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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 December 2020
When in the summer of 1881 Sidney Colvin settled back to enjoy the praise of friends and reviewers for his short biography of Walter Savage Landor, his pleasure was rudely interrupted by a letter to the Athenaeum from a correspondent in Italy, headed “A Protest.” The correspondent, Mrs. Eliza Lynn Linton, objected (quite unjustly, as Colvin's pained reply pointed out) to his “curiously grudging spirit” in nelgecting her part in Landor's later life, and insisted on the “one honour which I regard as the most precious in my whole history, and the public recognition of which, when occasion offers, I claim as my right. I mean my long and close friendship with Walter Savage Landor.” Twelve years previously, when Forster had first published his biography of Landor, he too found himself beset for the same reason with a series of ill-tempered reviews by the same hand, one of them beginning, “The Life of Walter Savage Landor has yet to be written.” One can only guess how Mr. Malcolm Elwin's recent volume, Savage Landor, would have pleased her. Certain it is that Landor's friendship with her is worth tracing in detail, especially since his letters to her, for the most part unpublished, provide an important source of information about the last years of his life, and one which not even this most recent biographer has touched.
1 Athenaeum, August 13, 1881, pp. 208–209; Colvin's reply appeared August 20, p. 241.—E. V. Lucas, The Colvins and their Friends (London, 1928), prints several interesting letters to Colvin on his biography of Landor.
2 The review which began thus was intended for Dickens' All the Year Round, but Dickens, as Forster's friend, naturally rejected it, and wrote a review himself; cf. G. S. Layard, Mrs. Lynn Linton (London, 1901), pp. 160–162 (though from the tone of Dickens' letter I believe the review may not have been so violent as Layard indicated). Mrs. Linton published reviews of Forster's biography in The North British Review, i, 550–567 (July, 1869), and in The Broadway, n.s. ii, 553–558 (August, 1869).
3 E. Lynn Linton, “Reminiscences of Walter Savage Landor,” Fraser's Magazine, n.s. ii, 119–120 (July, 1870).—Mrs. Linton's published references to Landor, in addition to those already named, are as follows: Autobiography of Christopher Kirkland (an autobiographical novel), (London: 1885), i, 282–287, 289; ii, 291–298. “Eccentricities of Speech of Landor,” Notes and Queries, 7th ser., v, 246 (March 31, 1888). “An Unpublished Fragment by Walter Savage Landor,” Athenaeum, November 23, 1889, p. 707. “Landor, Dickens, Thackeray,” Bookman (New York), iii, 125–133 (April, 1896). My Literary Life (London, 1899), pp. 41–82 (a posthumous reprint of the preceding article). The same article is said to have been printed in Woman at Home for January, 1896.
4 “Harold, and Amymone,” Fraser's Magazine, xxxviii, 429–433 (October, 1848), anonymous, but attributed to Landor by Mrs. Linton; and “To Eliza Lynn on her Amymone,” Examiner, July 22, 1848, p. 470.
5 S. Wheeler, ed., Letters of Walter Savage Landor, Private and Public (London, 1899), pp. 173–174.
6 An unpublished letter, dated in MS. by Forster, “May 12, 1851” (the day he received it).—I am very much indebted to Mr. J. Lee Harlan, Jr., for his help and generosity in matters concerned with Forster.
7 Landor's letters to Mrs. Lynn Linton are preserved in the Pierpont Morgan Library, New York City, and are published by kind permission of the Director. I have retained Landor's punctuation, spelling, and slips of pen. Most of the letters are undated in manuscript; the dating of them is perhaps the most important aspect of my work, involving as it did a study of the whole of Landor's correspondence for these years, but it is based on evidence too complicated to describe in each case. This letter (fol. 12) is accompanied by a postmarked envelope (fol. 55).
8 Manuscript letter, dated by Forster in pencil.
9 For this quarrel, see below, and my article, “Extraordinary Action for Libel.—Yescombe v. Landor,” PMLA, lvi (September, 1941), 740.
10 Layard, op. cit., p. 93.—Layard has published a number of the letters now in the Morgan library, but not always accurately.
11 This letter is not with the other letters from Landor to Mrs. Lynn Linton, but is instead in the collection of his letters to John Forster, in private hands.
12 MSS in the Henry E. Huntington Library, San Marino, California; cf. Drinkwater, A Book for Bookmen (London, 1926), pp. 101–114.
13 Morgan MS., fols. 30, 13.
14 Morgan MS., fol. 15.
15 Morgan MS., fol. 16, with postmarked envelope (fol. 51a); printed by Layard, op. cit., pp. 112–113.
16 Morgan MS., fol. 17, with postmarked envelope (fol. 51b); partly printed by Layard, op. cit., p. 113.
17 Layard, op. cit., pp. 98–99, 105.
18 Forster, Landor (London, 1869), ii, 553–554.
19 Morgan MS., fol. 47.
20 Morgan MS., fol. 18, with postmarked envelope (fol. 52a).
21 Morgan MS., fol. 19, with postmarked envelope (fol. 52b); printed by Layard, op. cit., p. 114.
22 Morgan MS., fol. 20, with envelope, postmark illegible (fol. 56a).
23 Morgan MS., fol. 21, with postmarked envelope (fol. 53a).
24 Morgan MS., fol. 46, with postmarked envelope (fol. 53b).—This and the next letter are published by Super, loc. cit., pp. 743–744.
25 Morgan MS., fol. 22, with postmarked envelope (fol. 54a).
26 Forster, op. cit., ii, 556.
27 Layard, op. cit., p. 116.—Layard adds that certain passages of the letter are “suppressed, as they might prove painful to persons now living [1901].”
28 Morgan MS., fol. 23, with postmarked envelope (fol. 54b).—For the beginning of the letter, see Super, loc. cit., p. 749.
29 Morgan MS., fol. 24.—The letter of October 24 is fol. 45, with postmarked envelope.
30 The two letters from Landor to Linton are in the Yale University Library, and are published by the kind permission of the Librarian.
31 Morgan MS., fol. 2.—The verses, not written in the same ink as the letter, are dated “October 28.”
32 Morgan MS., fol. 38.—Prince Jerome Napoleon married Clotilde, daughter of Victor Emmanuel II, on January 31, and landed at Leghorn on May 23 for his visit to Florence, from which city the Grand Duke Leopold had fled on April 27.
33 Morgan MS., fol. 34; the end of the letter is apparently lacking.
34 Morgan MS., fol. 44.
35 Morgan MS., fol. 6.—It was Browning who rhymed the epigram on Paradise as it now appears in Landor's works.
36 Morgan MS., fol. 4.—The Hellenics were dedicated to General Sir William Napier, who was on his deathbed (he died February 12,1860), and Landor was gravely worried that the volume would never reach him. Mrs. West, of Ruthin, was an old acquaintance of Landor's.
37 Morgan MS., fol. 26.
38 Forster, op. cit., ii, 566,
38a Written “usuasually,” with lines through the letters here in italic.
39 Morgan MS., fol. 29.—The two letters to the Hoopers were published in the Literary Gazelle of February 18, 1860, p. 223, with the comment that if they had been introduced at Landor's trial, the verdict might have been different. They had previously appeared in Landor's pamphlets on the Yescombe affair. “The Trial of Aeschylos,” referred to in the preceding letter, was published in the Gazette of February 25, p. 242.
40 Morgan MS., fol. 39.
41 Morgan MS., fols. 31, 33.
42 Morgan MS., fol. 9.
43 Morgan MS., fol. 25, partly printed by Layard, op. cit., pp. 119–120.
44 Morgan MS., fol. 40.
45 S. Wheeler, Letters and Other Unpublished Writings of Landor (London: 1897), p. 211.
46 Morgan MS., fol. 37.
47 Morgan MS., fol. 50.
48 Morgan MS., fol. 1, partly printed by Layard, op. cit., pp. 120–121.—Landor quotes the first line of Anacreon's Ode to Eros (R. F. P. Brunck, ed., Anacreon (1786), ode γ').
49 Morgan MS., fol. 48.
50 Morgan MS., fol. 43.
51 Morgan MS., fol. 42, with postmarked envelope (fol. 56b).—cf. Layard, op. cit., pp. 121–122.
52 Morgan MS., fol. 49, printed by Mrs. Linton in Athenaeum, November 23, 1889, p. 707.—The MS. of the essay itself has disappeared.
53 Morgan MS., fol. 11.
54 Morgan MS., fol. 36.
55 Morgan MS., fol. 35, partly printed by Layard, op. cit., p. 120.—Cf. Mrs. Browning to Miss Haworth, June 16, 1860: “Mr. Kirkup (who is deafer than a post now) tries in vain to convert him [Landor] to the spiritual doctrine. Landor laughs so loud in reply that Erkup hears him.” (E. B. Browning, Letters [London, 1897], ii, 395).
56 Littell's Living Age, lxviii, 45 (January 5, 1861).
57 Morgan MS., fol. 7.
58 Morgan MS., fol. 3.
59 Morgan MS., fol. 32, printed by Layard, op. cit., p. 119.—The top of the first sheet has been clipped off, presumably by Layard, who prints what was on the front (here enclosed in brackets), but indicates no lacuna where he has omitted what must have been on the back of the clipping.
60 Morgan MS., fol. 27, with postmarked envelope (fol. 28b), partly printed by Layard, op. cit., p. 123.
61 Morgan MS., fol. 28a, with postmarked envelope (fol. 57).
62 H. C. Minchin, Walter Savage Landor (London, 1934), pp. 165–167,153 (all misdated), and R. Browning, Letters to Isa Blagden (Waco, Texas, 1923), p. 69.
63 W. J. Linton, Memories (London, 1895), p. 157.
64 Morgan MS., fol. 14, partly printed by Layard, op. cit., p. 113.
65 Cf. Minchin, op. cit., p. 165 (misdated).
66 E. L. Linton, “A Protest,” Athenaeum, August 13, 1881, p. 208.
67 Morgan MS., fol. 10.
68 Morgan MS., fol. 8, printed by Layard, op. cit., p. 124.
69 Morgan MS., fol. 5.—Mrs. Lucy Lynn Gaedge was Eliza's sister.
70 Morgan MS., fol. 41.
71 Layard, op. cit., p. 190.