Life and Literary Remains of L. E. L./1815-1824
1815 to 1824.
After a year's residence at Lewis-place, Fulham, Mr. Landon removed with his family to Old Brompton. Here a considerable period of L. E. L.'s youth was passed. Under the guiding care of her mother, the good and generous qualities of her nature continued to have fair play and to flourish; while those powers of intellect and imagination, which had been early signalized, acquired ripeness and strength so gradually as to insure, in the minds of her friends, the fulfilment of every gratifying promise. The days of tasks and lessons over, her studies took their own turn, and the tastes she displayed were those of the poetry and the romance that coloured all her visions, waking or asleep. Pen and ink had succeeded to the slate, writing to scribbling, distinct images to phantasies that had as little form as substance; and it followed that ideas of publication and a thirst for fame should succeed to the first natural charm of parental kisses and family pats on the head—the delicious encouragement of an occasional "not so bad!" or even a "very clever, indeed!" from some more enthusiastic patron. The desire was soon gratified. Mr. Jerdan, under whose management the "Literary Gazette," then recently established, was rapidly acquiring a large circulation and exercising great literary influence, happened to be a neighbour of the Landons, and to him, as an arbiter of the destinies of young authors, and a man of the kindliest disposition, admitted even in quarters where the utmost difference of literary opinion prevailed, an introduction was, without much difficulty, obtained. Fragments of romance, snatches of song, "fancies and good nights," pieces composed with about as much art as a young bird might exhibit in its first chirpings—were submitted with mingled hope and fear for the critic's judgment, and this was speedily given in a form of frank and strong encouragement. In some of the earliest verses that were shown to him, Mr. Jerdan had the taste and feeling to perceive the faint colourings of a dawn that was to resemble
"The uncertain glory of an April day."
If he could not pronounce every set of verses to be a poem, he could well discern that nobody but a poet had written them. If there were not evidences of the power and mastery of the divine art, they were proofs of a love of it too intense to fail in working out some of the sweetest of its objects. As he felt he spoke; the encouragement had an instant effect; and the "Child of Song" had the delight, not long after, of seeing some of her verses included among the original poetry of the influential and fame-dispensing "Literary Gazette."
The effect of this editorial compliment, and the praise that accompanied it, remained long upon her mind, comforting her under some trials to which her family were about that time subjected, by feeding her enthusiastic hopes of being able, in after years, to attach honour to their name, and to aid their fortunes. When she was about eighteen years old, she commenced a letter to her cousin, with a reference to some opinions just then pronounced by the same critical authority, and then ran on in a strain which shows that all her child like simplicity of feeling, and thoughtful light-heartedness, had been unchangeably preserved.
"Dear Cousin,
"Are you pleased with me? Am I not happy? 'An elegance of mind peculiarly graceful in a female;'—is not this the praise you would have wished me to obtain? Has all your trouble been thrown away? It has always been my most earnest wish to do something that might prove your time had not been altogether lost. To excel is to show my grateful affection to you. The poem is now entirely finished. I hope you will like 'Adelaide.' I wished to portray a gentle soft character, and to paint in her the most delicate love. I fear her dying of it is a little romantic; yet, what was I to do, as her death must terminate it? Pray do you think, as you are the model of my, I hope, charming heroine, you could have contrived to descend to the grave
'Pale martyr to love's wasting flame ?’
Not only is the second canto concluded, but I have written all the minor pieces I intend inserting. And now, dear cousin, I do so long to be with you, if it were only to show you how amiable I intend being. I will not be passionate; and, as to Elizabeth, I will be so good-natured—I will be to her what you have been to me. . . . I never knew how delightful it was to be at home until I was away. It is all very pleasant to go out for a day or two. I do not mean to say I do not like it, but when it comes to be week upon week and and month upon month (for it is now four months since I saw any of you) I am heartily tired. . . . . I hate to be continually obliged to think of what I must say, for fear of offending some one or other—however, I never had the slightest disagreement with one of them. On the whole, I compare my visit to Clifton to a sunny day in December. . . . I have such a delightful room to sit in, where I usually spend mornings and evenings—I have borrowed Miss Elizabeth Smith's 'Fragments,' I like them so much. I am quite in Miss C.'s good graces—it is impossible to help laughing at her, but it never offends her—on the contrary she exclaims, 'Well now, dear heart alive, I am so glad to find you have such good spirits!' I believe my aunt thinks me not a little rhodomontade, but it is very excusable at present. I am happy for three things; first, I am so enchanted with Mr. Jerdan's note; secondly, so pleased at having left Clifton; and last, though not least, I am so delighted to think it will not be long before I shall see you all again."
This letter, which, like every one of the hundreds we have seen from the same hand, is without a date, was written from Gloucestershire, where, in 1820, she was staying on a visit to some of her relatives, having previously visited Clifton (as referred to in the letter) accompanied by her grand-mother. This was the first time she had ever quitted home. We see how her heart returns to it. Separated from what she had most associated with, she can but compare her days to glimpses of December sunshine—warm and bright only by comparison.
The poem thus alluded to as being entirely finished, formed the principle feature of a little volume, published in the summer of the following year, by Mr. Warren, of Bond-street. Its title was "The Fate of Adelaide," a Swiss romantic tale, and it was dedicated to Mrs. Siddons. The story is of love, war, and misery. Adelaide loves and is loved, but her Orlando is inconstant; war calls him to the east, and there he marries; both ladies die for him—
"They laid
Zoraide (for so she wish'd it) by the side
Of her sweet rival;"—
and the hero hangs over the grave, a melancholy man, to point the moral of the lay. The poem and the minor verses that follow it, were of value only as promises—as indications of poetical genius; and these promises were soon redeemed by an assiduous cultivation of that beautiful faculty of song which, like mercy, is twice blessed, being ever in its best and highest exercise a joy inestimable.
Immediately after the publication of this volume she commenced, in the "Literary Gazette," a series of "Poetical Sketches," to which was affixed her initials only—"L. E. L." The three letters very speedily became a signature of magical interest and curiosity. Struck by the evident youth of the writer, by the force as well as the grace of her careless and hurried notes, by the impassioned tenderness of the many songs and sketches that, week after week, without intermission, appeared under the same signature, the public unhesitatingly recognised these contributions as the fresh and unstudied outpourings of genius; and they, by whom the loftier beauties and the more cultivated, grace of the living masters of the lyre were best appreciated, at once, "with open arms received one poet more." Not only was the whole tribe of initialists throughout the land eclipsed, but the initials became a name.
From the summer of 1821, to that of 1824, these contributions were uninterruptedly continued. It is impossible not to be struck with the profusion in which they were poured forth. Five or six snatches of song in a week, few of them without some charm of tenderness or fancy, or a brief tale of struggling passion, delineating some chivalrous character, and abounding in the picturesque—these were read in many quarters with the admiration which glances over defects and dwells on the result—the general image of beauty presented to the mind. It was thus that the young initialist "woke, and found herself famous." Perhaps the L. E. L. itself, the compromise between the anonymous and the full announcement, the partial revelation, the namelessness of the name, had the effect of stimulating curiosity. That the poet was a "young lady yet in her teens," as the editor answering inquiries at length announced, was a circumstance that did not, we may be sure, detract from the charm. Old poets read, and younger ones wrote verses to her. One of them, Bernard Barton, thus closes an admiring apostrophe, published in February, 1822, months before the object of it had attained her twentieth year:—
"I know not who, or what, thou art,
Nor do I seek to know thee,
Whilst thou, performing thus thy part,
Such banquets can bestow me.
Then be, as long as thou shalt list,
My viewless, nameless melodist."
And this she was to thousands beside the minstrel. With the young she at once became a favourite. She breathed in rapturous verse their own fervent and wild aspirations—she unfolded to them the visions of their morning; nor did she the less retain this hold upon them, because they shrunk with a sudden dullness from her blank and dreary pictures of destiny, and her sombre predictions wrung from them tears of needless pity.
A writer of the first literary rank, in one of the volumes of the "New Monthly," for the year 1831, has referred to the "sensation" created by our subject on her first appearance in the pages of the "Literary Gazette." "We were," he says, "at that time, more capable than we now are of poetic enthusiasm; and certainly that enthusiasm we not only felt ourselves, but we shared with every second person we then met. We were young, and at college, lavishing our golden years, not so much on the Greek verse and mystic character to which we ought, perhaps, to have been rigidly devoted, as
'Our heart in passion, and our head in rhyme.'
At that time poetry was not yet out of fashion, at least with us of the cloister; and there was always in the reading-room of the Union a rush every Saturday afternoon for the 'Literary Gazette;' and an impatient anxiety to hasten at once to that corner of the sheet which contained the three magical letters ‘L. E. L.' And all of us praised the verse, and all of us guessed at the author. We soon learned it was a female, and our admiration was doubled, and our conjectures tripled. Was she young? Was she pretty? And—for there were some embryo fortune-hunters among us—was she rich? We ourselves who, now staid critics and sober gentlemen, are about coldly to measure to a prose work [what is here quoted is introductory to a review of Romance and Reality,] the due quantum of laud and censure, then only thought of homage, and in verse only, we condescended to yield it. But the other day, in looking over some of our boyish effusions, we found a paper superscribed to L. E. L., and beginning with 'Fair spirit!'"
In this place, perhaps, it may be fitting to glance at one important characteristic of her writings, previous to the consideration of those maturer poems, the earliest of which, now on the eve of appearance, procured for her such deserved distinction. In the poetry of L. E. L., even at this early and happy period of her career, assuming that it has now in reality commenced, we detect, not unfrequently, examples of that which after wards cast a gloom over so much that she wrote, and was so justly complained of by those who took the deepest interest in the progress of her talents and reputation. The verses even of her gay and eager youth abound in distrusting views of life, in melancholy forebodings, and images of weariness and despondency. Whatever the subject of the song, baffled hopes and blighted affections would evermore thrust themselves between the singer and the light; and if they were not always seized upon as the theme, they were unfailingly associated with it, and introduced in the way of illustration or analogy. And here it may be desirable at once to impress upon the reader's mind the fact, that there was not the remotest connection or affinity, not indeed a colour of resemblance, between her every-day life or habitual feelings, and the shapes they were made to assume in her poetry. No two persons could be less like each other in all that related to the contemplation of the actual world, than "L. E. L." and Letitia Elizabeth Landon. People would do in this, as in so many other cases, forgetting one of the licenses of poetry, identify the poet's history in the poet's subject and sentiments, and they accordingly insisted that, because the strain was tender and mournful, the heart of the minstrel was breaking. Certain it is, that L. E. L.'s naturally sweet and cheerful disposition was not, at this time, soured or obscured by any meditations upon life and the things most worth living for, which a lavish and rapturous indulgence of the poetic mood could lead her into; and however she may have merited admiration, she had no original claim to sympathy as a victim to constitutional morbidness. While every chord of her lute seemed to awaken a thousand plaintive and painful memories, she was storing up just as many lively recollections; and as the melancholy of her song moved numberless hearts towards her, her own was only moved by the same process still farther than ever out of melancholy's reach. Her imagination would conjure up a scene in which, as was said of the Urn Burial, the gayest thing you should see would be a gilt coffin-nail; and this scene she would fancifully confound for the time being with human life, past, present, or to come; but the pen once out of her hand, there was no more sturdy questioner, not to say repudiator, of her own doctrines, than her own practice. The spectres she had conjured up vanished as the wand dropped from her hand. Five minutes after the composition of some poem full of passionate sorrow, or bitter disappointment and reproach, she would be seen again in the very mood out of which she had been carried by the poetic frenzy that had seized her—a state of mind the most frank, affectionate and enjoying—self-relying, but equally willing to share in the simple amusements that might be presented, or to employ its own resources for the entertainment of others.
A letter which must have been written towards the close of 1820, while L. E. L. was yet in Gloucestershire, will serve to show how early she was accustomed to give her thoughts the gloomiest and most unreal colouring when finding expression in verse. It is addressed to her mother.
"At present," she says, "all I have to say is, that I do so long to see you all, that I like my aunt more and more, that nothing can be pleasanter than my visit to Castle-end, and that I only wish you were in as agreeable a place. I have but one cause of complaint—I so seldom hear from any of you. As for my cousin, if I did not know her too well, I should take it for granted she had forgotten me. You cannot think how delightful a letter is—it makes me quite happy for three days. The following lines I wrote last night—I send them, as they are addressed to you.
'I will not say, I fear your absent one
Will be forgotten, but you cannot feel
The sickening thoughts that o'er the spirit steal
When I remember I am quite alone.
That all I love most fondly, all are gone.
To you that deepest sorrow is unknown;
Some very dear ones are beside you now;
But cold to me each smile that meets my own;
It does not beam upon some long-loved brow.
'Tis vain to tell me we again shall meet,
That thought but makes the weary hours depart
More slowly; hope is tedious to the heart
When we so oft its accents must repeat.
Absence is to affection, as the hour
Of winter's chilling blight upon the spring's young flower.'
"I have now," proceeds the letter, "entirely lost my former passion for travelling. If I am so tired of what can scarcely be called a long journey, what should I do in my intended travels through Africa! I have not written to you since you enclosed Mr. Jerdan's note. How happy I am! it so far surpasses my expectations, convinced as I am that a kind of curse hangs over us all; it seemed too delightful to happen to one of the Cahets. . . . To say the truth, I had thought so much about the poem, that I had got quite tired of it, and at last sent it in a fit of despair. So favourable a verdict again revived the spirit of exertion. I had, indeed, compounded a miserable essence for expectation—it might have been styled intrusion, presumption, or, to sum up in a word, it might have been good for nothing. The poem I took with me to Clifton, intending to finish it, I quarrelled with and burnt. This one has been entirely written since I was there, and is now completely terminated.—'My task is ended now.' . . . . I have made your purse scarlet. I think, though, they say green is the colour of hope: it has been an unlucky colour to us, for how fond we all were of it! . . . My aunt is really a delightful person—so good-natured, lets me do just as I please: I don't wonder they all like her so much. When do you think of moving? Once together again, and I care not for anything. . . . I think you will smile when I tell you I often spend an evening engaged in a sober rubber at whist."
The contrast between the tone of this letter, and that of the lines enclosed in it, is apparent. It forms the distinction between reality and romance. In prose, the writer only wishes her mother "were in as agreeable a place;" in poetry, she is "consumed by sickening thoughts" that steal over her as she remembers she is "quite alone." As a matter of fact she states, that her aunt, whom she likes more and more, is "delightful and good-natured, allowing her to do just as she pleases;" but as a matter of fiction she declares, that "all she loved most fondly, all are gone"—that she is quite solitary and ever sorrowful. The reality asserts "that nothing can be pleasanter than her visit to Castle-end," and the romance insists that "cold is every smile" which meets hers. How far poetry may require these convenient sacrifices of fact, is a question it would be idle to discuss; nor is it here maintained that the habit was at all peculiar to L. E. L. What is required to be conceded, is simply, that the habit was hers; that she less frequently aimed at expressing in her poetry her own actual feelings and opinions, than at assuming a character for the sake of a certain kind of effect, and throwing her thickly-thronging ideas together with the most passionate force, and in the most picturesque forms. Sorrow and suspicion, pining regrets for the past, anguish for the present, and morbid predictions for the future, were in L. E. L., not moral characteristics, but merely literary resources. The wounded spirit and the worm that never dies were often but terms of art, or means to an end. This admitted, there is little of contradiction to be accounted for, and few mysteries of character to clear up.