LETTER 399
CHARLES LAMB TO WILLIAM WORDSWORTH
[P.M. September 6, 1826.]
My dear Wordsworth, The Bearer of this is my young friend Moxon, a young lad with a Yorkshire head, and a heart that would do honour to a more Southern county: no offence to Westmoreland. He is one of Longman's best hands, and can give you the best account of The Trade as 'tis now going; or stopping. For my part, the failure of a Bookseller is not the most unpalatable accident of mortality:
sad but not saddest The desolation of a hostile city.
When Constable fell from heaven, and we all hoped Baldwin was next, I tuned a slight stave to the words in Macbeth (D'avenant's) to be sung by a Chorus of Authors,
What should we do when Booksellers break?
We should rejoyce.
Moxon is but a tradesman in the bud yet, and retains his virgin Honesty; Esto perpetua, for he is a friendly serviceable fellow, and thinks nothing of lugging up a Cargo of the Newest Novels once or twice a week from the Row to Colebrooke to gratify my Sister's passion for the newest things. He is her Bodley. He is author besides of a poem which for a first attempt is promising. It is made up of common images, and yet contrives to read originally. You see the writer felt all he pours forth, and has not palmed upon you expressions which he did not believe at the time to be more his own than adoptive. Rogers has paid him some proper compliments, with sound advice intermixed, upon a slight introduction of him by me; for which I feel obliged. Moxon has petition'd me by letter (for he had not the confidence to ask it in London) to introduce him to you during his holydays; pray pat him on the head, ask him a civil question or two about his verses, and favor him with your genuine autograph. He shall not be further troublesome. I think I have not sent any one upon a gaping mission to you a good while. We are all well, and I have at last broke the bonds of business a second time, never to put 'em on again. I pitch Colburn and his magazine to the divil. I find I can live without the necessity of writing, tho' last year I fretted myself to a fever with the hauntings of being starved. Those vapours are flown. All the difference I find is that I have no pocket money: that is, I must not pry upon an old book stall, and cull its contents as heretofore, but shoulders of mutton, Whitbread's entire, and Booth's best, abound as formerly.
I don't know whom or how many to send our love to, your household is so frequently divided, but a general health to all that may be fixed or wandering; stars, wherever. We read with pleasure some success (I forget quite what) of one of you at Oxford. Mrs. Monkhouse (… was one of you) sent us a kind letter some [months back], and we had the pleasure to [see] her in tolerable spirits, looking well and kind as in by-gone days.
Do take pen, or put it into goodnatured hands Dorothean or Wordsworthian-female, or Hutchinsonian, to inform us of your present state, or possible proceedings. I am ashamed that this breaking of the long ice should be a letter of business. There is none circum praecordia nostra I swear by the honesty of pedantry, that wil I nil I pushes me upon scraps of Latin. We are yours cordially: CHAS. & MARY LAMB.
September. 1826.
[In this letter, the first to Wordsworth for many months, we have the first mention of Edward Moxon, who was to be so closely associated with Lamb in the years to come. Moxon, a young Yorkshireman, educated at the Green Coat School, was then nearly twenty-five, and was already author of The Prospect and other Poems, dedicated to Rogers, who was destined to be a valuable patron. Moxon subsequently became Wordsworth's publisher.
"Constable … Baldwin." Archibald Constable & Co., Scott's publishers, failed in 1826. Baldwin was the first publisher of the London Magazine.
"I pitch Colburn and his magazine." Lamb wrote nothing in the New
Monthly Magazine after September, 1826.
I append portions of what seems to be Lamb's first letter to Edward
Moxon, obviously written before this date, but not out of place here.
The letter seems to have accompanied the proof of an article on Lamb
which he had corrected and was returning to Moxon.]
LETTER 400
CHARLES LAMB TO EDWARD MOXON
(Fragment)
Were my own feelings consulted I should print it verbatim, but I won't hoax you, else I love a Lye. My biography, parentage, place of birth, is a strange mistake, part founded on some nonsense I wrote about Elia, and was true of him, the real Elia, whose name I took…. C.L. was born in Crown Office Row, Inner Temple in 1775. Admitted into Christs Hospital, 1782, where he was contemporary with T.F.M. [Thomas Fanshawe Middleton], afterwards Bishop of Calcutta, and with S.T.C. with the last of these two eminent scholars he has enjoyed an intimacy through life. On quitting this foundation he became a junior clerk in the South Sea House under his Elder Brother who died accountant there some years since…. I am not the author of the Opium Eater, &c.
[I have not succeeded in finding the article in question.]
LETTER 401
CHARLES LAMB TO JOHN BATES DIBDIN
[P.M. September 9, 1826.]
An answer is requested.
Saturday.
Dear D.—I have observed that a Letter is never more acceptable than when received upon a rainy day, especially a rainy Sunday; which moves me to send you somewhat, however short. This will find you sitting after Breakfast, which you will have prolonged as far as you can with consistency to the poor handmaid that has the reversion of the Tea Leaves; making two nibbles of your last morsel of stale roll (you cannot have hot new ones on the Sabbath), and reluctantly coming to an end, because when that is done, what can you do till dinner? You cannot go to the Beach, for the rain is drowning the sea, turning rank Thetis fresh, taking the brine out of Neptune's pickles, while mermaids sit upon rocks with umbrellas, their ivory combs sheathed for spoiling in the wet of waters foreign to them. You cannot go to the library, for it's shut. You are not religious enough to go to church. O it is worth while to cultivate piety to the gods, to have something to fill the heart up on a wet Sunday! You cannot cast accounts, for your ledger is being eaten up with moths in the Ancient Jewry. You cannot play at draughts, for there is none to play with you, and besides there is not a draught board in the house. You cannot go to market, for it closed last night. You cannot look in to the shops, their backs are shut upon you. You cannot read the Bible, for it is not good reading for the sick and the hypochondriacal. You cannot while away an hour with a friend, for you have no friend round that Wrekin. You cannot divert yourself with a stray acquaintance, for you have picked none up. You cannot bear the chiming of Bells, for they invite you to a banquet, where you are no visitant. You cannot cheer yourself with the prospect of a tomorrow's letter, for none come on Mondays. You cannot count those endless vials on the mantlepiece with any hope of making a variation in their numbers. You have counted your spiders: your Bastile is exhausted. You sit and deliberately curse your hard exile from all familiar sights and sounds. Old Ranking poking in his head unexpectedly would just now be as good to you as Grimaldi. Any thing to deliver you from this intolerable weight of Ennui. You are too ill to shake it off: not ill enough to submit to it, and to lie down as a lamb under it. The Tyranny of Sickness is nothing to the Cruelty of Convalescence: 'tis to have Thirty Tyrants for one. That pattering rain drops on your brain. You'll be worse after dinner, for you must dine at one to-day, that Betty may go to afternoon service. She insists upon having her chopped hay. And then when she goes out, who was something to you, something to speak to—what an interminable afternoon you'll have to go thro'. You can't break yourself from your locality: you cannot say "Tomorrow morning I set off for Banstead, by God": for you are book'd for Wednesday. Foreseeing this, I thought a cheerful letter would come in opportunely. If any of the little topics for mirth I have thought upon should serve you in this utter extinguishment of sunshine, to make you a little merry, I shall have had my ends. I love to make things comfortable. [Here is an erasure.] This, which is scratch'd out was the most material thing I had to say, but on maturer thoughts I defer it.
P.S.—We are just sitting down to dinner with a pleasant party, Coleridge, Reynolds the dramatist, and Sam Bloxam: to-morrow (that is, to_day_), Liston, and Wyat of the Wells, dine with us. May this find you as jolly and freakish as we mean to be.
C. LAMB.
[Addressed to "T. Dibdin Esq're. No. 4 Meadow Cottages, Hastings,
Sussex."
"You have counted your spiders." Referring, I suppose, to Paul
Pellisson-Fontanier, the academician, and a famous prisoner in the
Bastille, who trained a spider to eat flies from his hand.
"Grimaldi"—Joseph Grimaldi, the clown. Ranking was one of Dibdin's employers.
"A pleasant party." Reynolds, the dramatist, would be Frederic Reynolds (1764-1841); Bloxam we have just met; and Wyat of the Wells was a comic singer and utility actor at Sadler's Wells.
Canon Ainger remarks that as a matter of fact Dibdin was a religious youth.]
LETTER 402
CHARLES LAMB TO BERNARD BARTON
[P.M. September 26, 1826.]
Dear B.B.—I don't know why I have delay'd so long writing. 'Twas a fault. The under current of excuse to my mind was that I had heard of the Vessel in which Mitford's jars were to come; that it had been obliged to put into Batavia to refit (which accounts for its delay) but was daily expectated. Days are past, and it comes not, and the mermaids may be drinking their Tea out of his China for ought I know; but let's hope not. In the meantime I have paid £28, etc., for the freight and prime cost, (which I a little expected he would have settled in London.) But do not mention it. I was enabled to do it by a receipt of £30 from Colburn, with whom however I have done. I should else have run short. For I just make ends meet. We will wait the arrival of the Trinkets, and to ascertain their full expence, and then bring in the bill. (Don't mention it, for I daresay 'twas mere thoughtlessness.)
I am sorry you and yours have any plagues about dross matters. I have been sadly puzzled at the defalcation of more than one third of my income, out of which when entire I saved nothing. But cropping off wine, old books, &c. and in short all that can be call'd pocket money, I hope to be able to go on at the Cottage. Remember, I beg you not to say anything to Mitford, for if he be honest it will vex him: if not, which I as little expect as that you should [not] be, I have a hank still upon the JARS.
Colburn had something of mine in last month, which he has had in hand these 7 months, and had lost, or cou'dnt find room for: I was used to different treatment in the London, and have forsworn Periodicals.
I am going thro' a course of reading at the Museum: the Garrick plays, out of part of which I formed my Specimens: I have Two Thousand to go thro'; and in a few weeks have despatch'd the tythe of 'em. It is a sort of Office to me; hours, 10 to 4, the same. It does me good. Man must have regular occupation, that has been used to it. So A.K. keeps a School! She teaches nothing wrong, I'll answer for't. I have a Dutch print of a Schoolmistress; little old-fashioned Fleminglings, with only one face among them. She a Princess of Schoolmistress, wielding a rod for form more than use; the scene an old monastic chapel, with a Madonna over her head, looking just as serious, as thoughtful, as pure, as gentle, as herself. Tis a type of thy friend.
Will you pardon my neglect? Mind, again I say, don't shew this to M.; let me wait a little longer to know the event of his Luxuries. (I am sure he is a good fellow, tho' I made a serious Yorkshire Lad, who met him, stare when I said he was a Clergyman. He is a pleasant Layman spoiled.) Heaven send him his jars uncrack'd, and me my—— Yours with kindest wishes to your daughter and friend, in which Mary joins
C.L.
["I saved nothing." Lamb, however, according to Procter, left £2000 at his death eight years later. He must have saved £200 a year from his pension of £441, living at the rate of £241 per annum, plus small earnings, for the rest of his life, and investing the £200 at 5 per cent, compound interest.
"Colburn had something of mine." The Popular Fallacy "That a Deformed Person is a Lord," not included by Lamb with the others when he reprinted them. Printed in Vol. I. of this edition.
"Reading at the Museum." Lamb had begun to visit the Museum every day to collect extracts from the Garrick plays for Hone's Table Book, 1827.
"A.K."—Anne Knight again.
The pleasant Yorkshire lad whom Mitford's secular air surprised was probably Moxon.
Here might come a business letter, from Lamb to Barton, preserved in the
British Museum, relating to Mitford's jars.]
LETTER 403
CHARLES LAMB TO EDWARD MOXON
[No date. ? Sept., 1826.]
I have had much trouble to find Field to-day. No matter. He was packing up for out of town. He has writ a handsomest letter, which you will transmit to Murry with your proof-sheets. Seal it.—
Yours C. L——.
Mrs. Hood will drink tea with us on Thursday at 1/2 past 5 at Latest.
N.B. I have lost my Museum reading today: a day with Titus: owing to your dam'd bisness.—I am the last to reproach anybody. I scorn it.
If you shall have the whole book ready soon, it will be best for Murry to see.
[I am not clear as to what proof-sheets of Moxon's Lamb refers. His second book, Christmas, 1829, was issued through Hurst, Chance & Co.
Barton Field and John Murray were friends.
"A day with Titus." Can this (a friend suggests) have any connection with the phrase Amici! diem perdidi? There is no Titus play among the Garrick Extracts.]
LETTER 404
CHARLES LAMB TO BERNARD BARTON
[No postmark or date. Soon after preceding letter to Barton. 1826.]
Dear B.B.—the Busy Bee, as Hood after Dr. Watts apostrophises thee, and well dost thou deserve it for thy labors in the Muses' gardens, wandering over parterres of Think-on-me's and Forget-me-nots, to a total impossibility of forgetting thee,—thy letter was acceptable, thy scruples may be dismissed, thou art Rectus in Curiâ, not a word more to be said, Verbum Sapienti and so forth, the matter is decided with a white stone, Classically, mark me, and the apparitions vanishd which haunted me, only the Cramp, Caliban's distemper, clawing me in the calvish part of my nature, makes me ever and anon roar Bullishly, squeak cowardishly, and limp cripple-ishly. Do I write quakerly and simply, 'tis my most Master Mathew-like intention to do it. See Ben Jonson.—I think you told me your acquaint'ce with the Drama was confin'd to Shakspeare and Miss Bailly: some read only Milton and Croly. The gap is as from an ananas to a Turnip. I have fighting in my head the plots characters situations and sentiments of 400 old Plays (bran new to me) which I have been digesting at the Museum, and my appetite sharpens to twice as many more, which I mean to course over this winter. I can scarce avoid Dialogue fashion in this letter. I soliloquise my meditations, and habitually speak dramatic blank verse without meaning it. Do you see Mitford? he will tell you something of my labors. Tell him I am sorry to have mist seeing him, to have talk'd over those OLD TREASURES. I am still more sorry for his missing Pots. But I shall be sure of the earliest intelligence of the Lost Tribes. His Sacred Specimens are a thankful addition to my shelves. Marry, I could wish he had been more careful of corrigenda. I have discover'd certain which have slipt his Errata. I put 'em in the next page, as perhaps thou canst transmit them to him. For what purpose, but to grieve him (which yet I should be sorry to do), but then it shews my learning, and the excuse is complimentary, as it implies their correction in a future Edition. His own things in the book are magnificent, and as an old Christ's Hospitaller I was particularly refreshd with his eulogy on our Edward. Many of the choice excerpta were new to me. Old Christmas is a coming, to the confusion of Puritans, Muggletonians, Anabaptists, Quakers, and that Unwassailing Crew. He cometh not with his wonted gait, he is shrunk 9 inches in the girth, but is yet a Lusty fellow. Hood's book is mighty clever, and went off 600 copies the 1st day. Sion's Songs do not disperse so quickly. The next leaf is for Rev'd J.M. In this ADIEU thine briefly in a tall friendship C. LAMB.
[Barton's letter, to which this is an answer, not being preserved, we do not know what his scruples were. B.B. was a great contributor to annuals.
"With a white stone." In trials at law a white stone was cast as a vote for acquittal, a black stone for condemnation (see Ovid, Metamorphoses, 15, 41).
"Master Mathew"—in Ben Jonson's "Every Man in His Humour."
"Croly"—the Rev. George Croly (1780-1860), of the Literary Gazette, author of The Angel of the World and other pretentious poems.
"Mitford's Sacred Specimens"—Sacred Specimens Selected from the Early
English Poets, 1827. The last poem, by Mitford himself, was "Lines
Written under the Portrait of Edward VI."
"Hood's book"—Whims and Oddities, second series, 1827.
Here should come a note to Allsop stating that Lamb is "near killed with
Christmassing."]
LETTER 405
CHARLES LAMB TO HENRY CRABB ROBINSON
Colebrooke Row, Islington,
Saturday, 20th Jan., 1827.
Dear Robinson,—I called upon you this morning, and found that you were gone to visit a dying friend. I had been upon a like errand. Poor Norris has been lying dying for now almost a week, such is the penalty we pay for having enjoyed a strong constitution! Whether he knew me or not, I know not, or whether he saw me through his poor glazed eyes; but the group I saw about him I shall not forget. Upon the bed, or about it, were assembled his wife and two daughters, and poor deaf Richard, his son, looking doubly stupified. There they were, and seemed to have been sitting all the week. I could only reach out a hand to Mrs. Norris. Speaking was impossible in that mute chamber. By this time I hope it is all over with him. In him I have a loss the world cannot make up. He was my friend and my father's friend all the life I can remember. I seem to have made foolish friendships ever since. Those are friendships which outlive a second generation. Old as I am waxing, in his eyes I was still the child he first knew me. To the last he called me Charley. I have none to call me Charley now. He was the last link that bound me to the Temple. You are but of yesterday. In him seem to have died the old plainness of manners and singleness of heart. Letters he knew nothing of, nor did his reading extend beyond the pages of the "Gentleman's Magazine." Yet there was a pride of literature about him from being amongst books (he was librarian), and from some scraps of doubtful Latin which he had picked up in his office of entering students, that gave him very diverting airs of pedantry. Can I forget the erudite look with which, when he had been in vain trying to make out a black-letter text of Chaucer in the Temple Library, he laid it down and told me that—"in those old books, Charley, there is sometimes a deal of very indifferent spelling;" and seemed to console himself in the reflection! His jokes, for he had his jokes, are now ended, but they were old trusty perennials, staples that pleased after decies repetita, and were always as good as new. One song he had, which was reserved for the night of Christmas-day, which we always spent in the Temple. It was an old thing, and spoke of the flat bottoms of our foes and the possibility of their coming over in darkness, and alluded to threats of an invasion many years blown over; and when he came to the part
"We'll still make 'em run, and we'll still make 'em sweat,
In spite of the devil and Brussels Gazette!"
his eyes would sparkle as with the freshness of an impending event. And what is the "Brussels Gazette" now? I cry while I enumerate these trifles. "How shall we tell them in a stranger's ear?" His poor good girls will now have to receive their afflicted mother in an inaccessible hovel in an obscure village in Herts, where they have been long struggling to make a school without effect; and poor deaf Richard—and the more helpless for being so—is thrown on the wide world.
My first motive in writing, and, indeed, in calling on you, was to ask if you were enough acquainted with any of the Benchers, to lay a plain statement before them of the circumstances of the family. I almost fear not, for you are of another hall. But if you can oblige me and my poor friend, who is now insensible to any favours, pray exert yourself. You cannot say too much good of poor Norris and his poor wife.
Yours ever, CHARLES LAMB.
[This letter, describing the death of Randal Norris, Sub-Treasurer and Librarian of the Inner Temple, was printed with only very slight alterations in Hone's Table Book, 1827, and again in the Last Essays of Elia, 1833, under the title "A Death-Bed." It was, however, taken out of the second edition, and "Confessions of a Drunkard" substituted, in deference to the wishes of Norris's family. Mrs. Norris, as I have said, was a native of Widford, where she had known Mrs. Field, Lamb's grandmother. With her son Richard, who was deaf and peculiar, Mrs. Norris moved to Widford again, where the daughters, Miss Betsy and Miss Jane, had opened a school—Goddard House; which they retained until a legacy restored the family prosperity. Soon after that they both married, each a farmer named Tween. They survived until quite recently.
Mrs. Coe, an old scholar at the Misses Morris's school in the twenties, gave me, in 1902, some reminiscences of those days, from which I quote a passage or so:—
When he joined the Norrises' dinner-table he kept every one laughing. Mr. Richard sat at one end, and some of the school children would be there too. One day Mr. Lamb gave every one a fancy name all round the table, and made a verse on each. "You are so-and-so," he said, "and you are so-and-so," adding the rhyme. "What's he saying? What are you laughing at?" Mr. Richard asked testily, for he was short-tempered. Miss Betsy explained the joke to him, and Mr. Lamb, coming to his turn, said—only he said it in verse—"Now, Dick, it's your turn. I shall call you Gruborum; because all you think of is your food and your stomach." Mr. Richard pushed back his chair in a rage and stamped out of the room. "Now I've done it," said Mr. Lamb: "I must go and make friends with my old chum. Give me a large plate of pudding to take to him." When he came back he said, "It's all right. I thought the pudding would do it." Mr. Lamb and Mr. Richard never got on very well, and Mr. Richard didn't like his teasing ways at all; but Mr. Lamb often went for long walks with him, because no one else would. He did many kind things like that.
There used to be a half-holiday when Mr. Lamb came, partly because he would force his way into the schoolroom and make seriousness impossible. His head would suddenly appear at the door in the midst of lessons, with "Well, Betsy! How do, Jane?" "O, Mr. Lamb!" they would say, and that was the end of work for that day. He was really rather naughty with the children. One of his tricks was to teach them a new kind of catechism (Mrs. Coe does not remember it, but we may rest assured, I fear, that it was secular), and he made a great fuss with Lizzie Hunt for her skill in saying the Lord's Prayer backwards, which he had taught her.
"We'll still make 'em run…" Garrick's "Hearts of Oak," sung in
"Harlequin's Invasion."
"How shall we tell them in a stranger's ear?" A quotation from Lamb himself, in the lines "Written soon after the Preceding Poem," in 1798 (see Vol. IV.).]
LETTER 406
CHARLES LAMB TO HENRY CRABB ROBINSON
[No date. Jan. 20, 1827.]
Dear R.N. is dead. I have writ as nearly as I could to look like a letter meant for your eye only. Will it do?
Could you distantly hint (do as your own judgment suggests) that if his son could be got in as Clerk to the new Subtreasurer, it would be all his father wish'd? But I leave that to you. I don't want to put you upon anything disagreeable.
Yours thankfully
C.L.
[The reference at the beginning is to the preceding letter, which was probably enclosed with this note.
Here should come a note to Allsop dated Jan. 25, 1827, complaining of the cold.]
LETTER 407
CHARLES LAMB TO HENRY CRABB ROBINSON
[Dated by H.C.R. Jan. 29, 1827.]
Dear Robinson, If you have not seen Mr. Gurney, leave him quite alone for the present, I have seen Mr. Jekyll, who is as friendly as heart can desire, he entirely approves of my formula of petition, and gave your very reasons for the propriety of the "little village of Hertf'shire." Now, Mr. G. might not approve of it, and then we should clash. Also, Mr. J. wishes it to be presented next week, and Mr. G. might fix earlier, which would be aukward. Mr. J. was so civil to me, that I think it would be better NOT for you to show him that letter you intended. Nothing can increase his zeal in the cause of poor Mr. Norris. Mr. Gardiner will see you with this, and learn from you all about it, & consult, if you have seen Mr. G. & he has fixed a time, how to put it off. Mr. J. is most friendly to the boy: I think you had better not teaze the Treasurer any more about him, as it may make him less friendly to the Petition
Yours Ever
C.L.
[Writing to Dorothy Wordsworth on February 13, 1827, Robinson says: "The
Lambs are well. I have been so busy that I have not lately seen them.
Charles has been occupied about the affair of the widow of his old
friend Norris whose death he has felt. But the health of both is good."
Gurney would probably be John Gurney (afterwards Baron Gurney), the counsel and judge. Jekyll was Joseph Jekyll, the wit, mentioned by Lamb in his essay on "The Old Benchers of the Inner Temple." He was a friend of George Dyer.]
LETTER 408
CHARLES LAMB TO HENRY CRABB ROBINSON
[Dated by H.C. R. Jan., 1827.]
Dear R. do not say any thing to Mr. G. about the day or Petition, for Mr. Jekyll wishes it to be next week, and thoroughly approves of my formula, and Mr. G. might not, and then they will clash. Only speak to him of Gardner's wish to have the Lad. Mr. Jekyll was excessive friendly. C.L.
[The matter referred to is still the Norrises' welfare. Mr. Hazlitt says that an annuity of £80 was settled by the Inn on Mrs. Norris.
Here perhaps should come a letter from Lamb to Allsop, printed by Mr. Fitzgerald, urging Allsop to go to Highgate to see Coleridge and tell him of the unhappy state of his, Allsop's, affairs. In Crabb Robinson's Diary for February 1, 1827, I read: "I went to Lamb. Found him in trouble about his friend Allsop, who is a ruined man. Allsop is a very good creature who has been a generous friend to Coleridge." Writing of his troubles in Letters, Conversations and Recollections of S.T. Coleridge, Allsop says: "Charles Lamb, Charles and Mary Lamb, 'union is partition,' were never wanting in the hour of need."]
LETTER 409
CHARLES LAMB TO B.R. HAYDON
[March, 1827.]
Dear Raffaele Haydon,—Did the maid tell you I came to see your picture, not on Sunday but the day before? I think the face and bearing of the Bucephalus-tamer very noble, his flesh too effeminate or painty. The skin of the female's back kneeling is much more carnous. I had small time to pick out praise or blame, for two lord-like Bucks came in, upon whose strictures my presence seemed to impose restraint: I plebeian'd off therefore.
I think I have hit on a subject for you, but can't swear it was never executed,—I never heard of its being,—"Chaucer beating a Franciscan Friar in Fleet Street." Think of the old dresses, houses, &c. "It seemeth that both these learned men (Gower and Chaucer) were of the Inner Temple; for not many years since Master Buckley did see a record in the same house where Geoffry Chaucer was fined two shillings for beating a Franciscan Friar in Fleet Street." Chaucer's Life by T. Speght, prefixed to the black letter folio of Chaucer, 1598.
Yours in haste (salt fish waiting), C. LAMB.
[Haydon's picture was his "Alexander and Bucephalus." The two Bucks, he tells us in his Diary, were the Duke of Devonshire and Mr. Agar Ellis. Haydon did not take up the Chaucer subject.]
LETTER 410
CHARLES LAMB TO WILLIAM HONE [No date. April, 1827.]
Dear H. Never come to our house and not come in. I was quite vex'd.
Yours truly. C.L.
There is in Blackwood this month an article MOST AFFECTING indeed called Le Revenant, and would do more towards abolishing Capital Punishments than 400000 Romillies or Montagues. I beg you read it and see if you can extract any of it. The Trial scene in particular.
[Written on the fourteenth instalment of the Garrick Play extracts. The article was in Blackwood for April, 1827. Hone took Lamb's advice, and the extract from it will be found in the Table Book, Vol. I., col. 455.
Lamb was peculiarly interested in the subject of survival after hanging.
He wrote an early Reflector essay, "On the Inconveniences of Being
Hanged," on the subject, and it is the pivot of his farce "The
Pawnbroker's Daughter."
"Romillies or Montagues." Two prominent advocates for the abolition of capital punishment were Sir Samuel Romilly (who died in 1818) and Basil Montagu.]
LETTER 411
CHARLES LAMB TO THOMAS HOOD
[No date. May, 1827.]
Dearest Hood,—Your news has spoil'd us a merry meeting. Miss Kelly and we were coming, but your letter elicited a flood of tears from Mary, and I saw she was not fit for a party. God bless you and the mother (or should be mother) of your sweet girl that should have been. I have won sexpence of Moxon by the sex of the dear gone one.
Yours most truly and hers,
[C.L.]
[This note refers to one of the Hoods' children, which was still-born.
It was upon this occasion that Lamb wrote the beautiful lines "On an
Infant Dying as soon as Born" (see Vol. IV.).]
LETTER 412
CHARLES LAMB TO BERNARD BARTON
[No date. (1827.)]
My dear B.B.—A gentleman I never saw before brought me your welcome present—imagine a scraping, fiddling, fidgetting, petit-maitre of a dancing school advancing into my plain parlour with a coupee and a sideling bow, and presenting the book as if he had been handing a glass of lemonade to a young miss—imagine this, and contrast it with the serious nature of the book presented! Then task your imagination, reversing this picture, to conceive of quite an opposite messenger, a lean, straitlocked, wheyfaced methodist, for such was he in reality who brought it, the Genius (it seems) of the Wesleyan Magazine. Certes, friend B., thy Widow's tale is too horrible, spite of the lenitives of Religion, to embody in verse: I hold prose to be the appropriate expositor of such atrocities! No offence, but it is a cordial that makes the heart sick. Still thy skill in compounding it I not deny. I turn to what gave me less mingled pleasure. I find markd with pencil these pages in thy pretty book, and fear I have been penurious.
page 52, 53 capital. page 59 6th stanza exquisite simile. page 61 11th stanza equally good. page 108 3d stanza, I long to see van Balen. page 111 a downright good sonnet. Dixi. page 153 Lines at the bottom.
So you see, I read, hear, and mark, if I don't learn—In short this little volume is no discredit to any of your former, and betrays none of the Senility you fear about. Apropos of Van Balen, an artist who painted me lately had painted a Blackamoor praying, and not filling his canvas, stuff'd in his little girl aside of Blacky, gaping at him unmeaningly; and then didn't know what to call it. Now for a picture to be promoted to the Exhibition (Suffolk Street) as HISTORICAL, a subject is requisite. What does me? I but christen it the "Young Catechist" and furbishd it with Dialogue following, which dubb'd it an Historical Painting. Nothing to a friend at need.
While this tawny Ethiop prayeth,
Painter, who is She that stayeth
By, with skin of whitest lustre;
Sunny locks, a shining cluster;
Saintlike seeming to direct him
To the Power that must protect him?
Is she of the heav'nborn Three,
Meek Hope, strong Faith, sweet Charity?
Or some Cherub?
They you mention
Far transcend my weak invention.
'Tis a simple Christian child,
Missionary young and mild,
From her store of script'ral knowledge
(Bible-taught without a college)
Which by reading she could gather,
Teaches him to say OUR FATHER
To the common Parent, who
Colour not respects nor hue.
White and Black in him have part,
Who looks not to the skin, but heart.—
When I'd done it, the Artist (who had clapt in Miss merely as a fill-space) swore I exprest his full meaning, and the damosel bridled up into a Missionary's vanity. I like verses to explain Pictures: seldom Pictures to illustrate Poems. Your wood cut is a rueful Lignum Mortis. By the by, is the widow likely to marry again?
I am giving the fruit of my Old Play reading at the Museum to Hone, who sets forth a Portion weekly in the Table Book. Do you see it? How is Mitford?—
I'll just hint that the Pitcher, the Chord and the Bowl are a little too often repeated (passim) in your Book, and that on page 17 last line but 4 him is put for he, but the poor widow I take it had small leisure for grammatical niceties. Don't you see there's He, myself, and him; why not both him? likewise imperviously is cruelly spelt imperiously. These are trifles, and I honestly like your [book,] and you for giving it, tho' I really am ashamed of so many presents.
I can think of no news, therefore I will end with mine and Mary's kindest remembrances to you and yours. C.L.
[It has been customary to date this letter December, 1827, but I think
that must be too late. Lamb would never have waited till then to tell
Barton that he was contributing the Garrick Plays to Hone's Table
Book, especially as the last instalment was printed in that month.
Barton's new volume was A Widow's Tale and Other Poems, 1827. The title poem tells how a missionary and his wife were wrecked, and how after three nights and days of horror she was saved. The woodcut on the title-page of Barton's book represented the widow supporting her dead or dying husband in the midst of the storm.
This is the "exquisite simile" on page 59, from "A Grandsire's Tale":—
Though some might deem her pensive, if not sad,
Yet those who knew her better, best could tell
How calmly happy, and how meekly glad
Her quiet heart in its own depths did dwell:
Like to the waters of some crystal well,
In which the stars of heaven at noon are seen.
Fancy might deem on her young spirit fell
Glimpses of light more glorious and serene
Than that of life's brief day, so heavenly was her mien.
This was the "downright good sonnet":—
TO A GRANDMOTHER
"Old age is dark and unlovely."—Ossian.
O say not so! A bright old age is thine;
Calm as the gentle light of summer eves,
Ere twilight dim her dusky mantle weaves;
Because to thee is given, in strength's decline,
A heart that does not thanklessly repine
At aught of which the hand of God bereaves,
Yet all He sends with gratitude receives;—
May such a quiet, thankful close be mine.
And hence thy fire-side chair appears to me
A peaceful throne—which thou wert form'd to fill;
Thy children—ministers, who do thy will;
And those grand-children, sporting round thy knee,
Thy little subjects, looking up to thee,
As one who claims their fond allegiance still.
And these are the lines at the foot of page 153 in a poem addressed to a child seven years old:—
There is a holy, blest companionship
In the sweet intercourse thus held with those
Whose tear and smile are guileless; from whose lip
The simple dictate of the heart yet flows;—
Though even in the yet unfolded rose
The worm may lurk, and sin blight blooming youth,
The light born with us long so brightly glows,
That childhood's first deceits seem almost truth,
To life's cold after lie, selfish, and void of ruth.
Van Balen was the painter of the picture of the "Madonna and Child" which Mrs. FitzGerald (Edward FitzGerald's mother) had given to Barton and for which he expressed his thanks in a poem.
The artist who painted Lamb recently was Henry Meyer (1782?-1847), the portrait being that which serves as frontispiece to this volume. I give in my large edition a reproduction of "The Young Catechist," which Meyer also engraved, with Lamb's verses attached. In 1910 I saw the original in a picture shop in the Charing Cross Road, now removed.]
LETTER 413
CHARLES LAMB TO WILLIAM HONE
[No date. End of May, 1827.]
Dear H. in the forthcoming "New Monthly" are to be verses of mine on a
Picture about Angels. Translate em to the Table-book. I am off for
Enfield.
Yours. C.L.
[Written on the back of the XXI. Garrick Extracts. The poem "Angel Help" was printed in the New Monthly Magazine for June and copied by Hone in the Table-Book, No. 24, 1827.]
LETTER 414
CHARLES LAMB TO WILLIAM HONE
[No date. June, 1827.]
Dear Hone, I should like this in your next book. We are at Enfield, where (when we have solituded awhile) we shall be glad to see you. Yours,
C. LAMB.
[This was written on the back of the MS. of "Going or Gone" (see Vol.
IV.), a poem of reminiscences of Lamb's early Widford days, printed in
Hone's Table-Book, June, 1827, signed Elia.]
LETTER 415
CHARLES LAMB TO BERNARD BARTON
Enfield, and for some weeks to come, "June 11, 1827."
Dear B.B.—One word more of the picture verses, and that for good and all; pray, with a neat pen alter one line
His learning seems to lay small stress on
to
His learning lays no mighty stress on
to avoid the unseemly recurrence (ungrammatical also) of "seems" in the next line, besides the nonsence of "but" there, as it now stands. And I request you, as a personal favor to me, to erase the last line of all, which I should never have written from myself. The fact is, it was a silly joke of Hood's, who gave me the frame, (you judg'd rightly it was not its own) with the remark that you would like it, because it was b—d b—d,—and I lugg'd it in: but I shall be quite hurt if it stands, because tho' you and yours have too good sense to object to it, I would not have a sentence of mine seen, that to any foolish ear might sound unrespectful to thee. Let it end at appalling; the joke is coarse and useless, and hurts the tone of the rest. Take your best "ivory-handled" and scrape it forth.
Your specimen of what you might have written is hardly fair. Had it been a present to me, I should have taken a more sentimental tone; but of a trifle from me it was my cue to speak in an underish tone of commendation. Prudent givers (what a word for such a nothing) disparage their gifts; 'tis an art we have. So you see you wouldn't have been so wrong, taking a higher tone. But enough of nothing.
By the bye, I suspected M. of being the disparager of the frame; hence a certain line.
For the frame,'tis as the room is, where it hangs. It hung up fronting my old cobwebby folios and batter'd furniture (the fruit piece has resum'd its place) and was much better than a spick and span one. But if your room be very neat and your other pictures bright with gilt, it should be so too. I can't judge, not having seen: but my dingy study it suited.
Martin's Belshazzar (the picture) I have seen. Its architectural effect is stupendous; but the human figures, the squalling contorted little antics that are playing at being frightend, like children at a sham ghost who half know it to be a mask, are detestable. Then the letters are nothing more than a transparency lighted up, such as a Lord might order to be lit up, on a sudden at a Xmas Gambol, to scare the ladies. The type is as plain as Baskervil's—they should have been dim, full of mystery, letters to the mind rather than the eye.—Rembrandt has painted only Belshazzar and a courtier or two (taking a part of the banquet for the whole) not fribbled out a mob of fine folks. Then every thing is so distinct, to the very necklaces, and that foolish little prophet. What one point is there of interest? The ideal of such a subject is, that you the spectator should see nothing but what at the time you would have seen, the hand—and the King—not to be at leisure to make taylor-remarks on the dresses, or Doctor Kitchener-like to examine the good things at table.
Just such a confusd piece is his Joshua, fritterd into 1000 fragments, little armies here, little armies there—you should see only the Sun and Joshua; if I remember, he has not left out that luminary entirely, but for Joshua, I was ten minutes a finding him out.
Still he is showy in all that is not the human figure or the preternatural interest: but the first are below a drawing school girl's attainment, and the last is a phantasmagoric trick, "Now you shall see what you shall see, dare is Balshazar and dare is Daniel." You have my thoughts of M. and so adieu C. LAMB.
[Lamb had sent Barton the picture that is reproduced in Vol. V. of my large edition. Later Lamb had sent the following lines:—
When last you left your Woodbridge pretty,
To stare at sights, and see the City,
If I your meaning understood,
You wish'd a Picture, cheap, but good;
The colouring? decent; clear, not muddy;
To suit a Poet's quiet study,
Where Books and Prints for delectation
Hang, rather than vain ostentation.
The subject? what I pleased, if comely;
But something scriptural and homely:
A sober Piece, not gay or wanton,
For winter fire-sides to descant on;
The theme so scrupulously handled,
A Quaker might look on unscandal'd;
Such as might satisfy Ann Knight,
And classic Mitford just not fright.
Just such a one I've found, and send it;
If liked, I give—if not, but lend it.
The moral? nothing can be sounder.
The fable? 'tis its own expounder—
A Mother teaching to her Chit
Some good book, and explaining it.
He, silly urchin, tired of lesson,
His learning seems to lay small stress on,
But seems to hear not what he hears;
Thrusting his fingers in his ears,
Like Obstinate, that perverse funny one,
In honest parable of Bunyan.
His working Sister, more sedate,
Listens; but in a kind of state,
The painter meant for steadiness;
But has a tinge of sullenness;
And, at first sight, she seems to brook
As ill her needle, as he his book.
This is the Picture. For the Frame—
'Tis not ill-suited to the same;
Oak-carved, not gilt, for fear of falling;
Old-fashion'd; plain, yet not appalling;
And broad brimm'd, as the Owner's Calling.
It was not Obstinate, by the way, who thrust his fingers in his ears, but Christian.
"Hence a certain line"—line 16, I suppose.
Martin's "Belshazzar." "Belshazzar's Feast," by John Martin (1789-1854), had been exhibited for some years and had created an immense impression. Lamb subjected Martin's work to a minute analysis a few years later (see the Elia essay on the "Barrenness of the Imaginative Faculty in the Productions of Modern Art," Vol. II.). Barton did not give up Martin in consequence of this letter. The frontispiece to his New Year's Eve, 1828, is by that painter, and the volume contains eulogistic poems upon him, one beginning—
Boldest painter of our day.
"Baskervil's"—John Baskerville (1706-1775), the printer, famous for his folio edition of the Bible, 1763.
Doctor William Kitchiner—the author of Apicius Redivious; or, The
Cook's Oracle, 1817.]
LETTER 416
CHARLES LAMB TO HENRY CRABB ROBINSON
[P.M. June 26, 1827.]
Dear H.C. We are at Mrs. Leishman's, Chase, Enfield. Why not come down by the Green Lanes on Sunday? Picquet all day. Pass the Church, pass the "Rising Sun," turn sharp round the corner, and we are the 6th or 7th house on the Chase: tall Elms darken the door. If you set eyes on M. Burney, bring him.
Yours truly C. LAMB.
[Mrs. Leishman's house, or its successor, is the seventh from the Rising Sun. It is now on Gentleman's Row, not on Chase Side proper. The house next it—still, as in Lamb's day, a girl's school—is called Elm House, but most of the elms which darkened both doors have vanished. It has been surmised that when later in the year Lamb took an Enfield house in his own name, he took Mrs. Leishman's; but, as we shall see, his own house was some little distance from hers.]
LETTER 417
CHARLES LAMB TO WILLIAM HONE
[No date. Early July, 1827.]
Dear H., This is Hood's, done from the life, of Mary getting over a style here. Mary, out of a pleasant revenge, wants you to get it engrav'd in Table Book to surprise H., who I know will be amus'd with you so doing.
Append some observations about the awkwardness of country styles about
Edmonton, and the difficulty of elderly Ladies getting over 'em.——
That is to say, if you think the sketch good enough.
I take on myself the warranty.
Can you slip down here some day and go a Green-dragoning? C.L.
Enfield (Mrs. Leishman's, Chase).
If you do, send Hood the number, No. 2 Robert St., Adelphi, and keep the sketch for me.
["This" was the drawing by Hood. I take it from the Table-Book, where it represents Mrs. Gilpin resting on a stile:—
[Illustration]
Lamb subsequently appended the observations himself. The text of his little article, changing Mary Lamb into Mrs. Gilpin, was in the late Mr. Locker-Lampson's collection. The postmark is July 17. 1827.]
LETTER 418
CHARLES LAMB TO EDWARD MOXON
Enfield. P.M. July 17, 182[7].
Dear M. Thanks for your attentions of every kind. Emma will not fail Mrs. Hood's kind invitation, but her Aunt is so queer a one, that we cannot let her go with a single gentleman singly to Vauxhall; she would withdraw her from us altogether in a fright; but if any of the Hood's family accompany you, then there can be small objection.
I have been writing letters till too dark to see the marks. I can just say we shall be happy to see you any Sunday after the next: say, the Sunday after, and perhaps the Hoods will come too and have a merry other day, before they go hence. But next Sunday we expect as many as we can well entertain.
With ours and Emma's
acknowlgm's
yours
C.L.
[The earliest of a long series of letters to Edward Moxon, preserved at Rowfant by the late Mr. Locker-Lampson, but now in America. Emma Isola's aunt was Miss Humphreys.]
LETTER 419
CHARLES LAMB TO P.G. PATMORE
[Dated at end: July 19, 1827.]
Dear P.—I am so poorly! I have been to a funeral, where I made a pun, to the consternation of the rest of the mourners. And we had wine. I can't describe to you the howl which the widow set up at proper intervals. Dash could, for it was not unlike what he makes.
The letter I sent you was one directed to the care of E. White, India House, for Mrs. Hazlitt. Which Mrs. Hazlitt I don't yet know, but A. has taken it to France on speculation. Really it is embarrassing. There is Mrs. present H., Mrs. late H., and Mrs. John H., and to which of the three Mrs. Wiggins's it appertains, I don't know. I wanted to open it, but it's transportation.
I am sorry you are plagued about your book. I would strongly recommend you to take for one story Massinger's "Old Law." It is exquisite. I can think of no other.
Dash is frightful this morning. He whines and stands up on his hind legs. He misses Beckey, who is gone to town. I took him to Barnet the other day, and he couldn't eat his victuals after it. Pray God his intellectuals be not slipping.
Mary is gone out for some soles. I suppose 'tis no use to ask you to come and partake of 'em; else there's a steam-vessel.
I am doing a tragi-comedy in two acts, and have got on tolerably; but it will be refused, or worse. I never had luck with anything my name was put to.
Oh, I am so poorly! I waked it at my cousin's the bookbinder's, who is now with God; or, if he is not, it's no fault of mine.
We hope the Frank wines do not disagree with Mrs. Patmore. By the way, I like her.
Did you ever taste frogs? Get them, if you can. They are like little
Lilliput rabbits, only a thought nicer.
Christ, how sick I am!—not of the world, but of the widow's shrub.
She's sworn under £6000, but I think she perjured herself. She howls in
E la, and I comfort her in B flat. You understand music?…
"No shrimps!" (That's in answer to Mary's question about how the soles are to be done.)
I am uncertain where this wandering letter may reach you. What you mean by Poste Restante, God knows. Do you mean I must pay the postage? So I do to Dover.
We had a merry passage with the widow at the Commons. She was howling—part howling and part giving directions to the proctor—when crash! down went my sister through a crazy chair, and made the clerks grin, and I grinned, and the widow tittered—and then I knew that she was not inconsolable. Mary was more frightened than hurt.
She'd make a good match for anybody (by she, I mean the widow).
"If he bring but a relict away,
He is happy, nor heard to complain."
SHENSTONE.
Procter has got a wen growing out at the nape of his neck, which his wife wants him to have cut off; but I think it rather an agreeable excrescence—like his poetry—redundant. Hone has hanged himself for debt. Godwin was taken up for picking pockets…. Beckey takes to bad courses. Her father was blown up in a steam machine. The coroner found it Insanity. I should not like him to sit on my letter.
Do you observe my direction? Is it Gallic?—Classical?
Do try and get some frogs. You must ask for "grenouilles" (green-eels).
They don't understand "frogs," though it's a common phrase with us.
If you go through Bulloign (Boulogne) enquire if old Godfrey is living, and how he got home from the Crusades. He must be a very old man now.
If there is anything new in politics or literature in France, keep it till I see you again, for I'm in no hurry. Chatty-Briant is well I hope.
I think I have no more news; only give both our loves ("all three," says Dash) to Mrs. Patmore, and bid her get quite well, as I am at present, bating qualms, and the grief incident to losing a valuable relation.
C.L.
Londres, July 19, 1827.
[This is from Patmore's My Friends and Acquaintances, 1854; but I have no confidence in Patmore's transcription. After "picking pockets" should come, for example, according to other editors, the sentence, "Moxon has fallen in love with Emma, our nut-brown maid." This is the first we hear of the circumstance and quite probably Lamb was then exaggerating. As it happened, however, Moxon and Miss Isola, as we shall see, were married in 1833.
We do not know the name of the widow; but her husband was Lamb's cousin, the bookbinder.
The doubt about the Hazlitts refers chiefly to William Hazlitt's divorce from his first wife in 1822, and his remarriage in 1824 with a Mrs. Bridgewater.
"Your book." Patmore, in My Friends and Acquaintances, writes:—
This refers to a series of tales that I was writing, (since published under the title of Chatsworth, or the Romance of a Week.) for the subject of one of which he had recommended me to take "The Old Law." As Lamb's critical faculties (as displayed in the celebrated "specimens" which created an era in the dramatic taste of England) were not surpassed by those of any writer of his day, the reader may like to see a few "specimens" of some notes which Lamb took the pains to make on two of the tales that were shown to him. I give these the rather that there is occasionally blended with their critical nicety of tact, a drollery that is very characteristic of the writer. I shall leave these notes and verbal criticisms to speak for themselves, after merely explaining that they are written on separate bits of paper, each note having a numerical reference to that page of the MS. in which occurs the passage commented on.
"Besides the words 'riant' and 'Euphrosyne,' the sentence is senseless. 'A sweet sadness' capable of inspiring 'a more grave joy'—than what?—than demonstrations of mirth? Odd if it had not been. I had once a wry aunt, which may make me dislike the phrase.
"'Pleasurable:'—no word is good that is awkward to spell. (Query.)
Welcome or Joyous.
"'Steady self-possession rather than undaunted courage,' etc. The two things are not opposed enough. You mean, rather than rash fire of valour in action.
"'Looking like a heifer,' I fear wont do in prose. (Qy.) 'Like to some spotless heifer,'—or,'that you might have compared her to some spotless heifer,' etc.—or 'Like to some sacrificial heifer of old.' I should prefer, 'garlanded with flowers as for a sacrifice '—and cut the cow altogether.
"(Say) 'Like the muttering of some strange spell,'—omitting the demon,—they are subject to spells, they don't use them.
"'Feud' here (and before and after) is wrong. (Say) old malice, or, difference. Feud is of clans. It might be applied to family quarrels, but is quite improper to individuals falling out.
"'Apathetic.' Vile word.
"'Mechanically,' faugh!—insensibly—involuntarily—in-any-thing-ly but mechanically.
"Calianax's character should be somewhere briefly drawn, not left to be dramatically inferred.
"'Surprised and almost vexed while it troubled her.' (Awkward.) Better, 'in a way that while it deeply troubled her, could not but surprise and vex her to think it should be a source of trouble at all.'
"'Reaction' is vile slang. 'Physical'—vile word.
"Decidedly, Dorigen should simply propose to him to remove the rocks as ugly or dangerous, not as affecting her with fears for her husband. The idea of her husband should be excluded from a promise which is meant to be frank upon impossible conditions. She cannot promise in one breath infidelity to him, and make the conditions a good to him. Her reason for hating the rocks is good, but not to be expressed here.
"Insert after 'to whatever consequences it might lead,'—'Neither had Arviragus been disposed to interpose a husband's authority to prevent the execution of this rash vow, was he unmindful of that older and more solemn vow which, in the days of their marriage, he had imposed upon himself, in no instance to control the settled purpose or determination of his wedded wife;—so that by the chains of a double contract he seemed bound to abide by her decision in this instance, whatever it might be.'"
"A tragi-comedy"—Lamb's dramatic version of Crabbe's "Confidante," which he called "The Wife's Trial" (see Vol. IV. of this edition).
"Procter has got a wen." This paragraph must be taken with salt. Poor Hone, however, had the rules of the King's Bench at the time. Beckey was the Lambs' servant and tyrant; she had been Hazlitt's. Patmore described her at some length in his reminiscences of Lamb.
"Chatty-Briant"—Chateaubriand.]
LETTER 420
CHARLES LAMB TO MRS. PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY
Enfield, July 26th, 1827.
Dear Mrs. Shelley,—At the risk of throwing away some fine thoughts, I must write to say how pleased we were with your very kind remembering of us (who have unkindly run away from all our friends) before you go. Perhaps you are gone, and then my tropes are wasted. If any piece of better fortune has lighted upon you than you expected, but less than we wish you, we are rejoiced. We are here trying to like solitude, but have scarce enough to justify the experiment. We get some, however. The six days are our Sabbath; the seventh—why, Cockneys will come for a little fresh air, and so—
But by your month, or October at furthest, we hope to see Islington: I like a giant refreshed with the leaving off of wine, and Mary, pining for Mr. Moxon's books and Mr. Moxon's society. Then we shall meet.
I am busy with a farce in two acts, the incidents tragi-comic. I can do the dialogue commey fo: but the damned plot—I believe I must omit it altogether. The scenes come after one another like geese, not marshalling like cranes or a Hyde Park review. The story is as simple as G[eorge] D[yer], and the language plain as his spouse. The characters are three women to one man; which is one more than laid hold on him in the "Evangely." I think that prophecy squinted towards my drama.
I want some Howard Paine to sketch a skeleton of artfully succeeding scenes through a whole play, as the courses are arranged in a cookery book: I to find wit, passion, sentiment, character, and the like trifles: to lay in the dead colours,—I'd Titianesque 'em up: to mark the channel in a cheek (smooth or furrowed, yours or mine), and where tears should course I'd draw the waters down: to say where a joke should come in or a pun be left out: to bring my personae on and off like a Beau Nash; and I'd Frankenstein them there: to bring three together on the stage at once; they are so shy with me, that I can get no more than two; and there they stand till it is the time, without being the season, to withdraw them.
I am teaching Emma Latin to qualify her for a superior governess-ship; which we see no prospect of her getting. 'Tis like feeding a child with chopped hay from a spoon. Sisyphus—his labours were as nothing to it.
Actives and passives jostle in her nonsense, till a deponent enters, like Chaos, more to embroil the fray. Her prepositions are suppositions; her conjunctions copulative have no connection in them; her concords disagree; her interjections are purely English "Ah!" and "Oh!" with a yawn and a gape in the same tongue; and she herself is a lazy, block-headly supine. As I say to her, ass in praesenti rarely makes a wise man in futuro.
But I daresay it was so with you when you began Latin, and a good while after.
Good-by! Mary's love.
Yours truly, C. LAMB.
[This is the second letter to Mrs. Shelley, née Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin, the widow of the poet and the author of Frankenstein. She had been living in England since 1823; and in 1826 had issued anonymously The Last Man. That she kept much in touch with the Lambs' affairs we know by her letters to Leigh Hunt.
Major Butterworth has kindly supplied me with a copy of her letter to
Mary Lamb which called forth Lamb's reply. It runs thus:—
Kentish Town, 22 July, 1827.
My dear Miss Lamb,
You have been long at Enfield—I hardly know yet whether you are returned—and I quit town so very soon that I have not time to—as I exceedingly wish—call on you before I go. Nevertheless believe (if such familiar expression be not unmeet from me) that I love you with all my heart—gratefully and sincerely—and that when I return I shall seek you with, I hope, not too much zeal—but it will be with great eagerness.
You will be glad to hear that I have every reason to believe that the worst of my pecuniary troubles are over—as I am promised a regular tho' small income from my father-in-law. I mean to be very industrious on other accounts this summer, so I hope nothing will go very ill with me or mine.
I am afraid Miss Kelly will think me dreadfully rude for not having availed myself of her kind invitation. Will you present my compliments to her, and say that my embarassments, harassings and distance from town are the guilty causes of my omission—for which with her leave I will apologize in person on my return to London.
All kind and grateful remembrances to Mr. Lamb, he must not forget me nor like me one atom less than I delight to flatter myself he does now, when again I come to seize a dinner perforce at your cottage. Percy is quite well—and is reading with great extacy (sic) the Arabian Nights. I shall return I suppose some one day in September. God bless you.
Yours affectionately,
MARY W. SHELLEY.
Commey fo is Lamb's comme il faut.
"In the 'Evangely.'" If by Evangely he meant Gospel, Lamb was a little confused here, I think. Probably Isaiah iv. I was in his mind: "and in that day seven women shall take hold of one man." But he may also have half remembered Luke xvii. 35.
"I am teaching Emma Latin." Mary Lamb contributed to Blackwood's
Magazine for June, 1829, the following little poem describing Emma
Isola's difficulties in these lessons:—