travel books: ON January 30, 1838, Walter Savage Landor entered upon his sixty-fourth year. Three years earlier, he had hastily left his wife and children and his pleasant villa at Fiesole, to find " a solitary and a late repose " in England. After paying visits to various friends, he took a lodging for himself in St James's Square, Bath. We read in his correspondence of frequent excursions to London, Warwick, Llanbedr, and elsewhere ; and the earliest letter here printed was written from Gore House, Kensington, the residence of his old friend, the Countess of Blessington. Long afterwards, Mr Augustus Hare relates, Landor would tall: of his visits to Gore House, of Count D'Orsay and Lady Blessington, "with Disraeli sitting silently watching their conversation as if it were a display of fireworks." But his headquarters were fixed at Bath for twenty years to come. His daily life there is described in a letter to his sister (1845) :-" I walk out in all weathers six miles a day at least ; and I generally, unless I am engaged in the evening, read from seven till twelve or one. I sleep twenty minutes after dinner, and nearly four hours at night, or rather in the morning. I rise at nine, breakfast at ten, and books

Books > Old Books > Letters of Walter Savage Landor (1899)

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CHAPTER I
PRIVATE LETTERS 1838 - 1839

ON January 30, 1838, Walter Savage Landor entered upon his sixty-fourth year. Three years earlier, he had hastily left his wife and children and his pleasant villa at Fiesole, to find " a solitary and a late repose " in England. After paying visits to various friends, he took a lodging for himself in St James's Square, Bath. We read in his correspondence of frequent excursions to London, Warwick, Llanbedr, and elsewhere ; and the earliest letter here printed was written from Gore House, Kensington, the residence of his old friend, the Countess of Blessington. Long afterwards, Mr Augustus Hare relates, Landor would tall: of his visits to Gore House, of Count D'Orsay and Lady Blessington, "with Disraeli sitting silently watching their conversation as if it were a display of fireworks."
But his headquarters were fixed at Bath for twenty years to come. His daily life there is described in a letter to his sister (1845) :-" I walk out in all weathers six miles a day at least ; and I generally, unless I am engaged in the evening, read from seven till twelve or one. I sleep twenty minutes after dinner, and nearly four hours at night, or rather in the morning. I rise at nine, breakfast at ten, and