Works of Charles and Mary Lamb. VI-VII. Letters
Charles Lamb to William Wordsworth [18 February 1805]
[p.m. February 18, 1805.]
MY dear Wordsworth, the subject of your letter has never been out of
our thoughts since the day we first heard of it, and many have been our
impulses towards you, to write to you, or to write to enquire about you; but it
never seemed the time. We felt all your situation, and how much you would want
Coleridge at such a time, and we
wanted somehow to make up to you his absence, for we loved and honoured your
Brother, and his death always occurs
to my mind with something like a feeling of reproach, as if we ought to have
been nearer acquainted, and as if there had been some incivility shown him by
us, or something short of that respect which we now feel: but this is always a
feeling when people die, and I should not foolishly offer a piece of
refinement, instead of sympathy, if I knew any other way of making you feel how
little like indifferent his loss has been to us. I have been for some time
wretchedly ill and low, and your letter this morning has affected me so with a
pain in my inside and a confusion, that I hardly know what to write or how. I
have this ![]()
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morning seen Stewart, the 2d mate, who was saved: but he
can give me no satisfactory account, having been in quite another part of the
ship when your brother went down. But I shall see Gilpin tomorrow, and will communicate your thanks, and learn
from him all I can. All accounts agree that just before the vessel going down,
your brother seemed like one overwhelmed with the situation, and careless of
his own safety. Perhaps he might have saved himself; but a Captain who in such
circumstances does all he can for his ship and nothing for himself, is the
noblest idea. I can hardly express myself, I am so really ill. But the
universal sentiment is, that your brother did all that duty required: and if he
had been more alive to the feelings of those distant ones whom he loved, he
would have been at that time a less admirable object; less to be exulted in by
them: for his character is high with all that I have heard speak of him, and no
reproach can fix upon him. Tomorrow I shall see Gilpin, I
hope, if I can get at him, for there is expected a complete investigation of
the causes of the loss of the ship, at the East India House, and all the
Officers are to attend: but I could not put off writing to you a moment. It is
most likely I shall have something to add tomorrow, in a second letter. If I do
not write, you may suppose I have not seen G. but you
shall hear from me in a day or two. We have done nothing but think of you,
particularly of Dorothy. Mary is crying by me while I with difficulty
write this: but as long as we remember any thing, we shall remember your
Brother’s noble person, and his sensible manly modest voice, and how safe
and comfortable we all were together in our apartment, where I am now writing.
When he returned, having been one of the triumphant China fleet, we thought of
his pleasant exultation (which he exprest here one night) in the wish that he
might meet a Frenchman in the seas; and it seem’d to be accomplished, all
to his heart’s desire. I will conclude from utter inability to write any
more, for I am seriously unwell: and because I mean to gather something like
intelligence to send to you tomorrow: for as yet, I have but heard second hand,
and seen one narrative, which is but a transcript of what was common to all the
Papers. God bless you all, and reckon upon us as entering into all your griefs.
[Signature cut away.]
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.
Thomas Gilpin (1781 c.-1805 fl.)
The fourth mate on the Abergavenny who survived the wreck.
Mary Anne Lamb (1764-1847)
Sister of Charles Lamb with whom she wrote Tales from Shakespeare (1807). She lived with
her brother, having killed their mother in a temporary fit of insanity.
Cosmas Henry Stewart (1751-1815)
The purser on the Abergavenny; having survived the wreck he later died in India.
Dorothy Wordsworth (1771-1855)
The sister of William Wordsworth who transcribed his poems and kept his house; her
journals and letters were belatedly published after her death.
John Wordsworth (1772-1805)
The brother of William Wordsworth, an East India Company captain, he was drowned in the
wreck of the Earl of Abergavenny near Weymouth.
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.
