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Memoirs of William Hazlitt

Ch. IX

INTRODUCTION & INDEXES

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Preface

Introduction

Catalogue

Chap. I 1778-1811

Ch. II: 1791-95

Ch. III 1795-98

Ch. IV 1798

Ch. V 1798

Ch. VI 1792-1803

Ch. VII 1803-05

Ch. VIII 1803-05

‣ Ch. IX

Ch. X 1807

Ch. XI 1808

Ch. XII 1808

Ch. XII 1812

Ch. XIV 1814-15

Ch. XV 1814-17

Ch. XVI 1818

Ch. XVII 1820

Ch. XVIII

Ch. XIX

Ch. XX 1821

Ch. I 1821

Ch. II 1821-22

Ch. III 1821-22

Ch. IV 1822

Ch. V 1822

Ch. VI 1822

Ch. VII 1822-23

Ch. VIII 1822

Ch. IX 1823

Ch. X 1824

Ch. XI 1825

Ch. XII 1825

Ch. XIII 1825

Ch. XIV 1825

Ch. XV 1825

Ch. XVI 1825-27

Ch. XVII 1826-28

Ch. XVIII 1829-30

Ch. XIX

Ch. XX

Ch. XXI

Ch. XXII

Ch. XXIII

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128

CHAPTER IX.

‘Free Thoughts on Public Affairs’ published—Miss Lamb’s correspondence with Miss Stoddart—William Hazlitt chiefly at Wem.

Report was rife that a life of the Rev. Joseph Fawcett, Mr. Hazlitt’s early friend, might be expected from the same quarter; but such was not the fact, although Lamb, in a letter of January 15, 1806, strenuously urged Mr. Hazlitt to enter upon it. “You might dish, up a Fawcettiad,” said he, “in three months, and ask 60l. or 80l. for it. I dare say Phillips would catch at it.” He mentions in the same place that Mrs. John Hazlitt had had to make clear to his friend Manning who Fawcett was.

“Mrs. H.,” he writes, “was naming something about a ‘Life of Fawcett’ to be by you undertaken; the great Fawcett, as she explained to Manning, when he asked What Fawcett? He innocently thought Fawcett the player. But Fawcett the divine is known to many people, albeit unknown to the Chinese inquirer.”

This and a companion epistle, the latter dated Feb. 19th, 1806, are printed at length in the corre-

‘FREE THOUGHTS ON PUBLIC AFFAIRS.’

129

spondence. There is nothing in them, beyond the particulars of Godwin’s visits to Johnson on my grandfather’s business, of a personal character. It seems from the second that Johnson had had a fire in his house, and that his nephew Hunter extinguished it; but the catastrophe delayed the publication of the Tucker.

I do not imagine that Mr. Hazlitt ever seriously entertained the project imputed to him here—of writing the life of Fawcett. It was a kind of labour, even if the materials had been at hand, which demanded more research than he was inclined to bestow, and yielded less intellectual profit than the author of the ‘Essay on Human Actions’ was apt to look for. It involved a sort of drudgery which satisfied neither his political nor his literary views.

A task infinitely more congenial to him, if not more conducive to his fame, was the digestion into an octavo pamphlet, which was printed and published this year (1806) without the writer’s name, of certain political theories he had imbibed from reading some years ago Coleridge’s contributions to the Morning Post, and from conversing with that great man on several subsequent occasions. They were notions which had been floating in his head since the beginning of 1800.

He (Mr. H.) was a person of too upright a mind to conceal his indebtedness to others, and he frankly admits, in a note, that for a portion of the contents his ‘Free Thoughts on Public Affairs’ he lay under obligations to Coleridge.

This production, to the generality of readers, is wholly

130

LAMB’S ANECDOTE.

unknown, and the authorship only transpires in a footnote. Incidentally, Lamb, writing to Wordsworth, observes, “He [H.] is, rather imprudently I think, printing a political pamphlet on his own account, and will have to pay for the paper, &c.” He gave Wordsworth, at the same time, an account of a visit he and H. had paid to some house, where H. was abashed by the presence of some pretty girls:—

“W. Hazlitt is in town. I took him to see a very pretty girl, professedly, where there were two young girls—the very head and sum of the girlery was two young girls—they neither laughed, nor sneered, nor giggled, nor whispered—but they were young girls—and he sat and frowned blacker and blacker, indignant that there should be such a thing as youth and beauty, till he tore me away before supper, in perfect misery, and owned he could not bear young girls; they drove him mad. So I took him home to my old nurse, where he recovered perfect tranquillity. Independent of this, and as I am not a young girl myself, he is a great acquisition to us.”

I find no allusion to this tract anywhere in Lamb’s letters to Mr. Hazlitt; but perhaps Mr. Hazlitt may have broached the subject to Lamb in one of those the loss of which has to be lamented. From it I gather another point—that he had now taken to reading Burke. In the concluding paragraph of the ‘Free Thoughts,’ the author sums up briefly thus;—

“I have thus expressed the sentiments which occurred to me in the present situation of our affairs, and some

PROSPECTS.

131

of the steps which led to it. I have done this as freely and unreservedly as I could; because, if they are wrong, it is not likely that they will be much attended to; but if they are right, they may have some use. And I conceive that even they who may think the view I have taken of the measures of the last administration, and the application of particular observations to our own conduct, altogether unfounded, will not deny the truth of the general principles on which they are built.”

Mr. Hazlitt was still dividing his time between Wem and Great Russell Street, still unsettled in his views, and probably not a little disconcerted and vexed at the postponement of the Tucker. He was visiting the Lambs pretty often and pretty intimately when he was up in London, but he passed the greater part of his time in Shropshire. His ‘Free Thoughts on Public Affairs’ had attracted little attention; and if he was not out of pocket by it, he probably did not gain a penny by the sale of the pamphlet. The ‘Essay on Human Actions’ had dropped stillborn from the press; but this was Johnson’s affair.

Miss Stoddart, while matters were in this posture,

132

MISS LAMB’S LETTERS RESUMED.

came to London, and stayed with the Lambs. But William and she did not meet, and perhaps Mr. Turner or Mr. White stood in the way. The next letter of news and advice was sent after her, when she had returned to Winterslow.

[February 17-22,1806.]

“My dear Sarah,

“. . . . I am going to make a sort of promise to myself and to you, that I will write you kind of journal-like letters of the daily what-we-do matters, as they occur. This day seems to me like a new era in our time. It is not a birthday, nor a new year’s day, nor a leave-off-something day; but it is about an hour after the time of leaving you, our poor Phœnix, in the Salisbury stage. . . . Writing plays, novels, poems, and all such kind of vapouring and impossible schemes are floating in my head, which at the same time aches with the thought of parting from you, and is perplexed at the idea of I cannot-tell-what-about notion that I have not made you half so comfortable as I ought to have done, and a melancholy sense of the dull prospect you have before you on your return home; then I think I will make my new gown, and now I consider the white petticoat will be better candle-light worth. . . . .

“So much for an account of my own confused head, and now for yours. Returning home from the Inn, we took that to pieces, and ca[n]vassed you as you know is our usual custom. We agreed we should miss you sadly, and that you had been what you yourself discovered, not at all in our way; and although if the post-

MISS LAMB’S LETTERS RESUMED.

133

master should happen to open this, it would appear to him to be no great compliment; yet you, who enter so warmly into the interior of our affairs, will understand and value it, as well as what we likewise asserted, that since you have been with us you have done but one foolish thing, vide Pinckhorn (excuse my bad Latin if it should chance to mean exactly contrary to what I intend). We praised you for the very friendly way in which you regarded all our whimsies, and, to use a phrase of Coleridge’s, understood us. We had, in short, no drawback on our eulogy on your merit except lamenting the want of respect you have to yourself—the want of a certain dignity of action, you know what I mean, which, though it only broke out in the acceptance of the old justice’s book, and was, as it were, smothered and almost extinct, while you were here; yet is it so native a feeling in your mind, that you will do whatever the present moment prompts you to do, that I wish you would take that one slight offence seriously to heart, and make it a part of your daily consideration to drive this unlucky propensity, root and branch, out of your character. Then, mercy on us, what a perfect little gentlewoman you will be!!!

“You are not yet arrived at the first stage of your journey, yet have I the sense of your absence so strong upon me, that I was really thinking what news I had to send you, and what had happened since you had left us. Truly nothing, except that Martin Burney met us in Lincoln’s Inn Fields, and borrowed fourpence, of the repayment of which sum I will send you due notice.

134

MISS STODDART AND HER LOVERS AGAIN.

“Friday [Feb. 20, 1806]. Last night I told Charles of your matrimonial overtures from Mr. White, and of the cause of that business being at a standstill. . . .

“He wishes you success, and when Coleridge comes, will consult with him about what is best to be done. But I charge you, be most strictly cautious how you proceed yourself. Do not give Mr. W. any reason to think you indiscreet; let him return of his own accord, and keep the probability of his doing so full in your own mind; so I mean as to regulate your whole conduct by that expectation. Do not allow yourself to see, or in any way renew your acquaintance with William, nor do not do any other silly thing of that kind; for you may depend upon it he will be a kind of spy upon you, and if he observes nothing that he disapproves of, you will certainly hear of him again in time.*

“Feb. 21. I have received your letter, and am happy to hear that your mother has been so well in your absence, which I wish had been prolonged a little, for you have been wanted to copy out the farce, in the writing of which I made many an unlucky blunder. . . . I wish you had [been with] us to have given your opinion. I have half a mind to write another copy and send it to you. . . . .

“I miss you sadly, and but for the fidget I have been in about the farce I should have missed you still more. I do not mind being called Widow Blackacre. . . .

“Say all in your mind about your lover now Charles knows of it; he will be as anxious to hear as me. All

* These italics are mine.

MISS STODDART AND HER LOVERS AGAIN.

135

the time we can spare from talking of the characters and plot of the farce, we talk of you. I have got a fresh bottle of brandy to-day: if you were here you should have a glass, three parts brandy, so you should. . . . Charles does not send his love, because he is not here.

“Yours affectionately,

“M. Lamb.

[Endorsed]
“Miss Stoddart, Winterslow, near Salisbury.
“5s. 1d. paid.”

Some coolness appears to have arisen between Miss Stoddart and Mr. White shortly after this, and Miss Stoddart provided herself with a new lover. It may be doubtful, however, whether the affair alluded to in what follows ever reached any serious stage:—

Two days later (March 15, 1806), Lamb wrote off a pretty long letter to Hazlitt, who was still at Wem, in default, it should seem, of any fixed purpose, or any plans for the future. Whether the Stoddart business lay heavily on his mind, and distracted his attention, I honestly do not know. There is not a hint anywhere as to whether he had quarrelled with Miss S., or whether it was she who broke off the correspondence in the prospect of a more advantageous match.

Lamb’s letter is printed by Talfourd, and it is of no use bringing it forward here. It does not contain an atom of home news, or of matter directly personal to the subject of these memoirs; it is all talk about

MISS STODDART AND HER LOVERS.

137

pictures and picture-auctions. He wants to know what H. can be thinking of, to be down in Shropshire, or Wales—hunting, while there is so much in his line going on in town.

Mr. White, it seems, did not respond in a proper manner, did not “return of his own accord;” and in fact it came to nothing. Mr. Turner had not been heard of. Miss Stoddart’s correspondent asks about him. Miss Lamb begins, too, to grow anxious about William, and to think it might not be such a “silly thing,” after all, to renew acquaintance with him:—

A month passed without any letters that we know of. William Hazlitt had put himself outside the stage, and was up in town again, in and out of Lamb’s more than

* He mentioned this once, however, as a peculiarity he had observed in Mr. Hazlitt’s character.

WILLIAM HAZLITT IN TOWN.

139

ever; reconciling Lamb to the loss of Manning, as Mary tells us, but domiciled, as usual, at his brother John’s in Great Russell Street.* Miss Stoddart had not ventured to London, nor had the Lambs gone down to see her at Winterslow, as was talked about. Mary’s next shows that Mr. Turner’s star was still in the ascendant, and that Sarah was not quite explicit enough about him to please her friend. The letter opens with “Hazlitt” and Charles starting for Sadler’s Wells together. The former could almost count upon his fingers as yet the times he had seen the inside of a playhouse; but not so his companion:—

[Saturday.]

“They (Hazlitt and Charles) came home from Sadler’s Wells so dismal and dreary dull on Friday, that I gave them both a good scolding—quite a setting to rights; and I think it has done some good, for Charles has been very cheerful ever since.

“Write directly, for I am uneasy about your lover. I wish something was settled.

“God bless you. Once more, yours affectionately,

“M. Lamb.

“Sunday morning.—I did not put your letter in the post, hoping to be able to write a less dull letter, but I have been prevented, so it shall go as it is. . . . . .

MISS STODDART’S NEW LOVER.

141

“I am cooking a shoulder of Lamb (Hazlitt dines with us); It will be ready at two o’clock, if you can pop in and eat a bit with us.

“Miss Stoddart,
“Winterslow, near Salisbury.”

While Mr. Turner and Mr. White were still wavering and uncertain, and Miss Stoddart—disappointed in the hope held out to her by the Doctor of a Maltese husband—was still resident with her mother at Salisbury, another person all at once started up, a Mr. Dowling, the owner or lessee of a farm in the neighbourhood. The matter was progressing in a highly satisfactory manner, when Miss Lamb wrote to her old friend on the 22nd October, 1806:—

* Miss Stoddart was only thirty-one or thirty-two, however.

LAMB’S ‘MR. H.’

143

Corydon Dowling was a Wiltshire man, and so a countryman of Miss Stoddart and her family. I cannot help suspecting that Corydon had an unpastoral eye to certain messuages in the village of Winterslow, appertaining to the new lady of his heart. For the present, adieu to Mr. Dowling, and let us see what is passing somewhere else.

My grandfather was still, or at all events again, in London, when Lamb’s farce of ‘Mr. H.’ was brought out on the 10th December, 1806, at Drury Lane. The first piece was the opera of ‘The Travellers.’ My grandfather and Lamb had placed themselves in the first row of the pit. There was a good deal of applause at the conclusion of the prologue, and among the applauders Lamb himself was not the least vociferous. But the thing was hopelessly damned. Gentleman Lewis was there, and said that he could have made a good piece of it by a few judicious curtailments—“the most popular little thing that had been brought out for some time.” But it was agreed on all sides (Lamb himself was the only dissentient voice) that if a tragedy had preceded, instead of ‘The Travellers,’ it might have done well.

It is said that the author joined in the hissing as he had done in the applause. We know that Horace Smith once did the same thing exactly on a first night. I am tempted to print the letter which the author wrote to Miss Stoddart the very next day, communicating the news of his failure. It is given by Talfourd, but not so accurately as could have been wished:—

144

FAILURE OF ‘MR. H.’