"Ipsley! when hurried by malignant fate
I passed thy court, and heard thy closing gate,
I sighed, but sighing to myself I said,
Now for the quiet cot and mountain shade.
Oh! what resistless madness made me roam
From cheerful friends and hospitable home!
Whether in Arrow's vale, or Tachbrook's grove,
My lyre resounded liberty and love.
Here never love hath fanned his purple flame,
And fear and anger start at Freedom's name.
Yet high exploits the churlish nation boasts
Against the Norman and the Roman hosts.
'Tis false; where conquest had but reaped disgrace
Contemptuous valor spurned the reptile race.
Let me once more my native land regain,
Bounding with steady pride and high disdain;
Then will I pardon all the faults of fate,
And hang fresh garlands, Ipsley, on thy gate."
Landor laughingly calls this old house a barracks. It is nearly a
hundred feet in front, if not quite, but this portion formed only the
offices of the old March-house, which the steward of the Savages, the
clergyman, pulled down, and built his own with!
He received his education at Rugby, and at Trinity College, Oxford. At
Rugby, as we are told by Mr. Horne in his New Spirit of the Age, he
was famous for riding out of bounds, boxing, leaping, net-casting,
stone-throwing, and making Greek and Latin verses. A droll anecdote is
related of his throwing his casting-net suddenly over the head of a
farmer who found him fishing in his ponds, and keeping him there till
the fellow was tame enough to beg to be allowed to go away, instead of
seizing Landor's net, as he had threatened. He was conspicuous there
for his resistance to every species of tyranny, either of the masters
and their rules, or the boys and their system of making fags, which he
violently opposed against all odds; and he was considered arrogant and
overbearing in his own conduct. All this, I have no doubt, is quite
correct--it is most characteristic of the man and his writings; as
well as that he was a leader of the boys in all things, and yet did
not associate with them. This trait sticks by him to the present hour.
He declares that he never can bear to walk with men; with ladies he
can, but not with men, and that to walk in the streets of London
drives him mad. To this peculiarity he alludes in the opening of the
conversation between Southey and Landor; where also Southey mentions
another, which no one can be long in Landor's society without
noticing--his hearty peals of laughter at some merry story or other,
often of his own.
"_Landor._--The last time I ever walked hither in company (which,
unless with ladies, I rarely have done anywhere), was with a just, a
valiant, and a memorable man, Admiral Nichols.
"_Southey._--I never had the same dislike to company in my walks
and rambles as you profess to have, but of which I perceived no sign
whatever when I visited you, first at Lantony Abbey, and afterward on
the Lake Como. Well do I remember four long conversations in the
silent and solitary church of Sant' Abondio (surely the coolest spot
in Italy), and how often I turned back my head toward the open door,
fearing lest some pious passer-by, or some more distant one in the
wood above, pursuing the pathway which leads toward the tower of
Luitprand, should hear the roof echo with your laughter, at the
stories you had collected about the brotherhood and sisterhood of the
place."
At Oxford, Mr. Horne informs us, Landor was rusticated for firing off
a gun in the quadrangle, and, as he never intended to take a degree,
he never returned. On quitting the university, he published, in 1793,
a small volume of poems. After spending some time in London studying
Italian, he went to reside at Swansea, where he wrote "Gebir."
Having been pressed in vain by his friends to enter the army, or to
study the law, he was moved by his old spirit of resistance to
oppression, by the French invasion of Spain. He embarked for that
country, raised a number of troops at his own expense, and--being the
first Englishman who landed in Spain for the purpose of aiding
it--marched with his men from Corunna to Aguila, the head-quarters of
General Blake. For this, he received the thanks of the supreme junta,
in the Madrid Gazette, together with an acknowledgment of the donation
of twenty thousand reals from Mr. Landor. On the subversion of the
constitution by Ferdinand, he returned the letters and documents, with
his commission, to Don Pedro Cevallos, telling Don Pedro that he was
willing to aid a people in the assertion of its liberties against the
antagonist of Europe, but he could have nothing to do with a perjurer
and traitor.
I suppose it was before he left Spain that a circumstance occurred
which led to his being robbed by George III., of which he often talks.
Expressing to a Spanish nobleman a desire to have a ram and a couple
of ewes of his celebrated Merino breed, the nobleman replied, "Oh, I
will give you a score." Mr. Landor thanked him, but replied, that he
did not wish to tax his generosity to that extent. "Oh," said he, "I
kill them for mutton; you shall have a score. The King of England is
to have a cargo of them, and I will send yours in the same ship." The
ship arrived; a letter from the Spanish nobleman also arrived to say,
that, according to promise, there they were, and that on applying to
the king's steward, he would have them. Away went Landor to the
steward, showed his letter, and demanded his sheep. The steward said
he had no commands on the subject. "But his majesty," suggested
Landor, "has undoubtedly information of the fact." "That," replied the
steward, "is in his own breast." "But on seeing this letter,"
continued Landor, "his majesty will certainly give commands for the
sheep to be delivered to me. Be so good as to see that it is laid
before his majesty." The steward declined, declaring that it would be
at the risk of his place.
On this, Landor applied to a nobleman in high favor with the king, and
who was well known to himself. On announcing that he wanted him to do
him a service, the nobleman replied, "With all the pleasure in the
world: any thing that is in my power." Landor then explained the case,
showed his letter from the Spanish nobleman, and begged that his noble
friend would lay the matter before the king. The nobleman seemed
struck dumb. After a while, recovering his speech, he exclaimed--"Lay
the case before his majesty! Advise his majesty to have a score of
Merinos of this quality delivered up to you! Why, Landor, you must be
mad. There is not a man in the kingdom who dare do any such thing. It
would be his ruin." All similar efforts were in vain, and so the royal
farmer kept Landor's sheep. They were at that time worth £1,000. He
has the subject in his mind when he makes Sheridan say to Wyndham, "I
do believe in my conscience he would rather lose the affection of half
his subjects than the carcass of one fat sheep. I am informed that all
his possessions in Ireland never yielded him five thousand a-year.
Give him ten, and he will chuckle at overreaching you; and not you
only, but his own heirs forever, as he chuckled when he cheated his
eldest son of what he pocketed in twenty years from Cornwall,
Lancashire, and Wales."--Vol. ii. p. 179. Landor never relates one of
these facts without the other, adding, "When George was asked to
account for the revenues of the duchies of Cornwall and Lancaster, and
the Principality, during the prince's minority, he said he had spent
the money in the prince's education! What an education George IV., the
prince, must have had!"
If the life of Savage Landor was written, it would be one of the most
remarkable on record. He has lived much abroad, in the most eventful
times in the history of the world. He witnessed the progress of the
French Revolution; saw Bonaparte made First Consul; saw him and his
armies go out to victory; saw and conversed with the greatest of his
generals, and the most remarkable men of those times and scenes. His
conversation, therefore, abounds with facts and personages from his
own actual knowledge, of which most other men have only read, and many
of which no one has read. On the fall of Napoleon, he saw him ride,
followed by one servant, into Tours, whose inhabitants hated him, and
would have rejoiced to give him up to his enemies. He was disguised,
but Landor recognized him in a moment. Hating and despising the man as
he did, yet he never for a moment dreamed of betraying him. He,
however, went close to the fallen emperor, and touching his arm, said,
"You are not safe here. I have penetrated your disguise, and others
may." "Sir," replied Bonaparte, "you are, I perceive, an Englishman.
My secret is in good keeping." He mounted and rode away, wholly
undiscovered by the townsmen.
Before this time, however, he had done what gave him infinite
annoyance. I quote the account from Mr. Horne: "In 1806, Mr. Landor
sold several estates in Warwickshire, which had been in his family
nearly seven hundred years, and purchased Lantony and Comjoy in
Monmouthshire, where he laid out nearly £70,000. Here he made
extensive improvements, giving employment daily, for many years, to
between twenty and thirty laborers in building and planting. He made a
road at his own expense, of eight miles long, and planted and fenced
half-a-million of trees. The infamous behavior of some tenants caused
him to leave the country. At this time he had a million more trees
ready to plant, which, as he observed, 'were lost to the country, by
driving me from it. I may speak of _their_ utility if I must not
of my own.' The two chief offenders were brothers, who rented farms of
Mr. Landor to the amount of £1500 per annum, and were to introduce an
improved system of Suffolk husbandry. Mr. Landor got no rent from
them, but all manner of atrocious annoyances. They even rooted up his
trees, and destroyed whole plantations. They paid nobody. When
neighbors and work-people applied for money, Mr. Landor says, 'they
were referred to the devil, with their wives and families, while these
brothers had their two bottles of wine upon the table. As for the
Suffolk system of agriculture, wheat was sown upon the last of May,
and cabbage, for winter food, was planted in August or September.' Mr.
Landor eventually remained master of the field, and drove his
tormentors across the seas; but so great was his disgust at these
circumstances that he resolved to leave England. Before his departure
he caused his house, which had cost him some £8000, to be taken down,
that his son might never have the chance of similar vexations in that
place."
To this there wants a few additional facts. It was not only the
Suffolk farmers, but the general spirit and brutality of the people of
the country which wearied and disgusted him beyond endurance. In the
verses we have recently quoted he vents unmitigated hatred of the
Welsh, as a "churlish nation," and a "reptile race." He seems to have
been subjected to a system of universal plunder and imposition. None
but they who have lived among such a rude, thievish, and unattractive
crew can conceive the astonishment and exasperation of it to an
intelligent and generous mind. He used to have twenty watchers on his
moorland hills night and day to protect his grouse. He had twelve
thousand acres of land, and never used to see a grouse upon his table.
He says the protection of game that he never eat or benefited by, cost
him more than he now lives at. Disgusted by all these circumstances,
he left the place and resolved never to return to it. But it was not
yet that he ordered the destruction of his new and splendid house, in
which he only resided six months. He ordered his steward to let it.
Five years went on, and it still remained unlet. He then chanced to
meet with a nobleman in Italy who had once applied to him for its
occupation, "How was it," he asked, "that you did not take my house at
Lantony?" "How, why it was not to be let." "It has been to let this
five years." "You amaze me. I was most anxious to take it, but your
steward assured me it was not to be let on any account."
Landor immediately wrote to England to make particular inquiries, and
found that the steward was keeping the house to accommodate his own
friends, who came down there in parties to shoot his master's grouse.
With characteristic indignation, Mr. Landor at once ordered the
steward to quit his service and estate, and that the house should be
leveled to the ground.
In 1811, Mr. Landor married Julia, the daughter of J. Thuillier de
Malaperte, descendant and representative of the Baron de Neuve-ville,
first gentleman of the bedchamber to Charles VIII. He went to reside
in Italy, and, during several years, occupied the Palazzo Medici, in
Florence. The proprietor dying, and the palace being to be sold, he
looked out for a fresh residence, and found that the villa
Gherardesca, at Fiesole, with its gardens and farms, about three
thousand acres, was to be sold; and he purchased it. The villa
Gherardesca lies only two miles from Florence, on the banks of the
Affrico. It was built by Michael Angelo, and is one of the most
delightful residences in the world. Here Landor resided many years,
and here his family still resides. In both poetry and prose, he
frequently refers to this beloved spot with deep feeling and regret,
as in the verses commencing--
"Let me sit here and muse by thee
Awhile, aerial Fiesole!
Thy sheltered walks and cooler grots,
Villas, and vines, and olive plots,
Catch me, entangle me, detain me,
And laugh to hear that aught can pain me."--Vol. ii. p. 625.