BOOK FOURTH.

1815-1821. ÆT. 40-46.

FIRST SIX YEARS IN ITALY: AT COMO, PISA, AND PISTOIA.

1. From Tours to Milan. 11. At Como, Pisa, and Pistoia. 111. On the way to Florence. IV. Retrospect and Prospect: a new Literary Undertaking.

I. FROM TOURS TO MILAN.

THE intention of remaining in France survived Waterloo but a little while, and with the second Bourbon restoration Landor resolved upon quitting Tours. But any return to England being for the present impossible, he thought of Italy for his home.

What had been his homes in Llanthony and Bath were now no longer his. His personal property had been sold in both places, and the management of his real estate had been taken out of his hands. It was a sad time. The Llanthony vision was over. No more possibility now of what once had been his dream, to rebuild the abbey as a princely mansion; no more chance of seeing in its plantations the two or three million trees which with a desperate fidelity his fancy and his hopes had made almost real; and though his new roads were to survive him, as they do even yet, too surely had the doom already been pronounced against whatever else he would have associated with his name at Llanthony. Before his house had well been inhabited his new trustees had ordered it to be taken down; but a few months earlier a flood had carried away the bridge he built; and whatever besides he valued had since been swept away as ruthlessly by a public sale. I have here in my rectory,' writes Mr. Robert Landor, ' a Titian valued at twelve hundred guineas which my brother Henry purchased at the auction for ten pounds.' It needs not to dwell farther on these things.

As to his real estate he was happily more fortunate. By the annuity reserved under the act of parliament to his mother, she became the first of his creditors; and being enabled to demand the management of Llanthony, she set apart from it for his use five hundred a year on condition that the money so advanced should be repaid to her younger children whenever by her death the estate at Ipsley should fall into his hands. Her life was prolonged for fourteen years, during which she had thus paid to him seven thousand pounds; and what was held to be a sufficient provision having accrued in the same interval to the younger children, partly by her economy and partly by the bequests of other relatives, the above-named condition, shortly before her death, with the entire concurrence of those other children, was abandoned and Llanthony released from that encumbrance. To this it will be only necessary to add that irrespective of all these arrangements there were simple contract debts unsettled which rendered for the present unadvisable not only any return to England, but even a continued residence at Tours; and Mr. Robert Landor, having at the time a project to visit Italy, at his brother's earnest request joined him at Tours that they might make the journey together.

Landor's stay in the hospitable old French town, then less overrun with English than in later days, had been not without many enjoyments; for the ease with which at will he put off from his thoughts whatever troubled or harassed him, the old characteristic well known to his family, surprised even his brother when they met so soon after the tragedy of Llanthony. I have heard the latter, in relating their first visit together to the quaint old market-place with its splendid fountain where Walter had been in the habit of doing his own marketing daily during his exile, describe the joyous greeting that broke forth from all the market-women successively as he came in view, and his laughing word of jest or compliment for each that had given him universal popularity. The prefet of the town, next to the marketwomen, he seems to have regarded with most favour; it was the same who (I believe erroneously) was reported to have given brief refuge to Napoleon in his then recent flight to the English coast ; and it was always Landor's belief that he had seen the fugitive

emperor dismount in the court-yard of the prefet's house in one of the suburbs, to which he had himself gone, finding the door unexpectedly closed to him, upon the very day when Napoleon was supposed to have passed through Tours.

In September the brothers started for Italy, and by means of a letter addressed in the following month to their mother by the younger of them I learn some of the incidents of their journey. Here are its opening sentences: 'Walter wished very much to 'leave Tours on many accounts; amongst others, on account of ' its unhealthiness, the probability of fresh revolutions, and some 'personal apprehensions about his English creditors. I wished 'to see Italy; and as he pressed it most earnestly, and indeed 'could not travel without me, I agreed to accompany him. After 'contests with his landlady of a most tremendous description, " we set off. Walter had kept his own carriage in all his distresses, and as posting was the cheapest thing in France, we posted : Walter and myself on the dicky, his wife and her maid ' within. Our road lay on the eastern side of the river Loire for more than two hundred miles. This side was occupied by the 'German troops, and the other by the French. Thus we passed, 'between Tours and Lyons, a distance of four hundred miles, through 200,000 men,-Austrians, Prussians, Bavarians, Wirtembergers, Hessians. At Moulins the Prince of Hesse with all 'his staff was at the same hotel; and amused himself, whilst we were at supper, by standing with another officer at the door of our room and looking at Walter's wife. I ordered the door to be shut in his face. As this was done by an Englishman, he only laughed. If it had been done by a Frenchman or a German, there would have been no laughing on either side.'

The acres of vineyards seen by them on the banks of the Loire, Landor himself would often refer to with enthusiasm as not numbering less than hundreds of thousands; and as they passed, he told me, he could not but remember Goldsmith and his flute: though the scene otherwise was unlike the poet's pastoral picture, for along the rocky parts of the shore they observed, miles together, the people making their homes in the rock. The towns on the route were dirty and ill-built as Lyons itself; but for the last half of the distance, the two hundred miles nearest

that second city of France, they found the scenery liker their own than anywhere else, and saw enclosures of quick with timber in the fences, rich well-cultivated land, and young wheat much forwarder than in England. 'It was from the bridge of Lyons we first saw the Alps, extending immediately in our front to a 'great distance. They were covered with snow half-way from the summits. It was about twenty miles from Lyons that one ' of our wheels broke for the third time, and we were detained 'more than a day. At last however we proceeded towards Cham'bery, the capital of Savoy, and passed through a most enchanting and romantic country,-rocks, woods, vineyards, and the 'finest passes.'

The letter proceeded to relate with much reality and vividness their first impressions of Italy, destined to be the home of one of them for more than twenty years and after another thirty years his final resting-place. All this however may not be dwelt on beyond the fact that though Landor meant at first to have fixed his quarters at Chambery, he made wiser ultimate choice of the Lake of Como. Of small and great discomforts also, and their trials of temper, incident to such a twenty days' journey over the seven hundred miles separating Milan from Tours, the son's letter naturally told much that the mother might be glad to hear; but even the few touches of character I shall quote must be read with allowances. If Mr. Robert Landor did not spare himself, of his brother he was quite as unsparing; and, with a very humane and proper chivalry which need not now be construed with excessive strictness, all his sympathy and all his pity were reserved for the pretty little wife. To an observer so generous as well as just, her advantages of sex as well as of youth and beauty were indeed very great; but though prepared for Walter's 'ten thousand' fits of temper, it is a little startling, after the incident at Jersey, to find Walter's wife never giving way to even one. He is seldom out of a passion or a sulky fit excepting at dinner, when he is more boisterous and good'humoured than ever. Then his wife is a darling, a beauty, an 'angel, and a bird. But for just as little reason the next morn'ing she is a fool. She is certainly gentle, patient, and sub'missive. She takes all the trouble, is indeed too officious, and

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'would walk on foot most willingly if he wished it, and she were able. If he loses his keys, his purse, or his pocket-handkerchief, which he does ten times in an hour, she is to be blamed; and she takes it all very quietly.' Perhaps one might have said too quietly. There is such a thing as an ostentatious meekness, or, as the poor bad-tempered husband in the play puts it, a' malign excess of undemanded patience.' Nor is it difficult to discover that the fits of passion, on the other side, were rather of the lambent and phosphorescent than of a scorching or consuming kind. 'If he is ever really unhappy, it is because the 'cook has put oil or garlic into the soup. Give him a good dinner 'well cooked, and he is happier than an emperor. He writes and reads all the day besides. As for his creditors, he cares no 'more about them or his own concerns than about Bonaparte's. 'He has plenty of money for this country; lives as well as ever 'he did in his life; and at Tours had even saved five-and-thirty 'pounds. He has one entire quarter in his banker's hands at 'present, after travelling so far.'

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Again, on the 10th of December in the same year, being then at Rome, Mr. Robert Landor wrote to his mother that he had heard from Walter at Como; that he found it expensive, was dissatisfied with it, and talked of going farther east; but that he had himself written to dissuade this, at least for the present. 'He has seen nothing of Italy, and yet he swears that it contains nothing worth seeing. Every place is the worst.' From Rome. the writer had moved to Naples in April 1816; and in a letter of the 26th of that month to their sister Elizabeth he tells her that Walter had written in the last week from Como, and seemed just then very tranquil and comfortable, but that for himself he would as soon trust to Vesuvius. Finally, having meanwhile paid a visit himself to Como, he writes thus again to that sister from Venice on the 24th of June: 'At Como I found Walter and his wife in comfortable apartments, or rather in a comfort'able house. But they had lost their English maid, whose mis'conduct in leaving, and depravity after having left, were not the least part of the grievance. Julia looks thin, but not pale; talks much of dying, and of returning to Bath, preferring the 'latter a little; and amuses herself in learning the very worst