travel books: will return sooner and try my hand at it. Your account of Sophy has removed from me a heavy load of anxiety. That horrible pleurisy frightened me. I can bear pain passably well myself: it is only when it rebounds from my friends that I have not the courage to face it. You would have laught at me the other day when a lady was my protectress. I was over at Marston (1) to see the Boyles when (tell the Admiral if he is with you) I delivered his message to Sir Courtney.(2) In the courtyard was a magnificent black Newfoundland dog. No sooner had I entered the gate than, before I could deliver my credentials, or make the sign of dog-freemasonry, he seized my leg. A swinging box on the ear was opposed to this manoeuvre. My Newfoundlander had what the boxers (not very elegantly) call pluck.(3) He renewed the attack, despite some severe appellations and admirable parasol-thrusts of Miss Boyle.(4) However she conquered him-for neither my box on the ear nor a kick at the second round, which sent him upon his back, made him give in. We were pretty good friends at last, although I told him I should trouble him, at his leisure, just to look over a certain article in my 1 Marston, in Somersetshire. See "Last Fruit," p. 484. 2Admiral Sir Courtenay Boyle, brother-in-law of the 8th Earl of Cork and Orrery. 3 This was a word which Landor greatly disliked. "The Romans were content with cor and fiectus; we with their contents." Works, 1876, v. 9 4 Miss Mary Boyle. books

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

Page 41

CHAPTER I
PRIVATE LETTERS 1838 - 1839

will return sooner and try my hand at it. Your account of Sophy has removed from me a heavy load of anxiety. That horrible pleurisy frightened me. I can bear pain passably well myself: it is only when it rebounds from my friends that I have not the courage to face it. You would have laught at me the other day when a lady was my protectress. I was over at Marston (1) to see the Boyles when (tell the Admiral if he is with you) I delivered his message to Sir Courtney.(2) In the courtyard was a magnificent black Newfoundland dog. No sooner had I entered the gate than, before I could deliver my credentials, or make the sign of dog-freemasonry, he seized my leg. A swinging box on the ear was opposed to this manoeuvre. My Newfoundlander had what the boxers (not very elegantly) call pluck.(3) He renewed the attack, despite some severe appellations and admirable parasol-thrusts of Miss Boyle.(4) However she conquered him-for neither my box on the ear nor a kick at the second round, which sent him upon his back, made him give in. We were pretty good friends at last, although I told him I should trouble him, at his leisure, just to look over a certain article in my

1 Marston, in Somersetshire. See "Last Fruit," p. 484.
2Admiral Sir Courtenay Boyle, brother-in-law of the 8th Earl of Cork and Orrery.
3 This was a word which Landor greatly disliked. "The Romans were content with cor and fiectus; we with their contents." Works, 1876, v. 9
4 Miss Mary Boyle.