MANY thanks for the wrap-rascal, but how delicate the insinuating in, into the pocket, of that 3½d., in paper too! Who was it? Amelia, Caroline, Julia, Augusta, or “Scots who have”?
As a set-off to the very handsome present, which I shall lay out in a pot of ale certainly to her health, I have paid sixpence for the mend of two button-holes of the coat now return’d. She shall not have to say, “I don’t care a button for her.” Adieu, tres aimables!
| Buttons | 6d. |
| Gift | 3½ |
| —— | |
| Due from —— | 2½ |
| 884 | LETTERS OF C. AND M. LAMB | March |
[For Joseph Hume see the note to Letter 205, page 455. Mr. Hazlitt writes: “Amelia Hume became Mrs. Bennett, Julia Mrs. Todhunter. The latter personally informed me in 1888 that her Aunt Augusta perfectly recollected all the circumstances [of the present note]. The incident seems to have taken place at the residence of Mr. Hume, in Percy Street, Bloomsbury, and it was Amelia who found the threepence-halfpenny in the coat which Lamb left behind him, and who repaired the button-holes. The sister who is described as ‘Scots wha ha’e’ was Louisa Hume; it was a favourite song with her.” Mrs. Todhunter supplied the date, 1832.]
DR Sir, My friend Aders, a German merchant, German born, has opend to the public at the Suffolk St. Gallery his glorious Collection of old Dutch and German Pictures. Pray see them. You have only to name my name, and have a ticket—if you have not received one already. You will possibly notice ’em, and might lug in the inclosed, which I wrote for Hone’s Year Book, and has appear’d only there, when the Pictures were at home in Euston Sq. The fault of this matchless set of pictures is, the admitting a few Italian pictures with ’em, which I would turn out to make the Collection unique and pure. Those old Albert Durers have not had their fame. I have tried to illustrate ’em. If you print my verses, a Copy, please, for me.
[The first letter to Charles Wentworth Dilke (1789-1864), a friend of Keats, Hunt and Hood, editor of Dodsley and now editor of The Athenæum. Lamb’s verses ran thus:—
Friendliest of men, Aders, I never come Within the precincts of this sacred Room, But I am struck with a religious fear, Which says “Let no profane eye enter here.” With imagery from Heav’n the walls are clothed, Making the things of Time seem vile and loathed. |
| 1832 | COLERIDGE’S “SICK MAN’S FANCY” | 885 |
Spare Saints, whose bodies seem sustain’d by Love With Martyrs old in meek procession move. Here kneels a weeping Magdalen, less bright To human sense for her blurr’d cheeks; in sight Of eyes, new-touch’d by Heaven, more winning fair Than when her beauty was her only care. A Hermit here strange mysteries doth unlock In desart sole, his knees worn by the rock. There Angel harps are sounding, while below Palm-bearing Virgins in white order go. Madonnas, varied with so chaste design, While all are different, each seems genuine, And hers the only Jesus: hard outline, And rigid form, by Durer’s hand subdued To matchless grace, and sacro-sanctitude; Durer, who makes thy slighted Germany Vie with the praise of paint-proud Italy. |
Whoever enter’st here, no more presume To name a Parlour, or a Drawing Room; But, bending lowly to each, holy Story, Make this thy Chapel, and thine Oratory.] |
MY dear Coleridge,—Not an unkind thought has passed in my brain about you. But I have been wofully neglectful of you, so that I do not deserve to announce to you, that if I do not hear from you before then, I will set out on Wednesday morning to take you by the hand. I would do it this moment, but an unexpected visit might flurry you. I shall take silence for acquiescence, and come. I am glad you could write so long a letter. Old loves to, and hope of kind looks from, the Gilmans, when I come.
Yours semper idem
If you ever thought an offence, much more wrote it, against me, it must have been in the times of Noah; and the great waters swept it away. Mary’s most kind love, and maybe a wrong prophet of your bodings!—here she is crying for mere love over your letter. I wring out less, but not sincerer, showers.
My direction is simply, Enfield.
[Mr. Dykes Campbell’s comment upon this note is that it was written to remove some mistaken sick-man’s fancy.]
| 886 | LETTERS OF C. AND M. LAMB | April |
DEAR Kn.—I
will not see London again without seeing your pleasant Play. In meanwhile,
pray, send three or four orders to a Lady who can’t afford to pay:
Miss James, No. 1 Grove Road, Lisson
Grove, Paddington, a day or two before—and come and see us some Evening with my hitherto uncorrupted and honest
bookseller
Moxon.
[I have dated this April, 1832, because it may refer to Knowles’ play “The Hunchback,” produced April 5, 1832. It might also possibly refer to “The Wife” of a year later, but I think not.]
One day in my life
Do come.
I HAVE placed poor Mary at Edmonton—
I shall be very glad to see the Hunch Back and Straitback the 1st Eveng they can come. I am very poorly indeed. I have been cruelly thrown out. Come and don’t let me drink too much. I drank more yesterday than I ever did any one day in my life
Do come.
Cannot your Sister come and take a half bed—or a whole one? Which, alas, we have to spare.
[Mary Lamb would have been taken to Walden House, Edmonton, where mental patients were received. A year later the Lambs moved there altogether.
The Hunchback would be Knowles; the Straitback I do not recognise.
John Forster (1812-1876), whom we now meet for the
first time, one of Lamb’s last new friends, was
the author, later, of Lives of
| 1832 | “BOOKSELLERS AFTER AUTHORS” | 887 |
Mr. Bertram Dobell has a letter from Lamb to Talfourd, belonging probably to the same period, asking him to bring Ryle. He says that Moxon and Knowles are coming; and adds the erratum “for M. and K. read K. and M. Booksellers after authors.” He ends: “Yours till Death; you are mine after”—Talfourd being one of his executors.]
I AM a little more than half alive—
I was more than half dead—
the Ladies are very agreeable—
I flatter myself I am less than disagreeable—
Convey this to Mr. Forster—
Whom, with you, I shall just be able to see some 10 days hence and believe me ever yours
I take Forster’s name to be John,
But you know whom I mean,
the Pym-praiser
not pimp-raiser.
[This letter possibly is not to Moxon at all, as the wrapper (on which is the postmark) may perhaps belong to another letter.]
MY dear Wilson, I cannot let my old friend Mrs. Hazlitt (Sister in Law to poor Wm. Hazlitt) leave Enfield, without endeavouring to introduce
her to you, and to Mrs. Wilson. Her daughter has a School
in your neighbourhood, and for her talents and by [for] her merits I can answer. If it lies in your power to be useful to them in
any way, the obligation to your old office-fellow
| 888 | LETTERS OF C. AND M. LAMB | Oct. |
Poor Mary is ill, or would send her love—
News.—Collet is dead, Du Puy is dead. I am not.—Hone! is turned Believer in Irving and his unknown Tongues.
In the name of dear Defoe which alone might be a Bond of Union between us, Adieu!
[Addressed to Wilson, Burnet House, Bath.
Mrs. Hazlitt was the wife of John Hazlitt, the miniature painter, who died in 1837. I have been unable to trace her daughter’s history.
Collet I do not recognise. Probably an old fellow-clerk at the India House, as was Du Puy (see note on page 327). It is true that Hone was converted by Irving, and became himself a preacher.]
FOR Landor’s kindness I have just esteem. I shall tip him a Letter, when you tell me how to address him.
Give Emma’s kindest regrets that I could not entice her good friend, your Nephew, here.
Her warmest love to the Bury Robinsons—our all three to H. Crab.
[Mr. Macdonald’s transcript adds: “Accompanying copy of Landor’s verses to Emma Isola, and others, contributed to Miss Wordsworth’s Album, and poem written at Wast-water. C. L.”
The Bury Robinsons were Crabb Robinson’s brother and other relatives, whom Miss Isola had met when at Fornham.]
| 1832 | LANDOR AND LAMB | 889 |
DEAR Sir, pray accept a little volume. ’Tis a legacy from Elia, you’ll see. Silver and Gold had he none, but such as he had, left he you. I do not know how to thank you for attending to my request about the Album. I thought you would never remember it. Are not you proud and thankful, Emma?
Many things I had to say to you, which there was not time for. One why should I forget? ’tis for Rose Aylmer, which has a charm I cannot explain. I lived upon it for weeks.—
Next I forgot to tell you I knew all your Welch annoyancers, the measureless Beethams. I knew a quarter of a mile of them. 17 brothers and 16 sisters, as they appear to me in memory. There was one of them that used to fix his long legs on my fender, and tell a story of a shark, every night, endless, immortal. How have I grudged the salt sea ravener not having had his gorge of him!
The shortest of the daughters measured 5 foot eleven without her shoes. Well, some day we may confer about them. But they were tall. Surely I have discover’d the longitude—
Sir, If you can spare a moment, I should be happy to hear from you—that rogue Robinson detained your verses, till I call’d for them. Don’t entrust a bit of prose to the rogue, but believe me
My Sister sends her kind regards.
[Crabb Robinson took Landor to see Lamb on September 28, 1832. The following passage in Forster’s Life of Landor describes the visit and explains this letter:—
The hour he passed with Lamb was one of unalloyed
enjoyment. A letter from Crabb Robinson before
he came over had filled him with affection for that most lovable of men, who had not an
infirmity to which his sweetness of nature did not give something of kinship to a
virtue. “I have just seen Charles and Mary Lamb,” Crabb
Robinson had written (20th October, 1831), “living in absolute
solitude at Enfield. I find your poems lying open before Lamb.
Both tipsy and sober he is ever muttering Rose Aylmer. But it
is not those lines only that have a curious fascination for him. He is always
turning to Gebir for things that haunt him in the same way.” Their
first and last hour was now passed together, and before they parted they were old
friends. I visited Lamb myself (with Barry Cornwall) the following month, and remember the boyish delight
with which he read to us the
| 890 | LETTERS OF C. AND M. LAMB | Oct. |
These were Landor’s verses:—
Etrurian domes, Pelasgian walls, Live fountains, with their nymphs around Terraced and citron-scented halls, Skies smiling upon sacred ground— |
The giant Alps, averse to France, Point with impatient pride to those, Calling the Briton to advance, Amid eternal rocks and snows— |
I dare not bid him stay behind, I dare not tell him where to see The fairest form, the purest mind, Ausonia! that e’er sprang from thee, |
Ah what avails the sceptred race! Ah what the form divine! What every virtue, every grace! Rose Aylmer, all were thine. Rose Aylmer, whom these wakeful eyes May weep, but never see, A night of memories and of sighs I consecrate to thee. |
Of the measureless Bethams Lamb wrote in similar terms, but more fully, in an article in the New Times in 1825, entitled “Many Friends” (see Vol. I., page 270).
On April 9, 1834, Landor wrote to Lady Blessington:—
I do not think that you ever knew Charles Lamb, who is lately dead. Robinson took me to see him.
“Once, and once only, have I seen thy face, Elia! once only has thy tripping tongue Run o’er my heart, yet never has been left Impression on it stronger or more sweet. Cordial old man! what youth was in thy years, What wisdom in thy levity, what soul In every utterance of thy purest breast! Of all that ever wore man’s form, ’tis thee I first would spring to at the gate of Heaven.” |
I say tripping tongue, for Charles Lamb stammered and spoke hurriedly. He did not think it worth while to put on a fine new coat to come down and see me in, as poor Coleridge did, but met me as if I had been a friend of twenty years’ standing; indeed, he told me I had been so, and shewed me some things I had written much longer ago, and had utterly forgotten. The world will never see again two such delightful volumes as “The Essays of Elia;” no man living is capable of writing the worst twenty pages of them. The Continent has Zadig and Gil Blas, we have Elia and Sir Roger de Coverly.
In a letter to Southey the lines differed, ending thus:
Few are the spirits of the glorified I’d spring to earlier at the gate of Heaven.] |
| 1832 | LAMB’S SCHOOLMISTRESS DIES | 891 |
A POOR mad usher (and schoolfellow of mine) has been pestering me through you with poetry and petitions. I have desired him to call upon you for a half sovereign, which place to my account.
I have buried Mrs. Reynolds at last, who has virtually at least bequeath’d me a legacy of £32 per Ann., to which add that my other pensioner is safe housed in the workhouse, which gets me £10.
Richer by both legacies £42 per Ann.
For a loss of a loss is as good as a gain of a gain.
But let this be between ourselves, specially keep it from A—— or I shall speedily have candidates for the Pensions.
Mary is laid up with a cold.
Will you convey the inclosed by hand?
When you come, if you ever do, bring me one Devil’s Visit, I mean Southey’s; also the Hogarth which is complete, Noble’s I think. Six more letters to do. Bring my bill also.
[I do not identify the usher. Mrs. Reynolds, Lamb’s first schoolmistress, we have met. The other pensioner I do not positively identify; presumably it was Morgan, Coleridge’s old friend, to whom Lamb and Southey had each given ten pounds annually from 1819.
A—— I cannot positively identify. Perhaps the philanthropic Allsop.
Southey’s “Devil’s Visit” was a new edition of The Devil’s Walk illustrated by Thomas Landseer.
Noble’s “Hogarth.” Noble was the engraver.]
THANK you for the books. I am ashamed to take tythe
thus of your press. I am worse to a publisher than the two Universities and the
Brit. Mus. A[llan] C[unningham] I will
forthwith read. B[arry] C[ornwall] (I can’t get out of
the A, B, C) I have more than read. Taken altogether, ’tis too Lovey; but what
| 892 | LETTERS OF C. AND M. LAMB | 1832 |
Apple-pie is very good, And so is apple-pasty; But —— O Lard! ’tis very nasty: |
[“I am worse to a publisher.” There is a rule by which a publisher must present copies of every book to the Stationers’ Hall, to be distributed to the British Museum, the Bodleian, and Cambridge University Library.
“A. C. . . . B. C.” Allan Cunningham’s Maid of Elvar and Barry Cornwall’s English Songs, both published by Moxon. This is Barry Cornwall’s “King Death”:—
|
King Death was a rare old fellow!
He sate where no sun could shine;
And he lifted his hand so yellow,
And poured out his coal-black wine.
Hurrah! for the coal-black Wine!
|
|
There came to him many a Maiden,
Whose eyes had forgot to shine;
And Widows, with grief o’erladen,
For a draught of his sleepy wine.
Hurrah! for the coal-black Wine!
|
|
The Scholar left all his learning;
The Poet his fancied woes;
And the Beauty her bloom returning,
Like life to the fading rose.
Hurrah! for the coal-black Wine!
|
| 1832 | MOXON’S REFLECTOR | 893 |
|
All came to the royal old fellow,
Who laugh’d till his eyes dropped brine,
As he gave them his hand so yellow,
And pledged them in Death’s black wine.
Hurrah!—Hurrah!
Hurrah! for the coal-black Wine!
|
By the “Epistle to What’s his Name” Lamb refers to some lines to himself which had been printed first in the London Magazine in 1825, entitled “The Epistle to Charles Lamb.” They are printed in the Appendix, page 962.
“Madame Pasty.” Procter had some lines on Madame Pasta.
“My Specimens.” Lamb’s Dramatic Specimens, which very likely suggested to Procter the idea of “Dramatic Fragments.”
Under the date November 30, 1832, an unsigned letter endorsed from Charles Lamb to Professor Wilson is printed in Mrs. Gordon’s “Christopher North:” A Memoir of John Wilson. Although in its first paragraph it might be Lamb’s, there is evidence to the contrary in the remainder, and I have no doubt that the endorsement was a mistake. It is therefore not printed here.]
THIS is my notion. Wait till you are able to throw away a round sum (say £1500) upon a speculation, and then—don’t do it. For all your loving encouragemts—till this final damp came in the shape of your letter, thanks—for Books also—greet the Fosters and Proctors—and come singly or conjunctively as soon as you can. Johnson and Fare’s sheets have been wash’d—unless you prefer Danby’s last bed—at the Horseshoe.
[I assume Lamb’s advice to refer to Moxon’s intention of founding a paper called The Reflector, which Forster was to edit. All trace of this periodical has vanished, but it existed in December, 1832, for three numbers, and was then withdrawn. Lamb contributed to it.
Johnson and Fare had just murdered—on December 19—a Mr. Danby, at Enfield. They had met him in the Crown and Horseshoes (see note to next Letter).
Mr. W. C. Hazlitt prints a note to Moxon in his Bohn edition in which Lamb advises the withdrawal of The Reflector at once. This would be December, 1832.]
| 894 | LETTERS OF C. AND M. LAMB | Jan. |
To Messrs. Bradbury & Evans, 14 Bouverie Street, Fleet Street. For the Editor of the Reflector from C. Lamb.
I AM very sorry the poor Reflector is abortive. Twas a child of good promise for its weeks. But if the chances are so much against it, withdraw immediately. It is idle up hill waste of money to spend another stamp on it.
[Around the seal of this note are the words in Lamb’s hand: “Obiit Edwardus Reflector Armiger, 31 Dec., 1832. Natus tres hebdomidas. Pax animae ejus.”
The newspaper stamp at that time was fourpence (less 25 per cent.)
Here should come a letter from Lamb to Louisa Badams (née Holcroft), dated December 31, 1832, not available for this edition, in which, after some plain speaking about the Westwoods, Lamb refers to the murder of Mr. Danby at Enfield by Fare and two other men on the night of December 19, and says that he had been in their company at the inn a little before, and the next morning was asked to give his evidence. Canon Ainger says that Lamb’s story is a hoax, but it reads reasonably enough and might as easily have happened as not.]
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