| 590 | LETTERS OF C. AND M. LAMB | Jan. |
DEAR Payne—Your little books are most acceptable. ’Tis a delicate
edition. They are gone to the binder’s. When they come home I shall have
two—the “Camp” and
“Patrick’s
Day”—to read for the first time. I may say three, for I never
read the “School for
Scandal.” “Seen it I have, and
in its happier days.” With the books Harwood left a truncheon or mathematical instrument, of which
we have not yet ascertained the use. It is like a telescope, but unglazed. Or a
ruler, but not smooth enough. It opens like a fan, and discovers a frame such
as they weave lace upon at Lyons and Chambery. Possibly it is from those parts.
I do not value the present the less, for not being quite able to detect its
purport. When I can find any one coming your way I have a volume for you, my
Elias collected. Tell
Poole, his Cockney in the Lon. Mag. tickled me exceedingly.
Harwood is to be with us this evening with Fanny, who comes to introduce a literary lady,
who wants to see me,—and whose portentous name is Plura, in English “many things.” Now, of
all God’s creatures, I detest letters-affecting, authors-hunting ladies.
But Fanny “will have it so.” So Miss Many
Things and I are to have a conference, of which you shall have the result. I
dare say she does not play at whist. Treasurer
Robertson, whose coffers are absolutely swelling with pantomimic
receipts, called on me yesterday to say he is going to write to you, but if I
were also, I might as well say that your last bill is at the Banker’s,
and will be honored on the instant receipt of the third Piece, which you have
stipulated for. If you have any such in readiness, strike while the iron is
hot, before the Clown cools. Tell Mrs.
Kenney, that the Miss F. H. (or H. F.)
Kelly, who has begun so splendidly in Juliet, is the identical little Fanny
Kelly who used to play on their green before their great
Lying-Inn Lodgings at Bayswater. Her career has stopt short by the injudicious
bringing her out in a vile new Tragedy, and for a third character in a stupid
old one,—the Earl of Essex.
This is Macready’s doing, who
taught her. Her recitation, &c. (not her voice or
person), is masculine. It is so clever, it seemed a male Debut. But
cleverness is the bane of Female Tragedy especially. Passions uttered
logically, &c. It is bad enough in men-actors. Could you do nothing for
little Clara Fisher? Are there no French
Pieces with a Child in them? By Pieces I mean here dramas, to
| 1823 | SHAKESPEARE SUPERSEDED | 591 |
[Payne seems to have sent Lamb an edition of Sheridan. “The Camp” and “St. Patrick’s Day” are among his less known plays.
“Seen it I have, and in its happier days.” After Pope’s line (29) in the “Epilogue to the Satires I.”:—
Seen him I have, but in his happier hour. |
Poole was writing articles on France in the London Magazine. Lamb refers to “A Cockney’s Rural Sports” in the number for December, 1822.
Fanny would be Fanny Holcroft. Plura I do not identify.
“Fanny ‘will have it so.’” Possibly in recollection of “pretty Fanny’s way” in Parnell’s “Elegy to an Old Beauty.”
The new tragedy in which Miss Kelly had to play was probably “The Huguenot,” produced December 11, 1822. “The Earl of Essex” was revived December 30, 1822. Macready played in both.
“Cleverness is the bane.” See Lamb’s little article on “The New Acting” in Vol. I., page 151.
Clara Fisher. See Letter 292.
The Blue Girl seems to refer to the lady mentioned at the end of Letter 275.
Angelica is in Congreve’s “Love for Love”; Millamant in his “Way of the World.”]
DEAR Wordsworth, I beg your acceptance of Elia, detached from any of its old companions which might have been less agreeable to you. I hope your eyes are better, but if you must spare them, there is nothing in my pages which a Lady may not read aloud without indecorum, which is more than can be said of Shakspeare.
| 592 | LETTERS OF C. AND M. LAMB | Jan. |
What a nut this last sentence would be for Blackwood! You will find I availed myself of your suggestion, in curtailing the dissertation on Malvolio.
I have been on the Continent since I saw you.
I have eaten frogs.
I saw Monkhouse tother day, and Mrs. M. being too poorly to admit of company, the annual goosepye was sent to Russell Street, and with its capacity has fed “A hundred head” (not of Aristotle’s) but “of Elia’s friends.”
Mrs. Monkhouse is sadly confined, but chearful.—
This packet is going off, and I have neither time, place nor solitude for a longer Letter.’
Will you do me the favor to forward the other volume to Southey?
Mary is perfectly well, and joins me in kindest remembces to you all.
[“What a nut . . . for Blackwood.” To help on Maga’s great cause against Cockney arrogance.
“The dissertation on Malvolio.” In Elia the essays on the Old Actors were much changed and rearranged (see Appendix to Vol. II. in this edition).
“A hundred head.” See the Dunciad, IV., 192:—
A hundred head of Aristotle’s friends.] |
THE pig was above my feeble praise. It was a dear pigmy. There was some contention as to who should have the ears, but in spite of his obstinacy (deaf as these little creatures are to advice) I contrived to get at one of them.
It came in boots too, which I took as a favor. Generally those petty toes, pretty toes! are missing. But I suppose he wore them, to look taller.
He must have been the least of his race. His little foots would have gone into the silver slipper. I take him to have been Chinese, and a female.—
If Evelyn could have
seen him, he would never have farrowed two
| 1823 | LITTLE PIGS AGAIN | 593 |
John Collier Junr has sent me a Poem which (without the smallest bias from the aforesaid present, believe me) I pronounce sterling.
I set about Evelyn, and finished the first volume in the course of a natural day. To-day I attack the second.—Parts are very interesting.—
I left a blank at top of my letter, not being determined which to address it to, so Farmer and Farmer’s wife will please to divide our thanks. May your granaries be full, and your rats empty, and your chickens plump, and your envious neighbors lean, and your labourers busy, and you as idle and as happy as the day is long!
Vive L’ Agriculture! |
Frank Field’s marriage of course you have seen in the papers, and that his brother Barron is expected home.
How do you make your pigs so little? They are vastly engaging at that age. I was so myself. Now I am a disagreeable old hog— A middle-aged-gentleman-and-a-half. |
Believe me, while my faculties last, a proper appreciator of your many kindnesses in this way; and that the last lingering relish of past flavors upon my dying memory will be the smack of that little Ear. It was the left ear, which is lucky. Many happy returns (not of the Pig) but of the New Year to both.—
Mary for her share of the Pig and the memoirs desires to send the same—
[This letter, now printed from the original in the possession of Mr. Adam of Buffalo, is usually supposed to have been addressed by Lamb to Mr. and Mrs. Bruton of Mackery End. The address is, however, Mrs. Collier, Smallfield Place, East Grinstead, Sussex (see also Letters 266 and 336, pages 561 and 655).
| 594 | LETTERS OF C. AND M. LAMB | Jan. |
“If Evelyn could have seen him.” John Evelyn’s Diary had recently been published, in 1818 and 1819, in two large quarto volumes.]
“THROW yourself on the world without any rational plan of support, beyond what the chance employ of Booksellers would afford you”!!!
Throw yourself rather, my dear Sir, from the steep Tarpeian
rock, slap-dash headlong upon iron spikes. If you had but five consolatory
minutes between the desk and the bed, make much of them, and live a century in
them, rather than turn slave to the Booksellers. They are Turks and Tartars,
when they have poor Authors at their beck. Hitherto you have been at
arm’s length from them. Come not within their grasp. I have known many
authors for bread, some repining, others envying the blessed security of a
Counting House, all agreeing they had rather have been Taylors, Weavers, what
not? rather than the things they were. I have known some starved, some to go
mad, one dear friend literally dying in a workhouse. You know not what a
rapacious, dishonest set those booksellers are. Ask even Southey, who (a single case almost) has made a
fortune by book drudgery, what he has found them. O you know not, may you never
know! the miseries of subsisting by authorship. ’Tis a pretty appendage
to a situation like yours or mine, but a slavery worse than all slavery to be a
bookseller’s dependent, to drudge your brains for pots of ale and breasts
of mutton, to change your free thoughts and voluntary numbers for ungracious
Task-Work. Those fellows hate us. The reason I
take to be, that, contrary to other trades, in which the Master gets all the
credit (a Jeweller or Silversmith for instance), and the Journeyman, who really
does the fine work, is in the background, in our work
the world gives all the credit to Us, whom they consider
as their Journeymen, and therefore do they hate us, and
cheat us, and oppress us, and would wring the blood of us out, to put another
sixpence in their mechanic pouches. I contend, that a Bookseller has a relative honesty towards Authors, not like his honesty
to the rest of the world. B[aldwin], who
first engag’d me as Elia, has not paid me up yet
(nor any of us without repeated mortifying applials), yet how the Knave fawned
| 1823 | “WELCOME, DEAD TIMBER” | 595 |
Yours truly,
Please to direct to me at India Ho. in future. [? I am] not always at Russell St.
[Barton had long been meditating the advisability of giving up his place in the bank at Woodbridge and depending upon his pen. Lamb’s letter of dissuasion is not the only one which he received. Byron had written to him in 1812: “You deserve success; but we knew, before Addison wrote his Cato, that desert does not always command it. But suppose it attained—
‘You know what ills the author’s life assail— Toil, envy, want, the patron, and the jail.’ |
Southey made no “fortune” by his pen. He almost always had to forestall his new works.]
| 596 | LETTERS OF C. AND M. LAMB | Feb. |
DEAR Payne—I have no mornings (my day begins at 5 p.m.) to transact business in, or talents for it, so I employ Mary, who has seen Robertson, who says that the Piece which is to be Operafied was sent to you six weeks since by a Mr. Hunter, whose journey has been delayed, but he supposes you have it by this time. On receiving it back properly done, the rest of your dues will be forthcoming. You have received £30 from Harwood, I hope? Bishop was at the theatre when Mary called, and he has put your other piece into C. Kemble’s hands (the piece you talk of offering Elliston) and C. K. sent down word that he had not yet had time to read it. So stand your affairs at present. Glossop has got the Murderer. Will you address him on the subject, or shall I—that is, Mary? She says you must write more showable letters about these matters, for, with all our trouble of crossing out this word, and giving a cleaner turn to th’ other, and folding down at this part, and squeezing an obnoxious epithet into a corner, she can hardly communicate their contents without offence. What, man, put less gall in your ink, or write me a biting tragedy!
MY dear Miss Lamb—I have enclosed for you Mr. Payne’s piece called Grandpapa, which I regret to say is not thought to be of the nature that will suit this theatre; but as there appears to be much merit in it, Mr. Kemble strongly recommends that you should send it to the English Opera House, for which it seems to be excellently adapted. As you have already been kind enough to be our medium of communication with Mr. Payne, I have imposed this trouble upon you; but if you do not like to act for Mr. Payne in the business, and have no means of disposing of the piece, I will forward it to Paris or elsewhere as you thins he may prefer.
Very truly yours,
| 1823 | HOWARD PAYNE’S “GRANDPAPA” | 597 |
Dear P—— We have just received the above, and want your instructions. It strikes me as a very merry little piece, that should be played by very young actors. It strikes me that Miss Clara Fisher would play the boy exactly. She is just such a forward chit. No young man would do it without its appearing absurd, but in a girl’s hands it would have just all the reality that a short dream of an act requires. Then for the sister, if Miss Stevenson that was, were Miss Stevenson and younger, they two would carry it off. I do not know who they have got in that young line, besides Miss C. F., at Drury, nor how you would like Elliston to have it—has he not had it? I am thick with Arnold, but I have always heard that the very slender profits of the English Opera House do not admit of his giving above a trifle, or next to none, for a piece of this kind. Write me what I should do, what you would ask, &c. The music (printed) is returned with the piece, and the French original. Tell Mr. Grattan I thank him for his book, which as far as I have read it is a very companionable one. I have but just received it. It came the same hour with your packet from Cov. Gar., i.e. yester-night late, to my summer residence, where, tell Kenney, the cow is quiet. Love to all at Versailles. Write quickly.
I have no acquaintance with Kemble at all, having only met him once or twice; but any information, &c., I can get from R., who is a good fellow, you may command. I am sorry the rogues are so dilitory, but I distinctly believe they mean to fulfill their engagement. I am sorry you are not here to see to these things. I am a poor man of business, but command me to the short extent of my tether. My sister’s kind remembrance ever.
[The “Grandpapa” was eventually produced at Drury Lane, May 25, 1825, and played thrice. Miss Stevenson was an actress praised by Lamb in The Examiner (see Vol. I. of this edition, pages 187 and 189).
Samuel James Arnold was manager of the Lyceum, then known as the English Opera House; he was the brother of Mrs. William Ayrton, Lamb’s friend.
Mr. Grattan was Thomas Colley Grattan (1792-1864), who was then living in Paris. His book would be Highways and Byways, first series, 1823.
There is one other note to Payne in the Century Magazine, unimportant and undated, suggesting a walk one Sunday.]
| 598 | LETTERS OF C. AND M. LAMB | Feb. |
MY dear Sir—I have read quite through the ponderous
folio of G. F. I think
Sewell has been judicious in
omitting certain parts, as for instance where G.
F. has revealed to him the natures of
all the creatures in their names, as Adam had. He luckily turns aside from that
compendious study of natural history, which might have superseded Buffon, to his proper spiritual pursuits, only
just hinting what a philosopher he might have been. The ominous passage is near
the beginning of the Book. It is clear he means a physical knowledge, without
trope or figure. Also, pretences to miraculous healing and the like are more
frequent than I should have suspected from the epitome in
Sewell. He is nevertheless a great spiritual man, and
I feel very much obliged by your procuring me the Loan of it. How I like the
Quaker phrases—though I think they were hardly completed till Woolman. A pretty little manual of Quaker
language (with an endeavour to explain them) might be gathered out of his Book.
Could not you do it? I have read through G. F. without
finding any explanation of the term first volume in the
title page. It takes in all, both his life and his death. Are there more Last
words of him? Pray, how may I venture to return it to Mr.
Shewell at Ipswich? I fear to send such a Treasure by a Stage
Coach. Not that I am afraid of the Coachman or the Guard reading it. But it might be lost. Can you put me in a way of sending
it in safety? The kind hearted owner trusted it to me for six months. I think I
was about as many days in getting through it, and I do not think that I skipt a
word of it. I have quoted G. F. in my Quaker’s meeting, as having said he
was “lifted up in spirit” (which I felt at the time to be not a
Quaker phrase), “and the Judge and Jury were as dead men under his
feet.” I find no such words in his Journal, and I did not get them from
Sewell, and the latter sentence I am sure I did not
mean to invent. I must have put some other Quaker’s words into his mouth.
Is it a fatality in me, that every thing I touch turns into a Lye? I once
quoted two Lines from a translation of Dante, which Hazlitt very
greatly admired, and quoted in a Book as proof of the stupendous power of that
poet, but no such lines are to be found in the translation, which has been
searched for the purpose. I must have dreamed them, for I am quite certain I
did not forge them knowingly. What a misfortune to have a Lying
| 1823 | SARA COLERIDGE | 599 |
[In the 1694 folio of George Fox’s Journal the revelation of the names of creatures occurs twice, once under Notts in 1647 and again under Mansfield in 1648.
“Sewell.” The History of the Rise, Increase and Progress of the Christian People called Quakers, 1722. By William Sewell (1654-1720).
“In my Quaker’s meeting”—the Elia essay (see Vol. II., page 45).
“I once quoted two Lines.” Possibly, Mr. A. R. Waller suggests to me, the lines:—
Because on earth their names In Fame’s eternal volume shine for aye, |
“Miss Coleridge”—Coleridge’s daughter Sara, born in 1802, who had been brought up by her uncle, Southey. She had translated Martin Dobrizhoffer’s Latin history of the Abipones in order to gain funds for
her brother Derwent’s college expenses. Her
father considered the translation “unsurpassed for pure mother English by anything
I have read for a long time.” Sara Coleridge married her
cousin, Henry Nelson Coleridge, in 1829. She edited
her father’s
| 600 | LETTERS OF C. AND M. LAMB | Feb. |
Mr. Mitford was John Mitford (1781-1859), rector of Benhall, in Suffolk, and editor of old poets. Later he became editor of the Gentleman’s Magazine. He was a cousin of Mary Russell Mitford. In the Gentleman’s Magazine for May, 1838, is a review of Talfourd’s edition of Lamb’s Letters, probably from his pen, in which he records a visit to the Lambs in 1827.]
DEAR W.—I
write that you may not think me neglectful, not that I have any thing to say.
In answer to your questions, it was at your house I saw an edition of Roxana, the preface to which
stated that the author had left out that part of it which related to Roxana’s daughter persisting in imagining
herself to be so, in spite of the mother’s denial, from certain hints she
had picked up, and throwing herself continually in her mother’s way (as
Savage is said to have done in his,
prying in at windows to get a glimpse of her), and that it was by advice of
Southern, who objected to the
circumstances as being untrue, when the rest of the story was founded on fact;
which shows S. to have been a stupid-ish fellow. The
incidents so resemble Savage’s story, that I taxed
Godwin with taking Falconer from his life by
Dr. Johnson. You should have the
edition (if you have not parted with it), for I saw it never but at your place
at the Mews’ Gate, nor did I then read it to compare it with my own; only
I know the daughter’s curiosity is the best part of my Roxana. The prologue you speak of was mine, so named, but not worth
much. You ask me for 2 or 3 pages of verse. I have not written so much since
you knew me. I am altogether prosaic. May be I may touch off a sonnet in time.
I do not prefer Col. Jack
to either Rob. Cr. or Roxana. I only spoke of the beginning of it, his
childish history. The rest is poor. I do not know anywhere any good character
of De Foe besides what you mention. I do
not know that Swift mentions him.
Pope does. I forget if D’Israeli has. Dunlop I think has nothing of him. He is quite
new ground, and scarce known beyond Crusoe. I do not
know who wrote Quarll. I never thought of Quarll as having an author. It is a
poor imitation; the monkey is the best in it, and his pretty dishes made of
shells. Do you know the
| 1823 | DANIEL DEFOE AGAIN | 601 |
Your old friend,
[With this letter compare Letter 89 to Godwin, and Letter 285 to Wilson, pages 225 and 586.
Defoe’s Roxana, first edition, does not, as a matter of fact, contain the episode of the daughter which Lamb so much admired. Later editions have it. Godwin says in his Preface to “Faulkener,” 1807, the play to which Lamb wrote a prologue in praise of Defoe (see Vol. V., page 123), that the only accessible edition of Roxana in which the story of Susannah is fully told is that of 1745.
Richard Savage was considered to be the natural son of the Countess of Macclesfield and Earl Rivers. His mother at first disowned him, but afterwards, when this became impossible, repulsed him. Johnson says in his “Life of Savage,” that it was his hero’s “practice to walk in the dark evenings for several hours before her door in hopes of seeing her as she might come by accident to the window or cross her apartment with a candle in her hand.”
Swift and Defoe were steady enemies, although I do not find that either mentions the other by name. But Swift in The Examiner often had Defoe in mind, and Defoe in one of his political writings refers to Swift, apropos Wood’s halfpence, as “the copper farthing author.”
Pope referred to Defoe twice in the Dunciad: once as standing high, fearless and unabashed in the pillory, and once, libellously, as the father of Norton, of the Flying Post.
Philip Quarll was the
first imitation of Robinson
Crusoe. It was published in 1727, purporting to be the narrative of one
Dorrington, a merchant, and Quarll’s discoverer. The title begins, The Hermit; or, The Unparalleled Sufferings and Surprising Adventures of
Mr. Philip Quarll, an Englishman . . . Lamb
says in his essay on Christ’s
Hospital that the Blue-Coat boys used to read the book. It is unknown now,
although an abridgment
| 602 | LETTERS OF C. AND M. LAMB | March |
Steele’s account of Selkirk is in The Englishman, No. 26, Dec. 1, 1713. Wilson quoted it.
Defoe’s fictitious Military Memoirs of Capt. George Carleton was published in 1728.
I cannot explain Puzzelli or Donald M’Leod. Later Lamb sent Wilson, who seems to have asked for some verse about Defoe, the “Ode to the Treadmill,” but Wilson did not use it.
“My old compound.” Robinson’s Diary (Vol. I., page 333) has this: “The large room in the accountant’s office at the East India House is divided into boxes or compartments, in each of which sit six clerks, Charles Lamb himself in one. They are called Compounds. The meaning of the word was asked one day, and Lamb said it was ‘a collection of simples.’”]
DEAR Sir—The approbation of my little book by your sister is very pleasing to me. The Quaker incident did not happen to me, but to Carlisle the surgeon, from whose mouth I have twice heard it, at an interval of ten or twelve years, with little or no variation, and have given it as exactly as I could remember it. The gloss which your sister, or you, have put upon it does not strike me as correct. Carlisle drew no inference from it against the honesty of the Quakers, but only in favour of their surprising coolness—that they should be capable of committing a good joke, with an utter insensibility to its being any jest at all. I have reason to believe in the truth of it, because, as I have said, I heard him repeat it without variation at such an interval. The story loses sadly in print, for Carlisle is the best story teller I ever heard. The idea of the discovery of roasting pigs, I also borrowed, from my friend Manning, and am willing to confess both my plagiarisms.
Should fate ever so order it that you shall be in town with
your sister, mine bids me say that she
shall have great pleasure in being introduced to her. I think I must give up
the cause of the Bank—from nine to nine is galley-slavery, but I hope it is but
temporary. Your endeavour at explaining Fox’s insight into the natures of animals must fail, as I
shall transcribe the passage. It appears to me that he stopt short in time, and
was on the brink of falling
| 1823 | BARRON FIELD’S SEAL | 603 |
They have dragged me again into the Magazine, but I feel the spirit of the thing in my own mind quite gone. “Some brains” (I think Ben Jonson says it) “will endure but one skimming.” We are about to have an inundation of poetry from the Lakes, Wordsworth and Southey are coming up strong from the North. The she Coleridges have taken flight, to my regret. With Sara’s own-made acquisitions, her unaffectedness and no-pretensions are beautiful. You might pass an age with her without suspecting that she knew any thing but her mother’s tongue. I don’t mean any reflection on Mrs. Coleridge here. I had better have said her vernacular idiom. Poor C. I wish he had a home to receive his daughter in. But he is but as a stranger or a visitor in this world. How did you like Hartley’s sonnets? The first, at least, is vastly fine. Lloyd has been in town a day or two on business, and is perfectly well. I am ashamed of the shabby letters I send, but I am by nature anything but neat. Therein my mother bore me no Quaker. I never could seal a letter without dropping the wax on one side, besides scalding my fingers. I never had a seal too of my own. Writing to a great man lately, who is moreover very Heraldic, I borrowed a seal of a friend, who by the female side quarters the Protectorial Arms of Cromwell. How they must have puzzled my correspondent!—My letters are generally charged as double at the Post office, from their inveterate clumsiness of foldure. So you must not take it disrespectful to your self if I send you such ungainly scraps. I think I lose £100 a year at the India House, owing solely to my want of neatness in making up Accounts. How I puzzle ’em out at last is the wonder. I have to do with millions. I?
It is time to have done my incoherencies.
Believe me Yours Truly
[Lamb had sent Elia to Woodbridge. Bernard Barton’s sister was Maria Hack, author of many books for children. The Quaker incident is in the essay “Imperfect Sympathies.” Carlisle was Sir Anthony Carlisle, whom we have already seen.
“Your endeavour at explaining Fox’s insight.” See Letter 293. James Nayler (1617?-1660), an early Quaker who permitted his admirers to look upon him as a new Christ. He went to extremes totally foreign to the spirit of the Society. Barton made a paraphrase of Nayler’s “Last Testimony.”
| 604 | LETTERS OF C. AND M. LAMB | April |
“They have dragged me again.” Lamb had been quite ready to give up Elia with the first essays. “Old China,” one of his most charming papers, was in the March London Magazine.
“Some brains . . .” I have not been able to find this in Ben Jonson.
“Hartley’s sonnets.” Four sonnets by Hartley Coleridge were printed in the London Magazine for February, 1823, addressed to R. S. Jameson. This was the first:—
When we were idlers with the loitering rills, The need of human love we little noted: Our love was Nature; and the peace that floated On the white mist, and slept upon the hills, To sweet accord subdued our wayward wills: One soul was ours, one mind, one heart devoted, That, wisely doating, ask’d not why it doated; And ours the unknown joy, that knowing kills. But now I find how dear thou wert to me; That, man is more than half of Nature’s treasure,— Of that fair beauty which no eye can see,— Of that still music which no ear can measure; But now the streams may sing for others’ pleasure, The hills sleep on in their eternity. |
“Writing to a great man lately.” This was Sir Walter Scott (see Letter 279). Barron Field would be the friend with the seal.]
DEAR Sir—You must think me ill mannered not to have
replied to your first letter sooner, but I have an ugly habit of aversion from
letter writing, which makes me an unworthy correspondent. I have had no spring,
or cordial call to the occupation of late. I have been not well lately, which
must be my lame excuse. Your poem, which I consider very affecting, found me
engaged about a humorous Paper for the London, which I had called a “Letter to an Old
Gentleman whose Education had been neglected”—and
when it was done Taylor and Hessey would not print it, and it discouraged
me from doing any thing else, so I took up Scott, where I had scribbled some petulant remarks, and for a make shift father’d
them on Ritson. It is obvious I could
not make your Poem a part of
them, and as I did not know whether I should ever be able to do to my mind what
you suggested, I thought it not fair to keep back the verses for the chance.
Mr. Mitford’s
| 1823 | DINING IN PARNASSUS | 605 |
I wishd for you yesterday. I dined in Parnassus, with Wordsworth, Coleridge, Rogers, and Tom Moore—half the Poetry of England constellated and clustered in Gloster Place! It was a delightful Even! Coleridge was in his finest vein of talk, had all the talk, and let ’em talk as evilly as they do of the envy of Poets, I am sure not one there but was content to be nothing but a listener. The Muses were dumb, while Apollo lectured on his and their fine Art. It is a lie that Poets are envious, I have known the best of them, and can speak to it, that they give each other their merits, and are the kindest critics as well as best authors. I am scribbling a muddy epistle with an aking head, for we did not quaff Hippocrene last night. Marry, it was Hippocras rather. Pray accept this as a letter in the mean time, and do me the favor to mention my respects to Mr. Mitford, who is so good as to entertain good thoughts of Elia, but don’t show this almost impertinent scrawl. I will write more respectfully next time, for believe me, if not in words, in feelings, yours most so.
[“Your poem.” Barton’s poem was entitled “A Poet’s Thanks,” and was printed in the
London Magazine for
April, 1823, the same number that contained Lamb’s article on Ritson and Scott. It is one of
his best poems, an expression of contentment in simplicity. The “Letter to an Old Gentleman,” a parody of
De Quincey’s series of “Letters to a Young Gentleman”
in the London Magazine,
was not published until January, 1825. Scott was John Scott of Amwell (Barton’s
predecessor as the Quaker poet), who had written
| 606 | LETTERS OF C. AND M. LAMB | April |
What to thy broken Spirit can atone, Unhappy victim of the Tyrant’s fears; |
“A man forbid” (“Macbeth,” I., 3, 21).
“I dined in Parnassus.” This dinner, at Thomas Monkhouse’s, No. 34 Gloucester Place, is described both by Moore and by Crabb Robinson, who was present. Moore wrote in his Journal: “Dined at Mr. Monkhouse’s (a gentleman I had never seen before) on Wordsworth’s invitation, who lives there whenever he comes to town. A singular party. Coleridge, Rogers, Wordsworth and wife, Charles Lamb (the hero at present of the London Magazine), and his sister (the poor woman who went mad in a diligence on the way to Paris), and a Mr. Robinson, one of the minora sidera of this constellation of the Lakes; the host himself, a Mæcenas of the school, contributing nothing but good dinners and silence. Charles Lamb, a clever fellow, certainly, but full of villainous and abortive puns, which he miscarries of every minute. Some excellent things, however, have come from him.”
Lamb told Moore that he had hitherto always felt an antipathy to him, but henceforward should like him.
Crabb Robinson writes: “April 4th.—Dined at Monkhouse’s. Our party consisted of Wordsworth, Coleridge, Lamb, Moore, and
Rogers. Five poets of very unequal worth and
most disproportionate popularity, whom the public probably would arrange in the very
inverse order, except that it would place Moore above
Rogers. During this afternoon, Coleridge
alone displayed any of his peculiar talent. He talked much and well. I have not for
years seen him in such excellent health and spirits. His subjects metaphysical
criticism—Wordsworth he chiefly talked to.
Rogers occasionally let fall a remark.
Moore seemed conscious of his inferiority. He was very
attentive to Coleridge, but seemed to relish
Lamb, whom he sat next. L. was in a good
frame—kept
| 1823 | POPE’S PORTRAIT | 607 |
Many years later Robinson sent to The Athenæum (June 25, 1853) a further and fuller account of the evening.
“Hippocrene . . . Hippocras.” Hippocrene is the fountain of the Muses; hippocras, a medicinal drink.]
DEAR Lad,—You must think me a brute beast, a rhinoceros, never to have acknowledged the receipt of your precious present. But indeed I am none of those shocking things, but have arrived at that indisposition to letter-writing, which would make it a hard exertion to write three lines to a king to spare a friend’s life. Whether it is that the Magazine paying me so much a page, I am loath to throw away composition—how much a sheet do you give your correspondents? I have hung up Pope, and a gem it is, in my town room; I hope for your approval. Though it accompanies the “Essay on Man,” I think that was not the poem he is here meditating. He would have looked up, somehow affectedly, if he were just conceiving “Awake, my St. John.” Neither is he in the “Rape of the Lock” mood exactly. I think he has just made out the last lines of the “Epistle to Jervis,” between gay and tender,
“And other beauties envy
Worsley’s eyes.” |
I’ll be damn’d if that isn’t the line. He is brooding over it, with a dreamy phantom of Lady Mary floating before him. He is thinking which is the earliest possible day and hour that she will first see it. What a miniature piece of gentility it is! Why did you give it me? I do not like you enough to give you anything so good.
I have dined with T. Moore and breakfasted with Rogers, since I saw you; have much to say about them when we meet, which I trust will be in a week or two. I have been over-watched and overpoeted since Wordsworth has been in town. I was obliged for health sake to wish him gone: but now he is gone I feel a great loss. I am going to Dalston to recruit, and have serious thoughts—of altering my condition, that is, of taking to sobriety. What do you advise me?
T. Moore asked me your address in a manner which made me believe he meant to call upon you.
Rogers spake very kindly of you, as every body does, and none with so much reason as your
| 608 | LETTERS OF C. AND M. LAMB | April |
[This is the first important letter to Bryan Waller Procter, better known as Barry Cornwall, who was afterwards to write, in his old age, so pleasant a memoir of Lamb. He was then thirty-five, was practising law, and had already published Marcian Colonna and A Sicilian Story.
The Epistle to Mr. Jervas (with Mr. Dryden’s translation of Fresnoy’s Art of Painting) did not end upon this line, but some eighteen lines later. I give the portrait opposite page 606.
“Lady Mary.” By Lady Mary Lamb means, as Pope did in the first edition, Lady Mary Wortley Montagu. But after his quarrel with that lady Pope altered it to Worsley, signifying Lady Frances Worsley, daughter of the Duke of Marlborough and wife of Sir Robert Worsley.]
DEAR Miss
H——, Mary has such an
invincible reluctance to any epistolary exertion, that I am sparing her a
mortification by taking the pen from her. The plain truth is, she writes such a
pimping, mean, detestable hand, that she is ashamed of the formation of her
letters. There is an essential poverty and abjectness in the frame of them.
They look like begging letters. And then she is sure to omit a most substantial
word in the second draught (for she never ventures an epistle without a foul
copy first) which is obliged to be interlined, which spoils the neatest
epistle, you know [the word “epistle” is
underlined]. Her figures, 1, 2, 3, 4, &c., where she has occasion
to express numerals, as in the date (25 Apr 1823), are not figures, but
Figurantes. And the combined posse go staggering up and down shameless as
drunkards in the day time. It is no better when she rules her paper, her lines
are “not less erring” than her words—a sort of unnatural parallel
lines, that are perpetually threatening to meet, which you know is quite
contrary to Euclid [here
Lamb has ruled lines grossly unparallel]. Her
very blots are not bold like this [here a bold blot],
but poor smears [here a poor smear] half left in and
half scratched out with another smear left in their place. I like a clean
letter, A bold free hand, and a
| 1823 | A CUTTER OF APRON STRINGS | 609 |
There is a corkscrew, one of the best I ever drew. By the way what incomparable whiskey that was of Monkhouse’s. But if I am to write a letter, let me begin, and not stand flourishing like a fencer at a fair.
It gives me great pleasure (the letter now begins) to hear that you got down smoothly, and that Mrs. Monkhouse’s spirits are so good and enterprising. It shews, whatever her posture may be, that her mind at least is not supine. I hope the excursion will enable the former to keep pace with its out-stripping neighbor. Pray present our kindest wishes to her, and all. (That sentence should properly have come in the Post Script, but we airy Mercurial Spirits, there is no keeping us in). Time—as was said of one of us—toils after us in vain. I am afraid our co-visit with Coleridge was a dream. I shall not get away before the end (or middle) of June, and then you will be frog-hopping at Boulogne. And besides I think the Gilmans would scarce trust him with us, I have a malicious knack at cutting of apron strings. The Saints’ days you speak of have long since fled to heaven, with Astræa, and the cold piety of the age lacks fervor to recall them—only Peter left his key—the iron one of the two, that shuts amain—and that’s the reason I am lockd up. Meanwhile of afternoons we pick up primroses at Dalston, and Mary corrects me when I call ’em cowslips. God bless you all, and pray remember me euphoneously to Mr. Gnwellegan. That Lee Priory must be a dainty bower, is it built of flints, and does it stand at Kingsgate? Did you remem
[This is apparently the proper end of the letter. At least there is no indication of another sheet.]
[Addressed to “Miss Hutchinson, 17 Sion Hill, Ramsgate, Kent,” where she was staying with Mrs. Monkhouse. “Not less erring.” I have not found this.
“‘Time’—as was said of one of us.” Johnson wrote of Shakespeare, in the Prologue at the opening of Drury Lane Theatre in 1747:—
And panting Time toil’d after him in vain. |
| 610 | LETTERS OF C. AND M. LAMB | 1823 |
“The Saints’ days.” See note on page 514. Astræa, goddess of justice, fled to heaven in the age of bronze owing to the wickedness of man.
Two mass keys he bore, of metals twain, (The golden opes, the iron shuts amain). Lycidas, 110, 111. |
“Mr. Gnwellegan.” Probably Lamb’s effort to write the name of Edward Quillinan, afterwards Wordsworth’s son-in-law, whose first wife had been a Miss Brydges of Lee Priory.
“Lee Priory”—the home of Sir Egerton Brydges, at Ickham, near Canterbury, for some years. He had, however, now left, and the private press was closed.
In Notes and Queries, November 11, 1876, was printed the following scrap, a postscript by Charles Lamb to a letter from Mary Lamb to Miss H(utchinson). I place it here, having no clue as to date, nor does it matter:—]
APROPOS of birds—the other day at a large dinner, being call’d upon for a toast, I gave, as the best toast I knew, “Wood-cock toast,” which was drunk with 3 cheers.
IT is hard when a Gentleman cannot remain concealed, who affecteth obscurity with greater avidity than most do seek to have their good deeds brought to light—to have a prying inquisitive finger, (to the danger of its own scorching), busied in removing the little peck measure (scripturally a bushel) under which one had hoped to bury his small candle. The receipt of fern-seed, I think, in this curious age, would scarce help a man to walk invisible.
| 1823 | DIBDIN’S DISCOVERY | 611 |
Well, I am discovered—and thou thyself, who thoughtest to shelter under the pease-cod of initiality (a stale and shallow device), art no less dragged to light—Thy slender anatomy—thy skeletonian D—— fleshed and sinewed out to the plump expansion of six characters—thy tuneful genealogy deduced—
By the way, what a name is Timothy!
Lay it down, I beseech thee, and in its place take up the properer sound of Timotheus—
Then mayst thou with unblushing fingers handle the Lyre “familiar to the D——n name.”
With much difficulty have I traced thee to thy lurking-place. Many a goodly name did I run over, bewildered between Dorrien, and Doxat, and Dover, and Dakin, and Daintry—a wilderness of D’s—till at last I thought I had hit it—my conjectures wandering upon a melancholy Jew—you wot the Israelite upon Change—Master Daniels—a contemplative Hebrew—to the which guess I was the rather led, by the consideration that most of his nation are great readers—
Nothing is so common as to see them in the Jews’ Walk, with a bundle of script in one hand, and the Man of Feeling, or a volume of Sterne, in the other—
I am a rogue if I can collect what manner of face thou carriest, though thou seemest so familiar with mine—If I remember, thou didst not dimly resemble the man Daniels, whom at first I took thee for—a care-worn, mortified, economical, commercio-political countenance, with an agreeable limp in thy gait, if Elia mistake thee not. I think I shd. shake hands with thee, if I met thee.
[John Bates Dibdin, the son of Charles Dibdin the younger and grandson of the great Charles Dibdin, was at this time a young man of about twenty-four, engaged as a clerk in a shipping office in the city. I borrow from Canon Ainger an interesting letter from a sister of Dibdin on the beginning of the correspondence:—
My brother . . . had constant occasion to conduct the
giving or taking of cheques, as it might be, at the India House. There he always selected
“the little clever man “in preference to the other clerks. At that time the
Elia Essays were
appearing in print. No one had the slightest conception who
“Elia” was. He was talked of everywhere, and everybody
was trying to find him out, but without success. At last, from the style and manner of
conveying his ideas and opinions on different subjects, my brother began to suspect that
Lamb was the individual so widely sought for, and
wrote some lines to him, anonymously, sending them by post to his residence, with the hope
of sifting him on the subject. Although Lamb could not know who sent
him the lines, yet he looked very hard at the writer of them the next time they met, when
he walked up, as usual, to Lamb’s desk in the most unconcerned
manner, to transact the necessary business. Shortly after, when they
| 612 | LETTERS OF C. AND M. LAMB | May |
“I’ve found thee out, O
Elia!” |
Dibdin’s letter of discovery was signed D. Hence Lamb’s fumbling after his Christian name, which he probably knew all the time.
“Familiar to the D——n name.” I have not traced the quotation that was in Lamb’s mind.]
DEAR Sir—I am vexed to be two letters in your debt,
but I have been quite out of the vein lately. A philosophical treatise is
wanting, of the causes of the backwardness with which persons after a certain
time of life set about writing a letter. I always feel as if I had nothing to
say, and the performance generally justifies the presentiment. Taylor and Hessey did foolishly in not admitting the sonnet. Surely it
might have followed the B. B. I agree with you in thinking
Bowring’s paper better than the former.
I will inquire about my Letter
to the Old Gentleman, but I expect it to go
in, after those to the Young Gentn
are completed. I do not exactly see why the Goose and little Goslings should
emblematize a Quaker poet that has no children. But
after all—perhaps it is a Pelican. The Mene Mene Tekel
Upharsin around it I cannot decypher. The songster of the night
pouring out her effusions amid a Silent Meeting of Madge Owlets, would be at
least intelligible. A full pause here comes upon me, as if I had not a word
more left. I will shake my brain. Once—twice—nothing comes up. George Fox recommends waiting on these
occasions. I wait. Nothing comes. G. Fox—that sets me off
again. I have finished the Journal, and 400 more pages of the Doctrinals, which I picked up for 7s. 6d. If
I get on at this rate, the Society will be in danger of having two Quaker
poets—to patronise. I am at Dalston now, but if, when I go back to Cov. Gar., I
find thy friend has not call’d for the Journal, thee must put me in a way
of sending it; and if it should happen that the Lender of it, having that
volume, has not the other, I shall be most happy in his accept-
| 1823 | “LONDON MAGAZINE” TOPPLING | 613 |
I cannot but think the London drags heavily. I miss Janus. And O how it misses Hazlitt! Procter too is affronted (as Janus has been) with their abominable curtailment of his things—some meddling Editor or other—or phantom of one—for neither he nor Janus know their busy friend. But they always find the best part cut out; and they have done well to cut also. I am not so fortunate as to be served in this manner, for I would give a clean sum of money in sincerity to leave them handsomely. But the dogs—T. and H. I mean—will not affront me, and what can I do? must I go on to drivelling? Poor Relations is tolerable—but where shall I get another subject—or who shall deliver me from the body of this death? I assure you it teases me more than it used to please me. Ch. Lloyd has published a sort of Quaker poem, he tells me, and that he has order’d me a copy, but I have not got it. Have you seen it? I must leave a little wafer space, which brings me to an apology for a conclusion. I am afraid of looking back, for I feel all this while I have been writing nothing, but it may show I am alive. Believe me, cordially yours
[The sonnet probably was Mitford’s, which was printed in the June number (see page 606). Bowring, afterwards Sir John, was writing in the London Magazine on “Spanish Romances.”
“The Goose and little Goslings.” Possibly the design upon the seal of Barton’s last letter.
“Janus.” The first mention of Thomas Griffiths Wainewright (see note on page 619), who sometimes wrote in the London over the pseudonym Janus Weathercock. John Taylor, Hood and perhaps John Hamilton Reynolds made up the magazine for press. In the May number, in addition to Lamb’s “Poor Relations,” were contributions from De Quincey, Hartley Coleridge, Cary, and Barton. But it was not what it had been.
Lloyd’s Quaker poem would probably be one of those in his Poems, 1823, which contains some of his most interesting work.]
DEAR Sir—Your verses were very pleasant, and I shall like to see more of them—I do not mean addressed to me.
I do not know whether you live in town or country, but if
it
| 614 | LETTERS OF C. AND M. LAMB | June |
My love to Mr. Railton.
The same to Mr. Rankin,
to the whole Firm indeed.
[The verses are not, I fear, now recoverable. Dibdin’s firm was Railton, Rankin & Co., in Old Jury.
Here should come a letter from Lamb to Hone, dated May 19, 1823. William Hone (1780-1842), who then, his stormy political days over, was publishing antiquarian works on Ludgate Hill, had sent Lamb his Ancient Mysteries Described, 1823. Lamb thanks him for it, and invites him to 14 Kingsland Row, Dalston, the next Sunday: “We dine exactly at 4.”]
MY dear Friend,—Day after day has passed away, and
my brother has said, “I will write to Mrs. [?
Mr.] Norris tomorrow,” and therefore I am resolved to
write to Mrs. Norris today, and trust
him no longer. We took our places for Sevenoaks, intending to remain there all
night in order to see Knole, but when we got there we chang’d our minds,
and went on to Tunbridge Wells. About a mile short of the Wells the coach
stopped at a little inn, and I saw, “Lodgings to let” on a little,
very little house opposite. I ran over the way, and secured them before the
coach drove away, and we took immediate possession: it proved a very
comfortable place, and we remained there nine days. The first evening, as we
were wandering about, we met a lady, the wife of one of the India House clerks,
with whom we had been slightly acquainted some years ago, which slight
acquaintance has been ripened into a great intimacy during the nine pleasant
days that we passed at the Wells. She and her two daughters went with us in an
open chaise to Knole, and as the chaise held only five, we
| 1823 | THE LAMBS AT HASTINGS | 615 |
We came from Tunbridge Wells in a Postchaise, and would have seen Battle Abbey on the way, but it is only shewn on a Monday. We are trying to coax Charles into a Monday’s excursion. And Bexhill we are also thinking about. Yesterday evening we found out by chance the most beautiful view I ever saw. It is called “The Lovers’ Seat.” . . . You have been here, therefore you must have seen [it, or] is it only Mr. and Mrs. Faint who have visited Hastings? [Tell Mrs.] Faint that though in my haste to get housed I d[ecided on] . . . ice’s lodgings, yet it comforted all th . . . to know that I had a place in view.
I suppose you are so busy that it is not fair to ask you to write me a line to say how you are going on. Yet if any one of you have half an hour to spare for that purpose, it will be most thankfully received. Charles joins with me in love to you all together, and to each one in particular upstairs and downstairs.
[Mr. Hazlitt dates this letter 1825 or 1826, and considers it to refer to a second visit to Hastings; but I think most probably it refers to the 1823 visit, especially as the Lovers’ Seat would assuredly have been discovered then. Miss James was Mary Lamb’s nurse. Mrs. Randal Norris had been a Miss Faint.
There is a curious similarity between a passage in this letter and in one of Byron’s, written in 1814: “I have been swimming, and eating turbot, and smuggling neat brandies, and silk handkerchiefs . . . and walking on cliffs and tumbling down hills.”
A Hastings guide book for 1825 gives Mrs. Gibbs’ address as 4 York Cottages, near Priory Bridge. Near by, in Pelham Place, a Mr. Hogsflesh had a lodging-house.]
| 616 | LETTERS OF C. AND M. LAMB | July |
DEAR Sir—I shall be happy to read the MS. and to forward it; but T. and H. must judge for themselves of publication. If it prove interesting (as I doubt not) I shall not spare to say so, you may depend upon it. Suppose you direct it to Accots. Office, India House.
I am glad you have met with some sweetening circumstances to your unpalatable draught. I have just returned from Hastings, where are exquisite views and walks, and where I have given up my soul to walking, and I am now suffering sedentary contrasts. I am a long time reconciling to Town after one of these excursions. Home is become strange, and will remain so yet a while. Home is the most unforgiving of friends and always resents Absence; I know its old cordial looks will return, but they are slow in clearing up. That is one of the features of this our galley slavery, that peregrination ended makes things worse. I felt out of water (with all the sea about me) at Hastings, and just as I had learned to domiciliate there, I must come back to find a home which is no home. I abused Hastings, but learned its value. There are spots, inland bays, etc., which realise the notions of Juan Fernandez.
The best thing I lit upon by accident was a small country church (by whom or when built unknown) standing bare and single in the midst of a grove, with no house or appearance of habitation within a quarter of a mile, only passages diverging from it thro’ beautiful woods to so many farm houses. There it stands, like the first idea of a church, before parishioners were thought of, nothing but birds for its congregation, or like a Hermit’s oratory (the Hermit dead), or a mausoleum, its effect singularly impressive, like a church found in a desert isle to startle Crusoe with a home image; you must make out a vicar and a congregation from fancy, for surely none come there. Yet it wants not its pulpit, and its font, and all the seemly additaments of our worship.
Southey has attacked Elia on the score of infidelity, in the Quarterly, Article, “Progress of Infidels [Infidelity].” I had not, nor have, seen the Monthly. He might have spared an old friend such a construction of a few careless flights, that meant no harm to religion. If all his unguarded expressions on the subject were to be collected
| 1823 | SOUTHEY AND ELIA | 617 |
But I love and respect Southey—and will not retort. I hate his review, and his being a Reviewer.
The hint he has droppd will knock the sale of the book on the head, which was almost at a stop before.
Let it stop. There is corn in Egypt, while there is cash at Leadenhall. You and I are something besides being Writers. Thank God.
Yours truly
[What the MS. was I do not know. Lamb recurs more fully to the description of the little church—probably Hollingdon Rural, about three miles north-west from the town—in Letters 332 and 378, on pages 648 and 708.
The thoughts in the second paragraph of this letter were amplified in the Elia essay “The Old Margate Hoy,” in the London Magazine for July, 1823.
“Southey has attacked Elia.” In an article in the Quarterly for January, 1823, in a review of a work by Grégoire on Deism in France, under the title “The Progress of Infidelity,” Southey had a reference to Elia in the following terms: “Unbelievers have not always been honest enough thus to express their real feelings; but this we know concerning them, that when they have renounced their birthright of hope, they have not been able to divest themselves of fear. From the nature of the human mind this might be presumed, and in fact it is so. They may deaden the heart and stupify the conscience, but they cannot destroy the imaginative faculty. There is a remarkable proof of this in Elia’s Essays, a book which wants only a sounder religious feeling, to be as delightful as it is original.” And then Southey went on to draw attention to the case of Thornton Hunt, the little child of Leigh Hunt, the (to Southey) notorious freethinker, who, as Lamb had stated in the essay “Witches and Other Night Fears,” would wake at night in terror of images of fear.
“I will not retort.” Lamb, as we shall see, changed his mind.
“Almost at a stop before.” Elia was never popular until long after Lamb’s death. It did not reach a second edition until 1836. There are now several new editions every year.]
| 618 | LETTERS OF C. AND M. LAMB | July |
DR. A.—I expect Proctor and Wainwright (Janus W.) this evening; will you come? I suppose it is but a compt to ask Mrs. Alsop; but it is none to say that we should be most glad to see her. Yours ever. How vexed I am at your Dalston expeditn.
[Mrs. Allsop was a daughter of Mrs. Jordan, and had herself been an actress.]
DEAR B. B.—What will you say to my not writing? You cannot say I do not write now. Hessey has not used your kind sonnet, nor have I seen it. Pray send me a Copy. Neither have I heard any more of your Friend’s MS., which I will reclaim, whenever you please. When you come London-ward you will find me no longer in Covt. Gard. I have a Cottage, in Colebrook row, Islington. A cottage, for it is detach’d; a white house, with 6 good rooms; the New River (rather elderly by this time) runs (if a moderate walking pace can be so termed) close to the foot of the house; and behind is a spacious garden, with vines (I assure you), pears, strawberries, parsnips, leeks, carrots, cabbages, to delight the heart of old Alcinous. You enter without passage into a cheerful dining room, all studded over and rough with old Books, and above is a lightsome Drawing room, 3 windows, full of choice prints. I feel like a great Lord, never having had a house before.
The London I fear falls off.—I linger among its creaking rafters, like the last rat. It will topple down, if they don’t get some Buttresses. They have pull’d down three, W. Hazlitt, Proctor, and their best stay, kind light hearted Wainwright—their Janus. The best is, neither of our fortunes is concern’d in it.
I heard of you from Mr.
Pulham this morning, and that gave a fillip to my Laziness,
which has been intolerable. But I am so
| 1823 | COLEBEOOKE COTTAGE | 619 |
I hope you transmitted the Fox-Journal to its Owner with suitable thanks.
Mr. Cary, the Dante-man, dines with me to-day. He is a model of a country Parson, lean (as a Curate ought to be), modest, sensible, no obtruder of church dogmas, quite a different man from Southey,—you would like him.
Pray accept this for a Letter, and believe me with sincere regards
Yours
[“Your kind sonnet.” Barton’s well-known sonnet to Elia (quoted on page 645) had been printed in the London Magazine long before—in the previous February. I do not identify this one among his writings.
“I have a Cottage.” This cottage still stands (1904). Within it is much as in Lamb’s day, but outwardly changed, for a new house has been built on one side and it is thus no longer detached. The New River still runs before it, but subterraneously. There is no tablet on the house; there is no tablet on any of Lamb’s houses.
Barton was so attracted by one at least of Lamb’s similes that, I fancy, he borrowed it for an account of his grandfather’s house at Tottenham which he wrote some time later; for I find that gentleman’s garden described as “equal to that of old Alcinous.”
“Kind light hearted Wainwright.” Lamb has
caused much surprise by using such words of one who was destined to become almost the most
cold-blooded criminal in English history; but, as Hartley
Coleridge wrote in another connection, it was
Lamb’s way to take things by the better handle, and
Wainewright’s worse faults in those days seem to have been
extravagance and affectation. Lamb at any rate liked him and
Wainewright
| 620 | LETTERS OF C. AND M. LAMB | Sept. |
“Mr. Pulham”—Brook Pulham of the India House, who made the caricature etching of Elia.
“While I watch my tulips.” Lamb is, of course, embroidering here, but we have it on the authority of George Daniel, the antiquary, that with his removal to Colebrooke Cottage began an interest in horticulture, particularly in roses.
“Garden-state.” From Marvell’s “Garden,” verse 8, line 1:—
Such was that happy garden-state. |
“Mr. Cary.” The Rev. Henry Francis Cary (1772-1844), the translator of Dante and afterwards, 1826, Assistant-Keeper of the Printed Books in the British Museum. A regular contributor to the London Magazine.]
DEAR Alsop—I am snugly seated at the cottage; Mary is well but weak, and comes home on Monday; she will soon be strong enough to see her friends here. In the mean time will you dine with me at ½ past four to-morrow? Ayrton and Mr. Burney are coming.
Colebrook Cottage, left hand side, end of Colebrook Row on the western brink of the New River, a detach’d whitish house.
No answer is required but come if you can.
I call’d on you on Sunday. Respcts to Mrs. A. & boy.
MY dear A.—I
am going to ask you to do me the greatest favour which a man can do to another.
I want to make my will, and to leave my property in trust for my sister. N.B.
| 1823 | LAMB MAKES HIS WILL | 621 |
Yours ever,
MY dear A.—Your kindness in accepting my request no words of mine can repay. It has made you overflow into some romance which I should have check’d at another time. I hope it may be in the scheme of Providence that my sister may go first (if ever so little a precedence), myself next, and my good Exrs survive to remembr us with kindness many years. God bless you.
I will set Proctor about the will forthwith.
DEAR A.—Your Cheese is the best I ever tasted; Mary will tell you so hereafter. She is at home, but has disappointed me. She has gone back rather than improved. However, she has sense enough to value the present, for she is greatly fond of Stilton. Yours is the delicatest rain-bow-hued melting piece I ever flavoured. Believe me. I took it the more kindly, following so great a kindness.
Depend upon’t, yours shall be one of the first houses we shall present ourselves at, when we have got our Bill of Health.
Being both yours and Mrs. Allsop’s truly.
[Allsop and Procter may have been named as executors of Lamb’s will at one time, but when it came to be proved the executors were Talfourd and Ryle, a fellow-clerk in the India House.]
DEAR Sir—I have again been reading your stanzas on
Bloomfield, which are the most
appropriate that can be imagined, sweet with Doric delicacy. I like that
| 622 | LETTERS OF C. AND M. LAMB | Sept. |
Our more chaste Theocritus— |
Words phrases fashions pass away; But Truth and nature live through all. |
I doubt if their having been in a Paper will not prevent T. and H. from insertion, but I shall have a thing to send in a day or two, and shall try them. Omitting that stanza, a very little alteration is wantg in the beginng of the next. You see, I use freedom. How happily (I flatter not!) you have brot in his subjects; and, (I suppose) his favorite measure, though I am not acquainted with any of his writings but the Farmer’s Boy. He dined with me once, and his manners took me exceedingly.
I rejoyce that you forgive my long silence. I continue to estimate my own-roof comforts highly. How could I remain all my life a lodger! My garden thrives (I am told) tho’ I have yet reaped nothing but some tiny sallad, and withered carrots. But a garden’s a garden anywhere, and twice a garden in London.
Somehow I cannot relish that word Horkey. Cannot you supply it by circumlocution, and direct the reader by a note to explain that it means the Horkey. But Horkey choaks me in the Text.
It raises crowds of mean associations, Hawking and sp——g, Gauky, Stalky, Maukin. The sound is every thing, in such dulcet modulations ’specially. I like
Gilbert Meldrum’s sterner
tones, |
Do you go on with your Quaker Sonnets—[to] have ’em ready with Southey’s Book of the Church? I meditate a letter to S. in the London, which perhaps will meet the fate of the Sonnet.
Excuse my brevity, for I write painfully at office, liable to 100 callings off. And I can never sit down to an epistle elsewhere. I read or walk. If you return this letter to the Post Office, I think they will return 4d, seeing it is but half a one. Believe me tho’ entirely yours
| 1823 | LLOYD’S ”POEMS,” 1823 | 623 |
[Barton’s “Verses to the Memory of Bloomfield, the Suffolk Poet” (who died in August, 1823), were printed in book form in his Poetic Vigils, 1824. This is the stanza that Lamb most liked:—
It is not quaint and local terms Besprinkled o’er thy rustic lay, Though well such dialect confirms Its power unletter’d minds to sway, It is not these that most display Thy sweetest charms, thy gentlest thrall,— Words, phrases, fashions, pass away, But Truth and Nature live through all. |
The stanza referring to Byron was not reprinted, nor was the word Horkey, which means Harvest Home in Suffolk. Gilbert Meldrum is a character in one of Bloomfield’s Rural Tales.
“Seldom advisable in prose.” Lamb’s editors would have a lighter task had he practised this precept.
“Quaker Sonnets.” Barton did not carry out this project. Southey’s Book of the Church was published in 1824.
“I meditate a letter to S.” The “Letter of Elia to Mr. Southey” was published in the London Magazine for October, 1823.]
YOUR lines are not to be understood reading on one leg. They are sinuous, and to be won with wrestling. I assure you in sincerity that nothing you have done has given me greater satisfaction. Your obscurity, where you are dark, which is seldom, is that of too much meaning, not the painful obscurity which no toil of the reader can dissipate; not the dead vacuum and floundering place in which imagination finds no footing; it is not the dimness of positive darkness, but of distance; and he that reads and not discerns must get a better pair of spectacles. I admire every piece in the collection; I cannot say the first is best; when I do so, the last read rises up in judgment. To your Mother—to your Sister—to Mary dead—they are all weighty with thought and tender with sentiment. Your poetry is like no other:—those cursed Dryads and Pagan trumperies of modern verse have put me out of conceit of the very name of poetry. Your verses are as good and as wholesome as prose; and I have made a sad blunder if I do not leave you with an impression that your present is rarely valued.
| 624 | LETTERS OF C. AND M. LAMB | 1823 |
[This scrap is in Selections from the Poems and Letters of Bernard Barton, 1849, edited by Edward FitzGerald and Lucy Barton. Lloyd says: “I had a very ample testimony from C. Lamb to the character of my last little volume. I will transcribe to you what he says, as it is but a note, and his manner is always so original, that I am sure the introduction of the merest trifle from his pen will well compensate for the absence of any-thing of mine.” The volume was Poems, 1823, one of the chief of which was “Stanzas on the Difficulty with which, in Youth, we Bring Home to our Habitual Consciousness, the Idea of Death,” to which Lloyd appended the following sentence from Elia’s essay on “New Year’s Eve,” as motto: “Not childhood alone, but the young man till thirty, never feels practically that he is mortal. He knows it indeed, and, if need were, he could preach a homily on the fragility of life; but he brings it not home to himself, any more than in a hot June, we can appropriate to our imagination the freezing days of December.”]
DEAR Sir,—If convenient, will you give us house room on Saturday next? I can sleep anywhere. If another Sunday suit you better, pray let me know. We were talking of Roast Shoulder of Mutton with onion sauce; but I scorn to prescribe to the hospitalities of mine host.
With respects to Mrs. C., yours truly,
DEAR Sir—Mary has got a cold, and the nights are dreadful; but at the first indication of Spring (alias the first dry weather in Novr early) it is our intention to surprise you early some eveng.
| 1823 | ANOTHER PIG | 625 |
Mary regrets very much Mrs. Allsop’s fruitless visit. It made her swear! She was gone to visit Miss Hutchinsn, whom she found out.
MY dear Sir—Your Pig was a picture of a pig, and your Picture a pig of a picture. The former was delicious but evanescent, like a hearty fit of mirth, or the crackling of thorns under a pot; but the latter is an idea, and abideth. I never before saw swine upon sattin. And then that pretty strawy canopy about him! he seems to purr (rather than grunt) his satisfaction. Such a gentlemanlike porker too! Morland’s are absolutely clowns to it. Who the deuce painted it?
I have ordered a little gilt shrine for it, and mean to wear it for a locket; a shirt-pig.
I admire the petty-toes shrouded in a veil of something, not mud, but that warm soft consistency with [? which] the dust takes in Elysium after a spring shower—it perfectly engloves them.
I cannot enough thank you and your country friend for the delicate double present—the Utile et Decorum—three times have I attempted to write this sentence and failed; which shows that I am not cut out for a pedant.
Sir
(as I say to Southey) will you come and see us at our poor cottage of
Colebrook to tea tomorrow evening, as early as six? I have some friends coming
at that hour—
The panoply which covered your material pig shall be forthcoming—The pig pictorial, with its trappings, domesticate with me.
[“The crackling of thorns” (Eccles. vii. 6). “Morland’s”—George Morland, the painter. “Utile et Decorum.” A very common tag. But Lamb may have been thinking of—
Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori. |
“Sir (as I say to Southey).” Elia’s Letter in the London Magazine begins thus.]
| 626 | LETTERS OF C. AND M. LAMB | Nov. |
DEAR Mrs. H.,—Sitting down to write a letter is such a painful operation to Mary, that you must accept me as her proxy. You have seen our house. What I now tell you is literally true. Yesterday week George Dyer called upon us, at one o’clock (bright noon day) on his way to dine with Mrs. Barbauld at Newington. He sat with Mary about half an hour, and took leave. The maid saw him go out from her kitchen window; but suddenly losing sight of him, ran up in a fright to Mary. G. D., instead of keeping the slip that leads to the gate, had deliberately, staff in hand, in broad open day, marched into the New River. He had not his spectacles on, and you know his absence. Who helped him out, they can hardly tell; but between ’em they got him out, drenched thro’ and thro. A mob collected by that time, and accompanied him in. “Send for the Doctor!” they said: and a one-eyed fellow, dirty and drunk, was fetched from the Public House at the end, where it seems he lurks, for the sake of picking up water practice, having formerly had a medal from the Humane Society for some rescue. By his advice, the patient was put between blankets; and when I came home at four to dinner, I found G. D. a-bed, and raving, light-headed with the brandy-and-water which the doctor had administered. He sung, laughed, whimpered, screamed, babbled of guardian angels, would get up and go home; but we kept him there by force; and by next morning he departed sobered, and seems to have received no injury. All my friends are open-mouthed about having paling before the river, but I cannot see that, because a . . . lunatic chooses to walk into a river with his eyes open at midday, I am any the more likely to be drowned in it, coming home at midnight.
I had the honour of dining at the Mansion House on Thursday last, by special card from the Lord Mayor, who never saw my face, nor I his; and all from being a writer in a magazine! The dinner costly, served on massy plate, champagne, pines, &c.; forty-seven present, among whom the Chairman and two other directors of the India Company. There’s for you! and got away pretty sober! Quite saved my credit!
We continue to like our house prodigiously. Does
Mary Hazlitt go on with her novel, or has she begun
another? I would not dis-
| 1823 | RECONCILIATION WITH SOUTHEY | 627 |
Our kind remembrances to her and hers and you and yours.—
I am pleased that H. liked my letter to the Laureate.
[Addressed to “Mrs. Hazlitt, Alphington, near Exeter.”
This letter is the first draft of the Elia essay “Amicus Redivivus,” which was printed in the London Magazine in December, 1823. George Dyer, who was then sixty-eight, had been getting blind steadily for some years. A visit to Lamb’s cottage to-day (the little end white house in the accompanying picture), bearing in mind that the ribbon of green between iron railings that extends along Colebrooke Row was at that time an open stream, will make the nature of G. D.’s misadventure quite plain.
“Mary Hazlitt”—the daughter of John Hazlitt, the essayist’s brother. See Letter 827.
“I am pleased that H. liked my letter to the Laureate.” Hazlitt wrote, in the essay “On the Pleasures of Hating,” “I think I must be friends with Lamb again, since he has written that magnanimous Letter to Southey, and told him a piece of his mind!” Coleridge also approved of it, and Crabb Robinson’s praise was excessive.]
DEAR Southey,—The kindness of your note has melted away the mist which was upon me. I have been fighting against a shadow. That accursed “Quarterly Review” had vexed me by a gratuitous speaking, of its own knowledge, that the “Confessions of a Drunkard” was a genuine description of the state of the writer. Little things, that are not ill meant, may produce much ill. That might have injured me alive and dead. I am in a public office, and my life is insured. I was prepared for anger, and I thought I saw, in a few obnoxious words, a hard case of repetition directed against me. I wished both magazine and review at the bottom of the sea. I shall be ashamed to see you, and my sister (though innocent) will be still more so; for the folly was done without her knowledge, and has made her uneasy ever since. My guardian angel was absent at that time.
| 628 | LETTERS OF C. AND M. LAMB | Nov. |
I will muster up courage to see you, however, any day next week (Wednesday excepted). We shall hope that you will bring Edith with you. That will be a second mortification. She will hate to see us; but come and heap embers. We deserve it, I for what I’ve done, and she for being my sister.
Do come early in the day, by sun-light, that you may see my Milton.
I am at Colebrook Cottage, Colebrook Row, Islington. A detached whitish house, close to the New River, end of Colebrook Terrace, left hand from Sadler’s Wells.
Will you let me know the day before?
P.S.—I do not think your handwriting at all like Hunt’s. I do not think many things I did think.
[For the right appreciation of this letter Elia’s Letter to Southey must be read (see Vol. I. of the present edition, page 226). It was hard hitting, and though Lamb would perhaps have been wiser had he held his hand, yet Southey had taken an offensive line of moral superiority and rebuke, and much that was said by Lamb was justified.
Southey’s reply, which I am permitted by Miss Warter to print, ran thus:—
My Dear Lamb—On Monday I saw your letter in the London Magazine, which I had not before had an opportunity of seeing, and I now take the first interval of leisure for replying to it.
Nothing could be further from my mind than any intention or apprehension of any way offending or injuring a man concerning whom I have never spoken, thought, or felt otherwise than with affection, esteem, and admiration.
If you had let me know in any private or friendly manner that you felt wounded by a sentence in which nothing but kindness was intended—or that you found it might injure the sale of your book—I would most readily and gladly have inserted a note in the next Review to qualify and explain what had hurt you.
You have made this impossible, and I am sorry for it. But I will not engage in controversy with you to make sport for the Philistines.
The provocation must be strong indeed that can rouse me to do this, even with an enemy. And if you can forgive an unintended offence as heartily as I do the way in which you have resented it, there will be nothing to prevent our meeting as we have heretofore done, and feeling towards each other as we have always been wont to do.
Only signify a correspondent willingness on your part, and send me your address, and my first business next week shall be to reach your door, and shake hands with you and your sister. Remember me to her most kindly and believe me—Yours, with unabated esteem and regards,
The matter closed with this exchange of letters, and no hostility remained on either side.
Lamb’s quarrel with the Quarterly began in 1811, when in a
review of Weber’s edition of
Ford Lamb was described as a “poor
| 1823 | THE INNER MAN | 629 |
“I do not think your handwriting at all like Hunt’s.” Lamb had said, in the Letter, of Leigh Hunt: “His hand-writing is so much the same with your own, that I have opened more than one letter of his, hoping, nay, not doubting, but it was from you, and have been disappointed (he will bear with my saying so) at the discovery of my error.”]
DEAR B. B.—I am ashamed at not acknowledging your kind little poem, which I must needs like much, but I protest I thought I had done it at the moment. Is it possible a letter has miscarried? Did you get one in which I sent you an extract from the poems of Lord Sterling? I should wonder if you did, for I sent you none such.—There was an incipient lye strangled in the birth. Some people’s conscience is so tender! But in plain truth I thank you very much for the verses. I have a very kind letter from the Laureat, with a self-invitation to come and shake hands with me. This is truly handsome and noble. ’Tis worthy of my old idea of Southey. Shall not I, think you, be covered with a red suffusion?
You are too much apprehensive of your complaint. I know
many that are always ailing of it, and live on to a good old age. I know a
merry fellow (you partly know him) who when his Medical Adviser told him he had
drunk away all that part, congratulated himself (now his liver was gone) that
he should be the longest Liver of the two. The best way in these cases is to
keep yourself as ignorant as you can—as ignorant as the world was before
Galen—of the entire inner construction
of the Animal Man—not to be conscious of a midriff—to hold kidneys (save of
sheep and swine) to be an agreeable fiction—not to know whereabout the gall
grows—to account the circulation of the blood an idle whimsey of Harvey’s—
| 630 | LETTERS OF C. AND M. LAMB | Dec. |
I protest I cannot answer thy Sister’s kind enquiry, but I judge I shall put forth no second volume. More praise than buy, and T. and H. are not particularly disposed for Martyrs.
Thou wilt see a funny passage, and yet a true History, of George Dyer’s Aquatic Incursion, in the next “London.” Beware his fate, when thou comest to see me at my Colebrook Cottage. I have filled my little space with my little thoughts. I wish thee ease on thy sofa, but not too much indulgence on it. From my poor desk, thy fellow-sufferer this bright November,
[Again I do not identify the kind little poem. It may have been a trifle enclosed in a letter, which Barton did not print and Lamb destroyed.]
(If I had time I would go over this letter again, and dot all my i’s.)
DEAR Sir,—I should have thanked you for your Books
and Compliments sooner, but have been waiting for a revise to be sent, which
does not come, tho’ I returned the proof on the receit of your letter. I
have read Warner with great pleasure. What an elaborate
piece of alliteration and antithesis! why it must have been a labour far above
the most difficult versification. There is a fine simile of or picture of
Semiramis arming to repel a siege. I do not mean to keep the Book, for I
suspect you are forming a
| 1823 | MARLOWE AND GOETHE | 631 |
“Cut is the branch that bore the goodly
fruit, And wither’d is Apollo’s laurel tree: Faustus is dead.” |
What a noble natural transition from metaphor to plain speaking! as if the figurative had flagged in description of such a Loss, and was reduced to tell the fact simply.—
I must now thank you for your very kind invitation. It is not out of prospect that I may see Manchester some day, and then I will avail myself of your kindness. But Holydays are scarce things with me, and the Laws of attendance are getting stronger and stronger at Leadenhall. But I shall bear it in mind. Meantime something may (more probably) bring you to town, where I shall be happy to see you. I am always to be found (alas!) at my desk in the forepart of the day.
I wonder why they do not send the revise. I leave late at office, and my abode lies out of the way, or I should have seen about it. If you are impatient, Perhaps a Line to the Printer, directing him to send it me, at Accountant’s Office, may answer. You will see by the scrawl that I only snatch a few minutes from intermitting Business.
[Ainsworth had sent Lamb William Warner’s Syrinx; or, A Sevenfold History, 1597. The book was a gift, and is now in the Dyce and Foster library at South Kensington.
Goethe’s Faust. Lamb, as we have seen, had read the account of the play in Madame de Staël’s Germany. He might also have
| 632 | LETTERS OF C. AND M. LAMB | 1823 |
Cut is the branch that might have grown full straight, And burned is Apollo’s laurel bough That sometime grew within this learned man: Faustus is gone. |
“Manchester.” Ainsworth was still a solicitor’s pupil at Manchester. The letter is addressed to him at 10 King’s Street in that city.]
MY dear Sir—You talk of months at a time and I know not what inducements to visit Manchester, Heaven knows how gratifying! but I have had my little month of 1823 already. It is all over, and without incurring a disagreeable favor I cannot so much as get a single holyday till the season returns with the next year. Even our half-hour’s absences from office are set down in a Book! Next year, if I can spare a day or two of it, I will come to Manchester, but I have reasons at home against longer absences.—I am so ill just at present—(an illness of my own procuring last night; who is Perfect?)—that nothing but your very great kindness could make me write. I will bear in mind the letter to W. W., you shall have it quite in time, before the 12.
My aking and confused Head warns me to leave off.—With a muddled sense of gratefulness, which I shall apprehend more clearly to-morrow, I remain, your friend unseen,
Will your occasions or inclination bring you to London? It will give me great pleasure to show you every thing that Islington can boast, if you know the meaning of that very Cockney sound. We have the New River!
I am asham’d of this scrawl: but I beg you to accept it for the present. I am full of qualms.
A fool at 50 is a fool indeed.
| 1823 | A COLD IN THE HEAD | 633 |
[W. W. was Wordsworth.
“A fool at 50 is a fool indeed.” “A fool at forty is a fool indeed” was Young’s line in Satire II. of the series on “Love of Fame.” Lamb was nearing forty-nine.]
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