Page:William Howitt.pdf/4

Rh had no little influence in deciding the fatal step of marrying to go out to Cape Coast. To the happy days spent at Trevor Park, and the reading of books like these, always a period of elysium to a child, Miss Landon makes many references, both in her poems and her prose sketches, called Traits and Trials of Early Life. Some lines addressed to her brother commemorate these imaginative pleasures very graphically:—

It was an August evening, with sunset in the trees, When home you brought his voyages, who found the fair South Seas. For weeks he was our idol, we sailed with him at sea, And the pond, amid the willows, our ocean seemed to he; The water-lilies growing beneath the morning smile, We called the South Sea Islands, each flower a different isle. Within that lovely garden what happy hours went by, While we fancied that around us spread a foreign sea and sky."

From this place the family removed to Lower-place, Fulham, where they continued about a year, and then removed again to Old Brompton. Miss Landon now gave continually-increasing signs of a propensity to poetry. Mr. Jerdan, the editor of the Literary Gazette, was a neighbour of her father's, and from time to time her compositions were shown to him, who at once saw and acknowledged their great promise. It does not appear very clear whether Miss Landon continued at home during this period—that is, from the time the family came to live here, when she was about fourteen, till the death of her father, when she was about twenty—but it is probable that she was for part of this time at the school, No. 22, Hans-place, which was now in the hands of the Misses Lance, as she says of herself,—"I have lived all my life since childhood with the same people. The Misses Lance," &c. However, it was at about the age of eighteen that her contributions appeared in the Literary Gazette, which excited universal attention. These had been preceded by a little volume now forgotten, The Fate of Adelaide, a Swiss romantic tale; and was speedily followed by the Improvisatrice. It was during the writing of this her first volume of successful poetry that her father died, leaving the family in narrow circumstances.

The history of her life from this time is chiefly the history of her works. The Improvisatrice was published in 1824; the Troubadour in 1825; the Golden Violet in 1826; the Venetian Bracelet, 1829. In 1830 she produced her first prose work, Romance and Reality. In 1831 she commenced the editorship of Fisher's Drawing-room Scrap Book, which she continued yearly till the time of her marriage—eight successive volumes. In 1835 she published Francesca Carrara; the Vow of the Peacock, 1835; Traits and Trials of Early Life, 1836; and in the same year, Ethel Churchill. Besides these works, she wrote largely in the annuals and periodicals, and edited various volumes of illustrated works for the publishers. None of the laborious tribe of authors ever toiled more incessantly or more cheerfully than Miss Landon—none with a more devotedly generous spirit. She had the proud satisfaction of contributing to the support of her family, and to the end of her life