The Best Letters of Charles Lamb Part 22

LXXVI.

TO MISS HUTCHINSON.

_April_ 25, 1823.

Dear Miss H.,--Mary has such an invincible reluctance to any epistolary exertion that I am sparing her a mortification by taking the pen from her. The plain truth is, she writes such a mean, detestable hand that she is ashamed of the formation of her letters. There is an essential poverty and abjectness in the frame of them. They look like begging letters. And then she is sure to omit a most substantial word in the second draught (for she never ventures an epistle without a foul copy first), which is obliged to be interlined,--which spoils the neatest epistle, you know. Her figures, 1, 2, 3, 4, etc., where she has occasion to express numerals, as in the date (25th April, 1823), are not figures, but figurantes; and the combined posse go staggering up and down shameless, as drunkards in the daytime. It is no better when she rules her paper. Her lines "are not less erring" than her words; a sort of unnatural parallel lines, that are perpetually threatening to meet,--which, you know, is quite contrary to Euclid. Her very blots are not bold, like this [_here a large blot is inserted_], but poor smears, half left in and half scratched out, with another smear left in their place. I like a clear letter; a bold, free hand and a fearless flourish.

Then she has always to go through them (a second operation) to dot her _i_'s and cross her _t_'s. I don't think she could make a corkscrew if she tried,--which has such a fine effect at the end or middle of an epistle, and fills up.

There is a corkscrew! One of the best I ever drew. [1] By the way, what incomparable whiskey that was of Monkhouse's! But if I am to write a letter, let me begin, and not stand flourishing like a fencer at a fair.

_April_ 25, 1823.

Dear Miss H.,--It gives me great pleasure [the letter now begins] to hear that you got down so smoothly, and that Mrs. Monkhouse's spirits are so good and enterprising. [2] It shows, whatever her posture may be, that her mind at least is not supine. I hope the excursion will enable the former to keep pace with its outstripping neighbor. Pray present our kindest wishes to her and all (that sentence should properly have come into the postscript; but we airy, mercurial spirits, there is no keeping us in). "Time" (as was said of one of us) "toils after us in vain." I am afraid our co-visit with Coleridge was a dream. I shall not get away before the end or middle of June, and then you will be frog-hopping at Boulogne. And besides, I think the Gilmans would scarce trust him with us; I have a malicious knack at cutting of ap.r.o.n-strings. The saints'

days you speak of have long since fled to heaven with Astraea, and the cold piety of the age lacks fervor to recall them; only Peter left his key,--the iron one of the two that "shuts amain,"--and that is the reason I am locked up. Meanwhile, of afternoons we pick up primroses at Dalston, and Mary corrects me when I call 'em cowslips. G.o.d bless you all, and pray remember me euphoniously to Mr. Gruvellegan. That Lee Priory must be a dainty bower. Is it built of flints? and does it stand at Kingsgate?

[1] Lamb was fond of this flourish, and it is frequently found in his letters.

[2] Miss Hutchinson's invalid relative.

LXXVII.

TO BERNARD BARTON.

_September_ 2, 1823.

Dear B.B.,--What will you not say to my not writing? You cannot say I do not write now. Hessey has not used your kind sonnet, nor have I seen it.

Pray send me a copy. Neither have I heard any more of your friend's MS., which I will reclaim whenever you please. When you come Londonward, you will find me no longer in Covent Garden: I have a cottage in Colebrook Row, Islington,--a cottage, for it is detached; a white house, with six good rooms, The New River (rather elderly by this time) runs (if a moderate walking pace can be so termed) close to the foot of the house; and behind is a s.p.a.cious garden with vines (I a.s.sure you), pears, strawberries, parsnips, leeks, carrots, cabbages, to delight the heart of old Alcinous. You enter without pa.s.sage into a cheerful dining-room, all studded over and rough with old books; and above is a lightsome drawing-room, three windows, full of choice prints. I feel like a great lord, never having had a house before.

The "London," I fear, falls off. I linger among its creaking rafters, like the last rat; it will topple down if they don't get some b.u.t.tresses. They have pulled down three,--Hazlitt, Procter, and their best stay, kind, light-hearted Wainewright, their Ja.n.u.s. [1] The best is, neither of our fortunes is concerned in it.

I heard of you from Mr. Pulham this morning, and that gave a fillip to my laziness, which has been intolerable; but I am so taken up with pruning and gardening,--quite a new sort of occupation to me. I have gathered my jargonels; but my Windsor pears are backward. The former were of exquisite raciness. I do now sit under my own vine, and contemplate the growth of vegetable nature. I can now understand in what sense they speak of father Adam. I recognize the paternity while I watch my tulips. I almost fell with him, for the first day I turned a drunken gardener (as he let in the serpent) into my Eden; and he laid about him, lopping off some choice boughs, etc., which hung over from a neighbor's garden, and in his blind zeal laid waste a shade which had sheltered their window from the gaze of pa.s.sers-by. The old gentlewoman (fury made her not handsome) could scarcely be reconciled by all my fine words.

There was no b.u.t.tering her parsnips. She talked of the law. What a lapse to commit on the first day of my happy "garden state"!

I hope you transmitted the Fox-Journal to its owner, with suitable thanks. Mr. Cary, the Dante man, dines with me to-day. He is a mode of a country parson, lean (as a curate ought to be), modest, sensible, no obtruder of church dogmas, quite a different man from Southey. You would like him. Pray accept this for a letter, and believe me, with sincere regards, yours,

C.L.

[1] Wainewright, the notorious poisoner, who, under the name of "Ja.n.u.s Weatherc.o.c.k," contributed various frothy papers on art and literature to the "London Magazine."

LXXVIII.

TO MRS. HAZLITT.

_November_, 1823.

Dear Mrs. H.,--Sitting down to write a letter is such a painful operation to Mary that you must accept me as her proxy. You have seen our house. What I now tell you is literally true. Yesterday week, George Dyer called upon us, at one o'clock (_bright noonday_), on his way to dine with Mrs. Barbauld at Newington. He sat with Mary about half an hour, and took leave. The maid saw him go out from her kitchen window, but suddenly losing sight of him, ran up in a fright to Mary. G.D., instead of keeping the slip that leads to the gate, had deliberately, staff in hand, in broad, open day, marched into the New River. [1] He had not his spectacles on, and you know his absence. Who helped him out, they can hardly tell; but between 'em they got him out, drenched thro'

and thro'. A mob collected by that time, and accompanied him in. "Send for the doctor!" they said; and a one-eyed fellow, dirty and drunk, was fetched from the public-house at the end, where it seem he lurks for the sake of picking up water-practice, having formerly had a medal from the Humane Society for some rescue. By his advice the patient was put between blankets; and when I came home at four to dinner, I found G.D.

a-bed, and raving, light-headed with the brandy-and-water which the doctor had administered. He sang, laughed, whimpered, screamed, babbled of guardian angels, would get up and go home; but we kept him there by force; and by next morning he departed sobered, and seems to have received no injury. [2] All my friends are open-mouthed about having paling before the river; but I cannot see that because a ... lunatic chooses to walk into a river, with his eyes open, at mid-day, I am any the more likely to be drowned in it, coming home at midnight.

[1] See Elia-essay, "Amicus Redivivus."

[2] In the "Athenaeum" for 1835 Procter says: "I happened to call at Lamb's house about ten minutes after this accident; I saw before me a train of water running from the door to the river. Lamb had gone for a surgeon; the maid was running about distraught, with dry clothes on one arm, and the dripping habiliments of the involuntary bather in the other. Miss Lamb, agitated, and whimpering forth 'Poor Mr. Dyer!' in the most forlorn voice, stood plunging her hands into the wet pockets of his trousers, to fish up the wet coin. Dyer himself, an amiable little old man, who took water _in_ternally and eschewed strong liquors, lay on his host's bed, hidden by blankets; his head, on which was his short gray hair, alone peered out; and this, having been rubbed dry by a resolute hand,--by the maid's, I believe, who a.s.sisted at the rescue,--looked as if bristling with a thousand needles. Lamb, moreover, in his anxiety, had administered a formidable dose of cognac and water to the sufferer, and _he_ (used only to the simple element) babbled without cessation."

LXXIX.

TO BERNARD BARTON.

_January_ 9, 1824.

Dear B.B.,--Do you know what it is to succ.u.mb under an insurmountable day-mare,--"a wh.o.r.eson lethargy," Falstaff calls it,--an indisposition to do anything or to be anything; a total deadness and distaste; a suspension of vitality; an indifference to locality; a numb, soporifical good-for-nothingness; an ossification all over; an oyster-like insensibility to the pa.s.sing events; a mind-stupor; a brawny defiance to the needles of a thrusting-in conscience? Did you ever have a very bad cold, with a total irresolution to submit to water-gruel processes? This has been for many weeks my lot and my excuse. My fingers drag heavily over this paper, and to my thinking it is three-and-twenty furlongs from here to the end of this demi-sheet. I have not a thing to say; nothing is of more importance than another. I am flatter than a denial or a pancake; emptier than Judge Parke's wig when the head is in it; duller than a country stage when the actors are off it,--a cipher, an o! I acknowledge life at all only by an occasional convulsional cough and a permanent phlegmatic pain in the chest. I am weary of the world; life is weary of me, My day is gone into twilight, and I don't think it worth the expense of candles. My wick hath a thief in it, but I can't muster courage to snuff it. I inhale suffocation; I can't distinguish veal from mutton; nothing interests me. 'T is twelve o'clock, and Thurtell [1] is just now coming out upon the new drop, Jack Ketch alertly tucking up his greasy sleeves to do the last office of mortality; yet cannot I elicit a groan or a moral reflection. If you told me the world will be at an end to-morrow, I should just say, "Will it?" I have not volition enough left to dot my _i_'s, much less to comb my eyebrows; my eyes are set in my head; my brains are gone out to see a poor relation in Moorfields, and they did not say when they'd come back again; my skull is a Grub Street attic to let,--not so much as a joint-stool left in it; my hand writes, not I, from habit, as chickens run about a little when their heads are off. Oh for a vigorous fit of gout, colic, toothache,--an earwig in my auditory, a fly in my visual organs; pain is life,--the sharper the more evidence of life; but this apathy, this death! Did you ever have an obstinate cold,--a six or seven weeks' unintermitting chill and suspension of hope, fear, conscience, and everything? Yet do I try all I can to cure it. I try wine, and spirits, and smoking, and snuff in unsparing quant.i.ties; but they all only seem to make me worse, instead of better. I sleep in a damp room, but it does me no good; I come home late o' nights, but do not find any visible amendment! Who shall deliver me from the body of this death?

It is just fifteen minutes after twelve. Thurtell is by this time a good way on his journey, baiting at Scorpion, perhaps. Ketch is bargaining for his cast coat and waistcoat; and the Jew demurs at first at three half-crowns, but on consideration that he may get somewhat by showing 'em in the town, finally closes.

C. L.

[1] Hanged that day for the murder of Weare.

Lx.x.x.

TO BERNARD BARTON.

_January_ 23, 1824.

My dear sir,--That peevish letter of mine, [1] which was meant to convey an apology for my incapacity to write, seems to have been taken by you in too serious a light,--it was only my way of telling you I had a severe cold. The fact is, I have been insuperably dull and lethargic for many weeks, and cannot rise to the vigor of a letter, much less an essay. The "London" must do without me for a time, for I have lost all interest about it; and whether I shall recover it again I know not. I will bridle my pen another time, and not tease and puzzle you with my aridities. I shall begin to feel a little more alive with the spring.

Winter is to me (mild or harsh) always a great trial of the spirits. I am ashamed not to have noticed your tribute to Woolman, whom we love so much; it is done in your good manner. Your friend Tayler called upon me some time since, and seems a very amiable man. His last story is painfully fine. His book I "like;" it is only too stuffed with Scripture, too parsonish. The best thing in it is the boy's own story.

When I say it is too full of Scripture, I mean it is too full of direct quotations; no book can have too much of silent Scripture in it. But the natural power of a story is diminished when the uppermost purpose in the writer seems to be to recommend something else,--namely, Religion. You know what Horace says of the _Deus intersit_? I am not able to explain myself,--you must do it for me. My sister's part in the "Leicester School" (about two thirds) was purely her own; as it was (to the same quant.i.ty) in the "Shakspeare Tales" which bear my name. I wrote only the "Witch Aunt," the "First Going to Church," and the final story about "A little Indian girl" in a ship. Your account of my black-balling amused me. _I think, as Quakers, they did right._ There are some things hard to be understood. The more I think, the more I am vexed at having puzzled you with that letter; but I have been so out of letter-writing of late years that it is a sore effort to sit down to it; and I felt in your debt, and sat down waywardly to pay you in bad money. Never mind my dulness; I am used to long intervals of it. The heavens seem bra.s.s to me; then again comes the refreshing shower,--

"I have been merry twice and once ere now."

You said something about Mr. Mitford in a late letter, which I believe I did not advert to. I shall be happy to show him my Milton (it is all the show things I have) at any time he will take the trouble of a jaunt to Islington. I do also hope to see Mr. Tayler there some day. Pray say so to both. Coleridge's book is in good part printed, but sticks a little for _more copy_. It bears an unsalable t.i.tle,--"Extracts from Bishop Leighton;" but I am confident there will be plenty of good notes in it,--more of Bishop Coleridge than Leighton in it, I hope; for what is Leighton? Do you trouble yourself about libel cases? The decision against Hunt for the "Vision of Judgment" made me sick. What is to become of the good old talk about our good old king,--his personal virtues saving us from a revolution, etc.? Why, none that think can utter it now. It must stink. And the "Vision" is as to himward such a tolerant, good-humored thing! What a wretched thing a Lord Chief Justice is, always was, and will be!

Keep your good spirits up, dear B. B., mine will return; they are at present in abeyance, but I am rather lethargic than miserable. I don't know but a good horsewhip would be more beneficial to me than physic. My head, without aching, will teach yours to ache. It is well I am getting to the conclusion. I will send a better letter when I am a better man.

Let me thank you for your kind concern for me (which I trust will have reason soon to be dissipated), and a.s.sure you that it gives me pleasure to hear from you.