The return of my mother, and the success of her book, produced a change in the condition and circumstances of affairs at home which resembled the transformation scene in a pantomime that takes place at the advent of the good fairy. Even the old farm-house at Harrow Weald was brightened up physically, and to a far greater degree morally, by her presence. But we did not remain long there. Very shortly she took us back to Harrow, not to the large house built by my father on Lord Northwick’s land, but to another very good house on the same farm--not above a stone’s throw from the previous one, which he had made (very imprudently) by adding to and improving the original farm-house--a very comfortable residence. This was the house which the world has heard of as “Orley Farm.” And there my mother became immediately surrounded by many old friends and many new ones. I remember among the latter Letitia Landon, better known to the world as “L. E. L.” She was a _petite_ figure, very insignificant-looking, with a sharp chin, turn-up nose, and on the whole rather _piquante_ face, though without any pretension to good looks. I remember her being seated one day at dinner by the side of a certain dignitary of the Church, who had the reputation of being more of a _bon vivant_ than a theologian, and who was old enough to have been her father; and on my asking her afterwards what they had been talking about so earnestly, as I had seen them, “About eating, to be sure!” said she. “I always talk to everybody on their strong point. I told him that writing poetry was my trade, but that eating was my pleasure, and we were fast friends before the fish was finished!” Her sad fate and tragic ending, poor soul! attracted much attention and sympathy at the time. And doubtless fate and the world used her hardly; but she was one of those who never under any circumstances would have run a straight and prosperous course.