lockhart, Browning, the authors; Marochetti, the sculptor, and so on; as for Mrs. Sartoris, I look upon her as an angel, _ni plus ni moins_, and I feel terrified at the idea of how much more exacting she has made me for the future choice of a wife, by showing one what opposite excellencies a woman may unite in herself.

_To his Father--Part of letter missing._] 1855.

It is with very great pleasure that I announce to you the completion of my large picture, which I have exhibited privately to my English friends and a crowd of artists of all nations. You will, I am sure, be gratified to hear that it had a remarkable "succes"; artists of whatever school seem equally pleased, some admiring the drawing, others the colouring. I hope that what I say does not savour of vanity; I simply tell it you from a conviction that it is agreeable to you to hear what people say of your son, and to anticipate in some measure the verdict of a larger public. As for the positive _value_ of it, we all know what to think about _that_. It amused me to hear that several people compared my picture to the works of Maclise, and came to conclusions considerably in my favour. Swinton paid me the compliment of requesting to be introduced to me, and seemed very sincerely to admire my picture, as also a portfolio of leads which I have drawn at different times, and which are much admired by everybody.

Of course you did perfectly right in not dreaming of exhibiting Isabel's likeness. Pray do not think from what I said about my lengthened stay in Rome, that I undervalue the delight of seeing you all again, but still I think that if by a little postponement I can have that pleasure without losing my spring, it would be better. My idea is to remain in Italy till the end of May, and then visiting Paris (to see the great Exhibition) on my road to get home by the middle or end of June, which will still leave me a long summer's holiday.

This letter from his mother contains the news of Leighton's father's joy at the success of the picture in Rome:--

_February 18, 1855._

Now I think of it, you have probably some signs of spring about you--how enviable! My dear Fred, I did not compare the artistic resources of Bath with those of Rome, well knowing that the transparent atmosphere there imparts beauty to the country which, without it, might not be remarked; equally bright and clear the sky is not in England, but I assure you that many parts of the country near us and in Devonshire, and doubtless in many other counties, may for beauty challenge a comparison with many most admired spots in Italy and elsewhere, though the character of the landscape is different. Nevertheless, I shall be very glad to see again Switzerland, Southern Germany, &c. &c. Pray, dear Fred, if you do go to sketch in the Campagna, take care not to expose yourself to any disagreeable adventures with Brigands; I _entreat_ you, be prudent. Not to tire you with repetition, I have not alluded to the success of your picture, but I must tell you that your father was radiant with joy as he read your letter and gave it into my hands with the words, "That _is_ a satisfactory letter." I am curious to know _when_ we shall see your Paris picture, and whether we shall winter in that delightful town; Papa and I have always wished it. I must just mention, what I had nearly forgotten, that a great treat is in store for the inhabitants of Bath, as next week Mrs. Fanny Kemble is to read some of Shakespeare's plays in public, with appropriate music. A great treat is expected. God bless you, love, I can no more. Our united affectionate greetings.--Your attached Mother,

A. LEIGHTON.

ROME, _January 3, 1855_. (_Recd. January 12._)

DEAREST MAMMA,--Let me hasten to reassure my poor dear progenitor on the subject of his anxieties; if I spoke doubtfully and despondently of my performances, it was owing to the lively feeling that every artist, whose ideal is beyond the applause of the many, must entertain of his own shortcomings; once and for all let me beg him never to feel any uneasiness on the score of mechanical processes, as in such cases one always has the resource of cutting the Gordian knot by painting over again the unsuccessful portions, an expedient indeed to which I have many a time been forced to resort; the result of such failures is called experience; through such failures alone one arrives at success. Nor am I wanting in the applause of my friends, who all speak in praise and encouragement of my works, and it is not a little gratifying to me to find that those whose opinions I most value are the first to speak favourably of my endeavours; as agreeable as is to me this testimony on their part, so indifferent am I, and must I beg you to be (for better and for worse) to the scribbling of pamphleteers; the self-complacent oracularity of these _pachidermata_ is rivalled only by their gross ignorance of the subjects they bemaul, and the conventional flatness of all their views; I speak without fear of being considered partial, as the article which you communicate to me contains more of praise than of blame; it is, however, my practice never to accept (inwardly) the praise of those whose blame I don't acknowledge. I happen to have seen other articles from the pen of this same Mister ----, and know _a quoi m'en tenir_. The notice on myself I had heard of, but not seen. It may amuse you to hear that my draperies have been considered (alas!) the most successful part of my picture, and I am at present labouring hard to bring the heads, &c., _up to them_! In about a fortnight, the large work ("Cimabue," the "canvas of many feet") will be, D.V., finished, with the exception of the ultimate glazes and retouches; by the end of February, both pictures will start for their respective destinations. One thing has caused me some annoyance and anxiety; I wrote a month ago (or more) to one Mr. Allen, carver and gilder, 31 Ebury Street, Pimlico, sending a design of my frame, and requesting him to let me know at once what would be the cost of such a frame, whether he would undertake it, and asking many questions important to me to know; I have received no answer; I therefore must take for granted that either he has not received my letter, or his answer to me has been lost; now, as there is no longer any time to correspond on the subject, I must, on the supposition that my letter has gone astray, send another design together with an unconditional order to begin at once at whatever cost; now I grudge the time of writing a duplicate of my old letter, and especially that of drawing a new diagram for his guidance. With regard to the price, Fripp, who recommended him to me, says Allen is a very respectable man, and will no way take advantage of my awkward position; I calculate the frame can hardly exceed five and twenty pounds; then there will be the bill for exhibiting the picture of which he will take charge; I expect that the framing, packing, sending, &c., of the two canvases together will cost about fifty pounds "tant pis pour moi!"

(Here the letter breaks off.)

(_Cover_--Madame Leighton, 9 Circus, Bath, England.)

ROME, VIA FELICE 123, _March 2, 1855_. (_On cover--Recd. April 12._)

DEAR PAPA,--I received a day or two ago the kind letter in which you inform me of the disposition you have made to enable me to get the money I want, and for which I sincerely thank you; your letter reached me just as I was driving the last nail into the coffin of my large picture; the small had been disposed of in like manner the day before. Delighted as I am to have got them at last off my hands, yet I felt a kind of strange sorrow at seeing them nailed up in their narrow boxes; it was so painfully like shrouding and stowing away a corpse, with the exception, by-the-bye, that my pictures may possibly return to my bosom long before the Last Judgment. With regard to the success of my picture with its little Roman public, nearly all the praise that reached my ears was bestowed _behind my back_, so that whether intelligent or no, I have good reason to believe it was sincere; indeed, I should not else have said anything about it; Cornelius, I am sincerely sorry to say, did not see my daubs in their finished state; he was prevented by ill-health; however, all the advice he could give me I got out of him in the beginning, and indeed, as you know, altered about a dozen figures at his request; in points of material execution he is utterly incompetent; I am happy to say that he feels very kindly towards me, as indeed he told me in plain words, and added on one occasion, "Sie koennen fuer England etwas bedeutendes werden;" I need not tell you that as he is altogether without apprehension of the peculiar and very great merits of some of our artists, he considerably overvalues my (relative) value. You ask for _my_ opinion of my pictures; you couldn't ask a more embarrassing and unsatisfactory question; I think, indeed, that they are very creditable works for my age, but I am anything but satisfied with them, and believe that I could paint both of them better now; I am particularly anxious that persons whom I love or esteem should think neither more nor less of my artistic capacity than I deserve; the plain truth; I am therefore very circumspect in passing a verdict on myself in addressing myself to such persons; I think, however, you may expect me to become eventually the best draughtsman in my country; Gibson and Miss Hosmer are, as you expect, amongst those who praise me, but I warn you that they are both utterly without an opinion in matters pictorial. Who is ----? He is, _entre nous_, the worst painter I ever saw, but also the greatest toady, in virtue of which quality he makes L5000 a year by portraying the nobility of Great Britain and Ireland; however, towards me he has been very pleasant and nice, and so long as there is no lord in the way he is a sufficiently companionable person. I certainly feel very little desire to have my "Cimabue" hung in the little room you speak of, but I fear that I must take my chance with the rest; the fact is that although I personally have taken no steps in the matter, still "ces messieurs" will not be unprepared for my picture, because I know that old Leitch for one will speak to them about it and will do everything that is friendly; he even offered to varnish it, but _that_ another friend of mine has already undertaken. One thing is certain, they can't hang it out of sight--it's too large for that. I must leave myself room to write afterwards to Mamma....

...I am glad that you have made up your mind to not seeing me as soon as you expected; indeed I felt sure that when I told you all the reasons which concurred to make me prolong my stay, you would feel the force of them; I willingly confess, too, that I was most strongly biassed on the matter by my reluctance to part from my friends, but particularly _her_. I am horrified at the use you make of the words "indefinite time"; I shall certainly never live long anywhere without going to see them, and I trust that our "intimes relations" will not cease as long as I live. How sorry I am that I should not have known in time that Mrs. Kemble was to read in Bath; I should have liked so to introduce you to her; you no doubt found her reading a rare treat. How beautiful is the "Midsummer Night's Dream" with Mendelssohn's music! This reminds me of dear Gussy and _her_ music; I suppose her new master is a good one, or she would not have taken him; generally speaking I have a sovereign dislike for the _engeance_ of _pianistes_ with their eternal jingle-tingles at the top of the piano, their drops of dew, their sources, their fairies, their bells, and the vapid runs and futile conceits with which they sentimentalise and torture the motive of other men; we have a specimen here in the shape of the all-fashionable ----....

Referring to a lady of his acquaintance, he continues:--

She has acquired by her melancholy and sometimes haughty moods a character for misanthropy which she has not cared to refute; but, my good sir, she is DIVORCED! Poor cowards! should they not rather gather her to them, and "weep with her that weeps," Bible-wise Pharisees! Your letter is full of thrilling events: children born among the Australian flocks of Mr. Donaldson; little ----, too, taking to herself a husband--alas for the Laird of (probably) Ballyshallynachurighawalymoroo! I must think of answering dear Gussy's note, and close with a hearty kiss, from your dutiful and affectionate son,

FRED LEIGHTON.

DEAREST GUSSY,--Many thanks to you for your kind note and for the sympathy and interest which you both offer and ask. How heartily sorry I am that you should still be persecuted by the soreness in your throat, and should be prevented, poor dear, from singing; you who have the rare gift of that which is unteachable and without which the most brilliant execution is dumb to the heart; I mean musical accent. I had hoped that we should sing together, but I fear that if the air of Bath has such a bad effect on the throat, I shall be invalided as well as yourself. What is about the compass of your voice? or (which is more important) in what _tessitura_ do you sing with least discomfort? that I may see whether anything I sing will suit us; unfortunately most part of my limited _repertoire_ consists of the first tenor part in quintettes and quartettes, which are not available for us two. I don't know whether I told you that I take a part in Mrs. Sartoris' musical evenings, in which I officiate as _primo tenore_; you may imagine how great an enjoyment this is to me. Dear Gussy, how I wish you could hear _her_ sing! it would enlarge your ideas and open out your heart; I am sadly afraid however, that she won't winter in Paris, so that if you go there you must make up your mind to not meeting her; but if you are in England in October she may possibly be there by that time, and you might make her acquaintance; if I sell either of my pictures, and am "sur les lieux" at the time, I will take you and Lina to town at my own expense and introduce you to the dearest friend I have in the world; I long for you to know and love one another. You ask me whether she is like her sister; in _expression_, sometimes, strikingly like; in _feature_, not in the least. She is the image of John Kemble, with large aquiline nose and the most beautiful mouth in the world, a most harmonious head, and, like Fanny, the hair low down on her forehead; artistically speaking, her head and shoulders are the finest I ever saw with the exception only of Dante's; in spite of all this, many people think her barely good-looking, because she has no complexion, very little hair, and is excessively stout; _you_ will be more discriminating. I am amused at Mamma's asking me in her letter whether I know why ---- did not know the Sartoris! Pardi! I did not introduce them,--in the first place I have been obliged to make a rule to introduce nobody to that house, as I should otherwise become a nuisance; people have constantly fished for introductions knowing my intimacy; but the chief reason is that Mrs. Sartoris has the judgment and courage to ask to her house nobody but those she _likes_ for some reason or other, for which reason her house is the most sociable in the world; her "intimes" are a complete medley, from the Duke of Wellington down to a poor artist with one change of boots, but _all_ agreeable for some reason; I know that she would be kind to _any one I_ brought to her, but I also know that the ----s would have been in the way and a _corvee_ to her, which fully accounts, &c. &c.

I am delighted, dear Guss, that you have a music master to your heart, and that you have been considered worthy to play Bach's Fugues, which are indeed monstrous difficult. With regard to the pianistic style and the dewdrop-warbling school, you need not fear that _I_ should throw sour grapes in your teeth about _that_; _franchement_, the ---- after all is commonplace enough, and the ----, though pretty, hardly deserves such an epithet as beautiful; as for the ----, it's just ludicrous. Did you ever hear ---- piano-doodle himself?

I was rather surprised at the judgment you pass on Fanny Kemble's reading; if _anything_ seems at all coarse in it, it is occasional bits in the _male_ part, and that only, after all, because it is _too_ good and it seems discrepant to hear male harsh sounds proceeding from the mouth of a woman. With regard to her women, nothing can be more pathetic and touching than her Juliet, or indeed all the women I have heard her do; there is altogether in her style a certain amount of mannerism belonging to the Kemble school, but in spite of all that, it is quite unapproachable now and is grand in the extreme; the Ghost in "Hamlet" is quite a creation. You seem, like Mamma, to apologise almost for expressing an admiration for my photograph; do you think, dear, that I don't value your sympathy irrespectively of your art judgment? I shall send you soon two photographs of portraits that I am now painting; one of Mrs. Sartoris, the other of her little daughter May. I must close.--With very best love to all, I remain, your very affectionate brother,

FRED LEIGHTON.

The change Leighton made in his picture at the request of Cornelius, mentioned in his letter to his father, dated March 2, 1855, can be seen by comparing the pencil sketch of the complete design with the finished painting (see List of Illustrations). It consisted in his making the Procession turn at the left-hand corner to face spectator, instead of filling in this space and giving the required grouping of lines partly by the foreshortened horse and its rider which we find in the first sketch. In the Leighton House Collection there is a fine study in pencil of the undraped figure of the man riding which is not included in the final design. There are those who remembered the picture when first painted in Rome, also at the Exhibitions in Trafalgar Square and Burlington House, who were of opinion that it was never seen so advantageously as on the occasion when the King lent it for exhibition in the artist's own studio in Leighton House in the year 1900, and many seeing it there exclaimed, "Leighton never did a finer thing;" and, truly, seen, as it was then, placed across the end of the glass studio under perfect conditions of lighting and surroundings, the power and originality both in the colouring and design of the work were very striking and impressive. Leighton's friends felt specially grateful to the King, for an opportunity having been afforded for the public to see this early work under such favourable and appropriate circumstances. During those months when the picture was shown at Leighton House, it felt as if the very spirit of the young artist, at the time when he was starting on his notable career, had returned and was haunting the home of his later years. From the end of the large studio, looking through the darkened passage connecting the two rooms, the procession verily looked alive, a _tableau vivant_--no mere painting.

One of the salient virtues in the composition lies in the happy way in which the two central figures take a separate important position, without the moving on of the procession being interrupted nor their attitudes being in any sense forced. On the contrary, it is by their absorbed, modest demeanour, which contrasts with the rest of the gay crowd, talking, singing, and playing musical instruments as it moves along, that the sense of awe and reverence felt by the two artist spirits becomes accentuated. These recognise in this public ovation bestowed on the picture of their beloved "Madonna and Child" the union of a service offered both to Art and to Religion.

The happiness Leighton enjoyed during the two years when this subject occupied his thoughts seems to have been reflected in the vigour of the actual painting. It was evidently finally executed with an exuberant feeling of satisfaction. Careful studies having been previously made for every portion, the under-painting itself was, as he writes to Steinle, completed in one week, and the canvas once attacked, there appears to have been no hitch in the process of completion. The happy balancing of masses, the grouping of the figures, the beauty of the lines throughout the crowded procession are admirable. The picture was admitted by competent judges to be a work marked by a distinct individuality, yet possessing "style," a word which in recent years had been associated in England with art that lacked vigour and originality, and which flavoured solely of obsolete grooves and theories. The colour is richer and purer than in Leighton's earliest pictures, and arranged cleverly so as to give full importance and value to the beautiful white costume worn by Cimabue.[34] Sir William Richmond, R.A., writes: "Impressions of early years are not easily removed. As a boy at school I went to the R.A. Exhibition, and saw for the first time a work of Leighton's, the procession in honour of the picture by Cimabue in Florence, 1855. It stood out among the other pictures to my young eye as a work so complete, so noble in design, so serious in sentiment and of such achievement, that perforce it took me by the throat."

Leighton sent a photograph of the picture to Steinle with a letter dated March 1.

_Translation._] ROME, VIA FELICE 123, _March 1, 1855_.

MY VERY DEAR FRIEND,--Although since my last letter I have had no news of you, I cannot pass by this moment, so important to me, without giving you intelligence of it. Yesterday I at last sent off both my pictures, the large one to London, the small one to Paris, with the consignment of the Roman Committee. Thank goodness, at last I have got them off my mind! And how sorry I am, dear Friend, that I could not put the finishing touches to them in your presence! Of the "Cimabue," I send you, in two pieces, a very bad photograph, but it is the best that could be made within four walls; from it you will only be able to judge generally of the grouping, for as regards the colour, which comes out so black in the photograph, in the picture it is altogether clear and light. You will certainly be glad to hear that this work has earned much praise here; I promised that you should not have to be ashamed of your pupil. The small picture is so dark in effect, that it would be impossible to photograph it; but as I suppose you, like all the rest of the world, will visit the great exhibition in Paris, you can avail yourself of the same opportunity to see my daub.

Gamba is, now as ever, industrious, tireless, conscientious; his picture _also_ will be finished in a few weeks, and will be a great credit to him; I only wish he had a prospect of selling it, but at present the sale of pictures is stagnant, especially in Piedmont, where the art-loving Queen-Mother has died. He will have to fight hard against the gigantic pedantry of the Turin Academy and College of Painters (_Malfacultaet_), for he paints things exactly as he sees them in nature; God be with him! Of course, he sends you heartfelt greetings. Of other artistic doings in Rome I cannot tell you much; I think I have already told you that I look upon Rome as the grave of art; for a young artist, I mean, for whom actively suggestive surroundings are necessary. As regards the so-called German historical art, that is not much of a joke to me; when men, out of pure impotence, throw themselves under the shield of noble tendencies, in order to make mistaken efforts to imitate the work of other painters, they are simply ridiculous; but when men are endowed with fine natural gifts, and nevertheless out of sheer queerness and pedantry go altogether astray, then I only feel angry. God forgive me if I am intolerant, but according to my view an artist must produce his art out of his own heart; or he is none.

Dear Master, I may perhaps pass through Frankfurt on my way back (in June); I should like beyond all things to see you again, you and your works that are so dear to me. Have you painted the "Death of Christ" which pleased me so much? Write to me if you have time, and tell me how things go with you. Keep a friendly recollection of your grateful, affectionate pupil,

FRED. LEIGHTON.

_Translation._] FRANKFURT AM MAIN, _March 20, 1855_.

DEAR FRIEND,--My best thanks for your dear lines of the 1st and for the photographs, with which you afforded me the greatest pleasure. I had an idea that I should receive this friendly remembrance, and I hope that you have meanwhile received my letter of the 3rd March. I know the difference in a photograph of a painting, and the often quite contrary effect of the yellow and red, too well to be deceived by a dark impression; the masses, their distribution, alike in the groups and in the light and shade, the outline of the background, most of the single figures, all please me very well, and you could not believe how much I rejoice in every detail in which I recognise my Leighton, and when I see how all these have been achieved so thoroughly by industrious study and artistic culture. You have indeed prepared a real feast for me, my good wishes in my last letter were quite the right ones, and the recognition which you have obtained in Rome was certainly well earned. I am convinced that Overbeck was heartily pleased with your pictures. It was perhaps my imagination, dear friend, when I thought from your letter that there was a slight cloud between us, but I think it will be torn away when these lines reach you. The fond idea of being again able to share your life and artistic work, I must relinquish, for I am an exile, and besides cannot make myself familiar with your progress as an artist in the Fatherland. Shall, then, your stay in Italy be ended by the journey which you led me to hope would bring you to see me again? But I forget so easily that we live in a world of renunciations, and that often when we believe we are disposing, we are disposed. My spirit and my love will always, wherever you may be, be with you. It occurred to me that probably our excellent Gamba would not send his great picture to Paris, and yet I seem to have heard that he intended doing so; it appears to me that exhibition in Paris would give the picture more importance than in Turin; that Gamba would triumph over the academic formalities in Turin, I do not doubt in the least. His grandmother and all his friends await him here; on a journey to Paris?--Now, dear friend, one more request. Ihlee brought from Rome some photographic views, with which I and the friends who know Rome are truly delighted; the worthy Frau Rath Schlosser wishes very much to possess a selection of twelve, I myself would like to have at least three, will you be so good as to bring them with you in June, and also yourself take the trouble to make a really beautiful selection? You will oblige me thereby very greatly. I shall rejoice excessively to see you again, and wish much that your stay in Frankfurt need not be so short. Remember me cordially to Gamba, and give my kindest regards to Altmeister Cornelius. My wife thanks you for your kind remembrance, and sends many greetings. All friends here have bidden me send their best wishes to you and Gamba. Adieu, dear friend, always and altogether yours,

EDW. STEINLE.

_Translation._] ROME, _April 15, 1855_.

MY VERY DEAR FRIEND,--Only a day or two after I sent off my letter with the photograph, I received your dear lines, and now I have also the letter in which you acknowledge receipt of mine, so that I am well off for news of you. All the affection and kind sympathy which you express for me has affected me deeply, and I look forward with sincere pleasure to the moment when I shall be able personally to express my gratitude to you; I am also most eager to see the drawings of the completion of which you tell me; judging by the sketches, I expect great things from this composition, so rich in imagination; I saw the first beginnings of it. That you are pleased with my photograph rejoices me extremely, but I am sorry that you have not mingled some blame with the praise; you say that _most_ of my figures please you well; ergo, some of them do not; which are they? why not tell me all? do you no longer regard me as your pupil? From one part of your letter I understand that you think I have had a great deal of intercourse with good old Overbeck; that is not so; he and his followers one does not see at all unless one belongs to their clique; Overbeck has never been within my four walls. Cornelius I see less seldom, but not very often; he is a very charming old man, so cheerful and friendly, and is of great strength; for the rest, he has some little queernesses; he said to me once, "Yes, Nature has also her style" (!). Does that not bespeak a curious mental development?

Gamba will not, as it happens, send his picture to Paris, it was not ready in time; meantime, it is being exhibited here in the Piazza del Popolo, and receives the applause it merits; he sends you most cordial greeting.

Yes, indeed, the years of my "Italian Journey" are now ended! It seems but yesterday that we first took leave of one another, and you encouraged me upon my setting forth; the remembrance makes me sad at heart; I cannot help asking myself whether my expectations for these three years have been fulfilled: and the question remains unanswered.

My stay in Italy will always remain a charming memory to me; a beautiful, irrecoverable time; the young, careless, independent time! I have also made some friends here who will always be dear to me, and to whom I particularly attribute my attachment to Rome.

From an artistic point of view I am quite glad to leave Rome, which I, _for a beginner_, regard as the grave of art. A young man needs before all things the emulation of his contemporaries; this I lack here in the highest degree; also here I cannot learn my _trade_, and, notwithstanding Cornelius, I am of opinion that the spirit cannot work effectively until the hand has attained complete pliancy, and I cannot see what right a painter has to evade the difficulties of painting; Cornelius always says, "Take care that the hand does not become master of the spirit," and that sounds well enough; however, I see that, in consequence of his scheme of development, he has not once succeeded in painting a head reasonably, not once in modelling as the _form_ requires; and that, with all his magnificent talent! Judge the tree by the fruit. How are the frescoes of Raphael painted and modelled? and the Sixtine Chapel! the lower part of the "Day of Judgment" is in a high degree _colouristic_ (_Koloristisch_). _Those_ people took nature straight from God, and were not ashamed; therefore their art was no galvanised mummy.

I must close. Please remember me most kindly to your wife, and to my other friends. For yourself, keep in remembrance, your grateful and affectionate pupil,

FRED. LEIGHTON.

Steinle answers:--

_Translation._] FRANKFURT AM MAIN, _May 6, 1855_.

MY VERY DEAR FRIEND,--Hearty thanks for your friendly note of April. The photograph of your picture quite pleases me as it is, and if I am particularly pleased with the details, that is to cast no discredit on the whole; for a general criticism the photograph does not give me sufficient certainty, and I must content myself, this time, with expressing the pleasure your always well-composed pictures give me. You know your picture, and can see more in the photograph than I. What you say about Overbeck, Cornelius, and Rome, I understand well, and I am in sympathy with much of it; but I am almost beginning to fear you, especially as I particularly feel how much I myself am wanting in ground-work, how much I myself belong to the same evolution as these two men. Custom, circumstances, and the tendencies of the times, are often mitigating facts in our judgment of these painters; they have fought against things of which we no longer know anything, and, as participators in their art, we stand, to a certain extent, shoulder to shoulder with them; their delicacies are proofs of their struggle, and the characteristic of youth becomes in old age principally a sign of weakness. Also experience has taught me not to let myself be deceived by what is called "cliquiness," I grant you that this is not an infallible judgment, which is often to be regretted, but people nowadays are weak, and I have found that cliques often have a greater tendency for good than those judgments which make more noise, a greater outcry than the fact warrants. Overbeck has always withdrawn himself too much; but now, dear friend, you must attack him on the subject before you leave Rome. Kindest regards to Gamba, to whom I wish a happy completion of his picture. My wife sends best greetings. Always and altogether yours,

EDW. STEINLE.

We have read in Leighton's letters the effect the "Cimabue's Madonna" produced on his friends in Rome, and how it was nailed up as "in a coffin" and despatched from the Eternal City, where it was destined never to return.

There exists a small long envelope edged with black, stained horny yellow by time, the head of Queen Victoria on the postage stamp. It was despatched from England to Rome over fifty years ago. In the ardent spirit of the young artist who had been eagerly awaiting tidings of his first great venture, what a tumult of excitement must the contents of that small envelope have aroused! They brought with them a conclusive and triumphal end to all arguments with his father concerning the career Leighton had chosen; they realised the sanguine hopes of his beloved master, Steinle, and of his other friends; last not least, they gave him the means and the great happiness of helping his fellow-artists. To quote again from the record of one who was with him in Rome at the time: "My husband[35] remembers the departure of his picture 'The Triumph of Cimabue,' sent with diffidence, and so, proportionate was the joy when news came of its success, and that the Queen had bought it. It was the month of May. Rome was at its loveliest, and Leighton's friends and brother-artists gave him a festal dinner to celebrate his honours. On receiving the news, Leighton's first act was to fly to three less successful artists and buy a picture from each of them. (George Mason, then still unknown, was one.) And so Leighton reflected his own happiness at once on others."

_Translation._] ROME, 123 VIA FELICE, _May 18, 1855_.

DEAR AND HONOURED FRIEND,--As with everything that I receive from you, I was delighted to get your dear lines of the 6th; one thing only in them grieved me a little, _i.e._ that what I said about the German historical painters here seems to have rather jarred upon you. Was I then so intolerant in my expressions? I hope not. You say that you are almost afraid of me. When I spoke to you so freely of the others, was that not a plain proof of how completely I except you? You assuredly know, dear Master, how and what I think of you, and that I ascribe entirely to you my whole aesthetic culture in art. Your commission to good old Overbeck I have executed as well as I could. I found him much more cheerful and less ailing than before. He received me with the greatest amiability; we spoke, amongst other things, of you, and I perceived that he had it in his mind to go soon to Germany and to spend a couple of weeks in Mainz; I should like to be the first to give you this good news.

As for myself, dear Friend, my plans are once more quite upset. My father has hastily recalled me to England, and I am sorry to say that I must consequently give up going to Frankfurt. However, I have not neglected your commission. I have chosen the photographs, and you will receive them in the beginning of next month, and that by a friend of mine who will be passing through Frankfurt, and whom I hereby introduce to you. Mrs. Sartoris is my dearest friend, and the noblest, cleverest woman I have ever met; I need not say more to secure her a cordial welcome from you. She is one of the celebrated theatrical family of Kemble. It is now ten or eleven years since she left the stage, but she is still the greatest living cantatrice.[36]

You will certainly be glad to hear that on the first day of the Exhibition my picture was bought by the Queen.

I am at this moment in the thick of packing; you must excuse, dear Friend, my ending so abruptly. I will write again from England.--Your grateful pupil,

FRED LEIGHTON.

So ended the first page of Leighton's life as an artist in the Rome of the fifties--a very different Rome to that of the present. The atmosphere was still steeped in those days with a flavour belonging to the Papal temporal dominion, and the visible life still picturesque with the costumes and grandeur of mediaeval customs.

FOOTNOTES:

[20] See page 83.

[21] Page 97.

[22] Page 26, "Introduction."

[23] "If the Almighty were to come before me, with absolute knowledge in his right hand, and perpetual striving after truth in his left, I would fling myself to his left, praying: Father, give! pure truth is thine alone."

[24] "The Well-Head" (see List of Illustrations), drawn during Leighton's visit to Venice, and described in "Pebbles," more than justifies this opinion, for it may be questioned whether any other drawing he ever made of the kind is as perfectly beautiful.

[25] Miss Laing, afterwards Lady Nias.

[26] See Appendix. Presidential Address delivered by Sir F. Leighton, Bart., P.R.A., at the Art Congress, held at Liverpool, December 3, 1888.

[27] This modest attitude Leighton took as listener reminds me of the last time he saw Browning. One afternoon in the autumn of 1888, we were sitting with Leighton and Browning in the Kensington studio. Browning showed us photographs of the Palazzo Rezzonico which he had lately given to his son. The subject turned to a discussion on Byron and Shelley. Often as I had heard Browning talk well, I never heard him converse so well as he did on that afternoon. It was no monologue. It was real conversation, and of the kind that inspires others to do also their best; but Leighton never uttered, till--when, after an hour or so, we rose to leave--he exclaimed, "Oh, don't! _do_ go on," and we had to sit down again. When at last the good thing came to an end, Leighton conducted us downstairs to his door, where we parted. Browning waved a farewell from across the road, where he stood for a moment in front of the little cottages, while Leighton stood in the porch-way of his house. The next day Browning started on his last journey to Italy--to die in the Palazzo Rezzonico.

[28] Another old friend of Leighton's, Mr. Hamilton Aide, writes: "My journal 1854-55-56 contains frequent notices of our excursions and long days spent on the Campagna, and on the hill-sides near the Bagni di Lucca, where we took out food for mind and will as well as for the body, and sketched while one of our party read aloud--and also of many Tableaux at Rome, devised by him (Leighton) to suit the colouring, character, and grace of certain noble ladies."

[29] It appears that Leighton had been misinformed as to "every girl" having to pass such an examination.

[30] In Italien auf meiner Wanderschaft Hab' ich dies Bueblein aufgerafft Hab's mit dem Pinsel so hingeschrieben Ist mir leider unvollendet geblieben.

[31] The Cafe Greco still exists, unaltered since the days when Leighton and Gamba lunched there every day on _macaroni al burro_. I visited it last May (1906), and heard from the present proprietor that it continues to be frequented by artists of all countries. He had heard of the book of sketches, and also that Rafaello had sold it before his death, but to whom the _Padrone_ could not say.

[32] Of Cervara there is a pencil drawing by Leighton in the Leighton House Collection, in his earliest style, dated 1856.

[33] Fanny Kemble's answer to these words of Leighton's were:--"Thank you, my dear Sir Frederic, for the address you have been so good as to give me. You honour me by remembering any conversation you ever had with me. I remember one I had with you many years ago, but do not think you refer to that. You say no word, and you do well, upon the subject that must be uppermost in both our minds when we meet or hold any intercourse with each other--our thoughts must be of the same complexion and could hardly find any expression. Thank you again for your kindness.--I am affectionately, your obliged,

FANNY KEMBLE."

[34] Ruskin wrote the following criticism of the picture when it was first exhibited: "This is a very important and very beautiful picture. It has both sincerity and grace, and is painted on the purest principles of Venetian art--that is to say, on the calm acceptance of the whole of nature, small and great, as, in its place, deserving of faithful rendering. The great secret of the Venetians was their simplicity. They were great colourists, not because they had peculiar secrets about oil and colour, but because when they saw a thing red they painted it red, and ... when they saw it distinctly they painted it distinctly. In all Paul Veronese's pictures the lace borders of the tablecloths or fringes of the dresses are painted with just as much care as the faces of the principal figures; and the reader may rest assured that in all great Art it is so. Everything in it is done as well as it can be done. Thus, in the picture before us, in the background is the Church of San Miniato, strictly accurate in every detail; on top of the wall are oleanders and pinks, as carefully painted as the church; the architecture of the shrine on the wall is studied from thirteenth-century Gothic, and painted with as much care as the pinks; the dresses of the figures, very beautifully designed, are painted with as much care as the faces; that is to say, all things throughout with as much care as the painter could bestow. It necessarily follows that what is most difficult (_i.e._ the faces) should be comparatively the worst done. But if they are done as well as the painter could do them, it is all we have to ask, and modern artists are under a wonderful mistake in thinking that when they have painted faces ill, they make their pictures more valuable by painting the dresses worse.

"The painting before us has been objected to because it seems broken up in bits. Precisely the same objection would hold, and in very nearly the same degree, against the best works of the Venetians. All faithful colourists' work, in figure-painting, has a look of sharp separation between part and part.... Although, however, in common with all other work of its class, it is marked by these sharp divisions, there is no confusion in its arrangement. The principal figure is nobly principal, not by extraordinary light, but by its own pure whiteness; and both the master and the young Giotto attract full regard by distinction of form and face. The features of the boy are carefully studied, and are indeed what, from the existing portraits of him, we know those of Giotto must have been in his youth. The head of the young girl who wears the garland of blue flowers is also very sweetly conceived."

D.G. Rossetti wrote to his friend, William Allingham, May 11, 1855: "There is a big picture of Cimabue, one of his works in procession, by a new man, living abroad, named Leighton--a huge thing, which the Queen has bought; which every one talks of. The R.A.'s have been gasping for years for some one to back against Hunt and Millais, and here they have him, a fact that makes some people do the picture injustice in return. It was very interesting to me at first sight; but on looking more at it, I think there is great richness of arrangement, a quality which, when really existing, as it does in the best old masters, and perhaps hitherto in no living man--at any rate English--ranks among the great qualities."

[35] Sir John Leslie.

[36] Mrs. Richmond Ritchie gives a very charming account of her first introduction in the Rome of those days to Leighton's friend, the great _cantatrice_, Mrs. Sartoris, in the preface to the edition of "A Week in a French Country House," published in 1902. Thackeray, Mrs. Ritchie's father, and Charles Kemble, Mrs. Sartoris' father, had been old friends. Mrs. Ritchie says: "The writer's first definite picture of her old friend (Mrs. Sartoris) remains as a sort of frontispiece to many aspects and remembrances. We were all standing in a big Roman drawing-room with a great window to the west, and the colours of the room were not unlike sunset colours. There was a long piano with a bowl of flowers on it in the centre of the room; there were soft carpets to tread upon; a beautiful little boy in a white dress, with yellow locks all a-shine from the light of the window, was perched upon a low chair looking up at his mother, who with her arm round him stood by the chair, so that their two heads were on a level. She was dressed (I can see her still) in a sort of grey satin robe, and her beautiful proud head was turned towards the child. She seemed pleased to see my father, who had brought us to be introduced to her, and she made us welcome, then, and all that winter, to her home. In that distant, vivid hour (there may be others as vivid now for a new generation) Rome was still a mediaeval city--monks in every shade of black and grey and brown were in the streets outside with their sandalled feet flapping on the pavement; cardinals passed in their great pantomime coaches, rolling on with accompaniment of shabby cocked-hats and liveries to clear a way; Americans were rare and much made of; English were paramount; at night oil-lamps swung in the darkness. Many of the ruins of the present were still in their graves peacefully hidden away for another generation to unearth; the new buildings, the streets, the gas lamps, the tramways were not. The Sartorises had fireplaces with huge logs burning; Mrs. Browning sat by her smouldering wood fire; but we in our lodging still had to light brazen pans of charcoal to warm ourselves if we shivered. At my request an old friend, who for our good fortune has kept a diary, opens one of his pretty vellum-bound note-books, and evokes an hour of those old Italian times from the summer following that Roman winter. He tells of a peaceful Sunday at Lucca, a place of which I have often heard Mrs. Sartoris speak with pleasure; Leighton and Hatty Hosmer and Hamilton Aide himself are there; they are all sitting peacefully together on some high terrace with a distant view of the spreading plains, while Mrs. Sartoris reads to them out of one of her favourite Dr. Channing's sermons. Another page tells of a party at Ostia. 'Very pleasant we made ourselves in a pine wood,' says the diarist; 'I walked by A.S.'s _chaise-a-porteur_ up the hills later in the evening. She talked of her past life and all its trials, and of her early youth.' Mrs. Ritchie in her preface also tells of this 'past life.'

"The Rue de Clichy of which he (Thackeray) speaks was the street in which Miss Foster lived, under whose care both Fanny and Adelaide Kemble were placed, when they successively went to Paris. Then each in turn came out and made her mark, and each in turn married and left the stage for that world in which real tragedies and real comedies are still happening, and where men and women play their own parts instinctively and sing their own songs. Adelaide's short artistic career lasted from 1835 to 1842, long enough to impress all the subsequent years of her life. With all the welcoming success which was hers, there must have been many a moment of disillusion, discouragement, and suffering for a girl so original, so aristocratic in instinct, so quick of perception, so individual, '_De la boheme exquise_,' as some great lady once described her. The following page out of one of her early diaries gives a vivid picture of one side of her artistic life: '...Received an intimation that the company who are to act with me had arrived at Trieste, and would be here at eleven to rehearse the music. At twelve came Signor Carcano (the director of the music), and a dirty-looking little object, who turned out to be the prompter. After they had sat some time wondering what detained the rest, a little fusty woman, with a grey-coloured white petticoat dangling three inches below her gown, holding a thin shivering dog by a dirty pocket-handkerchief, and followed by a tall slip of a man, with his hair all down his back, and decorated with whiskers, beard, and mustachios, made her appearance. I advanced to welcome my Adalgisa, but without making any attempt at a return of my salutation, she glanced all round the room and merely said, "Come fa caldo qui! Non c'e nessuno ancora? Andiamo a prendere un caffe," and taking the arm of the hairy man retreated forthwith. Then came Signor Gallo, leader of the band, then the tenor, who could have gained the prize for unwashedness against 'em all--and after half-an-hour more waiting, Adalgisa and the hairy one returned, and after about half-an-hour more arrived my bass, and, God bless him, he came clean!

"'We then went to work. Adalgisa could think of nothing but her dog, who kept up a continuous plaintive howl all the time we sang, which she assured me was because it liked the band accompaniment better than the piano, as it never made signs of disapprobation when she took it to rehearsals with the orchestra. She also informed me that it had five puppies, all of which it had nursed itself, as if Italian dogs were in the habit of hiring out wet nurses....'" And again--

"I can remember her describing to us one of these performances, and her enjoyment of the long folds of drapery as she flew across the stage as Norma and how she added with a sudden flash, half humour, half enthusiasm: 'I have everything a woman could wish for, my friends and my home, my husband and my children, and yet sometimes a wild longing comes over me to be back, if only for one hour, on the stage again, and living once more as I did in those early adventurous times.' She was standing in a beautiful room in Park Place when she said this. There were high carved cabinets, and worked silken tapestries on the walls, and a great golden carved glass over her head--she herself in some velvet brocaded dress stood looking not unlike a picture by Tintoret."