LETTER 232
CHARLES LAMB TO WILLIAM WORDSWORTH
[P.M. September 23, 1816.]
My dear Wordsworth, It seems an age since we have corresponded, but indeed the interim has been stuffd out with more variety than usually checquers my same-seeming existence.—Mercy on me, what a traveller have I been since I wrote you last! what foreign wonders have been explored! I have seen Bath, King Bladud's ancient well, fair Bristol, seed-plot of suicidal Chatterton, Marlbro', Chippenham, Calne, famous for nothing in particular that I know of—but such a vertigo of locomotion has not seized us for years. We spent a month with the Morgans at the last named Borough—August—and such a change has the change wrought in us that we could not stomach wholesome Temple air, but are absolutely rusticating (O the gentility of it) at Dalston, about one mischievous boy's stone's throw off Kingsland Turnpike, one mile from Shoreditch church,—thence we emanate in various directions to Hackney, Clapton, Totnam, and such like romantic country. That my lungs should ever prove so dainty as to fancy they perceive differences of air! but so it is, tho' I am almost ashamed of it, like Milton's devil (turn'd truant to his old Brimstone) I am purging off the foul air of my once darling tobacco in this Eden, absolutely snuffing up pure gales, like old worn out Sin playing at being innocent, which never comes again, for in spite of good books and good thoughts there is something in a Pipe that virtue cannot give tho' she give her unendowed person for a dowry. Have you read the review of Coleridge's character, person, physiognomy &c. in the Examiner—his features even to his nose—O horrible license beyond the old Comedy. He is himself gone to the sea side with his favorite Apothecary, having left for publication as I hear a prodigious mass of composition for a Sermon to the middling ranks of people to persuade them they are not so distressed as is commonly supposed. Methinks he should recite it to a congregation of Bilston Colliers,—the fate of Cinna the Poet would instantaneously be his. God bless him, but certain that rogue Examiner has beset him in most unmannerly strains. Yet there is a kind of respect shines thro' the disrespect that to those who know the rare compound (that is the subject of it) almost balances the reproof, but then those who know him but partially or at a distance are so extremely apt to drop the qualifying part thro' their fingers. The "after all, Mr. Wordsworth is a man of great talents, if he did not abuse them" comes so dim upon the eyes of an Edinbro' review reader, that have been gloating-open chuckle-wide upon the preceding detail of abuses, it scarce strikes the pupil with any consciousness of the letters being there, like letters writ in lemon. There was a cut at me a few months back by the same hand, but my agnomen or agni-nomen not being calculated to strike the popular ear, it dropt anonymous, but it was a pretty compendium of observation, which the author has collected in my disparagement, from some hundreds of social evenings which we had spent together,—however in spite of all, there is something tough in my attachment to H—— which these violent strainings cannot quite dislocate or sever asunder. I get no conversation in London that is absolutely worth attending to but his. There is monstrous little sense in the world, or I am monstrous clever, or squeamish or something, but there is nobody to talk to—to talk with I should say—and to go talking to one's self all day long is too much of a good thing, besides subjecting one to the imputation of being out of one's senses, which does no good to one's temporal interest at all. By the way, I have seen Coler'ge but once this 3 or 4 months. He is an odd person, when he first comes to town he is quite hot upon visiting, and then he turns off and absolutely never comes at all, but seems to forget there are any such people in the world. I made one attempt to visit him (a morning call) at Highgate, but there was something in him or his apothecary which I found so unattractively-repulsing-from any temptation to call again, that I stay away as naturally as a Lover visits. The rogue gives you Love Powders, and then a strong horse drench to bring 'em off your stomach that they mayn't hurt you. I was very sorry the printing of your Letter was not quite to your mind, but I surely did not think but you had arranged the manner of breaking the paragraphs from some principle known to your own mind, and for some of the Errors, I am confident that Note of Admiration in the middle of two words did not stand so when I had it, it must have dropt out and been replaced wrong, so odious a blotch could not have escaped me. Gifford (whom God curse) has persuaded squinting Murray (whom may God not bless) not to accede to an offer Field made for me to print 2 vols. of Essays, to include the one on Hog'rth and 1 or 2 more, but most of the matter to be new, but I dare say I should never have found time to make them; M. would have had 'em, but shewed specimens from the Reflector to G—-, as he acknowleged to Field, and Crispin did for me. "Not on his soal but on his soul, damn'd Jew" may the malediction of my eternal antipathy light—We desire much to hear from you, and of you all, including Miss Hutchinson, for not writing to whom Mary feels a weekly (and did for a long time feel a daily) Pang. How is Southey?—I hope his pen will continue to move many years smoothly and continuously for all the rubs of the rogue Examiner. A pertinacious foul-mouthed villain it is!
This is written for a rarity at the seat of business: it is but little time I can generally command from secular calligraphy—the pen seems to know as much and makes letters like figures—an obstinate clerkish thing. It shall make a couplet in spite of its nib before I have done with it,
"and so I end
Commending me to your love, my dearest friend."
from Leaden Hall, Septem'r something, 1816
C. LAMB.
[The Lambs had taken summer lodgings—at 14 Kingsland Row,
Dalston—which they retained for some years.
Hazlitt's article on Coleridge was in The Examiner for September 8. Among other things Hazlitt said: "Mr. Shandy would have settled the question at once: 'You have little or no nose, Sir.'"
One passage in the article gives colour to the theory that Hazlitt occasionally borrowed from Lamb's conversation. In Lamb's letter to Wordsworth of April 20, 1816, he has the celebrated description of Coleridge, "an archangel a little damaged." Hazlitt in this article writes: "If he had had but common moral principle, that is, sincerity, he would have been a great man; nor hardly, as it is, appears to us—
"'Less than arch-angel ruined, and the excess
Of glory obscur'd.'"
Hazlitt may have heard Lamb's epithet, backed probably by the same passage from_ Paradise Lost_.
Crabb Robinson tells us, in his Diary, that Coleridge was less hurt by the article than he anticipated. "He denies H., however, originality, and ascribes to L. [Lamb] the best ideas in H.'s articles. He was not displeased to hear of his being knocked down by John Lamb lately."
Coleridge's new work was The Statesman's Manual; or, the Bible the best Guide to Political Skill and Foresight: A Lay Sermon, 1816. It had been first announced as "A Lay Sermon on the Distresses of the Country, addressed to the Middle and Higher Orders," and Hazlitt's article had been in the nature of an anticipatory review.
I do not find anywhere the "cut" at Lamb from Hazlitt's hand, or indeed any one's hand, to which Lamb refers. Hazlitt at this time was living at No. 19 York Street, Westminster, in Milton's old house.
"Agni-nomen." From agnus, a lamb.
"After all, Mr. Wordsworth …"—the Edinburgh Review article on The Excursion, in November, 1814, beginning, "This will never do," had at least two lapses into fairness: "But the truth is, that Mr. Wordsworth, with all his perversities, is a person of great powers"; and "Nobody can be more disposed to do justice to the great powers of Mr. Wordsworth than we are."
"The printing of your Letter." The Letter to a Friend of Burns (see above).
"2 vols. of Essays." These were printed with poems as The Works of Charles Lamb by the Olliers in 1818 (see later).
"Crispin"—Gifford (see note to the letter to Wordsworth, early January, 1815).
"Southey." Hazlitt's attacks on the Laureate were continuous.]
LETTER 233
MARY LAMB TO SARAH HUTCHINSON
[No date. Middle of November, 1816.]
Inner Temple.
My dear friend, I have procured a frank for this day, and having been hindered all the morning have no time left to frame excuses for my long and inexcusable silence, and can only thank you for the very kind way in which you overlook it. I should certainly have written on the receipt of yours but I had not a frank, and also I wished to date my letter from my own home where you expressed so cordial a wish to hear we had arrived. We have passed ten, I may call them very good weeks, at Dalston, for they completely answered the purpose for which we went. Reckoning our happy month at Calne, we have had quite a rural summer, and have obtained a very clear idea of the great benefit of quiet—of early hours and time intirely at one's own disposal, and no small advantages these things are; but the return to old friends—the sight of old familiar faces round me has almost reconciled me to occasional headachs and fits of peevish weariness—even London streets, which I sometimes used to think it hard to be eternally doomed to walk through before I could see a green field, seem quite delightful.
Charles smoked but one pipe while we were at Dalston and he has not transgressed much since his return. I hope he will only smoke now with his fellow-smokers, which will give him five or six clear days in the week. Shame on me, I did not even write to thank you for the bacon, upon which, and some excellent eggs your sister added to her kind present, we had so many nice feasts. I have seen Henry Robinson, who speaks in raptures of the days he passed with you. He says he never saw a man so happy in three wives as Mr. Wordsworth is. I long to join you and make a fourth, and we cannot help talking of the possibility in some future fortunate summer of venturing to come so far, but we generally end in thinking the possibility impossible, for I dare not come but by post chaises, and the expence would be enormous, yet it was very pleasing to read Mrs. Wordsworth's kind invitation and to feel a kind of latent hope of what might one day happen.
You ask how Coleridge maintains himself. I know no more than you do. Strange to say, I have seen him but once since he has been at Highgate, and then I met him in the street. I have just been reading your kind letter over again and find you had some doubt whether we had left the Temple entirely. It was merely a lodging we took to recruit our health and spirits. From the time we left Calne Charles drooped sadly, company became quite irksome, and his anxious desire to leave off smoking, and his utter inability to perform his daily resolutions against it, became quite a torment to him, so I prevailed with him to try the experiment of change of scene, and set out in one of the short stage coaches from Bishopsgate Street, Miss Brent and I, and we looked over all the little places within three miles and fixed on one quite countrified and not two miles from Shoreditch Church, and entered upon it the next day. I thought if we stayed but a week it would be a little rest and respite from our troubles, and we made a ten weeks stay, and very comfortable we were, so much so that if ever Charles is superannuated on a small pension, which is the great object of his ambition, and we felt our income straitened, I do think I could live in the country entirely—at least I thought so while I was there but since I have been at home I wish to live and die in the Temple where I was born. We left the trees so green it looked like early autumn, and can see but one leaf "The last of its clan" on our poor old Hare Court trees. What a rainy summer!—and yet I have been so much out of town and have made so much use of every fine day that I can hardly help thinking it has been a fine summer. We calculated we walked three hundred and fifty miles while we were in our country lodging. One thing I must tell you, Charles came round every morning to a shop near the Temple to get shaved. Last Sunday we had such a pleasant day, I must tell you of it. We went to Kew and saw the old Palace where the King was brought up, it was the pleasantest sight I ever saw, I can scarcely tell you why, but a charming old woman shewed it to us. She had lived twenty six years there and spoke with such a hearty love of our good old King, whom all the world seems to have forgotten, that it did me good to hear her. She was as proud in pointing out the plain furniture (and I am sure you are now sitting in a larger and better furnished room) of a small room in which the King always dined, nay more proud of the simplicity of her royal master's taste, than any shower of Carlton House can be in showing the fine things there, and so she was when she made us remark the smallness of one of the Princesses' bedrooms, and said she slept and also dressed in that little room. There are a great many good pictures but I was most pleased with one of the King when he was about two years old, such a pretty little white-headed boy.
I cannot express how much pleasure a letter from you gives us. If I could promise my self I should be always as well as I am now, I would say I will be a better correspondent in future. If Charles has time to add a line I shall be less ashamed to send this hasty scrawl. Love to all and every one. How much I should like once more to see Miss Wordsworth's handwriting, if she would but write a postscript to your next, which I look to receive in a few days.
Yours affectionately
M. LAMB.
[Charles Lamb adds at the head:—]
Mary has barely left me room to say How d'ye. I have received back the
Examiner containing the delicate enquiry into certain infirm parts of S.
T. C.'s character. What is the general opinion of it? Farewell. My love
to all.
C. LAMB.
["Miss Brent." Mrs. Morgan's sister.
Crabb Robinson had been in the Lake Country in September and October.
"To a shop near the Temple." Possibly to Mr. A—— of Flower-de-Luce Court, mentioned by Lamb in the footnote to his essay "On the Melancholy of Tailors" (see Vol. I.).
"Our good old King"—George III., then in retirement. Carlton House was the home of the Regent, whom Lamb (and probably his sister) detested—as his "Triumph of the Whale" and other squibs (see Vol. IV.) show.
Here should come a letter to Rickman, dated December 30, 1816. The chief news in it is that George Dyer has been made one of Lord Stanhope's ten Residuary Legatees. This, says Lamb, will settle Dyer's fate: he will have to throw his dirty glove at some one and marry.]
LETTER 234
MARY LAMB TO SARAH HUTCHINSON
[No date. ? Late 1816.]
My dear Miss Hutchinson, I had intended to write you a long letter, but as my frank is dated I must send it off with a bare acknowledgment of the receipt of your kind letter. One question I must hastily ask you. Do you think Mr. Wordsworth would have any reluctance to write (strongly recommending to their patronage) to any of his rich friends in London to solicit employment for Miss Betham as a Miniature Painter? If you give me hopes that he will not be averse to do this, I will write to you more fully stating the infinite good he would do by performing so irksome a task as I know asking favours to be. In brief, she has contracted debts for printing her beautiful poem of "Marie," which like all things of original excellence does not sell at all.
These debts have led to little accidents unbecoming a woman and a poetess to suffer. Retirement with such should be voluntary.
[Charles Lamb adds:—]
The Bell rings. I just snatch the Pen out of my sister's hand to finish rapidly. Wordsw'th. may tell De Q that Miss B's price for a Virgin and Child is three guineas.
Yours (all of you) ever
C. L.
["De Q"—Thomas de Quincey (1785-1859), the "opium-eater," then living at Grasmere. Lamb and De Quincey had first met in 1804; but it was not until 1821 that they became really intimate, when Lamb introduced him to the London Magazine.
Miss Betham painted miniature portraits, among others, of Mrs. S. T.
Coleridge and Sara Coleridge.
Here should come a note to William Ayrton dated April 18, 1817, thanking him for much pleasure at "Don Giovanni" (see note to next letter).
Somewhen in 1816 should come a letter from Lamb to Leigh Hunt on the publication of The Story of Rimini, mentioned in Leigh Hunt's Correspondence, of which this is the only sentence that is preserved: "The third Canto is in particular my favourite: we congratulate you most sincerely on the trait [? taste] of your prison fruit."]
LETTER 235
CHARLES LAMB TO WILLIAM AYRTON EPISTLE TO WILL'M. AYRTON ESQ'RE.
Temple, May 12, 1817.
My dear friend,
Before I end,—
Have you any
More orders for Don Giovanni
To give
Him that doth live
Your faithful Zany?
Without raillery
I mean Gallery
Ones:
For I am a person that shuns
All ostentation
And being at the top of the fashion;
And seldom go to operas
But in formâ pauperis.
I go to the play
In a very economical sort of a way,
Rather to see
Than be seen.
Though I'm no ill sight
Neither,
By candle-light,
And in some kinds of weather.
You might pit me
For height
Against Kean;
But in a grand tragic scene
I'm nothing:—
It would create a kind of loathing
To see me act Hamlet;
There'd be many a damn let
Fly
At my presumption
If I should try,
Being a fellow of no gumption.
By the way, tell me candidly how you relish
This, which they call
The lapidary style?
Opinions vary.
The late Mr. Mellish
Could never abide it.
He thought it vile,
And coxcombical.
My friend the Poet Laureat,
Who is a great lawyer at
Anything comical,
Was the first who tried it;
But Mellish could never abide it.
But it signifies very little what Mellish said,
Because he is dead.
For who can confute
A body that's mute?—
Or who would fight
With a senseless sprite?—
Or think of troubling
An impenetrable old goblin
That's dead and gone,
And stiff as stone,
To convince him with arguments pro and con,
As if some live logician,
Bred up at Merton,
Or Mr. Hazlitt, the Metaphysician—
Hey, Mr. Ayrton!
With all your rare tone.
For tell me how should an apparition
List to your call,
Though you talk'd for ever,—
Ever so clever,
When his ear itself,
By which he must hear, or not hear at all,
Is laid on the shelf?
Or put the case
(For more grace)
It were a female spectre—
Now could you expect her
To take much gust
In long speeches,
With her tongue as dry as dust,
In a sandy place,
Where no peaches,
Nor lemons, nor limes, nor oranges hang,
To drop on the drought of an arid harangue,
Or quench,
With their sweet drench,
The fiery pangs which the worms inflict,
With their endless nibblings,
Like quibblings,
Which the corpse may dislike, but can ne'er contradict—
Hey, Mr. Ayrton?
With all your rare tone—
I am.
C. LAMB.
[The text is from Ayrton's transcript in a private volume lately in the possession of Mr. Edward Ayrton, lettered Lamb's Works, Vol. III., uniform with the 1818 edition.
William Ayrton (1777-1858), a friend and neighbour of the Burneys, and a member of Lamb's whist-playing set, was a musical critic, and at this time director of the King's Theatre in the Haymarket, where he had just produced Mozart's "Don Giovanni." His wife was Marianne Arnold, sister of Samuel James Arnold, manager of the Lyceum Theatre.
"You might pit me for height against Kean." This was so. Edmund Kean was small in stature, though not so "immaterially" built as Lamb is said to have been.
"Mr. Mellish." Possibly the Joseph Charles Mellish who translated
Schiller.
The Laureate, Southey, had first tried the lapidary style in "Gooseberry
Pie"; later, without rhymes, in "Thalaba."
Some time in the intervening three months before the next letter the
Lambs went to Brighton for their holiday.]
LETTER 236
CHARLES LAMB TO BARRON FIELD
Aug. 31st, 1817.
My dear Barren,—The bearer of this letter so far across the seas is Mr. Lawrey, who comes out to you as a missionary, and whom I have been strongly importuned to recommend to you as a most worthy creature by Mr. Fenwick, a very old, honest friend of mine, of whom, if my memory does not deceive me, you have had some knowledge heretofore as editor of the "Statesman"—a man of talent, and patriotic. If you can show him any facilities in his arduous undertaking, you will oblige us much. Well, and how does the land of thieves use you? and how do you pass your time in your extra-judicial intervals? Going about the streets with a lantern, like Diogenes, looking for an honest man? You may look long enough, I fancy. Do give me some notion of the manners of the inhabitants where you are. They don't thieve all day long, do they? No human property could stand such continuous battery. And what do they do when they an't stealing?
Have you got a theatre? What pieces are performed? Shakespear's, I suppose—not so much for the poetry, as for his having once been in danger of leaving his country on account of certain "small deer."
Have you poets among you? Cursed plagiarists, I fancy, if you have any.
I would not trust an idea or a pocket-handkerchief of mine among 'em.
You are almost competent to answer Lord Bacon's problem, whether a
nation of atheists can subsist together. You are practically in one:—
"So thievish 'tis, that the eighth commandment itself
Scarce seemeth there to be."
Our old honest world goes on with little perceptible variation. Of course you have heard of poor Mitchell's death, and that G. Dyer is one of Lord Stanhope's residuaries. I am afraid he has not touched much of the residue yet. He is positively as lean as Cassius. Barnes is going to Demerara or Essequibo, I am not quite certain which. A[lsager] is turned actor. He came out in genteel comedy at Cheltenham this season, and has hopes of a London engagement.
For my own history, I am just in the same spot, doing the same thing (videlicet, little or nothing,) as when you left me; only I have positive hopes that I shall be able to conquer that inveterate habit of smoking which you may remember I indulged in. I think of making a beginning this evening, viz., Sunday 31st August, 1817, not Wednesday, 2nd Feb., 1818, as it will be perhaps when you read this for the first time. There is the difficulty of writing from one end of the globe (hemispheres I call 'em) to another! Why, half the truths I have sent you in this letter will become lies before they reach you, and some of the lies (which I have mixed for variety's sake, and to exercise your judgment in the finding of them out) may be turned into sad realities before you shall be called upon to detect them. Such are the defects of going by different chronologies. Your now is not my now; and again, your then is not my then; but my now may be your then, and vice versá. Whose head is competent to these things?
How does Mrs. Field get on in her geography? Does she know where she is by this time? I am not sure sometimes you are not in another planet; but then I don't like to ask Capt. Burney, or any of those that know anything about it, for fear of exposing my ignorance.
Our kindest remembrances, however, to Mrs. F., if she will accept of reminiscences from another planet, or at least another hemisphere.
C. L.
[This is Lamb's first letter that has been preserved to Barron Field. Barron Field (1786-1846) was a lawyer, a son of Henry Field, apothecary to Christ's Hospital, and brother of a fellow-clerk of Lamb's in the India House. He had also been a contributor to Leigh Hunt's Reflector in 1810-1812. Field was appointed Judge of the Supreme Court of New South Wales, whither he sailed in 1816, reaching Sydney in February, 1817. His wife was a Miss Jane Carncroft.
This letter forms the groundwork of Lamb's Elia essay on "Distant Correspondents" (see Vol. II.), which may be read with it as an example of the difference in richness between Lamb's epistolary and finished literary style.
"So thievish 'tis …" A perversion of Coleridge's lines, in The
Ancient Mariner:—
So lonely 'twas, that God himself
Scarce seemed there to be.
"Poor Mitchell's death." This may have been one of the lies referred to a little lower. If so, Thomas Mitchell (1783-1845) was probably intended, as he had been at Christ's Hospital, and was a friend of Leigh Hunt's, and might thus have known Lamb and Field. He translated Aristophanes. The only Mitchell of any importance who died in 1817 was Colonel Mitchell, who commanded a brigade at Waterloo; but Lamb would hardly know anything of him.
George Dyer, who had been tutor in the family of the third Earl of Stanhope (Citizen Stanhope), was one of the ten executors to whom that peer's estate was left, after paying a few legacies. Among them was another of Lamb's acquaintances, Joseph Jekyll, mentioned in the Elia essay on the Old Benchers. Dyer repudiated the office, but the heir persuaded him to accept an annuity.
Thomas Barnes (1785-1841), another old Christ's Hospitaller, and a contributor to The Reflector, became editor of The Times in 1817. His projected journey was one of the "lies"; nor did Alsager, another Times man, whom we have already met, turn actor.]
LETTER 237
CHARLES LAMB TO JAMES AND LOUISA KENNEY
Londres, October, [1817].
Dear Friends,—It is with infinite regret I inform you that the pleasing privilege of receiving letters, by which I have for these twenty years gratified my friends and abused the liberality of the Company trading to the Orient, is now at an end. A cruel edict of the Directors has swept it away altogether. The devil sweep away their patronage also. Rascals who think nothing of sponging upon their employers for their Venison and Turtle and Burgundy five days in a week, to the tune of five thousand pounds in a year, now find out that the profits of trade will not allow the innocent communication of thought between their underlings and their friends in distant provinces to proceed untaxed, thus withering up the heart of friendship and making the news of a friend's good health worse than indifferent, as tidings to be deprecated as bringing with it ungracious expenses. Adieu, gentle correspondence, kindly conveyance of soul, interchange of love, of opinions, of puns and what not! Henceforth a friend that does not stand in visible or palpable distance to me, is nothing to me. They have not left to the bosom of friendship even that cheap intercourse of sentiment the twopenny medium. The upshot is, you must not direct any more letters through me. To me you may annually, or biennially, transmit a brief account of your goings on [on] a single sheet, from which after I have deducted as much as the postage comes to, the remainder will be pure pleasure. But no more of those pretty commission and counter commissions, orders and revoking of orders, obscure messages and obscurer explanations, by which the intellects of Marshall and Fanny used to be kept in a pleasing perplexity, at the moderate rate of six or seven shillings a week. In short, you must use me no longer as a go-between. Henceforth I write up NO THOROUGHFARE.
Well, and how far is Saint Valery from Paris; and do you get wine and walnuts tolerable; and the vintage, does it suffer from the wet? I take it, the wine of this season will be all wine and water; and have you any plays and green rooms, and Fanny Kellies to chat with of an evening; and is the air purer than the old gravel pits, and the bread so much whiter, as they say? Lord, what things you see that travel! I dare say the people are all French wherever you go. What an overwhelming effect that must have! I have stood one of 'em at a time, but two I generally found overpowering, I used to cut and run; but, then, in their own vineyards may be they are endurable enough. They say marmosets in Senegambia are so pleasant as the day's long, jumping and chattering in the orange twigs; but transport 'em, one by one, over here into England, they turn into monkeys, some with tails, some without, and are obliged to be kept in cages.
I suppose you know we've left the Temple pro tempore. By the way, this conduct has caused strange surmises in a good lady of our acquaintance. She lately sent for a young gentleman of the India House, who lives opposite her, at Monroe's, the flute shop in Skinner Street, Snow Hill,—I mention no name, you shall never get out of me what lady I mean,—on purpose to ask all he knew about us. I had previously introduced him to her whist-table. Her inquiries embraced every possible thing that could be known of me, how I stood in the India house, what was the amount of my salary, what it was likely to be hereafter, whether I was thought to be clever in business, why I had taken country lodgings, why at Kingsland in particular, had I friends in that road, was anybody expected to visit me, did I wish for visitors, would an unexpected call be gratifying or not, would it be better if she sent beforehand, did anybody come to see me, wasn't there a gentleman of the name of Morgan, did he know him, didn't he come to see me, did he know how Mr. Morgan lived, she never could make out how they were maintained, was it true that he lived out of the profits of a linendraper's shop in Bishopsgate Street (there she was a little right, and a little wrong—M. is a gentleman tobacconist); in short, she multiplied demands upon him till my friend, who is neither over-modest nor nervous, declared he quite shuddered. After laying as bare to her curiosity as an anatomy he trembled to think what she would ask next. My pursuits, inclinations, aversions, attachments (some, my dear friends, of a most delicate nature), she lugged 'em out of him, or would, had he been privy to them, as you pluck a horse-bean from its iron stem, not as such tender rosebuds should be pulled. The fact is I am come to Kingsland, and that is the real truth of the matter, and nobody but yourselves should have extorted such a confession from me. I suppose you have seen by the Papers that Manning is arrived in England. He expressed some mortifications at not finding Mrs. Kenney in England. He looks a good deal sunburnt, and is got a little reserved, but I hope it will wear off. You will see by the Papers also that Dawe is knighted. He has been painting the Princess of Coborg and her husband. This is all the news I could think of. Write to us, but not by us, for I have near ten correspondents of this latter description, and one or other comes pouring in every day, till my purse strings and heart strings crack. Bad habits are not broken at once. I am sure you will excuse the apparent indelicacy of mentioning this, but dear is my shirt, but dearer is my skin, and it's too late when the steed is stole, to shut the door.—Well, and does Louisa grow a fine girl, is she likely to have her mother's complexion, and does Tom polish in French air—Henry I mean—and Kenney is not so fidgety, and YOU sit down sometimes for a quiet half-hour or so, and all is comfortable, no bills (that you call writs) nor anything else (that you are equally sure to miscall) to annoy you? Vive la gaite de coeur et la bell pastime, vive la beau France et revive ma cher Empreur.
C. LAMB.
[James Kenney and his wife were now living at St. Valery. Marshall was
Godwin's old friend, whom we have already seen, and Fanny was Fanny
Holcroft.
Lamb's friend Fanny Kelly is first mentioned by Lamb in this letter. Frances Maria Kelly (1790-1882), to give her her full name, was then playing at the Lyceum. We shall soon see much of her.
"We've left the Temple pro tempore"—referring to the Dalston lodgings.
"What lady I mean." Mrs. Godwin lived in Skinner Street.
Manning, on his return from China, was wrecked near Sunda on February 17, 1817. The passengers were taken to St. Helena, and he did not reach England until the summer. This must give us the date of the present letter, previously attributed to October, 1816.
George Dawe was not knighted. Probably it was rumoured that he was to be. His portrait of Princess Charlotte of Saxe-Coburg (who died in 1817 so soon after her marriage) was very popular.
Louisa would be Louisa Holcroft. In Tom Holcroft, Lamb later took some interest.]
LETTER 238
MARY LAMB TO DOROTHY WORDSWORTH
[P.M. November 21, 1817.]
My dear Miss Wordsworth, Your kind letter has given us very great pleasure,—the sight of your hand writing was a most welcome surprize to us. We have heard good tidings of you by all our friends who were so fortunate as to visit you this summer, and rejoice to see it confirmed by yourself. You have quite the advantage in volunteering a letter. There is no merit in replying to so welcome a stranger.
We have left the Temple. I think you will be sorry to hear this. I know I have never been so well satisfied with thinking of you at Rydal Mount as when I could connect the idea of you with your own Grasmere Cottage. Our rooms were dirty and out of repair, and the inconveniences of living in chambers became every year more irksome, and so at last we mustered up resolution enough to leave the good old place that so long had sheltered us—and here we are, living at a Brazier's shop, No. 20, in Russell Street, Covent Garden, a place all alive with noise and bustle, Drury Lane Theatre in sight from our front and Covent Garden from our back windows. The hubbub of the carriages returning from the play does not annoy me in the least—strange that it does not, for it is quite tremendous. I quite enjoy looking out of the window and listening to the calling up of the carriages and the squabbles of the coachmen and linkboys. It is the oddest scene to look down upon, I am sure you would be amused with it. It is well I am in a chearful place or I should have many misgivings about leaving the Temple. I look forward with great pleasure to the prospect of seeing my good friend Miss Hutchinson. I wish Rydal Mount with all its inhabitants enclosed were to be transplanted with her and to remain stationary in the midst of Covent Garden. I passed through the street lately where Mr. and Mrs. Wordsworth lodged; several fine new houses, which were then just rising out of the ground, are quite finished and a noble entrance made that way into Portland Place.
I am very sorry for Mr. De Quincey—what a blunder the poor man made when he took up his dwelling among the mountains. I long to see my friend Py pos. Coleridge is still at Little Hampton with Mrs. Gillman, he has been so ill as to be confined to his room almost the whole time he has been there.
Charles has had all his Hogarths bound in a book, they were sent home yesterday, and now that I have them all together and perceive the advantage of peeping close at them through my spectacles I am reconciled to the loss of them hanging round the room, which has been a great mortification to me—in vain I tried to console myself with looking at our new chairs and carpets, for we have got new chairs, and carpets covering all over our two sitting rooms, I missed my old friends and could not be comforted—then I would resolve to learn to look out of the window, a habit I never could attain in my life, and I have given it up as a thing quite impracticable—yet when I was at Brighton last summer, the first week I never took my eyes off from the sea, not even to look in a book. I had not seen the sea for sixteen years. Mrs. Morgan, who was with us, kept her liking, and continued her seat in the window till the very last, while Charles and I played truant and wandered among the hills, which we magnified into little mountains and almost as good as Westmoreland scenery. Certainly we made discoveries of many pleasant walks which few of the Brighton visitors have ever dreamed of—for like as is the case in the neighbourhood of London, after the first two or three miles we were sure to find ourselves in a perfect solitude. I hope we shall meet before the walking faculties of either of us fail. You say you can walk fifteen miles with ease,—that is exactly my stint, and more fatigues me; four or five miles every third or fourth day, keeping very quiet between, was all Mrs. Morgan could accomplish.
God bless you and yours. Love to all and each one.
I am ever yours most affectionately M. LAMB.
LETTER 239
CHARLES LAMB TO DOROTHY WORDSWORTH (Same letter.)
Dear Miss Wordsworth, Here we are, transplanted from our native soil. I thought we never could have been torn up from the Temple. Indeed it was an ugly wrench, but like a tooth, now 'tis out and I am easy. We never can strike root so deep in any other ground. This, where we are, is a light bit of gardener's mold, and if they take us up from it, it will cost no blood and groans like mandrakes pull'd up. We are in the individual spot I like best in all this great city. The theatres with all [a few words cut away: Talfourd has "their noises. Convent Garden"] dearer to me than any gardens of Alcinous, where we are morally sure of the earliest peas and 'sparagus. Bow Street, where the thieves are examined, within a few yards of us. Mary had not been here four and twenty hours before she saw a Thief. She sits at the window working, and casually throwing out her eyes, she sees a concourse of people coming this way, with a constable to conduct the solemnity. These little incidents agreeably diversify a female life. It is a delicate subject, but is Mr. * * * really married? and has he found a gargle to his mind? O how funny he did talk to me about her, in terms of such mild quiet whispering speculative profligacy. But did the animalcule and she crawl over the rubric together, or did they not? Mary has brought her part of this letter to an orthodox and loving conclusion, which is very well, for I have no room for pansies and remembrances. What a nice holyday I got on Wednesday by favor of a princess dying. [A line and signature cut away.]
[The Lambs' house in Russell Street is now (1912) a fruiterer's: it has been rebuilt. Russell Street, Covent Garden, in those days was divided into Great Russell Street (from the Market to Brydges Street, now Catherine Street) and Little Russell Street, (from Brydges Street to Drury Lane). The brazier, or ironmonger, was Mr. Owen, Nos. 20 and 21.
The Wordsworths had moved to Rydal Mount in 1813.
"I am very sorry for Mr. De Quincey." Probably a reference to one of the opium-eater's illnesses.
It was at Littlehampton that Coleridge met Henry Francis Cary, the translator of Dante, afterwards one of Lamb's friends.
"Spot I like best in all this great city." See Vol. I. of this edition, for a little essay by Lamb on places of residence in London.
"Mr. * * *." One can but conjecture as to these asterisks. De Quincey, who was very small, married at the close of 1816.
"A princess dying"—Princess Charlotte of Saxe-Coburg. She was buried, amid national lamentation, on November 19, 1817.
Here should come a letter from Lamb to Ayrton dated November 25, 1817, which Lamb holds is peculiarly neatly worded.]
LETTER 240
CHARLES LAMB TO JOHN PAYNE COLLIER
The Garden of England,
December 10, 1817.
Dear J. P. C.,—I know how zealously you feel for our friend S. T. Coleridge; and I know that you and your family attended his lectures four or five years ago. He is in bad health and worse mind: and unless something is done to lighten his mind he will soon be reduced to his extremities; and even these are not in the best condition. I am sure that you will do for him what you can; but at present he seems in a mood to do for himself. He projects a new course, not of physic, nor of metaphysic, nor a new course of life, but a new course of lectures on Shakspear and Poetry. There is no man better qualified (always excepting number one); but I am pre-engaged for a series of dissertations on India and India-pendence, to be completed at the expense of the Company, in I know not (yet) how many volumes foolscap folio. I am busy getting up my Hindoo mythology; and for the purpose I am once more enduring Southey's Curse. To be serious, Coleridge's state and affairs make me so; and there are particular reasons just now, and have been any time for the last twenty years, why he should succeed. He will do so with a little encouragement. I have not seen him lately; and he does not know that I am writing.
Yours (for Coleridge's sake) in haste, C. LAMB.
[The "Garden of England" of the address stands, of course, for Covent
Garden.
This is the first letter to Collier that has been preserved. John Payne Collier (1789-1883), known as a Shakespearian critic and editor of old plays and poems, was then a reporter on The Times. He had recently married. Wordsworth also wrote to Collier on this subject, Coleridge's lectures were delivered in 1818, beginning on January 27, in Flower-de-Luce Court. Their preservation we owe to Collier's shorthand notes.
"My Hindoo mythology … Southey's Curse"—The Curse of Kehama.]
LETTER 241
CHARLES LAMB TO BENJAMIN ROBERT HAYDON
December [26], 1817.
My dear Haydon,—I will come with pleasure to 22, Lisson Grove North, at
Rossi's, half-way up, right-hand side—if I can find it.
Yours,
C. LAMB.
20, Russell Court, Covent Garden East, half-way up, next the corner, left hand side.
[The first letter that has been preserved to Haydon, the painter. Benjamin Robert Haydon (1786-1846) was then principally known by his "Judgment of Solomon": he was at this time at work upon his most famous picture, "Christ's Entry into Jerusalem." Lamb's note is in acceptance of the invitation to the famous dinner which Haydon gave on December 28,1817, to Wordsworth, Keats, Monkhouse and others, with the Comptroller of Stamps thrown in. Haydon's Diary describes the evening with much humour. See Appendix.]
LETTER 242
CHARLES LAMB TO MRS. WILLIAM WORDSWORTH 18 Feb. 1818. East India House.
(Mary shall send you all the news, which I find I have left out.)
My dear Mrs. Wordsworth, I have repeatedly taken pen in hand to answer your kind letter. My sister should more properly have done it, but she having failed, I consider myself answerable for her debts. I am now trying to do it in the midst of Commercial noises, and with a quill which seems more ready to glide into arithmetical figures and names of Goods, Cassia, Cardemoms, Aloes, Ginger, Tea, than into kindly responses and friendly recollections.
The reason why I cannot write letters at home is, that I am never alone. Plato's (I write to W. W. now) Plato's double animal parted never longed [? more] to be reciprocally reunited in the system of its first creation, than I sometimes do to be but for a moment single and separate. Except my morning's walk to the office, which is like treading on sands of gold for that reason, I am never so. I cannot walk home from office but some officious friend offers his damn'd unwelcome courtesies to accompany me. All the morning I am pestered. I could sit and gravely cast up sums in great Books, or compare sum with sum, and write PAID against this and UNP'D against t'other, and yet reserve in some "corner of my mind" some darling thoughts all my own—faint memory of some passage in a Book—or the tone of an absent friend's Voice—a snatch of Miss Burrell's singing—a gleam of Fanny Kelly's divine plain face—The two operations might be going on at the same time without thwarting, as the sun's two motions (earth's I mean), or as I sometimes turn round till I am giddy, in my back parlour, while my sister is walking longitudinally in the front—or as the shoulder of veal twists round with the spit, while the smoke wreathes up the chimney—but there are a set of amateurs of the Belle Lettres—the gay science—who come to me as a sort of rendezvous, putting questions of criticism, of British Institutions, Lalla Rooks &c., what Coleridge said at the Lecture last night—who have the form of reading men, but, for any possible use Reading can be to them but to talk of, might as well have been Ante-Cadmeans born, or have lain sucking out the sense of an Egypt'n. hieroglyph as long as the Pyramids will last before they should find it. These pests worrit me at business and in all its intervals, perplexing my accounts, poisoning my little salutary warming-time at the fire, puzzling my paragraphs if I take a newspaper, cramming in between my own free thoughts and a column of figures which had come to an amicable compromise but for them. Their noise ended, one of them, as I said, accompanys me home lest I should be solitary for a moment; he at length takes his welcome leave at the door, up I go, mutton on table, hungry as hunter, hope to forget my cares and bury them in the agreeable abstraction of mastication, knock at the door, in comes Mrs. Hazlitt, or M. Burney, or Morgan, or Demogorgon, or my brother, or somebody, to prevent my eating alone, a Process absolutely necessary to my poor wretched digestion. O the pleasure of eating alone!—eating my dinner alone! let me think of it. But in they come, and make it absolutely necessary that I should open a bottle of orange—for my meat turns into stone when any one dines with me, if I have not wine—wine can mollify stones. Then that wine turns into acidity, acerbity, misanthropy, a hatred of my interrupters (God bless 'em! I love some of 'em dearly), and with the hatred a still greater aversion to their going away. Bad is the dead sea they bring upon me, choaking and death-doing, but worse is the deader dry sand they leave me on if they go before bed time. Come never, I would say to these spoilers of my dinner, but if you come, never go. The fact is, this interruption does not happen very often, but every time it comes by surprise that present bane of my life, orange wine, with all its dreary stifling consequences, follows. Evening Company I should always like had I any mornings, but I am saturated with human faces (divine forsooth) and voices all the golden morning, and five evenings in a week would be as much as I should covet to be in company, but I assure you that is a wonderful week in which I can get two, or one, to myself. I am never C. L. but always C. L. and Co.
He, who thought it not good for man to be alone, preserve me from the more prodigious monstrosity of being never by myself. I forget bed time, but even there these sociable frogs clamber up to annoy me. Once a week, generally some singular evening that, being alone, I go to bed at the hour I ought always to be abed, just close to my bedroom window, is the club room of a public house, where a set of singers, I take them to be chorus-singers of the two theatres (it must be both of them), begin their orgies. They are a set of fellows (as I conceive) who being limited by their talents to the burthen of the song at the play houses, in revenge have got the common popular airs by Bishop or some cheap composer arranged for choruses, that is, to be sung all in chorus. At least I never can catch any of the text of the plain song, nothing but the Babylonish choral howl at the tail on't. "That fury being quenchd"—the howl I mean—a curseder burden succeeds, of shouts and clapping and knocking of the table. At length over tasked nature drops under it and escapes for a few hours into the society of the sweet silent creatures of Dreams, which go away with mocks and mows at cockcrow. And then I think of the words Christobel's father used (bless me, I have dipt in the wrong ink) to say every morning by way of variety when he awoke—"Every knell, the Baron saith, Wakes us up to a world of death," or something like it. All I mean by this senseless interrupted tale is, that by my central situation I am a little over companied. Not that I have any animosity against the good creatures that are so anxious to drive away the Harpy solitude from me. I like 'em, and cards, and a chearful glass, but I mean merely to give you an idea between office confinement and after office society, how little time I can call my own. I mean only to draw a picture, not to make an inference. I would not that I know of have it otherwise. I only wish sometimes I could exchange some of my faces and voices for the faces and voices which a late visitation brought most welcome and carried away leaving regret, but more pleasure, even a kind of gratitude, at being so often favored with that kind northern visitation. My London faces and noises don't hear me—I mean no disrespect—or I should explain myself that instead of their return 220 times a year and the return of W. W. &c. 7 times in 104 weeks, some more equal distribution might be found. I have scarce room to put in Mary's kind love and my poor name.
CH. LAMB.
This to be read last.
W. H. goes on lecturing against W. W. and making copious use of quotations from said W. W. to give a zest to said lectures. S. T. C. is lecturing with success. I have not heard either him or H. but I dined with S. T. C. at Gilman's a Sunday or 2 since and he was well and in good spirits. I mean to hear some of the course, but lectures are not much to my taste, whatever the Lecturer may be. If read, they are dismal flat, and you can't think why you are brought together to hear a man read his works which you could read so much better at leisure yourself; if delivered extempore, I am always in pain lest the gift of utterance should suddenly fail the orator in the middle, as it did me at the dinner given in honor of me at the London Tavern. "Gentlemen" said I, and there I stoppt,—the rest my feelings were under the necessity of supplying. Mrs. Wordsworth will go on, kindly haunting us with visions of seeing the lakes once more which never can be realized. Between us there is a great gulf—not of inexplicable moral antipathies and distances, I hope (as there seemd to be between me and that Gentleman concern'd in the Stamp office that I so strangely coiled up from at Haydons). I think I had an instinct that he was the head of an office. I hate all such people—Accountants, Deputy Accountants. The dear abstract notion of the East India Company, as long as she is unseen, is pretty, rather Poetical; but as SHE makes herself manifest by the persons of such Beasts, I loathe and detest her as the Scarlet what-do-you-call-her of Babylon. I thought, after abridging us of all our red letter days, they had done their worst, but I was deceived in the length to which Heads of offices, those true Liberty haters, can go. They are the tyrants, not Ferdinand, nor Nero—by a decree past this week, they have abridged us of the immemorially observed custom of going at one o'clock of a Saturday, the little shadow of a holiday left us. Blast them. I speak it soberly. Dear W. W., be thankful for your Liberty.
We have spent two very pleasant Evenings lately with Mr. Monkhouse.
[Mary Lamb's letter of news either was not written or has not been preserved.
Lamb returned to the subject of this essay for his Popular Fallacy "That Home is Home" in 1826 (see Vol. II. of this edition). A little previously to that essay he had written an article in the New Times on unwelcome callers (see Vol. I.).
"Miss Burrell"—Fanny Burrell, afterwards Mrs. Gould. Lamb wrote in praise of her performance in "Don Giovanni in London" (see Vol. I. of this edition).
"Fanny Kelly's divine plain face." Only seventeen months later Lamb proposed to Miss Kelly.
"What Coleridge said." Coleridge was still lecturing on Shakespeare and poetry in Flower-de-Luce Court.
"The two theatres"—Drury Lane and Covent Garden.
"Bishop"—Sir Henry Rowley Bishop (1786-1855), composer of "Home, Sweet
Home."
"Christabel's father."
Each matin bell, the Baron saith,
Knells us back to a world of death.
Part II., lines 1 and 2.
"W. H. goes on lecturing." Hazlitt was delivering a course of lectures on the English poets at the Surrey Institution.
"'Gentleman' said I." On another occasion Lamb, asked to give a toast, gave the best he knew—woodcock on toast. See also his toasts at Haydon's dinner. I do not know when or why the dinner was given to him; perhaps after the failure of "Mr. H."
"Gentleman concern'd in the Stamp office." See note to the preceding letter.
"Our red letter days." Lamb repeats the complaint in his Elia essay
"Oxford in the Vacation." In 1820, I see from the Directory, the
Accountant's Office, where Lamb had his desk, kept sacred only five
red-letter days, where, ten years earlier, it had observed many.
"Mr. Monkhouse," Thomas Monkhouse, a friend of the Wordsworths and of
Lamb. He was at Haydon's dinner.
Here should come a note from Lamb to Charles and James Ollier, dated May 28, 1818, which apparently accompanied final proofs of Lamb's Works. Lamb remarks, "There is a Sonnet to come in by way of dedication." This would be that to Martin Burney at the beginning of Vol. II. The Works were published in two volumes with a beautiful dedication to Coleridge (see Vol. IV. of the present edition). Charles Ollier (1788-1859) was a friend of Leigh Hunt's, for whom he published, as well as for Shelley. He also brought out Keats' first volume. The Olliers' address was The Library, Vere Street, Oxford Street.]
LETTER 243
CHARLES LAMB TO CHARLES AND JAMES OLLIER
[P.M. June 18, 1818.]
Dear Sir (whichever opens it)
I am going off to Birmingh'm. I find my books, whatever faculty of selling they may have (I wish they had more for {your/my} sake), are admirably adapted for giving away. You have been bounteous. SIX more and I shall have satisfied all just claims. Am I taking too great a liberty in begging you to send 4 as follows, and reserve 2 for me when I come home? That will make 31. Thirty-one times 12 is 372 shillings, Eighteen pounds twelve Shillings!!!—but here are my friends, to whom, if you could transmit them, as I shall be away a month, you will greatly oblige the obliged
C. LAMB.
Mr. Ayrton, James Street, Buckingham Gate Mr. Alsager, Suffolk Street East, Southwark, by Horsemonger Lane and in one parcel directed to R. Southey, Esq., Keswick, Cumberland one for R. S.; and one for W'm. Wordsworth, Esq'r.
If you will be kind enough simply to write "from the Author" in all 4—you will still further etc.—
Either Longman or Murray is in the frequent habit of sending books to Southey and will take charge of the Parcel. It will be as well to write in at the beginning thus
R. Southey Esq. from the Author.
W. Wordsworth Esq. from the Author.
Then, if I can find the remaining 2, left for me at Russell St when I return, rather than encroach any more on the heap, I will engage to make no more new friends ad infinitum, YOURSELVES being the last.
Yours truly C. L.
I think Southey will give us a lift in that damn'd Quarterly. I meditate an attack upon that Cobler Gifford, which shall appear immediately after any favourable mention which S. may make in the Quarterly. It can't in decent gratitude appear before.
[We know nothing of Lamb's visit to Birmingham. He is hardly likely to have stayed with any of the Lloyd family. The attack on Gifford was probably the following sonnet, printed in The Examiner for October 3 and 4, 1819:—
ST. CRISPIN TO MR. GIFFORD
All unadvised, and in an evil hour,
Lured by aspiring thoughts, my son, you daft
The lowly labours of the Gentle Craft
For learned toils, which blood and spirits sour.
All things, dear pledge, are not in all men's power;
The wiser sort of shrub affects the ground;
And sweet content of mind is oftener found
In cobbler's parlour, than in critic's bower.
The sorest work is what doth cross the grain;
And better to this hour you had been plying
The obsequious awl with well-waxed finger flying,
Than ceaseless thus to till a thankless vein;
Still teazing Muses, which are still denying;
Making a stretching-leather of your brain.]
LETTER 244
CHARLES LAMB TO ROBERT SOUTHEY
Monday, Oct. 26th, 1818.
Dear Southey,—I am pleased with your friendly remembrances of my little things. I do not know whether I have done a silly thing or a wise one; but it is of no great consequence. I run no risk, and care for no censures. My bread and cheese is stable as the foundations of Leadenhall Street, and if it hold out as long as the "foundations of our empire in the East," I shall do pretty well. You and W.W. should have had your presentation copies more ceremoniously sent; but I had no copies when I was leaving town for my holidays, and rather than delay, commissioned my bookseller to send them thus nakedly. By not hearing from W.W. or you, I began to be afraid Murray had not sent them. I do not see S.T.C. so often as I could wish. He never comes to me; and though his host and hostess are very friendly, it puts me out of my way to go see one person at another person's house. It was the same when he resided at Morgan's. Not but they also were more than civil; but after all one feels so welcome at one's own house. Have you seen poor Miss Betham's "Vignettes"? Some of them, the second particularly, "To Lucy," are sweet and good as herself, while she was herself. She is in some measure abroad again. I am better than I deserve to be. The hot weather has been such a treat! Mary joins in this little corner in kindest remembrances to you all.
C.L.
[The letter treats of Lamb's Works, just published. Matilda Betham followed up The Lay of Marie with a volume entitled Vignettes.
"I am better than I deserve." Why Lamb underlined these words I do not know, but it may have been a quotation from Coleridge. Carlyle in his account of his visit to Coleridge at Highgate (in the Life of John Sterling) puts it into Coleridge's mouth in connection with a lukewarm cup of tea. Although lukewarm it was better, he said, than he deserved. That was later, but it may have been a saying of which Coleridge was fond.]
LETTER 245
CHARLES LAMB TO S. T. COLERIDGE
Dec. 24th, 1818.
My dear Coleridge,—I have been in a state of incessant hurry ever since the receipt of your ticket. It found me incapable of attending you, it being the night of Kenney's new comedy[1] … You know my local aptitudes at such a time; I have been a thorough rendezvous for all consultations. My head begins to clear up a little; but it has had bells in it. Thank you kindly for your ticket, though the mournful prognostic which accompanies it certainly renders its permanent pretensions less marketable; but I trust to hear many a course yet. You excepted Christmas week, by which I understood next week; I thought Christmas week was that which Christmas Sunday ushered in. We are sorry it never lies in your way to come to us; but, dear Mahomet, we will come to you. Will it be convenient to all the good people at Highgate, if we take a stage up, not next Sunday, but the following, viz., 3rd January, 1819—shall we be too late to catch a skirt of the old out-goer;—how the years crumble from under us! We shall hope to see you before then; but, if not, let us know if then will be convenient. Can we secure a coach home?
Believe me ever yours, C. LAMB.
I have but one holiday, which is Christmas-day itself nakedly: no pretty garnish and fringes of St. John's day, Holy Innocents &c., that used to bestud it all around in the calendar. Improbe labor! I write six hours every day in this candle-light fog-den at Leadheall.
[Footnote 1: Canon Ainger supplies the four missing words: "which has utterly failed."]
[The ticket was for a new course of lectures, either on the History of
Philosophy, or Six Plays of Shakespeare, both of which began in
December, 1818, and continued into 1819.
Kenney's new farce was "A Word for the Ladies," produced at Covent
Garden on December 17.
"To catch a skirt of the old out-goer." A reference to Coleridge's line—
I saw the skirts of the departing year.
Somewhere at this point should come a delightful letter from Lamb to John Chambers. John Chambers was the brother of Charles Chambers. He was a colleague of Lamb's at the India House (see the Elia essay "The Superannuated Man"), and survived until 1872. It was to John Chambers that Lamb made the remark that he (Lamb) was probably the only man in England who had never worn boots and never ridden a horse. The letter, which is concerned with the peculiarities of India House clerks, is famous for the remark on Tommy Bye, a fellow-clerk at the India House, that "his sonnets are most like Petrarch of any foreign poet, or what we may suppose Petrarch would have written if Petrarch had been born a fool." We meet Bye again in the next letter but one to Wordsworth. I can find no trace of his sonnets in book form. Possibly they were never published.]