The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb Volume VI Part 47

I expect a pacquet of ma.n.u.script from you: you promised me the office of negotiating with booksellers, and so forth, for your next work. Is it in good forwardness? or do you grow rich and indolent now? It is not surprising that your Maltese story should find its way into Malta; but I was highly pleased with the idea of your pleasant surprise at the sight of it. I took a large sheet of paper, in order to leave Charles room to add something more worth reading than my poor mite.

May we all meet again once more!

M. LAMB.

LETTER 423

CHARLES LAMB TO SIR JOHN STODDART

(_Same letter: Lamb's share_)

Dear Knight--Old Acquaintance--'Tis with a violence to the _pure imagination_ (_vide_ the "Excursion" _pa.s.sim_) that I can bring myself to believe I am writing to Dr. Stoddart once again, at Malta. But the deductions of severe reason warrant the proceeding. I write from Enfield, where we are seriously weighing the advantages of dulness over the over-excitement of too much company, but have not yet come to a conclusion. What is the news? for we see no paper here; perhaps you can send us an old one from Malta. Only, I heard a butcher in the market-place whisper something about a change of ministry. I don't know who's in or out, or care, only as it might affect _you_. For domestic doings, I have only to tell, with extreme regret, that poor Elisa Fenwick (that was)--Mrs. Rutherford--is dead; and that we have received a most heart-broken letter from her mother--left with four grandchildren, orphans of a living scoundrel lurking about the pothouses of Little Russell Street, London: they and she--G.o.d help 'em!--at New York. I have just received G.o.dwin's third volume of the _Republic_, which only reaches to the commencement of the Protectorate. I think he means to spin it out to his life's thread. Have you seen Fearn's _Anti-Tooke_? I am no judge of such things--you are; but I think it very clever indeed. If I knew your bookseller, I'd order it for you at a venture: 'tis two octavos, Longman and Co. Or do you read now? Tell it not in the Admiralty Court, but my head aches _hesterno vino_. I can scarce pump up words, much less ideas, congruous to be sent so far. But your son must have this by to-night's post.[_Here came a pa.s.sage relating to an escapade of young Stoddart, then at the Charterhouse, which, probably through Lamb's intervention, was treated leniently. Lamb helped him--with his imposition-- Gray's "Elegy" into Greek elegiacs_.]

Manning is gone to Rome, Naples, etc., probably to touch at Sicily, Malta, Guernsey, etc.; but I don't know the map. Hazlitt is resident at Paris, whence he pours his lampoons in safety at his friends in England.

He has his boy with him. I am teaching Emma Latin. By the time you can answer this, she will be qualified to instruct young ladies: she is a capital English reader: and S.T.C. acknowledges that a part of a pa.s.sage in Milton she read better than he, and part he read best, her part being the shorter. But, seriously, if Lady St------ (oblivious pen, that was about to write _Mrs._!) could hear of such a young person wanted (she smatters of French, some Italian, music of course), we'd send our loves by her. My congratulations and a.s.surances of old esteem. C.L.

[Stoddart had been appointed in 1826 Chief-Justice and Justice of the Vice-Admiralty Court in Malta and had been knighted in the same year.

His daughter Isabella had just married. Lady Stoddart's literary efforts did not, I think, reach print.

"The deductions of severe reason." See the quotation from Cottle in the letter to Manning of November, 1802.

"A change of ministry." On Liverpool's resignation early in 1827 Canning had been called in to form a new Ministry, which he effected by an alliance with the Whigs.

"G.o.dwin's _Republic_"--_History of the Commonwealth of England_, in four volumes, 1824-1828.

"Fearn's _Anti-Tooke_"--_Anti-Tooke; or, An a.n.a.lysis of the Principles and Structure of Language Exemplified in the English Tongue_, 1824.

Here should come a note from Lamb to Hone, dated August 10, 1827, in which Lamb expresses regret for Matilda Hone's illness.]

LETTER 424

CHARLES LAMB TO BERNARD BARTON

[P.M. 10 August, 1827.]

Dear B.B.--I have not been able to: answer you, for we have had, and are having (I just s.n.a.t.c.h a moment), our poor quiet retreat, to which we fled from society, full of company, some staying with us, and this moment as I write almost a heavy importation of two old Ladies has come in. Whither can I take wing from the oppression of human faces? Would I were in a wilderness of Apes, tossing cocoa nuts about, grinning and grinned at!

Mitford was hoaxing you surely about my Engraving, 'tis a little sixpenny thing, too like by half, in which the draughtsman has done his best to avoid flattery. There have been 2 editions of it, which I think are all gone, as they have vanish'd from the window where they hung, a print shop, corner of Great and Little Queen Streets, Lincolns Inn fields, where any London friend of yours may inquire for it; for I am (tho' you _won't understand_ it) at Enfield (Mrs. Leishman's, Chase). We have been here near 3 months, and shall stay 2 or more, if people will let us alone, but they persecute us from village to village. So don't direct to _Islington_ again, till further notice.

I am trying my hand at a Drama, in 2 acts, founded on Crabbe's "Confidant," mutatis mutandis.

You like the Odyssey. Did you ever read my "Adventures of Ulysses,"

founded on Chapman's old translation of it? for children or _men_. Ch.

is divine, and my abridgment has not quite emptied him of his divinity.

When you come to town I'll show it you.

You have well described your old fashioned Grand-paternall Hall. Is it not odd that every one's earliest recollections are of some such place.

I had my Blakesware (Blakesmoor in the "London"). Nothing fills a childs mind like a large old Mansion [_one or two words wafered over_]; better if un-or-partially-occupied; peopled with the spirits of deceased members of [for] the County and Justices of the Quorum. Would I were buried in the peopled solitude of one, with my feelings at 7 years old.

Those marble busts of the Emperors, they seem'd as if they were to stand for ever, as they had stood from the living days of Rome, in that old Marble Hall, and I to partake of their permanency; Eternity was, while I thought not of Time. But he thought of me, and they are toppled down, and corn covers the spot of the n.o.ble old Dwelling and its princely gardens. I feel like a gra.s.shopper that chirping about the grounds escaped his scythe only by my littleness. Ev'n now he is whetting one of his smallest razors to clean wipe me out, perhaps. Well!

["My Engraving"--Brook Pulham's caricature.

"You have well described your ... Grand-paternall Hall." Barton wrote the following account of this house, the home of his step-grandfather at Tottenham; but I do not know whether it is the same that Lamb saw:--

My most delightful recollections of boyhood are connected with the fine old country-house in a green lane diverging from the high road which runs through Tottenham. I would give seven years of life as it now is, for a week of that which I then led. It was a large old house, with an iron palisade and a pair of iron gates in front, and a huge stone eagle on each pier. Leading up to the steps by which you went up to the hall door, was a wide gravel walk, bordered in summer time by huge tubs, in which were orange and lemon trees, and in the centre of the gra.s.s-plot stood a tub yet huger, holding an enormous aloe, The hall itself, to my fancy then lofty and wide as a cathedral would seem now, was a famous place for battledore and shuttlec.o.c.k; and behind was a garden, equal to that of old Alcinous himself. My favourite walk was one of turf by a long straight pond, bordered with lime-trees. But the whole demesne was the fairy ground of my childhood; and its presiding genius was grandpapa. He must have been a very handsome man in his youth, for I remember him at nearly eighty, a very fine-looking one, even in the decay of mind and body. In the morning a velvet cap; by dinner, a flaxen wig; his features always expressive of benignity and placid cheerfulness.

When he walked out into the garden, his c.o.c.ked hat and amber-headed cane completed his costume. To the recollection of this delightful personage, I am, I think, indebted for many soothing and pleasing a.s.sociations, with old age.

"Those marble busts of the Emperors." See the _Elia_ essay "Blakesmoor in H----shire," in Vol. II, of this edition.]

LETTER 425

CHARLES LAMB TO BERNARD BARTON

28th of Aug., 1827.

I have left a place for a wafer, but can't find it again.

Dear B.B.--I am thankful to you for your ready compliance with my wishes. Emma is delighted with your verses, to which I have appended this notice "The 6th line refers to the child of a dear friend of the author's, named Emma," without which it must be obscure; and have sent it with four Alb.u.m poems of my own (your daughter's with _your_ heading, requesting it a place next mine) to a Mr. Fraser, who is to be editor of a more superb Pocket book than has yet appeared by far! the property of some wealthy booksellers, but whom, or what its name, I forgot to ask.

It is actually to have in it schoolboy exercises by his present Majesty and the late Duke of York, so Lucy will come to Court; how she will be stared at! Wordsworth is named as a Contributor. Frazer, whom I have slightly seen, is Editor of a forth-come or coming Review of foreign books, and is intimately connected with Lockhart, &c. so I take it that this is a concern of Murray's. Walter Scott also contributes mainly. I have stood off a long time from these Annuals, which are ostentatious trumpery, but could not withstand the request of Jameson, a particular friend of mine and Coleridge.

I shall hate myself in frippery, strutting along, and vying finery with Beaux and Belles

with "Future Lord Byrons and sweet L.E.L.'s."--

Your taste I see is less simple than mine, which the difference of our persuasions has doubtless effected. In fact, of late you have so frenchify'd your style, larding it with hors de combats, and au desopoirs, that o' my conscience the Foxian blood is quite dried out of you, and the skipping Monsieur spirit has been infused. Doth Lucy go to b.a.l.l.s? I must remodel my lines, which I write for her. I hope A.K. keeps to her Primitives. If you have any thing you'd like to send further, I don't know Frazer's address, but I sent mine thro' Mr. Jameson, 19 or 90 Cheyne Street, Totnam Court road. I dare say an honourable place wou'd be given to them; but I have not heard from Frazer since I sent mine, nor shall probably again, and therefore I do not solicit it as from him.

Yesterday I sent off my tragi comedy to Mr. Kemble. Wish it luck. I made it all ('tis blank verse, and I think, of the true old dramatic cut) or most of it, in the green lanes about Enfield, where I am and mean to remain, in spite of your peremptory doubts on that head.

Your refusal to lend your poetical sanction to my Icon, and your reasons to Evans, are most sensible. May be I may hit on a line or two of my own jocular. May be not.

Do you never Londonize again? I should like to talk over old poetry with you, of which I have much, and you I think little. Do your Drummonds allow no holydays? I would willingly come and w[ork] for you a three weeks or so, to let you loose. Would I could sell or give you some of my Leisure! Positively, the best thing a man can have to do is nothing, and next to that perhaps--good works.

I am but poorlyish, and feel myself writing a dull letter; poorlyish from Company, not generally, for I never was better, nor took more walks, 14 miles a day on an average, with a sporting dog--Dash--you would not know the plain Poet, any more than he doth recognize James Naylor trick'd out au deserpoy (how do you spell it.) En Pa.s.sant, J'aime entendre da mon bon homme sur surveillance de croix, ma pas l'homme figuratif--do you understand me?

[The verses with which Emma was delighted were probably written for her alb.u.m. I have not seen them. That alb.u.m was cut up for the value of its autographs and exists now only in a mutilated state: where, I cannot discover. The pocket-book was _The Bijou_, 1828, edited by William Fraser for Pickering. Only one of Lamb's contributions was included: his verses for his own alb.u.m (see Vol. IV. of this edition).

Jameson was Robert Jameson, to whom Hartley Coleridge addressed the sonnets in the _London Magazine_ to which Lamb alludes in a previous letter. He was the husband of Mrs. Jameson, author of _Sacred and Legendary Art_, but the marriage was not happy. He lived in Chenies Street.

"Future Lord Byrons and sweet L.E.L.'s." A line from some verses written by Lamb in more than one alb.u.m. Probably originally intended for Emma Isola's alb.u.m. The pa.s.sage runs, answering the question, "What is an Alb.u.m?"--