Saturday Rave: Change by Letitia Elizabeth Landon

 Letitia Elizabeth Landon (1802 - 1838) was most famous as L.E.L. She earned her (and her family's) income by writing poetry, selling stationery, and inventing a new kind of book which consisted of a kind of creative writing based on works of art.

Society at the time wasn't quite sure what to make of a commercially adequate young female poet, and false rumours soon began to swirl about her many lovers and the children she had borne. Landon broke off an engagement to one man (he had questioned her virtue) and then (the story went) she married another man, sailed with him to Africa, and was within two months poisoned with prussic acid by his African common-law wife.

That story, as all the others, was false. Landon had a heart-condition for which prussic acid was prescribed, and she almost certainly died of that heart condition, poor woman. (The common-law wife did exist, but she had moved away before Landon arrived on the Cape Coast.)

Here's an example of L.E.L.'s poetry. 

It's got things to say, and it's also a good story, so you can see why it was popular.

Change

And this is what is left of youth! . . .

There were two boys, who were bred up together,

Shared the same bed, and fed at the same board;

Each tried the other’s sport, from their first chase,

Young hunters of the butterfly and bee,

To when they followed the fleet hare, and tried

The swiftness of the bird. They lay beside

The silver trout stream, watching as the sun

Played on the bubbles: shared each in the store

Of either’s garden: and together read

Of him, the master of the desert isle,

Till a low hut, a gun, and a canoe,

Bounded their wishes. Or if ever came

A thought of future days, ’twas but to say

That they would share each other’s lot, and do

Wonders, no doubt. But this was vain: they parted

With promises of long remembrance, words

Whose kindness was the heart’s, and those warm tears,

Hidden like shame by the young eyes which shed them,

But which are thought upon in after-years

As what we would give worlds to shed once more.

 

They met again, — but different from themselves,

At least what each remembered of themselves:

The one proud as a soldier of his rank,

And of his many battles: and the other

Proud of his Indian wealth, and of the skill

And toil which gathered it; each with a brow

And heart alike darkened by years and care.

They met with cold words, and yet colder looks:

Each was changed in himself, and yet each thought

The other only changed, himself the same.

And coldness bred dislike, and rivalry

Came like the pestilence o’er some sweet thoughts

That lingered yet, healthy and beautiful,

Amid dark and unkindly ones. And they,

Whose boyhood had not known one jarring word,

Were strangers in their age: if their eyes met,

’Twas but to look contempt, and when they spoke,

Their speech was wormwood! . . .

. . . And this, this is life!

**

Letitia Elizabeth Landon worked to raise money for her brother to go to Oxford University. 

He afterwards repaid her by spreading false rumours about her marriage and death.

Poor L.E.L.

Word To Use Today: pestilence. The Latin word pestilens means unwholesome, and pestis means plague.