The Best Letters of Charles Lamb Part 26

LONDRES, _Julie_ 19_th_, 1827.

Dear P.,--I am so poorly. I have been to a funeral, where I made a pun, to the consternation of the rest of the mourners. And we had wine. I can't describe to you the howl which the widow set up at proper intervals. Dash [1] could; for it was not unlike what he makes.

The letter I sent you was one directed to the care of Edward White, India House, for Mrs. Hazlitt. _Which_ Mrs. H. I don't yet know; but Allsop has taken it to France on speculation. Really it is embarra.s.sing.

There is Mrs. present H., Mrs. late H., and Mrs. John H.; and to which of the three Mrs. Wigginses it appertains, I know not. I wanted to open it, but 'tis transportation.

I am sorry you are plagued about your book. I would strongly recommend you to take for one story Ma.s.singer's "Old Law." It is exquisite. I can think of no other.

Dash is frightful this morning. He whines and stands up on his hind legs. He misses Becky, who is gone to town. I took him to Barnet the other day, and he couldn't eat his vittles after it. Pray G.o.d his intellectuals be not slipping.

Mary is gone out for some soles. I suppose 'tis no use to ask you to come and partake of 'em; else there is a steam vessel.

I am doing a tragi-comedy in two acts, and have got on tolerably; but it will be refused, or worse, I never had luck with anything my name was put to.

Oh, I am so poorly! I _waked_ it at my cousin's the bookbinder, who is now with G.o.d; or if he is not,'tis no fault of mine.

We hope the Frank wines do not disagree with Mrs. Patmore. By the way, I like her.

Did you ever taste frogs? Get them if you can. They are like little Lilliput rabbits, only a thought nicer.

How sick I am!--not of the world, but of the Widow Shrub. She's sworn under 6,000; but I think she perjured herself. She howls in E _la_, and I comfort her in B flat. You understand music?

If you haven't got Ma.s.singer, you have nothing to do but go to the first Bibliotheque you can light upon at Boulogne, and ask for it (Gifford's edition); and if they haven't got it, you can have "Athalie," par Monsieur Racine, and make the best of it. But that "Old Law" is delicious.

"No shrimps!" (that's in answer to Mary's question about how the soles are to be done.)

I am uncertain where this wandering letter may reach you. What you mean by Poste Restante, G.o.d knows. Do you mean I must pay the postage? So I do,--to Dover.

We had a merry pa.s.sage with the widow at the Commons. She was howling,--part howling, and part giving directions to the proctor,--when crash! down went my sister through a crazy chair, and made the clerks grin, and I grinned, and the widow t.i.ttered, and then I knew that she was not inconsolable. Mary was more frightened than hurt.

She'd make a good match for anybody (by she, I mean the widow).

"If he bring but a _relict_ away, He is happy, nor heard to complain."

SHENSTONE.

Procter has got a wen growing out at the nape of his neck, which his wife wants him to have cut off; but I think it rather an agreeable excrescence,--like his poetry, redundant. Hone has hanged himself for debt. G.o.dwin was taken up for picking pockets. Moxon has fallen in love with Emma, our nut-brown maid. Becky takes to bad courses. Her father was blown up in a steam machine. The coroner found it "insanity." I should not like him to sit on my letter.

Do you observe my direction? Is it Gallic, cla.s.sical? Do try and get some frogs. You must ask for "grenouilles" (green eels). They don't understand "frogs," though 't is a common phrase with us.

If you go through Bulloign (Boulogne), inquire if Old G.o.dfrey is living, and how he got home from the Crusades. He must be a very old man.

[1] A dog given to Lamb by Thomas Hood. See letter to Patmore dated September, 1827.

XCV.

TO BERNARD BARTON.

_August_ 10, 1827.

Dear B. B.,--I have not been able to answer you, for we have had and are having (I just s.n.a.t.c.h a moment) our poor quiet retreat, to which we fled from society, full of company,--some staying with us; and this moment as I write, almost, a heavy importation of two old ladies has come in.

Whither can I take wing from the oppression of human faces? Would I were in a wilderness of apes, tossing cocoa-nuts about, grinning and grinned at!

Mitford was hoaxing you surely about my engraving; 't is a little sixpenny thing, [1] too like by half, in which the draughtsman has done his best to avoid flattery. There have been two editions of it, which I think are all gone, as they have vanished from the window where they hung,--a print-shop, corner of Great and Little Queen Streets, Lincoln's Inn Fields,--where any London friend of yours may inquire for it; for I am (though you _won't understand it_) at Enfield Chase. We have been here near three months, and shall stay two more, if people will let us alone; but they persecute us from village to village. So don't direct to _Islington_ again till further notice. I am trying my hand at a drama, in two acts, founded on Crabbe's "Confidant," _mutatis mutandis_. You like the Odyssey: did you ever read my "Adventures of Ulysses," founded on Chapman's old translation of it? For children or men. Chapman is divine, and my abridgment has not quite emptied him of his divinity.

When you come to town I'll show it you. You have well described your old-fashioned grand paternal hall. Is it not odd that every one's earliest recollections are of some such place? I had my Blakesware [Blakesmoor in the "London"]. Nothing fills a child's mind like a large old mansion; better if un--or partially--occupied,--peopled with the spirits of deceased members of the county and justices of the quorum.

Would I were buried in the peopled solitudes of one, with my feelings at seven years old! Those marble busts of the emperors, they seemed as if they were to stand forever, as they had stood from the living days of Rome, in that old marble hall, and I too partake of their permanency.

Eternity was, while I thought not of Time. But he thought of me, and they are toppled down, and corn covers the spot of the n.o.ble old dwelling and its princely gardens, I feel like a gra.s.shopper that, chirping about the grounds, escaped the scythe only by my littleness.

Even now he is whetting one of his smallest razors to clean wipe me out, perhaps. Well!

[Footnote 1:] An etching of Lamb, by Brooke Pulham, which is said to be the most characteristic likeness of him extant.

XCVI.

TO THOMAS HOOD,

_September_ 18, 1827.

Dear Hood,--If I have anything in my head, I will send it to Mr. Watts.

Strictly speaking, he should have all my alb.u.m-verses; but a very intimate friend importuned me for the trifles, and I believe I forgot Mr. Watts, or lost sight at the time of his similar "Souvenir." Jamieson conveyed the farce from me to Mrs. C. Kemble; he will not be in town before the 27th.

Give our kind loves to all at Highgate, and tell them that we have finally torn ourselves outright away from Colebrooke, where I had _no_ health, and are about to domiciliate for good at Enfield, where I have experienced _good_.

"Lord, what good hours do we keep!

How quietly we sleep!" [1]

See the rest in the "Compleat Angler."

We have got our books into our new house. I am a dray-horse if I was not ashamed of the indigested, dirty lumber, as I toppled 'em out of the cart, and blessed Becky that came with 'em for her having an unstuffed brain with such rubbish. We shall get in by Michael's Ma.s.s. 'T was with some pain we were evulsed from Colebrooke.

You may find some of our flesh sticking to the doorposts. To change habitations is to die to them; and in my time I have died seven deaths.

But I don't know whether every such change does not bring with it a rejuvenescence. 'T is an enterprise, and shoves back the sense of death's approximating, which, though not terrible to me, is at all times particularly distasteful. My house-deaths have generally been periodical, recurring after seven years; but this last is premature by half that time. Cut off in the flower of Colebrooke! The Middletonian stream and all its echoes mourn. Even minnows dwindle. _A parvis fiunt minimi!_

I fear to invite Mrs. Hood to our new mansion, lest she should envy it, and hate us. But when we are fairly in, I hope she will come and try it. I heard she and you were made uncomfortable by some unworthy-to-be-cared-for attacks, and have tried to set up a feeble counteraction through the "Table Book" of last Sat.u.r.day. Has it not reached you, that you are silent about it? Our new domicile is no manor-house, but new, and externally not inviting, but furnished within with every convenience,-- capital new locks to every door, capital grates in every room, with nothing to pay for incoming, and the rent 10 less than the Islington one.

It was built, a few years since, at 1,100 expense, they tell me, and I perfectly believe it. And I get it for 35, exclusive of moderate taxes.

We think ourselves most lucky.

It is not our intention to abandon Regent Street and West End perambulations (monastic and terrible thought!), but occasionally to breathe the fresher air of the metropolis. We shall put up a bedroom or two (all we want) for occasional ex-rustication, where we shall visit,--not be visited. Plays, too, we'll see,--perhaps our own; Urbani Sylvani and Sylvan Urba.n.u.ses in turns; courtiers for a sport, then philosophers; old, homely tell-truths and learn-truths in the virtuous shades of Enfield, liars again and mocking gibers in the coffee-houses and resorts of London. What can a mortal desire more for his bi-parted nature?

Oh, the curds-and-cream you shall eat with us here!

Oh, the turtle-soup and lobster-salads we shall devour with you there!