Works of Charles and Mary Lamb. VI-VII. Letters
Charles Lamb to Henry Crabb Robinson, 20 January 1827
Colebrooke Row, Islington,
Saturday, 20th Jan., 1827.
DEAR Robinson,—I called upon you this morning, and found that you were
gone to visit a dying friend. I had been upon a like errand. Poor Norris has been lying dying for now almost a
week, such is the penalty we pay for having enjoyed a strong constitution!
Whether he knew me or not, I know not, or whether he saw me through his poor
glazed eyes; but the group I saw about him I shall not forget. Upon the bed, or
about it, were assembled his wife and two daughters, and poor deaf
Richard, his son, looking doubly stupified. There they
were, and seemed to have been sitting all the week. I could only reach out a
hand to Mrs. Norris. Speak-![]()
| 1827 | “NONE TO CALL ME CHARLEY NOW” | 721 |
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ing was
impossible in that mute chamber. By this time I hope it is all over with him.
In him I have a loss the world cannot make up. He was my friend and my
father’s friend all the life I can remember. I seem to have made foolish
friendships ever since. Those are friendships which outlive a second
generation. Old as I am waxing, in his eyes I was still the child he first knew
me. To the last he called me Charley. I have none to call
me Charley now. He was the last link that bound me to the
Temple. You are but of yesterday. In him seem to have died the old plainness of
manners and singleness of heart. Letters he knew nothing of, nor did his
reading extend beyond the pages of the “Gentleman’s Magazine.” Yet there was
a pride of literature about him from being amongst books (he was librarian),
and from some scraps of doubtful Latin which he had picked up in his office of
entering students, that gave him very diverting airs of pedantry. Can I forget
the erudite look with which, when he had been in vain trying to make out a
blackletter text of Chaucer in the
Temple Library, he laid it down and told me that—“in those old books,
Charley, there is sometimes a deal of very
indifferent spelling;” and seemed to console himself in the
reflection! His jokes, for he had his jokes, are now ended, but they were old
trusty perennials, staples that pleased after decies
repetita, and were always as good as new. One song he
had, which was reserved for the night of Christmas-day, which we always spent
in the Temple. It was an old thing, and spoke of the flat bottoms of our foes
and the possibility of their coming over in darkness, and alluded to threats of
an invasion many years blown over; and when he came to the part “We’ll still make ’em run, and we’ll still
make ’em sweat, In spite of the devil and Brussels Gazette!” |
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his eyes would sparkle as with the freshness of an impending event. And
what is the “Brussels Gazette” now? I cry
while I enumerate these trifles. “How shall we tell them in a
stranger’s ear?” His poor good girls will now have to
receive their afflicted mother in an inaccessible hovel in an obscure village
in Herts, where they have been long struggling to make a school without effect;
and poor deaf Richard—and the more helpless for being
so—is thrown on the wide world.
My first motive in writing, and, indeed, in calling on you,
was to ask if you were enough acquainted with any of the Benchers, to lay a
plain statement before them of the circumstances of the family. I almost fear
not, for you are of another hall. But if you can oblige me and my poor friend,
who is now insensible to any favours, pray exert yourself. You cannot say too
much good of poor Norris and his poor
wife.
Yours ever,
Charles Lamb.
Geoffrey Chaucer (1340 c.-1400)
English Poet, the author of
The Canterbury Tales (1390 c.).
Elizabeth Norris (d. 1843)
Formerly Faint, a widow; she was remarried to Randal Norris, librarian of the Inner
Temple and friend of Charles and Mary Lamb.
Randal Norris (1751-1827)
He was educated at the Inner Temple, where he was appointed Librarian in 1784; he was a
friend of Charles Lamb and his father.
Henry Crabb Robinson (1775-1867)
Attorney, diarist, and journalist for
The Times; he was a founder
of the Athenaeum Club.
The Gentleman's Magazine. (1731-1905). A monthly literary miscellany founded by Edward Cave; edited by John Nichols 1778-1826,
and John Bowyer Nichols 1826-1833.
