Identifier: portraitgalleryo02duyc (find matches)
Title: Portrait gallery of eminent men and women of Europe and America : embracing history, statesmanship, naval and military life, philosophy, the drama, science, literature and art, with biographies
Year: 1873 (1870s)
Authors: Duyckinck, Evert A. (Evert Augustus), 1816-1878
Subjects: Biography Portraits
Publisher: New York : Johnson, Wilson
Contributing Library: Columbia University Libraries
Digitizing Sponsor: MSN

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born. She early exhibited unusual mentalacuteness. An invalid friend andneighbor taught her the alphabet,throwing the letters upon the floorand giving her a rev/ard when shepicked out the one called for; andthis reward, a trait of her disinterest-edness through life, she invaiiablybrought home to her brother. In hersixth year she attended a school inHans Place, kept by a Miss Rowden, alady poetess, who subsequently becameCountess St. Quentin. After a fewmonths at this place, she was takenby her parents to a new residence inthe country, Trevor Park, at EastBarnet, wheie her education fell intothe hands of her cousin. Miss Landon,who appears to have introduced herto a comjjaratively learned course ofreading, includini? such works as thehistories of Rollin, Hume and Smol-lett, Plutarchs Lives, Josephus, Dob-sons Petrarch, with what was proba-bly a pleasant relief, the fables of Gayand ^sop. Novels were forbidden;Ijut, it is said, notwithstanding thisprohibition, that the child managed to
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-^ ^ y^^/r^^^ LETITIA ELIZABETH LANDOiST. 245 get tlirougb a liundred volumes or soof Cookes widely circulated pocketedition of the English Poets andNovelists—a series which, doubtlessamong many other children of genius,gave great delight in their boyhood toLeigh Hunt, and Dickens. She seems to have taken a particu-lar interest in the heroic virtues of thecharacters in Plutarch, affecting an es-pecial fondness for the Spartans, witha natural inclination of her generousnature to their self-sacrificing spirit.For Robinson Crusoe she had a genu-ine boys rather than girls liking,probably encouraged by her fathersearly seafaring life. For weeks afterreading that book, she subsequentlywrote, • I lived as in a dream; indeed,I scarcely dreamt of anything else atnight. I went to sleep with the cave,its parrots, and goats, floating beforemy closed eyes. I awakened in somerapid flight from the savages landingin their canoes. The elms in ourhedges were not more familiar thanthe prickly shrubs

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