The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb Volume VI Part 56

[No date. ? Summer, 1828.]

My dear Friends,--My brother and Emma are to send you a partnership letter, but as I have a great dislike to my stupid sc.r.a.p at the f.a.g end of a dull letter, and, as I am left alone, I will say my say first; and in the first place thank you for your kind letter; it was a mighty comfort to me. Ever since you left me, I have been thinking I know not what, but every possible thing that I could invent, why you should be angry with me for something I had done or left undone during your uncomfortable sojourn with us, and now I read your letter and think and feel all is well again. Emma and her sister Harriet are gone to Theobalds Park, and Charles is gone to Barnet to cure his headache, which a good old lady has talked him into. She came on Thursday and left us yesterday evening. I mean she was Mrs. Paris, with whom Emma's aunt lived at Cambridge, and she had so much to [tell] her about Cambridge friends, and to [tell] us about London ditto, that her tongue was never at rest through the whole day, and at night she took Hood's Whims and Oddities to bed with her and laught all night. Bless her spirits! I wish I had them and she were as mopey as I am. Emma came on Monday, and the week has pa.s.sed away I know not how. But we have promised all the week that we should go and see the Picture friday or sat.u.r.day, and stay a night or so with you. Friday came and we could not turn Mrs. Paris out so soon, and on friday evening the thing was wholly given up. Sat.u.r.day morning brought fresh hopes; Mrs. Paris agreed to go to see the picture with us, and we were to walk to Edmonton. My Hat and my _new gown_ were put on in great haste, and his honor, who decides all things here, would have it that we could not get to Edmonton in time; and there was an end of all things. Expecting to see you, I did not write.

Monday evening.

Charles and Emma are taking a second walk. Harriet is gone home. Charles wishes to know more about the Widow. Is it to be made to match a drawing? If you could throw a little more light on the subject, I think he would do it, when Emma is gone; but his time will be quite taken up with her; for, besides refreshing her Latin, he gives her long lessons in arithmetic, which she is sadly deficient in. She leaves in a week, unless she receives a renewal of her holydays, which Mrs. Williams has half promised to send her. I do verily believe that I may hope to pa.s.s the last one, or two, or three nights with you, as she is to go from London to Bury. We will write to you the instant we receive Mrs. W.'s letter. As to my poor sonnet--and it is a very poor sonnet, only [it]

answered very well the purpose it was written for--Emma left it behind her, and n.o.body remembers more than one line of it, which is, I think, sufficient to convince you it would make no great impression in an Annual. So pray let it rest in peace, and I will make Charles write a better one instead.

This shall go to the Post to-night. If any [one] chooses to add anything to it they may. It will glad my heart to see you again.

Yours (both yours) truly and affectionately, M. LAMB.

Becky is going by the Post office, so I will send it away. I mean to commence letter-writer to the family.

[Mr. Hazlitt dates this letter April, 1828. The reference to the Widow, towards the end, shows that Hood was preparing _The Gem_, and, what is not generally known, that Lamb had been asked to write on that subject.

As it happened, Hood wrote the essay for him and signed it Elia (see note below). Mrs. Paris we have met. Harriet, Emma Isola's sister, we do not hear of again. I was recently shown a copy of Lamb's _Works_, 1818, inscribed in his hand to Miss Isola: this would be Harriet Isola. Emma had just begun her duties at Fornham, in Suffolk, where she taught the children of a Mr. Williams, a clergyman. I cannot say what the Picture was. The sonnet was probably that printed in the note to the letter to Mrs. Sh.e.l.ley of July 26, 1827. Charles Lamb's and Emma's joint letter has not been preserved.]

LETTER 460

CHARLES LAMB TO B.R. HAYDON

August, 1828.

Dear Haydon,--I have been tardy in telling you that your Chairing the Member gave me great pleasure;--'tis true broad Hogarthian fun, the High Sheriff capital. Considering, too, that you had the materials imposed upon you, and that you did not select them from the rude world as H.

did, I hope to see many more such from your hand. If the former picture went beyond this I have had a loss, and the King a bargain. I longed to rub the back of my hand across the hearty canvas that two senses might be gratified. Perhaps the subject is a little discordantly placed opposite to another act of Chairing, where the huzzas were Hosannahs,--but I was pleased to see so many of my old acquaintances brought together notwithstanding.

Believe me, yours truly,

C. LAMB.

[Haydon's "Chairing the Member" was exhibited in Bond Street this year, together with "Christ's Entry into Jerusalem," and other of his works.

"The former picture" was his "Mock Election," which the King had bought for 500 guineas. For "Chairing the Member" Haydon received only half that price.

Here should come a letter to Rickman, dated September 11, 1828, in which Lamb thanks him for a present of nuts and apples, but is surprised that apples should be offered to the owner of a "whole tree, almost an orchard," and "an apple chamber redolent" to boot.

Here should come a letter from Lamb to Louisa Holcroft, dated October 2, 1828, in which, so soon after Mary Lamb's determination to be the letter writer of the family, he says, "Mary Lamb has written her last letter in this world," adding that he has been left her _writing legatee_. He calls geese "those pretty birds that look like snow in summer, and cackle like ice breaking up."

Here should come a long Latin letter to Rickman, dated October 4, 1828.

Canon Ainger prints the Latin. I append an English version:--]

LETTER 461

CHARLES LAMB TO JOHN RICKMAN

(_Translation_)

[Postmark Oct. 3, 1828.]

I have been thinking of sending some kind of an answer in Latin to your very elaborate letter, but something has arisen every day to hinder me.

To begin with our awkward friend M.B. has been with us for a while, and every day and all day we have had such a lecture, you know how he stutters, on legal, mind, nothing but legal notices, that I have been afraid the Latin I want to write might prove rather barbaro-forensic than Ciceronian. He is swallowed up, body and soul, in law; he eats, drinks, plays (at the card table) Law, nothing but Law. He acts Ignoramus in the play so thoroughly, that you w'd swear that in the inmost marrow of his head (is not this the proper anatomical term?) there have housed themselves not devils but pettifoggers, to bemuddle with their noisy chatter his own and his friends' wits. He brought here, 'twas all his luggage, a book, Fearn on Contingent Remainders. This book he has read so hard, and taken such infinite pains to understand, that the reader's brain has few or no Remainders to continge. Enough, however, of M.B. and his luggage. To come back to your claims upon me.

Your return journey, with notes, I read again and again, nor have I done with them yet. You always make something fresh out of a hackneyed theme.

Our milestones, you say, bristle with blunders, but I must shortly explain why I cannot comply with your directions herein.

Suppose I were to consult the local magnates about a matter of this kind.--Ha! says one of our waywardens or parish overseers,--What business is this of _yours_? Do you want to drop the Lodger and come out as a Householder?--Now you must know that I took this house of mine at Enfield, by an obvious domiciliary fiction, in my Sister's name, to avoid the bother and trouble of parish and vestry meetings, and to escape finding myself one day an overseer or big-wig of some sort. What then w'd be my reply to the above question?

Leisure I have secured: but of dignity, not a t.i.ttle. Besides, to tell you the truth, the aforesaid irregularities are, to my thinking, most entertaining, and in fact very touching indeed. Here am I, quit of worldly affairs of every kind; for if superannuation does not mean that, what does it mean? The world then, being, as the saying is, beyond my ken, and being myself entirely removed from any accurate distinctions of s.p.a.ce or time, these mistakes in road-measure do not seriously offend me. For in the infinite s.p.a.ce of the heavens above (which in this contracted sphere of mine I desire to imitate so far as may be) what need is there of milestones? Local distance has to do with mortal affairs. In my walks abroad, limited though they must be, I am quite at my own disposal, and on that account I have a good word for our Enfield clocks too. Their hands generally point without any servile reference to this Sun of our World, in his _sub_-Empyrean position. They strike too just as it happens, according to their own sweet wiles,--one--two--three--anything they like, and thus to me, a more fortunate Whittington, they pleasantly announce, that Time, so far as I am concerned, is no more. Here you have my reasons for not attending in this matter to the requests of a busy subsolar such as you are.

Furthermore, when I reach the milestone that counts from the Hicks-Hall that stands now, I own at once the Aulic dignity, and, were I a gaol-bird, I should shake in my shoes. When I reach the next which counts from the site of the old Hall, my thoughts turn to the fallen grandeur of the pile, and I reflect upon the perishable condition of the most imposing of human structures. Thus I banish from my soul all pride and arrogance, and with such meditations purify my heart from day to day. A wayfarer such as I am, may learn from Vincent Bourne, in words terser and neater than any of mine, the advantages of milestones properly arranged. The lines are at the end of a little poem of his, called Milestones--(Do you remember it or shall I write it all out?)

How well the Milestones' use doth this express, Which make the miles [seem] more and way seem less.

What do you mean by this--I am borrowing hand and style from this youngster of mine--your son, I take it. The style looks, nay on careful inspection by these old eyes, is most clearly your very own, and the writing too. Either R's or the Devil's. I will defer your explanation till our next meeting--may it be soon.

My Latin failing me, as you may infer from erasures above, there is only this to add. Farewell, and be sure to give Mrs. Rickman my kind remembrances.

C. LAMB.

Enfield, Chase Side, 4th Oct., 1828. I can't put this properly into Latin. Dabam--what is it?

LETTER 462

CHARLES LAMB TO BERNARD BARTON

[P.M. October 11, 1828.]

A splendid edition of Bunyan's Pilgrim--why, the thought is enough to turn one's moral stomach. His c.o.c.kle hat and staff transformed to a smart c.o.c.kd beaver and a jemmy cane, his amice gray to the last Regent Street cut, and his painful Palmer's pace to the modern swagger. Stop thy friend's sacriligious hand. Nothing can be done for B. but to reprint the old cuts in as homely but good a style as possible. The Vanity Fair, and the pilgrims there--the silly soothness in his setting out countenance--the Christian idiocy (in a good sense) of his admiration of the Shepherds on the Delectable Mountains--the Lions so truly Allegorical and remote from any similitude to Pidc.o.c.k's. The great head (the author's) capacious of dreams and similitudes dreaming in the dungeon. Perhaps you don't know _my_ edition, what I had when a child: if you do, can you bear new designs from--Martin, enameld into copper or silver plate by--Heath, accompanied with verses from Mrs. Heman's pen O how unlike his own--

Wouldst thou divert thyself from melancholy?

Wouldst thou be pleasant, yet be far from folly?

Wouldst thou read riddles and their explanation?

Or else be drowned in thy contemplation?

Dost thou love picking meat? or wouldst thou see A man i' th' clouds, and hear him speak to thee?

Wouldst thou be in a dream, and yet not sleep?

Or wouldst thou in a moment laugh and weep?

Or wouldst thou lose thyself, and catch no harm, And find thyself again without a charm?

Wouldst read _thyself_, and read thou knowst not what, And yet know whether thou art blest or not By reading the same lines? O then come hither, And lay my book, thy head and heart together.

JOHN BUNYAN.

Shew me such poetry in any of the 15 forthcoming combinations of show and emptiness, yclept Annuals. Let me whisper in your ear that wholesome sacramental bread is not more nutritious than papistical wafer stuff, than these (to head and heart) exceed the visual frippery of Mitford's Salamander G.o.d, baking himself up to the work of creation in a solar oven, not yet by the terms of the context itself existing. Blake's ravings made genteel. So there's verses for thy verses; and now let me tell you that the sight of your hand gladdend me. I have been daily trying to write to you, but paralysed. You have spurd me on this tiny effort, and at intervals I hope to hear from and talk to you. But my spirits have been in a deprest way for a long long time, and they are things which must be to you of faith, for who can explain depression?

Yes I am hooked into the Gem, but only for some lines written on a dead infant of the Editor's, which being as it were his property, I could not refuse their appearing, but I hate the paper, the type, the gloss, the dandy plates, the names of contributors poked up into your eyes in 1st page, and whistled thro' all the covers of magazines, the barefaced sort of emulation, the unmodest candidateship, bro't into so little s.p.a.ce--in those old Londons a signature was lost in the wood of matter--the paper coa.r.s.e (till latterly, which spoil'd them)--in short I detest to appear in an Annual. What a fertile genius (an[d] a quiet good soul withal) is Hood. He has 50 things in hand, farces to supply the Adelphi for the season, a comedy for one of the great theatres, just ready, a whole entertainment by himself for Mathews and Yates to figure in, a meditated Comic Annual for next year, to be nearly done by himself.-- You'd like him very much. Wordsworth I see has a good many pieces announced in one of em, not our Gem. W. Scott has distributed himself like a bribe haunch among 'em. Of all the poets, Cary has had the good sense to keep quite clear of 'em, with Clergy-gentle-manly right notions. Don't think I set up for being proud in this point, I like a bit of flattery tickling my vanity as well as any one. But these pompous masquerades without masks (naked names or faces) I hate. So there's a bit of my mind. Besides they infallibly cheat you, I mean the booksellers. If I get but a copy, I only expect it from Hood's being my friend. Coleridge has lately been here. He too is deep among the Prophets--the Yea.r.s.ervers--the mob of Gentlemen Annuals. But they'll cheat him, I know.