The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb Volume V Part 77

My dear Sarah,--I have taken a large sheet of paper, as if I were going to write a long letter; but that is by no means my intention, for I only have time to write three lines to notify what I ought to have done the moment I received your welcome letter. Namely, that I shall be very much joyed to see you. Every morning lately I have been expecting to see you drop in, even before your letter came; and I have been setting my wits to work to think how to make you as comfortable as the nature of our inhospitable habits will admit. I must work while you are here; and I have been slaving very hard to get through with something before you come, that I may be quite in the way of it, and not teize you with complaints all day that I do not know what to do.

I am very sorry to hear of your mischance. Mrs. Rickman has just buried her youngest child. I am glad I am an old maid; for, you see, there is nothing but misfortunes in the marriage state.

Charles was drunk last night, and drunk the night before; which night before was at G.o.dwin's, where we went, at a short summons from Mr. G., to play a solitary rubber, which was interrupted by the entrance of Mr.

and little Mrs. Liston; and after them came Henry Robinson, who is now domesticated at Mr. G.o.dwin's fireside, and likely to become a formidable rival to Tommy Turner. We finished there at twelve o'clock (Charles and Liston brim-full of gin and water and snuff): after which Henry Robinson spent a long evening by our fireside at home; and there was much gin and water drunk, albeit only one of the party partook of it. And H.R.

professed himself highly indebted to Charles for the useful information he gave him on sundry matters of taste and imagination, even after Charles could not speak plain for tipsiness. But still he swallowed the flattery and the spirits as savourily as Robinson did his cold water.

Last night was to be a night, but it was not. There was a certain son of one of Martin's employers, one young Mr. Blake; to do whom honour, Mrs.

Burney brought forth, first rum, then a single bottle of champaine, long kept in her secret h.o.a.rd; then two bottles of her best currant wine, which she keeps for Mrs. Rickman, came out; and Charles partook liberally of all these beverages, while Mr. Young Blake and Mr. Ireton talked of high matters, such as the merits of the Whip Club, and the merits of red and white champaine. Do I spell that last word right?

Rickman was not there, so Ireton had it all his own way.

The alternating Wednesdays will chop off one day in the week from your jolly days, and I do not know how we shall make it up to you; but I will contrive the best I can. Phillips comes again pretty regularly, to the great joy of Mrs. Reynolds. Once more she hears the well-loved sounds of, 'How do you do, Mrs. Reynolds? How does Miss Chambers do?'

I have spun out my three lines amazingly. Now for family news. Your brother's little twins are not dead, but Mrs. John Hazlitt and her baby may be, for any thing I know to the contrary, for I have not been there for a prodigious long time. Mrs. Holcroft still goes about from Nicholson to Tuthil, and from Tuthil to G.o.dwin, and from G.o.dwin to Tuthil, and from Tuthil to G.o.dwin, and from G.o.dwin to Tuthil, and from Tuthil to Nicholson, to consult on the publication, or no publication, of the life of the good man, her husband. It is called the Life Everlasting. How does that same Life go on in your parts? Good bye, G.o.d bless you. I shall be glad to see you when you come this way.

Yours most affectionately,

M. LAMB.

I am going in great haste to see Mrs. Clarkson, for I must get back to dinner, which I have hardly time to do. I wish that dear, good, amiable woman would go out of town. I thought she was clean gone; and yesterday there was a consultation of physicians held at her house, to see if they could keep her among them here a few weeks longer.

[This letter is dated by Mr. Hazlitt November 30, 1810, but I doubt if that can be right. See extract from Crabb Robinson above, testifying to Lamb's sobriety between November 9 and December 23.

Liston was John Liston (1776?-1846), the actor, whose mock biography Lamb wrote some years later (see Vol. I. of this edition). His wife was a diminutive comedienne, famous as Queen Dollalolla in "Tom Thumb." Lamb may have known Liston through the Burneys, for he is said to have been an usher in Dr. Burney's school--Dr. Charles Burney, Captain Burney's brother.

"Henry Robinson." Crabb Robinson's _Diary_ shows us that his domestication by G.o.dwin's fireside was not of long duration. I do not know who Tommy Turner was. Mr. Ireton was probably William Ayrton, the musical critic, a friend and neighbour of the Burneys, and later a friend of the Lambs, as we shall see.

"The alternating Wednesdays." The Lambs seem to have given up their weekly Wednesday evening, which now became fortnightly. Later it was: changed to Thursday and made monthly.

Mrs. Reynolds had been a Miss Chambers.]

LETTER 198

MARY LAMB TO MATILDA BETHAM

[No date. Feb., 1811.]

My dear Matilda,--Coleridge has given me a very chearful promise that he will wait on Lady Jerningham any day you will be pleased to appoint; he offered to write to you; but I found it was to be done _tomorrow_, and as I am pretty well acquainted with his tomorrows, I thought good to let you know his determination _today_. He is in town today, but as he is often going to Hammersmith for a night or two, you had better perhaps send the invitation through me, and I will manage it for you as well as I can. You had better let him have four or five days' previous notice, and you had better send the invitation as soon as you can; for he seems tolerably well just now. I mention all these betters, because I wish to do the best I can for you, perceiving, as I do, it is a thing you have set your heart upon. He dined one [d]ay in company with Catilana (is that the way you spell her Italian name?--I am reading Sall.u.s.t, and had like to have written Catiline). How I should have liked, and how you would have liked, to have seen Coleridge and Catilana together!

You have been very good of late to let me come and see you so seldom, and you are a little goodish to come so seldom here, because you stay away from a kind motive. But if you stay away always, as I fear you mean to do, I would not give one pin for your good intentions. In plain words, come and see me very soon; for though I be not sensitive as some people, I begin to feel strange qualms for having driven you from me.

Yours affectionately,

M. LAMB.

Wednesday.

Alas! Wednesday shines no more to me now.

Miss Duncan played famously in the new comedy, which went off as famously. By the way, she put in a spiteful piece of wit, I verily believe of her own head; and methought she stared me full in the face.

The words were "As silent as an author in company." Her hair and herself looked remarkably well.

[Angelica Catalani (1782-1849) was the great singer. I find no record of Coleridge's meeting with her.

"Miss Duncan." Praise of this lady in Miss Hardcastle and other parts will be found in Leigh Hunt's _Critical Essays on the Performers of the London Theatres_, 1807. At this time she was playing with the Drury Lane Company at the Lyceum. They produced several new plays.]

LETTER 199

(Fragment)

CHARLES LAMB TO JOHN MORGAN

[Dated at end: March 8, 1811.]

There--don't read any further, because the Letter is not intended for you but for Coleridge, who might perhaps not have opened it directed to him suo nomine. It is to invite C. to Lady Jerningham's on Sunday. Her address is to be found within. We come to Hammersmith notwithstanding on Sunday, and hope Mrs. M. will not think of getting us Green Peas or any such expensive luxuries. A plate of plain Turtle, another of Turbot, with good roast Beef in the rear, and, as Alderman Curtis says, whoever can't make a dinner of that ought to be d.a.m.n'd. C. LAMB.

Friday night, 8 Mar., 1811.

[This is Lamb's only existing letter to Coleridge's friend, John Morgan.

Coleridge had not found a lodging and was still with the Morgans at 7 Portland Place, Hammersmith.

Alderman Sir William Curtis, M.P., afterwards Lord Mayor of London, was the subject of much ridicule by the Whigs and Radicals, and the hero of Peter Pindar's satire "The Fat Knight and the Pet.i.tion." It was he who first gave the toast of the three R.'s--"reading, riting and rithmetic."]

LETTER 200

MARY LAMB TO SARAH HAZLITT

2 Oct., 1811.

Temple.

My dear Sarah,--I have been a long time anxiously expecting the happy news that I have just received. I address you because, as the letter has been lying some days at the India House, I hope you are able to sit up and read my congratulations on the little live boy you have been so many years wishing for. As we old women say, 'May he live to be a great comfort to you!' I never knew an event of the kind that gave me so much pleasure as the little long-looked-for-come-at-last's arrival; and I rejoiced to hear his honour has begun to suck--the word was not distinctly written and I was a long time making out the solemn fact. I hope to hear from you soon, for I am desirous to know if your nursing labours are attended with any difficulties. I wish you a happy _getting-up_, and a merry christening.

Charles sends his love, perhaps though he will write a sc.r.a.p to Hazlitt at the end. He is now looking over me, he is always in my way, for he has had a month's holydays at home, but I am happy to say they end on Monday--when mine begin, for I am going to pa.s.s a week at Richmond with Mrs. Burney. She has been dying, but she went to the Isle of Wight and recovered once more, and she is finishing her recovery at Richmond. When there I intend to read Novels and play at Piquet all day long.