The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb Volume V Part 69

Yours truly, C. LAMB.

Sat.u.r.day, 12 Mar., 1808.

[This is the first letter to Henry Crabb Robinson (1775-1867), whom Lamb was destined to know very intimately, and to whose _Diary_ we are indebted for much of our information concerning the Lambs. Robinson, who was only a month younger than Lamb, had been connected with the _Times_ as foreign correspondent and foreign editor; in November, 1809, he gave up journalism and began to keep his terms at the Middle Temple, rising in time to be leader of the Norfolk Circuit. We shall see much more of him. He knew Lamb well enough to accompany him, his sister and Hazlitt to "Mr. H." in December, 1806.

Wordsworth left on April 3, by which time Coleridge was sufficiently recovered to give two more lectures. The series closed in June.

Coleridge then went to Bury St. Edmunds to see the Clarksons, and then to Grasmere, to the Wordsworths. His separation from Mrs. Coleridge had already occurred, he and his wife remaining, however, on friendly terms.]

LETTER 173

MARY LAMB TO SARAH STODDART

[P.M. March 16, 1808.]

My dear Sarah,--Do not be very angry that I have not written to you. I have promised your brother to be at your wedding, and that favor you must accept as an atonement for my offences--you have been in no want of correspondence lately, and I wished to leave you both to your own inventions.

The border you are working for me I prize at a very high rate because I consider it as the last work you can do for me, the time so fast approaching when you must no longer work for your friends. Yet my old fault of giving away presents has not left me, and I am desirous of even giving away this your last gift. I had intended to have given it away without your knowledge, but I have intrusted my secret to Hazlitt, and I suppose it will not remain a secret long, so I condescend to consult you. It is to Miss Hazlitt, to whose superior claim I wish to give up my right to this precious worked border. Her brother William is her great favorite, and she would be pleased to possess his bride's last work. Are you not to give the fellow-border to one sister-in-law, and therefore has she not a just claim to it?--I never heard in the annals of weddings (since the days of Nausicaa, and she only washed her old gowns for that purpose) that the brides ever furnished the apparel of their maids.

Besides, I can be completely clad in your work without it, for the spotted muslin will serve both for cap and hat (Nota bene, my hat is the same as yours) and the gown you sprigged for me has never been made up, therefore I can wear that--Or, if you like better, I will make up a new silk which Manning has sent me from China. Manning would like to hear I wore it for the first time at your wedding. It is a very pretty light colour, but there is an objection (besides not being your work and that is a very serious objection) and that is, Mrs. Hazlitt tells me that all Winterslow would be in an uproar if the bridemaid was to be dressed in anything but white, and although it is a very light colour I confess we cannot call it white, being a sort of a dead-whiteish-bloom colour; then silk, perhaps, in a morning is not so proper, though the occasion, so joyful, might justify a full dress. Determine for me in this perplexity between the sprig and the China-Manning silk. But do not contradict my whim about Miss Hazlitt having the border, for I have set my heart upon the matter: if you agree with me in this I shall think you have forgiven me for giving away your pin; and that was a _mad_ trick, but I had many obligations and no money. I repent me of the deed, wishing I had it now to send to Miss H. with the border, and I cannot, will not, give her the Doctor's pin, for having never had any presents from gentlemen in my young days, I highly prize all they now give me, thinking my latter days are better than my former.

You must send this same border in your own name to Miss Hazlitt, which will save me the disgrace of giving away your gift, and make it amount merely to a civil refusal.

I shall have no present to give you on your marriage, nor do I expect that I shall be rich enough to give anything to baby at the first christening, but at the second, or third child's I hope to have a coral or so to spare out of my own earnings. Do not ask me to be G.o.dmother, for I have an objection to that--but there is I believe, no serious duties attached to a bride's maid, therefore I come with a willing mind, bringing nothing with me but many wishes, and not a few hopes, and a very little of fears of happy years to come.

I am dear Sarah Yours ever most affectionately M. LAMB.

What has Charles done that n.o.body invites him to the wedding?

[The wedding was on May 1, 1808. Originally it was intended to perform the ceremony at Winterslow, but London was actually the place: St.

Andrew's, Holborn. Mary Lamb was a bridesmaid and Charles Lamb was present. He told Southey in a letter some years after: "I was at Hazlitt's marriage, and had like to have been turned out several times during the ceremony. Anything awful makes me laugh."

The episode of Nausicaa, to which Mary Lamb refers, had just been rewritten by Charles Lamb in the _Adventures of Ulysses_.]

LETTER 174

CHARLES LAMB TO GEORGE DYER

From my Desk in Leadenhall Street,

Decr 5, 1808.

Dear Dyer,--Coleridge is not so bad as your fears have represented him; it is true that he is Bury'd, altho' he is not dead; to understand this quibble you must know that he is at Bury St. Edmunds, relaxing, after the fatigues of lecturing and Londonizing. The little Rickmaness, whom you enquire after so kindly, thrives and grows apace; she is already a prattler, and 'tis thought that on some future day she may be a speaker.

[This was Mrs. Lefroy.] We hold our weekly meetings still at No. 16, where altho' we are not so high as the top of Malvern, we are involved in almost as much mist. Miss B[etham]'s merit "in every point of view,"

I am not disposed to question, altho' I have not been indulged with any view of that lady, back, side, or front--_fie!_ Dyer, to praise a female in such common market phrases--you who are held so courtly and so attentive. My book is not yet out, that is not my "Extracts," my "Ulysses" is, and waits your acceptance. When you shall come to town, I hope to present you both together--never think of buying the "Extracts"--half guinea books were never calculated for my friends.

Those poets have started up since your departure; William Hazlitt, your friend and mine, is putting to press a collection of verses, chiefly amatory, some of them pretty enough. How these painters encroach on our province! There's Hoppner, Shee, Westall, and I don't know who besides, and Tresham. It seems on confession, that they are not at the top of their own art, when they seek to eke out their fame with the a.s.sistance of another's; no large tea-dealer sells cheese; no great silversmith sells razorstrops; it is only your petty dealers who mix commodities. If Nero had been a great Emperor, he would never have played the Violoncello! Who ever caught you, Dyer, designing a landscape, or taking a likeness? I have no more to add, who am the friend of virtue, poetry, painting, therefore in an especial manner,

Unalterably Thine C. LAMB.

LETTER 175

MARY LAMB TO SARAH HAZLITT (LATE STODDART)

December 10th, 1808.

My dear Sarah,--I hear of you from your brother; but you do not write yourself, nor does Hazlitt. I beg that one or both of you will amend this fault as speedily as possible, for I am very anxious to hear of your health. I hope, as you say nothing about your fall to your brother, you are perfectly recovered from the effects of it.

You cannot think how very much we miss you and H. of a Wednesday evening. All the glory of the night, I may say, is at an end. Phillips makes his jokes, and there is no one to applaud him; Rickman argues, and there is no one to oppose him.

The worst miss of all to me is, that, when we are in the dismals, there is now no hope of relief from any quarter whatsoever. Hazlitt was most brilliant, most ornamental, as a Wednesday-man; but he was a more useful one on common days, when he dropt in after a quarrel or a fit of the glooms. The Skeffington is quite out now, my brother having got drunk with claret and Tom Sheridan. This visit, and the occasion of it, is a profound secret, and therefore I tell it to n.o.body but you and Mrs.

Reynolds. Through the medium of Wroughton, there came an invitation and proposal from T.S., that C.L. should write some scenes in a speaking pantomime, the other parts of which Tom now, and his father formerly, have manufactured between them. So, in the Christmas holydays, my brother and his two great a.s.sociates, we expect, will be all three d.a.m.ned together: this is, I mean, if Charles's share, which is done and sent in, is accepted.

I left this unfinished yesterday, in the hope that my brother would have done it for me: his reason for refusing me was 'no exquisite reason;'

for it was, because he must write a letter to Manning in three or four weeks, and therefore he could not be always writing letters, he said. I wanted him to tell your husband about a great work which G.o.dwin is going to publish, to enlighten the world once more, and I shall not be able to make out what it is. He (G.o.dwin) took his usual walk one evening, a fortnight since, to the end of Hatton Garden and back again. During that walk, a thought came into his mind, which he instantly set down and improved upon, till he brought it, in seven or eight days, into the compa.s.s of a reasonable sized pamphlet. To propose a subscription to all well disposed people, to raise a certain sum of money, to be expended in the care of a cheap monument for the former and the future great dead men,--the monument to be a white cross, with a wooden slab at the end, telling their names and qualifications. This wooden slab and white cross to be perpetuated to the end of time. To survive the fall of empires and the destruction of cities by means of a map, which was, in case of an insurrection among the people, or any other cause by which a city or country may be destroyed, to be carefully preserved; and then, when things got again into their usual order, the white-cross-wooden-slab-makers were to go to work again, and set them in their former places. This, as nearly as I can tell you, is the sum and substance of it, but it is written remarkably well, in his very best manner; for the proposal (which seems to me very like throwing salt on a sparrow's tail to catch him) occupies but half a page, which is followed by very fine writing on the benefits he conjectures would follow if it were done. Very excellent thoughts on death, and on our feelings concerning dead friends, and the advantages an old country has over a new one, even in the slender memorials we have of great men who once flourished.

Charles is come home, and wants his dinner; and so the dead men must be no more thought on: tell us how you go on, and how you like Winterslow and winter evenings.

Noales [Knowles] has not got back again, but he is in better spirits.

John Hazlitt was here on Wednesday, very sober.

Our love to Hazlitt.

Yours affectionately, M. LAMB.

LETTER 176

CHARLES LAMB TO MRS. HAZLITT

(_Added to same letter_)

Sat.u.r.day.

There came this morning a printed prospectus from S.T. Coleridge, Grasmere, of a weekly paper, to be called The Friend--a flaming prospectus--I have no time to give the heads of it--to commence first Sat.u.r.day in January. There came also a notice of a Turkey from Mr.

Clarkson, which I am more sanguine in expecting the accomplishment of than I am of Coleridge's prophecy.