Page:Samuel Carter Hall.pdf/3

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; envy, malice, and all uncharitableness: these are the fruits of a successful literary career for a woman."

She was slow to believe that false and bitter words could harm her. At first they seemed but to inspire her with a dangerous bravery in her innocence, and to increase a practice we always deplored, of saying things for effect in which she did not believe. It was no use telling her this; she would argue that a conversation of facts would be as dull as a work on algebra, and that all she did was to put her poetry into practice. In these moods you might as well attempt to imprison a sunbeam as keep her to matter-of-fact; and the misery was, that gradually the number of detractors increased, who caught up these "effective" scraps, and set them in circulation.

She was not more than fifteen years old when the letters "L. E. L."—appended to some verses in the "Literary Gazette"—riveted public attention; and when it became known that the author was scarcely in her teens, a full gush of popularity burst upon her that might have turned older heads and steadier dispositions. 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. Jerdan was a near neighbor of the Landons, and he thus refers to their residence at Old Brompton:—

"My cottage overlooked the mansion and grounds of Mr. 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. And in that locality, with few brief intervals, the whole of her life was passed.

When we first knew her, in 1825, she lived with her grandmother in Sloane Street; subsequently she was a boarder in the school-establishment of the Misses Lance, at No. 22, Hans Place, the house in which she had been a pupil when but six years old; and here she was residing up to within a few months of her marriage, when, in consequence of the retirement of the Misses Lance, she became an inmate in the family of Mrs. Sheddon.

Her grandmother's grave was, if I recollect rightly, the third that was made in the graveyard of Holy Trinity, Brompton. Her lines on this "new" churchyard will be remembered. I attended the old lady's funeral, Mrs. Hall having received from Miss Landon this letter:—

"I have had time to recover the first shock,—and it was great weakness to feel so sorry, though even now I do not like to think of her very sudden death. I am thankful for its giving her so little confinement or pain; she had never known illness, and would have borne it impatiently,—a great addition to suffering. I am so very grateful to Mr. Hall, for I really did not know what to do. Her funeral is fixed for Friday; the hour will be arranged to his and Mr. Jerdan's convenience."

Mrs. Hall supplies me with the following particulars concerning her early acquaintance and intercourse with Miss Landon.