140. CHARLES LAMB TO WILLIAM HAZLITT
November 10, 1805.
Dear Hazlitt,--I was very glad to hear from you, and that your journey was so picturesque. We miss you, as we foretold we should. One or two things have happened, which are beneath the dignity of epistolary communication, but which, seated about our fire at night, (the winter hands of pork have begun) gesture and emphasis might have talked into some importance. Something about Rickman's wife, for instance: how tall she is and that she visits prank'd out like a Queen of the May with green streamers--a good-natured woman though, which is as much as you can expect from a friend's wife, whom you got acquainted with a bachelor. Some things too about MONKEY, which can't so well be written--how it set up for a fine Lady, and thought it had got Lovers, and was obliged to be convinc'd of its age from the parish register, where it was proved to be only twelve; and an edict issued that it should not give itself airs yet these four years; and how it got leave to be called Miss, by grace;--these and such like Hows were in my head to tell you, but who can write? Also how Manning's come to town in spectacles, and studies physic; is melancholy and seems to have something in his head, which he don't impart. Then, how I am going to leave off smoking. O la! your Leonardos of Oxford made my mouth water. I was hurried thro' the gallery, and they escaped me. What do I say? I was a Goth then, and should not have noticed them. I had not settled my notions of Beauty. I have now for ever!--the small head, the [here is drawn a long narrow eye] long Eye,--that sort of peering curve, the wicked Italian mischief! the stick-at-nothing, Herodias'-daughter kind of grace. You understand me. But you disappoint me, in passing over in absolute silence the Blenheim Leonardo. Didn't you see it? Excuse a Lover's curiosity. I have seen no pictures of note since, except Mr. Dawe's gallery. It is curious to see how differently two great men treat the same subject, yet both excellent in their way: for instance, Milton and Mr. Dawe. Mr. Dawe has chosen to illustrate the story of Sampson exactly in the point of view in which Milton has been most happy: the interview between the Jewish Hero, blind and captive, and Dalilah. Milton has imagined his Locks grown again, strong as horse-hair or porcupine's bristles; doubtless shaggy and black, as being hairs "which of a nation armed contained the strength." I don't remember, he says black: but could Milton imagine them to be yellow? Do you? Mr. Dawe with striking originality of conception has crowned him with a thin yellow wig, in colour precisely like Dyson's, in curl and quantity resembling Mrs. Professor's, his Limbs rather stout, about such a man as my Brother or Rickman--but no Atlas nor Hercules, nor yet so bony as Dubois, the Clown of Sadler's Wells. This was judicious, taking the spirit of the story rather than the fact: for doubtless God could communicate national salvation to the trust of flax and tow as well as hemp and cordage, and could draw down a Temple with a golden tress as soon as with all the cables of the British Navy.--Miss Dawe is about a portrait of sulky Fanny Imlay, alias Godwin: but Miss Dawe is of opinion that her subject is neither reserved nor sullen, and doubtless she will persuade the picture to be of the same opinion. However, the features are tolerably like--Too much of Dawes! Wasn't you sorry for Lord Nelson? I have followed him in fancy ever since I saw him walking in Pall Mall (I was prejudiced against him before) looking just as a Hero should look; and I have been very much cut about it indeed. He was the only pretence of a Great Man we had. Nobody is left of any Name at all. His Secretary died by his side. I imagined him, a Mr. Scott, to be the man you met at Hume's; but I learn from Mrs. Hume that it is not the same. I met Mrs. H. one day, and agreed to go on the Sunday to Tea, but the rain prevented us, and the distance. I have been to apologise, and we are to dine there the first fine Sunday. Strange perverseness! I never went while you staid here, and now I go to find you! What other news is there, Mary?--What puns have I made in the last fortnight? You never remember them. You have no relish for the Comic. "O! tell Hazlitt not to forget to send the American Farmer. I dare say it isn't so good as he fancies; but a Book's a Book." I have not heard from Wordsworth or from Malta since. Charles Kemble, it seems, enters into possession to-morrow. We sup at 109 Russell St. this evening. I wish your brother wouldn't drink. It's a blemish in the greatest characters. You send me a modern quotation poetical. How do you like this in an old play? Vittoria Corombona, a spunky Italian Lady, a Leonardo one, nick-named the White Devil, being on her trial for murder, &c.--and questioned about seducing a Duke from his wife and the State, makes answer:
"Condemn you me for that the Duke did love me? So may you blame some fair and chrystal river, For that some melancholic distracted man Hath drown'd himself in it."--
Our ticket was a £20. Alas!! are both yours blanks?
P.S.--Godwin has asked after you several times.
N.B.--I shall expect a Line from you, if but a bare Line, whenever you write to Russell St., and a Letter often when you do not. I pay no postage; but I will have consideration for you until parliament time and franks. Luck to Ned Search and the new art of colouring. Monkey sends her Love, and Mary especially.
Yours truly, C. LAMB.
[Addressed to Hazlitt at Wem. This is the first letter from Lamb to Hazlitt that has been preserved. The two men first met at Godwin's. Holcroft and Coleridge were disputing which was best--man as he is, or man as he ought to be. Lamb broke in with, "Give me man as he ought not to be."
Hazlitt at this date was twenty-six, some three years younger than Lamb. He had just abandoned his project of being a painter and was settling down to literary work.
"Rickman's wife." This passage holds the germ of Lamb's essay on "The Behaviour of Married Persons," first printed in the Reflector, No. IV., in 1811 or 1812, and afterwards included with the Elia essays.
"Monkey" was Louisa Martin, a little girl of whom Lamb was fond and whom he knew to the end of his life.
Manning studied medicine at the Westminster Hospital for six months previous to May, 1806.
"The Oxford Leonardos ... the Blenheim Leonardo." The only Leonardos at Oxford are the drawings at Christ Church. The Blenheim Leonardo was probably Boltraffio's "Virgin and Child" which used to be ascribed to Da Vinci, as indeed were many pictures he never painted. Hazlitt subsequently wrote a work on the Picture Galleries of England, but he mentions none of these works.
"Mr. Dawe's gallery." George Dawe (1781-1829), afterwards R.A., of whom Lamb wrote his essay "Recollections of a Late Royal Academician," where he alludes again to the picture of Samson (see Vol. I. of this edition).
"Dyson's." Dyson was a friend of Godwin. Mrs. Professor was Mrs. Godwin.
"Miss Dawe." I know nothing further of George Dawe's sister. Fanny Imlay was the unfortunate daughter of Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin (by Gilbert Imlay the author). She committed suicide in 1816.
Nelson was killed on October 21, 1805. Scott was his chaplain, and he was not killed.
Hume was Joseph Hume, an official at Somerset House, whom we shall meet again directly.
The American Farmer was very likely Gilbert Imlay's novel The Emigrants, 1793, or possibly his Topographical Description of the Western Territory of North America, 1792.
Charles Kemble, brother of John Philip Kemble and father of Fanny Kemble.
John Hazlitt, the miniature painter, lived at 109 Russell Street. Lamb's quotation, afterwards included in his Dramatic Specimens, 1808, is from Webster's "The White Devil," Act III., Scene I.
The £20 ticket was presumably in the Lottery. Lamb's essay "The Illustrious Defunct" (see Vol. I.) shows him to have been interested in Lotteries; and in Letter No. 184 Mary Lamb states that he wrote Lottery puffs.
"Ned Search." Hazlitt was engaged on an abridgment of The Light of Nature Pursued, in seven volumes, 1768-1778, nominally by Edward Search, but really by Abraham Tucker.
"The new art of colouring" is a reference, I fancy, to Tingry, mentioned again below.]
Letter 141
MARY LAMB TO SARAH STODDART [November 9 and 14, 1805.]
My dear Sarah,--After a very feverish night, I writ a letter to you; and I have been distressed about it ever since. In the first place, I have thought I treated too lightly your differences with your brother--which I freely enter into and feel for, but which I rather wished to defer saying much about till we meet. But that which gives me most concern is the way in which I talked about your Mother's illness, and which I have since feared you might construe into my having a doubt of your showing her proper attention without my impertinent interference. God knows, nothing of this kind was ever in my thoughts; but I have entered very deeply into your affliction with regard to your Mother; and while I was wishing, the many poor souls in the kind of desponding way she is in, whom I have seen, came afresh into my mind; and all the mismanagement with which I have seen them treated was strong in my mind, and I wrote under a forcible impulse, which I could not at that time resist, but I have fretted so much about it since, that I think it is the last time I will ever let my pen run away with me.
Your kind heart will, I know, even if you have been a little displeased, forgive me, when I assure you my spirits have been so much hurt by my last illness, that at times I hardly know what I do. I do not mean to alarm you about myself, or to plead an excuse; but I am very much otherwise than you have always known me. I do not think any one perceives me altered, but I have lost all self-confidence in my own actions, and one cause of my low spirits is, that I never feel satisfied with any thing I do--a perception of not being in a sane state perpetually haunts me. I am ashamed to confess this weakness to you; which, as I am so sensible of, I ought to strive to conquer. But I tell you, that you may excuse any part of my letter that has given offence: for your not answering it, when you are such a punctual correspondent, has made me very uneasy.
Write immediately, my dear Sarah, but do not notice this letter, nor do not mention any thing I said relative to your poor Mother. Your handwriting will convince me you are friends with me; and if Charles, who must see my letter, was to know I had first written foolishly, and then fretted about the event of my folly, he would both ways be angry with me.
I would desire you to direct to me at home, but your hand is so well known to Charles, that that would not do. Therefore, take no notice of my megrums till we meet, which I most ardently long to do. An hour spent in your company would be a cordial to my drooping heart.
Pray write directly, and believe me, ever Your affectionate friend, M. LAMB.
Nov. l4.--I have kept this by me till to-day, hoping every day to hear from you. If you found the seal a clumsy one, it is because I opened the wafer.
Write, I beg, by the return of the post; and as I am very anxious to hear whether you are, as I fear, dissatisfied with me, you shall, if you please, direct my letter to Nurse. Her direction is, Mrs. Grant, at Mr. Smith's, Maidenhead, Ram Court, Fleet Street.
I was not able, you know, to notice, when I writ to Malta, your letter concerning an insult you received from a vile wretch there; and as I mostly show my letters to Charles, I have never named it since. Did it ever come to your brother's knowledge? Charles and I were very uneasy at your account of it. I wish I could see you.
Yours ever, M. LAMB.
I do not mean to continue a secret correspondence, but you must oblige me with this one letter. In future I will always show my letters before they go, which will be a proper check upon my wayward pen.
142. CHARLES LAMB TO THOMAS MANNING
[P.M. Nov. 15, 1805.]
Dear Manning,--Certainly you could not have called at all hours from two till ten, for we have been only out of an evening Monday and Tuesday in this week. But if you think you have, your thought shall go for the deed. We did pray for you on Wednesday night. Oysters unusually luscious--pearls of extraordinary magnitude found in them. I have made bracelets of them--given them in clusters to ladies. Last night we went out in despite, because you were not come at your hour.
This night we shall be at home, so shall we certainly both Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday. Take your choice, mind I don't say of one, but choose which evening you will not, and come the other four. Doors open at five o'clock. Shells forced about nine. Every gentleman smokes or not as he pleases. O! I forgot, bring the £10, for fear you should lose it.
C. L.
[Here should come a letter from Mary Lamb to Mrs. Clarkson, dated December 25, 1805, printed by Mr. Macdonald. It states that Lamb has been latterly in indifferent health, and is unimportant.]
143. CHARLES LAMB TO WILLIAM HAZLITT
Thursday, 15th Jan., 1806.
Dear Hazlitt,--Godwin went to Johnson's yesterday about your business. Johnson would not come down, or give any answer, but has promised to open the manuscript, and to give you an answer in one month. Godwin will punctually go again (Wednesday is Johnson's open day) yesterday four weeks next: i.e. in one lunar month from this time. Till when Johnson positively declines giving any answer. I wish you joy on ending your Search. Mrs. H. was naming something about a Life of Fawcett, to be by you undertaken: the great Fawcett, as she explain'd to Manning, when he ask'd, What Fawcett? He innocently thought Fawcett the player. But Fawcett the Divine is known to many people, albeit unknown to the Chinese Enquirer. I should think, if you liked it, and Johnson declined it, that Phillips is the man. He is perpetually bringing out Biographies, Richardson, Wilkes, Foot, Lee Lewis, without number: little trim things in two easy volumes price 12s. the two, made up of letters to and from, scraps, posthumous trifles, anecdotes, and about forty pages of hard biography. You might dish up a Fawcetiad in 3 months, and ask 60 or 80 Pounds for it. I should dare say that Phillips would catch at it--I wrote to you the other day in a great hurry. Did you get it? This is merely a Letter of business at Godwin's request.
Lord Nelson is quiet at last. His ghost only keeps a slight fluttering in odes and elegies in newspapers, and impromptus, which could not be got ready before the funeral.
As for news--We have Miss Stoddart in our house, she has been with us a fortnight and will stay a week or so longer. She is one of the few people who are not in the way when they are with you. No tidings of Coleridge. Fenwick is coming to town on Monday (if no kind angel intervene) to surrender himself to prison. He hopes to get the Rules of the Fleet. On the same, or nearly the same, day, Fell, my other quondam co-friend and drinker, will go to Newgate, and his wife and 4 children, I suppose, to the Parish. Plenty of reflection and motives of gratitude to the wise disposer of all things in us, whose prudent conduct has hitherto ensured us a warm fire and snug roof over our heads. Nullum numen abest si sit Prudentia.
Alas! Prudentia is in the last quarter of her tutelary shining over me. A little time and I--
But may be I may, at last, hit upon some mode of collecting some of the vast superfluities of this money-voiding town. Much is to be got, and I don't want much. All I ask is time and leisure; and I am cruelly off for them.
When you have the inclination, I shall be very glad to have a letter from you.--Your brother and Mrs. H., I am afraid, think hardly of us for not coming oftener to see them, but we are distracted beyond what they can conceive with visitors and visitings. I never have an hour for my head to work quietly its own workings; which you know is as necessary to the human system as sleep.
Sleep, too, I can't get for these damn'd winds of a night: and without sleep and rest what should ensue? Lunacy. But I trust it won't.
Yours, dear H., mad or sober, C. LAMB.
[Hazlitt's business was finding a publisher for his abridgment of Search (see page 340). Johnson was Priestley's publisher. A letter to Godwin from Coleridge in June, 1803 (see Kegan Paul's Life of Godwin, ii., 96), had suggested such an abridgment, Coleridge adding that a friend of his would make it, and that he would write a preface and see the proofs through the press. Hence Godwin's share in the matter. Coleridge's part of the transaction was not carried out.
Hazlitt's Life of Joseph Fawcett (?1758-1804), the poet and dissenting preacher of Walthamstow and Old Jewry, whom he had known intimately, was not written. The Fawcett of whom Manning, the Chinese Enquirer, was thinking was John Fawcett, famous as Dr. Pangloss and Caleb Quotem.
"The Fleet"--the prison for debtors in Farringdon Street. Closed in 1844. The Rules of the Fleet were the limits within which prisoners for debt were under certain conditions permitted to live: the north side of Ludgate Hill, the Old Bailey up to Fleet Lane, Fleet Lane to Fleet Market, and then back to Ludgate Hill. The Rules cost money: £10 for the first £100 of the debt and for every additional £100, £4. Later, Fenwick seems to have settled in America.
Here should come an undated letter to Hazlitt, accompanied by Tingry's Painter's and Varnisher's Guide, 1804. Hazlitt, who was then painting, seems to have wanted prints of trees, probably for a background. Lamb says that he has been hunting in shop windows for him. He adds: "To supply poetry and wildness, you may read the American Farmer over again." The postscript runs, "Johnson shall not be forgot at his month's end."]
144. CHARLES LAMB TO JOHN RICKMAN
Jan. 25th, 1806.
Dear Rickman,--You do not happen to have any place at your disposal which would suit a decayed Literatus? I do not much expect that you have, or that you will go much out of the way to serve the object, when you hear it is Fenwick. But the case is, by a mistaking of his turn, as they call it, he is reduced, I am afraid, to extremities, and would be extremely glad of a place in an office. Now it does sometimes happen, that just as a man wants a place, a place wants him; and though this is a lottery to which none but G.B. would choose to trust his all, there is no harm just to call in at Despair's office for a friend, and see if his number is come up (B.'s further case I enclose by way of episode). Now, if you should happen, or anybody you know, to want a hand, here is a young man of solid but not brilliant genius, who would turn his hand to the making out dockets, penning a manifesto, or scoring a tally, not the worse (I hope) for knowing Latin and Greek, and having in youth conversed with the philosophers. But from these follies I believe he is thoroughly awakened, and would bind himself by a terrible oath never to imagine himself an extraordinary genius again.
Yours, &., C. LAMB.
[Mr. Hazlitt's text, which I follow here, makes Lamb appeal for Fenwick; but other editors say Fell--except Talfourd, who says F. If, as Lamb says in his previous letter, Fell was bound for Newgate and Fenwick only for the Fleet, probably it was Fenwick. But the matter is not very important. Fenwick and Fell both came into Lamb's life through Godwin and at this point they drop out. The enclosure concerning George Burnett is missing.]
Letter 145
CHARLES LAMB TO WILLIAM WORDSWORTH [Dated at end: February 1st, 1806.]
Dear Wordsworth--I have seen the Books which you ordered, booked at the White Horse Inn, Cripplegate, by the Kendal waggon this day 1st Feb'y. 1806; you will not fail to see after them in time. They are directed to you at Grasmere. We have made some alteration in the Editions since your sister's directions. The handsome quarto Spencer which she authorized Mary to buy for £2. 12. 6, when she brought it home in triumph proved to be only the Fairy Queen: so we got them to take it again and I have procured instead a Folio, which luckily contains, besides all the Poems, the view of the State of Ireland, which is difficult to meet with. The Spencer, and the Chaucer, being noble old books, we did not think Stockdale's modern volumes would look so well beside them; added to which I don't know whether you are aware that the Print is excessive small, same as Eleg. Extracts, or smaller, not calculated for eyes in age; and Shakespear is one of the last books one should like to give up, perhaps the one just before the Dying Service in a large Prayer book. So we have used our own discretion in purchasing Pope's fine Quarto in six volumes, which may be read ad ultimam horam vitae. It is bound like Law Books (rather, half bound) and the Law Robe I have ever thought as comely and gentlemanly a garb as a Book would wish to wear. The state of the purchase then stands thus,
Urry's Chaucer £1. 16 -- Pope's Shakespeare 2. 2 -- Spenser 14 -- Milton 1. 5 -- Packing Case &c. 3. 6 ____________ 6. --. 6
Which your Brother immediately repaid us. He has the Bills for all (by his desire) except the Spenser, which we took no bill with (not looking to have our accounts audited): so for that and the Case he took a separate receipt for 17/6. N.B. there is writing in the Shakespear: but it is only variæ lectiones which some careful gentleman, the former owner, was at the pains to insert in a very neat hand from 5 Commentators. It is no defacement. The fault of Pope's edition is, that he has comically and coxcombically marked the Beauties: which is vile, as if you were to chalk up the cheek and across the nose of a handsome woman in red chalk to shew where the comeliest parts lay. But I hope the noble type and Library-appearance of the Books will atone for that. With the Books come certain Books and Pamphlets of G. Dyer, Presents or rather Decoy-ducks of the Poet to take in his thus-far obliged friends to buy his other works; as he takes care to inform them in M.S. notes to the Title Pages, "G. Dyer, Author of other Books printed for Longman &c." The books have lain at your dispatchful brother's a 12 months, to the great staling of most of the subjects. The three Letters and what is else written at the beginning of the respective Presents will ascertain the division of the Property. If not, none of the Donees, I dare say, will grudge a community of property in this case. We were constrained to pack 'em how we could, for room. Also there comes W. Hazlitt's book about Human Action, for Coleridge; a little song book for Sarah Coleridge; a Box for Hartley which your Brother was to have sent, but now devolved on us--I don't know from whom it came, but the things altogether were too much for Mr. (I've forgot his name) to take charge of; a Paraphrase on the King and Queen of Hearts, of which I being the Author beg Mr. Johnny Wordsworth's acceptance and opinion. Liberal Criticism, as G. Dyer declares, I am always ready to attend to!--And that's all, I believe. N.B. I must remain Debtor to Dorothy for 200 pens: but really Miss Stoddart (women are great gulfs of Stationery), who is going home to Salisbury and has been with us some weeks, has drained us to the very last pen: by the time S.T.C. passes thro' London I reckon I shall be in full feather. No more news has transpired of that Wanderer. I suppose he has found his way to some of his German friends.
A propos of Spencer (you will find him mentioned a page or two before, near enough for an a propos), I was discoursing on Poetry (as one's apt to deceive onesself, and when a person is willing to talk of what one likes, to believe that he also likes the same: as Lovers do) with a Young Gentleman of my office who is deep read in Anacreon Moore, Lord Strangford, and the principal Modern Poets, and I happen'd to mention Epithalamiums and that I could shew him a very fine one of Spencer's. At the mention of this, my Gentleman, who is a very fine Gentleman, and is brother to the Miss Evans who Coleridge so narrowly escaped marrying, pricked up his ears and exprest great pleasure, and begged that I would give him leave to copy it: he did not care how long it was (for I objected the length), he should be very happy to see any thing by him. Then pausing, and looking sad, he ejaculated POOR SPENCER! I begged to know the reason of his ejaculation, thinking that Time had by this time softened down any calamities which the Bard might have endured--"Why, poor fellow!" said he "he has lost his Wife!" "Lost his Wife?" said I, "Who are you talking of?" "Why, Spencer," said he. "I've read the Monody he wrote on the occasion, and a very pretty thing it is." This led to an explanation (it could be delay'd no longer) that the sound Spencer, which when Poetry is talk'd of generally excites an image of an old Bard in a Ruff, and sometimes with it dim notions of Sir P. Sydney and perhaps Lord Burleigh, had raised in my Gentleman a quite contrary image of The Honourable William Spencer, who has translated some things from the German very prettily, which are publish'd with Lady Di. Beauclerk's Designs.
Nothing like defining of Terms when we talk. What blunders might I have fallen into of quite inapplicable Criticism, but for this timely explanation.
N.B. At the beginning of Edm. Spencer (to prevent mistakes) I have copied from my own copy, and primarily from a book of Chalmers on Shakspear, a Sonnet of Spenser's never printed among his poems. It is curious as being manly and rather Miltonic, and as a Sonnet of Spenser's with nothing in it about Love or Knighthood. I have no room for remembrances; but I hope our doing your commission will prove we do not quite forget you.
C. L.
1 Feb., 1806.
["Hazlitt's book about Human Action for Coleridge"--An Essay on the Principles of Human Action, 1805.
"A Paraphrase of the King and Queen of Hearts." This was a little book for children by Lamb, illustrated by Mulready and published by T. Hodgkins (for the Godwins) in 1806. It was discovered through this passage in this letter and is reprinted in facsimile in Vol. III. of my large edition. The title ran The King and Queen of Hearts, with the Rogueries of the Knave who stole away the Queen's Pies.
Coleridge had left Malta on September 21, 1805. He went to Naples, and from there to Rome in January, 1806, where he stayed until May 18.
"A propos of Spencer." This portion of the letter, owing to a mistake of Talfourd's, is usually tacked on to one dated June, 1806. "Miss Evans." See note to Letter 3.
"Poor Spencer." William Robert Spencer (1769-1834) was the author of jeux d'esprit and poems. He is now known, if at all, by his ballad of "Bed Gellert." He married the widow of Count Spreti, and in 1804 published a book of elegies entitled "The Year of Sorrow." Spencer was among the translators of Bürger's "Leonore," his version being illustrated by Lady Diana Beauclerk (his great-aunt) in 1796. Lamb used this anecdote as a little article in the Reflector, No. II., 1811, entitled "On the Ambiguities arising from Proper Names" (see Vol. I. of this edition). Lamb, however, by always spelling the real poet with a "c," did nothing towards avoiding the ambiguity!
This is the sonnet which Lamb copied into Wordsworth's Spenser from George Chalmers' Supplemental Apology for the Believers in the Shakespeare-Papers (1799), page 94:--
To the Right worshipful, my singular good friend, Mr. Gabriel Harvey, Doctor of the Laws:--
"Harvey, the happy above happiest men I read: that sitting like a looker on Of this world's stage, doest note with critique pen The sharp dislikes of each condition: And as one careless of suspition, Ne fawnest for the favour of the great: Ne fearest foolish reprehension Of faulty men, which danger to thee threat. But freely doest, of what thee list, entreat, Like a great Lord of peerless liberty: Lifting the good up to high honours seat, And the Evil damning ever more to dy. For life, and death is [are] in thy doomful writing: So thy renowne lives ever by endighting."
Dublin: this xviij of July, 1586; Your devoted friend, during life, EDMUND SPENSER.]
Letter 146
CHARLES LAMB TO WILLIAM HAZLITT [Dated at end: Feb. 19, 1806.]
Dear H.--Godwin has just been here in his way from Johnson's. Johnson has had a fire in his house; this happened about five weeks ago; it was in the daytime, so it did not burn the house down, but did so much damage that the house must come down, to be repaired: his nephew that we met on Hampstead Hill put it out: well, this fire has put him so back, that he craves one more month before he gives you an answer.
I will certainly goad Godwin (if necessary) to go again this very day four weeks; but I am confident he will want no goading.
Three or four most capital auctions of Pictures advertised. In May, Welbore Ellis Agar's, the first private collection in England, so Holcroft says. In March, Sir George Young's in Stratford-place (where Cosway lives), and a Mr. Hulse's at Blackheath, both very capital collections, and have been announc'd for some months. Also the Marquis of Lansdowne's Pictures in March; and though inferior to mention, lastly, the Tructhsessian gallery. Don't your mouth water to be here?
T'other night Loftus called, whom we have not seen since you went before. We meditate a stroll next Wednesday, Fast-day. He happened to light upon Mr. Holcroft's Wife, and Daughter, their first visit at our house.
Your brother called last night. We keep up our intimacy. He is going to begin a large Madona and child from Mrs. H. and baby, I fear he goes astray after ignes fatui. He is a clever man. By the bye, I saw a miniature of his as far excelling any in his shew cupboard (that of your sister not excepted) as that shew cupboard excells the shew things you see in windows--an old woman--damn her name--but most superlative; he has it to clean--I'll ask him the name--but the best miniature I ever saw, equal to Cooper and them fellows. But for oil pictures!--what has he [to] do with Madonas? if the Virgin Mary were alive and visitable, he would not hazard himself in a Covent-Garden-pit-door crowd to see her. It ain't his style of beauty, is it?--But he will go on painting things he ought not to paint, and not painting things he ought to paint.
Manning is not gone to China, but talks of going this Spring. God forbid!
Coleridge not heard of.
I, going to leave off smoke. In mean time am so smoky with last night's 10 Pipes, that I must leave off.
Mary begs her kind remembrances.
Pray write to us--
This is no Letter, but I supposed you grew anxious about Johnson.
N.B.--Have taken a room at 3/- a week, to be in between 5 & 8 at night, to avoid my nocturnal alias knock-eternal visitors. The first-fruits of my retirement has been a farce which goes to manager tomorrow. Wish my ticket luck. God bless you, and do write,--Yours, fumosissimus,
C. LAMB.
Wednesday, 19 Feb., 1806.
[Johnson was the publisher whom we have already seen considering Hazlitt's abridgment of the Light of Nature Revealed.
Lamb was always interested in sales of pictures: the on-view days gave him some of his best opportunities of seeing good painting. The Truchsessian Picture Gallery was in New Road, opposite Portland Place. Exhibitions were held annually, the pictures being for sale.
Loftus was Tom Loftus of Wisbech, a cousin of Hazlitt.
Holcroft's wife at that time, his fourth, was Louisa Mercier, who afterwards married Lamb's friend, James Kenney, the dramatist. The daughter referred to was probably Fanny Holcroft, who subsequently wrote novels and translations.
Cooper, the miniature painter, was Samuel Cooper (1609-1672), a connection by marriage of Pope's mother, and the painter of Cromwell and other interesting men.
Lamb's N.B. contains his first mention of his farce "Mr. H." We are not told where the 3s. room was situated. Possibly in the Temple.]
147. MARY LAMB TO SARAH STODDART
[? Feb. 20, 21 and 22, 1806.]
My dear Sarah,--I have heard that Coleridge was lately going through Sicily to Rome with a party, but that, being unwell, he returned back to Naples. We think there is some mistake in this account, and that his intended journey to Rome was in his former jaunt to Naples. If you know that at that time he had any such intention, will you write instantly? for I do not know whether I ought to write to Mrs. Coleridge or not.
I am going to make a sort of promise to myself and to you, that I will write you kind of journal-like letters of the daily what-we-do matters, as they occur. This day seems to me a kind of new era in our time. It is not a birthday, nor a new-year's day, nor a leave-off-smoking day; but it is about an hour after the time of leaving you, our poor Phoenix, in the Salisbury Stage; and Charles has just left me for the first time to go to his lodgings; and I am holding a solitary consultation with myself as to the how I shall employ myself.
Writing plays, novels, poems, and all manner of such-like vapouring and vapourish schemes are floating in my head, which at the same time aches with the thought of parting from you, and is perplext at the idea of I-cannot-tell-what-about notion that I have not made you half so comfortable as I ought to have done, and a melancholy sense of the dull prospect you have before you on your return home. Then I think I will make my new gown; and now I consider the white petticoat will be better candle-light worth; and then I look at the fire, and think, if the irons was but down, I would iron my Gowns--you having put me out of conceit of mangling.
So much for an account of my own confused head; and now for yours. Returning home from the Inn, we took that to pieces, and ca[n]vassed you, as you know is our usual custom. We agreed we should miss you sadly, and that you had been, what you yourself discovered, not at all in our way; and although, if the Post Master should happen to open this, it would appear to him to be no great compliment, yet you, who enter so warmly into the interior of our affairs, will understand and value it, as well as what we likewise asserted, that since you have been with us you have done but one foolish thing, vide Pinckhorn (excuse my bad Latin, if it should chance to mean exactly contrary to what I intend). We praised you for the very friendly way in which you regarded all our whimsies, and, to use a phrase of Coleridge's, understood us. We had, in short, no drawback on our eulogy on your merit, except lamenting the want of respect you have to yourself--the want of a certain dignity of action, you know what I mean, which--though it only broke out in the acceptance of the old Justice's book, and was, as it were, smothered and almost extinct, while you were here--yet is so native a feeling in your mind, that you will do whatever the present moment prompts you to do, that I wish you would take that one slight offence seriously to heart, and make it a part of your daily consideration to drive this unlucky propensity, root and branch, out of your character.--Then, mercy on us, what a perfect little gentlewoman you will be!!!--
You are not yet arrived at the first stage of your journey; yet have I the sense of your absence so strong upon me, that I was really thinking what news I had to send you, and what had happened since you had left us. Truly nothing, except that Martin Burney met us in Lincoln's-Inn-Fields, and borrowed four-pence, of the repayment of which sum I will send you due notice.
Friday [Feb. 21, 1806].--Last night I told Charles of your matrimonial overtures from Mr. White, and of the cause of that business being at a stand-still. Your generous conduct in acquainting Mr. White with the vexatious affair at Malta highly pleased him. He entirely approves of it. You would be quite comforted to hear what he said on the subject.
He wishes you success, and, when Coleridge comes, will consult with him about what is best to be done. But I charge you, be most strictly cautious how you proceed yourself. Do not give Mr. W. any reason to think you indiscreet; let him return of his own accord, and keep the probability of his doing so full in your mind; so, I mean, as to regulate your whole conduct by that expectation. Do not allow yourself to see, or in any way renew your acquaintance with, William, nor do not do any other silly thing of that kind; for, you may depend upon it, he will be a kind of spy upon you, and, if he observes nothing that he disapproves of, you will certainly hear of him again in time.
Charles is gone to finish the farce, and I am to hear it read this night. I am so uneasy between my hopes and fears of how I shall like it, that I do not know what I am doing. I need not tell you so, for before I send this I shall be able to tell you all about it. If I think it will amuse you, I will send you a copy. The bed was very cold last night.
Feb. 21 [?22]. I have received your letter, and am happy to hear that your mother has been so well in your absence, which I wish had been prolonged a little, for you have been wanted to copy out the Farce, in the writing of which I made many an unlucky blunder.
The said Farce I carried (after many consultations of who was the most proper person to perform so important an office) to Wroughton, the Manager of Drury Lane. He was very civil to me; said it did not depend upon himself, but that he would put it into the Proprietors' hands, and that we should certainly have an answer from them.
I have been unable to finish this sheet before, for Charles has taken a week's holidays [from his] lodging, to rest himself after his labour, and we have talked to-night of nothing but the Farce night and day; but yesterday [I carri]ed it to Wroughton; and since it has been out of the [way, our] minds have been a little easier. I wish you had [been with] us, to have given your opinion. I have half a mind to sc[ribble] another copy, and send it you. I like it very much, and cannot help having great hopes of its success.
I would say I was very sorry for the death of Mr. White's father; but not knowing the good old gentleman, I cannot help being as well satisfied that he is gone--for his son will feel rather lonely, and so perhaps he may chance to visit again Winterslow. You so well describe your brother's grave lecturing letter, that you make me ashamed of part of mine. I would fain rewrite it, leaving out my 'sage advice;' but if I begin another letter, something may fall out to prevent me from finishing it,--and, therefore, skip over it as well as you can; it shall be the last I ever send you.
It is well enough, when one is talking to a friend, to hedge in an odd word by way of counsel now and then; but there is something mighty irksome in its staring upon one in a letter, where one ought only to see kind words and friendly remembrances.
I have heard a vague report from the Dawes (the pleasant-looking young lady we called upon was Miss Daw), that Coleridge returned back to Naples: they are to make further enquiries, and let me know the particulars. We have seen little or nothing of Manning since you went. Your friend [George] Burnett calls as usual, for Charles to point out something for him. I miss you sadly, and but for the fidget I have been in about the Farce, I should have missed you still more. I am sorry you cannot get your money. Continue to tell us all your perplexities, and do not mind being called Widow Blackacre.
Say all in your mind about your Lover, now Charles knows of it; he will be as anxious to hear as me. All the time we can spare from talking of the characters and plot of the Farce, we talk of you. I have got a fresh bottle of Brandy to-day: if you were here, you should have a glass, three parts brandy--so you should. I bought a pound of bacon to-day, not so good as yours. I wish the little caps were finished. I am glad the Medicines and the Cordials bore the fatigue of their journey so well. I promise you I will write often, and not mind the postage. God bless you. Charles does not send his love, because he is not here.
Yours affectionately, M. LAMB.
Write as often as ever you can. Do not work too hard.
[Mr. Hazlitt dates this letter April, thinking that Mary Lamb's pen slipped when she wrote February 21 half-way through. But I think February must be right; because (1) Miss Stoddart has only just left, and Lamb tells Hazlitt in January that she is staying a week or so longer: April would make this time three months; and (2) Lamb has told Hazlitt on February 19 that his farce is finished.
Coleridge left Malta for Rome on September 21, 1805. He was probably at Naples from October, 1805, to the end of January, 1806, when he went to Rome, remaining there until May 18. Writing to Mrs. Clarkson on March 2, 1806, Dorothy Wordsworth quotes from a letter written on February 25 by Mary Lamb to Mrs. S.T. Coleridge and containing this passage: "My Brother has received a letter from Stoddart dated December 26, in which he tells him that Coleridge was then at Naples. We have also heard from a Mr. Dawe that a friend of his had received a letter of the same date, which mentioned Coleridge having been lately travelling towards Rome with a party of gentlemen; but that he changed his mind and returned back to Naples. Stoddart says nothing more than that he was driven to Naples in consequence of the French having taken possession of Trieste." (See the Athenæum, January 23, 1904.)
"Vide Pinckhorn." I cannot explain this, unless a Justice Pinckhorn had ogled Sarah Stoddart and offered her a present of a book. Mary Lamb, by the way, some years later taught Latin to William Hazlitt, Junior, Sarah's son.
Martin Charles Burney, the son of Captain Burney, born in 1788, a devoted admirer of the Lambs to the end. He was now only eighteen. We shall often meet him again.
Mr. White was not Lamb's friend James White.
Winterslow, in Wiltshire, about six miles from Salisbury, was a small property belonging to Sarah Stoddart.
"Widow Blackacre." In Wycherley's "Plain Dealer:" a busy-body and persistent litigant.]
148. MARY LAMB TO SARAH STODDART
[March, 1806.]
My dear Sarah,--No intention of forfeiting my promise, but mere want of time, has prevented me from continuing my journal. You seem pleased with the long, stupid one I sent, and, therefore, I shall certainly continue to write at every opportunity. The reason why I have not had any time to spare, is because Charles has given himself some holidays after the hard labour of finishing his farce, and, therefore, I have had none of the evening leisure I promised myself. Next week he promises to go to work again. I wish he may happen to hit upon some new plan, to his mind, for another farce: when once begun, I do not fear his perseverance, but the holidays he has allowed himself, I fear, will unsettle him. I look forward to next week with the same kind of anxiety I did to the first entrance at the new lodging. We have had, as you know, so many teasing anxieties of late, that I have got a kind of habit of foreboding that we shall never be comfortable, and that he will never settle to work: which I know is wrong, and which I will try with all my might to overcome--for certainly, if I could but see things as they really are, our prospects are considerably improved since the memorable day of Mrs. Fenwick's last visit. I have heard nothing of that good lady, or of the Fells, since you left us.
We have been visiting a little--to Norris's, to Godwin's; and last night we did not come home from Captain Burney's till two o'clock: the Saturday night was changed to Friday, because Rickman could not be there to-night. We had the best tea things, and the litter all cleared away, and every thing as handsome as possible--Mrs. Rickman being of the party. Mrs. Rickman is much increased in size since we saw her last, and the alteration in her strait shape wonderfully improves her. Phillips was there, and Charles had a long batch of Cribbage with him: and, upon the whole, we had the most chearful evening I have known there a long time. To-morrow, we dine at Holcroft's. These things rather fatigue me; but I look for a quiet week next week, and hope for better times. We have had Mrs. Brooks and all the Martins, and we have likewise been there; so that I seem to have been in a continual bustle lately. I do not think Charles cares so much for the Martins as he did, which is a fact you will be glad to hear--though you must not name them when you write: always remember, when I tell you any thing about them, not to mention their names in return.
We have had a letter from your brother, by the same mail as yours, I suppose; he says he does not mean to return till summer, and that is all he says about himself; his letter being entirely filled with a long story about Lord Nelson--but nothing more than what the newspapers have been full of, such as his last words, &c. Why does he tease you with so much good advice? is it merely to fill up his letters as he filled ours with Lord Nelson's exploits? or has any new thing come out against you? has he discovered Mr. Curse-a-rat's correspondence? I hope you will not write to that news-sending gentleman any more. I promised never more to give my advice, but one may be allowed to hope a little; and I also hope you will have something to tell me soon about Mr. W[hite]: have you seen him yet? I am sorry to hear your Mother is not better, but I am in a hoping humour just now, and I cannot help hoping that we shall all see happier days. The bells are just now ringing for the taking of the Cape of Good Hope.
I have written to Mrs. Coleridge to tell her that her husband is at Naples; your brother slightly named his being there, but he did not say that he had heard from him himself. Charles is very busy at the Office; he will be kept there to-day till seven or eight o'clock: and he came home very smoky and drinky last night; so that I am afraid a hard day's work will not agree very well with him.
0 dear! what shall I say next? Why this I will say next, that I wish you was with me; I have been eating a mutton chop all alone, and I have been just looking in the pint porter pot, which I find quite empty, and yet I am still very dry. If you was with me, we would have a glass of brandy and water; but it is quite impossible to drink brandy and water by oneself; therefore, I must wait with patience till the kettle boils. I hate to drink tea alone, it is worse than dining alone, We have got a fresh cargo of biscuits from Captain Burney's. I have--
March l4.--Here I was interrupted; and a long, tedious interval has intervened, during which I have had neither time nor inclination to write a word. The Lodging--that pride and pleasure of your heart and mine--is given up, and here he is again--Charles, I mean--as unsettled and as undetermined as ever. When he went to the poor lodging, after the hollidays I told you he had taken, he could not endure the solitariness of them, and I had no rest for the sole of my foot till I promised to believe his solemn protestations that he could and would write as well at home as there. Do you believe this?
I have no power over Charles: he will do--what he will do. But I ought to have some little influence over myself. And therefore I am most manfully resolving to turn over a new leaf with my own mind. Your visit to us, though not a very comfortable one to yourself, has been of great use to me. I set you up in my fancy as a kind of thing that takes an interest in my concerns; and I hear you talking to me, and arguing the matter very learnedly, when I give way to despondency. You shall hear a good account of me, and the progress I make in altering my fretful temper to a calm and quiet one. It is but being once thorowly convinced one is wrong, to make one resolve to do so no more; and I know my dismal faces have been almost as great a drawback upon Charles's comfort, as his feverish, teazing ways have been upon mine. Our love for each other has been the torment of our lives hitherto. I am most seriously intending to bend the whole force of my mind to counteract this, and I think I see some prospect of success.
Of Charles ever bringing any work to pass at home, I am very doubtful; and of the farce succeeding, I have little or no hope; but if I could once get into the way of being chearful myself, I should see an easy remedy in leaving town and living cheaply, almost wholly alone; but till I do find we really are comfortable alone, and by ourselves, it seems a dangerous experiment. We shall certainly stay where we are till after next Christmas; and in the mean time, as I told you before, all my whole thoughts shall be to change myself into just such a chearful soul as you would be in a lone house, with no companion but your brother, if you had nothing to vex you--nor no means of wandering after Curse-a-rats.
Do write soon: though I write all about myself, I am thinking all the while of you, and I am uneasy at the length of time it seems since I heard from you. Your Mother, and Mr. White, is running continually in my head; and this second winter makes me think how cold, damp, and forlorn your solitary house will feel to you. I would your feet were perched up again on our fender.
Manning is not yet gone. Mrs. Holcroft is brought to bed. Mrs. Reynolds has been confined at home with illness, but is recovering. God bless you.
Yours affectionately, M. LAMB.
["Norris's"--Randal Norris, sub-treasurer of the Inner Temple, whose wife, née Faint, came from Widford, where she had known Lamb's grandmother, Mary Field.
Captain Burney's whist parties, in Little James Street, Pimlico, were, as a rule, on Saturdays. Later Lamb established a Wednesday party.
Of Mrs. Brooks I have no knowledge; nor of him whom Mary Lamb called Mr. Curse-a-rat.
"The Cape of Good Hope." The Cape of Good Hope, having been taken by the English in 1795 from the Dutch, and restored to them at the Peace of Amiens in 1802, had just been retaken by the English.
"Mrs. Holcroft is brought to bed." The child was Louisa, afterwards Mrs. Badams, one of Lamb's correspondents late in life.]
149. CHARLES LAMB TO JOHN RICKMAN
March, 1806.
Dear Rickman,--I send you some papers about a salt-water soap, for which the inventor is desirous of getting a parliamentary reward, like Dr. Jenner. Whether such a project be feasible, I mainly doubt, taking for granted the equal utility. I should suppose the usual way of paying such projectors is by patents and contracts. The patent, you see, he has got. A contract he is about with the Navy Board. Meantime, the projector is hungry. Will you answer me two questions, and return them with the papers as soon as you can? Imprimis, is there any chance of success in application to Parliament for a reward? Did you ever hear of the invention? You see its benefits and saving to the nation (always the first motive with a true projector) are feelingly set forth: the last paragraph but one of the estimate, in enumerating the shifts poor seamen are put to, even approaches to the pathetic. But, agreeing to all he says, is there the remotest chance of Parliament giving the projector anything; and when should application be made, now or after a report (if he can get it) from the navy board? Secondly, let the infeasibility be as great as you will, you will oblige me by telling me the way of introducing such an application to Parliament, without buying over a majority of members, which is totally out of projector's power. I vouch nothing for the soap myself; for I always wash in fresh water, and find it answer tolerably well for all purposes of cleanliness; nor do I know the projector; but a relation of mine has put me on writing to you, for whose parliamentary knowledge he has great veneration.
P.S. The Capt. and Mrs. Burney and Phillips take their chance at cribbage here on Wednesday. Will you and Mrs. R. join the party? Mary desires her compliments to Mrs. R., and joins in the invitation.
Yours truly, C. LAMB.
[Rickman now held the post of private secretary to the Speaker, Charles Abbot, afterwards Lord Colchester.
Captain Burney we have already met. His wife, Sarah Burney, was, there is good reason to suppose, in Lamb's mind when he wrote the Elia essay "Mrs. Battle's Opinions on Whist." Phillips was either Colonel Phillips, a retired officer of marines, who had sailed with Burney and Captain Cook, had known Dr. Johnson, and had married Burney's sister; or Ned Phillips (Rickman's Secretary).]
150. CHARLES LAMB TO WILLIAM HAZLITT
March 15, 1806.
Dear H.--I am a little surprised at no letter from you. This day week, to wit, Saturday, the 8th of March, 1806, I booked off by the Wem coach, Bull and Mouth Inn, directed to you, at the Rev. Mr. Hazlitt's, Wem, Shropshire, a parcel containing, besides a book, &c., a rare print, which I take to be a Titian; begging the said W.H. to acknowledge the receipt thereof; which he not having done, I conclude the said parcel to be lying at the inn, and may be lost; for which reason, lest you may be a Wales-hunting at this instant, I have authorised any of your family, whosoever first gets this, to open it, that so precious a parcel may not moulder away for want of looking after. What do you in Shropshire when so many fine pictures are a-going, a-going every day in London? Monday I visit the Marquis of Lansdowne's, in Berkeley Square. Catalogue 2s. 6d. Leonardos in plenty. Some other day this week I go to see Sir Wm. Young's, in Stratford Place. Hulse's, of Blackheath, are also to be sold this month; and in May, the first private collection in Europe, Welbore Ellis Agar's. And there are you, perverting Nature in lying landscapes, filched from old rusty Titians, such as I can scrape up here to send you, with an additament from Shropshire Nature thrown in to make the whole look unnatural. I am afraid of your mouth watering when I tell you that Manning and I got into Angerstein's on Wednesday. Mon Dieu! Such Claudes! Four Claudes bought for more than £10,000 (those who talk of Wilson being equal to Claude are either mainly ignorant or stupid); one of these was perfectly miraculous. What colours short of bonâ fide sunbeams it could be painted in, I am not earthly colourman enough to say; but I did not think it had been in the possibility of things. Then, a music-piece by Titian--a thousand-pound picture--five figures standing behind a piano, the sixth playing; none of the heads, as M. observed, indicating great men, or affecting it, but so sweetly disposed; all leaning separate ways, but so easy--like a flock of some divine shepherd; the colouring, like the economy of the picture, so sweet and harmonious--as good as Shakspeare's "Twelfth Night,"--almost, that is. It will give you a love of order, and cure you of restless, fidgetty passions for a week after--more musical than the music which it would, but cannot, yet in a manner does, show. I have no room for the rest. Let me say, Angerstein sits in a room--his study (only that and the library are shown)--when he writes a common letter, as I am doing, surrounded with twenty pictures worth £60,000. What a luxury! Apicius and Heliogabalus, hide your diminished heads!
Yours, my dear painter, C. LAMB.
[Angerstein's was the house of John Julius Angerstein (1735-1823) the financier, in Pall Mall. He had a magnificent collection of pictures, £60,000 worth of which were bought on his death by the nation, to form the nucleus of our National Gallery. A portrait of Angerstein by Lawrence hangs there. The Titian of which Lamb speaks is now attributed to the School of Titian. It is called "A Concert." Angerstein's Claudes are also in the National Gallery.]
151. CHARLES LAMB TO THOMAS MANNING
May 10, 1806.
My dear Manning--I didn't know what your going was till I shook a last fist with you, and then 'twas just like having shaken hands with a wretch on the fatal scaffold, and when you are down the ladder, you can never stretch out to him again. Mary says you are dead, and there's nothing to do but to leave it to time to do for us in the end what it always does for those who mourn for people in such a case. But she'll see by your letter you are not quite dead. A little kicking and agony, and then--. Martin Burney took me out a walking that evening, and we talked of Mister Manning; and then I came home and smoked for you; and at twelve o'Clock came home Mary and Monkey Louisa from the play, and there was more talk and more smoking, and they all seemed first-rate characters, because they knew a certain person. But what's the use of talking about 'em? By the time you'll have made your escape from the Kalmuks, you'll have staid so long I shall never be able to bring to your mind who Mary was, who will have died about a year before, nor who the Holcrofts were! Me perhaps you will mistake for Phillips, or confound me with Mr. Daw, because you saw us together. Mary (whom you seem to remember yet) is not quite easy that she had not a formal parting from you. I wish it had so happened. But you must bring her a token, a shawl or something, and remember a sprightly little Mandarin for our mantle-piece, as a companion to the Child I am going to purchase at the Museum. She says you saw her writings about the other day, and she wishes you should know what they are. She is doing for Godwin's bookseller twenty of Shakspear's plays, to be made into Children's tales. Six are already done by her, to wit, 'The Tempest,' 'Winter's Tale,' 'Midsummer Night,' 'Much Ado,' 'Two Gentlemen of Verona,' and 'Cymbeline:' 'The Merchant of Venice' is in forwardness. I have done 'Othello' and 'Macbeth,' and mean to do all the tragedies. I think it will be popular among the little people. Besides money. It is to bring in 60 guineas. Mary has done them capitally, I think you'd think. These are the humble amusements we propose, while you are gone to plant the cross of Christ among barbarous Pagan anthropophagi. Quam homo homini praestat! but then, perhaps, you'll get murder'd, and we shall die in our beds with a fair literary reputation. Be sure, if you see any of those people whose heads do grow beneath their shoulders, that you make a draught of them. It will be very curious. O Manning, I am serious to sinking almost, when I think that all those evenings, which you have made so pleasant, are gone perhaps for ever. Four years you talk of, maybe ten, and you may come back and find such alterations! Some circumstance may grow up to you or to me, that may be a bar to the return of any such intimacy. I daresay all this is Hum, and that all will come back; but indeed we die many deaths before we die, and I am almost sick when I think that such a hold as I had of you is gone. I have friends, but some of 'em are changed. Marriage, or some circumstance, rises up to make them not the same. But I felt sure of you. And that last token you gave me of expressing a wish to have my name joined with yours, you know not how it affected me: like a legacy.
God bless you in every way you can form a wish. May He give you health, and safety, and the accomplishment of all your objects, and return you again to us, to gladden some fireside or other (I suppose we shall be moved from the Temple). I will nurse the remembrance of your steadiness and quiet, which used to infuse something like itself into our nervous minds. Mary called you our ventilator. Farewell, and take her best wishes and mine.
One thing more. When you get to Canton, you will most likely see a young friend of mine, Inspector of Teas, named Ball. He is a very good fellow and I should like to have my name talked of in China. Give my kind remembrances to the same Ball. Good bye.
C. L.
I have made strict inquiries through my friend Thompson as to your affairs with the Comp'y. If there had been a committee yesterday an order would have been sent to the captain to draw on them for your passage money, but there was no Committee. But in the secretary's orders to receive you on board, it was specified that the Company would defray your passage, all the orders about you to the supercargoes are certainly in your ship. Here I will manage anything you may want done. What can I add but take care of yourself. We drink tea with the Holcrofts to-morrow.
[Addressed to "Mr. Manning, Passenger on Board the Thames, East Indiaman, Portsmouth."
Manning sailed for China this month. He did not return to England until 1817. His nominal purpose was to practise medicine there, not to spread Christianity, as Lamb suggests--probably in fun.
This is Manning's reply to Lamb's letter:--
"Dear Lamb--As we are not sailed yet, and I have a few minutes, why should not I give you a line to say that I received your kind letter yesterday, and shall read it again before I have done with it. I am sorry I had not time to call on Mary, but I did not even call on my own Father, and he's 70 and loves me like a Father. I don't know that you can do any thing for me at the India House: if you hear any thing there about me, communicate it to Mr. Crabtree, 13, Newgate Street. I am not dead, nor dying--some people go into Yorkshire for four [years], and I have no currant jelly aboard. Tell Holcroft I received his kind letter."
"T. MANNING for ever."]
152. MARY LAMB TO SARAH STODDART
[Mr. W.C. Hazlitt dates: June 2, 1806.]
My dear Sarah,--You say truly that I have sent you too many make-believe letters. I do not mean to serve you so again, if I can help it. I have been very ill for some days past with the toothache. Yesterday, I had it drawn; and I feel myself greatly relieved, but far from easy, for my head and my jaws still ache; and, being unable to do any business, I would wish to write you a long letter, to atone for my former offences; but I feel so languid, that I am afraid wishing is all I can do.
I am sorry you are so worried with business; and I am still more sorry for your sprained ancle. You ought not to walk upon it. What is the matter between you and your good-natured maid you used to boast of? and what the devil is the matter with your Aunt? You say she is discontented. You must bear with them as well as you can; for, doubtless, it is you[r] poor Mother's teazing that puts you all out of sorts. I pity you from my heart.
We cannot come to see you this summer, nor do I think it advisable to come and incommode you, when you for the same expence could come to us. Whenever you feel yourself disposed to run away from your troubles, come up to us again. I wish it was not such a long, expensive journey, then you could run backwards and forwards every month or two.
I am very sorry you still hear nothing from Mr. White. I am afraid that is all at an end. What do you intend to do about Mr. Turner?
I believe Mr. Rickman is well again, but I have not been able to get out lately to enquire, because of my toothache. Louisa Martin is quite well again.
William Hazlitt, the brother of him you know, is in town. I believe you have heard us say we like him? He came in good time; for the loss of Manning made Charles very dull, and he likes Hazlitt better than any body, except Manning.
My toothache has moped Charles to death: you know how he hates to see people ill.
Mrs. Reynolds has been this month past at Deptford, so that I never know when Monday comes. I am glad you have got your Mother's pension.
My Tales are to be published in separate story-books; I mean, in single stories, like the children's little shilling books. I cannot send you them in Manuscript, because they are all in the Godwins' hands; but one will be published very soon, and then you shall have it all in print. I go on very well, and have no doubt but I shall always be able to hit upon some such kind of job to keep going on. I think I shall get fifty pounds a year at the lowest calculation; but as I have not yet seen any money of my own earning, for we do not expect to be paid till Christmas, I do not feel the good fortune, that has so unexpectedly befallen me, half so much as I ought to do. But another year, no doubt, I shall perceive it.
When I write again, you will hear tidings of the farce, for Charles is to go in a few days to the Managers to enquire about it. But that must now be a next-year's business too, even if it does succeed; so it's all looking forward, and no prospect of present gain. But that's better than no hopes at all, either for present or future times.
Charles has written Macbeth, Othello, King Lear, and has begun Hamlet; you would like to see us, as we often sit, writing on one table (but not on one cushion sitting), like Hermia and Helena in the Midsummer's Night's Dream; or, rather, like an old literary Darby and Joan: I taking snuff, and he groaning all the while, and saying he can make nothing of it, which he always says till he has finished, and then he finds out he has made something of it.
If I tell you that you Widow-Blackacreise, you must tell me I Tale-ise, for my Tales seem to be all the subject matter I write about; and when you see them, you will think them poor little baby-stories to make such a talk about; but I have no news to send, nor nothing, in short, to say, that is worth paying two pence for. I wish I could get franks, then I should not care how short or stupidly I wrote.
Charles smokes still, and will smoke to the end of the chapter.
Martin [Burney] has just been here. My Tales (again) and Charles's Farce has made the boy mad to turn Author; and he has written a Farce, and he has made the Winter's Tale into a story; but what Charles says of himself is really true of Martin, for he can make nothing at all of it: and I have been talking very eloquently this morning, to convince him that nobody can write farces, &c., under thirty years of age. And so I suppose he will go home and new model his farce.
What is Mr. Turner? and what is likely to come of him? and how do you like him? and what do you intend to do about it? I almost wish you to remain single till your Mother dies, and then come and live with us; and we would either get you a husband, or teach you how to live comfortably without. I think I should like to have you always to the end of our lives living with us; and I do not know any reason why that should not be, except for the great fancy you seem to have for marrying, which after all is but a hazardous kind of an affair: but, however, do as you like; every man knows best what pleases himself best.
I have known many single men I should have liked in my life (if it had suited them) for a husband: but very few husbands have I ever wished was mine, which is rather against the state in general; but one never is disposed to envy wives their good husbands. So much for marrying--but however, get married, if you can.
I say we shall not come and see you, and I feel sure we shall not: but, if some sudden freak was to come into our wayward heads, could you at all manage?--Your Mother we should not mind, but I think still it would be so vastly inconvenient.--I am certain we shall not come, and yet you may tell me, when you write, if it would be horribly inconvenient if we did; and do not tell me any lies, but say truly whether you would rather we did or not.
God bless you, my dearest Sarah! I wish, for your sake, I could have written a very amusing letter; but do not scold, for my head aches sadly. Don't mind my headach, for before you get this it will be well, being only from the pains of my jaws and teeth. Farewell.
Yours affectionately, M. LAMB.
[This letter contains the first mention to Sarah Stoddart of William Hazlitt, who was shortly to put an end to the claims both of Mr. White and Mr. Turner.
The Tales from Shakespear, although mainly Mary Lamb's book, did not bear her name for many years, not until after her brother's death. Her connection with it was, however, made public in more than one literary year-book of her day. Originally they were to be unsigned, but Godwin "cheated" Lamb into putting a name to them (see letter of Jan. 29, 1807). The single stories, which Mrs. Godwin issued at sixpence each, are now excessively rare. The ordinary first edition in two volumes is a valuable possession, much desired by collectors.]
Letter 153
CHARLES LAMB TO WILLIAM WORDSWORTH [P.M. June 26, 1806.]
Dear Wordsworth--We got the six pounds safe in your sister's letters--are pleased, you may be sure, with the good news of Mrs. W.--hope all is well over by this time. "A fine boy!--have you any more? one more and a girl--poor copies of me" vide MR. H. a farce which the Proprietors have done me the honor--but I will set down Mr. Wroughton's own words. N.B. the ensuing letter was sent in answer to one which I wrote begging to know if my piece had any chance, as I might make alterations, &c. I writing on the Monday, there comes this letter on the Wednesday. Attend.
(Copy of a Letter from Mr. R'd. Wroughton)
Sir, Your Piece of Mr. H--I am desired to say, is accepted at Drury Lane Theatre, by the Proprietors, and, if agreeable to you, will be brought forwards when the proper opportunity serves--the Piece shall be sent to you for your Alterations in the course of a few days, as the same is not in my Hands but with the Proprietors.
(dated) I am Sir, 66 Gower St., Your obedient ser't., Wednesday R'd. WROUGHTON. June 11, 1806.
On the following Sunday Mr. Tobin comes. The scent of a manager's letter brought him. He would have gone further any day on such a business. I read the letter to him. He deems it authentic and peremptory. Our conversation naturally fell upon pieces--different sorts of pieces--what is the best way of offering a piece--how far the caprice of managers is an obstacle in the way of a piece--how to judge of the merits of a piece--how long a piece may remain in the hands of the managers before it is acted--and my piece--and your piece--and my poor brother's piece--my poor brother was all his life endeavouring to get a piece accepted--
I am not sure that when my poor Brother bequeathed the care of his pieces to Mr. James Tobin he did not therein convey a legacy which in some measure mollified the otherwise first stupefactions of grief. It can't be expected that the present Earl Nelson passes all his time in watering the laurels of the Admiral with Right Reverend Tears. Certainly he steals a fine day now and then to plot how to lay out the grounds and mansion at Burnham most suitably to the late Earl's taste, if he had lived, and how to spend the hundred thousand pound parliament has given him in erecting some little neat monument to his memory.
MR. H. I wrote that in mere wantonness of triumph. Have nothing more to say about it. The Managers I thank my stars have decided its merits for ever. They are the best judges of pieces, and it would be insensible in me to affect a false modesty after the very flattering letter which I have received and the ample--
I think this will be as good a pattern for Orders as I can think on. A little thin flowery border round, neat not gaudy, and the Drury Lane Apollo with the harp at the top. Or shall I have no Apollo?--simply nothing? Or perhaps the Comic Muse?
The same form, only I think without the Apollo, will serve for the pit and galleries. I think it will be best to write my name at full length; but then if I give away a great many, that will be tedious. Perhaps Ch. Lamb will do. BOXES now I think on it I'll have in Capitals. The rest in a neat Italian hand. Or better perhaps, BOXES, in old English character, like Madoc or Thalaba?
I suppose you know poor Mountague has lost his wife. That has been the reason for my sending off all we have got of yours separately. I thought it a bad time to trouble him. The Tea 25 lb. in 5 5 lb. Papers, two sheets to each, with the chocolate which we were afraid Mrs. W. would want, comes in one Box and the Hats in a small one. I booked them off last night by the Kendal waggon. There comes with this letter (no, it comes a day or two earlier) a Letter for you from the Doctor at Malta, about Coleridge, just received. Nothing of certainty, you see, only that he is not at Malta. We supt with the Clarksons one night--Mrs. Clarkson pretty well. Mr. C. somewhat fidgety, but a good man. The Baby has been on a visit to Mrs. Charlotte Smith, Novellist and morals-trainer, but is returned. [A short passage omitted here.]
Mary is just stuck fast in All's Well that Ends Well. She complains of having to set forth so many female characters in boy's clothes. She begins to think Shakspear must have wanted Imagination. I to encourage her, for she often faints in the prosecution of her great work, flatter her with telling her how well such a play and such a play is done. But she is stuck fast and I have been obliged to promise to assist her. To do this it will be necessary to leave off Tobacco. But I had some thoughts of doing that before, for I sometimes think it does not agree with me. W. Hazlitt is in Town. I took him to see a very pretty girl professedly, where there were two young girls--the very head and sum of the Girlery was two young girls--they neither laughed nor sneered nor giggled nor whispered--but they were young girls--and he sat and frowned blacker and blacker, indignant that there should be such a thing as Youth and Beauty, till he tore me away before supper in perfect misery and owned he could not bear young girls. They drove him mad. So I took him home to my old Nurse, where he recover'd perfect tranquillity. Independent of this, and as I am not a young girl myself, he is a great acquisition to us. He is, rather imprudently, I think, printing a political pamphlet on his own account, and will have to pay for the paper, &c. The first duty of an Author, I take it, is never to pay anything. But non cuivis attigit adire Corinthum. The Managers I thank my stars have settled that question for me.
Yours truly, C. LAMB.
[Wordsworth's third child, Thomas, who did not grow up, was born June 16, 1806.
"A fine boy!" The quotation is from Mr. H.'s soliloquy after the discovery of his name:--"No son of mine shall exist, to bear my ill-fated name. No nurse come chuckling, to tell me it is a boy. No midwife, leering at me from under the lids of professional gravity. I dreamed of caudle. (Sings in a melancholy tone) Lullaby, Lullaby,-- hush-a-by-baby--how like its papa it is!--(makes motions as if he was nursing). And then, when grown up, 'Is this your son, sir?' 'Yes, sir, a poor copy of me,--a sad young dog!--just what his father was at his age,--I have four more at home.' Oh! oh! oh!"
Tobin was James Tobin, whom we have already met, brother of the late dramatist, John Tobin.
Poor Mountague would be Basil Montagu, whose second wife had just died. He married afterwards Anne Skepper, whom Lamb came to know well, and of whom he speaks in his Elia essay "Oxford in the Vacation."
The Doctor was Dr. Stoddart. Coleridge had left Malta some months before, as we have seen. He had also left Rome and was in some foreign town unknown, probably not far from Leghorn, whence he sailed for England in the following month, reaching Portsmouth in August.
The Baby was Mrs. Godwin, and Charlotte Smith was the poetess (of great fame in her day, but now forgotten), who was then living at Tilford, near Farnham, in Surrey. She died in the following October. The passage which I have, with extreme reluctance, omitted, refers to the physical development of the two ladies. Lamb was writing just then less for Wordsworth than Antiquity.
Hazlitt's political pamphlet was his Free Thoughts on Public Affairs, 1806.]
154. MARY LAMB TO SARAH STODDART
[No date. ? Begun on Friday, July 4, 1806.]
Charles and Hazlitt are going to Sadler's Wells, and I am amusing myself in their absence with reading a manuscript of Hazlitt's; but have laid it down to write a few lines, to tell you how we are going on. Charles has begged a month's hollidays, of which this is the first day, and they are all to be spent at home. We thank you for your kind invitations, and were half-inclined to come down to you; but after mature deliberation, and many wise consultations, such as you know we often hold, we came to the resolution of staying quietly at home: and during the hollidays we are both of us to set stoutly to work and finish the Tales, six of them being yet to do. We thought, if we went anywhere and left them undone, they would lay upon our minds; and that when we returned, we should feel unsettled, and our money all spent besides: and next summer we are to be very rich, and then we can afford a long journey some where, I will not say to Salisbury, because I really think it is better for you to come to us; but of that we will talk another time.
The best news I have to send you is, that the Farce is accepted. That is to say, the manager has written to say it shall be brought out when an opportunity serves. I hope that it may come out by next Christmas: you must come and see it the first night; for if it succeeds, it will be a great pleasure to you, and if it should not, we shall want your consolation. So you must come.
I shall soon have done my work, and know not what to begin next. Now, will you set your brains to work and invent a story, either for a short child's story, or a long one that would make a kind of Novel, or a Story that would make a play. Charles wants me to write a play, but I am not over anxious to set about it; but seriously will you draw me out a skeleton of a story, either from memory of any thing that you have read, or from your own invention, and I will fill it up in some way or other.
The reason I have not written so long is, that I worked, and worked, in hopes to get through my task before the hollidays began; but at last I was not able, for Charles was forced to get them now, or he could not have had any at all: and having picked out the best stories first, these latter ones take more time, being more perplext and unmanageable. But however I hope soon to tell you that they are quite completed. I have finished one to-day which teazed me more than all the rest put together. The[y] sometimes plague me as bad as your Lovers do you. How do you go on, and how many new ones have you had lately?
I met Mrs. Fenwick at Mrs. Holcroft's the other day; she loo[ked very] placid and smiling, but I was so disconcerted that I hardly knew how to sit upon my chair. She invited us to come and see her, but we did not invite her in return; and nothing at all was said in an explanatory sort: so that matter rests at present.
Mrs. Rickman continues very ill--so ill, that there are no hopes of her recovery--for which I am very sorry indeed.
I am sorry you are altogether so uncomfortable; I shall be glad to hear you are settled at Salisbury: that must be better than living in a lone house, companionless as you are. I wish you could afford to bring your Mother up to London; but that is quite impossible.
Your brother wrote a letter a week ago (which passed through our hands) to Wordsworth, to tell him all he knew of Coleridge; but as he had not heard from C. for some time, there was nothing in the letter we did not know before.
Thanks for your brother's letters. I preserve them very carefully, and you shall have them (as the Manager says) when opportunity serves.
Mrs. Wordsworth is brought to bed; and I ought to write to Miss Wordsworth to thank her for the information, but I suppose I shall defer it till another child is coming. I do so hate writing letters. I wish all my friends would come and live in town. Charles has been telling me even it is better [than] two months that he ought to write to your brother. [It is not] my dislike to writing letters that prevents my [writing] to you, but sheer want of time, I assure you, because [I know] you care not how stupidly I write, so as you do but [hear at the] time what we are about.
Let me hear from you soon, and do let me hear some [good news,] and don't let me hear of your walking with sprained ancles again; no business is an excuse for making yourself lame.
I hope your poor Mother is better, and Aunty and Maid jog on pretty well; remember me to them all in due form and order. Charles's love, and our best wishes that all your little busy affairs may come to a prosperous conclusion.
Yours affectionately, M. LAMB.
Friday evening.
[Added later:--]
They (Hazlitt and Charles) came home from Sadler's Wells so dismal and dreary dull on Friday, that I gave them both a good scolding--quite a setting to rights; and I think it has done some good, for Charles has been very chearful ever since. I begin to hope the home hollidays will go on very well. Mrs. Rickman is better. Rickman we saw at Captain Burney's for the first time since her illness last night.
Write directly, for I am uneasy about your Lovers; I wish something was settled. God bless you.
Once more, yours affectionately, M. LAMB.
Sunday morning [July 6, or more probably 13].--I did not put this in the post, hoping to be able to write a less dull letter to you this morning; but I have been prevented, so it shall go as it is. I am in good spirits just at this present time, for Charles has been reading over the Tale I told you plagued me so much, and he thinks it one of the very best: it is All's Well that Ends Well. You must not mind the many wretchedly dull letters I have sent you; for, indeed, I cannot help it, my mind is so dry always after poring over my work all day. But it will soon be over.
I am cooking a shoulder of Lamb (Hazlitt dines with us); it will be ready at two o'Clock, if you can pop in and eat a bit with us.
[The programme at Sadler's Wells on July 4, 1806, was: "Aquatic Theatre, Sadler's Wells. A new dance called Grist and Puff, or the Highland Fling. The admired comic pantomime, Harlequin and the Water Kelpe. New melodramatic Romance, The Invisible Ring; or, The Water Monstre and Fire Spectre." The author of both was Mr. C. Dibdin, Jun. "Real water."
Mary Lamb's next work, after the Tales from Shakespear, was Mrs. Leicester's School. Charles Lamb meanwhile was preparing his Dramatic Specimens and Adventures of Ulysses.
Mrs. Rickman did not die then, She lived until 1836.]
155. MARY LAMB TO DOROTHY WORDSWORTH
[P.M. August 29, 1806.]
My dear Miss Wordsworth--After I had put my letter in the post yesterday I was uneasy all the night because of some few expressions relative to poor Coleridge--I mean, in saying I wished your brother would come to town and that I wished your brother would consult Mr. Southey. I am very sure your brother will take no step in consequence of any foolish advice that I can give him, so far I am easy, but the painful reflections I have had during a sleepless night has induced me to write merely to quiet myself, because I have felt ever since, that in the present situation of Coleridge, returned after an absence of two years, and feeling a reluctance to return to his family, I ought not to throw in the weight of a hair in advising you or your Brother, and that I ought not to have so much as named to you his reluctance to return to Keswick, for so little is it in my power to calculate on his actions that perhaps in a few days he may be on his return home.
You, my dear friend, will perfectly understand me that I do not mean that I might not freely say to you anything that is upon my mind--but [the] truth is, my poor mind is so weak that I never dare trust my own judgement in anything: what I think one hour a fit of low spirits makes me unthink the next. Yesterday I wrote, anxiously longing for Mr. Wordsworth and Mr. Southey to endeavour to bring Mrs. C. to consent to a separation, and to day I think of the letter I received from Mrs. Coleridge, telling me, as joyful news, that her husband is arrived, and I feel it very wrong in me even in the remotest degree to do anything to prevent her seeing that husband--she and her husband being the only people who ought to be concerned in the affair.
All that I have said, or meant to say, you will perfectly understand, it being nothing more than to beg you will consider both my letter to day and yesterday as if you had not read either, they being both equally the effect of low spirits, brought on by the fatigue of Coleridge's conversation and the anxious care even to misery which I have felt since he has been here, that something could be done to make such an admirable creature happy. Nor has, I assure you, Mrs. Coleridge been without her full share in adding to my uneasiness. They say she grows fat and is very happy--and people say I grow fat and look happy--
It is foolish to teize you about my anxieties, you will feel quite enough on the subject yourself, and your little ones are all ill, and no doubt you are fatigued with nursing, but I could not help writing to day, to tell you how what I said yesterday has vext and worried me. Burn both these foolish letters and do not name the subject of them, because Charles will either blame me for having written something improper or he will laugh at me for my foolish fears about nothing.
Though I wish you not to take notice of what I have said, yet I shall rejoice to see a letter from you, and I hope, when you have half an hour's leisure, to see a line from you. We have not heard from Coleridge since he went out of town, but I dare say you have heard either from him or Mrs. Clarkson.
I remain my dear friend Yours most affectionately M. LAMB.
Friday [August 29].
[For the full understanding of Mary Lamb's letter it is necessary to read Coleridge's Life and his Letters. Coleridge on his return from abroad reached London August 17, 1806, and took up his quarters with the Lambs on the following day. He once more joined Stuart, then editing the Courier, but much of his old enthusiasm had gone. In Mr. Dykes Campbell's words:--
"Almost his first words to Stuart were: 'I am literally afraid, even to cowardice, to ask for any person, or of any person.' Spite of the friendliest and most unquestioning welcome from all most dear to him, it was the saddest of home-comings, for the very sympathy held out with both hands induced only a bitter, hopeless feeling of remorse--a
"'Sense of past youth, and manhood come in vain;-- And genius given, and knowledge won in vain;--'
"of broken promises,--promises to friends and promises to himself; and above all, sense of a will paralysed--dead perhaps, killed by his own hand."
Coleridge remained at Lamb's at any rate until August 29, afterwards taking rooms in the Courier office at 348 Strand. Meanwhile his reluctance to meet or communicate with his wife was causing his friends much concern, none more so than Mary Lamb, who wrote at least two letters filled with anxious sympathy to Dorothy Wordsworth on the subject, asking for the mediation of Wordsworth or Southey. Her earlier letter is missing.
To quote Mr. Dykes Campbell again:--
"On September 16--just a month after his landing--he wrote his first letter to his wife, to say that he might be expected at Greta Hall on the 29th.
"Before this, Wordsworth had informed Sir George Beaumont that Coleridge 'dare not go home, he recoils so much from the thought of domesticating with Mrs. Coleridge, with whom, though on many accounts he much respects her, he is so miserable that he dare not encounter it. What a deplorable thing! I have written to him to say that if he does not come down immediately I must insist upon seeing him some-where. If he appoints London I shall go.
"'I believe if anything good is to be done for him it must be done by me.'"
"It was this letter of Wordsworth, doubtless, which drew Coleridge to the North. Dorothy's letter to Lady Beaumont, written on receipt of the announcement of Coleridge's home-coming, goes copiously and minutely into the reasons for the estrangement between the poet and his wife. Miss Wordsworth still had hopes of an improvement. 'Poor soul!' she writes, 'he had a struggle of many years, striving to bring Mrs. C. to a change of temper, and something like communion with him in his enjoyments. He is now, I trust, effectually convinced that he has no power of that sort,' and may, she thinks, if he will be 'reconciled to that one great want, want of sympathy,' live at home in peace and quiet. 'Mrs. C. has many excellent properties, as you observe; she is unremitting in her attention as a nurse to her children, and, indeed, I believe she would have made an excellent wife to many persons. Coleridge is as little fitted for her as she for him, and I am truly sorry for her.'"
It might perhaps be stated here that the separation was agreed upon in December. At the end of that month Coleridge visited the Wordsworths at Coleorton with Hartley, and in a few days began to be "more like his old self"--in Dorothy Wordsworth's phrase.
I append an undated letter which may belong to this period:--]
156. MARY LAMB TO S. T. COLERIDGE
Dear Coleridge--I have read your silly, very silly, letter, and between laughing and crying I hardly know how to answer it. You are too serious and too kind a vast deal, for we are not much used to either seriousness or kindness from our present friends, and therefore your letter has put me into a greater hurry of spirits that [? than] your pleasant segar did last night, for believe me your two odd faces amused me much more than the mighty transgression vexed me. If Charles had not smoked last night his virtue would not have lasted longer than tonight, and now perhaps with a little of your good counsel he will refrain. Be not too serious if he smokes all the time you are with us--a few chearful evenings spent with you serves to bear up our spirits many a long and weary year--and the very being led into the crime by your segar that you thought so harmless, will serve for our amusement many a dreary time when we can get no letter nor hear no tidings of you.
You must positively must write to Mrs. Coleridge this day, and you must write here, that I may know you write, or you must come and dictate a letter for me to write to her. I know all that you would say in defence of not writing and I allow in full force everything that [you] can say or think, but yet a letter from me or you shall go today.
I wanted to tell you, but feared to begin the subject, how well your children are, how Pypos thrives and what a nice child Sara is, and above all I hear such favourable accounts from Southey, from Wordsworth and Hazlitt, of Hartley.
I have got Wordsworth's letters out for you to look at, but you shall not see them or talk of them without you like--Only come here as soon as you receive this, and I will not teize you about writing, but will manage a few lines, Charles and I between us. But something like a letter shall go today.
Come directly Yours affectionately, M. LAMB.
Letter 157
MARY LAMB TO SARAH STODDART [P.M. October 23, 1806.]
My dear Sarah--I thank you a thousand times for the beautiful work you have sent me, I received the parcel from a strange gentleman yesterday. I like the patterns very much, you have quite set me up in finery, but you should have sent the silk handkerchief too. Will you make a parcel of that and send it by the Salisbury coach--I should like to have it in a few days because we have not yet been to Mr. Babbs and that handkerchief would suit this time of year nicely.
I have received a long letter from your brother on the subject of your intended marriage. I have no doubt but you also have one on this business, therefore it is needless to repeat what he says. I am well pleased to find that upon the whole he does not seem to see it in an unfavorable light. He says that, if Mr. D. is a worthy man he shall have no objection to become the brother of a farmer, and he makes an odd request to me that I shall set out to Salisbury to look at and examine into the merits of the said Mr. D., and speaks very confidently as if you would abide by my determination. A pretty sort of an office truly.--Shall I come?
The objections he starts are only such as you and I have already talked over, such as the difference in age, education, habits of life, &c.
You have gone too far in this affair for any interference to be at all desirable, and if you had not, I really do not know what my wishes would be. When you bring Mr. Dowling at Christmas I suppose it will be quite time enough for me to sit in judgement upon him, but my examination will not be a very severe one. If you fancy a very young man, and he likes an elderly gentlewoman; if he likes a learned and accomplished lady, and you like a not very learned youth, who may need a little polishing, which probably he will never acquire; it is all very well, and God bless you both together and may you be both very long in the same mind.
I am to assist you too, your brother says, in drawing up the marriage settlements--another thankful office! I am not, it seems, to suffer you to keep too much money in your own power, and yet I am to take care of you in case of bankruptcy &c., and I am to recommend to you, for the better management of this point, the serious perusal of Jeremy Taylor his opinion on the marriage state, especially his advice against separate interests in that happy state, and I am also to tell you how desirable it is that the husband should have the intire direction of all money concerns, except, as your good brother adds, in the case of his own family, where the money, he observes, is very properly deposited in Mrs. Stoddart's hands, she being better suited to enjoy such a trust than any other woman, and therefore it is fit that the general rule should not be extended to her.
We will talk over these things when you come to town, and as to settlements, which are matters of which, I never having had a penny in my own disposal, I never in my life thought of--and if I had been blessed with a good fortune, and that marvellous blessing to boot, a husband, I verily believe I should have crammed it all uncounted into his pocket--But thou hast a cooler head of thy own, and I dare say will do exactly what is expedient and proper, but your brother's opinion seems somewhat like Mr. Barwis's and I dare say you will take it into due consideration, yet perhaps an offer of your own money to take a farm may make uncle do less for his nephew, and in that case Mr. D. might be a loser by your generosity. Weigh all these things well, and if you can so contrive it, let your brother settle the settlements himself when he returns, which will most probably be long before you want them.
You are settled, it seems, in the very house which your brother most dislikes. If you find this house very inconvenient, get out of it as fast as you can, for your brother says he sent you the fifty pound to make you comfortable, and by the general tone of his letter I am sure he wishes to make you easy in money matters: therefore why straiten yourself to pay the debt you owe him, which I am well assured he never means to take? Thank you for the letter and for the picture of pretty little chubby nephew John.
I have been busy making waistcoats and plotting new work to succeed the Tales. As yet I have not hit upon any thing to my mind.
Charles took an emendated copy of his farce to Mr. Wroughton the Manager yesterday. Mr. Wroughton was very friendly to him, and expressed high approbation of the farce, but there are two, he tells him, to come out before it, yet he gave him hopes that it will come out this season, but I am afraid you will not see it by Christmas. It will do for another jaunt for you in the spring. We are pretty well and in fresh spirits about this farce. Charles has been very good lately in the matter of Smoking.
When you come bring the gown you wish to sell. Mrs. Coleridge will be in town then, and if she happens not to fancy it, perhaps some other person may.
Coleridge I believe is gone home; he left us with that design but we have not heard from him this fortnight.
Louisa sends her love; she has been very unwell lately.
My respects to Coridon, Mother, and Aunty.
Farewel, my best wishes are with you.
Yours affectionately, M. LAMB.
Thursday.
When I saw what a prodigious quantity of work you had put into the finery I was quite ashamed of my unreasonable request, I will never serve you so again, but I do dearly love worked muslin.
[Sarah Stoddart now had a new lover, Mr. Dowling, to whom she seems actually to have become engaged. Mr. Barwis, I presume, was Mr. Dowling's uncle. Coridon would, I imagine, be Mr. Dowling.]
158. CHARLES LAMB TO THOMAS MANNING
5th Dec., 1806.
Tuthill is at Crabtree's who has married Tuthill's sister.
Manning, your letter dated Hottentots, August the what-was-it? came to hand. I can scarce hope that mine will have the same luck. China-- Canton--bless us--how it strains the imagination and makes it ache! I write under another uncertainty, whether it can go to-morrow by a ship which I have just learned is going off direct to your part of the world, or whether the despatches may not be sealed up and this have to wait, for if it is detained here, it will grow staler in a fortnight than in a five months' voyage coming to you. It will be a point of conscience to send you none but brand-new news (the latest edition), which will but grow the better, like oranges, for a sea voyage. Oh, that you should be so many hemispheres off--if I speak incorrectly you can correct me--why, the simplest death or marriage that takes place here must be important to you as news in the old Bastile. There's your friend Tuthill has got away from France--you remember France? and Tuthill?--ten-to-one but he writes by this post, if he don't get my note in time, apprising him of the vessel sailing. Know then that he has found means to obtain leave from Bonaparte without making use of any incredible romantic pretences as some have done, who never meant to fulfil them, to come home; and I have seen him here and at Holcroft's. I have likewise seen his wife, this elegant little French woman whose hair reaches to her heels--by the same token that Tom (Tommy H.) took the comb out of her head, not expecting the issue, and it fell down to the ground to his utter consternation, two ells long. An't you glad about Tuthill? Now then be sorry for Holcroft, whose new play, called "The Vindictive Man," was damned about a fortnight since. It died in part of its own weakness, and in part for being choked up with bad actors. The two principal parts were destined to Mrs. Jordan and Mr. Bannister, but Mrs. J. has not come to terms with the managers, they have had some squabble, and Bannister shot some of his fingers off by the going off of a gun. So Miss Duncan had her part, and Mr. de Camp, a vulgar brother of Miss De Camp, took his. He is a fellow with the make of a jockey, and the air of a lamplighter. His part, the principal comic hope of the play, was most unluckily Goldfinch, taken out of the "Road to Ruin," not only the same character, but the identical Goldfinch--the same as Falstaff is in two plays of Shakspeare. As the devil of ill-luck would have it, half the audience did not know that H. had written it, but were displeased at his stealing from the "Road to Ruin;" and those who might have borne a gentlemanly coxcomb with his "That's your sort," "Go it"--such as Lewis is--did not relish the intolerable vulgarity and inanity of the idea stript of his manner. De Camp was hooted, more than hist, hooted and bellowed off the stage before the second act was finished, so that the remainder of his part was forced to be, with some violence to the play, omitted. In addition to this, a whore was another principal character--a most unfortunate choice in this moral day. The audience were as scandalised as if you were to introduce such a personage to their private tea-tables. Besides, her action in the play was gross--wheedling an old man into marriage. But the mortal blunder of the play was that which, oddly enough, H. took pride in, and exultingly told me of the night before it came out, that there were no less than eleven principal characters in it, and I believe he meant of the men only, for the play-bill exprest as much, not reckoning one woman and one whore; and true it was, for Mr. Powell, Mr. Raymond, Mr. Bartlett, Mr. H. Siddons, Mr. Barrymore, &c. &c.,--to the number of eleven, had all parts equally prominent, and there was as much of them in quantity and rank as of the hero and heroine--and most of them gentlemen who seldom appear but as the hero's friend in a farce--for a minute or two--and here they all had their ten-minute speeches, and one of them gave the audience a serious account how he was now a lawyer but had been a poet, and then a long enumeration of the inconveniences of authorship, rascally booksellers, reviewers, &c.; which first set the audience a-gaping; but I have said enough. You will be so sorry, that you will not think the best of me for my detail; but news is news at Canton. Poor H. I fear will feel the disappointment very seriously in a pecuniary light. From what I can learn he has saved nothing. You and I were hoping one day that he had; but I fear he has nothing but his pictures and books, and a no very flourishing business, and to be obliged to part with his long-necked Guido that hangs opposite as you enter, and the game-piece that hangs in the back drawing-room, and all those Vandykes, &c.! God should temper the wind to the shorn connoisseur. I hope I need not say to you, that I feel for the weather-beaten author and for all his household. I assure you his fate has soured a good deal the pleasure I should have otherwise taken in my own little farce being accepted, and I hope about to be acted--it is in rehearsal actually, and I expect it to come out next week. It is kept a sort of secret, and the rehearsals have gone on privately, lest by many folks knowing it, the story should come out, which would infallibly damn it. You remember I had sent it before you went. Wroughton read it, and was much pleased with it. I speedily got an answer. I took it to make alterations, and lazily kept it some months, then took courage and furbished it up in a day or two and took it. In less than a fortnight I heard the principal part was given to Elliston, who liked it, and only wanted a prologue, which I have since done and sent; and I had a note the day before yesterday from the manager, Wroughton (bless his fat face--he is not a bad actor in some things), to say that I should be summoned to the rehearsal after the next, which next was to be yesterday. I had no idea it was so forward. I have had no trouble, attended no reading or rehearsal, made no interest; what a contrast to the usual parade of authors! But it is peculiar to modesty to do all things without noise or pomp! I have some suspicion it will appear in public on Wednesday next, for W. says in his note, it is so forward that if wanted it may come out next week, and a new melo-drama is announced for every day till then: and "a new farce is in rehearsal," is put up in the bills. Now you'd like to know the subject. The title is "Mr. H.," no more; how simple, how taking! A great H. sprawling over the play-bill and attracting eyes at every corner. The story is a coxcomb appearing at Bath, vastly rich--all the ladies dying for him--all bursting to know who he is--but he goes by no other name than Mr. H.--a curiosity like that of the dames of Strasburg about the man with the great nose. But I won't tell you any more about it. Yes, I will; but I can't give you an idea how I have done it. I'll just tell you that after much vehement admiration, when his true name comes out, "Hogsflesh," all the women shun him, avoid him, and not one can be found to change their name for him--that's the idea--how flat it is here!--but how whimsical in the farce! and only think how hard upon me it is that the ship is despatched to-morrow, and my triumph cannot be ascertained till the Wednesday after--but all China will ring of it by and by. N.B. (But this is a secret). The Professor has got a tragedy coming out with the young Roscius in it in January next, as we say--January last it will be with you--and though it is a profound secret now, as all his affairs are, it cannot be much of one by the time you read this. However, don't let it go any further. I understand there are dramatic exhibitions in China. One would not like to be forestalled. Do you find in all this stuff I have written anything like those feelings which one should send my old adventuring friend, that is gone to wander among Tartars and may never come again? I don't--but your going away, and all about you, is a threadbare topic. I have worn it out with thinking--it has come to me when I have been dull with anything, till my sadness has seemed more to have come from it than to have introduced it. I want you, you don't know how much--but if I had you here in my European garret, we should but talk over such stuff as I have written--so--. Those "Tales from Shakespear" are near coming out, and Mary has begun a new work. Mr. Dawe is turned author: he has been in such a way lately--Dawe the painter, I mean--he sits and stands about at Holcroft's and says nothing--then sighs and leans his head on his hand. I took him to be in love--but it seems he was only meditating a work,--"The Life of Morland,"--the young man is not used to composition. Rickman and Captain Burney are well; they assemble at my house pretty regularly of a Wednesday--a new institution. Like other great men I have a public day, cribbage and pipes, with Phillips and noisy Martin.
Good Heaven! what a bit only I've got left! How shall I squeeze all I know into this morsel! Coleridge is come home, and is going to turn lecturer on taste at the Royal Institution. I shall get £200 from the theatre if "Mr. H." has a good run, and I hope £100 for the copyright. Nothing if it fails; and there never was a more ticklish thing. The whole depends on the manner in which the name is brought out, which I value myself on, as a chef-d'oeuvre. How the paper grows less and less! In less than two minutes I shall cease to talk to you, and you may rave to the Great Wall of China. N.B. Is there such a wall! Is it as big as Old London Wall by Bedlam? Have you met with a friend of mine, named Ball, at Canton?--if you are acquainted, remember me kindly to him. Amongst many queer cattle I have and do meet with at the India Ho. I always liked his behaviour. Tell him his friend Evans &c. are well. Woodruff not dead yet. May-be, you'll think I have not said enough of Tuthill and the Holcrofts. Tuthill is a noble fellow, as far as I can judge. The Holcrofts bear their disappointment pretty well, but indeed they are sadly mortified. Mrs. H. is cast down. It was well, if it were but on this account, that Tuthill is come home. N.B. If my little thing don't succeed, I shall easily survive, having, as it were, compared to H.'s venture, but a sixteenth in the lottery. Mary and I are to sit next the orchestra in the pit, next the tweedledees. She remembers you. You are more to us than five hundred farces, clappings, &c.
Come back one day. C. LAMB.
[The letter is addressed to T. Manning, Esq., Canton. At the end Lamb adds:--
"Holcroft has just writ to me as follows:--
"'DEAR SIR, Miss L. has informed us you are writing to Manning. Will you be kind enough to inform him directly from me that I and my family are most truly anxious for his safety; that if praying could bring down blessings on him we should pray morning noon and night; that his and our good friends the Tuthills are once more happily safe in England, and that I earnestly entreat not only a single letter but a correspondence with him whenever the thing [is] practicable, with such an address as may make letters from me likely to find him. In short, dear sir, if you will be kind enough to speak of me to Manning, you cannot speak with greater friendship and respect than I feel.
"'Yours with true friendship and kindness.'"
In the beginning of this letter we see the first germ of an idea afterwards developed in the letter to Barren Field of August 31, 1817, and again, more fully, in the Elia essay "Distant Correspondents."
Tuthill, afterwards Sir George Leman Tuthill (1772-1835), was the physician who, on a visit to Paris, was included among the English détenus and held a captive for several years. He was released only after his wife had made a personal appeal to Napoleon on his return from hunting. The words "incredible romantic pretences" refer chaffingly to Manning's application to Napoleon for liberty to return to England two or three years previously. Holcroft's "Vindictive Man" was produced at Drury Lane on November 20, 1806. It was a complete failure. His "Road to Ruin," produced in 1792 at Covent Garden, with "Gentleman" Lewis as Goldfinch, had been a great success and is still occasionally played. Holcroft was also a very voluminous author and translator, and the partner of his brother-in-law, Mercier, in a printing business, which, however, was unprofitable. Tommy was Holcroft's son.
"The dames of Strasburg"--in Tristram Shandy, Vol. IV.
"The Professor has a tragedy." This was "Faulkener," for which Lamb wrote the prologue. Owing to the capriciousness of Master Betty, the Young Roscius, it was not produced until December 16, 1807, and then with Elliston in the principal part. It was only partially successful, a result for which Godwin blamed Holcroft, who had revised the play.
Mary Lamb's new work was Mrs. Leicester's School.
"Mr. Dawe is turned author." The Life of George Morland, by George Dawe, was published in 1807.
Coleridge's intended series of lectures on Taste was abandoned. He did not actually deliver any until January 12, 1808.]
159. CHARLES LAMB TO WILLIAM WORDSWORTH
[Dated at end: December 11, 1806.]
Mary's Love to all of you--I wouldn't let her write--
Dear Wordsworth, Mr. H. came out last night and failed.
I had many fears; the subject was not substantial enough. John Bull must have solider fare than a Letter. We are pretty stout about it, have had plenty of condoling friends, but after all, we had rather it should have succeeded. You will see the Prologue in most of the Morning Papers. It was received with such shouts as I never witness'd to a Prologue. It was attempted to be encored. How hard! a thing I did merely as a task, because it was wanted--and set no great store by; and Mr. H.----!!
The quantity of friends we had in the house, my brother and I being in Public Offices &c., was astonishing--but they yielded at length to a few hisses. A hundred hisses--damn the word, I write it like kisses--how different--a hundred hisses outweigh a 1000 Claps. The former come more directly from the Heart--Well, 'tis withdrawn and there is an end.
Better Luck to us--
C. L.
11 Dec.--(turn over).
P.S. Pray when any of you write to the Clarksons, give our kind Loves, and say we shall not be able to come and see them at Xmas--as I shall have but a day or two,--and tell them we bear our mortification pretty well.
["Mr. H." was produced at Drury Lane on December 10, with Elliston in the title-role. Lamb's account of the evening is supplemented by Hazlitt in his essay "On Great and Little Things" and by Crabb Robinson, a new friend whom he had just made, in his Diary. See Vol. IV. of this edition. The curious thing is that the management of Drury Lane advertised the farce as a success and announced it for the next night. But Lamb apparently interfered and it was not played again. Some few years later "Mr. H." was performed acceptably in America.]
160. CHARLES LAMB TO SARAH STODDART
December 11 [1806].
Don't mind this being a queer letter. I am in haste, and taken up by visitors, condolers, &c. God bless you!
Dear Sarah,--Mary is a little cut at the ill success of "Mr. H.," which came out last night and failed. I know you'll be sorry, but never mind. We are determined not to be cast down. I am going to leave off tobacco, and then we must thrive. A smoking man must write smoky farces.
Mary is pretty well, but I persuaded her to let me write. We did not apprise you of the coming out of "Mr. H." for fear of ill-luck. You were much better out of the house. If it had taken, your partaking of our good luck would have been one of our greatest joys. As it is, we shall expect you at the time you mentioned. But whenever you come you shall be most welcome.
God bless you, dear Sarah,
Yours most truly, C. L.
Mary is by no means unwell, but I made her let me write.
[Following this should come a letter from Mary Lamb to Mrs. Thomas Clarkson, dated December 23, 1806. It again describes the ill success of "Mr. H." "The blame rested chiefly with Charles and yet it should not be called blame for it was mere ignorance of stage effect ... he seems perfectly aware why and for what cause it failed. He intends to write one more with all his dearly bought experience in his head, and should that share same fate he will then turn his mind to some other pursuit." Lamb did not write another farce for many years. When he did--"The Pawnbroker's Daughter" (see Vol. IV.)--it deservedly was not acted.]
161. CHARLES LAMB TO WILLIAM GODWIN
[No date. ? 1806.]
I repent. Can that God whom thy votaries say that thou hast demolished expect more? I did indite a splenetic letter, but did the black Hypocondria never gripe thy heart, till them hast taken a friend for an enemy? The foul fiend Flibbertigibbet leads me over four inched bridges, to course my own shadow for a traitor. There are certain positions of the moon, under which I counsel thee not to take anything written from this domicile as serious.
I rank thee with Alves, Latinè Helvetius, or any of his cursed crew? Thou art my friend, and henceforth my philosopher--thou shall teach Distinction to the junior branches of my household, and Deception to the greyhaired Janitress at my door.
What! Are these atonements? Can Arcadians be brought upon knees, creeping and crouching?
Come, as Macbeth's drunken porter says, knock, knock, knock, knock, knock, knock, knock--seven times in a day shall thou batter at my peace, and if I shut aught against thee, save the Temple of Janus, may Briareus, with his hundred hands, in each a brass knocker, lead me such a life.
C. LAMB.
[I cannot account for this letter in the absence of its predecessor and that from Godwin to which it replies.]
162. CHARLES LAMB TO WILLIAM WORDSWORTH
[Dated at end: January 29, 1807.]
Dear Wordsworth--
We have book'd off from Swan and Two Necks, Lad Lane, this day (per Coach) the Tales from Shakespear. You will forgive the plates, when I tell you they were left to the direction of Godwin, who left the choice of subjects to the bad baby, who from mischief (I suppose) has chosen one from damn'd beastly vulgarity (vide Merch. Venice) where no atom of authority was in the tale to justify it--to another has given a name which exists not in the tale, Nic Bottom, and which she thought would be funny, though in this I suspect his hand, for I guess her reading does not reach far enough to know Bottom's Xtian name--and one of Hamlet, and Grave digging, a scene which is not hinted at in the story, and you might as well have put King Canute the Great reproving his courtiers-- the rest are Giants and Giantesses. Suffice it, to save our taste and damn our folly, that we left it all to a friend W. G.--who in the first place cheated me into putting a name to them, which I did not mean, but do not repent, and then wrote a puff about their simplicity, &c., to go with the advertisement as in my name! Enough of this egregious dupery.--I will try to abstract the load of teazing circumstances from the Stories and tell you that I am answerable for Lear, Macbeth, Timon, Romeo, Hamlet, Othello, for occasionally a tail piece or correction of grammar, for none of the cuts and all of the spelling. The rest is my Sister's.--We think Pericles of hers the best, and Othello of mine--but I hope all have some good. As You Like It we like least.
So much, only begging you to tear out the cuts and give them to Johnny, as "Mrs. Godwin's fancy."
C. L.
Thursday, 29 Jan., 1807.
Our Love to all.
I had almost forgot,
My part of the Preface begins in the middle of a sentence, in last but one page after a colon thus
:--which if they be happily so done &c.
the former part hath a more feminine turn and does hold me up something as an instructor to young Ladies: but upon my modesty's honour I wrote it not.
Godwin told My Sister that the Baby chose the Subjects. A fact in Taste.
[Lamb has run his pen lightly through "God bless me," at the beginning of the postscript.
The plates to the Tales from Shakespear will be found reproduced in facsimile in Vol. III. of my large edition. They were designed probably by Mulready.
An interval of nine months occurs before we come to another letter of the date of which we can be certain. Of what happened in this time, we know little or nothing, but I think it probable that the following hitherto unpublished letter from Charles Lamb to the Clarksons explains part of the long silence. The postmark gives no year, but it must be either 1807 or 1808, and since the Dramatic Specimens herein referred to as in preparation were published in 1808, we may confidently assume it to be 1807. The letter tells its own story only too clearly: the Lambs had been on a visit to the Clarksons at Bury St. Edmunds; Mary Lamb had again fallen ill while there; and her brother had just left her once more at her Hoxton Asylum.]
163. CHARLES LAMB TO THOMAS AND CATHERINE CLARKSON
[P.M. June (1807).]
Dear Mr. & Mrs. Clarkson, you will wish to know how we performed our journey. My sister was tolerably quiet until we got to Chelmsford, where she began to be very bad indeed, as your friends William Knight and his family can tell you when you see them. What I should have done without their kindness I don't know, but among other acts of great attention, they provided me with a waistcoat to confine her arms, by the help of which we went through the rest of our journey. But sadly tired and miserably depressed she was before we arrived at Hoxton. We got there about half past eight; and now 'tis all over, I have great satisfaction that she is among people who have been used to her. In all probability a few months or even weeks will restore her (her last illness confined her ten weeks) but if she does recover I shall be very careful how I take her so far from home again. I am so fatigued, for she talked in the most wretched desponding way conceivable, particularly the last three stages, she talked all the way,--so that you won't expect me to say much, or even to express myself as I should do in thanks for your kindnesses. My sister will acknowledge them when she can.--
I shall not have heard how she is to day until too late for the Post, but if any great change takes place for better or worse, I shall certainly let you know.
She tells me something about having given away one of my coats to your servant. It is a new one, and perhaps may be of small use to him. If you can get it me again, I shall very willingly give him a compensation. I shall also be much obliged by your sending in a parcel all the manuscripts, books &c. she left behind. I want in particular the Dramatic Extracts, as my purpose is to make use of the remainder of my holydays in completing them at the British Museum, which will be employment & money in the end.
I am exceedingly harrassed with the journey, but that will go off in a day or two, and I will set to work. I know you will grieve for us, but I hope my sister's illness is not worse than many she has got through before. Only I am afraid the fatigue of the journey may affect her general health. You shall have notice how she goes on. In the mean time, accept our kindest thanks.
[Signature cut off.]
164. MARY LAMB TO SARAH STODDART
[No date. Endorsed Oct., 1807.]
My dear Sarah,--I am two letters in your debt; but it has not been so much from idleness, as a wish first to see how your comical love affair would turn out. You know, I make a pretence not to interfere; but like all old maids I feel a mighty solicitude about the event of love stories. I learn from the Lover that he has not been so remiss in his duty as you supposed. His Effusion, and your complaints of his inconstancy, crossed each other on the road. He tells me his was a very strange letter, and that probably it has affronted you. That it was a strange letter I can readily believe; but that you were affronted by a strange letter is not so easy for me to conceive, that not being your way of taking things. But however it be, let some answer come, either to him, or else to me, showing cause why you do not answer him. And pray, by all means, preserve the said letter, that I may one day have the pleasure of seeing how Mr. Hazlitt treats of love.
I was at your brother's on Thursday. Mrs. S. tells me she has not written, because she does not like to put you to the expense of postage. They are very well. Little Missy thrives amazingly. Mrs. Stoddart conjectures she is in the family way again; and those kind of conjectures generally prove too true. Your other sister-in-law, Mrs. Hazlitt, was brought to bed last week of a boy: so that you are likely to have plenty of nephews and nieces.
Yesterday evening we were at Rickman's; and who should we find there but Hazlitt; though, if you do not know it was his first invitation there, it will not surprise you as much as it did us. We were very much pleased, because we dearly love our friends to be respected by our friends.
The most remarkable events of the evening were, that we had a very fine pine-apple; that Mr. Phillips, Mr. Lamb, and Mr. Hazlitt played at Cribbage in the most polite and gentlemanly manner possible--and that I won two rubbers at whist.
I am glad Aunty left you some business to do. Our compliments to her and your Mother. Is it as cold at Winterslow as it is here? How do the Lions go on? I am better, and Charles is tolerably well. Godwin's new Tragedy will probably be damned the latter end of next week. Charles has written the Prologue. Prologues and Epilogues will be his death. If you know the extent of Mrs. Reynolds' poverty, you will be glad to hear Mr. Norris has got ten pounds a year for her from the Temple Society. She will be able to make out pretty well now.
Farewell--Determine as wisely as you can in regard to Hazlitt; and, if your determination is to have him, Heaven send you many happy years together. If I am not mistaken, I have concluded letters on the Corydon Courtship with this same wish. I hope it is not ominous of change; for if I were sure you would not be quite starved to death, nor beaten to a mummy, I should like to see Hazlitt and you come together, if (as Charles observes) it were only for the joke sake.
Write instantly to me.
Yours most affectionately, M. LAMB.
Saturday morning.
[The reference to Godwin's tragedy, "Faulkener," which was produced on December 16, 1807, would indicate a later date, except that that play was so frequently postponed.
The Lover this time is, at last, William Hazlitt. Miss Stoddart was not his first love; some time before he had wished to marry a Miss Railton of Liverpool; then, in the Lakes, he had had passages with a farmer's daughter involving a ducking at the hands of jealous rivals; while De Quincey would have us believe that Hazlitt proposed to Dorothy Wordsworth. But it was Sarah Stoddart whom he was destined to marry. A specimen of Hazlitt's love letters (which Mary Lamb wished to see) will be found in Mr. W. C. Hazlitt's Memoirs of William Hazlitt, Vol. I., page 153. The marriage turned out anything but a joke.
Mrs. Reynolds' poverty was in later years further relieved by an annuity of £30 from Charles Lamb.]
Letter 165
MARY LAMB TO SARAH STODDART Dec. 21, 1807.
My dear Sarah,--I have deferred answering your last letter, in hopes of being able to give you some intelligence that might be useful to you; for I every day expected that Hazlitt or you would communicate the affair to your brother; but, as the Doctor is silent upon the subject, I conclude he yet knows nothing of the matter. You desire my advice; and therefore I tell you I think you ought to tell your brother as soon as possible; for, at present, he is on very friendly visiting terms with Hazlitt, and, if he is not offended by a too long concealment, will do every thing in his power to serve you. If you chuse that I should tell him, I will; but I think it would come better from you. If you can persuade Hazlitt to mention it, that would be still better; for I know your brother would be unwilling to give credit to you, because you deceived yourself in regard to Corydon. Hazlitt, I know, is shy of speaking first; but I think it of such great importance to you to have your brother friendly in the business, that, if you can overcome his reluctance, it would be a great point gained. For you must begin the world with ready money--at least an hundred pound; for, if you once go into furnished lodgings, you will never be able to lay by money to buy furniture.
If you obtain your brother's approbation, he might assist you, either by lending or otherwise. I have a great opinion of his generosity, where he thinks it would be useful.
Hazlitt's brother is mightily pleased with the match; but he says you must have furniture, and be clear in the world at first setting out, or you will be always behindhand. He also said he would give you what furniture he could spare. I am afraid you can bring but few things away from your house. What a pity that you have laid out so much money on your cottage!--that money would have just done. I most heartily congratulate you on having so well got over your first difficulties; and, now that it is quite settled, let us have no more fears. I now mean not only to hope and wish, but to persuade myself, that you will be very happy together.
Endeavour to keep your mind as easy as you can. You ought to begin the world with a good stock of health and spirits: it is quite as necessary as ready money at first setting out. Do not teize yourself about coming to town. When your brother learns how things are going on, we shall consult him about meetings and so forth; but, at present, any hasty step of that kind would not answer, I know. If Hazlitt were to go down to Salisbury, or you were to come up here, without consulting your brother, you know it would never do.
Charles is just come in to dinner; he desires his love and best wishes.
Yours affectionately, M. LAMB.
Monday morning.
[Our next letter shows that when Dr. Stoddart was at length told of the engagement he resented it.
We now come to two curious letters from Charles Lamb to Joseph Hume, not available for this edition, which are printed by Mr. W. C. Hazlitt in Lamb and Hazlitt. The first, dated December 29, 1807, contains the beginning of an elaborate hoax maintained by Lamb and Hume (who was Joseph Hume, a clerk in the Victualling Office at Somerset House, and the author of a translation of Tasso), in which Hazlitt, although the victim, played his part. Lamb asserts that Hazlitt has cut his throat. He also incidentally regrets that he cannot accept an invitation to dine with Hume: "Cold bones of mutton and leather-roasted potatoes at Pimlico at ten must carry it away from a certain Turkey and contingent plumb-pudding at Montpelier at four (I always spell plumb-pudding with a b, p-l-u-m-b--) I think it reads fatter and more suetty."
In reply to this letter came one from Hume, dated January 11, 1808, referring to a humble petition and remonstrance by Hazlitt, dated January 10, 1808, showing that he is not dead. The petition will be found in full in Lamb and Hazlitt. It ends thus:--
"With all the sincerity of a man doubtful between life and death, the petitioner declares that he looks upon the said Charles Lamb as the ring-leader in this unjust conspiracy against him, and as the sole cause and author of the jeopardy he is in: but that as losers have leave to speak, he must say, that, if it were not for a poem he wrote on Tobacco about two years ago, a farce called Mr. H----- he brought out last winter with more wit than discretion in it, some prologues and epilogues he has since written with good success, and some lively notes he is at present writing on dead authors, he sees no reason why he should not be considered as much a dead man as himself, and the undertaker spoken to accordingly."
The next letter, dated January 12, 1808, carrying on the joke, consists of speculations as to Hazlitt's reappearance. Lamb remarks that the commonest reason for the return of the spirits of the dead is the desire to reveal hidden treasures which they had hoarded in their lifetime. He destroys this theory in the case of Hazlitt in the following passage:--
"I for my part always looked upon our dear friend as a man rich rather in the gifts of his mind than in earthly treasures. He had few rents or comings in, that I was ever aware of, small (if any) landed property, and by all that I could witness he subsisted more upon the well-timed contributions of a few chosen friends who knew his worth, than upon any Estate which could properly be called his own. I myself have contributed my part. God knows, I speak not this in reproach. I have never taken, nor indeed did the Deceased offer, any written acknowledgments of the various sums which he has had of me, by which I could make the fact manifest to the legal eye of an Executor or Administrator. He was not a Man to affect these niceties in his transactions with his friends. He would often say, Money was nothing between intimate acquaintances, that Golden Streams had no Ebb, that a Purse mouth never regorged, that God loved a chearful giver but the Devil hated a free taker, that a paid Loan makes angels groan, with many such like sayings: he had always free and generous notions about money. His nearest friends know this best."
Continuing the subject of the return of Spirits, Lamb decides that it must be with the wish to establish some speculative point in religion. "But whatever the cause of this re-appearance may prove to be, we may now with truth assert that our deceased friend has attained to one object of his pursuits, one hour's separate existence gives a dead man clearer notions of metaphysics than all the treatises which in his state of casual entanglement the least immersed spirit can out-spin. It is good to leave such subjects to that period when we shall have no Heads to ache, no brains to distort, no faces to lengthen, no clothes to neglect."]
Letter 166
MARY LAMB TO SARAH STODDART [P.M. February 12, 1808.]
My dear Sarah,--I have sent your letter and drawing off to Wm. Hazlitt's father's in Shropshire, where I conjecture Hazlitt is. He left town on Saturday afternoon, without telling us where he was going. He seemed very impatient at not hearing from you. He was very ill and I suppose is gone home to his father's to be nursed.
I find Hazlitt has mentioned to you an intention which we had of asking you up to town, which we were bent on doing, but having named it since to your brother, the Doctor expressed a strong desire that you should not come to town to be at any other house than his own, for he said that it would have a very strange appearance. His wife's father is coming to be with them till near the end of April, after which time he shall have full room for you. And if you are to be married, he wishes that you should be married with all the proper decorums, from his house. Now though we should be willing to run any hazards of disobliging him, if there were no other means of your and Hazlitt's meeting, yet as he seems so friendly to the match, it would not be worth while to alienate him from you and ourselves too, for the slight accommodation which the difference of a few weeks would make, provided always, and be it understood, that if you, and H. make up your minds to be married before the time in which you can be at your brother's, our house stands open and most ready at a moment's notice to receive you. Only we would not quarrel unnecessarily with your brother. Let there be a clear necessity shewn, and we will quarrel with any body's brother. Now though I have written to the above effect, I hope you will not conceive, but that both my brother & I had looked forward to your coming with unmixed pleasure, and we are really disappointed at your brother's declaration, for next to the pleasure of being married, is the pleasure of making, or helping marriages forward.
We wish to hear from you, that you do not take the seeming change of purpose in ill part; for it is but seeming on our part; for it was my brother's suggestion, by him first mentioned to Hazlitt, and cordially approved by me; but your brother has set his face against it, and it is better to take him along with us, in our plans, if he will good-naturedly go along with us, than not.
The reason I have not written lately has been that I thought it better to leave you all to the workings of your own minds in this momentous affair, in which the inclinations of a bye-stander have a right to form a wish, but not to give a vote.
Being, with the help of wide lines, at the end of my last page, I conclude with our kind wishes, and prayers for the best.
Yours affectionately, M. LAMB.
H.'s direction is (if he is there) at Wem in Shropshire. I suppose as letters must come to London first, you had better inclose them, while he is there, for my brother in London.
[The drawing referred to, says Mr. W.C. Hazlitt, was a sketch of Middleton Cottage, Miss Stoddart's house at Winterslow (see next letter).]
167. CHARLES LAMB TO THE REV. W. HAZLITT
Temple, 18th February, 1808.
Sir,--I am truly concerned that any mistake of mine should have caused you uneasiness, but I hope we have got a clue to William's absence, which may clear up all apprehensions. The people where he lodges in town have received direction from him to forward one or two of his shirts to a place called Winterslow, in the county of Hants [Wilts] (not far from Salisbury), where the lady lives whose Cottage, pictured upon a card, if you opened my letter you have doubtless seen, and though we have had no explanation of the mystery since, we shrewdly suspect that at the time of writing that Letter which has given you all this trouble, a certain son of yours (who is both Painter and Author) was at her elbow, and did assist in framing that very Cartoon which was sent to amuse and mislead us in town, as to the real place of his destination.
And some words at the back of the said Cartoon, which we had not marked so narrowly before, by the similarity of the handwriting to William's, do very much confirm the suspicion. If our theory be right, they have had the pleasure of their jest, and I am afraid you have paid for it in anxiety. But I hope your uneasiness will now be removed, and you will pardon a suspense occasioned by LOVE, who does so many worse mischiefs every day.
The letter to the people where William lodges says, moreover, that he shall be in town in a fortnight.
My sister joins in respects to you and Mrs. Hazlitt, and in our kindest remembrances and wishes for the restoration of Peggy's health.
I am, Sir, your humble serv't.,
CH. LAMB.
[The Rev. William Hazlitt, Hazlitt's father (1737-1820), was a Unitarian minister at Wem, in Shropshire, the son of an Irish Protestant. Hazlitt's mother was Grace Loftus of Wisbech, a farmer's daughter.
Sarah Stoddart's letter containing the drawing referred to had been sent by the Lambs to William Hazlitt at Wem, whereas Hazlitt, instead of seeking his father's roof as arranged, had sought his betrothed's, and had himself helped in the mystification.
Peggy was Hazlitt's only sister.]
168. CHARLES LAMB TO THOMAS MANNING
[Dated at end: 26 February, 1808.]
Dear Missionary,--Your letters from the farthest ends of the world have arrived safe. Mary is very thankful for your remembrance of her, and with the less suspicion of mercenariness, as the silk, the symbolum materiale of your friendship, has not yet appeared. I think Horace says somewhere, nox longa. I would not impute negligence or unhandsome delays to a person whom you have honoured with your confidence; but I have not heard of the silk, or of Mr. Knox, save by your letter. Maybe he expects the first advances! or it may be that he has not succeeded in getting the article on shore, for it is among the res prohibitae et non nisi smuggle-ationis viá fruendae. But so it is, in the friendships between wicked men, the very expressions of their good-will cannot but be sinful. Splendida vitia at best. Stay, while I remember it--Mrs. Holcroft was safely delivered of a girl some day in last week. Mother and child doing well. Mr. Holcroft has been attack'd with severe rheumatism. They have moved to Clipstone Street. I suppose you know my farce was damned. The noise still rings in my ears. Was you ever in the pillory?--being damned is something like that. Godwin keeps a shop in Skinner Street, Snow Hill, he is turned children's bookseller, and sells penny, twopenny, threepenny, and fourpenny books. Sometimes he gets an order for the dearer sort of Books. (Mind, all that I tell you in this letter is true.) A treaty of marriage is on foot between William Hazlitt and Miss Stoddart. Something about settlements only retards it. She has somewhere about £80 a year, to be £120 when her mother dies. He has no settlement except what he can claim from the Parish. Pauper est Cinna, sed amat. The thing is therefore in abeyance. But there is love o' both sides. Little Fenwick (you don't see the connexion of ideas here, how the devil should you?) is in the rules of the Fleet. Cruel creditors! operation of iniquitous laws! is Magna Charta then a mockery? Why, in general (here I suppose you to ask a question) my spirits are pretty good, but I have my depressions, black as a smith's beard, Vulcanic, Stygian. At such times I have recourse to a pipe, which is like not being at home to a dun; he comes again with tenfold bitterness the next day.--(Mind, I am not in debt, I only borrow a similitude from others; it shows imagination.) I have done two books since the failure of my farce; they will both be out this summer. The one is a juvenile book--"The Adventures of Ulysses," intended to be an introduction to the reading of Telemachus! It is done out of the Odyssey, not from the Greek: I would not mislead you; nor yet from Pope's Odyssey, but from an older translation of one Chapman. The "Shakespear Tales" suggested the doing it. Godwin is in both those cases my bookseller. The other is done for Longman, and is "Specimens of English Dramatic Poets contemporary with Shakespear." Specimens are becoming fashionable. We have-- "Specimens of Ancient English Poets," "Specimens of Modern English Poets," "Specimens of Ancient English Prose Writers," without end. They used to be called "Beauties." You have seen "Beauties of Shakespear?" so have many people that never saw any beauties in Shakespear. Longman is to print it, and be at all the expense and risk; and I am to share the profits after all deductions; i.e. a year or two hence I must pocket what they please to tell me is due to me. But the book is such as I am glad there should be. It is done out of old plays at the Museum and out of Dodsley's collection, &c. It is to have notes. So I go creeping on since I was lamed with that cursed fall from off the top of Drury-Lane Theatre into the pit, something more than a year ago. However, I have been free of the house ever since, and the house was pretty free with me upon that occasion. Damn 'em, how they hissed! It was not a hiss neither, but a sort of a frantic yell, like a congregation of mad geese, with roaring something like bears, mows and mops like apes, sometimes snakes, that hiss'd me into madness. 'Twas like St. Anthony's temptations. Mercy on us, that God should give his favourite children, men, mouths to speak with, to discourse rationally, to promise smoothly, to flatter agreeably, to encourage warmly, to counsel wisely: to sing with, to drink with, and to kiss with: and that they should turn them into mouths of adders, bears, wolves, hyenas, and whistle like tempests, and emit breath through them like distillations of aspic poison, to asperse and vilify the innocent labours of their fellow-creatures who are desirous to please them! God be pleased to make the breath stink and the teeth rot out of them all therefore! Make them a reproach, and all that pass by them to loll out their tongue at them! Blind mouths! as Milton somewhere calls them. Do you like Braham's singing? The little Jew has bewitched me. I follow him like as the boys followed Tom the Piper. He cured me of melancholy, as David cured Saul; but I don't throw stones at him, as Saul did at David in payment. I was insensible to music till he gave me a new sense. O, that you could go to the new opera of "Kais" to-night! 'Tis all about Eastern manners; it would just suit you. It describes the wild Arabs, wandering Egyptians, lying dervishes, and all that sort of people, to a hair. You needn't ha' gone so far to see what you see, if you saw it as I do every night at Drury-lane Theatre. Braham's singing, when it is impassioned, is finer than Mrs. Siddons's or Mr. Kemble's acting; and when it is not impassioned, it is as good as hearing a person of fine sense talking. The brave little Jew! Old Sergeant Hill is dead. Mrs. Rickman is in the family way. It is thought that Hazlitt will have children, if he marries Miss Stoddart. I made a pun the other day, and palmed it upon Holcroft, who grinned like a Cheshire cat. (Why do cats grin in Cheshire?--Because it was once a county palatine and the cats cannot help laughing whenever they think of it, though I see no great joke in it.) I said that Holcroft said, being asked who were the best dramatic writers of the day, "HOOK AND I." Mr. Hook is author of several pieces, "Tekeli," &c. You know what hooks and eyes are, don't you? They are what little boys do up their breeches with. Your letter had many things in it hard to be understood: the puns were ready and Swift-like; but don't you begin to be melancholy in the midst of Eastern customs! "The mind does not easily conform to foreign usages, even in trifles: it requires something that it has been familiar with." That begins one of Dr. Hawkesworth's papers in the "Adventurer," and is, I think, as sensible a remark as ever fell from the Doctor's mouth. Do you know Watford in Hertfordshire? it is a pretty village. Louisa goes to school there. They say the governess is a very intelligent managing person, takes care of the morals of the pupils, teaches them something beyond exteriors. Poor Mrs. Beaumont! Rickman's aunt, she might have been a governess (as both her nieces ate) if she had any ability or any education, but I never thought she was good for anything; she is dead and so is her nephew. He was shot in half at Monte Video, that is, not exactly in half, but as you have seen a 3 quarter picture. Stoddart is in England. White is at Christ's Hospital, a wit of the first magnitude, but had rather be thought a gentleman, like Congreve. You know Congreve's repulse which he gave to Voltaire, when he came to visit him as a literary man, that he wished to be considered only in the light of a private gentleman. I think the impertinent Frenchman was properly answered. I should just serve any member of the French institute in the same manner, that wished to be introduced to me. Bonaparte has voted 5,000 livres to Davy, the great young English chemist; but it has not arrived. Coleridge has delivered two lectures at the Royal Institution; two more were attended, but he did not come. It is thought he has gone sick upon them. He a'n't well, that's certain. Wordsworth is coming to see him. He sits up in a two pair of stairs room at the "Courier" Office, and receives visitors on his close stool. How is Mr. Ball? He has sent for a prospectus of the London Library.
Does any one read at Canton? Lord Moira is President of the Westminster Library. I suppose you might have interest with Sir Joseph Banks to get to be president of any similiar institution that should be set up at Canton. I think public reading-rooms the best mode of educating young men. Solitary reading is apt to give the headache. Besides, who knows that you do read? There are ten thousand institutions similar to the Royal Institution, which have sprung up from it. There is the London Institution, the Southwark Institution, the Russell Square Rooms Institution, &c.--College quasi Conlege, a place where people read together. Wordsworth, the great poet, is coming to town; he is to have apartments in the Mansion House. He says he does not see much difficulty in writing like Shakspeare, if he had a mind to try it. It is clear then nothing is wanting but the mind. Even Coleridge a little checked at this hardihood of assertion. Jones of Trinity, I suppose you know he is dead. Dyer came to me the other evening at 11 o'clock, when there was a large room full of company, which I usually get together on a Wednesday evening (all great men have public days), to propose to me to have my face done by a Miss Beetham (or Betham), a miniature painter, some relation to Mrs. Beetham the Profilist or Pattern Mangle woman opposite to St. Dunstan's, to put before my book of Extracts. I declined it.
Well, my dear Manning, talking cannot be infinite; I have said all I have to say; the rest is but remembrances, which we shall bear in our heads of you, while we have heads. Here is a packet of trifles nothing worth; but it is a trifling part of the world where I live; emptiness abounds. But, in fulness of affection, we remain yours,
C.L.
[Manning had written in April, 1807, saying that a roll of silk was on its way to Mary Lamb. It was, however, another letter, not preserved, which mentioned Mr. Knox as the bearer.
Godwin sold books at 41 Skinner Street under his wife's name--M.J. Godwin. At first when he began, in 1805, in Hanway Street, he had used the name of Thomas Hodgkins, his manager.
"Damn 'em, how they hissed." This passage has in it the germ of Lamb's essay in The Reflector two or three years later, "On the Custom of Hissing at the Theatres" (see Vol. I.).
John Braham (?1774-1856), the great tenor and the composer of "The Death of Nelson." Lamb praised him again in his Elia essay "Imperfect Sympathies," and later wrote an amusing article on Braham's recantation of Hebraism (see "The Religion of Actors," Vol. I.). "Kais," composed by Braham and Reeve, was produced at Drury Lane, February 11, 1808.
"Old Sergeant Hill." George Hill (1716-1808), nicknamed Serjeant Labyrinth, the hero of many stories of absence-of-mind. He would have appealed to Manning on account of his mathematical abilities. He died on February 21.
"Hook and I." This pun is attributed also to others; who may very easily have made it independently. Theodore Hook was then only nineteen, but had already written "Tekeli," a melodrama, and several farces. Talfourd omits the references to breeches.
"Dr. Hawkesworth." John Hawkesworth, LL.D. (?1715-1773), the editor of Swift, a director of the East India Company, and the friend of Johnson whom he imitated in The Adventurer. He also made one of the translations of Fénélon's Télémaque, to which Lamb's Adventures of Ulysses was to serve as prologue.
James White, Lamb's friend and the author of Falstaff's Letters, was for many years a clerk in the Treasurer's office at Christ's Hospital. Later he founded an advertisement agency, which still exists.
"Congreve's repulse." The story is told by Johnson in the Lives of the Poets. Congreve "disgusted him [Voltaire] by the despicable foppery of desiring to be considered not as an author but a gentleman; to which the Frenchman replied, 'that, if he had been only a gentleman, he should not have come to visit him.'"
"Young Davy." Afterwards Sir Humphry Davy, and now one of Coleridge's correspondents. He had been awarded the Napoleon prize of 3,000 francs "for his discoveries announced in the Philosophical Transactions for the year 1807."
"Coleridge's lectures." Coleridge delivered the first on January 12, 1808, and the second on February 5. The third and fourth were eventually delivered some time before April 3. The subject was not Taste but Poetry. Coleridge's rooms over The Courier office at No. 348 Strand are described by De Quincey in his Works, Vol. II. (1863 edition), page 98.
It was Coleridge's illness that was bringing Wordsworth to town, to be followed by Southey, largely by the instrumentality of Charles and Mary Lamb. It is conjectured that Coleridge was just then more than usually in the power of drugs.
Sir Joseph Banks, as President of the Royal Society, had written a letter to the East India Company supporting Manning's wish to practise as a doctor in Canton.
The similar institutions that sprang up in imitation of the Royal Institution have all vanished, except the London Institution in Finsbury Circus.
"Writing like Shakspeare." This passage was omitted by Talfourd. He seems to have shown it to Crabb Robinson, just after Lamb's death, as one of the things that could not be published. Robinson (or Robinson's editor, Dr. Sadler), in recording the event, substitutes a dash for Wordsworth's name.
Miss Betham was Miss Mary Matilda Betham (1776-1852), afterwards a correspondent of Lamb. We shall soon meet her again. She had written a Biographical Dictionary of the Celebrated Women of Every Age and Country, 1804, and some poems. Among her sitters were Coleridge and Mrs. Coleridge. The Profilist opposite St. Dunstan's was, I take it, E. Beetham, Patent Washing-Mill Maker at 27 Fleet Street. I find this in the 1808 Directory. The shop was close to Inner Temple Lane.
[Two undated letters to Miss Betham follow, which may well belong to this time. Mr. Ernest Betham allows me to take them from his book, A House of Letters.]
169. CHARLES LAMB TO MATILDA BETHAM
[No date. ?1808.]
Dear Miss B.--I send you three Tickets which will serve the first course of C.'s Lectures, six in number, the first begins tomorrow. Excuse the cover being not or fa, is not that french? I have no writing paper.
Yours truly, C. LAMB.
N.B. It is my present, not C.'s, id. est he gave 'em me, I you.
170. CHARLES LAMB TO MATILDA BETHAM
Dear Miss Betham,--I am very sorry, but I was pre-engaged for this evening when Eliza communicated the contents of your letter. She herself also is gone to Walworth to pass some days with Miss Hays--
"G-d forbid I should pass my days with Miss H--ys"
but that is neither here nor there. We will both atone for this accident by calling upon you as early as possible.
I am setting out to engage Mr. Dyer to your Party, but what the issue of my adventure will be, cannot be known, till the wafer has closed up this note for ever.
Yours truly, C. LAMB.
Friday.
[We have already met Miss Hayes. Miss Betham was a friend of Dyer, as we shall see.]
171. CHARLES LAMB TO WILLIAM GODWIN
March 11, 1808.
Dear Godwin,--The giant's vomit was perfectly nauseous, and I am glad you pointed it out. I have removed the objection. To the other passages I can find no other objection but what you may bring to numberless passages besides, such as of Scylla snatching up the six men, etc., that is to say, they are lively images of shocking things. If you want a book, which is not occasionally to shock, you should not have thought of a tale which was so full of anthropophagi and wonders. I cannot alter these things without enervating the Book, and I will not alter them if the penalty should be that you and all the London booksellers should refuse it. But speaking as author to author, I must say that I think the terrible in those two passages seems to me so much to preponderate over the nauseous, as to make them rather fine than disgusting. Who is to read them, I don't know: who is it that reads Tales of Terror and Mysteries of Udolpho? Such things sell. I only say that I will not consent to alter such passages, which I know to be some of the best in the book. As an author I say to you an author, Touch not my work. As to a bookseller I say, Take the work such as it is, or refuse it. You are as free to refuse it as when we first talked of it. As to a friend I say, Don't plague yourself and me with nonsensical objections. I assure you I will not alter one more word.
[This letter refers to the proofs of Lamb's Adventures of Ulysses, his prose paraphrase for children of Chapman's translation of the Odyssey, which Mrs. Godwin was publishing. Godwin had written the following letter:--
"Skinner St., March 10, 1808.
"DEAR LAMB,--I address you with all humility, because I know you to be tenax propositi. Hear me, I entreat you, with patience.
"It is strange with what different feelings an author and a bookseller looks at the same manuscript. I know this by experience: I was an author, I am a bookseller. The author thinks what will conduce to his honour: the bookseller what will cause his commodities to sell.
"You, or some other wise man, I have heard to say, It is children that read children's books, when they are read, but it is parents that choose them. The critical thought of the tradesman put itself therefore into the place of the parent, and what the parent will condemn.
"We live in squeamish days. Amid the beauties of your manuscript, of which no man can think more highly than I do, what will the squeamish say to such expressions as these,--'devoured their limbs, yet warm and trembling, lapping the blood,' p. 10. Or to the giant's vomit, p. 14; or to the minute and shocking description of the extinguishing the giant's eye in the page following. You, I daresay, have no formed plan of excluding the female sex from among your readers, and I, as a bookseller, must consider that if you have you exclude one half of the human species.
"Nothing is more easy than to modify these things if you please, and nothing, I think, is more indispensable.
"Give me, as soon as possible, your thoughts on the matter.
"I should also like a preface. Half our customers know not Homer, or know him only as you and I know the lost authors of antiquity. What can be more proper than to mention one or two of those obvious recommendations of his works, which must lead every human creature to desire a nearer acquaintance.--
"Believe me, ever faithfully yours, W. GODWIN."
As a glance at the Adventures of Ulysses will show (see Vol. III.), Lamb did not make the alteration on pages 10 or 15 (pages 244 and 246 of Vol. III.), although the giant's vomit has disappeared. The Tales of Terror, 1801, were by Matthew Gregory Lewis, "Monk Lewis," as he was called, and the Mysteries of Udolpho, 1794, by Mrs. Radcliffe.]
172. CHARLES LAMB TO HENRY CRABB ROBINSON
[Dated at end: March 12, 1808.]
Dear Sir,--Wordsworth breakfasts with me on Tuesday morning next; he goes to Mrs. Clarkson the next day, and will be glad to meet you before he goes. Can you come to us before nine or at nine that morning? I am afraid, W. is so engaged with Coleridge, who is ill, we cannot have him in an evening. If I do not hear from you, I will expect you to breakfast on Tuesday.
Yours truly, C. LAMB. Saturday, 12 Mar., 1808.
[This is the first letter to Henry Crabb Robinson (1775-1867), whom Lamb was destined to know very intimately, and to whose Diary we are indebted for much of our information concerning the Lambs. Robinson, who was only a month younger than Lamb, had been connected with the Times as foreign correspondent and foreign editor; in November, 1809, he gave up journalism and began to keep his terms at the Middle Temple, rising in time to be leader of the Norfolk Circuit. We shall see much more of him. He knew Lamb well enough to accompany him, his sister and Hazlitt to "Mr. H." in December, 1806.
Wordsworth left on April 3, by which time Coleridge was sufficiently recovered to give two more lectures. The series closed in June. Coleridge then went to Bury St. Edmunds to see the Clarksons, and then to Grasmere, to the Wordsworths. His separation from Mrs. Coleridge had already occurred, he and his wife remaining, however, on friendly terms.]
173. MARY LAMB TO SARAH STODDART
[P.M. March 16, 1808.]
My dear Sarah,--Do not be very angry that I have not written to you. I have promised your brother to be at your wedding, and that favor you must accept as an atonement for my offences--you have been in no want of correspondence lately, and I wished to leave you both to your own inventions.
The border you are working for me I prize at a very high rate because I consider it as the last work you can do for me, the time so fast approaching when you must no longer work for your friends. Yet my old fault of giving away presents has not left me, and I am desirous of even giving away this your last gift. I had intended to have given it away without your knowledge, but I have intrusted my secret to Hazlitt, and I suppose it will not remain a secret long, so I condescend to consult you. It is to Miss Hazlitt, to whose superior claim I wish to give up my right to this precious worked border. Her brother William is her great favorite, and she would be pleased to possess his bride's last work. Are you not to give the fellow-border to one sister-in-law, and therefore has she not a just claim to it?--I never heard in the annals of weddings (since the days of Nausicaa, and she only washed her old gowns for that purpose) that the brides ever furnished the apparel of their maids. Besides, I can be completely clad in your work without it, for the spotted muslin will serve both for cap and hat (Nota bene, my hat is the same as yours) and the gown you sprigged for me has never been made up, therefore I can wear that--Or, if you like better, I will make up a new silk which Manning has sent me from China. Manning would like to hear I wore it for the first time at your wedding. It is a very pretty light colour, but there is an objection (besides not being your work and that is a very serious objection) and that is, Mrs. Hazlitt tells me that all Winterslow would be in an uproar if the bridemaid was to be dressed in anything but white, and although it is a very light colour I confess we cannot call it white, being a sort of a dead-whiteish-bloom colour; then silk, perhaps, in a morning is not so proper, though the occasion, so joyful, might justify a full dress. Determine for me in this perplexity between the sprig and the China-Manning silk. But do not contradict my whim about Miss Hazlitt having the border, for I have set my heart upon the matter: if you agree with me in this I shall think you have forgiven me for giving away your pin; and that was a mad trick, but I had many obligations and no money. I repent me of the deed, wishing I had it now to send to Miss H. with the border, and I cannot, will not, give her the Doctor's pin, for having never had any presents from gentlemen in my young days, I highly prize all they now give me, thinking my latter days are better than my former.
You must send this same border in your own name to Miss Hazlitt, which will save me the disgrace of giving away your gift, and make it amount merely to a civil refusal.
I shall have no present to give you on your marriage, nor do I expect that I shall be rich enough to give anything to baby at the first christening, but at the second, or third child's I hope to have a coral or so to spare out of my own earnings. Do not ask me to be Godmother, for I have an objection to that--but there is I believe, no serious duties attached to a bride's maid, therefore I come with a willing mind, bringing nothing with me but many wishes, and not a few hopes, and a very little of fears of happy years to come.
I am dear Sarah Yours ever most affectionately M. LAMB.
What has Charles done that nobody invites him to the wedding?
[The wedding was on May 1, 1808. Originally it was intended to perform the ceremony at Winterslow, but London was actually the place: St. Andrew's, Holborn. Mary Lamb was a bridesmaid and Charles Lamb was present. He told Southey in a letter some years after: "I was at Hazlitt's marriage, and had like to have been turned out several times during the ceremony. Anything awful makes me laugh."
The episode of Nausicaa, to which Mary Lamb refers, had just been rewritten by Charles Lamb in the Adventures of Ulysses.]
174. CHARLES LAMB TO GEORGE DYER
From my Desk in Leadenhall Street,
Decr 5, 1808.
Dear Dyer,--Coleridge is not so bad as your fears have represented him; it is true that he is Bury'd, altho' he is not dead; to understand this quibble you must know that he is at Bury St. Edmunds, relaxing, after the fatigues of lecturing and Londonizing. The little Rickmaness, whom you enquire after so kindly, thrives and grows apace; she is already a prattler, and 'tis thought that on some future day she may be a speaker. [This was Mrs. Lefroy.] We hold our weekly meetings still at No. 16, where altho' we are not so high as the top of Malvern, we are involved in almost as much mist. Miss B[etham]'s merit "in every point of view," I am not disposed to question, altho' I have not been indulged with any view of that lady, back, side, or front--fie! Dyer, to praise a female in such common market phrases--you who are held so courtly and so attentive. My book is not yet out, that is not my "Extracts," my "Ulysses" is, and waits your acceptance. When you shall come to town, I hope to present you both together--never think of buying the "Extracts"--half guinea books were never calculated for my friends. Those poets have started up since your departure; William Hazlitt, your friend and mine, is putting to press a collection of verses, chiefly amatory, some of them pretty enough. How these painters encroach on our province! There's Hoppner, Shee, Westall, and I don't know who besides, and Tresham. It seems on confession, that they are not at the top of their own art, when they seek to eke out their fame with the assistance of another's; no large tea-dealer sells cheese; no great silversmith sells razorstrops; it is only your petty dealers who mix commodities. If Nero had been a great Emperor, he would never have played the Violoncello! Who ever caught you, Dyer, designing a landscape, or taking a likeness? I have no more to add, who am the friend of virtue, poetry, painting, therefore in an especial manner,
Unalterably Thine C. LAMB.
175. MARY LAMB TO SARAH HAZLITT (LATE STODDART)
December 10th, 1808.
My dear Sarah,--I hear of you from your brother; but you do not write yourself, nor does Hazlitt. I beg that one or both of you will amend this fault as speedily as possible, for I am very anxious to hear of your health. I hope, as you say nothing about your fall to your brother, you are perfectly recovered from the effects of it.
You cannot think how very much we miss you and H. of a Wednesday evening. All the glory of the night, I may say, is at an end. Phillips makes his jokes, and there is no one to applaud him; Rickman argues, and there is no one to oppose him.
The worst miss of all to me is, that, when we are in the dismals, there is now no hope of relief from any quarter whatsoever. Hazlitt was most brilliant, most ornamental, as a Wednesday-man; but he was a more useful one on common days, when he dropt in after a quarrel or a fit of the glooms. The Skeffington is quite out now, my brother having got drunk with claret and Tom Sheridan. This visit, and the occasion of it, is a profound secret, and therefore I tell it to nobody but you and Mrs. Reynolds. Through the medium of Wroughton, there came an invitation and proposal from T.S., that C.L. should write some scenes in a speaking pantomime, the other parts of which Tom now, and his father formerly, have manufactured between them. So, in the Christmas holydays, my brother and his two great associates, we expect, will be all three damned together: this is, I mean, if Charles's share, which is done and sent in, is accepted.
I left this unfinished yesterday, in the hope that my brother would have done it for me: his reason for refusing me was 'no exquisite reason;' for it was, because he must write a letter to Manning in three or four weeks, and therefore he could not be always writing letters, he said. I wanted him to tell your husband about a great work which Godwin is going to publish, to enlighten the world once more, and I shall not be able to make out what it is. He (Godwin) took his usual walk one evening, a fortnight since, to the end of Hatton Garden and back again. During that walk, a thought came into his mind, which he instantly set down and improved upon, till he brought it, in seven or eight days, into the compass of a reasonable sized pamphlet. To propose a subscription to all well disposed people, to raise a certain sum of money, to be expended in the care of a cheap monument for the former and the future great dead men,--the monument to be a white cross, with a wooden slab at the end, telling their names and qualifications. This wooden slab and white cross to be perpetuated to the end of time. To survive the fall of empires and the destruction of cities by means of a map, which was, in case of an insurrection among the people, or any other cause by which a city or country may be destroyed, to be carefully preserved; and then, when things got again into their usual order, the white-cross-wooden-slab-makers were to go to work again, and set them in their former places. This, as nearly as I can tell you, is the sum and substance of it, but it is written remarkably well, in his very best manner; for the proposal (which seems to me very like throwing salt on a sparrow's tail to catch him) occupies but half a page, which is followed by very fine writing on the benefits he conjectures would follow if it were done. Very excellent thoughts on death, and on our feelings concerning dead friends, and the advantages an old country has over a new one, even in the slender memorials we have of great men who once flourished.
Charles is come home, and wants his dinner; and so the dead men must be no more thought on: tell us how you go on, and how you like Winterslow and winter evenings.
Noales [Knowles] has not got back again, but he is in better spirits. John Hazlitt was here on Wednesday, very sober.
Our love to Hazlitt.
Yours affectionately, M. LAMB.
176. CHARLES LAMB TO MRS. HAZLITT
(Added to same letter)
Saturday.
There came this morning a printed prospectus from S.T. Coleridge, Grasmere, of a weekly paper, to be called The Friend--a flaming prospectus--I have no time to give the heads of it--to commence first Saturday in January. There came also a notice of a Turkey from Mr. Clarkson, which I am more sanguine in expecting the accomplishment of than I am of Coleridge's prophecy.
C. LAMB.
["The Skeffington." Referring probably to some dramatic scheme in which Sir Lumley Skeffington, an amateur playwright, had tried to engage Lamb's pen. Lamb's share of the speaking pantomime for the Sheridans has vanished. We do not even know if it were ever accepted.
The late Mr. Charles Kent, in his Centenary Edition of Lamb's works, printed a comic opera, said, on the authority of P.G. Patmore, to be Lamb's, and identified it with the experiment mentioned by Mary Lamb. But an examination of the manuscript, which is in the British Museum, convinces me that the writing is not Lamb's, while the matter has nothing characteristic in it. Tom Sheridan, by the way, was just a month younger than Lamb.
Noales was probably James Sheridan Knowles (1784-1862), the dramatist, a protégé of Hazlitt's father. We shall meet him again in the correspondence. After serving as a soldier and practising medicine he had gone on the stage. Several years later he became one of Lamb's friends.
The Friend, which probably had been in Coleridge's thoughts for some time, was announced to begin on the first Saturday in January. Lamb's scepticism was justified; the first number came out on June 1.]
177. MARY LAMB TO MRS. THOMAS CLARKSON
[P.M. Dec. (10), 1808.]
My dear Mrs. Clarkson--I feel myself greatly indebted to Mr. Clarkson for his care about our direction, since it has procured us the pleasure of a line from you. Why are we all, my dear friend, so unwilling to sit down and write a letter when we all so well know the great satisfaction it is to hear of the welfare of an absent friend? I began to think that you and all I connect in my mind with you were gone from us for ever--Coleridge in a manner gave us up when he was in town, and we have now lost all traces of him. At the time he was in town I received two letters from Miss Wordsworth, which I never answered because I would not complain to her of our old friend. As this has never been explained to her it must seem very strange, more particularly so, as Miss Hutchinson & Mrs. Wordsworth were in an ill state of health at the time. Will you some day soon write a few words just to tell me how they all are and all you know concerning them?
Do not imagine that I am now complaining to you of Coleridge. Perhaps we are both in fault, we expect too much, and he gives too little. We ought many years ago to have understood each other better. Nor is it quite all over with us yet, for he will some day or other come in with the same old face, and receive (after a few spiteful words from me) the same warm welcome as ever. But we could not submit to sit as hearers at his lectures and not be permitted to see our old friend when school-hours were over. I beg you will not let what I have said give you a moment's thought, nor pray do not mention it to the Wordsworths nor to Coleridge, for I know he thinks I am apt to speak unkindly of him. I am not good tempered, and I have two or three times given him proofs that I am not. You say you are all in your "better way," which is a very chearful hearing, for I trust you mean to include that your health is bettering too. I look forward with great pleasure to the near approach of Christmas and Mr. Clarkson. And now the turkey you are so kind as to promise us comes into my head & tells me it is so very near that if writing before then should happen to be the least irksome to you, I will be content to wait for intelligence of our old friends till I have the pleasure of seeing Mr. Clarkson in town. I ought to say this because I know at times how dreadfully irksome writing a letter is to me, even when I have no reason in the world to give why it is so, and I remember I have heard you express something of the same kind of feelings.
I try to remember something to enquire after at Bury--The lady we visited, the cherry tree Tom and I robbed, Tom my partner in the robbery (Mr. Thomas C--- I suppose now), and your Cook maid that was so kind to me, are all at present I can recollect. Of all the places I ever saw Bury has made the liveliest impression on my memory. I have a very indistinct recollection of the Lakes.
Charles joins with me in affectionate remembrances to you all, and he is more warm in his expressions of gratitude for the turkey because he is fonder of good eating than I am, though I am not amiss in that way.
God bless you my kind friends
I remain yours affectionately
M. LAMB.
Excuse this slovenly letter, if I were to write it over again I should abridge it one half.
Saturday morning No. 16 Mitre Court Buildings Inner Temple.
178. CHARLES LAMB TO MRS. CLARKSON
(Added to same letter)
We have this moment received a very chearful letter from Coleridge, who is now at Grasmere. It contains a prospectus for a new weekly publication to be called The Friend. He says they are well there, and in good spirits & that he has not been so well for a long time.
The Prospectus is of a weekly paper of a miscellaneous nature to be call'd the Friend & to come out, the first number, the first Saturday in January. Those who remember The Watchman will not be very sanguine in expecting a regular fulfillment of this Prophecy. But C. writes in delightful spirits, & if ever, he may now do this thing. I suppose he will send you a Prospectus. I had some thought of inclosing mine. But I want to shew it about. My kindest remembrance to Mr. C. & thanks for the turkey.
C. LAMB.
[Coleridge, after delivering his lectures, had gone to Bury on a visit to the Clarksons. He then passed on to Grasmere, to Wordsworth's new house, Allan Bank, and settled down to project The Friend.
Tom Clarkson, with whom Mary Lamb robbed a cherry tree, became a metropolitan magistrate. He died in 1837.
Here should come a letter from Lamb to Robert Lloyd, dated February 25, 1809. It tells Lloyd where to look for Lamb when he reached town--at 16 Mitre Court Buildings, which he is leaving at Lady Day, or at 2 or 4 Inner Temple Lane. "Drury Lane Theatre is burnt to the ground." Robert Lloyd spent a short while in London in the spring of 1809 and saw the Lambs, Godwin, Captain Burney, James White and other persons. His letters to his wife describing these experiences, printed in Charles Lamb and the Lloyds, are amusingly fresh and enthusiastic.]
179. CHARLES LAMB TO THOMAS MANNING
28th March, 1809.
Dear Manning,--I sent you a long letter by the ships which sailed the beginning of last month, accompanied with books, &c. Since I last wrote, Holcroft is dead. He died on Thursday last and is not yet buried. He has been opened by Carlisle and his heart was found completely ossified. He has had a long and severe illness. He seemed very willing to live, and to the last acted on his favorite principle of the power of the will to overcome disease. I believe his strong faith in that power kept him alive long after another person would have given him up, and the physicians all concurred in positively saying he would not live a week, many weeks before he died. The family are as well as can be expected. I told you something about Mrs. Holcroft's plans. Since her death there has been a meeting of his friends and a subscription has been mentioned. I have no doubt that she will be set agoing, and that she will be fully competent to the scheme which she proposes. Fanny bears it much better than I could have supposed. So there is one of your friends whom you will never see again! Perhaps the next fleet may bring you a letter from Martin Burney, to say that he writes by desire of Miss Lamb, who is not well enough to write herself, to inform you that her brother died on Thursday last, 14th June, &c. But I hope not. I should be sorry to give occasion to open a correspondence between Martin and you. This letter must be short, for I have driven it off to the very moment of doing up the packets; and besides, that which I refer to above is a very long one; and if you have received my books, you will have enough to do to read them. While I think on it, let me tell you we are moved. Don't come any more to Mitre Court Buildings. We are at 34, Southampton Buildings, Chancery Lane, and shall be here till about the end of May: then we remove to No. 4, Inner Temple Lane, where I mean to live and die; for I have such horror of moving, that I would not take a benefice from the King, if I was not indulged with non-residence. What a dislocation of comfort is comprised in that word moving! Such a heap of little nasty things, after you think all is got into the cart: old dredging-boxes, worn-out brushes, gallipots, vials, things that it is impossible the most necessitous person can ever want, but which the women, who preside on these occasions, will not leave behind if it was to save your soul; they'd keep the cart ten minutes to stow in dirty pipes and broken matches, to show their economy. Then you can find nothing you want for many days after you get into your new lodgings. You must comb your hair with your fingers, wash your hands without soap, go about in dirty gaiters. Was I Diogenes, I would not move out of a kilderkin into a hogshead, though the first had had nothing but small beer in it, and the second reeked claret. Our place of final destination,--I don't mean the grave, but No. 2 [4] Inner Temple Lane,--looks out upon a gloomy churchyard-like court, called Hare Court, with three trees and a pump in it. Do you know it? I was born near it, and used to drink at that pump when I was a Rechabite of six years old. If you see newspapers you will read about Mrs. Clarke. The sensation in London about this nonsensical business is marvellous. I remember nothing in my life like it. Thousands of ballads, caricatures, lives, of Mrs. Clarke, in every blind alley. Yet in the midst of this stir, a sublime abstracted dancing-master, who attends a family we know in Kensington, being asked a question about the progress of the examination in the House, inquired who Mrs. Clarke was? He had heard nothing of it. He had evaded this omnipresence by utter insignificancy! The Duke should make that man his confidential valet. I proposed locking him up, barring him the use of his fiddle and red pumps, until he had minutely perused and committed to memory the whole body of the examinations, which employed the House of Commons a fortnight, to teach him to be more attentive to what concerns the public. I think I told you of Godwin's little book, and of Coleridge's prospectus, in my last; if I did not, remind me of it, and I will send you them, or an account of them, next fleet. I have no conveniency of doing it by this. Mrs.---- grows every day in disfavour with God and man. I will be buried with this inscription over me:--"Here lies C. L., the Woman-hater"--I mean that hated ONE WOMAN: for the rest, God bless them, and when he makes any more, make 'em prettier. How do you like the Mandarinesses? Are you on some little footing with any of them? This is Wednesday. On Wednesdays is my levee. The Captain, Martin, Phillips, (not the Sheriff,) Rickman, and some more, are constant attendants, besides stray visitors. We play at whist, eat cold meat and hot potatoes, and any gentleman that chooses smokes. Why do you never drop in? You'll come some day, won't you?
C. LAMB, &c.
[Thomas Holcroft died on March 23, 1809, aged sixty-three. Mitre Court Buildings, Southampton Buildings and Inner Temple Lane (Lamb's homes) have all been rebuilt since Lamb's day.
"That word 'moving.'" Lamb later elaborated and condensed this passage, in the Elia essay "New Year's Eve": "Any alteration, on this earth of mine, in diet or in lodging, puzzles and discomposes me. My household-gods plant a terrible fixed foot, and are not rooted up without blood."
"Mrs. Clarke." Mary Anne Clarke (1776-1852), mistress of the Duke of York, Commander-in-Chief, whose reception of money from officers as a return for procuring them preferment or promising to, by her influence with the Duke, had just been exposed in Parliament, and was causing immense excitement.
"Godwin's little book." Probably the Essay on Sepulchres. But Godwin's Lives of Edward and John Phillips, Milton's nephews, appeared also at this time.
"Mrs. ----." Most probably Mrs. Godwin once more.
"Not the Sheriff." Alluding to Sir Richard Phillips, the publisher, who was elected Sheriff of London in 1807, and was knighted in 1808.
On the same day Lamb and his sister wrote a very charming joint letter to Louisa Martin, which has not yet been published. See the Preface to this volume, p. viii.]
180. CHARLES LAMB TO HENRY CRABB ROBINSON
[Dated by H. C. R.: May, 1809.]
Dear Sir,--Would you be so kind as, when you go to the Times office, to see about an Advertisement which My Landlady's Daughter left for insertion about ten days since and has not appeared, for a Governesses Place? The references are to Thorpe & Graves 18 Lower Holborn, and to M. B. 115 Oxford St. Though not anxious about attitudes, she pines for a situation. I got home tolerably well, as I hear, the other evening. It may be a warning to any one in future to ask me to a dinner party. I always disgrace myself. I floated up stairs on the Coachman's back, like Ariel; "On a bat's back I do fly, After sunset merrily."
In sobriety
I am
Yours truly
C. LAMB.
[Lamb used the simile of Ariel at least twice afterwards: at the close of the Elia essay "Rejoicings on the New Year's Coming-of-Age," and in a letter to J. V. Asbury of Enfield, the Lambs' doctor.]
181. MARY LAMB TO SARAH HAZLITT
[June 2, 1809.]
You may write to Hazlitt, that I will certainly go to Winterslough, as my Father has agreed to give me 5l. to bear my expences, and has given leave that I may stop till that is spent, leaving enough to defray my Carriage on the 14th July.
So far Martin has written, and further than that I can give you no intelligence, for I do not yet know Phillips's intentions; nor can I tell you the exact time when we can come; nor can I positively say we shall come at all; for we have scruples of conscience about there being so many of us. Martin says, if you can borrow a blanket or two, he can sleep on the floor, without either bed or mattress, which would save his expences at the Hut; for, if Phillips breakfasts there, he must do so too, which would swallow up all his money. And he and I have calculated that, if he has no Inn expences, he may as well spare that money to give you for a part of his roast beef.
We can spare you also just five pounds. You are not to say this to Hazlitt, lest his delicacy should be alarmed; but I tell you what Martin and I have planned, that, if you happen to be empty pursed at this time, you may think it as well to make him up a bed in the best kitchen.
I think it very probable that Phillips will come; and, if you do not like such a croud of us, for they both talk of staying a whole month, tell me so, and we will put off our visit till next summer.
The 14th July is the day Martin has fixed for coming. I should have written before, if I could have got a positive answer from them.
Thank you very much for the good work you have done for me. Mrs. Stoddart also thanks you for the gloves. How often must I tell you never to do any needle work for any body but me?
Martin Burney has been very ill, and still is very weak and pale. Mrs. Holcroft and all her children, and all her scholars, have had the measles. Your old friend, Mrs. Fenwick, is in town.
We are going to see Mrs. Martin and her daughter, Mrs. Fulton (Sarah Martin), and I expect to see there the future husband of Louisa. It will be a charming evening, doubtless.
I cannot write any more, for we have got a noble Life of Lord Nelson lent us for a short time by my poor relation the book binder, and I want to read as much of it as I can.
Yours affectionately, M. LAMB.
On reading Martin's note over again, we guess the Captain means him to stay only a fortnight. It is most likely we shall come the beginning of July. Saturday [?June 3].
[The Lambs were proposing to spend their holidays with the Hazlitts, in July, and to take Colonel Phillips and his nephew Martin Burney with them. (Or possibly it was the other Phillips.) As it happened, however, Mary Lamb was taken ill almost immediately after writing this letter, and the visit had to be postponed until September and October.
The Hut was the Winterslow inn.
"My poor relation the book binder." See the letter to Barron Field, Oct. 4, 1827.]
Letter 182
CHARLES LAMB TO S.T. COLERIDGE June 7th, 1809.
Dear Coleridge,--I congratulate you on the appearance of "The Friend." Your first number promises well, and I have no doubt the succeeding numbers will fulfil the promise. I had a kind letter from you some time since, which I have left unanswered. I am also obliged to you, I believe, for a review in the "Annual," am I not? The "Monthly Review" sneers at me, and asks "if 'Comus' is not good enough for Mr. Lamb?" because I have said no good serious dramas have been written since the death of Charles the First, except "Samson Agonistes"; so because they do not know, or won't remember, that "Comus" was written long before, I am to be set down as an undervaluer of Milton! O Coleridge, do kill those reviews, or they will kill us--kill all we like! Be a friend to all else, but their foe. I have been turned out of my chambers in the Temple by a landlord who wanted them for himself; but I have got other at No. 4, Inner Temple Lane, far more commodious and roomy. I have two rooms on third floor and five rooms above, with an inner staircase to myself, and all new painted, &c., and all for £30 a year! I came into them on Saturday week; and on Monday following, Mary was taken ill with fatigue of moving, and affected, I believe, by the novelty of the home; she could not sleep, and I am left alone with a maid quite a stranger to me, and she has a month or two's sad distraction to go through. What sad large pieces it cuts out of life--out of her life, who is getting rather old; and we may not have many years to live together! I am weaker, and bear it worse than I ever did. But I hope we shall be comfortable by and bye. The rooms are delicious, and the best look backwards into Hare Court, where there is a pump always going. Just now it is dry. Hare Court trees come in at the window, so that it's like living in a garden. I try to persuade myself it is much pleasanter than Mitre Court; but, alas! the household gods are slow to come in a new mansion. They are in their infancy to me; I do not feel them yet; no hearth has blazed to them yet. How I hate and dread new places!
I was very glad to see Wordsworth's book advertised; I am to have it to-morrow lent me, and if Wordsworth don't send me an order for one upon Longman, I will buy it. It is greatly extolled and liked by all who have seen it. Let me hear from some of you, for I am desolate. I shall have to send you, in a week or two, two volumes of Juvenile Poetry, done by Mary and me within the last six months, and that tale in prose which Wordsworth so much liked, which was published at Christmas, with nine others, by us, and has reached a second edition. There's for you! We have almost worked ourselves out of child's work, and I don't know what to do. Sometimes I think of a drama, but I have no head for play-making; I can do the dialogue, and that's all. I am quite aground for a plan, and I must do something for money. Not that I have immediate wants, but I have prospective ones. O money, money, how blindly thou hast been worshipped, and how stupidly abused! Thou art health, and liberty, and strength; and he that has thee may rattle his pockets at the foul fiend!
Nevertheless, do not understand by this that I have not quite enough for my occasions for a year or two to come. While I think on it, Coleridge, I fetch'd away my books which you had at the "Courier" Office, and found all but a third volume of the old plays, containing "The White Devil," "Green's Tu Quoque," and the "Honest Whore,"--perhaps the most valuable volume of them all--that I could not find. Pray, if you can, remember what you did with it, or where you took it out with you a walking perhaps; send me word; for, to use the old plea, it spoils a set. I found two other volumes (you had three), the "Arcadia," and "Daniel," enriched with manuscript notes. I wish every book I have were so noted. They have thoroughly converted me to relish Daniel, or to say I relish him, for, after all, I believe I did relish him. You well call him sober-minded. Your notes are excellent. Perhaps you've forgot them. I have read a review in the "Quarterly," by Southey, on the Missionaries, which is most masterly. I only grudge it being there. It is quite beautiful. Do remember my Dodsley; and pray do write; or let some of you write. Clarkson tells me you are in a smoky house. Have you cured it? It is hard to cure anything of smoking. Our little poems are but humble, but they have no name. You must read them, remembering they were task-work; and perhaps you will admire the number of subjects, all of children, picked out by an old Bachelor and an old Maid. Many parents would not have found so many. Have you read "Coelebs?" It has reached eight editions in so many weeks; yet literally it is one of the very poorest sort of common novels, with the draw-back of dull religion in it. Had the religion been high and flavoured, it would have been something. I borrowed this "Coelebs in Search of a Wife" of a very careful, neat lady, and returned it with this stuff written in the beginning:--
"If ever I marry a wife I'd marry a landlord's daughter, For then I may sit in the bar, And drink cold brandy-and-water."
I don't expect you can find time from your "Friend" to write to me much, but write something, for there has been a long silence. You know Holcroft is dead. Godwin is well. He has written a very pretty, absurd book about sepulchres. He was affronted because I told him it was better than Hervey, but not so good as Sir T. Browne. This letter is all about books; but my head aches, and I hardly know what I write; but I could not let "The Friend" pass without a congratulatory epistle. I won't criticise till it comes to a volume. Tell me how I shall send my packet to you?--by what conveyance?--by Longman, Short-man, or how? Give my kindest remembrances to Wordsworth. Tell him he must give me a book. My kind love to Mrs. W. and to Dorothy separately and conjointly. I wish you could all come and see me in my new rooms. God bless you all.
C. L.
[The first number of The Friend was dated June 1, 1809.
Lamb's Dramatic Specimens had been reviewed in the Annual Review for 1808, with discrimination and approval (see Vol. IV. of my large edition), but whether or not by Coleridge I do not know.
Wordsworth's book was his pamphlet on the "Convention of Cintra."
The Juvenile Poetry was Poetry for Children. Entirely Original. By the author of Mrs. Leicester's School. In two volumes, 1809. Mrs. Leicester's School, 1809, had been published a little before. Wordsworth's favourite tale was Arabella Hardy's "The Sea Voyage."
I know nothing of the annotated copy of Sidney's Arcadia. Daniel's Poetical Works, 12mo, 1718, two volumes, with marginalia by Lamb and Coleridge, is still preserved. The copy of Hannah More's Coelebs in Search of a Wife, 1809, with Lamb's verses, is not, I think, now known.
Southey's missionary article was in the first number of the Quarterly, February, 1809.
Hervey wrote Meditations among the Tombs; Sir Thomas Browne, Urn Burial.
Here should come four letters from Lamb to Charles Lloyd, Senior. They are all printed in Charles Lamb and the Lloyds. The first, dated June 13, 1809, contains an interesting criticism of a translation of the twenty-fourth book of the Iliad, which Charles Lloyd, the father of Robert Lloyd, had made. Lamb says that what he misses, and misses also in Pope, is a savage-like plainness of speaking.
"The heroes in Homer are not half civilized--they utter all the cruel, all the selfish, all the mean thoughts even of their nature, which it is the fashion of our great men to keep in."
Mr. Lloyd had translated [Greek: aoidous] (line 720) "minstrels." Lamb says "minstrels I suspect to be a word bringing merely English or English ballad feelings to the Mind. It expresses the thing and something more, as to say Sarpedon was a Gentleman, or as somebody translated Paul's address, 'Ye men of Athens,' 'Gentlemen of Athens.'"
The second letter, dated June 19, 1809, continues the subject. Lamb writes: "I am glad to see you venture made and maid for rhymes. 'Tis true their sound is the same. But the mind occupied in revolving the different meaning of two words so literally the same, is diverted from the objection which the mere Ear would make, and to the mind it is rhyme enough."
In the third letter, dated July 31, 1809, Lamb remarks of translators of Homer, that Cowper delays one as much, walking over a Bowling Green, as Milton does, travelling over steep Alpine heights.
The fourth letter, undated, accompanies criticisms of Mr. Lloyd's translation of the Odyssey, Books 1 and 2, Mr. Lloyd had translated [Greek: Bous Helioio] (Book I, line 8) "Bullocks of the Sun." Lamb wrote: "OXEN of the Sun, I conjure. Bullocks is too Smithfield and sublunary a Word. Oxen of the Sun, or of Apollo, but in any case not Bullocks."
With a letter to Robert Lloyd, belonging to this year, Lamb sends Poetry for Children, and states that the poem "The Beggar Man" is by his brother, John Lamb.]
183. CHARLES LAMB TO S. T. COLERIDGE
Monday, Oct. 30th, 1809.
Dear Coleridge,--I have but this moment received your letter, dated the 9th instant, having just come off a journey from Wiltshire, where I have been with Mary on a visit to Hazlitt. The journey has been of infinite service to her. We have had nothing but sunshiny days and daily walks from eight to twenty miles a-day; have seen Wilton, Salisbury, Stonehenge, &c. Her illness lasted but six weeks; it left her weak, but the country has made us whole. We came back to our Hogarth Room--I have made several acquisitions since you saw them,--and found Nos. 8, 9, 10 of "The Friend." The account of Luther in the Warteburg is as fine as anything I ever read. God forbid that a man who has such things to say should be silenced for want of £100. This Custom-and-Duty Age would have made the Preacher on the Mount take out a licence, and St. Paul's Epistles would not have been missible without a stamp. Oh, that you may find means to go on! But alas! where is Sir G. Beaumont?--Sotheby? What is become of the rich Auditors in Albemarle Street? Your letter has saddened me.
I am so tired with my journey, being up all night, I have neither things nor words in my power. I believe I expressed my admiration of the pamphlet. Its power over me was like that which Milton's pamphlets must have had on his contemporaries, who were tuned to them. What a piece of prose! Do you hear if it is read at all? I am out of the world of readers. I hate all that do read, for they read nothing but reviews and new books. I gather myself up unto the old things.
I have put up shelves. You never saw a book-case in more true harmony with the contents, than what I've nailed up in a room, which, though new, has more aptitudes for growing old than you shall often see--as one sometimes gets a friend in the middle of life, who becomes an old friend in a short time. My rooms are luxurious; one is for prints and one for books; a Summer and a Winter parlour. When shall I ever see you in them?
C. L.
[Hazlitt has given some account of the Lambs' visit to Winterslow, but the passage belongs probably to the year following. In his essay "On the Conversation of Authors" he likens Lamb in the country to "the most capricious poet Ovid among the Goths." "The country people thought him an oddity, and did not understand his jokes. It would be strange if they had, for he did not make any, while he stayed. But when he crossed the country to Oxford, then he spoke a little. He and the old colleges were hail-fellow well met; and in the quadrangles he 'walked gowned.'" Again, in "A Farewell to Essay-writing," Hazlitt says: "I used to walk out at this time with Mr. and Miss Lamb of an evening, to look at the Claude Lorraine skies over our heads melting from azure into purple and gold, and to gather mushrooms, that sprang up at our feet, to throw into our hashed mutton."
Lamb's Hogarths were framed in black. It must have been about this time that he began his essay "On the Genius of Hogarth," which was printed in The Reflector in 1811 (see Vol. I.).
The Friend lasted until No. XXVII., March 15, 1810. The account of Luther was in No. VIII., October 5, 1809. Coleridge had not been supported financially as he had hoped, and had already begun to think of stopping the paper.
Sir George Howland Beaumont (1753-1827), of Coleorton, the friend and patron of men of genius, had helped, with Sotheby, in the establishment of The Friend, and was instrumental subsequently in procuring a pension for Coleridge. William Sotheby (1757-1833), the translator and author, had received subscriptions for Coleridge's lectures.
"The rich Auditors in Albemarle Street"--those who had listened to Coleridge's lectures at the Royal Institution.
"The pamphlet." Presumably Wordsworth's "Convention of Cintra."
"You never saw a book-case." Leigh Hunt wrote of Lamb's books in the essay "My Books," in The Literary Examiner:--
"It looks like what it is, a selection made at precious intervals from the book-stalls;--now a Chaucer at nine and two-pence; now a Montaigne or a Sir Thomas Browne at two shillings; now a Jeremy Taylor, a Spinoza; an old English Dramatist, Prior, and Sir Philip Sidney; and the books are 'neat as imported.' The very perusal of the backs is a 'discipline of humanity.' There Mr. Southey takes his place again with an old Radical friend: there Jeremy Collier is at peace with Dryden: there the lion, Martin Luther, lies down with the Quaker lamb, Sewel: there Guzman d'Alfarache thinks himself fit company for Sir Charles Grandison, and has his claims admitted. Even the 'high fantastical' Duchess of Newcastle, with her laurel on her head, is received with grave honours, and not the less for declining to trouble herself with the constitutions of her maids."]
184. MARY LAMB TO SARAH HAZLITT
November 7th, 1809.
My dear Sarah--The dear, quiet, lazy, delicious month we spent with you is remembered by me with such regret, that I feel quite discontent & Winterslow-sick. I assure you, I never passed such a pleasant time in the country in my life, both in the house & out of it, the card playing quarrels, and a few gaspings for breath after your swift footsteps up the high hills excepted, and those drawbacks are not unpleasant in the recollection. We have got some salt butter to make our toast seem like yours, and we have tried to eat meat suppers, but that would not do, for we left our appetites behind us; and the dry loaf, which offended you, now comes in at night unaccompanied; but, sorry am I to add, it is soon followed by the pipe and the gin bottle. We smoked the very first night of our arrival.
Great news! I have just been interrupted by Mr. Daw, who comes to tell me he was yesterday elected a Royal Academician. He said none of his own friends voted for him; he got it by strangers, who were pleased with his picture of Mrs. White. Charles says he does not believe Northcote ever voted for the admission of any one. Though a very cold day, Daw was in a prodigious sweat, for joy at his good fortune.
More great news! my beautiful green curtains were put up yesterday, and all the doors listed with green baize, and four new boards put to the coal-hole, and fastening hasps put to the window, and my died Manning silk cut out.
Yesterday was an eventful day: for yesterday too Martin Burney was to be examined by Lord Eldon, previous to his being admitted as an Attorney; but he has not yet been here to announce his success.
I carried the baby-caps to Mrs. [John] Hazlitt; she was much pleased, and vastly thankful. Mr. [John] H. got fifty-four guineas at Rochester, and has now several pictures in hand.
I am going to tell you a secret, for ---- says she would be sorry to have it talked of. One night ---- came home from the ale-house, bringing with him a great, rough, ill-looking fellow, whom he introduced to ---- as Mr. Brown, a gentleman he had hired as a mad keeper, to take care of him, at forty pounds a year, being ten pounds under the usual price for keepers, which sum Mr. Brown had agreed to remit out of pure friendship. It was with great difficulty, and by threatening to call in the aid of watchmen and constables, that ---- could prevail on Mr. Brown to leave the house.
We had a good chearful meeting on Wednesday: much talk of Winterslow, its woods & its nice sun flowers. I did not so much like Phillips at Winterslow, as I now like him for having been with us at Winterslow. We roasted the last of his 'beach, of oily nut prolific,' on Friday, at the Captain's. Nurse is now established in Paradise, alias the Incurable Ward [of Westminster Hospital]. I have seen her sitting in most superb state, surrounded by her seven incurable companions. They call each other ladies. Nurse looks as if she would be considered as the first lady in the ward: only one seemed at [all] like to rival her in dignity.
A man in the India House has resigned, by which Charles will get twenty pounds a year; and White has prevailed on him to write some more lottery-puffs. If that ends in smoke, the twenty pounds is a sure card, and has made us very joyful.
I continue very well, & return you very sincere thanks for my good health and improved looks, which have almost made Mrs. Godwin die with envy; she longs to come to Winterslow as much as the spiteful elder sister did to go to the well for a gift to spit diamonds--
Jane and I have agreed to boil a round of beef for your suppers, when you come to town again. She, Jane, broke two of the Hogarth glasses while we were away--whereat I made a great noise.
Farewel. Love to William, and Charles's love and good wishes for the speedy arrival of the Life of Holcroft, & the bearer thereof.
Yours most affectionately, M. LAMB.
Tuesday.
Charles told Mrs. Godwin, Hazlitt had found a well in his garden, which, water being scarce in your country, would bring him in two hundred a year; and she came in great haste the next morning to ask me if it were true. Your brother and his &c. are quite well.
[George Dawe had just been elected not Royal Academician but Associate. He became full R.A. in 1814.
Mrs. White was the wife of Anthony White, the surgeon, who had been apprenticed to Sir Anthony Carlisle.
Northcote was James Northcote, R.A., whose Conversations Hazlitt recorded some years later.
Martin Burney never made a successful lawyer. His life was destined to be unhappy and unprofitable, as we shall see later.
"I am going to tell you a secret." In the absence of the original these blanks cannot be filled in, nor are they important.
"Lottery puffs." See note on page 340.
"The spiteful elder sister." This story is in Grimm, I think.
"The Life of Holcroft." The Memoirs of Thomas Holcroft, begun by Holcroft and finished by Hazlitt, although completed in 1810, was not published until 1816.
Here should come a letter from Lamb to Robert Lloyd, dated January 1, 1810, thanking him for a turkey. Lamb mentions that his 1809 holiday had been spent in Wiltshire, where he saw Salisbury Cathedral and Stonehenge. He adds that Coleridge's Friend is occasionally sublime. This was the last letter of the correspondence. Robert Lloyd died on October 26, 1811. Lamb wrote in the Gentleman's Magazine a memoir of him, which will be found in Vol. I. of this edition.]