The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb Volume V Part 64

LETTER 157

MARY LAMB TO SARAH STODDART [P.M. October 23, 1806.]

My dear Sarah--I thank you a thousand times for the beautiful work you have sent me, I received the parcel from a strange gentleman yesterday.

I like the patterns very much, you have quite set me up in finery, but you should have sent the silk handkerchief too. Will you make a parcel of that and send it by the Salisbury coach--I should like to have it in a few days because we have not yet been to Mr. Babbs and that handkerchief would suit this time of year nicely.

I have received a long letter from your brother on the subject of your intended marriage. I have no doubt but you also have one on this business, therefore it is needless to repeat what he says. I am well pleased to find that upon the whole he does not seem to see it in an unfavorable light. He says that, if Mr. D. is a worthy man he shall have no objection to become the brother of a farmer, and he makes an odd request to me that I shall set out to Salisbury to look at and examine into the merits of the said Mr. D., and speaks very confidently as if you would abide by my determination. A pretty sort of an office truly.--Shall I come?

The objections he starts are only such as you and I have already talked over, such as the difference in age, education, habits of life, &c.

You have gone too far in this affair for any interference to be at all desirable, and if you had not, I really do not know what my wishes would be. When you bring Mr. Dowling at Christmas I suppose it will be quite time enough for me to sit in judgement upon him, but my examination will not be a very severe one. If you fancy a very young man, and he likes an elderly gentlewoman; if he likes a learned and accomplished lady, and you like a not very learned youth, who may need a little polishing, which probably he will never acquire; it is all very well, and G.o.d bless you both together and may you be both very long in the same mind.

I am to a.s.sist you too, your brother says, in drawing up the marriage settlements--another thankful office! I am not, it seems, to suffer you to keep too much money in your own power, and yet I am to take care of you in case of bankruptcy &c., and I am to recommend to you, for the better management of this point, the serious perusal of _Jeremy Taylor_ his opinion on the marriage state, especially his advice against _separate interests_ in that happy state, and I am also to tell you how desirable it is that the husband should have the intire direction of all money concerns, except, as your good brother adds, in the case of his own family, where the money, he observes, is very properly deposited in Mrs. Stoddart's hands, she being better suited to enjoy such a trust than any other woman, and therefore it is fit that the general rule should not be extended to her.

We will talk over these things when you come to town, and as to settlements, which are matters of which, I never having had a penny in my own disposal, I never in my life thought of--and if I had been blessed with a good fortune, and that marvellous blessing to boot, a husband, I verily believe I should have crammed it all uncounted into his pocket--But thou hast a cooler head of thy own, and I dare say will do exactly what is expedient and proper, but your brother's opinion seems somewhat like Mr. Barwis's and I dare say you will take it into due consideration, yet perhaps an offer of your own money to take a farm may make _uncle_ do less for his nephew, and in that case Mr. D. might be a loser by your generosity. Weigh all these things well, and if you can so contrive it, let your brother _settle_ the _settlements_ himself when he returns, which will most probably be long before you want them.

You are settled, it seems, in the very house which your brother most dislikes. If you find this house very inconvenient, get out of it as fast as you can, for your brother says he sent you the fifty pound to make you comfortable, and by the general tone of his letter I am sure he wishes to make you easy in money matters: therefore why straiten yourself to pay the debt you owe him, which I am well a.s.sured he never means to take? Thank you for the letter and for the picture of pretty little chubby nephew John.

I have been busy making waistcoats and plotting new work to succeed the Tales. As yet I have not hit upon any thing to my mind.

Charles took an emendated copy of his farce to Mr. Wroughton the Manager yesterday. Mr. Wroughton was very friendly to him, and expressed high approbation of the farce, but there are two, he tells him, to come out before it, yet he gave him hopes that it will come out this season, but I am afraid you will not see it by Christmas. It will do for another jaunt for you in the spring. We are pretty well and in fresh spirits about this farce. Charles has been very good lately in the matter of _Smoking_.

When you come bring the gown you wish to sell. Mrs. Coleridge will be in town then, and if she happens not to fancy it, perhaps some other person may.

Coleridge I believe is gone home; he left us with that design but we have not heard from him this fortnight.

Louisa sends her love; she has been very unwell lately.

My respects to Coridon, Mother, and Aunty.

Farewel, my best wishes are with you.

Yours affectionately, M. LAMB.

Thursday.

When I saw what a prodigious quant.i.ty of work you had put into the finery I was quite ashamed of my unreasonable request, I will never serve you so again, but I do dearly love worked muslin.

[Sarah Stoddart now had a new lover, Mr. Dowling, to whom she seems actually to have become engaged. Mr. Barwis, I presume, was Mr.

Dowling's uncle. Coridon would, I imagine, be Mr. Dowling.]

LETTER 158

CHARLES LAMB TO THOMAS MANNING

5th Dec., 1806.

Tuthill is at Crabtree's who has married Tuthill's sister.

Manning, your letter dated Hottentots, August the what-was-it? came to hand. I can scarce hope that mine will have the same luck. China-- Canton--bless us--how it strains the imagination and makes it ache! I write under another uncertainty, whether it can go to-morrow by a ship which I have just learned is going off direct to your part of the world, or whether the despatches may not be sealed up and this have to wait, for if it is detained here, it will grow staler in a fortnight than in a five months' voyage coming to you. It will be a point of conscience to send you none but brand-new news (the latest edition), which will but grow the better, like oranges, for a sea voyage. Oh, that you should be so many hemispheres off--if I speak incorrectly you can correct me--why, the simplest death or marriage that takes place here must be important to you as news in the old Bastile. There's your friend Tuthill has got away from France--you remember France? and Tuthill?--ten-to-one but he writes by this post, if he don't get my note in time, apprising him of the vessel sailing. Know then that he has found means to obtain leave from Bonaparte without making use of any _incredible romantic pretences_ as some have done, who never meant to fulfil them, to come home; and I have seen him here and at Holcroft's. I have likewise seen his wife, this elegant little French woman whose hair reaches to her heels--by the same token that Tom (Tommy H.) took the comb out of her head, not expecting the issue, and it fell down to the ground to his utter consternation, two ells long. An't you glad about Tuthill? Now then be sorry for Holcroft, whose new play, called "The Vindictive Man," was d.a.m.ned about a fortnight since. It died in part of its own weakness, and in part for being choked up with bad actors. The two princ.i.p.al parts were destined to Mrs. Jordan and Mr. Bannister, but Mrs. J. has not come to terms with the managers, they have had some squabble, and Bannister shot some of his fingers off by the going off of a gun. So Miss Duncan had her part, and Mr. de Camp, a vulgar brother of Miss De Camp, took his. He is a fellow with the make of a jockey, and the air of a lamplighter. His part, the princ.i.p.al comic hope of the play, was most unluckily Goldfinch, taken out of the "Road to Ruin," not only the same character, but the identical Goldfinch--the same as Falstaff is in two plays of Shakspeare. As the devil of ill-luck would have it, half the audience did not know that H. had written it, but were displeased at his stealing from the "Road to Ruin;" and those who might have borne a gentlemanly c.o.xcomb with his "That's your sort," "Go it"--such as Lewis is--did not relish the intolerable vulgarity and inanity of the idea stript of his manner. De Camp was hooted, more than hist, hooted and bellowed off the stage before the second act was finished, so that the remainder of his part was forced to be, with some violence to the play, omitted. In addition to this, a wh.o.r.e was another princ.i.p.al character--a most unfortunate choice in this moral day. The audience were as scandalised as if you were to introduce such a personage to their private tea-tables. Besides, her action in the play was gross--wheedling an old man into marriage. But the mortal blunder of the play was that which, oddly enough, H. took pride in, and exultingly told me of the night before it came out, that there were no less than eleven princ.i.p.al characters in it, and I believe he meant of the men only, for the play-bill exprest as much, not reckoning one woman and one wh.o.r.e; and true it was, for Mr. Powell, Mr. Raymond, Mr. Bartlett, Mr. H. Siddons, Mr. Barrymore, &c. &c.,--to the number of eleven, had all parts equally prominent, and there was as much of them in quant.i.ty and rank as of the hero and heroine--and most of them gentlemen who seldom appear but as the hero's friend in a farce--for a minute or two--and here they all had their ten-minute speeches, and one of them gave the audience a serious account how he was now a lawyer but had been a poet, and then a long enumeration of the inconveniences of authorship, rascally booksellers, reviewers, &c.; which first set the audience a-gaping; but I have said enough. You will be so sorry, that you will not think the best of me for my detail; but news is news at Canton. Poor H. I fear will feel the disappointment very seriously in a pecuniary light. From what I can learn he has saved nothing. You and I were hoping one day that he had; but I fear he has nothing but his pictures and books, and a no very flourishing business, and to be obliged to part with his long-necked Guido that hangs opposite as you enter, and the game-piece that hangs in the back drawing-room, and all those Vand.y.k.es, &c.! G.o.d should temper the wind to the shorn connoisseur. I hope I need not say to you, that I feel for the weather-beaten author and for all his household. I a.s.sure you his fate has soured a good deal the pleasure I should have otherwise taken in my own little farce being accepted, and I hope about to be acted--it is in rehearsal actually, and I expect it to come out next week. It is kept a sort of secret, and the rehearsals have gone on privately, lest by many folks knowing it, the story should come out, which would infallibly d.a.m.n it. You remember I had sent it before you went. Wroughton read it, and was much pleased with it. I speedily got an answer. I took it to make alterations, and lazily kept it some months, then took courage and furbished it up in a day or two and took it. In less than a fortnight I heard the princ.i.p.al part was given to Elliston, who liked it, and only wanted a prologue, which I have since done and sent; and I had a note the day before yesterday from the manager, Wroughton (bless his fat face--he is not a bad actor in some things), to say that I should be summoned to the rehearsal after the next, which next was to be yesterday. I had no idea it was so forward. I have had no trouble, attended no reading or rehearsal, made no interest; what a contrast to the usual parade of authors! But it is peculiar to modesty to do all things without noise or pomp! I have some suspicion it will appear in public on Wednesday next, for W. says in his note, it is so forward that if wanted it may come out next week, and a new melo-drama is announced for every day till then: and "a new farce is in rehearsal,"

is put up in the bills. Now you'd like to know the subject. The t.i.tle is "Mr. H.," no more; how simple, how taking! A great H. sprawling over the play-bill and attracting eyes at every corner. The story is a c.o.xcomb appearing at Bath, vastly rich--all the ladies dying for him--all bursting to know who he is--but he goes by no other name than Mr. H.--a curiosity like that of the dames of Strasburg about the man with the great nose. But I won't tell you any more about it. Yes, I will; but I can't give you an idea how I have done it. I'll just tell you that after much vehement admiration, when his true name comes out, "Hogsflesh," all the women shun him, avoid him, and not one can be found to change their name for him--that's the idea--how flat it is here!--but how whimsical in the farce! and only think how hard upon me it is that the ship is despatched to-morrow, and my triumph cannot be ascertained till the Wednesday after--but all China will ring of it by and by. N.B. (But this is a secret). The Professor has got a tragedy coming out with the young Roscius in it in January next, as we say--January last it will be with you--and though it is a profound secret now, as all his affairs are, it cannot be much of one by the time you read this. However, don't let it go any further. I understand there are dramatic exhibitions in China.

One would not like to be forestalled. Do you find in all this stuff I have written anything like those feelings which one should send my old adventuring friend, that is gone to wander among Tartars and may never come again? I don't--but your going away, and all about you, is a threadbare topic. I have worn it out with thinking--it has come to me when I have been dull with anything, till my sadness has seemed more to have come from it than to have introduced it. I want you, you don't know how much--but if I had you here in my European garret, we should but talk over such stuff as I have written--so--. Those "Tales from Shakespear" are near coming out, and Mary has begun a new work. Mr. Dawe is turned author: he has been in such a way lately--Dawe the painter, I mean--he sits and stands about at Holcroft's and says nothing--then sighs and leans his head on his hand. I took him to be in love--but it seems he was only meditating a work,--"The Life of Morland,"--the young man is not used to composition. Rickman and Captain Burney are well; they a.s.semble at my house pretty regularly of a Wednesday--a new inst.i.tution. Like other great men I have a public day, cribbage and pipes, with Phillips and noisy Martin.

Good Heaven! what a bit only I've got left! How shall I squeeze all I know into this morsel! Coleridge is come home, and is going to turn lecturer on taste at the Royal Inst.i.tution. I shall get 200 from the theatre if "Mr. H." has a good run, and I hope 100 for the copyright.

Nothing if it fails; and there never was a more ticklish thing. The whole depends on the manner in which the name is brought out, which I value myself on, as a _chef-d'oeuvre_. How the paper grows less and less! In less than two minutes I shall cease to talk to you, and you may rave to the Great Wall of China. N.B. Is there such a wall! Is it as big as Old London Wall by Bedlam? Have you met with a friend of mine, named Ball, at Canton?--if you are acquainted, remember me kindly to him.

Amongst many queer cattle I have and do meet with at the India Ho. I always liked his behaviour. Tell him his friend Evans &c. are well.

Woodruff not dead yet. May-be, you'll think I have not said enough of Tuthill and the Holcrofts. Tuthill is a n.o.ble fellow, as far as I can judge. The Holcrofts bear their disappointment pretty well, but indeed they are sadly mortified. Mrs. H. is cast down. It was well, if it were but on this account, that Tuthill is come home. N.B. If my little thing don't succeed, I shall easily survive, having, as it were, compared to H.'s venture, but a sixteenth in the lottery. Mary and I are to sit next the orchestra in the pit, next the tweedledees. She remembers you. You are more to us than five hundred farces, clappings, &c.

Come back one day. C. LAMB.

[The letter is addressed to T. Manning, Esq., Canton. At the end Lamb adds:--

"Holcroft has just writ to me as follows:--

"'DEAR SIR, Miss L. has informed us you are writing to Manning. Will you be kind enough to inform him directly from me that I and my family are most truly anxious for his safety; that if praying could bring down blessings on him we should pray morning noon and night; that his and our good friends the Tuthills are once more happily safe in England, and that I earnestly entreat not only a single letter but a correspondence with him whenever the thing [is] practicable, with such an address as may make letters from me likely to find him. In short, dear sir, if you will be kind enough to speak of me to Manning, you cannot speak with greater friendship and respect than I feel.

"'Yours with true friendship and kindness.'"

In the beginning of this letter we see the first germ of an idea afterwards developed in the letter to Barren Field of August 31, 1817, and again, more fully, in the _Elia_ essay "Distant Correspondents."

Tuthill, afterwards Sir George Leman Tuthill (1772-1835), was the physician who, on a visit to Paris, was included among the English _detenus_ and held a captive for several years. He was released only after his wife had made a personal appeal to Napoleon on his return from hunting. The words "incredible romantic pretences" refer chaffingly to Manning's application to Napoleon for liberty to return to England two or three years previously. Holcroft's "Vindictive Man" was produced at Drury Lane on November 20, 1806. It was a complete failure. His "Road to Ruin," produced in 1792 at Covent Garden, with "Gentleman" Lewis as Goldfinch, had been a great success and is still occasionally played.

Holcroft was also a very voluminous author and translator, and the partner of his brother-in-law, Mercier, in a printing business, which, however, was unprofitable. Tommy was Holcroft's son.

"The dames of Strasburg"--in _Tristram Shandy_, Vol. IV.

"The Professor has a tragedy." This was "Faulkener," for which Lamb wrote the prologue. Owing to the capriciousness of Master Betty, the Young Roscius, it was not produced until December 16, 1807, and then with Elliston in the princ.i.p.al part. It was only partially successful, a result for which G.o.dwin blamed Holcroft, who had revised the play.

Mary Lamb's new work was Mrs. Leicester's School.

"Mr. Dawe is turned author." The Life of George Morland, by George Dawe, was published in 1807.

Coleridge's intended series of lectures on Taste was abandoned. He did not actually deliver any until January 12, 1808.]

LETTER 159

CHARLES LAMB TO WILLIAM WORDSWORTH

[Dated at end: December 11, 1806.]