Letitia Elizabeth LANDON (1802-1838)

Autograph Letter Signed (“L.E. Landon”) to Henry Austin Driver, thanking him for his Harold de Burun, and praising his generous view of Lord Byron.
3 pages 8vo, 12 Hyde Park Street, n.d. [but 1838].             
“After explaining to Mr. Lobb that the first copy of “Harold de Burun” was never received I must have seemed most ungracious in not acknowledging your second kindness. On that kindness I must trespass a little more in the way of excuse. I did not like to thank you till I had gone over the work, again, and renewed my acquaintance with favourite passages. It so happened that I received the volume just as I was moving, and it was put aside with some other books. From one or two circumstances, the last few weeks have been in constant hurry and confusion, and it is not till within the last three days that I have sate down one quiet hour. But I am not ungrateful for your kindness, nor for the pleasure which I owe to “Harold de Burun”. I like the spirit in which it is written so much – to admire is only too rare, and yet without admiration where is excellence. There is that generosity in your view of Lord Byron’s character, which I am convinced is the truest guide to real knowledge – all can deny and depreciate, for “Folly loves the martyrdom of fame”. but few can enter with a warm and kindly spirit into the efforts of talent – it requires a kindred talent so to do.
May I be permitted to say how much I admire some particular portions – the conversations with Teresa are marked with as much tenderness, as those . . . with sublimity. There some single lines that come like single notes of music – not only beautiful in themselves – but making up a whole train of beautiful associations.
Again I must cordially thank you for your volume. I shall take great care of it – and often find pleasure in its pages.”
Henry Austin Driver, poet and great admirer of Lord Byron was fêted and admired by many in his day, including Letitia Elizabeth Landon and Lady Blessington. His admiration for Lord Byron led him to start a campaign to have a monument dedicated to him, and to build a form of Panetheon to the nations’s great men. He produced pamphlets, wrote a great many letters, but to no avail.
Letitia Elizabeth Landon, sometimes known as “L.E.L.” was herself a great admirer of Lord Byron’s work and was on occasion referred to as “the female Byron”. Her poetry, unlike his, went out of favour after her death and the early days of the Victorian era, but has enjoyed a deserved revival in recent years.
Landon lived with her family or alone for most of her life, but in 1838 she married George Maclean, governor of British post at Cape Coast, in present-day Ghana. The ceremony was private, and the day after the wedding she returned to stay with friends at Hyde Park Street. This letter, though undated, must have been written either immediately before or, more likely, immediately after her wedding. Her reference to the “last few weeks” being a time of  “constant hurry and confusion” appear to confirm this.
The marriage took place on 7 June, and in July she and her husband sailed for west Africa, arriving there in August. Two months later, she was dead. Her death occurred in mysterious circumstances; she was found holding a bottle of prussic acid. It would appear that Letitia had suffered from ill health for some time and a diluted solution of prussic acid had been prescribed, but the circumstances nevertheless raised questions.
The address leaf is rather dusty, with a tear where the seal has been broken, not affecting the text.

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