LETTER 493
CHARLES LAMB TO VINCENT NOVELLO
[P.M. Probably Nov. 10, 1829.]
Dear FUGUE-IST,
or hear'st thou rather
CONTRAPUNTIST—?
We expect you four (as many as the Table will hold without squeeging) at Mrs. Westwood's Table D'Hote on Thursday. You will find the White House shut up, and us moved under the wing of the Phoenix, which gives us friendly refuge. Beds for guests, marry, we have none, but cleanly accomodings at the Crown & Horseshoe.
Yours harmonically,
C.L.
[Addressed: Vincentio (what Ho!) Novello, a Squire, 66, Great Queen
Street, Lincoln's Inn Fields.]
["The Phoenix." Mr. Westwood was agent for the Phoenix Insurance
Company, and the badge of that office was probably on the house.]
LETTER 494
CHARLES LAMB TO WALTER WILSON
Enfield, 15th November, 1829.
My dear Wilson,—I have not opened a packet of unknown contents for many years, that gave me so much pleasure as when I disclosed your three volumes. I have given them a careful perusal, and they have taken their degree of classical books upon my shelves. De Foe was always my darling; but what darkness was I in as to far the larger part of his writings! I have now an epitome of them all. I think the way in which you have done the "Life" the most judicious you could have pitched upon. You have made him tell his own story, and your comments are in keeping with the tale. Why, I never heard of such a work as "the Review." Strange that in my stall-hunting days I never so much as lit upon an odd volume of it. This circumstance looks as if they were never of any great circulation. But I may have met with 'em, and not knowing the prize, overpast 'em. I was almost a stranger to the whole history of Dissenters in those reigns, and picked my way through that strange book the "Consolidator" at random. How affecting are some of his personal appeals! what a machine of projects he set on foot! and following writers have picked his pocket of the patents. I do not understand where-abouts in Roxana he himself left off. I always thought the complete-tourist-sort of description of the town she passes through on her last embarkation miserably unseasonable and out of place. I knew not they were spurious. Enlighten me as to where the apocryphal matter commences. I, by accident, can correct one A.D. "Family Instructor," vol. ii. 1718; you say his first volume had then reached the fourth edition; now I have a fifth, printed for Eman. Matthews, 1717. So have I plucked one rotten date, or rather picked it up where it had inadvertently fallen, from your flourishing date tree, the Palm of Engaddi. I may take it for my pains. I think yours a book which every public library must have, and every English scholar should have. I am sure it has enriched my meagre stock of the author's works. I seem to be twice as opulent. Mary is by my side just finishing the second volume. It must have interest to divert her away so long from her modern novels. Colburn will be quite jealous. I was a little disappointed at my "Ode to the Treadmill" not finding a place; but it came out of time. The two papers of mine will puzzle the reader, being so akin. Odd that, never keeping a scrap of my own letters, with some fifteen years' interval I should nearly have said the same things. But I shall always feel happy in having my name go down any how with De Foe's, and that of his historiographer. I promise myself, if not immortality, yet diuternity of being read in consequence. We have both had much illness this year; and feeling infirmities and fretfulness grow upon us, we have cast off the cares of housekeeping, sold off our goods, and commenced boarding and lodging with a very comfortable old couple next door to where you found us. We use a sort of common table. Nevertheless, we have reserved a private one for an old friend; and when Mrs. Wilson and you revisit Babylon, we shall pray you to make it yours for a season. Our very kindest remembrances to you both. From your old friend and fellow-journalist, now in two instances,
C. LAMB.
Hazlitt is going to make your book a basis for a review of De Foe's Novels in the "Edinbro'." I wish I had health and spirits to do it. Hone I have not seen, but I doubt not he will be much pleased with your performance. I very much hope you will give us an account of Dunton, &c. But what I should more like to see would be a Life and Times of Bunyan. Wishing health to you and long life to your healthy book, again I subscribe me,
Yours in verity,
C.L.
[Wilson's Memoirs of the Life and Times of Daniel De Foe had just been published in three volumes, with the date 1830.
Defoe's Review was started in February, 1704, under the title, A Review of the Affairs of France…. purged from the Errors and Partiality of News-writers, and Petty-Statesmen, of all sides. It continued until May, 1713. The Consolidator; or, Memoirs of sundry Transactions from the world in the moon. Translated from the Lunar Language, was published in 1765, a political satire, which, it has been thought, gave hints to Swift for Gulliver.
Lamb had sent Wilson his "Ode to the Treadmill." The substance of his letter of December 16, 1822, was printed by Wilson in Chapter XXII. of Vol. III.; the new material which he wrote especially for the book, was printed in Chapter XVII. of the same volume. The space dividing them was not fifteen years but seven.
"Diuternity." Spelt "diuturnity." A rare word signifying long duration.
"Fellow-journalist." The other instance would be in connection with the journals of the India House, where Wilson had once been a clerk with Lamb.
Hazlitt's review of Wilson's book is in the Edinburgh for January, 1830, with this reference to Lamb's criticisms: "Captain Singleton is a hardened, brutal desperado, without one redeeming trait, or almost human feeling; and, in spite of what Mr. Lamb says of his lonely musings and agonies of a conscience-stricken repentance, we find nothing of this in the text."
"Dunton." This would be John Dunton (1659-1733), the bookseller, and author of The Athenian Gazette, Dunton's Whipping-Post, and scores of pamphlets and satires.]
LETTER 495
(? Fragment)
CHARLES LAMB TO JAMES GILLMAN
[No date. ? November 29, 1829.]
Pray trust me with the "Church History," as well as the "Worthies." A moon shall restore both. Also give me back Him of Aquinum. In return you have the light of my countenance. Adieu.
P.S.—A sister also of mine comes with it. A son of Nimshi drives her. Their driving will have been furious, impassioned. Pray God they have not toppled over the tunnel! I promise you I fear their steed, bred out of the wind without father, semi-Melchisedecish, hot, phaetontic. From my country lodgings at Enfield.
C.L.
[The Church History and the Worthies are by Fuller.
"Light of my countenance." Mr. Hazlitt says that this was a copy of
Brook Pulham's etching.
"The tunnel"—the Highgate Archway.]
LETTER 496
CHARLES LAMB TO JAMES GILLMAN
30 Nov., 1829.
Dear G.,—The excursionists reached home, and the good town of Enfield a little after four, without slip or dislocation. Little has transpired concerning the events of the back-journey, save that on passing the house of 'Squire Mellish, situate a stone-bow's cast from the hamlet, Father Westwood, with a good-natured wonderment, exclaimed, "I cannot think what is gone of Mr. Mellish's rooks. I fancy they have taken flight somewhere; but I have missed them two or three years past." All this while, according to his fellow-traveller's report, the rookery was darkening the air above with undiminished population, and deafening all ears but his with their cawings. But nature has been gently withdrawing such phenomena from the notice of Thomas Westwood's senses, from the time he began to miss the rooks. T. Westwood has passed a retired life in this hamlet of thirty or forty years, living upon the minimum which is consistent with gentility, yet a star among the minor gentry, receiving the bows of the tradespeople and courtesies of the alms' women daily. Children venerate him not less for his external show of gentry, than they wonder at him for a gentle rising endorsation of the person, not amounting to a hump, or if a hump, innocuous as the hump of the buffalo, and coronative of as mild qualities. 'Tis a throne on which patience seems to sit—the proud perch of a self-respecting humility, stooping with condescension. Thereupon the cares of life have sate, and rid him easily. For he has thrid the angustiae domûs with dexterity. Life opened upon him with comparative brilliancy. He set out as a rider or traveller for a wholesale house, in which capacity he tells of many hair-breadth escapes that befell him; one especially, how he rode a mad horse into the town of Devizes; how horse and rider arrived in a foam, to the utter consternation of the expostulating hostlers, inn-keepers, &c. It seems it was sultry weather, piping hot; the steed tormented into frenzy with gad-flies, long past being roadworthy; but safety and the interest of the house he rode for were incompatible things; a fall in serge cloth was expected; and a mad entrance they made of it. Whether the exploit was purely voluntary, or partially; or whether a certain personal defiguration in the man part of this extraordinary centaur (non-assistive to partition of natures) might not enforce the conjunction, I stand not to inquire. I look not with 'skew eyes into the deeds of heroes. The hosier that was burnt with his shop, in Field-lane, on Tuesday night, shall have past to heaven for me like a Marian Martyr, provided always, that he consecrated the fortuitous incremation with a short ejaculation in the exit, as much as if he had taken his state degrees of martyrdom in formâ in the market vicinage. There is adoptive as well as acquisitive sacrifice. Be the animus what it might, the fact is indisputable, that this composition was seen flying all abroad, and mine host of Daintry may yet remember its passing through his town, if his scores are not more faithful than his memory. After this exploit (enough for one man), Thomas Westwood seems to have subsided into a less hazardous occupation; and in the twenty-fifth year of his age we find him a haberdasher in Bow Lane: yet still retentive of his early riding (though leaving it to rawer stomachs), and Christmasly at night sithence to this last, and shall to his latest Christmas, hath he, doth he, and shall he, tell after supper the story of the insane steed and the desperate rider. Save for Bedlam or Luke's no eye could have guessed that melting day what house he rid for. But he reposes on his bridles, and after the ups and downs (metaphoric only) of a life behind the counter—hard riding sometimes, I fear, for poor T.W.—with the scrapings together of the shop, and one anecdote, he hath finally settled at Enfield; by hard economising, gardening, building for himself, hath reared a mansion, married a daughter, qualified a son for a counting-house, gotten the respect of high and low, served for self or substitute the greater parish offices: hath a special voice at vestries; and, domiciliating us, hath reflected a portion of his house-keeping respectability upon your humble servants. We are greater, being his lodgers, than when we were substantial renters. His name is a passport to take off the sneers of the native Enfielders against obnoxious foreigners. We are endenizened. Thus much of T. Westwood have I thought fit to acquaint you, that you may see the exemplary reliance upon Providence with which I entrusted so dear a charge as my own sister to the guidance of a man that rode the mad horse into Devizes. To come from his heroic character, all the amiable qualities of domestic life concentre in this tamed Bellerophon. He is excellent over a glass of grog; just as pleasant without it; laughs when he hears a joke, and when (which is much oftener) he hears it not; sings glorious old sea songs on festival nights; and but upon a slight acquaintance of two years, Coleridge, is as dear a deaf old man to us, as old Norris, rest his soul! was after fifty. To him and his scanty literature (what there is of it, sound) have we flown from the metropolis and its cursed annualists, reviewers, authors, and the whole muddy ink press of that stagnant pool.
Now, Gillman again, you do not know the treasure of the Fullers. I calculate on having massy reading till Christmas. All I want here, is books of the true sort, not those things in boards that moderns mistake for books—what they club for at book clubs.
I did not mean to cheat you with a blank side; but my eye smarts, for which I am taking medicine, and abstain, this day at least, from any aliments but milk-porridge, the innocent taste of which I am anxious to renew after a half-century's dis-acquaintance. If a blot fall here like a tear, it is not pathos, but an angry eye.
Farewell, while my specilla are sound.
Yours and yours,
C. LAMB.
[This letter records the safe return of Mary Lamb with the Fullers.
"Squire Mellish." William Mellish, M.P. for Middlesex for some years.
Thomas Westwood's son, for whom Lamb found an appointment, wrote some excellent articles in Notes and Queries many years later describing the Lambs' life at his father's.
"Old Norris." See letter to Crabb Robinson, Jan. 20, 1827.
Specilla is probably a slip for Conspicilla.]
LETTER 497
CHARLES LAMB TO BERNARD BARTON
[P.M. December 8, 1829.]
My dear B.B.—You are very good to have been uneasy about us, and I have the satisfaction to tell you, that we are both in better health and spirits than we have been for a year or two past; I may say, than we have been since we have been at Enfield. The cause may not appear quite adequate, when I tell you, that a course of ill health and spirits brought us to the determination of giving up our house here, and we are boarding and lodging with a worthy old couple, long inhabitants of Enfield, where everything is done for us without our trouble, further than a reasonable weekly payment. We should have done so before, but it is not easy to flesh and blood to give up an ancient establishment, to discard old Penates, and from house keepers to turn house-sharers. (N.B. We are not in the Work-house.) Dioclesian in his garden found more repose than on the imperial seat of Rome, and the nob of Charles the Fifth aked seldomer under a monk's cowl than under the diadem. With such shadows of assimilation we countenance our degradation. With such a load of dignifyd cares just removed from our shoulders, we can the more understand and pity the accession to yours, by the advancement to an Assigneeship. I will tell you honestly B.B. that it has been long my deliberate judgment, that all Bankrupts, of what denomination civil or religious whatever, ought to be hang'd. The pity of mankind has for ages run in a wrong channel, and has been diverted from poor Creditors (how many I have known sufferers! Hazlitt has just been defrauded of £100 by his Bookseller-friend's breaking) to scoundrel Debtors. I know all the topics, that distress may come upon an honest man without his fault, that the failure of one that he trusted was his calamity &c. &c. Then let both be hang'd. O how careful it would make traders! These are my deliberate thoughts after many years' experience in matters of trade. What a world of trouble it would save you, if Friend * * * * * had been immediately hangd, without benefit of clergy, which (being a Quaker I presume) he could not reasonably insist upon. Why, after slaving twelve months in your assign-business, you will be enabled to declare seven pence in the Pound in all human probabilty. B.B., he should be hanged. Trade will never re-flourish in this land till such a Law is establish'd. I write big not to save ink but eyes, mine having been troubled with reading thro' three folios of old Fuller in almost as few days, and I went to bed last night in agony, and am writing with a vial of eye water before me, alternately dipping in vial and inkstand. This may enflame my zeal against Bankrupts—but it was my speculation when I could see better. Half the world's misery (Eden else) is owing to want of money, and all that want is owing to Bankrupts. I declare I would, if the State wanted Practitioners, turn Hangman myself, and should have great pleasure in hanging the first after my salutary law should be establish'd. I have seen no annuals and wish to see none. I like your fun upon them, and was quite pleased with Bowles's sonnet. Hood is or was at Brighton, but a note, prose or rhime, to him, Robert Street, Adelphi, I am sure would extract a copy of his, which also I have not seen. Wishing you and yours all Health, I conclude while these frail glasses are to me—eyes.
C.L.
["Dioclesian." The Emperor Diocletian abdicated the throne after twenty-one years' reign, and retired to his garden. Charles V. of Germany imitated the Roman Emperor, and after thirty-six years took the cowl.
"Hazlitt has just been defrauded." The failure of Hunt & Clarke, the publishers of the Life of Napoleon, cost Hazlitt £500. He had received only £140 towards this, in a bill which on their insolvency became worthless.
"Friend * * * * *." Not identifiable.]
LETTER 498
CHARLES LAMB TO WILLIAM WORDSWORTH
[P.M. January 22, 1830.]
And is it a year since we parted from you at the steps of Edmonton Stage? There are not now the years that there used to be. The tale of the dwindled age of men, reported of successional mankind, is true of the same man only. We do not live a year in a year now. 'Tis a punctum stans. The seasons pass us with indifference. Spring cheers not, nor winter heightens our gloom, Autumn hath foregone its moralities, they are hey-pass re-pass [as] in a show-box. Yet as far as last year occurs back, for they scarce shew a reflex now, they make no memory as heretofore—'twas sufficiently gloomy. Let the sullen nothing pass.
Suffice it that after sad spirits prolonged thro' many of its months, as it called them, we have cast our skins, have taken a farewell of the pompous troublesome trifle calld housekeeping, and are settled down into poor boarders and lodgers at next door with an old couple, the Baucis and Baucida of dull Enfield. Here we have nothing to do with our victuals but to eat them, with the garden but to see it grow, with the tax gatherer but to hear him knock, with the maid but to hear her scolded. Scot and lot, butcher, baker, are things unknown to us save as spectators of the pageant. We are fed we know not how, quietists, confiding ravens. We have the otium pro dignitate, a respectable insignificance. Yet in the self condemned obliviousness, in the stagnation, some molesting yearnings of life, not quite kill'd, rise, prompting me that there was a London, and that I was of that old Jerusalem. In dreams I am in Fleetmarket, but I wake and cry to sleep again. I die hard, a stubborn Eloisa in this detestable Paraclete. What have I gained by health? intolerable dulness. What by early hours and moderate meals?—a total blank. O never let the lying poets be believed, who 'tice men from the chearful haunts of streets—or think they mean it not of a country village. In the ruins of Palmyra I could gird myself up to solitude, or muse to the snorings of the Seven Sleepers, but to have a little teazing image of a town about one, country folks that do not look like country folks, shops two yards square, half a dozen apples and two penn'orth of overlookd gingerbread for the lofty fruiterers of Oxford Street—and, for the immortal book and print stalls, a circulating library that stands still, where the shew-picture is a last year's Valentine, and whither the fame of the last ten Scotch novels has not yet travel'd (marry, they just begin to be conscious of the Red Gauntlet), to have a new plasterd flat church, and to be wishing that it was but a Cathedral. The very blackguards here are degenerate. The topping gentry, stock brokers. The passengers too many to ensure your quiet, or let you go about whistling, or gaping—too few to be the fine indifferent pageants of Fleet Street. Confining, room-keeping thickest winter is yet more bearable here than the gaudy months. Among one's books at one's fire by candle one is soothed into an oblivion that one is not in the country, but with the light the green fields return, till I gaze, and in a calenture can plunge myself into Saint Giles's. O let no native Londoner imagine that health, and rest, and innocent occupation, interchange of converse sweet and recreative study, can make the country any thing better than altogether odious and detestable. A garden was the primitive prison till man with promethean felicity and boldness luckily sinn'd himself out of it. Thence followd Babylon, Nineveh, Venice, London, haberdashers, goldsmiths, taverns, playhouses, satires, epigrams, puns—these all came in on the town part, and the thither side of innocence. Man found out inventions.
From my den I return you condolence for your decaying sight, not for any thing there is to see in the country, but for the miss of the pleasure of reading a London newspaper. The poets are as well to listen to, any thing high may, nay must, be read out—you read it to yourself with an imaginary auditor—but the light paragraphs must be glid over by the proper eye, mouthing mumbles their gossamery substance. 'Tis these trifles I should mourn in fading sight. A newspaper is the single gleam of comfort I receive here, it comes from rich Cathay with tidings of mankind. Yet I could not attend to it read out by the most beloved voice. But your eyes do not get worse, I gather. O for the collyrium of Tobias inclosed in a whiting's liver to send you with no apocryphal good wishes! The last long time I heard from you, you had knock'd your head against something. Do not do so. For your head (I do not flatter) is not a nob, or the top of a brass nail, or the end of a nine pin—unless a Vulcanian hammer could fairly batter a Recluse out of it, then would I bid the smirch'd god knock and knock lustily, the two-handed skinker. What a nice long letter Dorothy has written! Mary must squeeze out a line propriâ manu, but indeed her fingers have been incorrigibly nervous to letter writing for a long interval. 'Twill please you all to hear that, tho' I fret like a lion in a net, her present health and spirits are better than they have been for some time past: she is absolutely three years and a half younger, as I tell her, since we have adopted this boarding plan. Our providers are an honest pair, dame Westwood and her husband—he, when the light of prosperity shined on them, a moderately thriving haberdasher within Bow Bells, retired since with something under a competence, writes himself parcel gentleman, hath borne parish offices, sings fine old sea songs at threescore and ten, sighs only now and then when he thinks that he has a son on his hands about 15, whom he finds a difficulty in getting out into the world, and then checks a sigh with muttering, as I once heard him prettily, not meaning to be heard, "I have married my daughter however,"—takes the weather as it comes, outsides it to town in severest season, and a' winter nights tells old stories not tending to literature, how comfortable to author-rid folks! and has one anecdote, upon which and about forty pounds a year he seems to have retired in green old age. It was how he was a rider in his youth, travelling for shops, and once (not to baulk his employer's bargain) on a sweltering day in August, rode foaming into Dunstable upon a mad horse to the dismay and expostulary wonderment of innkeepers, ostlers &c. who declared they would not have bestrid the beast to win the Darby. Understand the creature gall'd to death and desperation by gad flies, cormorants winged, worse than beset Inachus' daughter. This he tells, this he brindles and burnishes on a' winter's eves, 'tis his star of set glory, his rejuvenescence to descant upon. Far from me be it (dii avertant) to look a gift story in the mouth, or cruelly to surmise (as those who doubt the plunge of Curtius) that the inseparate conjuncture of man and beast, the centaur-phenomenon that staggerd all Dunstable, might have been the effect of unromantic necessity, that the horse-part carried the reasoning, willy nilly, that needs must when such a devil drove, that certain spiral configurations in the frame of Thomas Westwood unfriendly to alighting, made the alliance more forcible than voluntary. Let him enjoy his fame for me, nor let me hint a whisper that shall dismount Bellerophon. Put case he was an involuntary martyr, yet if in the fiery conflict he buckled the soul of a constant haberdasher to him, and adopted his flames, let Accident and He share the glory! You would all like Thomas Westwood.
[Illustration: Hand drawn sketch]
How weak is painting to describe a man! Say that he stands four feet and a nail high by his own yard measure, which like the Sceptre of Agamemnon shall never sprout again, still you have no adequate idea, nor when I tell you that his dear hump, which I have favord in the picture, seems to me of the buffalo—indicative and repository of mild qualities, a budget of kindnesses, still you have not the man. Knew you old Norris of the Temple, 60 years ours and our father's friend, he was not more natural to us than this old W. the acquaintance of scarce more weeks. Under his roof now ought I to take my rest, but that back-looking ambition tells me I might yet be a Londoner. Well, if we ever do move, we have encumbrances the less to impede us: all our furniture has faded under the auctioneer's hammer, going for nothing like the tarnishd frippery of the prodigal, and we have only a spoon or two left to bless us. Clothed we came into Enfield, and naked we must go out of it. I would live in London shirtless, bookless. Henry Crabb is at Rome, advices to that effect have reach'd Bury. But by solemn legacy he bequeath'd at parting (whether he should live or die) a Turkey of Suffolk to be sent every succeeding Xmas to us and divers other friends. What a genuine old Bachelor's action! I fear he will find the air of Italy too classic. His station is in the Hartz forest, his soul is Bego'ethed. Miss Kelly we never see; Talfourd not this half-year; the latter flourishes, but the exact number of his children, God forgive me, I have utterly forgotten, we single people are often out in our count there. Shall I say two? One darling I know they have lost within a twelvemonth, but scarce known to me by sight, and that was a second child lost. We see scarce anybody. We have just now Emma with us for her holydays; you remember her playing at brag with Mr. Quillinan at poor Monkhouse's! She is grown an agreeable young woman; she sees what I write, so you may understand me with limitations. She was our inmate for a twelvemonth, grew natural to us, and then they told us it was best for her to go out as a Governess, and so she went out, and we were only two of us, and our pleasant house-mate is changed to an occasional visitor. If they want my sister to go out (as they call it) there will be only one of us. Heaven keep us all from this acceding to Unity!
Can I cram loves enough to you all in this little O? Excuse particularizing.
C.L.
LETTER 499
MARY LAMB TO DOROTHY WORDSWORTH
(Same letter)
My dear Miss Wordsworth, Charles has left me space to fill up with my own poor scribble; which I must do as well as I can, being quite out of practise, and after he has been reading his queer letter out to us I can hardly put down in a plain style all I had to tell you, how pleasant your handwriting was to me. He has lumped you all together in one rude remembrance at the end, but I beg to send my love individually and by name to Mr. and Mrs. Wordsworth, to Miss Hutchinson, whom we often talk of, and think of as being with you always, to the dutiful good daughter and patient amanuensis Dora, and even to Johanna, whom we have not seen, if she will accept it. Charles has told you of my long illness and our present settlement, which I assure you is very quiet and comfortable to me, and to him too, if he would own it. I am very sorry we shall not see John, but I never go to town, nor my brother but at his quarterly visits at the India House, and when he does, he finds it melancholy, so many of our old friends being dead or dispersed, and the very streets, he says altering every day. Many thanks for your Letter and the nice news in it, which I should have replied to more at large than I see he has done. I am sure it deserved it. He has not said a word about your intentions for Rome, which I sincerely wish you health one day to accomplish. In that case we may meet by the way. We are so glad to hear dear little William is doing well. If you knew how happy your letters made us you would write I know more frequently. Pray think of this. How chearfully should we pay the postage every week.
Your affectionate
MARY LAMB.
["Baucis and Baucida." A slip, I suppose, for Philemon and Baucis (Ovid, Metamorphoses).
Redgauntlet dated from 1824.
"In a calenture." A calenture is a form of fever at sea in which the sufferer believes himself to be surrounded by green fields, and often leaps overboard. Wordsworth describes one in "The Brothers."
"A Recluse"—Wordsworth's promised poem, that was never completed. First printed in 1888.
Inachus' daughter was Io, persecuted by a malignant insect sent by Juno.
"Henry Crabb." Crabb Robinson was a personal friend of Goethe's. He had spent some days with him at Weimar in the summer of 1829. Goethe told Robinson that he admired Lamb's sonnet "The Family Name."
"Mr. Quillinan"—Edward Quillinan, afterwards Wordsworth's son-in-law.
"Johanna." Joanna Hutchinson, Mrs. Wordsworth's sister. Joanna of the laugh.
"John." John Wordsworth, Wordsworth's eldest son, was now twenty-six;
William, Wordsworth's second son, no longer little, was nineteen.]
LETTER 500
CHARLES LAMB TO BERNARD BARTON
[P.M. 25 February, 1830.]
Dear B.B.—To reply to you by return of post, I must gobble up my dinner, and dispatch this in propriâ Personâ to the office, to be in time. So take it from me hastily, that you are perfectly welcome to furnish A.C. with the scrap, which I had almost forgotten writing. The more my character comes to be known, the less my veracity will come to be suspected. Time every day clears up some suspected narrative of Herodotus, Bruce, and others of us great Travellers. Why, that Joseph Paice was as real a person as Joseph Hume, and a great deal pleasanter. A careful observer of life, Bernard, has no need to invent. Nature romances it for him. Dinner plates rattle, and I positively shall incur indigestion by carrying it half concocted to the Post House. Let me congratulate you on the Spring coming in, and do you in return condole with me for the Winter going out. When the old one goes, seldome comes a better. I dread the prospect of Summer, with his all day long days. No need of his assistance to make country places dull. With fire and candle light, I can dream myself in Holborn. With lightsome skies shining in to bed time, I can not. This Meseck, and these tents of Kedar—I would dwell in the skirts of Jericho rather, and think every blast of the coming in Mail a Ram's Horn. Give me old London at Fire and Plague times, rather than these tepid gales, healthy country air, and purposeless exercise. Leg of mutton absolutely on the table.
Take our hasty loves and short farewell.
C.L.
[A.C. was Allan Cunningham, who wanted Lamb's letter on Blake (see above) for his Lives of the Painters. It was not, however, used there until included in Mrs. Charles Heaton's edition in Bohn's Library.
"Bruce"—the Abyssinian explorer, whom the Christ's Hospital boys used to emulate, as Lamb tells us in the Elia essay on Newspapers.
"Joseph Paice"—a Director of the South-Sea Company and Lamb's first employer, of whom he writes in the Elia essay on "Modern Gallantry" (see notes to Vol. II.).
Here should come a letter to Moxon, February 21, 1830, saying that a letter has just arrived from Mrs. Williams indicating that Miss Isola was not well and must have a long holiday. The illness increased very rapidly, becoming a serious attack of brain fever.]
LETTER 501
CHARLCHARLES TO MRS. WILLIAMS
[February 26, 1830.]
Dear Madam,—May God bless you for your attention to our poor Emma! I am so shaken with your sad news I can scarce write. She is too ill to be removed at present; but we can only say that if she is spared, when that can be practicable, we have always a home for her. Speak to her of it, when she is capable of understanding, and let me conjure you to let us know from day to day, the state she is in. But one line is all we crave. Nothing we can do for her, that shall not be done. We shall be in the terriblest suspense. We had no notion she was going to be ill. A line from anybody in your house will much oblige us. I feel for the situation this trouble places you in.
Can I go to her aunt, or do anything? I do not know what to offer. We are in great distress. Pray relieve us, if you can, by somehow letting us know. I will fetch her here, or anything. Your kindness can never be forgot. Pray excuse my abruptness. I hardly know what I write. And take our warmest thanks. Hoping to hear something, I remain, dear Madam,
Yours most faithfully,
C. LAMB.
Our grateful respects to Mr. Williams.
LETTER 502
CHARLES LAMB TO MRS. WILLIAMS
Enfield, 1 March, 1830.
Dear Madam,—We cannot thank you enough. Your two words "much better" were so considerate and good. The good news affected my sister to an agony of tears; but they have relieved us from such a weight. We were ready to expect the worst, and were hardly able to bear the good hearing. You speak so kindly of her, too, and think she may be able to resume her duties. We were prepared, as far as our humble means would have enabled us, to have taken her from all duties. But, far better for the dear girl it is that she should have a prospect of being useful.
I am sure you will pardon my writing again; for my heart is so full, that it was impossible to refrain. Many thanks for your offer to write again, should any change take place. I dare not yet be quite out of fear, the alteration has been so sudden. But I will hope you will have a respite from the trouble of writing again. I know no expression to convey a sense of your kindness. We were in such a state expecting the post. I had almost resolved to come as near you as Bury; but my sister's health does not permit my absence on melancholy occasions. But, O, how happy will she be to part with me, when I shall hear the agreeable news that I may come and fetch her. She shall be as quiet as possible. No restorative means shall be wanting to restore her back to you well and comfortable.
She will make up for this sad interruption of her young friend's studies. I am sure she will—she must—after you have spared her for a little time. Change of scene may do very much for her. I think this last proof of your kindness to her in her desolate state can hardly make her love and respect you more than she has ever done. O, how glad shall we be to return her fit for her occupation. Madam, I trouble you with my nonsense; but you would forgive me, if you knew how light-hearted you have made two poor souls at Enfield, that were gasping for news of their poor friend. I will pray for you and Mr. Williams. Give our very best respects to him, and accept our thanks. We are happier than we hardly know how to bear. God bless you! My very kindest congratulations to Miss Humphreys.
Believe me, dear Madam,
Your ever obliged servant,
C. LAMB.
LETTER 503
CHARLES LAMB TO SARAH HAZLITT
March 4th, 1830.
Dear Sarah,—I was meditating to come and see you, but I am unable for the walk. We are both very unwell, and under affliction for poor Emma, who has had a very dangerous brain fever, and is lying very ill at Bury, from whence I expect a summons to fetch her. We are very sorry for your confinement. Any books I have are at your service. I am almost, I may say quite, sure that letters to India pay no postage, and may go by the regular Post Office, now in St. Martin's le Grand. I think any receiving house would take them—
I wish I could confirm your hopes about Dick Norris. But it is quite a dream. Some old Bencher of his surname is made Treasurer for the year, I suppose, which is an annual office. Norris was Sub-Treasurer, quite a different thing. They were pretty well in the Summer, since when we have heard nothing of them. Mrs. Reynolds is better than she has been for years; she is with a disagreeable woman that she has taken a mighty fancy to out of spite to a rival woman she used to live and quarrel with; she grows quite fat, they tell me, and may live as long as I do, to be a tormenting rent-charge to my diminish'd income. We go on pretty comfortably in our new plan. I will come and have a talk with you when poor Emma's affair is settled, and will bring books. At present I am weak, and could hardly bring my legs home yesterday after a much shorter stroll than to Northaw. Mary has got her bonnet on for a short expedition. May you get better, as the Spring comes on. She sends her best love with mine.
C.L.
[Addressed to "Mrs. Hazlitt, Mrs. Tomlinson's, Northaw, near Potter's
Bar, Herts."
Mrs. Hazlitt was in later years a sufferer from rheumatism. Dick Norris was the son of Randal Norris. He had retired to Widford. Mrs. Reynolds, Lamb's old schoolmistress and dependant, we have met.]
LETTER 504
CHARLES LAMB TO MRS. WILLIAMS
Enfield, 5 Mar., 1830.
Dear Madam,—I feel greatly obliged by your letter of Tuesday, and should not have troubled you again so soon, but that you express a wish to hear that our anxiety was relieved by the assurances in it. You have indeed given us much comfort respecting our young friend, but considerable uneasiness respecting your own health and spirits, which must have suffered under such attention. Pray believe me that we shall wait in quiet hope for the time when I shall receive the welcome summons to come and relieve you from a charge, which you have executed with such tenderness. We desire nothing so much as to exchange it with you. Nothing shall be wanting on my part to remove her with the best judgment I can, without (I hope) any necessity for depriving you of the services of your valuable housekeeper. Until the day comes, we entreat that you will spare yourself the trouble of writing, which we should be ashamed to impose upon you in your present weak state. Not hearing from you, we shall be satisfied in believing that there has been no relapse. Therefore we beg that you will not add to your troubles by unnecessary, though most kind, correspondence. Till I have the pleasure of thanking you personally, I beg you to accept these written acknowledgments of all your kindness. With respects to Mr. Williams and sincere prayers for both your healths, I remain,
Your ever obliged servant,
C. LAMB.
My sister joins me in respects and thanks.
LETTER 505
CHARLES LAMB TO JAMES GILLMAN
March 8th, 1830.
My dear G.,—Your friend Battin (for I knew him immediately by the smooth satinity of his style) must excuse me for advocating the cause of his friends in Spitalfields. The fact is, I am retained by the Norwich people, and have already appeared in their paper under the signatures of "Lucius Sergius," "Bluff," "Broad-Cloth," "No-Trade-to-the-Woollen-Trade," "Anti-plush," &c., in defence of druggets and long camblets. And without this pre-engagement, I feel I should naturally have chosen a side opposite to ——, for in the silken seemingness of his nature there is that which offends me. My flesh tingles at such caterpillars. He shall not crawl me over. Let him and his workmen sing the old burthen,
"Heigh ho, ye weavers!"
for any aid I shall offer them in this emergency. I was over Saint Luke's the other day with my friend Tuthill, and mightily pleased with one of his contrivances for the comfort and amelioration of the students. They have double cells, in which a pair may lie feet to feet horizontally, and chat the time away as rationally as they can. It must certainly be more sociable for them these warm raving nights. The right-hand truckle in one of these friendly recesses, at present vacant, was preparing, I understood, for Mr. Irving. Poor fellow! it is time he removed from Pentonville. I followed him as far as to Highbury the other day, with a mob at his heels, calling out upon Ermigiddon, who I suppose is some Scotch moderator. He squinted out his favourite eye last Friday, in the fury of possession, upon a poor woman's shoulders that was crying matches, and has not missed it. The companion truck, as far as I could measure it with my eye, would conveniently fit a person about the length of Coleridge, allowing for a reasonable drawing up of the feet, not at all painful. Does he talk of moving this quarter? You and I have too much sense to trouble ourselves with revelations; marry, to the same in Greek you may have something professionally to say. Tell C. that he was to come and see us some fine day. Let it be before he moves, for in his new quarters he will necessarily be confined in his conversation to his brother prophet. Conceive the two Rabbis foot to foot, for there are no Gamaliels there to affect a humbler posture! All are masters in that Patmos, where the law is perfect equality—Latmos, I should rather say, for they will be Luna's twin darlings; her affection will be ever at the full. Well; keep your brains moist with gooseberry this mad March, for the devil of exposition seeketh dry places.
C.L.
[The letter is assigned to the Rev. James Gillman by some editors; but I think that a mistake. See the reference below to a medical matter. Battin was interested in the Spitalfields weavers to the detriment of the Norwich.
Major Butterworth in a letter to Notes and Queries, March 24, 1906, thus explains the reference to Battin:—
"In lately going over the pages of The New Monthly Magazine for 1826 I came across a paragraph in the June number, extracted from a daily newspaper, in which the following occurs: 'Great merit is due to Mr. Lamb junior for his exertions to relieve the weavers of Norwich.'…
"As his 'Reminiscences of Juke Judkins, Esq.,' was printed in the same number of the Magazine, Lamb's attention would no doubt be arrested by the remarks about his namesake, which would probably be retained in his memory, to be used subsequently, as occasion served, in mystifying his friend."
Tuthill, whom we have met, was one of the physicians at St. Luke's
Hospital for the insane.
"He squinted out…." Irving had sight only in one eye, an obliquity caused, it is suggested, by lying when a baby in a wooden cradle, the sides of which prevented the other from gathering light.
"To the same in Greek." An atrocious pun, which I leave to the reader to discover. Gillman was a doctor.]
LETTER 506
CHARLES LAMB TO WILLIAM AYRTON
Mr. Westwood's, Chase Side, Enfield,
14th March, 1830.
My dear Ayrton,—Your letter, which was only not so pleasant as your appearance would have been, has revived some old images; Phillips (not the Colonel), with his few hairs bristling up at the charge of a revoke, which he declares impossible; the old Captain's significant nod over the right shoulder (was it not?); Mrs. Burney's determined questioning of the score, after the game was absolutely gone to the devil, the plain but hospitable cold boiled-beef suppers at sideboard; all which fancies, redolent of middle age and strengthful spirits, come across us ever and anon in this vale of deliberate senectitude, ycleped Enfield.
You imagine a deep gulf between you and us; and there is a pitiable hiatus in kind between St. James's Park and this extremity of Middlesex. But the mere distance in turnpike roads is a trifle. The roof of a coach swings you down in an hour or two. We have a sure hot joint on a Sunday, and when had we better? I suppose you know that ill health has obliged us to give up housekeeping; but we have an asylum at the very next door—only twenty-four inches further from town, which is not material in a country expedition—where a table d'hôte is kept for us, without trouble on our parts, and we adjourn after dinner, when one of the old world (old friends) drops casually down among us. Come and find us out, and seal our judicious change with your approbation, whenever the whim bites, or the sun prompts. No need of announcement, for we are sure to be at home.
I keep putting off the subject of my answer. In truth I am not in spirits at present to see Mr. Murray on such a business; but pray offer him my acknowledgments and an assurance that I should like at least one of his propositions, as I have so much additional matter for the SPECIMENS, as might make two volumes in all, or ONE (new edition) omitting such better known authors as Beaumont and Fletcher, Jonson, &c.
But we are both in trouble at present. A very dear young friend of ours, who passed her Christmas holidays here, has been taken dangerously ill with a fever, from which she is very precariously recovering, and I expect a summons to fetch her when she is well enough to bear the journey from Bury. It is Emma Isola, with whom we got acquainted at our first visit to your sister at Cambridge, and she has been an occasional inmate with us—and of late years much more frequently—ever since. While she is in this danger, and till she is out of it and here in a probable way to recovery, I feel that I have no spirits for an engagement of any kind. It has been a terrible shock to us; therefore I beg that you will make my handsomest excuses to Mr. Murray.
Our very kindest loves to Mrs. A. and the younger A.'s.
Your unforgotten,
C. LAMB.
["Phillips." This would be Edward Phillips, who, I think, succeeded
Rickman as secretary to Abbot (afterwards Lord Colchester), the Speaker.
Colonel Erasmus Phillips we have also met. The Captain was Captain
Burney.
Mr. Murray's propositions. I presume that Murray had, through Ayrton, suggested either the republication of the Dramatic Specimens, 1808, in one volume, or in two volumes, with the Garrick Extracts added. The plan came to nothing. Moxon published them in the two volume style in 1835. Murray had refused Lamb's "Works" some twelve years before. For the Dramatic Specimens see Vol. IV. of my large edition.]
LETTER 507
CHARLES LAMB TO MRS. WILLIAMS
[Dated at end: March 22 (1830).]
Dear Madam,—Once more I have to return you thanks for a very kind letter. It has gladdened us very much to hear that we may have hope to see our young friend so soon, and through your kind nursing so well recovered. I sincerely hope that your own health and spirits will not have been shaken: you have had a sore trial indeed, and greatly do we feel indebted to you for all which you have undergone. If I hear nothing from you in the mean time, I shall secure myself a place in the Cornwallis Coach for Monday. It will not be at all necessary that I shall be met at Bury, as I can well find my way to the Rectory, and I beg that you will not inconvenience yourselves by such attention. Accordingly as I find Miss Isola able to bear the journey, I intend to take the care of her by the same stage or by chaises perhaps, dividing the journey; but exactly as you shall judge fit. It is our misfortune that long journeys do not agree with my sister, who would else have taken this care upon herself, perhaps more properly. It is quite out of the question to rob you of the services of any of your domestics. I cannot think of it. But if in your opinion a female attendant would be requisite on the journey, and if you or Mr. Williams would feel more comfortable by her being in charge of two, I will most gladly engage one of her nurses or any young person near you, that you can recommend; for my object is to remove her in the way that shall be most satisfactory to yourselves.
On the subject of the young people that you are interesting yourselves about, I will have the pleasure to talk to you, when I shall see you. I live almost out of the world and out of the sphere of being useful; but no pains of mine shall be spared, if but a prospect opens of doing a service. Could I do all I wish, and I indeed have grown helpless to myself and others, it must not satisfy the arrears of obligation I owe to Mr. Williams and yourself for all your kindness.
I beg you will turn in your mind and consider in what most comfortable way Miss Isola can leave your house, and I will implicitly follow your suggestions. What you have done for her can never be effaced from our memories, and I would have you part with her in the way that would best satisfy yourselves.
I am afraid of impertinently extending my letter, else I feel I have not said half what I would say. So, dear madam, till I have the pleasure of seeing you both, of whose kindness I have heard so much before, I respectfully take my leave with our kindest love to your poor patient and most sincere regards for the health and happiness of Mr. Williams and yourself.
May God bless you. CH. LAMB.
Enfield, Monday, 22 March.
LETTER 508
CHARLES LAMB TO MRS. WILLIAMS
Enfield, 2 Apr., 1830.
Dear Madam
I have great pleasure in letting you know that Miss Isola has suffered very little from fatigue on her long journey. I am ashamed to say that I came home rather the more tired of the two. But I am a very unpractised traveller. She has had two tolerable nights' sleeps since, and is decidedly not worse than when we left you. I remembered the Magnesia according to your directions, and promise that she shall be kept very quiet, never forgetting that she is still an invalid. We found my Sister very well in health, only a little impatient to see her; and, after a few hysterical tears for gladness, all was comfortable again. We arrived here from Epping between five and six. The incidents of our journey were trifling, but you bade me tell them. We had then in the coach a rather talkative Gentleman, but very civil, all the way, and took up a servant maid at Stamford, going to a sick mistress. To the latter, a participation in the hospitalities of your nice rusks and sandwiches proved agreeable, as it did to my companion, who took merely a sip of the weakest wine and water with them. The former engaged me in a discourse for full twenty miles on the probable advantages of Steam Carriages, which being merely problematical, I bore my part in with some credit, in spite of my totally un-engineer-like faculties. But when somewhere about Stanstead he put an unfortunate question to me as to the "probability of its turning out a good turnip season;" and when I, who am still less of an agriculturist than a steam-philosopher, not knowing a turnip from a potato ground, innocently made answer that I believed it depended very much upon boiled legs of mutton, my unlucky reply set Miss Isola a laughing to a degree that disturbed her tranquility for the only moment in our journey. I am afraid my credit sank very low with my other fellow-traveller, who had thought he had met with a well-informed passenger, which is an accident so desirable in a Stage Coach. We were rather less communicative, but still friendly, the rest of the way. How I employed myself between Epping and Enfield the poor verses in the front of my paper may inform you which you may please to Christen an Acrostic in a Cross Road, and which I wish were worthier of the Lady they refer to. But I trust you will plead my pardon to her on a subject so delicate as a Lady's good name. Your candour must acknowledge that they are written strait. And now dear Madam, I have left myself hardly space to express my sense of the friendly reception I found at Fornham. Mr. Williams will tell you that we had the pleasure of a slight meeting with him on the road, where I could almost have told him, but that it seemed ungracious, that such had been your hospitality, that I scarcely missed the good Master of the Family at Fornham, though heartily I should [have] rejoiced to have made a little longer acquaintance with him. I will say nothing of our deeper obligations to both of you, because I think we agreed at Fornham, that gratitude may be over-exacted on the part of the obliging, and over-expressed on the part of the obliged, person. My Sister and Miss Isola join in respects to Mr. Williams and yourself, and I beg to be remembered kindly to the Miss Hammonds and the two gentlemen whom I had the good fortune to meet at your house. I have not forgotten the Election in which you are interesting yourself, and the little that I can, I will do immediately. Miss Isola will have the pleasure of writing to you next week, and we shall hope, at your leisure, to hear of your own health, etc. I am, Dear Madam, with great respect,
your obliged
CHARLES LAMB.
[Added in Miss Isola's hand:] I must just add a line to beg you will let us hear from you, my dear Mrs. Williams. I have just received the forwarded letter. Fornham we have talked about constantly, and I felt quite strange at this home the first day. I will attend to all you said, my dear Madam.
[I do not know which of Lamb's acrostics was the one in question.
Possibly this, on Mrs. Williams' youngest daughter, Louisa Clare
Williams:—
Least Daughter, but not least beloved, of Grace!
O frown not on a stranger, who from place
Unknown and distant these few lines hath penn'd.
I but report what thy Instructress Friend
So oft hath told us of thy gentle heart.
A pupil most affectionate thou art,
Careful to learn what elder years impart.
Louisa—Clare—by which name shall I call thee?
A prettier pair of names sure ne'er was found,
Resembling thy own sweetness in sweet sound.
Ever calm peace and innocence befal thee!
See Vol. IV. of this edition.]
LETTER 509
CHARLES LAMB TO MRS. WILLIAMS
Enfield, Good Friday [April 9, 1830].
P.S.—I am the worst folder-up of a letter in the world, except certain Hottentots, in the land of Caffre, who never fold up their letters at all, writing very badly upon skins, &c.
Dear Madam,—I do assure you that your verses gratified me very much, and my sister is quite proud of them. For the first time in my life I congratulated myself upon the shortness and meanness of my name. Had it been Schwartzenberg or Esterhazy, it would have put you to some puzzle. I am afraid I shall sicken you of acrostics; but this last was written to order. I beg you to have inserted in your county paper something like this advertisement. "To the nobility, gentry, and others, about Bury.—C. Lamb respectfully informs his friends and the public in general, that he is leaving off business in the acrostic line, as he is going into an entirely new line. Rebuses and charades done as usual, and upon the old terms. Also, Epitaphs to suit the memory of any person deceased." I thought I had adroitly escaped the rather unpliable name of "Williams," curtailing your poor daughters to their proper surnames; but it seems you would not let me off so easily. If these trifles amuse you, I am paid. Tho really 'tis an operation too much like—"A, apple-pye; B, bit it." To make amends, I request leave to lend you the "Excursion," and to recommend, in particular, the "Churchyard Stories," in the seventh book, I think. They will strengthen the tone of your mind after its weak diet on acrostics. Miss Isola is writing, and will tell you that we are going on very comfortably. Her sister is just come. She blames my last verses, as being more written on Mr. Williams than on yourself; but how should I have parted whom a Superior Power has brought together? I beg you will jointly accept of our best respects, and pardon your obsequious if not troublesome Correspondent, C.L.
[Mr. Cecil Turner, a grandson of Mrs. Williams, tells me that her acrostic on Lamb ran thus:—
TO CHARLES LAMB
Answer to Acrostics on the Names of Two Friends
Charmed with the lines thy hand has sent,
Honour I feel the compliment,
Amongst thy products that have won the ear,
Ranged in thy verse two friends most dear.
Lay not thy winning pen away,
Each line thou writest we bid thee stay,
Still ask to charm us with another lay.
Long liked, long lived by public Fame
A friend to misery, whate'er its claim.
Marvel I must if e'er we find
Bestowed by heaven a kindlier mind.
The two friends were probably Edward Hogg and Cecilia Catherine Lawton, on whose names Lamb wrote acrostics (see Vol. IV.).
This was Lamb's effort:—
Go little Poem, and present
Respectful terms of compliment;
A gentle lady bids thee speak!
Courteous is she, tho' thou be weak—
Evoke from Heaven as thick as manna
Joy after joy on Grace Joanna:
On Fornham's Glebe and Pasture land
A blessing pray. Long, long may stand,
Not touched by Time, the Rectory blithe;
No grudging churl dispute his Tithe;
At Easter be the offerings due
With cheerful spirit paid; each pew
In decent order filled; no noise
Loud intervene to drown the voice,
Learning, or wisdom of the Teacher;
Impressive be the Sacred Preacher,
And strict his notes on holy page;
May young and old from age to age
Salute, and still point out, "The good man's Parsonage!"]
LETTER 510
CHARLES LAMB TO JAMES GILLMAN
[? Early Spring, 1830.]
Dear Gillman,—Pray do you, or S.T.C., immediately write to say you have received back the golden works of the dear, fine, silly old angel, which I part from, bleeding, and to say how the Winter has used you all.
It is our intention soon, weather permitting, to come over for a day at Highgate; for beds we will trust to the Gate-House, should you be full: tell me if we may come casually, for in this change of climate there is no naming a day for walking. With best loves to Mrs. Gillman, &c.
Yours, mopish, but in health,
C. LAMB.
I shall be uneasy till I hear of Fuller's safe arrival.
[See letter to Gillman above. The "dear, fine, silly old angel" was
Thomas Fuller.]
LETTER 511
CHARLES LAMB TO JACOB VALE ASBURY
[? April, 1830.]
Dear Sir—Some draughts and boluses have been brought here which we conjecture were meant for the young lady whom you saw this morning, though they are labelled for
MISS ISOLA LAMB.
No such person is known on the Chase Side, and she is fearful of taking medicines which may have been made up for another patient. She begs me to say that she was born an Isola and christened Emma. Moreover that she is Italian by birth, and that her ancestors were from Isola Bella (Fair Island) in the kingdom of Naples. She has never changed her name and rather mournfully adds that she has no prospect at present of doing so. She is literally I. SOLA, or single, at present. Therefore she begs that the obnoxious monosyllable may be omitted on future Phials,—an innocent syllable enough, you'll say, but she has no claim to it. It is the bitterest pill of the seven you have sent her. When a lady loses her good name, what is to become of her? Well she must swallow it as well as she can, but begs the dose may not be repeated.
Yours faithfully,
CHARLES LAMB (not Isola).
[Asbury was a doctor at Enfield. I append another letter to him, without date:—]
LETTER 512
CHARLES LAMB TO JACOB VALE ASBURY
Dear Sir, It is an observation of a wise man that "moderation is best in all things." I cannot agree with him "in liquor." There is a smoothness and oiliness in wine that makes it go down by a natural channel, which I am positive was made for that descending. Else, why does not wine choke us? could Nature have made that sloping lane, not to facilitate the down-going? She does nothing in vain. You know that better than I. You know how often she has helped you at a dead lift, and how much better entitled she is to a fee than yourself sometimes, when you carry off the credit. Still there is something due to manners and customs, and I should apologise to you and Mrs. Asbury for being absolutely carried home upon a man's shoulders thro' Silver Street, up Parson's Lane, by the Chapels (which might have taught me better), and then to be deposited like a dead log at Gaffar Westwood's, who it seems does not "insure" against intoxication. Not that the mode of conveyance is objectionable. On the contrary, it is more easy than a one-horse chaise. Ariel in the "Tempest" says
"On a Bat's back do I fly,
After sunset merrily."
Now I take it that Ariel must sometimes have stayed out late of nights. Indeed, he pretends that "where the bee sucks, there lurks he," as much as to say that his suction is as innocent as that little innocent (but damnably stinging when he is provok'd) winged creature. But I take it, that Ariel was fond of metheglin, of which the Bees are notorious Brewers. But then you will say: What a shocking sight to see a middle-aged gentleman-and-a-half riding upon a Gentleman's back up Parson's Lane at midnight. Exactly the time for that sort of conveyance, when nobody can see him, nobody but Heaven and his own conscience; now Heaven makes fools, and don't expect much from her own creation; and as for conscience, She and I have long since come to a compromise. I have given up false modesty, and she allows me to abate a little of the true. I like to be liked, but I don't care about being respected. I don't respect myself. But, as I was saying, I thought he would have let me down just as we got to Lieutenant Barker's Coal-shed (or emporium) but by a cunning jerk I eased myself, and righted my posture. I protest, I thought myself in a palanquin, and never felt myself so grandly carried. It was a slave under me. There was I, all but my reason. And what is reason? and what is the loss of it? and how often in a day do we do without it, just as well? Reason is only counting, two and two makes four. And if on my passage home, I thought it made five, what matter? Two and two will just make four, as it always did, before I took the finishing glass that did my business. My sister has begged me to write an apology to Mrs. A. and you for disgracing your party; now it does seem to me, that I rather honoured your party, for every one that was not drunk (and one or two of the ladies, I am sure, were not) must have been set off greatly in the contrast to me. I was the scapegoat. The soberer they seemed. By the way is magnesia good on these occasions? iii pol: med: sum: ante noct: in rub: can:. I am no licentiate, but know enough of simples to beg you to send me a draught after this model. But still you'll say (or the men and maids at your house will say) that it is not a seemly sight for an old gentleman to go home pick-a-back. Well, may be it is not. But I have never studied grace. I take it to be a mere superficial accomplishment. I regard more the internal acquisitions. The great object after supper is to get home, and whether that is obtained in a horizontal posture or perpendicular (as foolish men and apes affect for dignity) I think is little to the purpose. The end is always greater than the means. Here I am, able to compose a sensible rational apology, and what signifies how I got here? I have just sense enough to remember I was very happy last night, and to thank our kind host and hostess, and that's sense enough, I hope.
CHARLES LAMB.
N.B.—What is good for a desperate head-ache? Why, Patience, and a determination not to mind being miserable all day long. And that I have made my mind up to.
So, here goes. It is better than not being alive at all, which I might have been, had your man toppled me down at Lieut. Barker's Coal-shed. My sister sends her sober compliments to Mrs. A. She is not much the worse.
Yours truly,
C. LAMB.
["Ariel." In two other of his letters, Lamb confesses similarly to a similar escapade. And in his Elia essay "Rejoicings on the New Year's Coming of Age," he sends Ash Wednesday home in the same manner.
Lieut. John Barker, R.N., was a local character, a coal merchant and a man with a grievance. He had thirteen children, some of whose names probably greatly amused Lamb—John Thomas, William Charles, Frederick Alexander, Marius Collins, Caius Marcius, Marcus Aurelius Antonius, Coriolanus Aurelius, Horatius Tertius Decimus, Elizabeth Mary, Concordia, Lousia Clarissa, Caroline Maria Quiroja and Volumnia Hortensia.]