Page:Mrs Elwood 1843.pdf/3

Rh Hans-place, Chelsea, where, on the 14th of August, 1802, was born their celebrated daughter, Letitia Elizabeth Landon.

She was the eldest of three children, of whom one, a girl, died at the age of thirteen; the other was her brother, the Rev. Whittington Henry Landon, the attached and long the almost inseparable companion of her childhood and youth, and for whom she appears to have felt a peculiarly strong attachment; and to him is addressed a beautiful poem, descriptive of the feelings of their early days, when first perusing the voyages of Captain Cook.

Miss Landon received the first rudiments of education from an invalid friend and neighbour, who was wont to throw the letters of the alphabet over the carpet, and on the infant scholar bringing to her the right one, she received some trivial reward, which, on her return home, was displayed in the drawing-room, and invariably shared with her brother, who consequently was wont to look very earnestly for the hour of her appearance. She was only in her sixth year when she was sent for some months to a school kept by Miss Rowden, subsequently Countess St. Quentin, at No. 22, Hans-place, in which house she in after years resided for several years with the Misses Lance as a boarder.

Up to this period Miss Landon had never left London, excepting on short visits to a place called Coventry Farm, on the borders of Hertfordshire, where her father, confiding the superintendence of his projects to a brother, speculated deeply, and became in consequence, subsequently, greatly embarrassed in his circumstances. In the meantime, his more prosperous brother, Whittington, under the patronage and favour of the Duke of