The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 104, June, 1866, page 79 by Various Authors
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d, holding up a pen-wiper made of red and gold stuff in the shape of a bell with an ivory handle,--"that pen-wiper was given to me by ----, Rose's sister, forty years ago. Would you believe it? Have I not kept it well?" The pen-wiper looked as though it had been made the day before, so fresh was it. "Now," continued Landor, "I intend to give that to you."
"But, Mr. Landor--"
"Tut! tut! there are to be no buts about it. My passage for another world is already engaged, and I know you'll take good care of my keepsake. There, now, put it in your pocket, and only use it on grand occasions."
Into my pocket the pen-wiper went, and, wrapped in the same old paper, it lies in another desk, as free from ink as it was four years ago.
Who Rose was no reader of Landor need be told,--she to whom "Andrea of Hungary" was dedicated, and of whom Lady Blessington, in one of her letters to Landor, wrote: "The tuneful bird, inspired of old by the Persian rose, warbled not more harmoniously its praise than you do that of the English Rose, whom posterity will know through your beautiful verses." Many and many a time the gray-bearded poet related incidents of which this English Rose was the heroine, and for the moment seemed to live over again an interesting episode of his mature years.
* * * * *
"Dear! dear! what is the old creature to do for reading-matter?" Landor exclaimed after having exhausted his own small stock and my still smaller one. "Shakespeare and Milton are my daily food, but at times, you know, we require side-dishes."
"Why not subscribe to Vieusseux's Library, Mr. Landor?"
"That would be the best thing to do, would it not? Very well, you shall secure me a six months' subscription to-morrow. And now what shall I read? When Mr. Anthony Trollope was here, he called on me with his brother, and a clever man he appeared to be. I have never read anything of his. Suppose I begin with his novels?"
And so it happened that Landor read all of Anthony Trollope's