My Friends and Acquaintance
Charles Lamb X
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X.
CHARLES LAMB AND THE LORD MAYOR.—LAMB,
HAZLITT, AND
SOUTHEY.—LAMB AND THE AUTHOR OF “TREMAINE.”—LAMB’S DEATH.
In glancing through the foregoing “Recollections” of
Charles Lamb, it seems probable that they may be
deemed liable to the objection of not being sufficiently specific—of not dealing enough
with facts—of expressing rather what the writer thought and felt of Lamb than what he knew. Should this complaint be made, it will doubtless be a valid one for those
who make it; but it is one against which I cannot defend myself, because it points at the
precise object, not only of these Recollections, but of all the
others of which the work consists. In fact, I did not go to Charles
Lamb’s house with a note-book in my pocket, ready to slip aside at
every opportunity, and record his “good things” for the benefit of the absent,
or the amusement of those who, had they been present, would have disputed his wit because
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was not dressed in the received mode, and yawned over (if they had
not felt scandalized at) his wisdom, because it was dictated by the heart rather than the
head. Moreover, Lamb was anything but what is understood by “a
wit” and a diseur de mots, in the ordinary
and “company” sense of the phrase,—as the respectable Lord Mayor who invited
him to the City feast of Lord Mayor’s-day in that capacity would have found to his
cost, had Lamb, in that spirit of contradiction which sometimes beset him, accepted the
invitation. Though for the mere sitters-by it would have been capital fun to see him
mystifying my Lord Mayor, scandalizing my Lady Mayoress, confounding the sheriffs, and
putting the whole Court of Aldermen and their wives into a fever of mingled wonder and
indignation, at the unseemly revival of an exploded barbarism; for they would doubtless
have mistaken our incomparable Elia for the
Lord Mayor’s Fool.* The
* I am supposing that Lamb
did not accept this tribute offered to his literary fame; but he may have done so
for anything I know to the contrary. What I am sure of is, that if he had gone, he
would have |
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Boswells of the literary world are excellent and
admirable persons in their way—that is, when they have Doctor
Johnson to deal with. But Lamb was, of all men that
ever lived, the least of a Doctor Johnson; and Heaven preserve us from
a Boswell in his case!—for he would infallibly dissipate the charm and
the fragrance that at present encircle the personal memory of Lamb in
the minds of his friends, and which, if not so disturbed, may descend with him to that
posterity which his name and writings will surely reach.
As my opening Recollections of Charles
Lamb have necessarily connected themselves with the name of William Hazlitt, I shall, perhaps, not be improperly
departing from the spirit of my theme if I allow my closing remarks to again couple them
together. And I do so the rather that my impulse to the act involves in its explanation
certain cha-
taken care to remunerate his inviter as well as
himself in a manner and to an effect something like that which I have supposed in
the text. The story of the invitation I find in Hazlitt’s notice of him in “The Spirit of the Age.” |
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racteristic features in the minds of both these remarkable men.
The truth is, that though Lamb and
Hazlitt were strangely different from each other
in many features of their minds, they were singularly alike in many others—more so,
perhaps, than any other two men of their day. There was a general sympathy between them,
which served to melt away, and as it were fuse together, and bring into something like a
friendly unison and correspondence, those differences themselves,—till they almost took the
character of meeting-points, which brought the two extremes together, when perhaps nothing
else could.
In confirmation of this seemingly fanciful theory, I would refer to two
facts only, as almost demonstrative of it:—I allude first to that magnanimous letter of Charles Lamb’s to Southey, on
the latter paying him some public compliment which could only be accepted, as it was only
offered, at the cost of some imputation on Hazlitt’s character and pursuits. Lamb, on that
occasion, flung back to Southey, with a beautiful indignation almost
bordering on contempt, and in a tone ![]()
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of but half-suppressed bitterness
which I do not believe he ever exhibited on any other occasion, a testimony to his talents
and character which he could not have merited, had the qualifying insinuation, or regret,
or whatever it might be called that accompanied it, also been deserved. If I remember the
circumstances rightly (for I have no means at hand of referring to the record of them on
either side), the gist of Southey’s double offence was a mingled
remonstrance and lamentation at the melancholy fact, that such a man as
Lamb should consort with such a man as
Hazlitt! As if any two men that ever lived were more
exquisitely constituted and qualified to appreciate and admire the large balance of good
over evil that existed in each, and to explain, account for, and excuse the ill, than those
two men! Lamb never did a more noble or beautiful or characteristic
thing than the writing of that memorable letter; and Hazlitt never
experienced a higher or purer intellectual pleasure than in reading it: and though at the
period of its publication Hazlitt had for a long time absented himself
from Lamb’s house and so-![]()
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ciety, on account of
some strange and gratuitous crotchet of his brain, respecting some imagined offence on the
part of Lamb or of himself (for in these cases it was impossible to
tell which)—the letter instantly brought them together again; and there was no division of
their friendship till Hazlitt’s death, fifteen years afterwards.
The other proof I would offer of the natural sympathy between Lamb and Hazlitt, of
which I have spoken, is to be found in the fact, that of all the associates of
Hazlitt’s early days—indeed of his whole literary and social
life—the only one, except his son and myself, who followed him to his grave was
Charles Lamb.
But, perhaps, those readers who are unacquainted with the literary
table-talk of the last twenty years, or have become acquainted with it through a
discolouring and distorting medium, may imagine that there was some good and sufficient
reason for the double-edged insult of Southey, and
the seeming desertion of Hazlitt by his early
friends and associates.
If any reader of this page has imbibed such a notion, I call upon him, in
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of our common nature, and of that sense of justice which is
its fairest and noblest feature, to disabuse himself of the unworthy and utterly unfounded
impression. And that he is bound in truth and honesty to do so, I appeal to every
individual who really knew Hazlitt during the last
fifteen years of his life. That Hazlitt had great and crying faults,
nobody intimately acquainted with him will deny. But they were faults which hurt himself
alone, and were, moreover, inextricably linked with the finer qualities of his nature. The
only one of those faults which brought upon him the obloquy to which the peace and comfort
of his life were sacrificed, was the result of a virtue which nine-tenths of the world (his
maligners included) have the wit to divest themselves of:—what he thought and felt about
other people, whether friends or foes, that he spoke or
wrote,—careless of the consequences to himself, and sparing himself as little as he spared
any one else. Moreover, if a man smote him on one cheek, he did not meekly turn the other,
and crave for it the same process; nor could he ever persuade himself ![]()
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to carry away the affront quietly, merely because it might consist with his worldly
interest to do so. If he was hated and feared more than any other living man, it was
because he saw more deeply than any other man into the legitimate objects of hatred, and
was, by habit as well as temper, not amenable to those convenient restraints and mental
reservations which custom has imposed, in order to guard against the social consequences of
such untoward discoveries. Iago says it was the virtue
of the Venetian dames of his day, “not to leave undone, but to keep
unknown.” It was Hazlitt’s virtue—or vice, if you
please—not merely “to spy into abuses” (for that we can all of us do),
but to feel a sort of moral necessity for dragging them into the light, when he had found
them. He could neither conceal nor palliate a single fault or weakness of his own. Was it
likely, then, that he would be at the trouble of throwing a veil over those of other
people—especially when the only passion of his soul was a love of Truth!
Charles Lamb knew and appreciated these qualities of
Hazlitt’s mind more truly and ![]()
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entirely than any one else, because he found the types of them in his
own; the only but signal difference being, that he (Lamb), while he
saw the truth with an intellectual vision as clear as that of Hazlitt,
was, by the gentleness and moral sweetness of his nature, not merely deterred from exposing
it to those who might have overlooked it, but was impelled to transform or translate it
into symbols of its most striking opposite. Like the “sweet Ophelia,” he “turned to favour and to
prettiness” all the moral evil and deformity that presented itself to his
observation. He could not, or would not, see ugliness anywhere,—except as a sort of
beauty-spot upon the face of beauty; but beauty he could see everywhere, and nowhere
shining so brightly as when in connexion with what others called ugliness.
In a subsequent portion of these volumes—that devoted to the late
accomplished author of “Tremaine,” “De
Vere,” &c.—I have referred in detail to the singular fact, that no part of
the family of either Lamb himself or of Mr. Plumer Ward seem to have ![]()
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been aware
that the beautiful Elizabethan mansion and splendid domain of Gilston Park, which passed
into the possession of Mr. Ward, on his marriage with the relict of
“the last of the Plumers” (in 1828), is the identical
place so celebrated by Lamb in his exquisite Eliaism entitled
“Blakesmoor in
H——shire,” as the almost life-long residence of his maternal grandmother, the
respected housekeeper of the Plumers, and the scene where the happiest
days of Lamb’s childhood were spent. This interesting fact,
which confers a twofold classicality on Gilston, was certainly not known to Mr.
Plumer Ward himself, and is, I believe, now for the first time disclosed to
the world.
There is something inexpressibly shocking in first hearing of a dear
friend’s death through the medium of a public newspaper, at a time, perhaps, when you
believe him to be in perfect health, and are on the point of paying him a too long delayed
visit. Such was my case in respect to Charles Lamb.
Still more painful was the case of a lady, formerly a distinguished ornament of the ![]()
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English stage, to whom Lamb was attached by the
double tie of admiration and friendship.* Several days after
Lamb’s death, she was conversing of him with a mutual
friend, who, taking for granted her knowledge of Lamb’s death,
abruptly referred to some circumstance connected with the event, which for the first time
made her acquainted with it.
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James Boswell (1740-1795)
Scottish man of letters, author of
The Life of Samuel Johnson
(1791).
William Hazlitt (1778-1830)
English essayist and literary critic; author of
Characters of
Shakespeare's Plays (1817),
Lectures on the English Poets
(1818), and
The Spirit of the Age (1825).
Samuel Johnson (1709-1784)
English man of letters, among many other works he edited
A Dictionary
of the English Language (1755) and Shakespeare (1765), and wrote
Lives of the Poets (1779-81).
Frances Maria Kelly (1790-1882)
English actress and singer at Drury Lane and elsewhere; Charles Lamb proposed marriage
and later wrote an essay about her (“Barbara S”) in the
London
Magazine (1825).
Charles Lamb [Elia] (1775-1834)
English essayist and boyhood friend of Coleridge at Christ's Hospital; author of
Essays of Elia published in the
London
Magazine (collected 1823, 1833) and other works.
Robert Southey (1774-1843)
Poet laureate and man of letters whose contemporary reputation depended upon his prose
works, among them the
Life of Nelson, 2 vols (1813),
History of the Peninsular War, 3 vols (1823-32) and
The Doctor, 7 vols (1834-47).
Robert Plumer Ward (1765-1846)
Educated at Christ Church, Oxford, and the Inner Temple; he was Tory MP for Cockermouth
(1802-06) and Haslemere (1807-23) and the author of three novels.
Robert Plumer Ward (1765-1846)
Tremaine: or, the Man of Refinement. 3 vols (London: H. Colburn, 1825). The first “silver fork” novel.
