Samuel Carter Hall

“ We were nearly of the same age, but I had been almost a year married, and if I had not supported myself on my dignity as a married woman, should have been more than nervous, on my first introduction to a 'living poet,' though the poet was so different from what I had imagined. Her movements were as rapid as those of a squirrel. I wondered how any one so quick could be so graceful. ”

“ If ever woman was, Laetitia Landon was, "done to death by slanderous tongues."
I have touched upon this theme reluctantly,—perhaps it might have been omitted altogether,—but it seems to me absolutely necessary, in order to comprehend the character of the poet towards her close of life, and the secret of her marriage, which so "unequally yoked" her to one utterly unworthy. ”

“ She was perpetually at work, although often—nay, generally—with little of physical strength, and sometimes utterly prostrated by illness. Yet the work must be done, as her poems and prose were usually for periodical publications, and a given day of the month it was impossible to postpone.
Poetry she wrote with great ease and rapidity. In one of her letters to Mrs. Hall she says,—"I write poetry with far more ease than I do prose. In prose, I often stop and hesitate for a word; in poetry, never. Poetry always carries me out of myself. ”

“ In the zenith of her fame, and towards her terrible close of life, the personal appearance of Miss Landon was highly attractive. Though small of stature, her form was remarkably graceful; and in society she paid special attention to dress. ”

“ I congratulated them on the prospect. 'Yes,' said Miss Landon, 'the mechanical getting-up is all very well; I wish all that is termed "dashing " did not lie in the tomb of the Duchess of Gordon. A quadrille is but still life put into motion. Our faces, like our summers, want sunshine. Old Froissart complained in his day, that the English, after their fashion, "s'amusent moult tristement." A ball-room is merely "Arithmetic and the use of figures taught here." A young lady in a quadrille might answer,—"I am too busy to laugh,—I am making my calculations." And yet ours is not a marrying age ”

“ The lady of his love was there, and she ought to have been dressed as the Sultana poor Miss Spence burlesqued. Nature had bestowed on her an Oriental style of beauty, and she would have come out well in Oriental costume; but she chose the dress of a Swiss peasant, which, being more juvenile, brought her nearer to her lover's age. ”

“ She was one of those stolid persons who are the bane of authors, who think nothing of the lost idea, and the unravelling of the web, when a train of thought is broken by the 'only one word,' 'only a moment,' which scatters thoughts to the wind,—thoughts that can no more be gathered home than the thistle-down that is scattered by a passing breeze. ”

“ She was taking lessons in riding, and had so much pleased the riding-master that at parting he complimented her by saying,—"Well, Madam, we are all born with a genius for something, and yours is for horsemanship." ”

“ The prisoners do the scouring, and fancy three or four men cleaning a room that an old woman in England would do in an hour,—besides the soldier who stands by, his bayonet drawn in his hand. All my troubles have been of a housekeeping kind, and no one could begin on a more plentiful stock of ignorance than myself. ”

“ My next visit to her was after she left her grandmamma's, and went to reside at 22, Hans Place. Miss Emma Roberts and her sister at that time boarded in Miss Lance's school, and Miss Landon found there a room at the top of the house, where she could have the quiet and seclusion her labor required, and which her kind-natured, but restless grandmother prevented. She never could understand how 'speaking one word to Letty, just one word, and not keeping her five minutes away from that desk, where she would certainly grow humped or crooked,' could interfere with her work! ”

“ It seems absurd that a ball should be the first great event of my literary life. There I saw for the first time many persons who became in after-years intimate friends, and whose names are now parts of the history of the literature of their country. ”

“ Hall,—without a date,—but it must have been written in 1837, when she was suffering terribly under the blight of evil tongues:—
"I have long since discovered that I must be prepared for enmity I have never provoked, and unkindness I have little deserved. God knows, that, if, when I do go into society, I meet with more homage and attention than most, it is dearly bought. What is my life?
One day of drudgery after another; difficulties incurred for others, which have ever pressed upon me; health, which every year, by one severe illness after another, shows is taxed beyond its strength ”

“ I begged to decline the proposal concerning the wild Irish girl and the Irish harp, but agreed to carry a basket of flowers. Certainly the fête-givers worked 'with a will,' turned the great house 'out of windows,'
converting the two school-rooms, big and little, into a ball-room, and decorating it richly with green leaves and roses, real and artificial. ”

“ Maclean. The cocoa-trees with their long fan-like leaves are very beautiful. The natives seem to be 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 plays all the old popular airs, which they have caught from some chance hearing. The servants are very tolerable, but they take so many to work. ”

“ She had a lodging of two rooms in Great Quebec Street, and 'patronized' young littérateurs, inviting them to her 'humble abode,' where tea was made in the bed room, and where it was whispered the butter was kept cool in the wash-hand-basin! There were 'lots' of such-like small scandals about poor Miss Spence's 'humble abode'; still people liked to go; and my husband was invited, with a sort of apology to poor me, who, never having published anything at that time, was considered ineligible; it was 'a rule,' and Miss Spence, in her 'humble abode,' lived by rule. ”

“ I forget everything in the world but the subject that has interested my imagination. It is the most subtile and insinuating of pleasures; but, like all pleasures, it is dearly bought. It is always succeeded by extreme depression of spirits, and an overpowering sense of bodily fatigue. ”

“ Landon, the father of 'L. E. L,' at Old Brompton,
a narrow lane only dividing our residences. My first recollection of the future poetess is that of a plump girl, grown enough to be almost mistaken for a woman, bowling a hoop round the walks, with a hoop-stick in one hand and a book in the other, reading as she ran, and as well as she could managing both exercise and instruction at the same time."
She was born on the 14th of August, 1802, at Hans Place, Chelsea, where her father, a junior partner in the prosperous house of Adair, army-agents, then resided. ”

“ Maclean, then Governor of the Gold Coast,* [1] —a man who neither knew, felt, nor estimated her value. He wedded her, I am convinced, only because he was vain of her celebrity; and she married him only because he enabled her to change her name, and to remove from that society in which just then the old and infamous slander had been revived. ”

“ L. E. L. assured me he was very clever, had written a novel, and 'piles of poetry,' and would be wonderful soon, but that he was much too handsome for an author; at which opinion, little Miss Spence, in a plum-pudding sort of turban, with a bird-of-paradise bobbing over the front, and a fan even larger than poor Lady Morgan's, agitated her sultana's dress, and assured me that 'nothing elevated the expression of beauty so much as literature,' and that 'young things, like many of the present company, would not look as well in ten years!' Mr. ”

“ We live almost entirely on ducks and chickens; if a sheep be killed, it must be eaten the same day. The bread is very good, palm wine being used for yeast; and yams are an excellent substitute for potatoes. ”

“ She became a "lion," courted and flattered and fêted; yet never was she misled by the notion that popularity is happiness, or lip-service the true homage of the heart.
She was residing at Old Brompton, when her first poem appeared in the "Literary Gazette," which Mr. Jerdan had not long previously established. It would be difficult to conceive the enthusiasm excited by the magical three letters appended to the poems, whenever they appeared. Mr. ”

“ The hills are covered to the top with what we should call wood, but is here called bush. This dense mass of green is varied by some large, handsome, white houses belonging to different gentlemen, and on two of the heights are small forts built by Mr. ”