Arnold Henry Savage Landor - Later Travels

Later Travels

Landor returned to England, and Queen Victoria invited him to Balmoral so that she could look at his drawings and hear of his journeys. In London he became great friends with James McNeill Whistler and Joseph Pennell.

In 1897 he set off on his travels to explore Tibet where he was captured and suffered terrible adversities and tortures. Nevertheless, he discovered the sources of the Indus and the Brahmaputra. Landor returned fearlessly to Tibet a second time and then to Nepal. From his journeys to Tibet and Nepal come his books In the Forbidden Land (1898) and Tibet and Nepal (1905).

On his return to Europe, Landor gave an increasing number of popular lectures and went on to America to repeat them there. While in America, he heard of the Boxer Rebellion in China, and went immediately to Peking where he was the first to accompany General Linievitch in the triumphal entry parade of honour at the Forbidden City. From this journey came his book China and the Allies (1901).

In 1901 he journeyed to India from Russia, riding on horseback through Persia, and in that year published his account of the journey in the book Across Coveted Lands (1902). He then went to the Philippines where he met the future General Pershing and, returning across America, he succeeded in convincing Theodore Roosevelt that Pershing would be the man which America would need for its Army. Another book The Gems of the East, describes this journey of discovery (1904).

Then Landor dedicated himself to exploring Africa which was almost unknown at the time. In Abyssinia he painted the portrait of the Emperor Menelik II. In 1906 he published Across Wildest Africa and in 1911 and 1912 he went to the Mato Grosso in Central America. On his return to Europe, during his lectures, he told stories of meeting boa serpents, weeks of almost dying of starvation, voyages in canoes in rapids leading to the Amazon River, and many other terrible wanderings. His lectures were requested not only as entertainment for wordly society, but also by scholars. In 1913, Landor published Across the Unknown South America.

In 1912 Landor spoke at the Sorbonne, introduced by Paul Deschanel. Later he was a guest of Gabriele D'Annunzio. The poet gave him, as soon as he entered, an inscribed copy of his last novel Più che l'amore, stating that it was inspired by Landor's book on Tibet (In the Forbidden Land). D'Annunzio suggested they collaborate on his next novel. Landor did not accept the offer. The poet, a few days later, said he was asked to write an article for the Corriere della Sera. Landor, tricked by this, showed him his notes, and entertained him with a number of anecdotes. After some years, Landor discovered in a fascicle of Critica, the journal edited by Benedetto Croce, some extracts of Annunzio's latest novel Forse che sì, forse che no, plagiarized from Landor's travels in the Philippines, in Asia and in Africa, which the novel's hero, an aviator explorer, recounted in the first person.