Letitia Elizabeth Landon: Herring

“Mrs. Burgoyne passed the last twenty years of her life in a large, solemn-looking house at Kensington; it is now a mad-house. How curiously do these changes in dwelling places, once cheerful and familiar, bring the mutability of our existence home! It would be an eventful chronicle, the history of even a few of the old-fashioned houses in the vicinity of London. You ascended a flight of steps, with a balustrade and two indescribable birds on either side, and a large hall, which, strange to say, was more cheerful in winter than in summer. In summer the narrow windows, the black wood with which it was panelled, seemed heavy and dull; but in winter the huge fire gave its own gladness, and had besides the association with old English hospitality which a blazing grate always brings. You passed next through two long drawing-rooms, whose white wainscoting was almost covered with family portraits. There cannot be much said for the taste of Queen Anne's time downwards — bagged, wigged, and hooped; there was not a picture of which the African's question might not have been asked, "Pray tell me, white woman, if this is all you?””

Letitia Elizabeth Landon

The Monthly Magazine

Life , Family , Home , History

“And this is Love! Oh! why should woman love;
Wasting her dearest feelings, till health, hope,
Happiness, are but things of which henceforth
She'll only know the name?”

Letitia Elizabeth Landon

Love
The Improvisatrice (1824)

Love , Health , Hope , Feeling

“Her face was all too bright for tears, she gave
Sighs to the wind, and weeping to the wave,
And left a lesson unto after-times,
Too little dwelt upon in minstrel rhymes,
A lesson how inconstancy should be
Repaid again by like inconstancy.”

Letitia Elizabeth Landon

(1825-2) Ideal Likenesses. Ariadne
The Monthly Magazine

Tear , Time

“THE Moon is sailing o'er the sky,
But lonely all, as if she pined
For somewhat of companionship,
And felt it was in vain she shined:
Earth is her mirror, and the stars
Are as the court around her throne;
She is a beauty and a queen;
But what is this? she is alone.”

Letitia Elizabeth Landon

The Moon from The London Literary Gazette (25th March 1826)
The Vow of the Peacock (1835)

Beauty , Star

“Her rival—hers—language has not a word
By woman's ear so utterly abhorr'd.
No marvel, for it robs her only part
Of sweet dominion—empire o'er the heart.”

Letitia Elizabeth Landon

Title poem, section IV.
The Venetian Bracelet (1829)

Heart , Parting

“One moment he is at her knee,
“So, Leila, wouldst thou weep for me?”
Started she, as at lightning gleam,—
“O, Mirza, this I did not dream!
Moslem and Moor, may Spanish maid
Hearken such words as thou hast said?””

Letitia Elizabeth Landon

The Golden Violet - The Wreath
The Golden Violet (1827)

Dreams

“Oh! why should woman ever love,
Trusting to one false star above;
And fling her little chance away
Of sunshine for its treacherous ray.”

Letitia Elizabeth Landon

Canto IV
The Troubadour (1825)

Love , Star , Chance , Falseness

“Did we not know this world to be but a place of trial — our bitter probation for another and for a better — how strange in its severity would seem the lot of genius in a woman. The keen feeling — the generous enthusiasm — the lofty aspiration — and the delicate perception — are given but to make the possessor unfitted for her actual position.”

Letitia Elizabeth Landon

The Monthly Magazine

World , Feeling

“Once the buds of the pomegranate
Paled beside her cheek's warm dye,
Now 'tis like the last sad planet
Waning in the morning sky —
She has wept away its red.”

Letitia Elizabeth Landon

(1836-3) (Vol.48) Subjects for Pictures. Second Series. III. The Moorish Maiden’s Vigil
The Monthly Magazine

Sadness

“The very sound of his own steps disturbed him; and he flung himself on a couch, to enjoy without interruption the exquisite melody. The intense perfume of the flowers intoxicated him like wine. He felt as if lulled in a delicious trance, in which one image became more and more distinct — the pale but lovely face of his hostess. His heart was filling with love for those radiant eyes. A softer fragrance breathed around him — it was her breath. He looked, and she was again bending over him; he saw himself mirrored in the moonlight of her eyes.”

Letitia Elizabeth Landon

The Monthly Magazine

Love , Flowers , Wine , Heart

“Beautiful weakness! oh, if weak,
That woman's heart should tinge her cheek!
'Tis sad to change it for the strength
That heart and cheek must know at length.”

Letitia Elizabeth Landon

The Golden Violet - The Queen of Cyprus
The Golden Violet (1827)

Sadness , Beauty , Change , Heart

“Despair weeps not. Her lip moved as in prayer
Unconsciously; as if prayers had been there,
And they moved now from custom.”

Letitia Elizabeth Landon

The Golden Violet - The Child of the Sea
The Golden Violet (1827)

Despair

“Who seeing the fair ship
That swept through the bright waves.
Would dream that tyrants trod her deck,
And that her freight was slaves!”

Letitia Elizabeth Landon

20th August 1825) The Slave Ship (under the pen name Iole
The London Literary Gazette, 1825

Dreams

“I never saw more perfect loveliness.
It ask'd, it had no aid from dress: her robe
Was white, and simply gather'd in such folds
As suit a statue: neck and arms were bare;
The black hair was unbound, and like a veil
Hung even to her feet; she held a lute,
And, as she paced the ancient gallery, waked
A few wild chords, and murmur'd low sweet words,
But scarcely audible, as if she thought
Rather than spoke:—the night, the solitude,
Fill'd the young Pythoness with poetry.”

Letitia Elizabeth Landon

A History of the Lyre
The Venetian Bracelet (1829)

Solitude , Perfection , Night

“That day the youth was told the tale,
How she had pined beneath the veil
And died, and then they show'd her grave—
He knew that cypress's green wave. —
That night, alone, he watched his bride —
The next they laid him by her side.”

Letitia Elizabeth Landon

(18th September 1824) The Phantom Bride
The London Literary Gazette, 1824

Youth , Night

“The same, yet not the same — her face
Has still that Grecian line;
The sculptured perfectness whose grace
Has long been held divine.”

Letitia Elizabeth Landon

The Amulet, 1831 (1830), The Legacy
Other Gift Books

Perfection

“But not like this is Nature's face,
Though even she must bear the trace
Of the great curse that clings to all;
Her leaves, her flowers, must spring to fall :”

Letitia Elizabeth Landon

The Golden Violet - title poem - introduction
The Golden Violet (1827)

Spring , Flowers , Nature

“Always accustomed to wealth, she did not understand its value; we must want money to really know its worth, and money seemed to her the vilest consideration that could have influence.”

Letitia Elizabeth Landon

The Monthly Magazine

Money , Understanding , Wealth

“I believe that more women are disappointed in marriage than men; a woman gives the whole of her heart — the man only gives the remains of his, and very often there is only a little left. Besides his idol is rarely so much the work of his own hands as her's; at the end of the first year she may ask, where are the picturesque and ennobling qualities with which she invested her lover? in nine cases out of ten echo will indeed answer “where."”

Letitia Elizabeth Landon

No.15. Ivanhoe — REBECCA.
Literary Remains

Women , Men , Marriage , Disappointment

“What need hath she
Of shrine to her divinity?
Each fair face is her visible shrine;
She hath been, she will be divine.”

Letitia Elizabeth Landon

The Golden Violet - The Queen of Cyprus
The Golden Violet (1827)