by Romney in 1772, is preserved at Knowle, a memorial of the visit of those artists to the Duke of Dorset. It has been twice engraved, and the private plate from it, executed by Caroline Watson in 1784, is a work of very high merit. In 1799 Humphrey resided at No. 13 High Row, Knightsbridge, nearly opposite to the house in which Murphy lodged, and there, with the exception of the last few months, he passed the remainder of his life.
At No. 21 Queen’s Buildings (the second house beyond that occupied by Ozias Humphrey), Mr. Thomas Trotter, an ingenious engraver and draughtsman, resided in 1801. He engraved several portraits, of which the most esteemed are a head of the Rev. Stephen Whiston and a head of Lord Morpeth. Nearly the last work of his burin was a portrait of Shakspeare, patronized by George Steevens. Trotter died on the 14th February, 1803, having been prevented from following his profession in consequence of a blow on one of his eyes, accidentally received by the fall of a flower-pot from a window. He, however, obtained employment in making drawings of churches and monuments for the late Sir Richard Hoare, and other gentlemen interested in topographical illustration.
Queen’s Buildings, Brompton, are divided, rather than terminated, at No. 28 (Green’s, an earthenware-shop) by New Street, leading into Hans Place—“snug Hans Place,” which possesses one house, at least, that all literary pilgrims would desire to turn out of their direct road to visit. Miss Landon, alluding to “the fascinations of Hans Place,” playfully observes, “vivid must be the imagination that could discover them—
‘Never hermit in his cell,
Where repose and silence dwell,
Human shape and human word
Never seen and never heard,’
had a life of duller calm than the indwellers of our square.” Hans Place may also be approached from Sloane Street, and No. 22 Hans Place, is the south-east corner.
The editor of the memoirs of L. E. L. records two or three circumstances which give a general interest to Hans Place. Here it was that Miss Landon was born on the 14th August, 1802, in the house now No. 25; and “it is remarkable that the greater portion of L. E. L.’s existence was passed on the spot where she was born. From Hans Place and its neighbourhood she was seldom absent, and then not for any great length of time; until within a year or two of her death, she had there found her home, not indeed in the house of her birth, but close by. Taken occasionally during the earlier years of childhood into the country, it was to Hans Place she returned. Here some of her school time was passed. When her parents removed she yet clung to the old spot, and, as her own mistress, chose the same scene for her residence. When one series of inmates quitted it, she still resided there with their successors, returning continually after every wandering, ‘like a blackbird to his nest.’ ”
The partiality of Miss Landon for London was extraordinary. In a letter, written in 1834, and addressed to a reverend gentleman, she ominously says, “When I have the good luck or ill luck (I rather lean to the latter opinion) of being married, I shall certainly insist on the wedding excursion not extending much beyond Hyde Park Corner.”
When in her sixth year (1808), Miss Landon was sent to school at No. 22 Hans Place. This school was then kept by Miss Bowden, who in 1801 had published ‘A Poetical Introduction to the Study of Botany,’ [32a] and in 1810 a poem entitled ‘The Pleasures of Friendship.’ [32b] Miss Bowden became the Countess St. Quentin, and died some years ago in the neighbourhood of Paris. In this house, where she had been educated, Miss Landon afterwards resided for many years as a boarder with the Misses Lance, who conducted a ladies’ school. “It seems,” observes the biographer of L. E. L., “to have been appropriated to such purposes from the time it was built, nor was L. E. L. the first who drank at the ‘well of English’ within its walls. Miss Mitford, we believe, was educated there, and Lady Caroline Lamb was an inmate for a time.”
It is the remark of Miss Landon herself, that “a history of the how and where works of imagination have been produced would often be more extraordinary than the works themselves.” “Her own case,” observes a female friend, “is, in some degree, an illustration of perfect independence of mind over all external circumstances. Perhaps to the L. E. L., of whom so many nonsensical things have been said, as that she should write with a crystal pen, dipped in dew, upon silver paper, and use for pounce the dust of a butterfly’s wing, a dilettante of literature would assign for the scene of her authorship a fairy-like boudoir, with rose-coloured and silver hangings, fitted with all the luxuries of a fastidious taste. How did the reality agree with this fancy sketch?
In this attic did the muse of L. E. L. dream of and describe music, moonlight, and roses, and “apostrophise loves, memories, hopes, and fears,” with how much ultimate appetite for invention or sympathy may be judged from her declaration that, “there is one conclusion at which I have arrived, that a horse in a mill has an easier life than an author. I am fairly fagged out of my life.”
Miss Roberts, who had resided in the same house with Miss Landon, prefixed a brief memoir to a collection of poems by that lamented lady, which appeared shortly after her death, her own mournful lines—
“Alas! hope is not prophecy—we dream, But rarely does the glad fulfilment come; We leave our land, and we return no more.”
And within less than twenty months from the selection of these lines they became applicable to her who had quoted them.
Emma Roberts accompanied her sister, Mrs. M’Naughten, to India, where she resided for some time. On her sister’s death Miss Roberts returned to England, and employed her pen assiduously and advantageously in illustrating the condition of our eastern dominions. She returned to India, and died at Poonah, on the 17th September, 1840. Though considerably the elder, she was one of the early friends of Miss Landon, having for several years previous to her first visit to India boarded with the Misses Lance in Hans Place.
“These were happy days, and little boded the premature and melancholy fate which awaited them in foreign climes. We believe,” says the editor of the ‘Literary Gazette,’ “that it was the example of the literary pursuits of Miss Landon which stimulated Miss Roberts to try her powers as an author, and we remember having the gratification to assist her in launching her first essay—an historical production, [35] which reflected high credit on her talents, and at once established her in a fair position in the ranks of literature. Since then she has been one of the most prolific of our female writers, and given to the public a number of works of interest and value. The expedition to India, on which she unfortunately perished, was undertaken with comprehensive views towards the further illustration of the East, and portions of her descriptions have appeared as she journeyed to her destination in periodicals devoted to Asiatic pursuits.”
The influence of Miss Landon’s literary popularity upon the mind of Miss Roberts very probably caused that lady to desire similar celebrity. Indeed, so imitative are the impulses of the human mind, that it may fairly be questioned if Miss Landon would ever have attuned her lyre had she mot been in the presence of Miss Mitford’s and Miss Rowden’s “fame, and felt its influence.” Miss Mitford has chronicled so minutely all the sayings and doings of her school-days in Hans Place (H. P., as she mysteriously writes it), that she admits us at once behind