There is not much to be said about the homes and haunts of Mrs.
Maclean, or, as I shall call her in this article, by her poetical
cognomen, L. E. L. She was a creature of town and social life. The
bulk of her existence was spent in Hans-place, Sloane-street, Chelsea.
Like Charles Lamb, she was so molded to London habits and tastes, that
that was the world to her. The country was not to her what it is to
those who have passed a happy youth there, and learned to sympathize
with its spirit, and enjoy its calm. In one respect she was right.
Those who look for society alone in the country, are not likely to be
much pleased with the change from London, where every species of
intelligence concentrates; where the rust of intellectual sloth is
pretty briskly rubbed off, and old prejudices, which often lie like
fogs in low still nooks of the country, are blown away by the lively
winds of discussion. Though descended from a country family, and
spending some time, as a child, in the country, she was not there long
enough to cultivate those associations with places and things which
cling to the heart in after-life. Her mind, naturally quick, and all
her tastes, were developed in the city. City life was part and parcel
of her being; and as she was one of the most brilliant and attractive
of its children, we must be thankful to take her as she was. It robs
us of nothing but of certain attributes of the picturesque in the
account of her abodes.
Her ancestors, it seems, from Mr. Blanchard's memoir of her, were,
about the commencement of the eighteenth century, settled at Crednall
in Herefordshire, where they enjoyed some landed property. A Sir
William Landon was a successful participator in the South Sea Bubble,
but afterward contrived to lose the whole patrimonial estates. A
descendant of Sir William was the great-grandfather of L. E. L. He was
rector of Nursted and Ilsted in Kent, and a zealous antagonist of all
dissent. His son was rector of Tedstone Delamere, near Bromyard,
Herefordshire. At his death, the property of the family being
exhausted, his children, eight in number, were left to make their way
through the world as they could. Miss Landon's father, John Landon,
was the eldest of these children. He went to sea and made two voyages,
one to the coast of Africa, and one to Jamaica. His friend and patron,
Admiral Bowyer, dying, his career in the naval service was stopped. In
the mean time, the next of his brothers, Whittington Landon, had
acquired promotion in the Church, and eventually became Dean of
Exeter. By his influence the father of the poetess was established as
a partner in the prosperous house of Adair, army agents, in Pall Mall.
On this he married Catherine Jane Bishop, a lady of Welsh extraction,
and settled at No. 25, in Hans-place. Here Miss Landon was born, on
the 14th of August, 1802. Beside her, the only other surviving child
was a brother, the present Rev. Whittington Henry Landon.
In her sixth year she was sent to school to Miss Rowden at No. 22,
Hans-place; the house in which she was destined to pass the greater
part of her life. This lady, herself a poetess, afterward became
Countess St. Quentin, and died near Paris. In this school Miss Mitford
was educated, and here Lady Caroline Lamb was for a time an inmate. At
this period, however, Miss Landon was here only a few months. She had
occasionally been taken into the country to a farm in which her father
was deeply interested, called Coventry-farm, in Hertfordshire. She now
went with her family to reside at Trevor-park, East Barnet, where her
education was conducted by her cousin, Miss Landon. She was now about
seven years old, and here the family continued to live about six
years. Here she read a great deal of romance and poetry, and began to
show the operation of her fancy by relating long stories to her
parents, and indulging in long, meditative walks in the lime walk in
the garden. Her brother was her companion, and, spite of her nascent
authorship, they seemed to have played, and romped, and enjoyed
themselves as children should do. They read Plutarch, and had a great
ambition of being Spartans. An anecdote is related of their taking
vengeance on the gardener for some affront by shooting at him with
arrows with nails stuck in them for piles, and of his tossing them
upon a quickset hedge for punishment; most probably one of the
old-fashioned square-cut ones, where they would be rather prisoners
than sufferers. This man, whose name was Chambers, Miss Landon taught
to read; and he afterward saved money, and retired to keep an inn at
Barnet.
Now she read the Arabian Nights, Scott's Metrical Romances, and
Robinson Crusoe, beside a book called Silvester Trampe. This last
professed to be a narrative of travels in Africa, and seems especially
to have fascinated her imagination. No doubt that the united effects
of this book, of other African travels, and of the fact of her father
and one of her cousins having made voyages to that continent, had no
little influence in deciding the fatal step of marrying to go out to
Cape Coast. To the happy days spent at Trevor-park, and the reading of
books like these, always a period of elysium to a child, Miss Landon
makes many references, both in her poems, and her prose sketches,
called Traits and Trials of Early Life. Some lines addressed to her
brother commemorate these imaginative pleasures very graphically:--
"It was an August evening, with sunset in the trees,
When home you brought his voyages, who found the fair South Seas.
For weeks he was our idol, we sailed with him at sea,
And the pond, amid the willows, our ocean seemed to be;
The water-lilies growing beneath the morning smile,
We called the South Sea Islands, each flower a different isle.
Within that lovely garden what happy hours went by,
While we fancied that around us spread a foreign sea and sky."
From this place the family removed to Lower-place, Fulham, where they
continued about a year, and then removed again to Old Brompton. Miss
Landon now gave continually increasing signs of a propensity to
poetry. Mr. Jordan, the editor of the Literary Gazette, was a neighbor
of her father, and from time to time her compositions were shown to
him, who at once saw and acknowledged their great promise. It does not
appear very clear whether Miss Landon continued at home during this
period--that is, from the time the family came to live here when she
was about fourteen, till the death of her father when she was about
twenty,--but it is probable that she was for a good part of this time
at the school, No. 22, Hans-place, which was now in the hands of the
Misses Lance, as she says of herself,--"I have lived all my life since
childhood with the same people. The Misses Lance," etc. However, it
was at about the age of eighteen that her contributions appeared in
the Literary Gazette, which excited universal attention. These had
been preceded by a little volume now forgotten, The Fate of Adelaide,
a Swiss romantic tale; and was speedily followed by the
Improvisatrice. It was during the writing of this her first volume of
successful poetry that her father died, leaving the family in narrow
circumstances.
The history of her life from this time is chiefly the history of her
works. The Improvisatrice was published in 1824; the Troubadour in
1825; the Golden Violet in 1826; the Venetian Bracelet, 1829. In 1830,
she produced her first prose work, Romance and Reality. In 1831, she
commenced the editorship of Fisher's Drawing-room Scrap Book, which
she continued yearly till the time of her marriage--eight successive
volumes. In 1835, she published Francesca Carrara; the Vow of the
Peacock, 1835; Traits and Trials of Early Life, 1836; and in the same
year, Ethel Churchill. Beside these works, she wrote immensely in the
annuals and periodicals, and edited various volumes of illustrated
works for the publishers.
None of the laborious tribe of authors ever toiled more incessantly or
more cheerfully than Miss Landon--none with a more devotedly generous
spirit. She had the proud satisfaction of contributing to the support
of her family, and to the last minute of her life this great object
was uppermost in her mind. On her marriage, she proposed to herself to
go on writing still, with the prospect of being thus enabled to devote
the whole of her literary profits to the comfort of her mother and the
promotion of the fortunes of her brother. In all social and domestic
relations no one was ever more amiable or more beloved. It has been
said that the same generous and disinterested spirit actuated her in
her literary character; and that, in the many opportunities which she
possessed of giving an opinion from the press on the works of
cotemporaries, she displayed not only a fair, but a magnanimous
disposition. I regret to say that from documents--manuscripts of her
own--which chanced to fall into my hands, I can not by any means fully
subscribe to this opinion. But no mortal is perfect; and let these
exceptions to the generally amiable spirit of a high-hearted and
gifted woman sleep with her in the grave.
With occasional visits to different parts of the kingdom, and once to
Paris, Miss Landon continued living in Hans-place till 1837. The
Misses Lance had given up the school, I believe, about 1830, but she
continued still to reside there with Mrs. Sheldon, their successor. In
1837 Mrs. Sheldon quitted Hans-place, for 28 Upper Berkeley-street
West, whither Miss Landon accompanied her. Here she resided only a few
months, when, at the request of some much attached friends, she took
up her abode with them in Hyde-park-street. On the 7th of June, 1838,
she was married to Mr. Maclean, Governor of Cape Coast Castle, and
almost immediately left this country, never to return.
Of the abode where the greater part of Miss Landon's life was spent,
and where almost every one of her works was written, the reader will
naturally wish to have some description. The following particulars are
given by Laman Blanchard, as from the pen of a female friend.
"Genius," says our accomplished informant, "hallows every place where
it pours forth its inspirations. Yet how strongly contrasted,
sometimes, is the outward reality round the poet with the visions of
his inward being. Is it not D'Israeli, in his Curiosities of
Literature, referring to this frequent incongruity, who mentions,
among other facts, that Moore composed his Lalla Rookh in a large
barn. L. E. L. remarks on this subject, 'A history of the _how_
and _where_ works of imagination have been produced, would often
be more extraordinary than the works themselves.' Her own case, is, in
some degree, an illustration of independence of mind over all external
circumstances. Perhaps to the L. E. L. of whom so many nonsensical
things have been said--as, 'that she should write with a crystal pen,
dipped in dew, upon silver paper, and use for pounce the dust of a
butterfly's wing;' a _dilettante_ of literature would assign, for
the scene of her authorship, a fairy-like boudoir, with rose-colored
and silver hangings, fitted with all the luxuries of a fastidious
taste. How did the reality agree with this fairy sketch? Miss Landon's
drawing-room, indeed, was prettily furnished, but it was her
invariable habit to write in her bedroom. I see it now, that homely
looking, almost uncomfortable room, fronting the street, and barely
furnished; with a simple white bed, at the foot of which was a small,
old, oblong-shaped sort of dressing-table, quite covered with a
common, worn writing-desk, heaped with papers, while some strewed the
ground, the table being too small for aught beside the desk; a
high-backed cane chair, which gave you any idea rather than that of
comfort. A few books scattered about completed the author's
paraphernalia."
Certainly one would have imagined a girl's school in London just the
last place that a poet would have fixed upon to live and work in. But
as London was the city of cities to Miss Landon, so, no doubt,
Hans-place, from early associations, was to her the place of places;
and, when she was shut in her little bedroom, was just as poetical as
any other place in the world. I recollect there was a little garden
behind the house, which, if I remember right, you saw into through a
glass door from the hall. At all events, a person full of poetic
admiration once calling upon her, saw a little girl skipping very
actively in this court or garden, and was no little astonished to see
the servant go up to her, and announce the caller, whereupon the
little girl left her skipping, and turned out to be no other than Miss
Landon herself.
Of her person, Mr. Blanchard gives this description:--"Nobody who
might happen to see her for the first time, enjoying the little quiet
dance, of which she was fond, or the snug corner of the room where the
little lively discussion, which she liked still better, was going on,
could possibly have traced in her one feature of the sentimentalist
which popular error reported her to be. The listener might only hear
her running on from subject to subject, and lighting up each with a
wit never ill-natured, and often brilliant; scattering quotations as
thick as hail, opinions as wild as the winds; defying fair argument to
keep pace with her, and fairly talking herself out of breath. He would
most probably hear from her lips many a pointed and sparkling
aphorism, the wittiest things of the night, let who might be around
her,--he would be surprised, pleased; but his heroine of song, as
painted by anticipation, he would be unable to discover. He would see
her looking younger than she really was; and perhaps, struck by her
animated air, her expressive face, her slight but elegant figure, his
impression would at once find utterance in the exclamation which
escaped from the lips of the Ettrick Shepherd on being presented to
her, whose romantic fancies had often charmed him in the wild
mountains--'Hey! but I did not think ye'd bin sae bonnie!'
"Without attempting an elaborate description of the person of L. E.
L., we cite this expression of surprise as some indication that she
was far prettier than report allowed her to be, at the period we are
speaking of. Her easy carriage and careless movements would seem to
imply an insensibility to the feminine passion for 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, as before remarked, 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
color 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, beside 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 short, quick, ringing laughs, which, not even excepting her
_bon-mots_ and aphorisms, were the most delightful things that
issued from it."
This may be considered a very fair portrait of Miss Landon. Your first
impressions of her were--what a little, light, simple, merry-looking
girl. If you had not been aware of her being a popular poetess, you
would have suspected her of being nothing more than an agreeable,
bright, and joyous young lady. This feeling in her own house, or among
a few congenial people, was quickly followed by a feeling of the
kind-heartedness and goodness about her. You felt that you could not
be long with her without loving her. There was a frankness and a
generosity about her that won extremely upon you. On the other hand,
in mixed companies, witty and conversant as she was, you had a feeling
that she was playing an assumed part. Her manner and conversation were
not only the very reverse of the tone and sentiment of her poems, but
she seemed to say things for the sake of astonishing you with the very
contrast. You felt not only no confidence in the truth of what she was
asserting, but a strong assurance that it was said merely for the sake
of saying what her hearers would least expect to hear her say. I
recollect once meeting her in company, at a time when there was a
strong report that she was actually though secretly married. Mrs.
Hofland, on her entering the room, went up to her in her plain,
straightforward way, and said, "Ah! my dear, what must I call
you?--Miss Landon, or who?" After a well feigned surprise at the
question. Miss Landon began to talk in a tone of merry ridicule of
this report, and ended by declaring that, as to love or marriage, they
were things that she never thought of.
"What, then, have you been doing with yourself this last month?"
"Oh, I have been puzzling my brain to invent a new sleeve; pray how do
you like it?" showing her arm.
"You never think of such a thing as love!" exclaimed a young,
sentimental man, "you who have written so many volumes of poetry upon
it?"
"Oh! that's all professional, you know!" exclaimed she, with an air of
merry scorn.
"Professional!" exclaimed a grave Quaker, who stood near--"why, dost
thou make a difference between what is professional and what is real?
Dost thou write one thing and think another? Does not that look very
much like hypocrisy?"
To this the astonished poetess made no reply, but by a look of genuine
amazement. It was a mode of putting the matter to which she had
evidently never been accustomed.
And, in fact, there can be no question that much of her writing was
professional. She had to win a golden harvest for the comfort of
others as dear to her as herself; and she felt, like all authors who
have to cater for the public, that she must provide, not so much what
she would of her free-will choice, but what they expected from her.
Still, working for profit, and for the age, the peculiar idiosyncrasy
of her mind showed itself through all. Before we advance to the last
melancholy home of L. E. L., let us take a review of her literary
career; rapid, yet sufficiently full to point out some particulars in
her writings which I think too peculiar not to interest strongly the
reader.
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 colors 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 to revel amid death
and woe; laying prostrate life, hope, and affection. Of all the
episodical tales introduced into the general design of the principal
poem, not one but terminated fatally 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 time
to the time of her death. Her poems, though laid in scenes and times
capable of any course of events, and though filled to overflowing with
the splendors and high-toned sentiments of chivalry; though enriched
with all the colors 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 was entirely her own. It
had one prominent and fixed character, and that character belonged
wholly 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, in almost all other respects, she retained to the
last the poetical tastes of her very earliest years. The heroes of
chivalry and romance, feudal pageants, and Eastern splendor, delighted
her imagination as much in the full growth as in the budding of her
genius.
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 jeweled 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. Such, in the Improvisatrice, are The Guerilla
Chief, St. George's Hospital, The Deserter, Gladesmure, The
Covenanters, The Female Convict, The Soldier's Grave, etc. Such are
many that might be pointed out in every succeeding volume. But it was
in her few last years that her heart and mind seemed every day to
develop more strength, and to gather a wider range of humanity into
their embrace. In the latter 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, 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 vigor.
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 Ethel Churchill,
are unquestionably the best works, the latter preëminently 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 Ethel 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 honor 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 freely all that she
has learned. She puts words into the mouth of Walter Maynard, of which
all who have known any thing 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 materials 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 responsibilities 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 its
preservation, by Lady Marchmont? What of the perpetual creed of L. E.
L., that all affection brings woe and death? What of the
Improvisatrice, in her earlier 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 theme of
her writings, both in prose and poetry; this irresistible annunciation,
like another Cassandra, of woe 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 parts of an
unsolved mystery. Whatever they are, they are more than strange, and
are enough to make us superstitious; for surely, if ever
"Coming events cast their shadows before,"
they did so in the foreboding tone of this gifted spirit.
The painful part of Miss Landon's history is, that almost from the
first outbreak of her reputation, she became the mark of the most
atrocious calumnies. How far any girlish thoughtlessness had given a
shadow of ground on which the base things said of her might rest, is
not for me, who only saw her occasionally, to say. But my own
impressions, when I did see her and converse with her, were, that no
guilty spirit could live in that bright, clear, and generous person,
nor could look forth through those candid, playful, and transparent
eyes. It was a presence which gave you the utmost confidence in the
virtuous and innocent heart of the poetess, however much you might
regret the circumstances which had directed her mind from the
cultivation of its very highest powers. In after-years, and when I had
not seen her for a long time, rumors of a like kind, but with a show
of foundation more startling, were spread far and wide. That they were
equally untrue in fact, we may reasonably infer from the circumstance,
that they who knew her best, still continued her firm and unflinching
friends. Dr. and Mrs. Todd Thomson, Mr. and Mrs. S. C. Hall, Mr.
Blanchard, General Fagan and his family, and many others; among them,
Lady Emmeline Stuart Wortley, Miss Jane Porter, Miss Strickland, Miss
Costello, and Mrs. and Miss Sheldon, whose inmate she had been for so
many years; who began with prejudice against her, and who soon became,
and continued to the last, with the very best means of observation,
her sincere friends.
These calumnies, however, must for years have been a source of anguish
to her, haunting, but, happily, not disabling her in the midst of her
incessant exertions for the holiest of purposes. They put an end to
one engagement of marriage; they very probably threw their weight into
the decision which conducted her into the fatal one she ultimately
formed.
The circumstances connected with her marriage and death are too well
known, to require narrating here. Time has shown no clear light on the
mystery. Mr. Laman Blanchard, in his memoir of her, has labored hard
to prove that she did not die by the poison of prussic acid. His
reasoning will not bear a moment's examination. That she died with a
bottle in her hand, which contained it, he confesses is proved by
other evidence than that of Mrs. Bailey, who first found her dead. He
quotes Dr. Thomson, who furnished her order for her medicine-chest,
and examined the list of articles actually put into it, and who also,
on referring to the prescriptions written by him for her on former
occasions, certified that on no occasion had he ordered her prussic
acid. On this, Mr. Blanchard says, very innocently, how then could she
possibly have got it? and adds, that very probably she was quite
ignorant of its existence and nature; as he says he himself was! That
is, that hydrocyanic acid was prussic acid!
Unfortunately, the fact stands that she was found _by the
surgeon_ with an empty bottle, labeled "hydrocyanic acid," in her
hand, and was dead. "An empty bottle, though it bear on its label the
words, 'hydrocyanic acid,' ceases to be a proof of her having taken
any, when it is found there in her hand!" Poor Blanchard! How little
did he think, in his generous desire to rescue his friend from the
stigma of self-destruction, that no person, except himself, would
require more conclusive evidence of the fact of a person's dying from
the taking of prussic acid, than that of finding her dead on the
floor, with an exhausted bottle of it in her hand! But, unfortunately,
there are other facts which, however we may conclude as to the
circumstance of her having thus taken it willfully, leave us no doubt
of her being well acquainted with the effects of this poison; of her
being in the habit of keeping it; and of her having actually, years
before, threatened to make a fatal use of this very remedy.
In Ethel Churchill will be found her own recital of the Countess
Marchmont distilling herself this very poison from the laurel, and
keeping secretly by her this poison, for the purpose of
self-destruction under certain circumstances. This shows, most
unanswerably, that Miss Landon not only was well aware of the
character of this poison, but of the mode of its preparation. She does
not send her heroine at once to the druggist's shop for it; though
scores, as is too well known, have found no difficulty in procuring it
there; but she details to us the process of its distillation,
bottling, and secreting for use.
There is a still more painful fact in existence, which, I believe, has
never been before adverted to in print, but is unquestionable, which
brings the matter more painfully home. During the agonies of mind
which Miss Landon suffered, at a time when calumny was dealing very
freely with her name, her old friend, and, for a long time, co-inmate,
Miss Roberts, came in one day, and found her very much agitated. "Have
those horrible reports," she eagerly inquired, "got into the papers,
Miss Roberts?" Miss Roberts assured her they had not. "If they do,"
she exclaimed, opening a drawer in the table, and taking out a vial,
"I am resolved--here is my remedy!" The vial was a vial of prussic
acid. This fact I have on the authority of the late Emma Roberts
herself. There remains, therefore, no question that Miss Landon was
well acquainted with the nature of prussic acid, for she kept it by
her, and had declared, under circumstances of cruel excitement, her
resolve to use it on a certain contingency. Being found, therefore,
with an emptied vial of this very poison in her hand, and dead on the
floor, can leave no rational doubt that she died by it, and by her own
hand.
But there remains the question, whether she took it purposely; and it
may be very strongly doubted that she did. From all that has
transpired, it is more probable that she had taken it by mistake. That
being in the habit of taking, by Dr. Thomson's prescription, the
_Tinctura Hyosciami_, she had been misled, in seeking hastily in
her spasms for it, by the similar label of _Acidum
Hydrocyanicum_; and, perceiving her mistake, had hurried toward the
door to call for assistance, but in vain; the usual quantity of
_Hyosciamus_ being an almost instant death-draught of the acid.
That Mrs. Maclean was likely to take this poison purposely, there is
no ground to imagine. On the contrary, to the very last, her letters
to England were full of a cheerfulness that has all the air of
thorough reality. It is true, there are many circumstances that we
could wish otherwise: that her husband had a connection with, and, it
is believed, a family by, a native Fantee woman; that he insisted on
the marriage with Miss Landon in England remaining a secret till just
before sailing, as if fearful of the news preceding him home; that he
went on shore in the night, through the surf, and at great risk, as if
to remove this woman from the spot, or see that she was not on it;
that the last two letters written to her family in England, were
detained by her husband; that the Mrs. Bailey, who attended on Mrs.
Maclean, and was about to sail the next day with her husband for
England, not only gave up these letters, but stayed there a year
longer; and that she turned out to be any thing but truthful in her
statements. Beside these, there are other facts which surprise us.
That Mrs. Maclean should have married under the impression that she
was not to go out to Cape Coast at all; that then she was to stay only
three years; that though Mr. Maclean knew the position L. E. L. had
held here--that she had been occupied with writing, and not with
cooking; that a woman who had been, as she had been for the greater
part of her life, the cherished and caressed favorite of the most
intelligent society of London, could not make, for the man of her
choice, a more entire sacrifice, than to go out to a distant barbarous
coast and settlement, in which was no single Englishwoman, except the
wife of a missionary; and might, therefore, reasonably expect that
that man should make every arrangement possible for her comfort; that
he should not object to her taking an English maid; that he should at
least have pots and pans in his house, where his celebrated wife was
to become housekeeper, and almost cook; that he should not lie in bed
all day, and leave her to entertain strange governors and their
suites. There are these and other things, which we must always wish
had been much otherwise; but all these will not induce us to let go
the belief to which we cling, that L. E. L., though she unquestionably
died by her own hand, died so through accident, and not through
resolve or cause for it.
The circumstances connected with this last home of the young poetess
are strange enough in themselves, independent of the closing tragedy.
That she who was educated in, and for, London; who could hardly bear
the country; who says, she worshiped the very pavement of London; who
was the idolized object of the ever moving and thronging social
circles of the metropolis, should go voluntarily out to the desert of
an African coast, to a climate generally fatal to Englishwomen, and to
the year-long solitude of that government fort, was a circumstance
which astonished every one. The picture of this home of exile, and of
herself and her duties in it, is drawn livingly by herself. Before
giving this, we may here simply state that Cape Coast Castle is one of
the eight British settlements on the Gold Coast. The castle stands on
a rock of gneiss and mixed slate, about twenty feet above the level of
the sea, in 5° 6' N. lat., and 1° 10' W. long. Outside there is a
native town; and the adjacent country, to a considerable distance, has
been cleared, and rendered fit for cultivation. The ruling natives are
the Fantees, a clever, stirring, turbulent race.
In one of her letters, she gives this account of the situation and
scenery of the castle:--"On three sides we are surrounded by the sea.
I like the perpetual dash on the rocks--one wave comes up after
another, and is forever dashed in pieces, like human hopes, that only
swell to be disappointed. We advance,--up springs the shining froth of
love or hope,--'a moment white, then gone forever!' The land view,
with its cocoa and palm-trees, is very striking--it is like a scene in
the Arabian Nights. Of a night, the beauty is very remarkable; the sea
is of a silvery purple, and the moon deserves all that has been said
in her favor. I have only been once out of the fort by daylight, and
then was delighted. The salt lakes were first dyed a deep crimson by
the setting sun, and as we returned they seemed a faint violet by the
twilight, just broken by a thousand stars; while before us was the red
beacon-light."
We may complete the view, exterior and interior, by other extracts. "I
must say, in itself, the place is infinitely superior to all that I
ever dreamed of. The castle is a fine building--the rooms excellent. I
do not suffer from heat; insects there are few, or none; and I am in
excellent health. The solitude, except an occasional dinner, is
absolute: from seven in the morning till seven, when we dine, I never
see Mr. Maclean, and rarely any one else. We were welcomed by a series
of dinners, which I am glad are over,--for it is very awkward to be
the only lady; still the great kindness with which I have been
treated, and the very pleasant manners of many of the gentlemen, made
me feel it as little as possible. Last week we had a visit from
Captain Castle of the Pylades. We had also a visit from Colonel Bosch,
the Dutch governor, a most gentlemanlike man. But fancy how awkward
the next morning!--I can not induce Mr. Maclean to rise; and I have to
make breakfast, and do the honors of adieu to him and his
officers--white plumes, mustaches, and all. I think I never felt more
embarrassed.
"The native huts I first took for ricks of hay; but those of the
better sort are pretty white houses, with green blinds. The English
gentlemen resident here have very large houses, quite mansions, with
galleries running round them. Generally speaking, the vegetation is so
thick, that the growth of the shrubs rather resembles a wall. The
solitude here is Robinson Crusoeish. The hills are covered to the top
with what we should call calf-weed, but here is called bush: on two of
these hills are small forts built by Mr. Maclean. The natives seem
obliging and intelligent, and look very picturesque, with their fine
dark figures, with pieces of the country cloth flung round them: they
seem to have an excellent ear for music. The band seems to play from
morning to night.
"The castle is a fine building, a sort of double square, shaped like
an H, of which we occupy the middle. A large flight of steps leads to
the hall, on either side of which is a suite of rooms. The one in
which I am writing would be pretty in England. It is of a pale blue,
and hung with some beautiful prints, for which Mr. Maclean has a
passion.
"You can not imagine how different every thing is here to England. I
hope, however, in time to get on pretty well. There is, nevertheless,
a deal to do. I have never been accustomed to housekeeping, and here
every thing must be seen to by yourself; it matters not what it is, it
must be kept under lock and key. I get up at seven, breakfast at
eight, and give out flour, butter, sugar, all from the store. I have
found the bag you gave me so useful to hold the keys, of which I have
a little army. We live almost entirely on chickens and ducks, for if a
sheep be killed it must be all eaten that day. The bread is very good:
they use palm wine for yeast. Yams are a capital substitute for
potatoes; pies and puddings are scarce thought of, unless there is a
party. The washing has been a terrible trouble, but I am getting on
better. I have found a woman to wash some of the things, but the men
do all the starching and ironing. Never did people require so much
looking after. Till Mr. Maclean comes in from court at seven, I never
see a living creature but the servants. * * * The weather is now very
warm; the nights so hot that you can only bear the lightest sheet over
you. As to the beds, the mattresses are so hard, they are like iron.
The damp is very destructive; the dew is like rain, and there are no
fireplaces: you would not believe it, but a grate would be the first
of luxuries. Keys, scissors, every thing rusts. * * * I find the
servants civil, and not wanting in intelligence, but industry. Each
has servants to wait on him, whom they call sense-boys, _i.e._,
they wait on them to be taught. Scouring is done by the prisoners.
Fancy three men employed to clean a room, which, in England, an old
woman could do in an hour, while a soldier stands over them with a
drawn bayonet."
Such was the last strange, solitary home of L. E. L.; such the strange
life of one who had been before employed only in diffusing her
beautiful fancies amid her countrymen. Here she was rising at seven,
giving out flour, sugar, etc. from the stores, seeing what room she
would have cleaned, and then sitting down to write. In the midst of
this new species of existence, she is suddenly plunged into the grave,
leaving the wherefore a wonder. The land which was the attraction of
her childhood, singularly enough, thus became her sepulcher. A marble
slab, with a Latin inscription, is said to be erected there by her
husband; and in Brompton Church a monument has been placed by her
admiring friends.
[Illustration: Abbotsford]