| 408 | LETTERS OF C. AND M. LAMB | Jan. |
Mary sends her love.
DEAR Manning,—When I last wrote to you, I was in lodgings. I am now in chambers, No. 4., Inner Temple Lane, where I should be happy to see you any evening. Bring any of your friends, the Mandarins, with you. I have two sitting-rooms: I call them so par excellence, for you may stand, or loll, or lean, or try any posture in them; but they are best for sitting; not squatting down Japanese fashion, but the more decorous use of the post——s which European usage has consecrated. I have two of these rooms on the third floor, and five sleeping, cooking, &c., rooms, on the fourth floor. In my best room is a choice collection of the works of Hogarth, an English painter of some humour. In my next best are shelves containing a small but well-chosen library. My best room commands a court, in which there are trees and a pump, the water of which is excellent—cold with brandy, and not very insipid without. Here I hope to set up my rest, and not quit till Mr. Powell, the undertaker, gives me notice that I may have possession of my last lodging. He lets lodgings for single gentlemen. I sent you a parcel of books by my last, to give you some idea of the state of European literature. There comes with this two volumes, done up as letters, of minor poetry, a sequel to “Mrs. Leicester;” the best you may suppose mine; the next best are my coadjutor’s; you may amuse yourself in guessing them out; but I must tell you mine are but one-third in quantity of the whole. So much for a very delicate subject. It is hard to speak of one’s self, &c. Holcroft had finished his life when I wrote to you, and Hazlitt has since finished his life—I do not mean his own life, but he has finished a life of Holcroft, which is going to press. Tuthill is Dr. Tuthill. I continue Mr. Lamb. I have published a little book for children on titles of honour: and to give them some idea of the difference of rank and gradual rising, I have made a little scale, supposing myself to receive the following various accessions of dignity from the king, who is the fountain of honour—As at first, 1, Mr. C. Lamb; 2, C. Lamb, Esq.; 3, Sir C. Lamb, Bart.; 4, Baron Lamb of Stamford;1 5, Viscount Lamb; 6, Earl Lamb; 7, Marquis Lamb; 8, Duke Lamb. It would look like quibbling to carry it on further, and especially as it is not necessary for children to go beyond the ordinary titles of sub-regal dignity in
1 Where my family come from. I have chosen that if ever I should have my choice. |
| 1810 | A DREAM OF HONOUR | 409 |
“She’s sweet Fifteen, I’m one year
more.” |
Mrs. Bland sung it in boy’s clothes the first time I heard it. I sometimes think the lower notes in my voice are like Mrs. Bland’s.
1 [See Appendix II., page 971.] |
| 410 | LETTERS OF C. AND M. LAMB | Jan. |
“Queens drop away, while blue-legg’d Maukin thrives; And courtly Mildred dies while country
Madge survives.” |
[“I have published a little book.” This was, of course, an invention. In the Elia essay on “Poor Relations” Lamb says that his father’s boyhood was spent at Lincoln, and in Susan Yates’ story in Mrs. Leicester’s School we see the Lincolnshire fens, but of the history of the family we know nothing. I fancy Stamford is a true touch.
“The Persian ambassador.” A portrait of this splendid person is preserved at the India Office. Leigh Hunt says that Dyer was among the pilgrims to Primrose Hill.
“Kate * * * * * * * * *.” I have not identified this young lady.
| 1810 | A GROUP OF FRIENDS | 411 |
“The old pathetic ballad.” I have not found this.
“Mrs. Bland.” Maria Theresa Bland (1769-1838), a Jewess, and a mezzo-soprano famous in simple ballads, who was connected with Drury Lane for many years.
“Braham is fled.” Braham did not sing in London in 1810, but joined Mrs. Billington in a long provincial tour. Phillips was Thomas Philipps (1774-1841), singer and composer.
“Miss B * * * * * *.” Miss Burrell. See note on page 513.
“Not my poetry, but Quarles’s.” In “An Elegie,” Stanza 16. Lamb does not quote quite correctly.
“Hazlitt’s grammar.” A New and Improved Grammar of the English Tongue . . . by William Hazlitt, to which is added A New Guide to the English Tongue by E[dward] Baldwin (William Godwin). Published by M. J. Godwin. 1810.
“A woman begged of me.” Lamb told this story at the end of his Elia essay “A Complaint of the Decay of Beggars,” in the London Magazine, June, 1822, but the passage was not reprinted in book form. See Vol. II. of this edition, page 387.
George Dawe was made A.R.A. in 1809, not R.A. until 1814.
Of the friends on Lamb’s list we have already met several. Mr. and Mrs. Norris were the Randal Norrises. Dr. Stoddart having left Malta was now practising in Doctors Commons. Mr. and Mrs. Collier were the John Dyer Colliers, the parents of John Payne Collier, who introduced Lamb to Henry Crabb Robinson. Both Colliers were journalists. We meet some Buffams later, in the Moxon correspondence. Mr. Marshall was Godwin’s friend. Of Mrs. Lum, Mr. Dollin, Mr. Thompson, Colonel and Mrs. Harwood, and Mr. Sutton, I know nothing.]
DR R.—My Brother whom you have met at my rooms (a plump good looking man of seven and forty!) has written a book about humanity, which I transmit to you herewith. Wilson the Publisher has put it in his head that you can get it Reviewed for him. I dare say it is not in the scope of your Review—but if you could put it in any likely train, he would rejoyce. For alas! our boasted Humanity partakes of Vanity. As it is, he teazes me to death with chusing to suppose that I could get it into all the Reviews at a moment’s notice—I!! who have been set up as a mark for them to throw at, and would willingly consign them all to Hell flames and Megæra’s snaky locks.
| 412 | LETTERS OF C. AND M. LAMB | Feb. |
But here’s the Book—and don’t shew it Mrs. Collier, for I remember she makes excellent Eel soup, and the leading points of the Book are directed against that very process.
[Addressed to “Henry Robinson, Esq., 56 Hatton Garden,’ with a Treatise on Cruelty to Animals.’”
Lamb’s brother, John Lamb, who was born in 1763, was now Accountant of the South-Sea House. His character is described by Lamb in the Elia essay “My Relations,” where he figures as James Elia. Robinson’s Diary later frequently expresses Robinson’s dislike of his dogmatic ways.
The pamphlet has been identified by Mr. L. S. Livingston as A Letter to the Right Hon. William Windham, on his opposition to Lord Erskine’s Bill for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. It was published by Maxwell & Wilson at 17 Skinner Street in 1810. No author’s name is given. One copy only is known, and that is in America, and the owner declines to permit it to be reprinted. The particular passage referring to eel pie runs thus:—
“If an eel had the wisdom of Solomon, he
could not help himself in the ill-usage that befalls him; but if he had, and were told,
that it was necessary for our subsistence that he should be eaten, that he must be
skinned first, and then broiled; if ignorant of man’s usual practice, he would
conclude that the cook would so far use her reason as to cut off his head first, which
is not fit for food, as then he might be skinned and broiled without harm; for however
the other parts of his body might be convulsed during the culinary operations, there
could be no feeling of consciousness therein, the communication with the brain being
cut off; but if the woman were immediately to stick a fork into his eye, skin him
alive, coil him up in a skewer, head and all, so that in the extremest agony he could
not move, and forthwith broil him to death: then were the same Almighty Power that
formed man from the dust, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, to call
the eel into a new existence, with a knowledge of the treatment he had undergone, and
he found that the instinctive disposition which man has in common with other
carnivorous animals, which inclines him to cruelty, was not the sole cause of his
torments; but that men did not attend to consider whether the sufferings of such
insignificant creatures could be lessened: that eels were not the only sufferers; that
lobsters and other shell fish were put into cold water and boiled to death by slow
degrees in many parts of the sea coast; that these, and many other such wanton
atrocities, were the consequence of care-
| 1810 | LAMB ON “SENTIMENT” | 413 |
Robinson’s review was, I imagine, The London Review, founded by Richard Cumberland in February, 1809, which, however, no longer existed, having run its brief course by November, 1809.
“Megæra’s snaky locks.” From Paradise Lost, X., 559:—
and up the trees Climbing, sat thicker than the snaky locks That curl’d Megæra. |
Here should come another letter from Lamb to Charles Lloyd, Senior, dated March 10, 1810, not available for this edition. It refers to Mr. Lloyd’s translation of the first seven books of the Odyssey and is accompanied by a number of criticisms. Lamb advises Mr. Lloyd to complete the Odyssey, adding that he would prize it for its Homeric plainness and truths above the confederate jumble of Pope, Browne and Fenton which goes under Pope’s name and is far inferior to his Iliad. Among the criticisms is one on Mr. Lloyd’s use of the word “patriotic,” in which Lamb says that it strikes his ears as being too modern; adding that in English few words of more than three syllables chime well into a verse. The word “sentiment” calls from him the remark that he would root it out of a translation of Homer. “It came in with Sterne, and was a child he had by Affectation.”]
DEAR Gutch,—I
did not see your brother, who brought me Wither; but he understood, he said, you were daily expecting to
come to town: this has prevented my writing. The books
| 414 | LETTERS OF C. AND M. LAMB | April |
Yours, with many thanks,
Perhaps I could digest the few critiques prefixed to the Satires, Shepherds Hunting, &c., into a short abstract of Wither’s character and works, at the end of his Life. But, may be, you don’t want any thing, and have said all you wish in the Life.
[John Mathew Gutch (1776-1861), whom we have met before (see page 167), was at this time living at Bristol, where he owned, edited and printed Felix Farley’s Bristol Journal. He had been printing for his own pleasure an edition of George Wither’s poems, which he had sent to Lamb for his opinion, intending ultimately to edit Wither fully. Lamb returned the volumes with a number of comments, many of which he afterwards incorporated in his essay “On the Poetry of George Wither,” printed in his Works in 1818. Gutch subsequently handed the volumes to his friend Dr. John Nott of the Hot Wells, Bristol, who had views of his own upon Wither, and who commented in his turn on the poet and on Lamb’s criticism of the poet. In course of time the volumes fell into Lamb’s hands again, when Nott’s comments on Wither and on Lamb received treatment. They were ultimately given by Lamb to his friend Brook Pulham of the India House (who made the caricature etching of “Ælia”) and are now in the possession of Mr. A. C. Swinburne, who told the story of the book in the Nineteenth Century for January, 1885, reprinted in his Miscellanies, 1886. Some passages from that article will be found in the notes to Lamb’s essay on Wither in Vol. I. of the present edition, page 453. The last word was with Nott, for when Gutch printed a three- or four-volume edition of Wither in 1820, under Nott’s editorship, many of Lamb’s best things were included as Nott’s.]
| 1810 | WITH THE HAZLITTS AGAIN | 415 |
DEAR [Montagu],—I have turned and twisted the MSS. in my head, and can make nothing of them. I knew when I took them that I could not; but I do not like to do an act of ungracious necessity at once; so I am ever committing myself by half engagements and total failures. I cannot make any body understand why I can’t do such things. It is a defect in my occiput. I cannot put other people’s thoughts together; I forget every paragraph as fast as I read it; and my head has received such a shock by an all-night journey on the top of the coach, that I shall have enough to do to nurse it into its natural pace before I go home. I must devote myself to imbecility. I must be gloriously useless while I stay here. How is Mrs. [M.]? will she pardon my inefficiency? The city of Salisbury is full of weeping and wailing. The Bank has stopt payment; and every body in the town kept money at it, or has got some of its notes. Some have lost all they had in the world. It is the next thing to seeing a city with a plague within its walls. The Wilton people are all undone. All the manufacturers there kept cash at the Salisbury bank; and I do suppose it to be the unhappiest county in England this, where I am making holiday.
We purpose setting out for Oxford Tuesday fortnight, and coming thereby home. But no more night travelling. My head is sore (understand it of the inside) with that deduction of my natural rest which I suffered coming down. Neither Mary nor I can spare a morsel of our rest. It is incumbent on us to be misers of it. Travelling is not good for us—we travel so seldom. If the Sun be Hell, it is not for the fire, but for the sempiternal motion of that miserable Body of Light. How much more dignified leisure hath a mussel glued to his unpassable rocky limit, two inch square! He hears the tide roll over him, backwards and forwards twice a-day (as the d——d Salisbury Long Coach goes and returns in eight and forty hours), but knows better than to take an outside night-place a top on’t. He is the Owl of the Sea. Minerva’s fish. The fish of Wisdom.
Our kindest remembrances to Mrs. [M.].
| 416 | LETTERS OF C. AND M. LAMB | August |
[If the date is correct we must suppose that the Lambs had made a second visit to the Hazlitts and were intending to return by way of Oxford (see next Letter).
Basil Montagu was a barrister and humanitarian, a friend of Wordsworth and Coleridge, and afterwards step-father-in-law of Procter. He was born in 1770 and lived until 1851. Lamb probably addressed to him many other letters, also to his third wife, Carlyle’s “noble lady.” But the correspondence was destroyed by Mrs. Procter.
The MSS. referred to cannot now be identified.]
DEAR H.,—Epistemon is not well. Our pleasant excursion has ended sadly for one of us. You will guess I mean my sister. She got home very well (I was very ill on the journey) and continued so till Monday night, when her complaint came on, and she is now absent from home.
I am glad to hear you are all well. I think I shall be mad if I take any more journeys with two experiences against it. I find all well here. Kind remembrances to Sarah—have just got her letter.
H. Robinson has been to Blenheim. He says you will be sorry to hear that we should have asked for the Titian Gallery there. One of his friends knew of it, and asked to see it. It is never shown but to those who inquire for it.
The pictures are all Titians, Jupiter and Ledas, Mars and Venuses, &c., all naked pictures, which may be a reason they don’t show it to females. But he says they are very fine; and perhaps it is shown separately to put another fee into the shower’s pocket. Well, I shall never see it.
I have lost all wish for sights. God bless you. I shall be glad to see you in London.
Yours truly,
| 1810 | EPITAPHS | 417 |
[Hazlitt subsequently saw the Blenheim Titians and wrote of them with gusto in his description of the Picture Galleries of England.
Next should come a letter from Lamb to Mrs. Thomas Clarkson, dated September 18, 1810, not available for this edition; relating to the illness of Mary Lamb and stating that she is “quite restored and will be with me in little more than a week.”]
DR W.—I forwarded the Letter which you sent to me, without opening it, to your Sister at Binfield. She has returned it to me, and begs me to tell you that she intends returning from B. on Monday or Tuesday next, when Priscilla leaves it, and that it was her earnest wish to spend another week with us in London, but she awaits another Letter from home to determine her. I can only say that she appeared so much pleased with London, and that she is so little likely to see it again for a long time, that if you can spare her, it will be almost a pity not. But doubtless she will have heard again from you, before I can get a reply to this Letter & what she next hears she says will be decisive. If wanted, she will set out immediately from London. Mary has been very ill which you have heard I suppose from the Montagues. She is very weak and low spirited now. I was much pleased with your continuation of the Essay on Epitaphs. It is the only sensible thing which has been written on that subject & it goes to the Bottom. In particular I was pleased with your Translation of that Turgid Epitaph into the plain feeling under it. It is perfectly a Test. But what is the reason we have so few good Epitaphs after all?
A very striking instance of your position might be found in
the Church yard of Ditton upon Thames, if you know such a place. Ditton upon
Thames has been blessed by the residence of a Poet, who for Love or Money, I do
not well know which, has dignified every grave stone for the last few years
with bran new verses, all different, and all ingenious, with the Author’s
name at the Bottom of each. The sweet Swan of Thames has artfully diversified
his strains & his rhymes, that the same thought never occurs twice. More
justly perhaps, as no thought ever occurs at all, there was a
| 418 | LETTERS OF C. AND M. LAMB | Oct. |
To do justice though, it must be owned that even the excellent Feeling which dictated this Dirge when new, must have suffered something in passing thro’ so many thousand applications, many of them no doubt quite misplaced, as I have seen in Islington Churchy’d (I think) an Epitaph to an Infant who died Ætatis 4 months, with this seasonable inscription appended, Honor thy Fathr. and Mothr. that thy days may be long in the Land &c.—Sincerely wishing your children better [words cut out with signature].
[Binfield, near Windsor, was the home of Dorothy Wordsworth’s uncle, Dr. Cookson, Canon of Windsor.
Priscilla, née Lloyd, a sister of Charles Lloyd, had married Christopher Wordsworth, afterwards Master of Trinity, in 1804.
Wordsworth’s “Essay on Epitaphs” was printed in part in The Friend, February 22, 1810. For the remainder see Wordsworth’s Works. Part II. began with a reference to Rosamund Gray. I quote the passage containing the turgid example.
Let us return to an instance of common life. I quote it with reluctance, not so much for its absurdity as that the expression in one place will strike at first sight as little less than impious; and it is indeed, though unintentionally so, most irreverent. But I know no other example that will so forcibly illustrate the important truth I wish to establish. The following epitaph is to be found in a church-yard in Westmoreland; which the present Writer has reason to think of with interest as it contains the remains of some of his ancestors and kindred. The date is 1673.
“Under this Stone, Reader, inter’d doth lye, Beauty and Virtue’s true epitomy. At her appearance the noone-son Blush’d and shrunk in ’cause quite outdon. In her concentered did all graces dwell: God pluck’d my rose that He might take a smel. I’ll say no more: but weeping wish I may Soone with thy dear chaste ashes com to lay. Sic efflevit Maritus.” |
| 1810 | THE BAD PEOPLE’S GRAVES | 419 |
Can anything go beyond this in extravagance? yet, if the fundamental thoughts be translated into a natural style, they will be found reasonable and affecting “The woman who lies here interred, was in my eyes a perfect image of beauty and virtue; she was to me a brighter object than the sun in heaven: God took her, who was my delight, from this earth to bring her nearer to Himself. Nothing further is worthy to be said than that weeping I wish soon to lie by thy dear chaste ashes. Thus did the husband pour out his tears.”
Wordsworth wrote an epitaph on Lamb, but it was too long to be used. A few lines are now on the tablet in Edmonton Church.
The text of “Afflictions Sore” will be found on page 63. Lamb had begun his criticisms of churchyard epitaphs very early: Talfourd tells that, when quite a little boy, after reading a number of flattering inscriptions, he asked Mary Lamb where all the bad people were buried.]
MY dear friend—My brother’s letter, which I did not see, I am sure has distressed you sadly. I was then so ill as to alarm him exceedingly, and he thought me quite incapable of any kind of business. It is a great mortification to me to be such an useless creature, and I feel myself greatly indebted to you for the very kind manner in which you take this ungracious matter: but I will say no more on this unpleasant subject. I am at present under the care of Dr. Tuthill. I think I have derived great benefit from his medicines. He has also made a water drinker of me, which, contrary to my expectations, seems to agree with me very well.
I very much regret that you were so untimely snatched away; the lively recollection you seem to retain of London scenes will I hope induce you to return, in happier times, for I must still hope for better days.
We have had many pleasant hours with Coleridge,—if I had not known how ill he is I should have had no idea of it, for he has been very chearful. But yet I have no good news to send you of him, for two days ago, when I saw him last, he had not begun his course of medicine & regimen under Carlisle. I have had a very chearful letter from Mrs. Clarkson. She complained a little of your friend Tom, but she says she means to devote the winter to the task of new molding him, I am afraid she will find it no easy task.
| 420 | LETTERS OF C. AND M. LAMB | Nov. |
Mrs. Montague was very sorry to find you gone. I have not seen much of her, for I have kept very much at home since her return. I mean to stay at home and keep early hours all this winter.
I have a new maid coming this evening. Betty, that you left here, went from me last week, and I took a girl lately from the country, who was fetched away in a few days by her sister, who took it into her head that the Temple was an improper place for a girl to live in. I wish the one that is coming may suit me. She is seven & twenty, with a very plain person, therefore I may hope she will be in little danger here.
Henry Robinson, and many other friends that you made here, enquire continually after you. The Spanish lady is gone, and now poor Robinson is left quite forlorn.
The streets remind me so much of you that I wish for you every showy shop I pass by. I hope we had many pleasant fireside hours together, but I almost fear the stupid dispirited state I was in made me seem a very flat companion; but I know I listened with great pleasure to many interesting conversations. I thank you for what you have done for Phillips, his fate will be decided in about a week. He has lately breakfasted with Sir Joseph Banks, who received him with great civility but made him no promise of support. Sir Joseph told him a new candidate had started up who it was expected would be favoured by the council. I am afraid Phillips stands a very poor chance.
I am doing nothing, I wish I was, for if I were once more busily employed at work, I should be more satisfied with myself. I should not feel so helpless, & so useless.
I hope you will write soon, your letters give me great pleasure; you have made me so well acquainted with all your household, that I must hope for frequent accounts how you are all going on. Remember us affectionately to your brother & sister. I hope the little Katherine continues mending. God bless you all & every one.
Mary has left a little space for me to
fill up with nonsense, as the Geographers used to cram monsters in the voids of
their maps & call it Terra Incognita. She has told you how she has taken to
water, like a hungry otter. I too limp after her in lame imita-
| 1810 | COLERIDGE AND WORDSWORTH | 421 |
[After the preceding letter Mary Lamb had been taken ill—but not, I think, mentally—and Dorothy Wordsworth’s visit was put off.
Coleridge, The Friend having ceased, had come to London with the Montagus on October 26 to stay with them indefinitely at 55 Frith Street, Soho. But a few days after his arrival Montagu had inadvisedly repeated what he unjustifiably called a warning phrase of Wordsworth’s concerning Coleridge’s difficult habits as a guest—the word “nuisance” being mentioned—and this had so plunged Coleridge in grief that he left Soho for Hammersmith, where his friends the Morgans were living. Montagu’s indiscretion led to a quarrel between Coleridge and Wordsworth which was long of healing. This is no place in which to tell the story, which has small part in Lamb’s life; but it led to one of the few letters from Coleridge to Lamb that have been preserved (see Mr. E. H. Coleridge’s edition of Coleridge’s Letters, page 586).
Carlisle was Sir Anthony Carlisle (1768-1840), the surgeon and a friend of Lamb.
| 422 | LETTERS OF C. AND M. LAMB | Nov. |
“The Spanish lady”—Madam Lavaggi. See Robinson’s Diary, 1869, Vol. I., page 303.
“Phillips.” This would be Ned Phillips, I presume, not the Colonel. I have not discovered for what post he was trying.
“The little Katherine.” Catherine Wordsworth, born September 6, 1808, lived only until June 4, 1812.
“I have been aquavorous.” Writing to Dorothy Wordsworth on December 23 Crabb Robinson says that Lamb has abstained from alcohol and tobacco since Lord Mayor’s Day (November 9).
“Bacchus ever sleek and young.” After Dryden, “Alexander’s Feast,” III., 2:—
Bacchus ever fair and ever young. |
“William Henshaw.” I know nothing more of this unfortunate man.]
MY dear Friend, Miss Monkhouse left town yesterday, but I think I am able to answer all your enquiries. I saw her on Sunday evening at Mrs. Montagu’s. She looked very well & said her health was greatly improved. She promised to call on me before she left town but the weather having been very bad I suppose has prevented her. She received the letter which came through my brother’s hands and I have learned from Mrs. Montagu that all your commissions are executed. It was Carlisle that she consulted, and she is to continue taking his prescriptions in the country. Mr. Monkhouse & Mr. Addison drank tea with us one evening last week. Miss Monkhouse is a very pleasing girl, she reminds me, a little, of Miss Hutchinson. I have not seen Henry Robinson for some days past, but I remember he told me he had received a letter from you, and he talked of Spanish papers which he should send to Mr. Southey. I wonder he does not write, for I have always understood him to be a very regular correspondent, and he seemed very proud of your letter. I am tolerably well, but I still affect the invalid—take medicines, and keep at home as much as I possibly can. Water-drinking, though I confess it to be a flat thing, is become very easy to me. Charles perseveres in it most manfully. Coleridge is just in the same state as when I wrote last—I have not seen him since Sunday, he was then at Mr. Morgan’s but talked of taking a lodging.
| 1810 | DOMESTIC DIFFICULTY | 423 |
Phillips feels a certainty that he shall lose his election, for the new candidate is himself a Fellow of the Royal Society, and [it] is thought Sir Joseph Banks will favour him. It will now be soon decided.
My new maid is now sick in bed. Am I not unlucky? She would have suited me very well if she had been healthy, but I must send her away if she is not better tomorrow.
Charles promised to add a few lines, I will therefore leave him plenty of room, for he may perhaps think of something to entertain you. I am sure I cannot.
I hope you will not return to Grasmere till all fear of the Scarlet Fever is over, I rejoice to hear so good an account of the children and hope you will write often. When I write next 1 will endeavour to get a frank. This I cannot do but when the parliament is sitting, and as you seemed anxious about Miss Monkhouse I would not defer sending this, though otherwise it is not worth paying one penny for.
God bless you all.
We are in a pickle. Mary from her affectation of physiognomy has hired a stupid big country wench who looked honest, as she thought, and has been doing her work some days but without eating—eats no butter nor meat, but prefers cheese with her tea for breakfast—and now it comes out that she was ill when she came with lifting her mother about (who is now with God) when she was dying, and with riding up from Norfolk 4 days and nights in the waggon. She got advice yesterday and took something which has made her bring up a quart of blood, and she now lies, a dead weight upon our humanity, in her bed, incapable of getting up, refusing to go into an hospital, having no body in town but a poor asthmatic dying Uncle, whose son lately married a drab who tills his house, and there is no where she can go, and she seems to have made up her mind to take her flight to heaven from our bed.—O God! O God!—for the little wheelbarrow which trundled the Hunchback from door to door to try the various charities of different professions of Mankind!
Here’s her Uncle just crawled up, he is far liker
Death than He. O the Parish, the Parish, the hospital, the infirmary, the
charnel house, these are places meet for such guests, not our quiet mansion
| 424 | LETTERS OF C. AND M. LAMB | Nov. |
[Miss Monkhouse was the daughter of the Wordsworths’ and Lambs’ friend, Thomas Monkhouse.
“Mr. Addison.” I have not traced this gentleman.
Miss Hutchinson was Sarah Hutchinson, sister of Mrs. Wordsworth.
“The Hunchback.” In the Arabian Nights.
“Howard’s House.” This would be Cold-Bath Fields Prison, erected in 1794 upon some humane suggestions of Howard the Philanthropist.
“The Paralytic.” See Mark ii.]
DEAR Hazlitt—I sent you on
Saturday a Cobbett,
containing your reply to
the Edinburgh Review, which I
thought you would be glad to receive as an example of attention on the part of
Mr. Cobbett to insert it so
speedily. Did you get it? We have received your pig, and return you thanks; it
will be dressed in due form, with appropriate sauce, this day. Mary has been very ill indeed since you saw
her; that is, as ill as she can be to remain at home. But she is a good deal
better now, owing to a very careful regimen. She drinks nothing but water, and
never goes out; she does not even go to the Captain’s. Her indisposition has been ever since that
night you left town; the night Miss
W[ordsworth] came. Her coming, and that d——d Mrs. Godwin coming and staying so late that
night, so overset her that she lay broad awake all that night, and it was by a
miracle that she escaped a very bad illness, which I thoroughly expected. I
have made up my mind that she shall never have any one in the house again with
her, and that no one shall sleep with her, not even for a night; for it is a
very serious
| 1810 | HAZLITT AND COBBETT | 425 |
Poor Phillips had the cup dash’d out of his lips as it were. He had every prospect of the situation, when about ten days since one of the council of the R. Society started for the place himself, being a rich merchant who lately failed, and he will certainly be elected on Friday next. P. is very sore and miserable about it.
Coleridge is in town, or at least at Hammersmith. He is writing or going to write in the Courier against Cobbett, and in favour of paper money.
No news. Remember me kindly to Sarah. I write from the office.
Yours ever,
I just open’d it to say the pig, upon proof, hath turned out as good as I predicted. My fauces yet retain the sweet porcine odour. I find you have received the Cobbett. I think your paper complete.
Mrs. Reynolds, who is a sage woman, approves of the pig.
[“A Cobbett.” This was Cobbett’s Political Register for November 24, 1810, containing Hazlitt’s letter upon “Mr. Malthus and the Edinburgh Reviewers,” signed “The Author of a Reply to the Essay on Population.” Hazlitt’s reply had been criticised in the Edinburgh for August, probably only just published.
The postscript contains Lamb’s first passage in praise of roast pig.
I place here the following undated letter to Godwin from Mr. Kegan Paul’s William Godwin: His Friends and Contemporaries, as it seems to be connected with the decision concerning visitors expressed in the letter to Hazlitt:—]
DEAR Godwin,—I have found it for several reasons indispensable to my comfort, and to my sister’s, to have no visitors in the forenoon. If I cannot accomplish this I am determined to leave town.
| 426 | LETTERS OF C. AND M. LAMB | 1810 |
I am extremely sorry to do anything in the slightest degree that may seem offensive to you or to Mrs. Godwin, but when a general rule is fixed on, you know how odious in a case of this sort it is to make exceptions; I assure you I have given up more than one friendship in stickling for this point. It would be unfair to those from whom 1 have parted with regret to make exceptions, which I would not do for them. Let me request you not to be offended, and to request Mrs. G. not to be offended, if I beg both your compliances with this wish. Your friendship is as dear to me as that of any person on earth, and if it were not for the necessity of keeping tranquillity at home, I would not seem so unreasonable.
If you were to see the agitation that my sister is in, between the fear of offending you and Mrs. G. and the difficulty of maintaining a system which she feels we must do to live without wretchedness, you would excuse this seeming strange request, which I send you with a trembling anxiety as to its reception with you, whom I would never offend. I rely on your goodness.
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