The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb Volume VI Part 65

LETTER 488

CHARLES LAMB TO BERNARD BARTON

[P.M. June 3, 1829.]

Dear B.B.--I am very much grieved indeed for the indisposition of poor Lucy. Your letter found me in domestic troubles. My sister is again taken ill, and I am obliged to remove her out of the house for many weeks, I fear, before I can hope to have her again. I have been very desolate indeed. My loneliness is a little abated by our young friend Emma having just come here for her holydays, and a schoolfellow of hers that was, with her. Still the house is not the same, tho' she is the same. Mary had been pleasing herself with the prospect of seeing her at this time; and with all their company, the house feels at times a frightful solitude. May you and I in no very long time have a more cheerful theme to write about, and congratulate upon a daughter's and a Sister's perfect recovery. Do not be long without telling me how Lucy goes on. I have a right to call her by her quaker-name, you know.

Emma knows that I am writing to you, and begs to be remembered to you with thankfulness for your ready contribution. Her alb.u.m is filling apace. But of her contributors one, almost the flower of it, a most amiable young man and late acquaintance of mine, has been carried off by consumption, on return from one of the Azores islands, to which he went with hopes of mastering the disease, came back improved, went back to a most close and confined counting house, and relapsed. His name was Dibdin, Grandson of the Songster. You will be glad to hear that Emma, tho' unknown to you, has given the highest satisfaction in her little place of Governante in a Clergyman's family, which you may believe by the Parson and his Lady drinking poor Mary's health on her birthday, tho' they never saw her, merely because she was a friend of Emma's, and the Vicar also sent me a brace of partridges. To get out of home themes, have you seen Southey's Dialogues? His lake descriptions, and the account of his Library at Keswick, are very fine. But he needed not have called up the Ghost of More to hold the conversations with, which might as well have pa.s.s'd between A and B, or Caius and Lucius. It is making too free with a defunct Chancellor and Martyr.

I feel as if I had nothing farther to write about--O! I forget the prettiest letter I ever read, that I have received from "Pleasures of Memory" Rogers, in acknowledgment of a Sonnet I sent him on the Loss of his Brother. It is too long to transcribe, but I hope to shew it you some day, as I hope sometime again to see you, when all of us are well.

Only it ends thus "We were nearly of an age (he was the elder). He was the only person in the world in whose eyes I always appeared young."--

I will now take my leave with a.s.suring you that I am most interested in hoping to hear favorable accounts from you.--

With kindest regards to A.K. and you

Yours truly, C.L.

["Lucy"--Lucy Barton.

"Your ready contribution." I do not find that Barton ever printed his lines for Emma Isola's alb.u.m.

"Dibdin"-John Bates Dibdin died in May, 1828.

Southey's _Sir Thomas More; or, Colloquies on the Progress and Prospects of Society_, had just been published.

This was Rogers' letter:--

Many, many thanks. The verses are beautiful. I need not say with what feelings they were read. Pray accept the grateful acknowledgments of us all, and believe me when I say that nothing could have been a greater cordial to us in our affliction than such a testimony from such a quarter. He was --for none knew him so well--we were born within a year or two of each other--a man of a very high mind, and with less disguise than perhaps any that ever lived. Whatever he was, _that_ we saw. He stood before his fellow beings (if I may be forgiven for saying so) almost as before his Maker: and G.o.d grant that we may all bear as severe an examination.

He was an admirable scholar. His Dante and his Homer were as familiar to him as his Alphabets: and he had the tenderest heart.

When a flock of turkies was stolen from his farm, the indignation of the poor far and wide was great and loud. To me he is the greatest loss, for we were nearly of an age; and there is now no human being alive in whose eyes I have always been young.

Under the date June 10, 1829, Mr. Macdonald prints a note from Lamb to Ayrton, which states that he has two young friends in the house. Here, therefore, I think, should come a letter from Lamb to William Hazlitt, Junior, in which Lamb says that he cannot see Mrs. Hazlitt this time. He adds that the ladies are very pleasant. Emma Isola adds a letter which tells us that the ladies are herself and her friend Maria. This would be the Maria of Lamb's sonnet "Harmony in Unlikeness," evidently written at this time (see Vol. IV.).]

LETTER 489

CHARLES LAMB TO BERNARD BARTON

Enfield Chase Side

Sat.u.r.day 25 July A.D. 1829.--11 A.M.

There--a fuller plumper juiceier date never dropt from Idumean palm. Am I in the dateive case now? if not, a fig for dates, which is more than a date is worth. I never stood much affected to these limitary specialities. Least of all since the date of my superannuation.

What have I with Time to do? } Dear B.B.--Your hand writing has Slaves of desks, twas meant for you.} conveyed much pleasure to me

in report of Lucy's restoration. Would I could send you as good news of my poor Lucy. But some wearisome weeks I must remain lonely yet. I have had the loneliest time near 10 weeks, broken by a short apparition of Emma for her holydays, whose departure only deepend the returning solitude, and by 10 days I have past in Town. But Town, with all my native hankering after it, is not what it was. The streets, the shops are left, but all old friends are gone. And in London I was frightfully convinced of this as I past houses and places--empty caskets now. I have ceased to care almost about any body. The bodies I cared for are in graves, or dispersed. My old Clubs, that lived so long and flourish'd so steadily, are crumbled away. When I took leave of our adopted young friend at Charing Cross, 'twas heavy unfeeling rain, and I had no where to go. Home have I none--and not a sympathising house to turn to in the great city. Never did the waters of the heaven pour down on a forlorner head. Yet I tried 10 days at a sort of a friend's house, but it was large and straggling--one of the individuals of my old long knot of friends, card players, pleasant companions--that have tumbled to pieces into dust and other things--and I got home on Thursday, convinced that I was better to get home to my hole at Enfield, and hide like a sick cat in my corner. Less than a month I hope will bring home Mary. She is at Fulham, looking better in her health than ever, but sadly rambling, and scarce showing any pleasure in seeing me, or curiosity when I should come again. But the old feelings will come back again, and we shall drown old sorrows over a game at Picquet again. But 'tis a tedious cut out of a life of sixty four, to lose twelve or thirteen weeks every year or two. And to make me more alone, our illtemperd maid is gone, who with all her airs, was yet a home piece of furniture, a record of better days; the young thing that has succeeded her is good and attentive, but she is nothing--and I have no one here to talk over old matters with.

Scolding and quarreling have something of familiarity and a community of interest--they imply acquaintance--they are of resentment, which is of the family of dearness. I can neither scold nor quarrel at this insignificant implement of household services; she is less than a cat, and just better than a deal Dresser. What I can do, and do overdo, is to walk, but deadly long are the days--these summer all-day days, with but a half hour's candlelight and no firelight. I do not write, tell your kind inquisitive Eliza, and can hardly read. In the ensuing Blackwood will be an old rejected farce of mine, which may be new to you, if you see that same dull Medley. What things are all the Magazines now! I contrive studiously not to see them. The popular New Monthly is perfect trash. Poor Hessey, I suppose you see, has failed. Hunt and Clarke too.

Your "Vulgar truths" will be a good name--and I think your prose must please--me at least--but 'tis useless to write poetry with no purchasers. 'Tis cold work Authorship without something to puff one into fashion. Could you not write something on Quakerism--for Quakers to read--but nominally addrest to Non Quakers? explaining your dogmas--waiting on the Spirit--by the a.n.a.logy of human calmness and patient waiting on the judgment? I scarcely know what I mean, but to make Non Quakers reconciled to your doctrines, by shewing something like them in mere human operations--but I hardly understand myself, so let it pa.s.s for nothing. I pity you for over-work, but I a.s.sure you no-work is worse. The mind preys on itself, the most unwholesome food. I brag'd formerly that I could not have too much time. I have a surfeit. With few years to come, the days are wearisome. But weariness is not eternal.

Something will shine out to take the load off, that flags me, which is at present intolerable. I have killed an hour or two in this poor scrawl. I am a sanguinary murderer of time, and would kill him inchmeal just now. But the snake is vital. Well, I shall write merrier anon.--'Tis the present copy of my countenance I send--and to complain is a little to alleviate.--May you enjoy yourself as far as the wicked wood will let you--and think that you are not quite alone, as I am.

Health to Lucia and to Anna and kind rememb'ces.

Yours forlorn.

C.L.

["Out of a life of sixty-four." Mary Lamb was born December 3, 1764.

"Your kind ... Eliza"--Eliza Barton, Bernard's sister.

"Rejected farce." "The p.a.w.nbroker's Daughter" was printed in _Blackwood_, January, 1830.

"I brag'd formerly." Referring I think to his sonnet "Leisure."]

LETTER 490

CHARLES LAMB TO THOMAS ALLSOP

[No date. Late July, 1829.]

My dear Allsop--I thank you for thinking of my recreation. But I am best here, I feel I am. I have tried town lately, but came back worse. Here I must wait till my loneliness has its natural cure. Besides that, though I am not very sanguine, yet I live in hopes of better news from Fulham, and can not be out of the way. 'Tis ten weeks to-morrow.--I saw Mary a week since, she was in excellent bodily health, but otherwise far from well. But a week or so may give a turn. Love to Mrs. A. and children, and fair weather accomp'y you.

C.L.

Tuesday.

LETTER 491

CHARLES LAMB TO EDWARD MOXON

[P.M. Sept. 22, 1829.]

Dear Moxon, If you can oblige me with the Garrick Papers or Ann of Gierstien, I shall be thankful. I am almost fearful whether my Sister will be able to enjoy any reading at present for since her coming home, after 12 weeks, she has had an unusual relapse into the saddest low spirits that ever poor creature had, and has been some weeks under medical care. She is unable to see any yet. When she is better I shall be very glad to talk over your ramble with you. Have you done any sonnets, can you send me any to overlook? I am almost in despair, Mary's case seems so hopeless.

Believe me

Yours

C.L.