WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR “NARRATIVE HISTORY” AMOUNTS TO FABULATION, THE REAL STUFF BEING MERE CHRONOLOGY “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project Walter Savage Landor HDT WHAT? INDEX WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR 1775 January 30, Monday: The Reverend Asa Dunbar recorded in his journal: “Very much unstrung with taking phisic [sic].” Walter Savage Landor was born at Eastgate House at almost the top of Smith Street, next to the eastward town gate of Warwick, England as the eldest son of a physician, Dr Walter Landor, with his 2d wife, Elizabeth Savage Landor (his birth home is now The King’s High School For Girls). His father inherited estates at Rugeley in Staffordshire and his mother estates at Ipsley Court and Tachbrook in Warwickshire. The family tradition was Whig, in reaction to King George III and Prime Minister William Pitt. After attending a school at Knowle Walter would be sent to Rugby School, HDT WHAT? INDEX WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR but there he would take offence at Dr. James’s review of his work and be removed at this headmaster’s request (in later life the two would reconcile). Walter’s temperament and violent opinions would create such embarrassment that when guests were expected the family would usually ask him to make himself scarce. Finally he would study privately with the Reverend William Langley, vicar of Fenny Bentley and headmaster of Ashbourne Grammar School. In his youth there would be an incident in which a local farmer objected to his trespass — for this he caught the farmer in a net and threw him into the river. He was such a man as to create trouble wherever he went, throughout his life — and yet he would become dear to a great many people. NOBODY COULD GUESS WHAT WOULD HAPPEN NEXT Walter Savage Landor “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project HDT WHAT? INDEX WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR 1793 Walter Savage Landor entered Trinity College of Oxford University and immediately displayed rebelliousness in his informal dress. He was so taken with the ideals of French republicanism that he would become notorious as a “mad Jacobin.” He impressed his tutor Dr Benwell but unfortunately his education at this school, like his previous experience at Rugby School, would be brief. TRINITY COLLEGE NO-ONE’S LIFE IS EVER NOT DRIVEN PRIMARILY BY HAPPENSTANCE “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project Walter Savage Landor HDT WHAT? INDEX WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR 1794 Walter Savage Landor fired his shotgun at the windows of a Tory for whom he had formed an aversion, whose evening revels disturbed his studies. Rusticated from Trinity College, when the authorities became willing to allow him to return to his studies at Oxford, he would refuse. Quarreling with his father, young Walter expressed an intention to leave home for ever. At Tenby in Wales he would have a love affair with one Nancy Evans and write for her some of his earliest love poems. He would also get this young lady pregnant. When his father disapproved of this match, Walter would remove for a time to lodgings near Portland Place in London. The infant would die. William Blake reprinted his illuminated 1789 collection of 19 poems, adding 26 new poems, as SONGS OF INNOCENCE AND OF EXPERIENCE SHOWING THE TWO CONTRARY STATES OF THE HUMAN SOUL: • Earth’s Answer • The Clod and the Pebble • Holy Thursday • The Little Girl Lost • The Little Girl Found • The Chimney Sweeper • Nurse’s Song • The Sick Rose • The Fly • The Angel • The Tyger • My Pretty Rose Tree • Ah! Sunflower • The Lily • The Garden of Love • The Little Vagabond • London • The Human Abstract • Infant Sorrow • A Poison Tree • A Little Boy Lost • A Little Girl Lost • To Tirzah • The Schoolboy • The Voice of the Ancient Bard WILLIAM BLAKE HDT WHAT? INDEX WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR (This collection of poems would be presented by Miss Elizabeth Palmer Peabody to Waldo Emerson in 1842, and Emerson’s copy inscribed “R.W. Emerson from his friend E.P.P.” has notes throughout made by Emerson. We do not have evidence, however, that Henry Thoreau ever sighted this volume in Emerson’s study, nor do we have evidence that Emerson made these notes while Thoreau was alive. It is generally recognized that Blake had no particular influence on either side of the Atlantic prior to the latter part of the 19th Century. In particular we do not have evidence that Thoreau became aware of the poem “A Poison Tree.” This is of relevance because, in 2012 in LITERARY PARTNERSHIPS AND THE MARKETPLACE: WRITERS AND MENTORS IN NINETEENTH-CENTURY AMERICA (Louisiana State UP), David Oakley Dowling < HDT WHAT? INDEX WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR Emerson’s vacillating attitude toward A WEEK. “I had a friend, I wrote a book, I asked my friend’s criticism, I never got but praise for what was good in it — my friend became estranged from me,” he wrote, concluding his litany of frustration by ironically casting himself as the poisoned “foe outstretched beneath the tree” at the close of Blake’s poem, with Emerson’s ill-timed criticism, of course, providing the poison: “and then I got blame for all that was bad, — & so I got at last the criticism I wanted.” It took four years for Thoreau to rid himself of the $300 debt incurred from the publication of A WEEK, and much longer to rid himself of his wrath for Emerson. His journal reflects a tortured soul, obsessing over the loss of his closest friend and greatest literary model. (page 135). It is generally presumed among Emerson scholars that, in Thoreau’s journal of May 1849, in all probability the reference is to Emerson since Emerson was so very important and since Emerson saw Thoreau “not only as his disciple but also as his professional apprentice” and since Emerson “fathered Thoreau’s career” — what is not immediately clear is that there is any resemblance whatever in imagery or style between this Blake poem and the indicated Thoreau snippet. Assistant Professor Dowling appears to be just making stuff up out of whole cloth, the way he makes up pseudo-history such as “Thoreau stayed at Emerson’s house most evenings while he purportedly was sleeping in his self-made cabin at Walden Pond.” Thoreau is not referring at this point in his journal to the fruit of a poisoned tree but to a poisoned arrow/barb, nor is Thoreau considering whether to inform or not inform whatever person it was with whom he had been having this difficulty: After September 11: Wherever we sat there we might live –what is a house but a sedes a seat –a country seat –& the landscape radiated from us accordingly.– We discovered may a site for a house –which some might have thought too far from the village –not likely soon to be improved. but to our eyes the village might have seemed to far from it. and instantly it became the centre of the world where would not be heard a rumor of the world. We never have the benefit of our friend’s criticism, and none is so severe & searching –until he is estranged from us. No one appreciates our virtues like our friend, yet methinks that I do not receive from my friend that criticism which is most valuable & indispensable to me until he is estranged from me. He who knows best what we are, knows what we are not. He will never tell me the fatal truth which it concerns me most to know until he is estranged from –& then the harmless truth will be shot with a poisoned arrow will have a poisoned barb. When we are such friends & have such for our friends that our love is not a partiality, that truth is not crowded out or postponed – or delayed there will be Friendship. Now first we are dealt with absolutely– This truth without that poison & we were friends still & indeed. The fruit of partiality is enmity I had a friend, I wrote a book, I asked my friend’s criticism, I never got but praise for what was good in it – my friend became estranged from me and then I got blame for all that was bad, –& so I got at last the criticism which I wanted. While my friend was my friend he flattered me, and I never heard the truth from him, but when he became my enemy he shot it to me on a poisoned arrow There is as much hatred as love in the world. Hate is a good critic. When two can treat each other with absolute truth, then there will be but those two in the world. Then men will no longer be divided but be one as God is. If friendship is but a sweetmeat, I ... {six pages missing} HDT WHAT? INDEX WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR Other presumptuous remarks by Assistant Professor Dowling include describing Thoreau’s literary career as “wayward” and as “rocky,” plus the entirely unsupported animadversion “Thoreau stayed at Emerson’s house most evenings while he purportedly was sleeping in his self-made cabin at Walden Pond”: Thoreau gravitated toward the Concord transcendentalist literary circle out of a desire to forge a career from his artistic vision. The established circle that published THE DIAL included influential and powerful figures in the literary world such as Emerson and Margaret Fuller, who represented connections vital to the success of a fledgling writer like Thoreau. Fuller and Emerson were not replacements for the traditional patrician patron of the arts in the way they supported Thoreau. Instead of wealthy, leisure-class genteel amateurs, Fuller and Emerson were literary professionals themselves. Their aid to the young Thoreau was not by means of large financial donations. They were instead exemplars of how to attain success in the field, providers of solid personal references, and mentors of the craft. Simply because Thoreau stayed at Emerson’s house most evenings while he purportedly was sleeping in his self-made cabin at Walden Pond does not make him the recipient of eighteenth-century-style patronage. It does, however, make him the recipient of a new style of patronage that would guide his ventures into the Philadelphia and New York markets, albeit unsuccessfully, to try to find work as a writer (pages 3-4). (Assistant Professor Dowling describes Thoreau as “desperate” and speaks of Thoreau’s “venom.” He characterizes Chapter 1 of WALDEN as merely “another agrarian jeremiad lamenting capitalist corruption.”) LIFE IS LIVED FORWARD BUT UNDERSTOOD BACKWARD? — NO, THAT’S GIVING TOO MUCH TO THE HISTORIAN’S STORIES. LIFE ISN’T TO BE UNDERSTOOD EITHER FORWARD OR BACKWARD. “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project Walter Savage Landor HDT WHAT? INDEX WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR 1795 A small volume of English and Latin verse appeared, THE POEMS OF WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR (London: Cadell and Davies). The author also made an anonymous attack on William Pitt, the Parliamentary leader for King George III, for trying to suppress liberal influences, in a pamphlet of 19 pages A MORAL EPISTLE; 1 RESPECTFULLY DEDICATED TO EARLY STANHOPE (London: Cadell and Davies). The Right Honourable William Pitt the Younger After December 23, 1845: ... {One-fourth page blank} Landor’s works are WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR 1st A small volume of poems 1793 out of print next Poems of “Gebir” “Chrysaor”, the “Phocaeans” &c The “Gebir” eulogized by Southey & Coleridge Wrote verses in Italian & Latin. The dramas “Andrea of Hungary” “Giovanna of Naples” and “Fra Rupert.” “Pericles & Aspasia” 1. He would subsequently disown these as “’prentice works.” HDT WHAT? INDEX WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR “Poems from the Arabic & Persian” 1800 pretending to be translations. “A Satire upon Satirists, and Admonition to Detractors” printed 1836 not published Letters called “High & Low Life in Italy” “Imaginary Conversations” “Pentameron & Pentalogia” “Examination of William Shakspeare before Sir Thomas Lucy, Knt., touching Deer-stealing.” {One-fourth page blank} Vide again Richard’s sail in “Rich. 1st & the Abbot” Phocion’s remarks in conclusion of “Eschines & Phocion” “Demosthenes & Eubulides” In Milton & Marvel speaking of the Greek poets –he says “There is a sort of refreshing odor flying off it perpetually; not enough to oppress or to satiate; nothing is beaten or bruized; nothing smells of the stalk; the flower itself is half-concealed by the Genius of it hovering round.” Pericles & Sophocles Marcus Tullius Cicero & his Brother Quinctus in this a sentence on Sleep and Death. Johnson & Tooke for a criticism on words. {Three-fifths page blank} ... Through the efforts of Dorothea Lyttelton, the young author would reconcile with his family (he would later indicate to his biographer John Forster that he and Dorothea would have married had he been financially independent). His father agreed to provide him with £150 a year, setting him free to live as he liked and come home as he pleased. He settled in South Wales, returning to Warwick for short visits. At Swansea he became friendly with the family of Lord Aylmer, and Rose, whom he would write of in the poem “Rose Aylmer,” lent him THE PROGRESS OF ROMANCE by Clara Reeve. This contained a story “The History of Charoba, Queen of Egypt” which would inspire his GEBIR (in 1798 Rose Aylmer would sail with an aunt to India, and there soon succumb to cholera). THE FUTURE IS MOST READILY PREDICTED IN RETROSPECT “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project Walter Savage Landor