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The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 102, April, 1866
On the stubbornness of Status Quo none have written better than Landor. "Unbendingness, in the moral as in the vegetable world, is an indication as frequently of unsoundness as of strength. Indeed, wise men, kings as well as others, have been free from it. Stiff necks are diseased ones."
It was impossible to be in Landor's society a half-hour and not reap advantage. His great learning, varied information, extensive acquaintance with the world's celebrities, ready wit, and even readier repartee, rendered his conversation wonderfully entertaining. He would narrate anecdote after anecdote with surprising accuracy, being possessed of a singularly retentive memory, that could refer to a catalogue of notables far longer than Don Giovanni's picture-gallery of conquests. Names, it is true, he was frequently unable to recall, and supplied their place with a "God bless my soul, I forget everything"; but facts were indelibly stamped upon his mind. He referred back to the year one with as much facility as a person of the rising generation invokes the shade of some deed dead a few years. I looked with wonder upon a person who remembered Napoleon Bonaparte as a slender young man, and listened with delight to a voice from so dim a past. "I was in Paris," said Landor one day, "at the time that Bonaparte made his entrance as First Consul. I was standing within a few feet of him when he passed, and had a capital good look at him. He was exceedingly handsome then, with a rich olive complexion and oval face, youthful as a girl's. Near him rode Murat, mounted upon a gold-clad charger,—and very handsome he was too, but coxcombical."
Like the rest of human kind, Landor had his prejudices,—they were very many. Foremost among them was an antipathy to the Bonaparte family. It is not necessary to have known him personally to be aware of his detestation of the first Napoleon, as in the conversation between himself, an English and a Florentine visitor, he gives expression to a generous indignation, which may well be inserted here, as it contains the pith of what Landor repeated in many a social talk. "This Holy Alliance will soon appear unholy to every nation in Europe. I despised Napoleon in the plenitude of his power no less than others despise him in the solitude of his exile: I thought him no less an impostor when he took the ermine, than when he took the emetic. I confess I do not love him the better, as some mercenaries in England and Scotland do, for having been the enemy of my country; nor should I love him the less for it, had his enmity been principled and manly. In what manner did this cruel wretch treat his enthusiastic admirer and humble follower, Toussaint l'Ouverture? He was thrown into a subterranean call, solitary, dark, damp, pestiferously unclean, where rheumatism racked his limbs, and where famine terminated his existence." Again, in his written opinions of Cæsar, Cromwell, Milton, and Bonaparte, Landor criticises the career of the latter with no fondness, but with much truth, and justly says, that "Napoleon, in the last years of his sovereignty, fought without aim, vanquished without glory, and perished without defeat."
Great as was Landor's dislike to the uncle, it paled before his detestation of the reigning Emperor,—a detestation too general to be designated an idiosyncrasy on the part of the poet. We always knew who was meant when a sentence was prefaced with "that rascal" or "that scoundrel,"—such were the epithets substituted for the name of Louis Napoleon. Believing the third Napoleon to be the worst enemy of his foster-mother, Italy, as well as of France, Landor bestowed upon him less love, if possible, than the majority of Englishmen. Having been personally acquainted with the Emperor when he lived in England as an exile, Landor, unlike many of Napoleon's enemies, acknowledged the superiority of his intellect. "I used to see a great deal of the Prince when he was in London. I met him very frequently of an evening at Lady Blessington's, and had many conversations with him, as he always sought me and made himself particularly civil. He was a very clever man, well informed on most subjects. The fops used to laugh at him, and call him a bore. A coxcombical young lord came up to me one evening after the Prince had taken his leave, and said, 'Mr. Landor, how can you talk to that fool, Prince Napoleon?' To which I replied, 'My Lord, it takes a fool to find out that he is not a wise man!' His Lordship retired somewhat discomfited," added Landor with a laugh, "The Prince presented me with his work on Artillery, and invited me to his house. He had a very handsome establishment, and was not at all the poor man he is so often said to have been." Of this book Landor writes in an article to the "Quarterly Review" (I think): "If it is any honor, it has been conferred on me to have received from Napoleon's heir the literary work he composed in prison, well knowing, as he did, and expressing his regret for, my sentiments on his uncle. The explosion of the first cannon against Rome threw us apart forever." I shall not soon forget Landor's lively narration of Napoleon's escape from the prison at Ham, given in the same language in which it was told to him by the Prince. I would feign repeat it here, were it not that an account of this wonderful escape found its way into print some years ago. Apropos of Napoleon, an old friend of Landor's told me that, while in London, the Prince was in the habit of calling upon him after dinner. He would sip café noir, smoke a cigar, ply his host with every conceivable question, but otherwise maintain a dignified reticence. It seems then that Louis Napoleon is indebted to nature, as well as to art, for his masterly ability in keeping his own counsel.
Among other persons of note encountered by Landor at Lady Blessington's was Rachel. It was many years ago, before her star had attained its zenith. "She took tea with her Ladyship, and was accompanied by a female attendant, her mother I think. Rachel had very little to say, and left early, as she had an engagement at the theatre. There was nothing particularly noticeable in her appearance, but she was very ladylike. I never met her again."
Landor entertained a genuine affection for the memory of Lady Blessington. "Ah, there was a woman!" he exclaimed one day with a sigh. "I never knew so brilliant and witty a person in conversation. She was most generous too, and kind-hearted. I never heard her make an ill-natured remark. It was my custom to visit her whenever the laurel was in bloom; and as the season approached, she would write me a note, saying, 'Gore House expects you, for the laurel has begun to blossom.' I never see laurel now, that it does not make me sad, for it recalls her to me so vividly. During these visits I never saw Lady Blessington until dinner-time. She always breakfasted in her own room, and wrote during the morning. She wrote very well, too; her style was pure. In the evening her drawing-room was thrown open to her friends, except when she attended the opera. Her opera-box faced the Queen's, and a formidable rival she was to her Majesty."
"D'Orsay was an Apollo in beauty, very amiable, and had considerable talent for modelling." Taking me into his little back sitting-room, Landor brought out a small album, and, passing over the likenesses of several old friends, among whom were Southey, Porson, Napier, and other celebrities, he held up an engraving of Lady Blessington. Upon my remarking its beauty, Landor replied: "That was taken at the age of fifty, so you can imagine how beautiful she must have been in her youth. Her voice and laugh were very musical." Then, turning to a young lady present, Landor made her an exceedingly neat compliment, by saying, "Your voice reminds me very vividly of Lady Blessington's. Perhaps," he continued with a smile, "this is the reason why my old, deaf ears never lose a word when you are speaking." Driving along the north side of the Arno, one summer's day, Landor gazed sadly at a terrace overlooking the water, and said: "Many a delightful evening have I spent on that terrace with Lord and Lady Blessington. There we used to take our tea. They once visited Florence for no other purpose than to see me. Was not that friendly? They are both dead now, and I am doomed to live on. When Lady Blessington died, I was asked to write a Latin epitaph for her tomb, which I did; but some officious person thought to improve the Latin before it was engraved, and ruined it."
This friendship was fully reciprocated by Lady Blessington, who, in her letters to Landor, refers no less than three times to those "calm nights on the terrace of the Casa Pelosi." "I send you," she writes, "the engraving, and have only to wish that it may sometimes remind you of the original.... Five fleeting years have gone by since our delicious evenings on the lovely Arno,—evenings never to be forgotten, and the recollections of which ought to cement the friendships then formed." Again, in her books of travel,—the "Idler in France" and "Idler in Italy,"—Lady Blessington pays the very highest tribute to Landor's heart, as well as intellect, and declares his real conversations to be quite as delightful as his imaginary ones. She who will live long in history as the friend of great men now lies "beneath the chestnut shade of Saint Germain"; and Landor, with the indignation of one who loved her, has turned to D'Orsay, asking
"Who was it squandered all her wealth,And swept away the bloom of health?"Although a Latinist, Landor did not approve of making those who have passed away doubly dead to a majority of the living by Latin eulogy. In an interesting conversation he gives the following opinion: "Although I have written at various times a great number of such inscriptions" (Latin), "as parts of literature, yet I think nothing is so absurd, if you only inscribe them on a tomb. Why should extremely few persons, the least capable, perhaps, of sympathy, be invited to sympathize, while thousands are excluded from it by the iron grate of a dead language? Those who read a Latin inscription are the most likely to know already the character of the defunct, and no new feelings are to be excited in them; but the language of the country tells the ignorant who he was that lies under the turf before them; and, if he was a stranger, it naturalizes him among them; it gives him friends and relations; it brings to him and detains about him some who may imitate, many who will lament him. We have no right to deprive any one of a tender sentiment, by talking in an unknown tongue to him, when his heart would listen and answer to his own; we have no right to turn a chapel into a library, locking it with a key which the lawful proprietors cannot turn."
I once asked Landor to describe Wordsworth's personal appearance. He laughed and replied: "The best description I can give you of Wordsworth is the one that Hazlitt gave me. Hazlitt's voice was very deep and gruff, and he peppered his sentences very bountifully with 'sirs.' In speaking to me of Wordsworth, he said: 'Well, sir, did you ever see a horse, sir?' 'Yes.' 'Then, sir, you have seen Wordsworth, sir! He looks exactly like a horse, sir, and a very long-faced horse at that, sir!' And he did look like a horse," added Landor.
Those who have seen good likenesses of Wordsworth will readily remark this resemblance. A greater length of ear would liken the Lake poet to an animal of less dignity.
Continuing the conversation thus begun, Landor said: "I saw a great deal of Hazlitt when he was in Florence. He called upon me frequently, and a funny fellow he was. He used to say to me: 'Mr. Landor, I like you, sir,—I like you very much, sir,—you're an honest man, sir; but I don't approve, sir, of a great deal that you have written, sir. You must reform some of your opinions, sir.'" And again Landor laughed with great good-will.
"I regret that I saw Charles Lamb but once," replied Landor, in answer to many questions asked concerning this delightful man and writer. "Lamb sent word by Southey" (I think it was Southey) "that he would be very happy to see me, whereupon we made him a visit. He had then retired from the India House, and lived at Enfield. He was most charming in conversation, and his smile impressed me as being particularly genial. His sister also was a very agreeable person. During my visit, Lamb rose, went to a table in the centre of the room, and took up a book, out of which he read aloud. Soon shutting it, he turned to me, saying: 'Is not what I have been reading exceedingly good?' 'Very good,' I replied. Thereupon Lamb burst out laughing, and exclaimed: 'Did one ever know so conceited a man as Mr. Landor? He has actually praised his own ideas!' It was now my turn to laugh, as I had not the slightest remembrance of having written what Lamb had read."
Are there many to whom the following lines will not be better than new?
"Once, and only once, have I seen thy face,Elia! once only has thy tripping tongueRun o'er my breast, yet never has been leftImpression on it stronger or more sweet.Cordial old man! what youth was in thy years,What wisdom in thy levity! what truthIn every utterance of that purest soul!Few are the spirits of the glorifiedI'd spring to earlier at the gate of Heaven."Being asked if he had met Byron, Landor replied: "I never saw Byron but once, and then accidentally. I went into a perfumery shop in London to purchase a pot of the ottar of roses, which at that time was very rare and expensive. As I entered the shop a handsome young man, with a slight limp in his walk, passed me and went out. The shopkeeper directed my attention to him, saying: 'Do you know who that is, sir?' 'No,' I answered. 'That is the young Lord Byron.' He had been purchasing some fancy soaps, and at that time was the fashion. I never desired to meet him."
As all the world knows, there was little love lost between these two great writers; but it was the man, not the poet, that Landor so cordially disliked.
MY ANNUAL
FOR THE "BOYS OF '29."
How long will this harp which you once loved to hearCheat your lips of a smile or your eyes of a tear?How long stir the echoes it wakened of old,While its strings were unbroken, untarnished its gold?Dear friends of my boyhood, my words do you wrong;The heart, the heart only, shall throb in my song;It reads the kind answer that looks from your eyes,—"We will bid our old harper play on till he dies."Though Youth, the fair angel that looked o'er the strings,Has lost the bright glory that gleamed on his wings,Though the freshness of morning has passed from its tone,It is still the old harp that was always your own.I claim not its music,—each note it affordsI strike from your heart-strings, that lend me its chords;I know you will listen and love to the last,For it trembles and thrills with the voice of your past.Ah, brothers! dear brothers! the harp that I holdNo craftsman could string and no artisan mould;He shaped it, He strung it, who fashioned the lyresThat ring with the hymns of the seraphim choirs.Not mine are the visions of beauty it brings,Not mine the faint fragrance around it that clings;Those shapes are the phantoms of years that have fled,Those sweets breathe from roses your summers have shed.Each hour of the past lends its tribute to this,Till it blooms like a bower in the Garden of Bliss;The thorn and the thistle may grow as they will,Where Friendship unfolds there is Paradise still.The bird wanders careless while Summer is green,The leaf-hidden cradle that rocked him unseen;When Autumn's rude fingers the woods have undressed,The boughs may look bare, but they show him his nest.Too precious these moments! the lustre they flingIs the light of our year, is the gem in its ring,So brimming with sunshine, we almost forgetThe rays it has lost, and its border of jet.While round us the many-hued halo is shed,How dear are the living, how near are the dead!One circle, scarce broken, these waiting below,Those walking the shores where the asphodels blow!Not life shall enlarge it, nor death shall divide,—No brother new-born finds his place at my side;No titles shall freeze us, no grandeurs infest,—His Honor, His Worship, are boys like the rest.Some won the world's homage,—their names we hold dear,—But Friendship, not Fame, is the countersign here;Make room by the conqueror crowned in the strifeFor the comrade that limps from the battle of life!What tongue talks of battle? Too long we have heardIn sorrow, in anguish, that terrible word;It reddened the sunshine, it crimsoned the wave,It sprinkled our doors with the blood of our brave.Peace, Peace, comes at last, with her garland of white;Peace broods in all hearts as we gather to-night;The blazon of Union spreads full in the sun;We echo its words,—We are One! We are One!WERE THEY CRICKETS?
About seven years ago, (it is possible that some of my readers may recall it,) the following paragraph appeared in the New York daily papers;—
"Mysterious Disappearance.—A young man named George Snyder left the residence of his parents in Thirty-Third Street, last Friday evening without his hat and taking nothing with him but the suit which he was wearing (dark doeskin pants, and invisible-green coat), and has not yet been heard from. It is feared that he has wandered, in some sudden mental derangement, off the wharves. Any information which may lead to his discovery will be gratefully received by the distressed parents."
No information was ever received until the 1st of April last, when the missing man himself returned to his father's house, as mysteriously as he went, and was welcomed as one risen from the dead. I am that George Snyder, and propose to give now a brief account of that strange going and coming. Since April last I have been engaged, as well as the excitement of listening to the narrative of the great events which had taken place in my native land during my absence would allow me, in preparing for publication a history of my observations, made during the six years' absence; but of this history I can now give merely an outline.
On the night of my departure, November 5, 1858, I was sitting in my own room, studying Gauss's "Theoria Motus"; and, as was often the case with me, I grew so absorbed in the study as to lose all consciousness of outward things beyond the limits of the single page before me. I had forgotten the time of night,—nay, I could not have recalled the time of my life, whether I was in college or had graduated, whether I had entered on my profession or was preparing for it. My loss of the sense of space was as absolute as my loss of the sense of time, and I could not have said whether I was in my father's house in New York, or in my room in Wentworth Hall, or in my office in Jersey City. I only knew that the page, illuminated by a drop gas-light, was before me, and on it the record of that brilliant triumph of the human intellect, the deduction of a planet's entire orbit from observations of its position.
As I sat thus absorbed, my attention was partially diverted by a slight tapping, as if upon the very table upon which my book was resting. Without raising my eyes from the page, I allowed my thoughts to wander, as I inquired within myself what could have produced the noise. Could it be that I was thus suddenly "developed as a medium," and that the spirit of some departed friend wished to communicate with me? I rejected the thought instantly, for I was no believer in modern necromancy. But no sooner had I mentally decided that this was not the true explanation than I began to feel my right hand tremble in an unnatural manner, and my fingers close against my will around a pencil which I had been loosely holding. Then suddenly, upon the paper on which I had been occasionally filling out the omitted links in Gauss's mathematical reasoning, my hand, against my will, legibly scrawled, "Copernicus,"—upon which a renewed tapping was heard upon the table. I sprang out of my chair, as one startled out of sleep, and looked about the room. My full consciousness of time and place returned, and I saw nothing unusual about my apartment; there were the books, the chairs, and even the table, standing in motionless silence as usual. I concluded that my late hours and excessive concentration on my studies had made me nervous, or else that I had had a dream. I closed the book and prepared to go to bed. Like school-boy whistling to keep his courage up, I began to talk aloud, saying: "I wish Copernicus would really come and carry me off to explore the solar system; I fancy that I could make a better report than Andrew Jackson Davis has done."
I tremble even now as I recall the instantaneous effect of those words. While I was still speaking, all earthly things vanished suddenly from my sight. There was no floor beneath me, no ceiling above, no walls around. There was even no earth below me, and no sky above. Look where I would, nothing was visible but my own body. My clothing shone with a pale blue light, by which I could peer into the surrounding darkness to the distance, as I should judge, of about twenty or thirty feet. I was apparently hanging, like a planet, in mid-ether, resting upon nothing. Horrible amazement seized me, as the conviction flashed through me like an electric shock that I must have lost my reason. In a few moments, however, this terror subsided; I felt certain that my thoughts were rational, and concluded that it was some affection of the optic nerve. But in a very few seconds I discovered by internal sensations that I was in motion, in a rapid, irregular, and accelerating motion. Awful horror again seized me; I screamed out a despairing cry for help, and fainted.
When I recovered from the swoon, I found myself lying on a grassy bank near a sea-shore, with strange trees waving over me. The sun was apparently an hour high. I was dressed as on the preceding evening, without a hat. The air was deliciously mild, the landscape before me lovely and grand. I said to myself: "This is a beautiful dream; it must be a dream." But it was too real, and I said, "Can it be that I am asleep?" I pinched my arms, I went to the sea and dipped my head in the waters,—'t was in vain; I could not awake myself, because I was already awake.
"No!" I replied, "you are not awake." Do you not remember that saying of Engel, that when men dream of asking whether they are awake, they always dream that they answer yes? But I said, I will apply two tests of my own which have often, when I was dreaming, convinced me that I was asleep and thus enabled me to awake. I gathered some pebbles and began to count them and lay them in heaps, and count them over again. There were no discrepancies between my counts; I was awake. Then I took out my pencil and memorandum-book to see whether I could solve an equation. But my hand was seized with trembling, and wrote without my assistance or guidance these words: "I, Copernicus, will comfort your friends. Be calm, be happy, you shall return and reap a peculiar glory. You, first of the inhabitants of Earth, have visited another planet while in the flesh. You are on an island in the tropical regions of Mars. I will take you home when you desire it,—only not now."
It would be in vain for me to attempt to recall and to describe the whirling tumult of thoughts and emotions which this message created. I sat down upon the grass, and for a time was incapable of deliberate thought or action. At length I arose and paced up and down the turf, staring around upon the changeless blue of the seaward horizon, the heaving swell of the ocean, the restless surf fretting against the shore, and the motionless hills that rose behind each other inland, and lured the eye to a distant group of mountains. The coloring of sea and land was wonderfully fine; both seemed formed of similar translucent purple; and despite the excited state of my feelings and the stupendous nature of the words which I had just seen written by my own pencil, I was impressed with a sense of grandeur and of beauty which presently filled me with faith and hope. I assured myself that the spirit to whom permission had been given thus to transport me from my home was as kind as he was powerful. He had set me down in a beautiful country, he had promised to return me home when I desired it,—"only not now";—by which I concluded that he wished me to think calmly over the question before asking to return. And why, I added, should I be in haste? Copernicus, if it be he, promises to comfort my parents,—the island looks fertile,—if I find no inhabitants, I can be a new Robinson Crusoe,—and when I have explored the island thoroughly, I will ask this spirit to carry me back to New York, where I shall publish my observations, and add a new chapter to our knowledge of the solar system.
