A LANDOB ANECDOTE.
[TO THE EDITOR Or THE "SPECTATOR."] SIR,—In " The Life and Times of Mrs. Sherwood," just published (Wells Gardner, Darton, and Co.), there is an allusion to Walter Savage Landor which, since the name is misspelt and the editor supplies no comment, might easily be Overlooked. When a girl, Mrs. Sherwood went with her soother to visit a Dr. Larnder (sic) at Warwick, and she was profoundly shocked at the behaviour of his eldest son Walter, " a • big boy, with rough hair." Mrs. Larnder, she relates, received the visitors very cordially ; but...Walter lay stretched out on the carpet before the fire. " On his mother admonishing bim to get up, he answered : ' I won't,' or I sha'n't.' " Mrs. Sherwood primly adds : " From that day this youth became the prototype in my mind of all that was vulgar and dis- obedient, for I had never seen anything like family insub- ordination, and had hardly conceived the thing to be possible." Walter's mother is described as an exceedingly civil and hospitable lady, but in such a perpetual fume that her husband, a hearty, old-fashioned sort of man, was constantly saying to her at dinner : " Come, Betty, keep your temper. Do, Betty, keep your temper."
• The visit to Warwick was paid in 1782, when the future author of " Imaginary Conversations" was seven years old. Forster said that no remembrance of Landor's infancy or childhood remained beyond such expressions as he himself let drop in his old age. Mrs. Sherwood's story, therefore, has a particular interest, and surely required something more precise than the insignificant and misleading entry iu the index: " Larnder, Dr., 44)-41." The picture of the mother in a perpetual fume, and of the unruly boy—already apt, when warming his hands before the fire of life, to ignore its con- ventions—should be of no small value as a clue to the influences which helped to form his character. Mrs. Sherwood, it may be noted, spelt his name as it ought to be pronounced.—I am, Sir, &c., STEPHEN WHEELER. Oriental Club, Hanover Square.
Previous page
