Works of Charles and Mary Lamb. VI-VII. Letters
Charles Lamb to Thomas Manning, 5 December 1806
Tuthill is at Crabtree’s who has married
Tuthill’s sister.
MANNING, your letter dated Hottentots, August the
what-was-it? came to hand. I can scarce hope that mine will have the same luck.
China—Canton—bless us—how it strains the imagination and makes it ache! I write
under another uncertainty, whether it can go to-morrow by a ship which I have
just learned is going off direct to your part of the world, or whether the
despatches may not be sealed up and this have to wait, for if it is detained
here, it will grow staler in a fortnight than in a five
1806 | HOLCROFT’S “VINDICTIVE MAN” | 365 |
months’ voyage
coming to you. It will be a point of conscience to send you none but bran-new
news (the latest edition), which will but grow the better, like oranges, for a
sea voyage. Oh, that you should be so many hemispheres off—if I speak
incorrectly you can correct me—why, the simplest death or marriage that takes
place here must be important to you as news in the old Bastile. There’s
your friend Tuthill has got away from
France—you remember France? and Tuthill?—ten-to-one but he
writes by this post, if he don’t get my note in time, apprising him of
the vessel sailing. Know then that he has found means to obtain leave from
Bonaparte without making use of any
incredible romantic pretences as some have done, who never meant to fulfil
them, to come home; and I have seen him here and at Holcroft’s.1 An’t you glad
about Tuthill? Now then be sorry for
Holcroft, whose new play, called “The Vindictive Man,”
was damned about a fortnight since. It died in part of its own weakness, and in
part for being choked up with bad actors. The two principal parts were destined
to Mrs. Jordan and Mr. Bannister, but Mrs.
J. has not come to terms with the managers, they have had some
squabble, and Bannister shot some of his fingers off by
the going off of a gun. So Miss Duncan
had her part, and Mr. de Camp1 took his.1 His part, the
principal comic hope of the play, was most unluckily Goldfinch, taken out of the “Road to Ruin,” not only the same
character, but the identical Goldfinch—the
same as Falstaff is in two plays of
Shakspeare. As the devil of ill-luck
would have it, half the audience did not know that H. had
written it, but were displeased at his stealing from the “Road to Ruin;” and those who might have borne a
gentlemanly coxcomb with his “That’s your sort,” “Go
it”—such as Lewis is—did not
relish the intolerable vulgarity and inanity of the idea stript of his manner.
De Camp was hooted, more than hist, hooted and
bellowed off the stage before the second act was finished, so that the
remainder of his part was forced to be, with some violence to the play,
omitted. In addition to this, a whore was another principal character—a most
unfortunate choice in this moral day. The audience were as scandalised as if
you were to introduce such a personage to their private tea-tables. Besides,
her action in the play was gross—wheedling an old man into marriage. But the
mortal blunder of the play was that which, oddly enough,
H. took pride in, and exultingly told me of the night
before it came out, that there were no less than eleven principal characters in
it, and I believe he meant of the men only, for the play-bill exprest as much,
not reckoning one woman and one whore; and true it was, for Mr.
Powell, Mr. Raymond,
Mr. Bartlett, Mr. H. Siddons, Mr. Barrymore, &c. &c.,—to the number
1 [See Appendix II., page 970.] |
366 | LETTERS OF C. AND M. LAMB | Dec. |
of eleven, had all parts equally prominent, and
there was as much of them in quantity and rank as of the hero and heroine—and
most of them gentlemen who seldom appear but as the hero’s friend in a
farce—for a minute or two—and here they all had their ten-minute speeches, and
one of them gave the audience a serious account how he was now a lawyer but had
been a poet, and then a long enumeration of the inconveniences of authorship,
rascally booksellers, reviewers, &c.; which first set the audience
a-gaping; but I have said enough. You will be so sorry, that you will not think
the best of me for my detail; but news is news at Canton. Poor
H. I fear will feel the disappointment very seriously
in a pecuniary light. From what I can learn he has saved nothing. You and I
were hoping one day that he had; but I fear he has nothing but his pictures and
books, and a no very flourishing business, and to be obliged to part with his
long-necked Guido that hangs opposite as
you enter, and the game-piece that hangs in the back drawing-room, and all
those Vandykes, &c.! God should
temper the wind to the shorn connoisseur. I hope I need not say to you, that I
feel for the weather-beaten author and for all his household. I assure you his
fate has soured a good deal the pleasure I should have otherwise taken in my
own little farce being accepted,
and I hope about to be acted—it is in rehearsal actually, and I expect it to
come out next week. It is kept a sort of secret, and the rehearsals have gone
on privately, lest by many folks knowing it, the story should come out, which
would infallibly damn it. You remember I had sent it before you went. Wroughton read it, and was much pleased with
it. I speedily got an answer. I took it to make alterations, and lazily kept it
some months, then took courage and furbished it up in a day or two and took it.
In less than a fortnight I heard the principal part was given to Elliston, who liked it, and only wanted a
prologue, which I have since done and sent; and I had a note the day before
yesterday from the manager, Wroughton (bless his fat
face—he is not a bad actor in some things), to say that I should be summoned to
the rehearsal after the next, which next was to be yesterday. I had no idea it
was so forward. I have had no trouble, attended no reading or rehearsal, made
no interest; what a contrast to the usual parade of authors! But it is peculiar
to modesty to do all things without noise or pomp! I have some suspicion it
will appear in public on Wednesday next, for W. says in
his note, it is so forward that if wanted it may come out next week, and a new
melo-drama is announced for every day till then: and “a new farce is
in rehearsal,” is put up in the bills. Now you’d like to
know the subject. The title is “Mr. H.,”
no more; how simple, how taking! A great H. sprawling over the play-bill and
attracting eyes at 1806 | THE PLOT OF “MR. H.” | 367 |
every comer. The story is a coxcomb appearing at Bath, vastly rich—all the
ladies dying for him—all bursting to know who he is—but he goes by no other
name than Mr. H.—a curiosity like that of
the dames of Strasburg about the man with the great nose. But I won’t
tell you any more about it. Yes, I will; but I can’t give you an idea how
I have done it. I’ll just tell you that after much vehement admiration,
when his true name comes out, “Hogsflesh,” all the women shun him,
avoid him, and not one can be found to change their name for him—that’s
the idea—how flat it is here!—but how whimsical in the farce! and only think
how hard upon me it is that the ship is despatched to-morrow, and my triumph
cannot be ascertained till the Wednesday after—but all China will ring of it by
and by. N.B. (But this is a secret). The Professor has got a tragedy coming out with the young Roscius in it in January next, as we
say—January last it will be with you—and though it is a profound secret now, as
all his affairs are, it cannot be much of one by the time you read this.
However, don’t let it go any further. I understand there are dramatic
exhibitions in China. One would not like to be forestalled. Do you find in all
this stuff I have written anything like those feelings which one should send my
old adventuring friend, that is gone to wander among Tartars and may never come
again? I don’t—but your going away, and all about you, is a threadbare
topic. I have worn it out with thinking—it has come to me when I have been dull
with anything, till my sadness has seemed more to have come from it than to
have introduced it. I want you, you don’t know how much—but if I had you
here in my European garret, we should but talk over such stuff as I have
written—so—. Those “Tales from
Shakespear” are near coming out, and Mary has begun a new work. Mr. Dawe is turned author: he has been in such
a way lately—Dawe the painter, I mean—he sits and stands
about at Holcroft’s and says nothing—then sighs and
leans his head on his hand. I took him to be in love—but it seems he was only
meditating a work,—“The Life
of Morland,”—the young man is not used to composition.
Rickman and Captain Burney are well; they assemble at my
house pretty regularly of a Wednesday—a new institution. Like other great men f
have a public day, cribbage and pipes, with Phillips and noisy Martin.
Good Heaven! what a bit only I’ve got left! How shall
I squeeze all I know into this morsel! Coleridge is come home, and is going to turn lecturer on taste
at the Royal Institution. I shall get £200 from the theatre if “Mr. H.” has a good run, and
I hope £100 for the copyright. Nothing if it fails; and there never was a more
ticklish thing. The whole depends on the manner in which the name is brought
out, which I value myself on, as a chef-d’oeuvre.
368 | LETTERS OF C. AND M. LAMB | Dec. |
How the paper grows less and less! In less
than two minutes I shall cease to talk to you, and you may rave to the Great
Wall of China. N.B. Is there such a wall! Is it as big as Old London Wall by
Bedlam? Have you met with a friend of mine, named Ball, at Canton?—if you are acquainted, remember me kindly to
him.1 May-be, you’ll think I have not said
enough of Tuthill and the Holcrofts. Tuthill is a
noble fellow, as far as I can judge. The Holcrofts bear
their disappointment pretty well, but indeed they are sadly mortified.
Mrs. H. is cast down. It was well,
if it were but on this account, that Tuthill is come home.
N.B. If my little thing don’t succeed, I shall easily survive, having, as
it were, compared to H.’s venture, but a sixteenth
in the lottery. Mary and I are to sit
next the orchestra in the pit, next the tweedledees. She remembers you. You are
more to us than five hundred farces, clappings, &c.
Come back one day.
Samuel Ball (1781 c.-1874)
Educated with Charles Lamb at Christ's Hospital, he was an authority on Chinese Tea
employed by the East India Company. He was a member of the Athenaeum Club.
John Bannister (1760-1836)
English comic actor whose roles included Tony Lumpkin, Sir Fretful Plagiary, and Sir
Anthony Absolute. He was a favorite of Charles Lamb.
William Barrymore (1759-1830)
Originally Blewit; he was an English actor at Drury Lane and the Haymarket; he was the
father of the pantomime actor William Barrymore (d. 1845).
George Bartley (1782 c.-1858)
English actor engaged by Sheridan at Drury Lane in 1802; he was stage-manager at
Covent-Garden in 1829.
James Burney (1750-1821)
The brother of Fanny Burney; he sailed with Captain Cook and wrote about his voyages, and
in later life was a friend of Charles Lamb and other literary people.
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.
Robert Crabtree (1772-1840)
Attorney of Halesworth, Suffolk; he married Elizabeth Tuthill (d. 1840).
Maria Rebecca Davison [née Duncan] (1780 c.-1858)
English comic actress, who after a provincial career made her debut at Drury Lane in
1804; in 1812 she was unhappily married to James Davison (d. 1858).
George Dawe (1781-1829)
Educated at the Royal Academy Schools, he was an engraver and portrait-painter elected to
the Royal Academy in 1814.
Vincent De Camp (1779-1839)
English actor who performed in America; he was the uncle of Fanny Kemble.
William Godwin (1756-1836)
English novelist and political philosopher; author of
An Inquiry
concerning the Principles of Political Justice (1793) and
Caleb
Williams (1794); in 1797 he married Mary Wollstonecraft.
Thomas Holcroft (1745-1809)
English playwright and novelist; a friend of William Godwin indicted for treason in 1794;
author of
The Road to Ruin (1792). His
Memoirs (1816) were completed by William Hazlitt.
Dorothy Jordan [née Phillips] (1761-1816)
Irish actress; after a career in Ireland and the provinces she made her London debut in
1785; at one time she was a mistress of the Duke of Clarence.
Louisa Kenney [née Mercier] (1780 c.-1853)
The daughter of the French writer Louis-Sébastien Mercier and former (fourth) wife of
Thomas Holcroft; in 1812 she married the Irish playwright James Kenney.
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.
Emperor Napoleon I (1769-1821)
Military leader, First Consul (1799), and Emperor of the French (1804), after his
abdication he was exiled to Elba (1814); after his defeat at Waterloo he was exiled to St.
Helena (1815).
Edward Phillips (1771-1844)
He was clerk to John Rickman whom he succeeded as secretary to the speaker of the House
of Commons (1814-33); he was also a friend of Charles Lamb.
James Grant Raymond (1771-1817)
Originally Grant; actor and manager of Drury Lane Theater, and biographer of the Irish
poet Thomas Dermody.
Guido Reni (1575-1642)
Of Bologna; Italian baroque painter.
John Rickman (1771-1840)
Educated at Magdalen Hall and Lincoln College, Oxford, he was statistician and clerk to
the House of Commons and an early friend of Charles Lamb and Robert Southey.
Henry Siddons (1774-1815)
English actor and playwright, the son of the actress Sarah Siddons; with the assistance
of Walter Scott he obtained patent of the Edinburgh Theatre Royal in 1809.
Sir George Leman Tuthill (1772-1835)
Educated at Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge, he was detained in France before
completing his medical education; he was physician to Westminster, Bridewell and Bethlem
hospitals. He was a friend of Thomas Manning and Charles Lamb; Mary Lamb was among his
patients.
Sir Anthony Van Dyke (1599-1641)
Flemish painter who studied under Rubens and spent the last decade of his life as a court
painter to Charles I.
Richard Wroughton (1748-1822)
English actor and theater manager at Covent Garden and Drury Lane.