Page:Samuel Carter Hall.pdf/2



ITH unmingled pain I write the name of Laetitia Elizabeth Landon,—the L. E. L., whose poems were for so long a period the delight of all readers, old and young. We were among the few friends who knew her intimately. But it was not in her nature to open her heart to any one; her large organ of "secretiveness" was her bane; she knew it and deplored it; it was the origin of that misconception which embittered her whole life, the mainspring of that calumny which made fame a mockery and glory a deceit. But I may say, that, when slander was busiest with her reputation, we had the best means to confute it,—and did. For some years there was not a single week during which, on some day or other, morning or evening, she was not a guest at our house; yet this blight in her spring-time undoubtedly led to the fatal marriage which eventuated in her mournful and mysterious death. The calumny was of that kind which most deeply wounds a woman. How it originated, it was at the time, and is of course now, impossible to say. Probably its source was nothing more than a sneer, but it bore Dead-Sea fruit. A slander more utterly groundless never was propagated. It broke off an engagement that promised much happiness with a gentleman, then eminent, and since famous, as an author: not that he at any time gave credence to the foul and wicked rumor; but to her "inquiry" was a sufficient blight, and by her the contract was annulled. The utter impossibility of its being other than false could have been proved, not only by us, but by a dozen of her intimate friends, whose evidence would have been without question and conclusive. She was living in a school for young ladies: seen daily by the ladies

who kept that school, and by the pupils. In one of her letters to Mrs. Hall, she writes, "I have lived nearly all my life, since childhood, with the same people. The Misses Lance were strict, scrupulous, and particular,—moreover, from having kept a school so long, with habits of minute observation. The affection they feel for me can hardly be undeserved. I would desire nothing more than to refer to their opinion." Dr. Thomson, her constant medical friend and adviser, testified long afterwards to her "estimable qualities, generous feelings, and exalted virtues." It would, indeed, have been easy to obtain proof abundant; but in such cases the very effort to lessen the evil augments it; there was no way of fighting with a shadow; it was found impossible to trace the rumor to any actual source. Few then, and perhaps none now, can tell how deeply the poisoned arrow entered her heart. 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.

Here is a passage from one of her letters to Mrs. 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?