L.E.L.

by Lucasta Miller

  Oscar Wilde’s quip that sentimentality was the bank holiday of cynicism could have been designed to describe Letitia’s mind-set. It sums up her double-faced persona as much as it reflects the two sides of Wilde, seen in the contrast between the glittering wit of his plays and the mawkish emotionalism of his fairy tales, such as “The Nightingale and the Rose,” in which the songbird self-impales on a thorn. When he organized a posse of camp young men to turn up to one of his premieres sporting mysterious green carnations in their buttonholes in 1892, he was playing the same game that Letitia had played over half a century before when she crowned Jerdan at a party with a floral wreath. Wilde’s act of puffery increased the ambiguous aura of scandal around his name, inspiring a semisatirical novel, The Green Carnation, published by Robert Hitchens in 1894, the year before Wilde’s trial.

  L.E.L.’s rise and fall prefigures that of Wilde. Both walked a dangerous line between fame and shame, monetizing their literary notoriety to support their downwardly mobile families, while pursuing renegade private lives. As an Irish cultural adventurer making his name on the mainland, Wilde was a descendant of Thomas Moore, William Maginn, Lady Blessington, Daniel Maclise, Samuel Carter Hall, Anna Maria Hall, and Rosina Bulwer. Even the Brontës fit the mold as their father was a displaced Irish Protestant. Letitia’s identification with so many Irish émigrés—and her probable Irish heritage via the Fagans—points to her own marginal position in society.

  During the second half of the nineteenth century, selections from L.E.L.’s less daring later poetry continued to be reissued sporadically. As cultural memories of her scandalous personal reputation receded, helped by the biographical cover-up, her sentimentalism was increasingly taken at face value. It is ironic that Bloomsbury regarded L.E.L. as an insipid virgin, since the real Letitia Landon lived in a literary subculture that was, at least in its sexual habits, quite as “modern.” What Landon and her fellow literary hustlers of the 1820s lacked was the sense of entitlement and financial security enjoyed by Virginia Woolf and her circle in the 1920s, who could flout the establishment because they belonged to it.

  Bloomsbury’s modernist urge to blow apart bourgeois values was a reaction against Victorian complacency. But the Victorian values they perceived as so stultifying had themselves been a reaction against the fragmentation and free-for-all of the pre-Victorian decades. Those who promoted the new moralistic ideology, including Charles Dickens, had often experienced the insecurity of the previous era at first hand.

  The Victorians not only idealized the family but created a professional caste as a bulwark against the Darwinian free-for-all. The sea green incorruptibility of Virginia Woolf’s grandfather Sir James Stephen, the Colonial Office lawyer in the 1830s, became the standard in the new civil service bureaucracy, designed to combat the culture of “interest.” His literary son, Leslie Stephen, helped transform the world of publishing into a new establishment when he initiated the Dictionary of National Biography in 1882, designed to reflect British cultural confidence in the era of empire.

  As general editor, Leslie Stephen presided over the entry on Letitia Elizabeth Landon. It obscurely referred to a “cruel scandal…destitute…of the least foundation,” without ever detailing its content, while dismissing her work entirely, concluding that “as a poetess…she had too little culture…to produce anything of great value.” The sole interest of her career was situated in its snuffing out, but its circumstances remained shrouded: “No circumstance respecting L.E.L. has occasioned so much discussion as her sudden and mysterious death.”

  Letitia’s memoirists did a good job. By the twentieth century, her sexual history had completely slipped from sight. The problem was that any understanding of her literary sophistication went with it. In her entrapped, silenced, yet paradoxically public space, she had in fact developed an uncanny voice in which to chronicle and expose the post-truth culture of her day. She defined the contours of her age, yet had no faith that her work would outlive her. Despite its fantasy vistas of medieval minstrels and ancient Greek poetesses, her art was so embedded in its time that it embodied modernity in Baudelaire’s sense of “the transitory, the fleeting, the contingent.”

  Vestiges of L.E.L.’s type—women on the edge, who accept their fate but attempt to cheat it—continued to echo at a remove through fiction during the Victorian age, at a time when Letitia’s own voice was increasingly silenced. In narratives where issues of illegitimacy, class, and gender were at stake, the theater proved a staying metaphor for the masquerade of social identity. Shorn of the certainties of her respectable upbringing, the pointedly named Magdalen in Wilkie Collins’s No Name (1862) takes to the stage in her quest to reestablish her birthright. The eponymous heroine of Thomas Hardy’s The Hand of Ethelberta (1876), who has to conceal her lower-class family connections, performs in public as a poet and storyteller, an English improvvisatrice in the L.E.L. mold.

  Down on her luck on the Suffolk coast, and afraid that her machinations have come to naught, Collins’s Magdalen contemplates suicide. Gazing through the window out to sea, a bottle of laudanum in her hand, she tells herself that she will only drain the contents—and die—if a certain number of ships pass before her eyes in a specified space of time. Collins explicitly depicts Magdalen as a fatalist, no believer in Christian providence, a character whose intense drive coexists with a gambler’s worldview that abdicates free will to chance. Luckily for Magdalen, the right number of ships pass by and she ultimately prospers, as does Hardy’s Ethelberta. Both fictional women successfully manipulate every situation to their advantage. It’s tempting to imagine Letitia playing a similar game of Russian roulette with the prussic acid bottle, looking out to sea at Cape Coast Castle. Just before she left England, she discussed her belief in fatalism with the Liddiards. But by the end of her life she was on a losing streak.

  At every stage, she was a casualty not just of her personal circumstances but of her historical moment. The dying of Romanticism, the political repression of the post-Waterloo era, market forces, a press licensed to bully, the rise of moral hypocrisy, the coming of Victorian values, and the corrupt world of the illegal slave trade were as implicated in her tragedy as her father’s bankruptcy, Jerdan’s predation, and her dodgy doctor. It is as well to remember that Magdalen in Wilkie Collins’s No Name is a figment of the male imagination, allowed to be alluringly gutsy and triumphant because she exists only in a book. In real life, Collins chose two poor, semi-literate women to be his concurrent mistresses, keeping them in such secrecy that their voices are completely lost to history.

  In contrast, Letitia was a public figure with a voice, though that voice was compromised by her situation. She responded to her own embattled position, in a society in which the truth could not be told, by dissociating. Her larger-than-life tragic heroines were surrogates to shield her from the pain of “feelings (if I have any),” as was her persona as a society wit. With her interior life under constant siege from external pressures, she used her brilliant mind to develop ambiguity and masquerade as a literary means of rattling her cage bars and obliquely offering a devastating commentary on her own situation and society. She became the most acute witness to the “strange pause” of the 1820s and 1830s that we have. In the classical myth, Philomel became a bird whose song was fated to be forever misunderstood. Only now can Letitia Landon’s voice be truly heard.

  On October 10, 2017, I visited Cape Coast Castle. Letitia died on October 15, 1838, so it was the same time of year. On the day she died, storm clouds hovered, bursting into a downpour during her burial. The day I visit is, in contrast, sunny and clear, very hot. Uninterrupted blue sky merges with the calm ocean. The castle, its white walls coated in plaster and paint, indeed appears a “fine building.” Only when the guide takes us into the slave dungeons below ground level is its traumatic history made visible.

  In none of her letters home does Letitia mention the dungeons or the castle’s history as a slave fort.
The perpetual swoosh of the ocean waves—pleasant enough for the hour or two I spend there, but inescapable—seems to echo the constant low-level interference of the suppressed. Letitia lived her entire adult life with the stress of the unspoken: “none among us dares to say / What none will choose to hear.”

  The room in which Letitia died is now an office, divided by a panel. Two men are looking at spreadsheets while an electric fan whirs. One green shutter is closed. Through the window you can see the edge of the castle batteries, bristling with cannon, and above them nothing but ocean and sky.

  Acknowledgments

  Before I got sucked in, I initially chose to work on Letitia Landon because I thought she might be relatively quick to dispatch, being a “minor” subject. Making sense of her life and work turned out to be much harder than I anticipated. The fact that her first biographer slit his throat in 1845 was hardly a consoling thought during the nine years I spent entangled, on and off, in the project.

  Although I often felt alone in L.E.L.’s hall of mirrors, I was, however, lucky enough to be able to draw on the materials collected by other researchers, especially F. J. Sypher, who has shown such dogged commitment to L.E.L. studies over many years. William Jerdan’s biographer Susan Matoff was delightfully supportive when I met her just as I was finishing this book, and her research has proved invaluable.

  Cynthia Lawford deserves recognition for publishing the first discovery relating to Letitia’s children in the London Review of Books. However, the truth about L.E.L.’s hidden life would never have come to light were it not for Michael Gorman’s interest in his own family’s history; thank you to him for his spirited telephone conversations and email correspondence, and for allowing me to reproduce the photograph of Ella.

  David and Tina Burgess offered me kindness and hospitality in Cornwall, where they let me see Maria Liddiard’s diary, along with other unpublished materials connected with L.E.L. Veronica Maclean also provided warm hospitality at her home in Scotland.

  Frances Wilson generously encouraged me at a very early stage, while Adam Gopnik, Simone Ling, and John Barnard were amazingly kind to give up their time to read and comment on embryonic drafts or sections, as did William St Clair. Later on, Philippa Brewster’s close reading of the manuscript was invaluable.

  I am hugely grateful to Hermione Lee, who invited me to speak on L.E.L. at Wolfson College, Oxford, home of the Oxford Centre for Life-Writing. As a visiting scholar there, I enjoyed many fruitful discussions with fellow biographers. In Oxford, Helen Barr, Alan Rusbridger, and Lindsay Mackie also offered me succor at Lady Margaret Hall, at a time when (to my chagrin and embarrassment) I was not in the best shape to make the most of it.

  Private conversations with many others—including Lyndall Gordon, Germaine Greer, Fiona MacCarthy, and Claire Tomalin—had more of an effect on my ability to keep going than they probably realize. Thank you also to the Brontë Society, which invited me to give its annual lecture in 2014, and was gracious enough to put up with me talking about L.E.L. instead; to Diane Long Hoeveler and Deborah Denenholz Morse, who let me digress on L.E.L. in the Blackwell Companion to the Brontës; to Tamsin Shaw for generously inviting me to talk about my work in progress at NYU; to Gregory Dart, who allowed me to try out some of my ideas (equally digressive) at the 2015 Hazlitt conference at University College London; and to Caroline Pegum for inviting me to speak on L.E.L.’s visual image at the 2017 Understanding British Portraits conference at the National Portrait Gallery.

  Jonathan Bate and Paula Byrne were welcoming at Worcester College, Oxford, where Letitia Landon’s uncle was his predecessor as provost. John Styles and Marika Sherwood shared their erudition. For invaluable conversations, connections, and permissions relating to Letitia’s portraits, I am indebted to Juliet Carey, David Ekserdjian, David Bindman, Tim and Jonathan Benthall, Ned Campbell, David Moore-Gwyn of Sotheby’s, and Anthony Greenwood. The skill and professionalism of picture editor Cecilia Mackay were invaluable.

  The staff of the British Library, British Museum Print Room, London Library, Bodleian Library, New York Public Library, Hertfordshire Archives, Witt Library at the Courtauld Institute of Art, Heinz Archive at the National Portrait Gallery, and Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas at Austin were unfailingly helpful. In Ghana, Mirwen Safi, who took me to Cape Coast Castle and showed me Accra, was the best of guides. Especial thanks to him, and to Alberto for his eloquence. Also to Anthony Appiah and to Isobel Appiah-Endresen for putting me in touch with them.

  I suffer from the opposite of L.E.L.’s fatal facility. It’s a very long time since I published a book, but I don’t think I would have found a voice for this one without Lisa Allardice, who was a wonderfully enabling editor when I was writing profiles and literary commentary pieces for The Guardian, what now seems an age ago.

  Those who selflessly endured listening to my endless, Ancient Mariner–style monologues on L.E.L. include both family and friends. Thank you to Lisa Miller, Charles Miller and Caroline McGinn, Mark Bostridge, Alexander Miller, the late Hugo Herbert-Jones, Kate and Benji Meuli, and Veronica Henty (with her book group); and also to Richard Sennett, John Mullan and Harriet Stewart, Natasha Lehrer, Sarah Christie-Brown, Emily Campbell, Lucy Morgan, Matt and Martha Hancock, Gus Gazzard and Tamara Oppenheimer, Jane Darcy, and Christopher Gayford. Working with Natasha Walter and the community at Women for Refugee Women kept me sane, with an especial mention for Monica Aidoo.

  I owe a large debt of thanks to my publishers, Dan Franklin at Jonathan Cape and Victoria Wilson at Knopf, who kept faith with me for years, and to my agent Georgina Capel, who continued to believe in me long after I had ceased to do so. Thanks also to Marc Jaffee and Ryan Ouimet, and to Roland Ottewell.

  My immediate family has been tolerant beyond the call of duty during my many mental absences due to L.E.L. I cannot thank my husband, Ian, or our beloved children, Oliver and Ottilie, enough.

  Notes

  ABBREVIATIONS

  AWJ The Autobiography of William Jerdan. 4 vols. London: Arthur Virtue and Co., 1852–53.

  BL British Library

  CO Colonial Office

  DNB Dictionary of National Biography

  Letters Letters by Letitia Elizabeth Landon. Ed. F. J. Sypher. Ann Arbor, MI: Scholars Facsimiles and Reprints, 2001.

  LG The Literary Gazette

  LLR Samuel Laman Blanchard. The Life and Literary Remains of L.E.L. 2 vols. London: Henry Colburn, 1841.

  NPG National Portrait Gallery

  PLG Poems from the Literary Gazette by Letitia Elizabeth Landon. Ed. F. J. Sypher. Ann Arbor, MI: Scholars Facsimiles and Reprints, 2001.

  TNA The National Archives

  * * *

  —

  I have used first editions of L.E.L.’s works.

  PREFACE

  “did in truth resemble”: S[arah] S[heppard], Characteristics of the Genius and Writings of L.E.L., p. 160.

  “female Byron”: Rowton, The Female Poets of Great Britain, p. 425.

  “Sappho of a polished age”: J. A. Heraud, quoted in Madden, The Literary Life and Correspondence of the Countess of Blessington, vol. 2, p. 268.

  “Landon, or L.E.L”: Montgomery, The Age Reviewed, p. 147.

  PROLOGUE

  She later testified: LLR, vol. 1, p. 212.

  “crushed”: Cruickshank, Eighteen Years on the Gold Coast, vol. 1, p. 224.

  The workmen finished the job by torchlight: Ibid., vol. 1, p. 229.

  a discreet death notice: The Times, January 1, 1839, p. 8.

  CHAPTER 1 THE TANGLED WEB

  “legendary figure”: McGann and Reiss, Letitia Elizabeth Landon, p. 11.

  “so identified with the literature of the day”: S[arah] S[heppard], Characteristics of the Genius and Writings of L.E.L., p. 10.

  “raw bare powers”: Letters of Elizabeth Bar
rett Browning to Mary Russell Mitford, vol. 2, p. 88.

  “genius”…“almost unnecessary to speak”: Poe, “Review of New Books.”

  Goethe’s family: In 1827, Goethe’s daughter-in-law received Landon’s book The Troubadour as a present from her mother, inscribed “Ottilie von Goethe. Geschenk der Mutter.” Sypher, A Biography, p. 70.

  Heinrich Heine: Heine called on Letitia Landon when she was staying in Paris in 1834. For Landon’s account of the meeting, see Letters, pp. 107–8. See also Mende, Heinrich Heine, p. 116.

  Revue des deux mondes: “Une jeune poète anglaise,” vol. 6 (May 15, 1832): 404–18.

  “strange pause”: Young, Victorian England, p. 12.

  “an embarrassment to the historian of English literature”: Nemoianu, The Taming of Romanticism, p. 41.

  “indeterminate borderland”: Salmon, The Formation of the Victorian Literary Profession, p. 8.

  “I have sung passionate songs”: L.E.L. The Venetian Bracelet, p. 107.

  “the fallen leaf”: Ibid., p. v.

  “No female poet before L.E.L.”: Greer, Slip-Shod Sibyls, p. 275.

  “not occasioned by any sickness”: Quoted in The Times, January 3, 1839, p. 3.

  “poor lady”: The Times, January 10, 1839, p. 6.

  “I must say”: LLR, vol. 1, pp. 213–14. The text of this letter was appended to the inquest transcript.

  first floated the possibility: Morning Post, January 3, 1839, unpaginated.