Page:Mrs Elwood 1843.pdf/4

306 Portland, rose to honours and distinction in the church, being provost for more than thirty years of Worcester College, Oxford, besides being appointed to the lucrative deanery of Exeter, which he held till his decease in 1839. Another brother had the livings of Aberford, in Yorkshire, and Amesbury.

Miss Landon seems to have been a frequent visitor at the house of her different relatives; and upon one occasion she thus playfully describes the dismay of her cousins at her deficiency in certain fashionable acquirements; for which, indeed, L. E. L. seems never to have had any taste.

"The younger ones were sadly distressed at my want of accomplishments. When I first arrived, Julie and Isabel began to cross-question me—'Can you play?'—'No.' 'Can you sing?'—'No.' 'Can you speak Italian?'—'No.' 'Can you draw?'—'No.' At last they came down to 'Can you write and read?' Here I was able to answer to their great relief, 'Yes, a little.' I believe Julie, in the first warmth of cousinly affection, was going to offer to teach me the alphabet."

But though, as she elsewhere says of herself, "for music she had no ear, for drawing no eye, and dancing was positively terrible to her timid temper," yet was she a very clever girl, with a mind far beyond her years, though lacking the knowledge which alone could teach her how to use its powers. Plain as a child, and deficient in showy and attractive accomplishments, she was so nervously shy, that she was often unable to repeat the lesson she had thoroughly mastered, from over-anxiety to say it well, and the words died upon her lips, which were thoroughly imprinted on her memory; whilst, as is often the case with timid dispositions, the