The Best Letters of Charles Lamb Part 24

Lx.x.xV.

TO BERNARD BARTON.

_March_ 23, 1825.

Dear B. B.,--I have had no impulse to write, or attend to any single object but myself for weeks past,--my single self, I by myself, I. I am sick of hope deferred. The grand wheel is in agitation that is to turn up my fortune; but round it rolls, and will turn up nothing. I have a glimpse of freedom, of becoming a gentleman at large; but I am put off from day to day. I have offered my resignation, and it is neither accepted nor rejected. Eight weeks am I kept in this fearful suspense.

Guess what an absorbing stake I feel it. I am not conscious of the existence of friends present or absent. The East India Directors alone can be that thing to me or not. I have just learned that nothing will be decided this week. Why the next? Why any week? It has fretted me into an itch of the fingers; I rub 'em against paper, and write to you, rather than not allay this s...o...b..ta.

While I can write, let me adjure you to have no doubts of Irving. Let Mr. Mitford drop his disrespect. Irving has prefixed a dedication (of a missionary subject, first part) to Coleridge, the most beautiful, cordial, and sincere. He there acknowledges his obligation to S. T. C.

for his knowledge of Gospel truths, the nature of a Christian Church, etc.,--to the talk of Samuel Taylor Coleridge (at whose Gamaliel feet he sits weekly), rather than to that of all the men living. This from him, the great dandled and petted sectarian, to a religious character so equivocal in the world's eye as that of S. T. C., so foreign to the Kirk's estimate,--can this man be a quack? The language is as affecting as the spirit of the dedication. Some friend told him, "This dedication will do you no good,"--_i. e._, not in the world's repute, or with your own people. "That is a reason for doing it," quoth Irving.

I am thoroughly pleased with him. He is firm, out-speaking, intrepid, and docile as a pupil of Pythagoras. You must like him.

Yours, in tremors of painful hope,

C. LAMB.

Lx.x.xVI.

TO WORDSWORTH

_April_ 6, 1825

Dear Wordsworth,--I have been several times meditating a letter to you concerning the good thing which has befallen me; but the thought of poor Monkhouse [1] came across me. He was one that I had exulted in the prospect of congratulating me. He and you were to have been the first partic.i.p.ators; for indeed it has been ten weeks since the first motion of it. Here am I then, after thirty-three years' slavery, sitting in my own room at eleven o'clock this finest of all April mornings, a freed man, with 441 a year for the remainder of my life, live I as long as John Dennis, who outlived his annuity and starved at ninety: 441; _i.e., 450_, with a deduction of 9 for a provision secured to my sister, she being survivor, the pension guaranteed by Act Georgii Tertii, etc.

I came home FOREVER on Tuesday in last week. The incomprehensibleness of my condition overwhelmed me; it was like pa.s.sing from life into eternity. Every year to be as long as three, _i.e._, to have three times as much real time--time that is my own--in it! I wandered about thinking I was happy, but feeling I was not. But that tumultuousness is pa.s.sing off, and I begin to understand the nature of the gift. Holidays, even the annual month, were always uneasy joys,--their conscious fugitiveness; the craving after making the most of them. Now, when all is holiday, there are no holidays. I can sit at home, in rain or shine, without a restless impulse for walkings. I am daily steadying, and shall soon find it as natural to me to be my own master as it has been irksome to have had a master. Mary wakes every morning with an obscure feeling that some good has happened to us.

Leigh Hunt and Montgomery, after their releas.e.m.e.nts, describe the shock of their emanc.i.p.ation much as I feel mine. But it hurt their frames. I eat, drink, and sleep sound as ever, I lay no anxious schemes for going hither and thither, but take things as they occur. Yesterday I excursioned twenty miles; to-day I write a few letters. Pleasuring was for fugitive play-days: mine are fugitive only in the sense that life is fugitive. Freedom and life co-existent!

At the foot of such a call upon you for gratulation, I am ashamed to advert to that melancholy event. Monkhouse was a character I learned to love slowly; but it grew upon me yearly, monthly, daily. What a chasm has it made in our pleasant parties! His n.o.ble, friendly face was always coming before me, till this hurrying event in my life came, and for the time has absorbed all interest; in fact, it has shaken me a little. My old desk companions, with whom I have had such merry hours, seem to reproach me for removing my lot from among them. They were pleasant creatures; but to the anxieties of business, and a weight of possible worse ever impending, I was not equal. Tuthill and Gilman gave me my certificates; I laughed at the friendly lie implied in them. But my sister shook her head, and said it was all true. Indeed, this last winter I was jaded out; winters were always worse than other parts of the year, because the spirits are worse, and I had no daylight. In summer I had daylight evenings. The relief was hinted to me from a superior power when I, poor slave, had not a hope but that I must wait another seven years with Jacob; and lo! the Rachel which I coveted is brought to me.

[1] Wordsworth's cousin, who was ill of consumption in Devonshire. He died the following year.

Lx.x.xVII.

TO BERNARD BARTON.

_April_ 6, 1825.

Dear B.B.,--My spirits are so tumultuary with the novelty of my recent emanc.i.p.ation that I have scarce steadiness of hand, much more mind, to compose a letter. I am free, B.B.,--free as air!

"The little bird that wings the sky Knows no such liberty." [1]

I was set free on Tuesday in last week at four o'clock. I came home forever!

I have been describing my feelings as well as I can to Wordsworth in a long letter, and don't care to repeat. Take it, briefly, that for a few days I was painfully oppressed by so mighty a change; but it is becoming daily more natural to me. I went and sat among 'em all at my old thirty-three-years' desk yester-morning; and, deuce take me, if I had not yearnings at leaving all my old pen-and-ink fellows, merry, sociable lads,--at leaving them in the lurch, f.a.g, f.a.g, f.a.g! The comparison of my own superior felicity gave me anything but pleasure.

B.B., I would not serve another seven years for seven hundred thousand pounds! I have got 441 net for life, sanctioned by Act of Parliament, with a provision for Mary if she survives me. I will live another fifty years; or if I live but ten, they will be thirty, reckoning the quant.i.ty of real time in them,--_i.e._, the time that is a man's own, Tell me how you like "Barbara S.;" [2] will it be received in atonement for the foolish "Vision"--I mean by the lady? _A propos_, I never saw Mrs.

Crawford in my life; nevertheless, it's all true of somebody.

Address me, in future, Colebrooke Cottage, Islington, I am really nervous (but that will wear off), so take this brief announcement.

Yours truly,

C.L.

[1] "The birds that wanton in the air Know no such liberty."

LOVELACE.

[2] The Elia essay. f.a.n.n.y Kelly was the original of "Barbara S."

Lx.x.xVIII.

TO BERNARD BARTON.

_July_ 2, 1825.

I am hardly able to appreciate your volume now; [1] but I liked the dedication much, and the apology for your bald burying grounds. To Sh.e.l.ley--but _that_ is not new, To the young Vesper-singer, Great Bealings, Playford, and what not.

If there be a cavil, it is that the topics of religious consolation, however beautiful, are repeated till a sort of triteness attends them.

It seems as if you were forever losing Friends' children by death, and reminding their parents of the Resurrection. Do children die so often and so good in your parts? The topic taken from the consideration that they are s.n.a.t.c.hed away from _possible vanities_ seems hardly sound; for to an Omniscient eye their conditional failings must be one with their actual. But I am too unwell for theology.

Such as I am,

I am yours and A.K.'s truly,

C. LAMB.

[1] "Barton's volume of Poems."

Lx.x.xIX.

TO BERNARD BARTON.

_August_ 10, 1825.