Letitia Elizabeth Landon (L. E. L.) in Fisher's Drawing Room Scrap Book, 1840/L. E. L.
4
THE
DRAWING-ROOM SCRAP BOOK.
L. E. L.
As we place these talismanic letters, L. E. L., which have stood so attractively for not less than eight years on the title-page of the Drawing-Room Scrap Book, at the head of a closing article on the genius of the very interesting and gifted creature whom they represented, we feel it to be a circumstance in which the readers of the Scrap-Book must, more than all others, take the deepest interest. Every succeeding year must have given to L. E. L. a more captivating and endearing hold on their minds, for over none of her numerous works had she cast more lavishly the rainbow hues of her genius, and in none had the evidences of her still rapidly growing intellect, and the expanding and deepening scope of her observation and her human sympathies, become more apparent. Every reader of the Drawing-Room Scrap Book would at once respond to Miss Landon's own candid declaration to the publishers, that she had given "a high literary character to it;" and nothing is more true than her assertion to the same party, "Some of my best poems have appeared in the Drawing-Room Scrap Book."
The circumstance, however, which terminated the intercourse of L. E. L. with the readers of this work, was that only which snapped asunder her connexion with the earth itself—death—an early and melancholy death.
We have, within a few years, felt some of the most vivid sensations which the death of popular writers can, under any circumstances, possibly create. We have not forgotten the electric shock which the death of Byron, falling in his prime and in a noble cause, sent through Europe: nor the more expected, but not less solemn and strongly recognized departure of Sir Walter Scott: but neither of these exceeded that with which the news was received of the sudden decease of this still young and popular poetess. the apprehensions which the climate suggested, on the first tidings of her going out to Cape Coast Castle, did not even abate the abrupt effect of the news of her death. The mysterious circumstances attending it, threw a tragic horror around it, and kindled an intense eagerness to penetrate their obscurity. The strange contrast between the youthful and buoyant spirit of L. E. L.'s genius, and the sombre tone of her views of life and human nature, were not more startling and stimulant than that between her popularity and her fate. It is not our intention here to pause, over this sudden quenching of so lovely and brilliant a luminary, nor to attempt to dissipate a single mystery which hangs over it. Her amiable and excellent friend, Emma Roberts, has drawn, in the introduction to “The Zenana, and Minor Poems of L. E. L." published since her death, an admirable, and admirably just, character of her. Our present object is to take a review of her literary career—rapid, yet sufficiently full to point out some particulars in her writings, which we think too peculiar not to interest strongly her former readers.
The subject of L. E. L.'s first volume was love—a subject which we might have supposed, in one so young, would have been clothed in all the gay and radiant colours of hope and happiness; but, on the contrary, it was exhibited as the most fatal and melancholy of human passions. With the strange wayward delight of the young heart ere it has known actual sorrow, she seemed to riot and revel amid death and wo, laying prostrate hope, life, and affection. Of all the episodical tales introduced into the general design of the principal poem, not one but terminated fearfully or sorrowfully: the heroine herself was the fading victim of crossed and wasted affections. The shorter poems which filled up the volume, and which were, mostly, of extreme beauty, were still based on the wrecks and agonies of humanity.
It might be imagined that this morbid indulgence of so strong an appetite for grief, was but the first dipping of the playful foot in the sunny shallows of that flood of mortal experience, through which all have to pass, and but the dallying, yet desperate pleasure afforded by the mingled chill and glittering eddies of the waters which might hereafter swallow up the passer through, and that the first real pang of actual pain would scare her youthful fancy into the bosom of those hopes and fascinations with which the young mind is commonly only too much delighted to surround itself. But it is a singular fact, that, spite of her own really cheerful disposition, and spite of all the advice of her most influential friends, she persisted in this tone from the first to the last of her works, from that hour to the hour of her lamented death. Her poems, though laid in scenes and times capable of any course of events, and though filled to overflowing with the splendours and gauds and high-toned sentiments of chivalry, though enriched with all the colours and ornaments of a most fertile and sportive fancy, were still but the heralds and delineations of melancholy, misfortune, and death. Let any one turn to any, or all, of her poetical volumes, and say whether this be not so, with few, and, in most of them, no exceptions. The very words of her first heroine might have literally been uttered as her own.
"Sad were my shades; methinks they had
Almost a tone of prophecy—
I ever had, from earliest youth,
A feeling what my fate would be."The Improvisatrice, p. 3.
This is one singular peculiarity of the poetry of L. E. L.; and her poetry must be confessed to be peculiar. It is entirely her own. It had one prominent and fixed character, and that character belonged solely to itself. The rhythm, the feeling, the style and phraseology of, L. E. L.'s poetry, were such, that you could immediately recognize it, though the writer's name was not mentioned. Love was still the great theme, and misfortune the great doctrine. It was not the less remarkable, that she retained to the last the poetical tastes of her very earliest years. The themes of chivalry and romance, feudal pageants and Eastern splendour, delighted her imagination as much in the full growth as in the budding of her genius. We should say that it is the young and the ardent who must always be the warmest admirers of the larger poems of L.E.L. They are filled with the faith and the fancies of the young. The very scenery and ornaments are of that rich and showy kind which belongs to the youthful taste—the white rose, the jasmine, the summer garniture of deep grass, and glades of greenest foliage; festal gardens with lamps and bowers; gay cavaliers and jewelled dames, and all that glitters in young eyes and love-haunted fancies. But amongst these, numbers of her smaller poems from the first dealt with subjects and sympathies of a more general kind, and gave glimpses of a nobility of sentiment, and a bold expression of her feeling of the unequal lot of humanity, of a far higher character. Such, in the Improvisatrice, are the Guerilla Chief, St. George's Hospital, The Deserter, Gladesmuir, The Covenanters, The Female Convict, The Soldier's Grave, &c. Such are many that we could point out in every succeeding volume. But it was in her few last years that her heart and mind seemed every day to develope more strength, and to gather a wider range of humanity into their embrace. In the later volumes of the Drawing-Room Scrap Book, many of the best poems of which have been reprinted with the Zenana, nothing was more striking than the steady development of growing intellectual power, and of deep, and generous, and truly philosophical sentiments, tone of thought, and serious experience.
But when L. E. L. had fixed her character as a poet, and the public looked only for poetical productions from her, she suddenly came forth as a prose writer, and with still added proofs of intellectual vigour. Her prose stories have the leading characteristics of her poetry. Their theme is love, and their demonstration, that all love is fraught with destruction and desolation. But there are other qualities manifested in the tales. The prose page was for her a wider tablet, on which she could, with more freedom and ampler display, record her views of society. Of these, Francesca Carrara, and Ethil Churchill, are unquestionably the best works, the latter pre-eminently so. In these she has shown, under the characters of Guido and Walter Maynard, her admiration of genius, and her opinion of its fate; under those of Francesca and Ethil Churchill, the adverse destiny of pure and high-souled woman.
These volumes abound with proofs of a shrewd observation of society, with masterly sketches of character, and the most beautiful snatches of scenery. But what surprise and delight more than all, are the sound and true estimates of humanity, and the honest boldness with which her opinions are expressed. The clear perception of the fearful social condition of this country, and the fervent advocacy of the poor, scattered through these works, but especially the last, do honour to her woman's heart. These portions of L. E. L.'s writings require to be yet more truly appreciated.
There is another characteristic of her prose writings which is peculiar. Never were the feelings and experiences of authorship so cordially and accurately described. She tells us all that she has learned freely. She puts words into the mouth of Walter Maynard, of which all who have known anything of literary life, must instantly acknowledge the correctness. The author's heart never was more completely laid open, with all its hopes, fears, fatigues, and enjoyments, its bitter and its glorious experiences. In the last hours of Walter Maynard, she makes him utter what must, at that period, have been daily more and more her own conviction. "I am far cleverer than I was. I have felt, have thought so much! Talk of the mind exhausting itself!—never! Think of the mass of material which every day accumulates! Then experience, with its calm, clear light corrects so many youthful fallacies; every day we feel our higher moral responsibility, and our greater power." They are the convictions of "higher moral responsibility and greater power," which strike us so forcibly in the later writings of L. E. L.
But what shall we say to the preparation of prussic acid, and to its preservation by Lady Marchmont? What of the perpetual creed of L. E. L., that all affection brings wo and death? What of the Improvisatrice in her earliest work, already quoted:—
"I ever had, from earliest youth,
A feeling what my fate would be."
And then the fate itself?
Whether this melancholy belief in the tendency of the great subject of her writings, both in prose and poetry; this irresistible annunciation, like another Cassandra, of wo and desolation; this evolution of scenes and characters in her last work, bearing such dark resemblance to those of her own after-experience; this tendency in all her plots to a tragic catastrophe, and this final tragedy itself, whether these be all mere coincidences or not, they are still but the parts of an unsolved mystery. If they be, they are more than strange, and ought to make us superstitious. But surely, if ever
Coming events cast their shadows before,
they did so in the foreboding tone of this gifted spirit. However these things be, we come from a fresh perusal of her works, since her lamented death, with a higher opinion of her intellectual and moral constitution, and with a livelier sense of the peculiar character of her genius.
W. H.