Works of Charles and Mary Lamb. VI-VII. Letters
Charles Lamb to Thomas Manning, [19 November 1800]
DEAR Manning,—I have received a very kind invitation from Lloyd and Sophia to go and spend a month with them at the Lakes. Now it
fortunately happens (which is so seldom the case!) that I have spare cash by
me, enough to answer the expenses of so long a journey; and I am determined to
get away from the office by some means. The purpose of this letter is to
request of you (my dear friend) that you will not take it unkind if I decline
my proposed visit to Cambridge for the present. Perhaps
I shall be able to take Cambridge in my way, going or
coming. I need not describe to you the expectations which such an one as
myself, pent up all my life in a dirty city, have formed of a tour to the
Lakes. Consider Grasmere! Ambleside! Wordsworth! Coleridge! I
hope you will.* Hills, woods, lakes, and mountains, to the eternal devil. I
will eat snipes with thee, Thomas Manning. Only confess,
confess, a bite.
P.S. I think you named the 16th; but was it not modest
of Lloyd to send such an invitation! It
shows his knowledge of money and time. I would be loth to think he meant
“Ironic satire sidelong sklented On my poor pursie.”— Burns.
|
![]()
For my part, with reference to my friends northward, I must confess that I
am not romance-bit about Nature. The earth, and sea, and sky (when all is said)
is but as a house to dwell in. If the inmates be courteous, and good liquors
flow like the conduits at an old coronation; if they can talk sensibly and feel
properly; I have no need to stand staring upon the gilded looking-glass (that
strained my friend’s purse-strings in the purchase), nor his
five-shilling print over the mantelpiece of old
Nabbs the carrier (which only betrays his false taste). Just as
important to me (in a sense) is all the furniture of my world—eye-pampering,
but satisfies no heart. Streets, streets, streets, markets, theatres, churches,
Covent Gardens, shops ![]()
![]()
sparkling with pretty faces of industrious milliners, neat sempstresses, ladies
cheapening, gentlemen behind counters lying, authors in the street with
spectacles, George Dyers (you may know
them by their gait), lamps lit at night, pastry-cooks’ and
silver-smiths’ shops, beautiful Quakers of Pentonville, noise of coaches,
drowsy cry of mechanic watchman at night, with bucks reeling home drunk; if you
happen to wake at midnight, cries of Fire and Stop thief; inns of court, with
their learned air, and halls, and butteries, just like Cambridge colleges; old
book-stalls, Jeremy Taylors, Burtons on Melancholy, and Religio Medicis on every stall. These are
thy pleasures, O London with-the-many-sins. O City abounding in whores, for
these may Keswick and her giant brood go hang!
Robert Burns (1759-1796)
Scottish poet and song collector; author of
Poems, chiefly in the
Scottish Dialect (1786).
Robert Burton (1577-1640)
English clergyman and satirist; author of
The Anatomy of
Melancholy (1621).
Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834)
English poet and philosopher who projected
Lyrical Ballads (1798)
with William Wordsworth; author of
Biographia Literaria (1817),
On the Constitution of the Church and State (1829) and other
works.
George Dyer (1755-1841)
English poet, antiquary, and friend of Charles Lamb; author of
Poems
and Critical Essays (1802),
Poetics: or a Series of Poems and
Disquisitions on Poetry, 2 vols (1812),
History of the
University and Colleges of Cambridge, 2 vols (1814) and other works.
Charles Lloyd (1775-1839)
Quaker poet; a disciple of Coleridge and friend of Charles Lamb, he published
Poetical Essays on the Character of Pope (1821) and other
volumes.
Sophia Lloyd [née Pemberton] (d. 1830)
The wife of the poet Charles Lloyd, with whom she eloped in 1799; they lived at Old
Brathay, near Ambleside in the Lake District.
Thomas Manning (1772-1840)
Educated at Caius College, Cambridge, he traveled in China and Tibet, and was a life-long
friend of Charles Lamb.
William Wordsworth (1770-1850)
With Coleridge, author of
Lyrical Ballads (1798), Wordsworth
survived his early unpopularity to succeed Robert Southey as poet laureate in 1843.
