The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb Volume VI Part 69

C. LAMB.

LETTER 503

CHARLES LAMB TO SARAH HAZLITT

March 4th, 1830.

Dear Sarah,--I was meditating to come and see you, but I am unable for the walk. We are both very unwell, and under affliction for poor Emma, who has had a very dangerous brain fever, and is lying very ill at Bury, from whence I expect a summons to fetch her. We are very sorry for your confinement. Any books I have are at your service. I am almost, I may say _quite_, sure that letters to India pay no postage, and may go by the regular Post Office, now in St. Martin's le Grand. I think any receiving house would take them--

I wish I could confirm your hopes about d.i.c.k Norris. But it is quite a dream. Some old Bencher of his surname is made _Treasurer_ for the year, I suppose, which is an annual office. Norris was Sub-Treasurer, quite a different thing. They were pretty well in the Summer, since when we have heard nothing of them. Mrs. Reynolds is better than she has been for years; she is with a disagreeable woman that she has taken a mighty fancy to out of spite to a rival woman she used to live and quarrel with; she grows quite _fat_, they tell me, and may live as long as I do, to be a tormenting rent-charge to my diminish'd income. We go on pretty comfortably in our new plan. I will come and have a talk with you when poor Emma's affair is settled, and will bring books. At present I am weak, and could hardly bring my legs home yesterday after a much shorter stroll than to Northaw. Mary has got her bonnet on for a short expedition. May you get better, as the Spring comes on. She sends her best love with mine.

C.L.

[Addressed to "Mrs. Hazlitt, Mrs. Tomlinson's, Northaw, near Potter's Bar, Herts."

Mrs. Hazlitt was in later years a sufferer from rheumatism. d.i.c.k Norris was the son of Randal Norris. He had retired to Widford. Mrs. Reynolds, Lamb's old schoolmistress and dependant, we have met.]

LETTER 504

CHARLES LAMB TO MRS. WILLIAMS

Enfield, 5 Mar., 1830.

Dear Madam,--I feel greatly obliged by your letter of Tuesday, and should not have troubled you again so soon, but that you express a wish to hear that our anxiety was relieved by the a.s.surances in it. You have indeed given us much comfort respecting our young friend, but considerable uneasiness respecting your own health and spirits, which must have suffered under such attention. Pray believe me that we shall wait in quiet hope for the time when I shall receive the welcome summons to come and relieve you from a charge, which you have executed with such tenderness. We desire nothing so much as to exchange it with you.

Nothing shall be wanting on my part to remove her with the best judgment I can, without (I hope) any necessity for depriving you of the services of your valuable housekeeper. Until the day comes, we entreat that you will spare yourself the trouble of writing, which we should be ashamed to impose upon you in your present weak state. Not hearing from you, we shall be satisfied in believing that there has been no relapse.

Therefore we beg that you will not add to your troubles by unnecessary, though _most kind_, correspondence. Till I have the pleasure of thanking you personally, I beg you to accept these written acknowledgments of all your kindness. With respects to Mr. Williams and sincere prayers for both your healths, I remain,

Your ever obliged servant,

C. LAMB.

My sister joins me in respects and thanks.

LETTER 505

CHARLES LAMB TO JAMES GILLMAN

March 8th, 1830.

My dear G.,--Your friend Battin (for I knew him immediately by the smooth satinity of his style) must excuse me for advocating the cause of his friends in Spitalfields. The fact is, I am retained by the Norwich people, and have already appeared in their paper under the signatures of "Lucius Sergius," "Bluff," "Broad-Cloth,"

"No-Trade-to-the-Woollen-Trade," "Anti-plush," &c., in defence of druggets and long camblets. And without this pre-engagement, I feel I should naturally have chosen a side opposite to ----, for in the silken seemingness of his nature there is that which offends me. My flesh tingles at such caterpillars. He shall not crawl me over. Let him and his workmen sing the old burthen,

"Heigh ho, ye weavers!"

for any aid I shall offer them in this emergency. I was over Saint Luke's the other day with my friend Tuthill, and mightily pleased with one of his contrivances for the comfort and amelioration of the students. They have double cells, in which a pair may lie feet to feet horizontally, and chat the time away as rationally as they can. It must certainly be more sociable for them these warm raving nights. The right-hand truckle in one of these friendly recesses, at present vacant, was preparing, I understood, for Mr. Irving. Poor fellow! it is time he removed from Pentonville. I followed him as far as to Highbury the other day, with a mob at his heels, calling out upon Ermigiddon, who I suppose is some Scotch moderator. He squinted out his favourite eye last Friday, in the fury of possession, upon a poor woman's shoulders that was crying matches, and has not missed it. The companion truck, as far as I could measure it with my eye, would conveniently fit a person about the length of Coleridge, allowing for a reasonable drawing up of the feet, not at all painful. Does he talk of moving this quarter? You and I have too much sense to trouble ourselves with revelations; marry, to the same in Greek you may have something professionally to say. Tell C. that he was to come and see us some fine day. Let it be before he moves, for in his new quarters he will necessarily be confined in his conversation to his brother prophet. Conceive the two Rabbis foot to foot, for there are no Gamaliels there to affect a humbler posture! All are masters in that Patmos, where the law is perfect equality--Latmos, I should rather say, for they will be Luna's twin darlings; her affection will be ever at the full. Well; keep _your_ brains moist with gooseberry this mad March, for the devil of exposition seeketh dry places.

C.L.

[The letter is a.s.signed to the Rev. James Gillman by some editors; but I think that a mistake. See the reference below to a medical matter.

Battin was interested in the Spitalfields weavers to the detriment of the Norwich.

Major b.u.t.terworth in a letter to _Notes and Queries_, March 24, 1906, thus explains the reference to Battin:--

"In lately going over the pages of _The New Monthly Magazine_ for 1826 I came across a paragraph in the June number, extracted from a daily newspaper, in which the following occurs: 'Great merit is due to Mr. Lamb junior for his exertions to relieve the weavers of Norwich.'...

"As his 'Reminiscences of Juke Judkins, Esq.,' was printed in the same number of the _Magazine_, Lamb's attention would no doubt be arrested by the remarks about his namesake, which would probably be retained in his memory, to be used subsequently, as occasion served, in mystifying his friend."

Tuthill, whom we have met, was one of the physicians at St. Luke's Hospital for the insane.

"He squinted out...." Irving had sight only in one eye, an obliquity caused, it is suggested, by lying when a baby in a wooden cradle, the sides of which prevented the other from gathering light.

"To the same in Greek." An atrocious pun, which I leave to the reader to discover. Gillman was a doctor.]

LETTER 506

CHARLES LAMB TO WILLIAM AYRTON

Mr. Westwood's, Chase Side, Enfield,

14th March, 1830.

My dear Ayrton,--Your letter, which was only not so pleasant as your appearance would have been, has revived some old images; Phillips (not the Colonel), with his few hairs bristling up at the charge of a revoke, which he declares impossible; the old Captain's significant nod over the right shoulder (was it not?); Mrs. Burney's determined questioning of the score, after the game was absolutely gone to the devil, the plain but hospitable cold boiled-beef suppers at sideboard; all which fancies, redolent of middle age and strengthful spirits, come across us ever and anon in this vale of deliberate senect.i.tude, ycleped Enfield.

You imagine a deep gulf between you and us; and there is a pitiable hiatus in _kind_ between St. James's Park and this extremity of Middles.e.x. But the mere distance in turnpike roads is a trifle. The roof of a coach swings you down in an hour or two. We have a sure hot joint on a Sunday, and when had we better? I suppose you know that ill health has obliged us to give up housekeeping; but we have an asylum at the very next door--only twenty-four inches further from town, which is not material in a country expedition--where a _table d'hote_ is kept for us, without trouble on our parts, and we adjourn after dinner, when one of the old world (old friends) drops casually down among us. Come and find us out, and seal our judicious change with your approbation, whenever the whim bites, or the sun prompts. No need of announcement, for we are sure to be at home.

I keep putting off the subject of my answer. In truth I am not in spirits at present to see Mr. Murray on such a business; but pray offer him my acknowledgments and an a.s.surance that I should like at least one of his propositions, as I have so much additional matter for the SPECIMENS, as might make two volumes in all, or ONE (new edition) omitting such better known authors as Beaumont and Fletcher, Jonson, &c.

But we are both in trouble at present. A very dear young friend of ours, who pa.s.sed her Christmas holidays here, has been taken dangerously ill with a fever, from which she is very precariously recovering, and I expect a summons to fetch her when she is well enough to bear the journey from Bury. It is Emma Isola, with whom we got acquainted at our first visit to your sister at Cambridge, and she has been an occasional inmate with us--and of late years much more frequently--ever since.

While she is in this danger, and till she is out of it and here in a probable way to recovery, I feel that I have no spirits for an engagement of any kind. It has been a terrible shock to us; therefore I beg that you will make my handsomest excuses to Mr. Murray.

Our very kindest loves to Mrs. A. and the younger A.'s.

Your unforgotten,

C. LAMB.

["Phillips." This would be Edward Phillips, who, I think, succeeded Rickman as secretary to Abbot (afterwards Lord Colchester), the Speaker.

Colonel Erasmus Phillips we have also met. The Captain was Captain Burney.