The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb Volume V Part 57

But to speak seriously. I mean, when we mean [? meet], that we will lay our heads together, and consult and contrive the best way of making the best girl in the world the fine Lady her brother wishes to see her; and believe me, Sarah, it is not so difficult a matter as one is sometimes apt to imagine. I have observed many a demure Lady, who pa.s.ses muster admirably well, who, I think, we could easily learn to imitate in a week or two. We will talk of these things when we meet. In the mean time, I give you free license to be happy and merry at Salisbury in any way you can. Has the partridge-season opened any communication between you and William--as I allow you to be imprudent till I see you, I shall expect to hear you have invited him to taste his own birds. Have you scratched him out of your will yet? Rickman is married, and that is all the news I have to send you.

Your Wigs were sent by Mr. Varvell about five months ago; therefore, he could have arrived when you came away.

I seem, upon looking over my letter again, to have written too lightly of your distresses at Malta; but, however I may have written, believe me, I enter very feelingly into all your troubles. I love you, and I love your brother; and between you, both of whom I think have been to blame, I know not what to say--only this I say, try to think as little as possible of past miscarriages; it was, perhaps, so ordered by Providence, that you might return home to be a comfort to your poor Mother. And do not, I conjure you, let her unhappy malady afflict you too deeply. I speak from experience, and from the opportunity I have had of much observation in such cases, that insane people, in the fancy's they take into their heads, do not feel as one in a sane state of mind does under the real evil of poverty, the perception of having done wrong, or any such thing that runs in their heads.

Think as little as you can, and let your whole care be to be certain that she is treated with _tenderness_. I lay a stress upon this, because it is a thing of which people in her state are uncommonly susceptible, and which hardly any one is at all aware of: a hired nurse never, even though in all other respects they are good kind of people. I do not think your own presence necessary, unless she _takes to you very much_, except for the purpose of seeing with your own eyes that she is very kindly treated.

I do so long to see you! G.o.d bless and comfort you!

Yours affectionately, M. LAMB.

[Miss Stoddart had now returned to England, to her mother at Salisbury, who had been and was very ill. Coleridge meanwhile had had coolnesses with Stoddart and had transferred himself to the roof of the Governor.

Rickman married, on October 30, 1805, Susanna Postlethwaite of Harting, in Suss.e.x.]

LETTER 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 pa.s.sing 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 ill.u.s.trate 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 s.h.a.ggy 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 quant.i.ty 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 G.o.d 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 f.a.n.n.y Imlay, alias G.o.dwin: 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. n.o.body 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 s.p.u.n.ky 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.--G.o.dwin 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 G.o.dwin'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 pa.s.sage 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 G.o.dwin. Mrs. Professor was Mrs. G.o.dwin.

"Miss Dawe." I know nothing further of George Dawe's sister. f.a.n.n.y Imlay was the unfortunate daughter of Mary Wollstonecraft G.o.dwin (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 f.a.n.n.y 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 Ill.u.s.trious 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. G.o.d 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 a.s.sure 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.