Letitia Elizabeth Landon (born 1802, died 1838), perhaps better known as “L. E. L.,” was the daughter of John Landon, of an old Herefordshire family. Her earliest poems were published in the “Literary Gazette,” the editor of which, Mr. Jerdan, afforded her valuable critical and literary assistance. Her first long poem, “The Fate of Adelaide” (1820), a very immature production, was followed by the “Poetical Sketches” contributed to the “Literary Gazette,” and during the whole of her career she continued to write for this and other periodicals. Of her longer poems, “The Improvisatrice” appeared in 1824, “The Troubadour” in 1825, “The Golden Violet” in 1826, “The Venetian Bracelet,” “Lost Pleiad,” and other poems in 1829. “The Zenana” was one of the longest contributions to Fisher’s “Drawing-room Scrap-book,” which Miss Landon edited from 1830 until her departure for Africa. In 1831 appeared her first prose work, “Romance and Reality;” it was followed by “Francesca Carrara.” “Ethel Churchill” (1836), her most powerful work, as well as the tragedy “The Fortunes of Castruccio Castracani,” gave evidence of maturing forces which might have produced greater results than those by which she is now known. Having spent the greater part of her life in London, Miss Landon married, on June 7th, 1838, George Maclean, Governor of Cape Coast, and sailed with him shortly after for Africa. The separation from her friends and admirers in England was destined to be a lasting one, for she died in the following year [?] from an overdose of prussic acid administered medicinally by herself. Unlike her writings, which are tinged with a uniform gloom and melancholy, she was of a most sociable and animated nature.

Personal

  Pickersgill’s portrait of her, which was exhibited at the Royal Academy, is allowed, by every body who has seen her, to be any thing but a flattering likeness, except in the talent and animation which it indicates…. Her life can as yet afford but few events to chronicle: and we hope it will never be chequered by any of an unpleasant character.

  So Daniel has bought the “Improvisatrice.” Did thou know that L. E. L. was a ward of Jerdan’s, the editor of the Literary Gazette? whence his abundant and extravagant puffs of her. She is, I understand, rather short, but interesting-looking, a most thoughtless girl in company, doing strangely extravagant things; for instance, making a wreath of flowers, then rushing with it into a grave and numerous party, and placing it on her patron’s head. Bernard Barton sent her one of his last volumes, and in reply, after some remarks on the poetry it contained, she sent him, in high glee, a full account of a ball she had just attended, particularising all the dresses, forgetting she was writing to a sober Quaker. However, she is but a girl of twenty, a genius and therefore she must be excused.

  I avoided L. E. L., who looked the very personification of Brompton—pink satin dress and white satin shoes, red cheeks, snub nose, and her hair à la Sappho.

  Oh! I saw L. E. L. to-day. She avows her love to her betrothed frankly, and is going to Africa, where he is governor of a fortress. Is not that grand? It is on the Gold Coast, and his duty is to protect black people from being made slaves. The whole thing is a romance for Lamartine—half Paul and Virginia, half Inkle and Yarico. Poor Miss Landon! I do like and shall miss her. But she will be happier than in writing, which seems to me like shooting arrows and never hitting the right mark, but now and then putting out one’s own little boy’s eye.

  There was no slander too vile, and no assertion too wicked, to heap on the fame of this injured creature. Mr. [      ], a married man, and the father of a large family, many of whom were older than L.E.L., was said to have been her lover, and it was publicly stated that she had become too intimately connected with him. Those who disbelieved the calumny refrained not from repeating it, until it became a general topic of conversation. Her own sex, fearful of censure, had not courage to defend her; and this highly-gifted and sensitive creature, without having committed a single error, found herself a victim to slander…. Pride led her to conceal what she suffered, but those who best knew her were aware that for many months sleep could only be obtained by the aid of narcotics, and that violent spasms and frequent attacks of the nerves left her seldom free from acute suffering. The effort to force a gayety she was far from feeling increased her sufferings even to the last. The first use she made of the money produced by her writings was to buy an annuity for her grandmother—that grandmother whose acerbity of temper and wearying exigeance had embittered her home. She then went to reside in Hans Place with some elderly ladies who kept a school, and here again calumny assailed her. Dr. M—, a married man, and father of grown daughters, was now named as her paramour; and though his habits, age, appearance, and attachment to his wife ought to have precluded the possibility of attaching credence to so absurd a piece of scandal, poor L. E. L. was again attacked in a manner that nearly sent her to the grave. This last falsehood was invented a little more than four years ago, when some of those who disbelieved the other scandal affected to give credit to this, and stung the sensitive mind of poor L. E. L. almost to madness by their hypocritical conduct. About this time Mr. Maclean became acquainted with her, and after some months proposed for her hand.

  Her easy carriage and careless movements would seem to imply an insensibility to the feminine passion of dress; yet she had a proper sense of it, and never disdained the foreign aid of ornament, always provided it was simple, quiet, and becoming. Her hair was darkly brown, very soft and beautiful, and always tastefully arranged; her figure slight, but well-formed and graceful; her feet small, but her hands especially so, and faultlessly white and finely shaped; her fingers were fairy fingers; her ears also were observably little. Her face, though not regular in any feature, became beautiful by expression; every flash of thought, every change and colour of feeling, lightened over it as she spoke, when she spoke earnestly. The forehead was not high, but broad and full; the eyes had no overpowering brilliancy, but their clear intellectual light penetrated by its exquisite softness; her mouth was not less marked by character; and besides the glorious faculty of uttering the pearls and diamonds of fancy and wit, knew how to express scorn, or anger, or pride, as well as it knew how to smile winningly, or to pour forth those quick, ringing laughs which, not even excepting her bon-mots and aphorisms, were the most delightful things that issued from it.

  A more mournful story than hers is seldom heard—illustrative as it is of the perils, snares, and sufferings of a literary life, where the responsibility of the vocation is not felt with the seriousness which shames cupidity, and silences flattery. People inferior to herself made money and amusement out of her talent and herself; and she permitted them to do it—partly out of careless generosity, and partly because she was too little aware of the responsibility of genius. Carefully cultivated, her genius might have accomplished great things. As it was, her early and wonderful facility is nearly all that remains for admiration. By her personal friends she is remembered with an affection which has nothing to do with her writings; and by those who did not know her, her writings are regarded with an indifference almost as great as her own.

  The verdict, therefore, was, that she died from an overdose of Scheele’s preparation of prussic acid, taken inadvertently. In those warm latitudes interment follows death with a haste which often cruelly shocks the feelings. Mrs. Maclean was buried the same evening, within the precincts of the castle. Mr. Topp read the funeral service, and the whole of the residents assisted at the solemn ceremony. The grave was lined with walls of brick and mortar, with an arch over the coffin. Soon after the conclusion of the service, one of those heavy showers only known in tropical climates suddenly came on. All departed for their houses. I remained to see the arch completed. The bricklayers were obliged to get a covering to protect them and their work from the rain. Night had come on before the paving-stones were all put down over the grave, and the workmen finished their business by torchlight. How sadly yet does that night of gloom return to my remembrance! How sad were then my thoughts, as, wrapped up in my cloak, I stood beside the grave of L. E. L. under that pitiless torrent of rain! I fancied what would be the thoughts of thousands in England if they could see and know the meaning of that flickering light, of those busy workmen, and of that silent watcher! I thought of yesterday, when at the same time I was taking my seat beside her at dinner, and now—oh, how very, very sad the change!

  I can recollect her when she lived in Sloane Street with her grandmother; indeed, I remember her before that time. I recall her exactly; short, not slight, with a most blooming, glowing complexion, beautiful teeth, expression; everything but features—that is, the features were insignificant—they were not unpleasing. She could not have been above eighteen, but she had a fashion of wearing a fanciful little cap on the top of her head, and that suited her exactly. It was an eccentric appearance that she made. She dressed then upon an idea—a sweeter voice I never heard; I mean in speaking. I do not believe that she sang, or that she had any knowledge of music. She had an inborn courtesy of manner, that flattered you whether she wished it or not: a warm, excitable nature. We met, one evening—but stay—I must sit and think of her awhile. She is too precious a remembrance to be merely made notes of. I should like here to record all that I knew of her, felt for her, heard of her. What is the street, in all that there really is, of London, (that is, west of Portland Place and south of Oxford Street), in which her pleasant voice, her quick step, are not at some moment or other present with me?

  The spot that was chosen for the grave of this accomplished but unhappy lady could not be more inappropriate; a few common tiles distinguish it from the graves of the various military men who have perished in this stronghold of pestilence. Her grave is daily trampled over by the soldiers of the fort. The morning blast of the bugle and roll of the drum are the sounds that have been thought most in unison with the spirit of the gentle being who sleeps below the few red tiles where the soldiers on parade do congregate. There is not a plant, nor a blade of grass, nor of any thing green, in that court-yard, on which the burning sun blazes down all day long. And this is the place where they have buried L. E. L.

  In spite of the miserably low standard of her literary morality, Miss Landon (for awhile put forward as Mrs. Hemans’s rival) was meant for better things. She was incomplete, but she was worthy of being completed; she was ignorant, but she was quick, and capable of receiving culture, had she been allowed a chance. If she was unrefined, it was because she had fallen into the hands of a coarse set of men—the Tories of a provincial capital—such as then made a noise and a flare in the “Noctes Ambrosianæ” of “Blackwood’s Magazine,” second-hand followers of Lockhart and Professor Wilson, and Theodore Hook; the most noisy and most reprehensible of whom—and yet one of the cleverest—was Dr. Maginn. Not merely did they, at a very early period of the girl’s career, succeed in bringing her name into a coarse repute, from which it never wholly extricated itself, but, by the ridiculous exaggeration of such natural gifts as she possessed (no doubt accompanied by immediate gain), flattered her into the idea that small further cultivation was required by one who could rank with a Baillie, a Tighe, a Hemans—if not their superior, at least their equal. Further, she was not fortunate in her home position, called on to labour incessantly for the support of those around her. All this resulted in what may be called a bravado in her intercourse with the public, which excited immense distaste among those who were not of the coterie to which she belonged.

  I knew her well and attended her from her infancy; she was the last woman whom I should have supposed likely to destroy herself. She was said to have died from prussic acid. Now I fitted out the medicine chest she took with her to Cape Coast Castle, and know that there was no prussic acid in her possession. I am convinced that she did not die from its effects, and we must seek for her death from some other cause.

  Mr. Landon was a character of no ordinary cast, and like his sister (though not in the same way) possessed very superior talents, cultivated by study, and no less by the opportunities of mingling much in the literary circles of London. His love for his sister was most warm and marked. When he came first to see us, his sister was living, in the bloom of womanhood, the height of fame, and indulging in the creations of her genius. She could not be unconscious of her uncommon powers, for success from the very first had attended her steps. She never experienced opposition and adversities, which humble often even the most gifted. She knew no jealousy of others; on the contrary she was ever ready to do a kind act for any one.

  Her fame, like herself, is but a memory now. But how bright it was half a century ago!—how intoxicating! So quickly won, too, that she might, like Byron, have written, “I awoke one morning and found myself famous.” Alas! Dead-Sea fruit, indeed, was to her the fruit of genius—of all the women of letters whose pens have assisted feminine charms to make them famous and flattered, few have been more completely miserable; none can I bring to mind who ever closed a career of brilliant unhappiness by a death so tragical. Her marriage wrecked her life; but before that fatal mistake was made, slander had been busy with her fair fame—the slander that most cruelly wounds a woman. She took refuge from it in union with a man utterly incapable of appreciating her or making her happy, and went out with him to his government at the Gold Coast—to die. And not even—tragical as such an ending would have been to the career of the applauded writer, the flattered woman—to wither before the pestilential influences that steam up from that wilderness of swamp and jungle; but to die a violent death—a fearful one—and to leave to the coroner’s inquest, that the manner of her end made necessary, the task of delicately veiling under a verdict of accident the horrid doubts that her fate suggested. Suicide or murder—which was it, the voice of the public of that day asked, that had so tragically closed the career of the gifted “L. E. L.?” For my part, that unhappy “L. E. L.” was murdered I never had a doubt…. When the ship that bore them to Africa arrived in port, Maclean left her on board while he went to arrange matters on shore. A negro woman was there, with four or five children—his children; she had to be sent into the interior to make room for her legitimate successor. It is understood the negress was the daughter of a king; at all events she was of a race “with whom revenge is a virtue,” and from the moment “L. E. L.” landed, her life was at the mercy of her rival; that by her hand she was done to death I am all but certain, although in the only letter she wrote to Mrs. Hall from Africa she assumed an air of cheerfulness and content…. Poor child, poor girl, poor woman, poor wife, poor victim—from the cradle to the grave, it was an unhappy life! I have seldom seen her merry, that the laugh was not followed by a sigh.

  No circumstance respecting “L. E. L.” has occasioned so much discussion as her sudden and mysterious death at Cape Coast Castle on 15 Oct. 1838. That she died of taking prussic acid can hardly be disputed, though the surgeon’s neglect to institute a post-mortem examination left an opening for doubt. That she was found lying in her room with an empty bottle, which had contained a preparation of prussic acid, in her hand seems equally certain, and the circumstance, if proved, negatives the not unnatural suspicion that her death was the effect of the vengeance of her husband’s discarded mistress, while there is no ground in any case for suspecting him. There remain, therefore, only the hypotheses of suicide and of accident; and the general tone of her letters to England, even though betraying some disappointment with her husband, is so cheerful, and the fact of her having been accustomed to administer a most dangerous medicine to herself is so well established, that accident must be regarded as the more probable supposition.

General

  L. E. L. has too little variety for me; everything is so impassioned: I wish she would mix a little sage with her myrtle garland.

  Tickler.  I love L. E. L.
  North.  So do I; and, being old gentlemen, we may blamelessly make the public our confidante. There is a passionate purity in all her feelings that endears to me both her human and poetical character. She is a true enthusiast. Her affections overflow the imagery her fancy lavishes on all the subjects of her song, and colour it with a rich and tender light which makes even confusion beautiful, gives a glowing charm even to indistinct conception, and when the thoughts themselves are full-formed and substantial, which they often are, brings them prominently out upon the eye of the soul in flashes that startle us into sudden admiration. The originality of her genius, methinks, is conspicuous in the choice of its subjects:—they are unborrowed—and in her least successful poems—as wholes—there is no dearth of poetry. Her execution has not the consummate elegance and grace of Felicia Hemans; but she is very young, and becoming, every year she lives, more mistress of her art,—and has chiefly to learn now how to use her treasures, which, profuse as she has been, are in abundant store. And, in good truth, the fair and happy being has a fertile imagination: the soil of her soul, if allowed to lie fallow for one sunny summer, would, I predict, yield a still richer and more glorious harvest. I love Miss Landon; for in her genius does the work of duty—the union of the two is “beautiful exceedingly,”—and virtue is its own reward; far beyond the highest meed of praise ever bestowed by critic, though round her fair forehead is already wreathed the immortal laurel.

  The brilliant parterres of Miss Landon’s enclosure, on the south of Parnassus, where ideas, like humming-birds, are seen flying about in tropical sunshine, or fluttering over blossoms of all hues and all climes.

  Next to “Sister Joanna,” the most successful poetess of our day. She is the L. E. L. of many a pretty poem: nor has she sung only a tender ditty or two, and then shut her lips to listen to the applause they brought; she has written much; sometimes loftily, sometimes touchingly, and always fluently and gracefully. She excels in short and neat things; yet she has poured out her fancy and her feelings through the evolutions of a continuous narrative and intricate story. The flow of her language is remarkable; her fancy is ever ready and never extravagant.

  The career of Mrs. Maclean commenced brilliantly, but the promise of her earlier efforts was scarcely fulfilled in her subsequent productions, which were generally written under circumstances that prevented study and elaboration. She had a deep feeling of affection, a lively fancy, a fine eye for the picturesque, and an unusual command of poetical language; and notwithstanding the haste and carelessness with which she wrote, she was improving in taste and execution, and would probably have gained a far higher reputation had she lived a few years more. With all her faults she will be remembered as one of the sweetest poets of the age.

  But you shall not think me exclusive. Of poor L. E. L. for instance, I could write with more praiseful appreciation than you can. It appears to me that she had the gift—though in certain respects she dishonored the art—and her latter lyrics are, many of them, of great beauty and melody, such as, having once touched the ear of a reader, live on in it.

  I should say that it is the young and 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, among 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…. Her prose stories have all 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.

  This remarkable writer, better known perhaps as Miss Landon, or L. E. L., may, I think, be considered the Byron of our poetesses…. Of Mrs. Maclean’s genius there can be but one opinion. It is distinguished by very great intellectual power, a highly sensitive and ardent imagination, an intense fervour of passionate emotion, and almost unequalled eloquence and fluency. Of mere art she displays but little. Her style is irregular and careless, and her painting sketchy and rough: but there is genius in every line she has written.

  Some of her smaller pieces, as “Crescentius,” show her to have been capable of higher classic power, if she had had the patience to cultivate a greater severity of criticism on her own productions. The editor has far greater pleasure in speaking of her writings, as they struck his youthful fancy, than with the cool judgment of more mature years; but he believes that there are few who will not join him in a willing tribute to the minstrel power of one, who, whatever her defects may have been, had the true fire and gush of poetic inspiration.

  Her deficiency alike in judgment and taste made her wayward and capricious, and her efforts seemed frequently impulsive. Hence she gave to the public a great deal too much—a large part of her writings being destitute of that elaboration, care, and finish essentially necessary in the fine arts, even when in combination with the highest genius, to secure permanent success…. L. E. L. had opened her eyes to these her defects, and was rapidly overcoming them; for her very last things—those published in her “Remains,” by Laman Blanchard—are incomparably her best, whether we regard vigorous conception, concentration of idea, or judicious selection of subject. Her faults originated in an enthusiastic temperament and an efflorescent fancy; and showed themselves, as might have been expected, in an uncurbed prodigality of glittering imagery,—her muse, untamed and untutored, ever darting in dalliance from one object to another, like the talismanic bird in the Arabian story.

  The poems of L. E. L. of surpassing sweetness and pathos, rivaling those of Mrs. Norton herself in heartrending sentiment, will long survive their unhappy author, and speak to the heart of generations to which her premature fate will be a lasting subject of commiseration.

  The chief characteristics of the poetry of L. E. L. consist in imaginative power, tenderness, and geniality of feeling, and harmony of versification.

  As a poetess Letitia Elizabeth Landon can only rank as a gifted improvisatrice. She had too little culture, too little discipline, too low an ideal of her art, to produce anything of very great value. All this she might and probably would have acquired under happier circumstances.

  It is tolerably exact, and it is not harsh, to say that “L. E. L.” is a Mrs. Hemans with the influence of Byron added, not to the extent of any “impropriety,” but to the heightening of the Romantic tone and of a native sentimentality. Her verse is generally musical and sweet: it is only sometimes silly. But it is too often characterised by what can but be called the “gush” which seems to have affected all the poetesses of this period except Sara Coleridge.

  Though her verse is of little value, she is one of the best examples of the tendencies of the time. She followed Byron as far as her talents and the restraints of her sex would allow. Her longer poems are on the whole poor; some of her shorter pieces are very readable, but they are chargeable with the fault of an excess of rhetoric.