The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb Volume V Part 51

Wherefore to day art singing in mine ear Sad songs were made so long ago, my dear?

This day I am to be a bride, you know.

Why sing sad songs were made so long ago?

_Child_.

"O Mother lay your costly robes aside,"

_For you may never be another's bride_: That line I learnt not in the old sad song.

_Mother_.

I pray thee, pretty one, now hold thy tongue; Play with the bride maids, and be glad, my boy, For thou shall be a second father's joy.

_Child_.

One father fondled me upon his knee: One father is enough alone for me.

Suggested by a print of 2 females after Leo[nardo da] Vinci, called Prudence & Beauty, which hangs up in our ro[om].

O! that you could see the print!!

The Lady Blanch, regardless of all her lovers' fears, To the Urseline Convent hastens, and long the Abbess hears: "O Blanch, my child, repent thee of the courtly life ye lead."

Blanch looked on a rose-bud, and little seem'd to heed; She looked on the rose-bud, she looked round, and thought On all her heart had whisper'd, and all the Nun had taught.

"I am worshipped by lovers, and brightly shines my fame, All Christendom resoundeth the n.o.ble Blanch's name; Nor shall I quickly wither like the rose-bud from the tree, My Queen-like graces shining when my beauty's gone from me.

But when the sculptur'd marble is raised o'er my head, And the matchless Blanch lies lifeless among the n.o.ble dead, This saintly Lady Abbess has made me justly fear.

It nothing will avail me that I were worshipt here."

I wish they may please you: we in these parts are not a little proud of them.

C. L.

["The little sc.r.a.ps." Professor Knight informed me that the sc.r.a.ps were not written but only copied by Miss Wordsworth. Arthur's Bower ran thus:--

Arthur's bower has broke his band, He comes riding up the land, The King of Scots with all his power Cannot build up Arthur's bower.

"Your brother Richard"--Wordsworth's eldest brother.

"Purchas's Pilgrimage." Samuel Purchas (1575?-1626) was the author of _Purchas His Pilgrimage_, 1613; _Purchas His Pilgrim_, 1619; and _Hakluytus Posthumus, or Purchas his Pilgrimes_, 1625. This last is Purchas's best work, and is probably that which Lamb sent to Grasmere.

Mary Lamb's two poems, her earliest that we know, with the exception of "Helen," were printed in the _Works_, 1818.]

LETTER 122

MARY LAMB TO SARAH STODDART

[Late July, 1804.]

My dearest Sarah,--Your letter, which contained the news of Coleridge's arrival, was a most welcome one; for we had begun to entertain very unpleasant apprehensions for his safety; and your kind reception of the forlorn wanderer gave me the greatest pleasure, and I thank you for it in my own and my brother's name. I shall depend upon you for hearing of his welfare; for he does not write himself; but, as long as we know he is safe, and in such kind friends' hands, we do not mind. Your letters, my dear Sarah, are to me very, very precious ones. They are the kindest, best, most natural ones I ever received. The one containing the news of the arrival of Coleridge perhaps the best I ever saw; and your old friend Charles is of my opinion. We sent it off to Mrs. Coleridge and the Wordsworths--as well because we thought it our duty to give them the first notice we had of our dear friend's safety, as that we were proud of shewing our Sarah's pretty letter.

The letters we received a few days after from you and your brother were far less welcome ones. I rejoiced to hear your sister is well; but I grieved for the loss of the dear baby; and I am sorry to find your brother is not so successful as he at first expected to be; and yet I am almost tempted to wish his ill fortune may send him over [to] us again.

He has a friend, I understand, who is now at the head of the Admiralty; why may he not return, and make a fortune here?

I cannot condole with you very sincerely upon your little failure in the fortune-making way. If you regret it, so do I. But I hope to see you a comfortable English wife; and the forsaken, forgotten William, of English-partridge memory, I have still a hankering after. However, I thank you for your frank communication, and I beg you will continue it in future; and if I do not agree with a good grace to your having a Maltese husband, I will wish you happy, provided you make it a part of your marriage articles that your husband shall allow you to come over sea and make me one visit; else may neglect and overlookedness be your portion while you stay there.

I would condole with you when the misfortune has fallen your poor leg; but such is the blessed distance we are at from each other, that I hope, before you receive this, that you forgot it ever happened.

Our compliments [to] the high ton at the Maltese court. Your brother is so profuse of them to me, that being, as you know, so unused to them, they perplex me sadly; in future, I beg they may be discontinued. They always remind me of the free, and, I believe, very improper, letter I wrote to you while you were at the Isle of Wight. The more kindly you and your brother and sister took the impertinent advice contained in it, the more certain I feel that it was unnecessary, and therefore highly improper. Do not let your brother compliment me into the memory of it again.

My brother has had a letter from your Mother, which has distressed him sadly--about the postage of some letters being paid by my brother. Your silly brother, it seems, has informed your Mother (I did not think your brother could have been so silly) that Charles had grumbled at paying the said postage. The fact was, just at that time we were very poor, having lost the Morning Post, and we were beginning to practise a strict economy. My brother, who never makes up his mind whether he will be a Miser or a Spendthrift, is at all times a strange mixture of both: of this failing, the even economy of your correct brother's temper makes him an ill judge. The miserly part of Charles, at that time smarting under his recent loss, then happened to reign triumphant; and he would not write, or let me write, so often as he wished, because the postage cost two and four pence. Then came two or three of your poor Mother's letters nearly together; and the two and four pences he wished, but grudged, to pay for his own, he was forced to pay for hers. In this dismal distress, he applied to Fenwick to get his friend Motley to send them free from Portsmouth. This Mr. Fenwick could have done for half a word's speaking; but this he did not do. Then Charles foolishly and unthinkingly complained to your brother in a half serious, half joking way; and your brother has wickedly, and with malice afore thought, told your Mother. O fye upon him! what will your Mother think of us?

I too feel my share of blame in this vexatious business; for I saw the unlucky paragraph in my brother's letter; and I had a kind of foreboding that it would come to your Mother's ears--although I had a higher opinion of your brother's good sense than I find he deserved. By entreaties and prayers, I might have prevailed on my brother to say nothing about it. But I make a point of conscience never to interfere or cross my brother in the humour he happens to be in. It always appears to me to be a vexatious kind of Tyranny, that women have no business to exercise over men, which, merely because _they having a better judgement_, they have the power to do. Let _men_ alone, and at last we find they come round to the right way, which _we_, by a kind of intuition, perceive at once. But better, far better, that we should let them often do wrong, than that they should have the torment of a Monitor always at their elbows.

Charles is sadly fretted now, I know, at what to say to your Mother. I have made this long preamble about it to induce [you,] if possible, to reinstate us in your Mother's good graces. Say to her it was a jest misunderstood; tell her Charles Lamb is not the shabby fellow she and her son took him for; but that he is now and then a trifle whimsical or so. I do not ask your brother to do this, for I am offended with him for the mischief he has made.

I feel that I have too lightly pa.s.sed over the interesting account you sent me of your late disappointment. It was not because I did not feel and compl[ete]ly enter into the affair with you. You surprise and please me with the frank and generous way in which you deal with your Lovers, taking a refusal from their so prudential hearts with a better grace and more good humour than other women accept a suitor's service. Continue this open artless conduct, and I trust you will at last find some man who has sense enough to know you are well worth risking a peaceable life of poverty for. I shall yet live to see you a poor, but happy, English wife.

Remember me most affectionately to Coleridge; and I thank you again and again for all your kindness to him. To dear Mrs. Stoddart and your brother, I beg my best love; and to you all I wish health and happiness, and a _soon_ return to Old England.

I have sent to Mr. Burrel's for your kind present; but unfortunately he is not in town. I am impatient to see my fine silk handkerchiefs; and I thank you for them, not as a present, for I do not love presents, but as a [_word illegible_] remembrance of your old friend. Farewell.

I am, my best Sarah, Your most affectionate friend, MARY LAMB.

Good wishes, and all proper remembrances, from old nurse, Mrs. Jeffries, Mrs. Reynolds, Mrs. Rickman, &c. &c. &c.

Long live Queen Hoop-oop-oop-oo, and all the old merry phantoms!

LETTER 123

CHARLES LAMB TO SARAH STODDART (_Same letter_)

My dear Miss Stoddart,--Mary has written so fully to you, that I have nothing to add but that, in all the kindness she has exprest, and loving desire to see you again, I bear my full part. You will, perhaps, like to tear this half from the sheet, and give your brother only his strict due, the remainder. So I will just repay your late kind letter with this short postscript to hers. Come over here, and let us all be merry again.

C. LAMB.

[Coleridge reached Valetta on May 18, 1804; but no opportunity to send letters home occurred until June 5. Miss Stoddart seems to have given up all her lovers at home in the hope of finding one in Malta.

"The blessed distance." Here Mary Lamb throws out an idea afterwards developed by her brother in the Elia essay on "Distant Correspondents."

Lamb's letter to Stoddart containing the complaint as to postage no longer exists. Mrs. Stoddart, Sarah's mother, had remained in England, at Salisbury.

Of Mr. Burrel I know nothing: he was probably an agent; nor can I explain Queen Hoop-oop-oop-oo.

Here should come a letter from Lamb to Robert Lloyd, dated September 13, 1804, not available for this edition, in which Lamb expresses his inability to accept an invitation, having had a month's holiday at Richmond. After alluding to Priscilla Lloyd's approaching marriage (to Christopher Wordsworth) he says that these new nuptials do not make him the less satisfied with his bachelor state.]