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_ LETTER XCI TO LETTER C LETTER XCI. TO BERNARD BARTON. _March_ 20, 1826. Dear B. B.,--You may know my letters by the paper and the folding. For the former, I live on scraps obtained in charity from an old friend, whose stationery is a permanent perquisite; for folding, I shall do it neatly when I learn to tie my neckcloths. I surprise most of my friends by writing to them on ruled paper, as if I had not got past pothooks and hangers. Sealing-wax I have none on my establishment; wafers of the coarsest bran supply its place. When my epistles come to be weighed with Pliny's, however superior to the Roman in delicate irony, judicious reflections, etc., his gilt post will bribe over the judges to him. All the time I was at the E. I. H. I never mended a pen; I now cut 'em to the stumps, marring rather than mending the primitive goose-quill. I cannot bear to pay for articles I used to get for nothing. When Adam laid out his first penny upon nonpareils at some stall in Mesopotamos, I think it went hard with him, reflecting upon his old goodly orchard, where he had so many for nothing. When I write to a great man at the court end, he opens with surprise upon a naked note, such as Whitechapel people interchange, with no sweet degrees of envelope. I never enclosed one bit of paper in another, nor understood the rationale of it. Once only I sealed with borrowed wax, to set Walter Scott a-wondering, signed with the imperial quartered arms of England, which my friend Field bears in compliment to his descent, in the female line, from Oliver Cromwell. It must have set his antiquarian curiosity upon watering. To your questions upon the currency, I refer you to Mr. Robinson's last speech, where, if you can find a solution, I cannot. I think this, though,--the best ministry we ever stumbled upon,--gin reduced four shillings in the gallon, wine two shillings in the quart! This comes home to men's minds and bosoms. My tirade against visitors was not meant _particularly_ at you or Anne Knight. I scarce know what I meant, for I do not just now feel the grievance. I wanted to make an _article_. So in another thing I talked of somebody's _insipid wife_ without a correspondent object in my head; and a good lady, a friend's wife, whom I really _love_ (don't startle, I mean in a licit way), has looked shyly on me ever since. The blunders of personal application are ludicrous. I send out a character every now and then on purpose to exercise the ingenuity of my friends. "Popular Fallacies" will go on; that word "concluded" is an erratum, I suppose, for "continued." I do not know how it got stuffed in there. A little thing without name will also be printed on the Religion of the Actors; but it is out of your way, so I recommend you, with true author's hypocrisy, to skip it. We are about to sit down to roast beef, at which we could wish A. K., B. B., and B. B.'s pleasant daughter to be humble partakers. So much for my hint at visitors, which was scarcely calculated for droppers-in from Woodbridge; the sky does not drop such larks every day. My very kindest wishes to you all three, with my sister's best love. C. LAMB.
LETTER XCII.
_June_, 1826. Dear D.,--My first impulse upon seeing your letter was pleasure at seeing your old neat hand, nine parts gentlemanly, with a modest dash of the clerical; my second, a thought natural enough this hot weather: Am I to answer all this? Why, 't is as long as those to the Ephesians and Galatians put together: I have counted the words, for curiosity.... I never knew an enemy to puns who was not an ill-natured man. Your fair critic in the coach reminds me of a Scotchman, who assured me he did not see much in Shakspeare. I replied, I daresay _not_. He felt the equivoke, looked awkward and reddish, but soon returned to the attack by saying that he thought Burns was as good as Shakspeare. I said that I had no doubt he was,--to a _Scotchman_. We exchanged no more words that day.... Let me hear that you have clambered up to Lover's Seat; it is as fine in that neighborhood as Juan Fernandez,--as lonely, too, when the fishing-boats are not out; I have sat for hours staring upon a shipless sea. The salt sea is never as grand as when it is left to itself. One cock-boat spoils it; a seamew or two improves it. And go to the little church, which is a very Protestant Loretto, and seems dropped by some angel for the use of a hermit who was at once parishioner and a whole parish. It is not too big. Go in the night, bring it away in your portmanteau, and I will plant it in my garden. It must have been erected, in the very infancy of British Christianity, for the two or three first converts, yet with all the appurtenances of a church of the first magnitude,--its pulpit, its pews, its baptismal font; a cathedral in a nutshell. The minister that divides the Word there must give lumping pennyworths. It is built to the text of "two or three assembled in my name." It reminds me of the grain of mustard-seed. If the glebe land is proportionate, it may yield two potatoes. Tithes out of it could be no more split than a hair. Its First fruits must be its Last, for 't would never produce a couple. It is truly the strait and narrow way, and few there be (of London visitants) that find it. The still small voice is surely to be found there, if anywhere. A sounding-board is merely there for ceremony. It is secure from earthquakes, not more from sanctity than size, for't would feel a mountain thrown upon it no more than a taper-worm would. _Go and see, but not without your spectacles_.
LETTER XCIII.
_January_ 20, 1827. Dear Robinson,--I called upon you this morning, and found that you had gone to visit a dying friend. I had been upon a like errand. Poor Norris [1] 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 stupefied. 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--
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 favors, pray exert yourself. You cannot say too much good of poor Norris and his poor wife. Yours ever, CHARLES LAMB. [1] Randal Norris, sub-treasurer of the Inner Temple, an early friend of the Lambs.
LETTER XCIV. TO PETER GEORGE PATMORE. LONDRES, _Julie_ 19_th_, 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 [1] could; for it was not unlike what he makes. The letter I sent you was one directed to the care of Edward White, India House, for Mrs. Hazlitt. _Which_ Mrs. H. I don't yet know; but Allsop 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. Wigginses it appertains, I know not. I wanted to open it, but 'tis 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 Becky, who is gone to town. I took him to Barnet the other day, and he couldn't eat his vittles 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 is 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, who is now with God; or if he is not,'tis 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. How sick I am!--not of the world, but of the Widow Shrub. She's sworn under L6,000; but I think she perjured herself. She howls in E _la_, and I comfort her in B flat. You understand music? If you haven't got Massinger, you have nothing to do but go to the first Bibliotheque you can light upon at Boulogne, and ask for it (Gifford's edition); and if they haven't got it, you can have "Athalie," par Monsieur Racine, and make the best of it. But that "Old Law" is delicious. "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).
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. Moxon has fallen in love with Emma, our nut-brown maid. Becky 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 't is a common phrase with us. If you go through Bulloign (Boulogne), inquire if Old Godfrey is living, and how he got home from the Crusades. He must be a very old man. [1] A dog given to Lamb by Thomas Hood. See letter to Patmore dated September, 1827.
LETTER XCV. TO BERNARD BARTON. _August_ 10, 1827. Dear B. B.,--I have not been able to answer you, for we have had and are having (I just snatch a moment) our poor quiet retreat, to which we fled from society, full of company,--some staying with us; and this moment as I write, almost, a heavy importation of two old ladies has come in. Whither can I take wing from the oppression of human faces? Would I were in a wilderness of apes, tossing cocoa-nuts about, grinning and grinned at! Mitford was hoaxing you surely about my engraving; 't is a little sixpenny thing, [1] too like by half, in which the draughtsman has done his best to avoid flattery. There have been two editions of it, which I think are all gone, as they have vanished from the window where they hung,--a print-shop, corner of Great and Little Queen Streets, Lincoln's Inn Fields,--where any London friend of yours may inquire for it; for I am (though you _won't understand it_) at Enfield Chase. We have been here near three months, and shall stay two more, if people will let us alone; but they persecute us from village to village. So don't direct to _Islington_ again till further notice. I am trying my hand at a drama, in two acts, founded on Crabbe's "Confidant," _mutatis mutandis_. You like the Odyssey: did you ever read my "Adventures of Ulysses," founded on Chapman's old translation of it? For children or men. Chapman is divine, and my abridgment has not quite emptied him of his divinity. When you come to town I'll show it you. You have well described your old-fashioned grand paternal hall. Is it not odd that every one's earliest recollections are of some such place? I had my Blakesware [Blakesmoor in the "London"]. Nothing fills a child's mind like a large old mansion; better if un--or partially--occupied,--peopled with the spirits of deceased members of the county and justices of the quorum. Would I were buried in the peopled solitudes of one, with my feelings at seven years old! Those marble busts of the emperors, they seemed as if they were to stand forever, as they had stood from the living days of Rome, in that old marble hall, and I too partake of their permanency. Eternity was, while I thought not of Time. But he thought of me, and they are toppled down, and corn covers the spot of the noble old dwelling and its princely gardens, I feel like a grasshopper that, chirping about the grounds, escaped the scythe only by my littleness. Even now he is whetting one of his smallest razors to clean wipe me out, perhaps. Well! [Footnote 1:] An etching of Lamb, by Brooke Pulham, which is said to be the most characteristic likeness of him extant.
LETTER XCVI.
_September_ 18, 1827. Dear Hood,--If I have anything in my head, I will send it to Mr. Watts. Strictly speaking, he should have all my album-verses; but a very intimate friend importuned me for the trifles, and I believe I forgot Mr. Watts, or lost sight at the time of his similar "Souvenir." Jamieson conveyed the farce from me to Mrs. C. Kemble; he will not be in town before the 27th. Give our kind loves to all at Highgate, and tell them that we have finally torn ourselves outright away from Colebrooke, where I had _no_ health, and are about to domiciliate for good at Enfield, where I have experienced _good_.
See the rest in the "Compleat Angler." We have got our books into our new house. I am a dray-horse if I was not ashamed of the indigested, dirty lumber, as I toppled 'em out of the cart, and blessed Becky that came with 'em for her having an unstuffed brain with such rubbish. We shall get in by Michael's Mass. 'T was with some pain we were evulsed from Colebrooke. You may find some of our flesh sticking to the doorposts. To change habitations is to die to them; and in my time I have died seven deaths. But I don't know whether every such change does not bring with it a rejuvenescence. 'T is an enterprise, and shoves back the sense of death's approximating, which, though not terrible to me, is at all times particularly distasteful. My house-deaths have generally been periodical, recurring after seven years; but this last is premature by half that time. Cut off in the flower of Colebrooke! The Middletonian stream and all its echoes mourn. Even minnows dwindle. _A parvis fiunt minimi!_ I fear to invite Mrs. Hood to our new mansion, lest she should envy it, and hate us. But when we are fairly in, I hope she will come and try it. I heard she and you were made uncomfortable by some unworthy-to-be-cared-for attacks, and have tried to set up a feeble counteraction through the "Table Book" of last Saturday. Has it not reached you, that you are silent about it? Our new domicile is no manor-house, but new, and externally not inviting, but furnished within with every convenience,-- capital new locks to every door, capital grates in every room, with nothing to pay for incoming, and the rent L10 less than the Islington one. It was built, a few years since, at L1,100 expense, they tell me, and I perfectly believe it. And I get it for L35, exclusive of moderate taxes. We think ourselves most lucky. It is not our intention to abandon Regent Street and West End perambulations (monastic and terrible thought!), but occasionally to breathe the fresher air of the metropolis. We shall put up a bedroom or two (all we want) for occasional ex-rustication, where we shall visit,--not be visited. Plays, too, we'll see,--perhaps our own; Urbani Sylvani and Sylvan Urbanuses in turns; courtiers for a sport, then philosophers; old, homely tell-truths and learn-truths in the virtuous shades of Enfield, liars again and mocking gibers in the coffee-houses and resorts of London. What can a mortal desire more for his bi-parted nature? Oh, the curds-and-cream you shall eat with us here! Oh, the turtle-soup and lobster-salads we shall devour with you there! Oh, the old books we shall peruse here! Oh, the new nonsense we shall trifle over there! Oh, Sir T. Browne, here! Oh, Mr. Hood and Mr. Jerdan, there! Thine, C. (URBANUS) L. (SYLVANUS)--(Elia ambo). [1] By Charles Cotton.
LETTER XCVII.
_September_, 1827. Dear P.,--Excuse my anxiety, but how is Dash? I should have asked if Mrs. Patmore kept her rules and was improving; but Dash came uppermost. The order of our thoughts should be the order of our writing. Goes he muzzled, or _aperto ore_? Are his intellects sound, or does he wander a little in _his_ conversation. You cannot be too careful to watch the first symptoms of incoherence. The first illogical snarl he makes, to St. Luke's with him! All the dogs here are going mad, if you believe the overseers; but I protest they seem to me very rational and collected. But nothing is so deceitful as mad people, to those who are not used to them. Try him with hot water; if he won't lick it up, it's a sign he does not like it. Does his tail wag horizontally or perpendicularly? That has decided the fate of many dogs in Enfield. Is his general deportment cheerful? I mean when he is pleased, for otherwise there is no judging. You can't be too careful. Has he bit any of the children yet? If he has, have them shot, and keep _him_ for curiosity, to see if it was the hydrophobia. They say all our army in India had it at one time; but that was in _Hyder_-Ally's time. Do you get paunch for him? Take care the sheep was sane. You might pull his teeth out (if he would let you), and then you need not mind if he were as mad as a Bedlamite. It would be rather fun to see his odd ways. It might amuse Mrs. P. and the children. They'd have more sense than he. He'd be like a fool kept in a family, to keep the household in good humor with their own understanding. You might teach him the mad dance, set to the mad howl. _Madge Owlet_ would be nothing to him. "My, how he capers!" (_In the margin is written "One of the children speaks this_.") ... What I scratch out is a German quotation, from Lessing, on the bite of rabid animals; but I remember you don't read German. But Mrs. P. may, so I wish I had let it stand. The meaning in English is: "Avoid to approach an animal suspected of madness, as you would avoid fire or a precipice,"--which I think is a sensible observation. The Germans are certainly profounder than we. If the slightest suspicion arises in your breast that all is not right with him, muzzle him and lead him in a string (common packthread will do; he don't care for twist) to Mr. Hood's, his quondam master, and he'll take him in at any time. You may mention your suspicion, or not, as you like, or as you think it may wound, or not, Mr. H.'s feelings. Hood, I know, will wink at a few follies in Dash, in consideration of his former sense. Besides, Hood is deaf, and if you hinted anything, ten to one he would not hear you. Besides, you will have discharged your conscience, and laid the child at the right door, as they say. We are dawdling our time away very idly and pleasantly at a Mrs. Leishman's, Chase, Enfield, where, if you come a-hunting, we can give you cold meat and a tankard. Her husband is a tailor; but that, you know, does not make her one. I know a jailor (which rhymes), but his wife was a fine lady. Let us hear from you respecting Mrs. P.'s regimen. I send my love in a-- to Dash. C. LAMB.
LETTER XCVIII.
_October_ 11, 1828. A splendid edition of Bunyan's Pilgrim! [1] Why, the thought is enough to turn one's moral stomach. His cockle-hat and staff transformed to a smart cocked beaver and a jemmy cane; his amice gray to the last Regent Street cut; and his painful palmer's pace to the modern swagger! Stop thy friend's sacrilegious hand. Nothing can be done for B. but to reprint the old cuts in as homely but good a style as possible,--the Vanity Fair and the Pilgrims there; the silly-soothness in his setting-out countenance; the Christian idiocy (in a good sense) of his admiration of the shepherds on the Delectable mountains; the lions so truly allegorical, and remote from any similitude to Pidcock's; the great head (the author's), capacious of dreams and similitudes, dreaming in the dungeon. Perhaps you don't know my edition, what I had when a child. If you do, can you bear new designs from Martin, enamelled into copper or silver plate by Heath, accompanied with verses from Mrs. Hemans's pen? Oh, how unlike his own!
Wordsworth, I see, has a good many pieces announced in one of 'em, not our "Gem." W. Scott has distributed himself like a bribe haunch among 'em. Of all the poets, Cary [3] has had the good sense to keep quite clear of 'em, with clergy-gentlemanly right notions. Don't think I set up for being proud on this point; I like a bit of flattery, tickling my vanity, as well as any one. But these pompous masquerades without masks (naked names or faces) I hate. So there's a bit of my mind. Besides, they infallibly cheat you,--I mean the booksellers. If I get but a copy, I only expect it from Hood's being my friend. Coleridge has lately been here. He too is deep among the prophets, the year-servers,--the mob of gentleman annuals. But they'll cheat him, I know. And now, dear B. B., the sun shining out merrily, and the dirty clouds we had yesterday having washed their own faces clean with their own rain, tempts me to wander up Winchmore Hill, or into some of the delightful vicinages of Enfield, which I hope to show you at some time when you can get a few days up to the great town. Believe me, it would give both of us great pleasure to show you our pleasant farms and villages. We both join in kindest loves to you and yours. C. LAMB _redivivus_. [1] An _edition de luxe_, illustrated by John Martin, and with an Introduction by Southey. See Macaulay's review of it. [2] Hood's. [3] The translator of Dante.
LETTER XCIX.
_January_ 22, 1829. Don't trouble yourself about the verses. Take 'em coolly as they come. Any day between this and midsummer will do. Ten lines the extreme. There is no mystery in my incognita. She has often seen you, though you may not have observed a silent brown girl, who for the last twelve years has rambled about our house in her Christmas holidays. She is Italian by name and extraction. [1] Ten lines about the blue sky of her country will do, as it's her foible to be proud of it. Item, I have made her a tolerable Latinist. She is called Emma Isola. I shall, I think, be in town in a few weeks, when I will assuredly see you. I will put in here loves to Mrs. Procter and the Anti-Capulets [Montagus], because Mary tells me I omitted them in my last. I like to see my friends here. I have put my lawsuit into the hands of an Enfield practitioner,--a plain man, who seems perfectly to understand it, and gives me hopes of a favorable result. Rumor tells us that Miss Holcroft is married. Who is Baddams? Have I seen him at Montacute's? I hear he is a great chemist. I am sometimes chemical myself. A thought strikes me with horror. Pray Heaven he may not have done it for the sake of trying chemical experiments upon her,--young female subjects are so scarce! An't you glad about Burke's case? We may set off the Scotch murders against the Scotch novels,--Hare the Great Unhanged. [2] Martin Burney is richly worth your knowing. He is on the top scale of my friendship ladder, on which an angel or two is still climbing, and some, alas! descending. I am out of the literary world at present. Pray, is there anything new from the admired pen of the author of "The Pleasures of Hope"? Has Mrs. He-mans (double masculine) done anything pretty lately? Why sleeps the lyre of Hervey and of Alaric Watts? Is the muse of L. E. L. silent? Did you see a sonnet of mine in Blackwood's last? [3] Curious construction! _Elaborata facilitas!_ And now I 'll tell. 'Twas written for "The Gem;" but the--editors declined it, on the plea that it would _shock all mothers_; so they published "The Widow" instead. I am born out of time, I have no conjecture about what the present world calls delicacy. I thought "Rosamund Gray" was a pretty modest thing. Hessey assures me that the world would not bear it. I have lived to grow into an indecent character. When my sonnet was rejected, I exclaimed, "Damn the age; I will write for Antiquity!" _Erratum_ in sonnet. Last line but something, for "tender" read "tend," The Scotch do not know our law terms, but I find some remains of honest, plain old writing lurking there still. They were not so mealy mouthed as to refuse my verses. Maybe, 't is their oatmeal, Blackwood sent me L20 for the drama. Somebody cheated me out of it next day; and my new pair of breeches, just sent home, cracking at first putting on, I exclaimed, in my wrath, "All tailors are cheats, and all men are tailors." Then I was better. C. L. [1] Emma Isola, Lamb's ward, daughter of one of the Esquire Bedells of Cambridge University, and granddaughter of an Italian refugee. The Lambs had met her during one of their Cambridge visits, and finally adopted her. [2] Burke and Hare, the Edinburgh resurrection-men. [3] The Gypsy's Malison.
LETTER C. _Saturday, 25th of July_, A.D. 1829, 11 A.M.
* * * * * I bragged formerly that I could not have too much time; I have now a surfeit. With few years to come, the days are wearisome. But weariness is not eternal. Something will shine out to take the load off that flags me, which is at present intolerable. I have killed an hour or two in this poor scrawl. I am a sanguinary murderer of time, and would kill him inch-meal just now. But the snake is vital. Well, I shall write merrier anon. 'T is the present copy of my countenance I send, and to complain is a little to alleviate. May you enjoy yourself as far as the wicked world will let you, and think that you are not quite alone, as I am! Health to Lucia and to Anna, and kind remembrances. Your forlorn C. L. [1] Mary Lamb. _ |
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