| Description | Dear Signor
I ought to have written before to thank you for your very kind letter, but have been very busy. I had already heard of the drawings at Sothebys but own that I have no sort of desire to see or to possess these early transgressions of mine. How kind of you dear Signor to have thought of suggesting a subject to me. My calamity is that the fact of a subject being given to me is precisely the thing that paralyzes me. A direct divine inspiration would have the same effect on me I believe. Meanwhile I should like much to look up the passage you allude to, if at any time you remember more exactly its whereabouts. The scene is evidently a very poetic one and I should like to read it; at the first blush it seems to me to have an important drawback as a picture subject; but on that matter I wish to suspend my judgement till I have seen the passage in question.
Were you not very much shocked by the news of our old friend Browning's death? I had known him for 35 years & his death distresses me very much, apart altogether from the irreparable loss which English letters sustain - in which what a gap he leaves!
I hope you are feeling fairly well & am with love to Mrs Mary
Yours affec'ly
Fred Leighton |