The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb Part 56

Page 188, line 7. _Which Thomson so feelingly describes._ This is the pa.s.sage, from Thomson's _Seasons_, "Winter," 799-809:--

There, through the prison of unbounded wilds, Barr'd by the hand of Nature from escape, Wide roams the Russian exile. Nought around Strikes his sad eye, but deserts lost in snow; And heavy-loaded groves; and solid floods, That stretch'd, athwart the solitary vast, Their icy horrors to the frozen main; And cheerless towns far-distant, never bless'd, Save when its annual course the caravan Bends to the golden coast of rich Cathay, With news of human-kind.

Page 200. ON THE MELANCHOLY OF TAILORS.

_The Champion_, December 4, 1814. _Works_, 1818.

The editor of _The Champion_ was then John Scott, afterwards editor of the _London Magazine_, which printed Lamb's best work. From a letter written by Lamb to Scott in 1814 (in the late Dr. Birkbeck Hill's _Talks about Autographs_, 1896) it seems that he was to contribute more or less regularly to _The Champion_. Lamb wrote:--

"SIR,--Your explanation is perfectly pleasant to me, and I accede to your proposal most willingly.

"As I began with the beginning of this month, I will if you please call upon you for _your part of the engagement_ (supposing I shall have performed mine) on the 1st of March next, and thence forward if it suit you quarterly--you will occasionally wink at BRISKETS and VEINY PIECES.

"Your Obt. Svt.,

"C. LAMB."

This essay on "Tailors" is, however, the only piece by Lamb that can be identified, although probably many of the pa.s.sages from old authors quoted in _The Champion_ in Scott's time were contributed by Lamb. These might be the briskets and veiny pieces he refers to. On January 23, 1814, is "A Challenge" of the Learned Dog at Drury Lane which he might have written; but it is not interesting now. Later, after John Thelwall took over _The Champion_ in 1818, Lamb contributed various epigrams, which will be found in Vol. IV. of the present edition.

Lamb seems to have sent the present essay to Wordsworth, whose reply we may imagine took the form of an account of certain tailors within his own experience that did not comply with Lamb's scription; since Lamb's answer to that letter is the one dated beginning, "Your experience about tailors seems to be in point blank opposition to Burton [Lamb's essay is signed 'Burton, Junior']" and so forth.

When preparing this essay for the _Works_, 1818, Lamb omitted certain portions. The footnote on page 202 originally continued thus:--

"But commend me above all to a shop opposite Middle Row, in Holborn, where, by the ingenious contrivance of the master taking in three partners, there is a physical impossibility of the conversation ever flagging, while 'the four' alternately toss it from one to the other, and at whatever time you drop in, you are sure of a discussion: an expedient which Mr. A----m would do well to think on, for with all the alacrity with which he and his excellent family are so dexterous to furnish their successive contributions, I have sometimes known the continuity of the dialogue broken into, and silence for a few seconds to intervene."

In connection with Mr. A----m there is a pa.s.sage in a letter from Mary Lamb to Miss Hutchinson in 1818, wherein she says that when the Lambs, finding London insupportable after a long visit to Calne, in Wiltshire (at the Morgans'), had taken lodgings in Dalston, Charles was so much the creature of habit, or the slave of his barber, that he went to the Temple every morning to be shaved, on a roundabout way to the India House. This would very likely be Mr. A----m, Flower de Luce Court being just opposite the Temple, off Fetter Lane. The London directories in those days ignored barbers; hence his name must remain in disguise.

In _The Champion_, also, the paragraph on page 203, beginning, "I think," etc., ran thus:--

"I think, then, that they [the causes of tailors' melancholy] may be reduced to three, omitting some subordinate ones; viz.

"The sedentary habits of the tailor.-- Something peculiar in his diet.-- Mental perturbation from a sense of reproach, &c.--"

And at the end of the article, as it now stands, came the following exposition of the third theory:--

"Thirdly, and lastly, _mental perturbation, arising from a sense of shame_; in other words, _that painful consciousness which he always carries about with him, of lying under a sort of disrepute in popular estimation_. It is easy to talk of despising public opinion, of its being unworthy the attention of a wise man &c. The theory is excellent; but, somehow, in practice

"still the world prevails and its dread laugh.

"Tailors are men (it is well if so much be allowed them,) and as such, it is not in human nature not to feel sore at being misprized, undervalued, and made a word of scorn.[66] I have often racked my brains to discover the grounds of this unaccountable prejudice, which is known to exist against a useful and industrious body of men. I confess I can discover none, except in the sedentary posture, before touched upon, which from long experience has been found by these artists to be the one most convenient for the exercise of their vocation. But I would beg the more stirring and locomotive part of the community, to whom the quiescent state of the tailor furnishes a perpetual fund of rudeness, to consider, that in the mere action of _sitting_ (which they make so merry with) there is nothing necessarily ridiculous. That, in particular, it is the posture best suited to contemplation. That it is that, in which the hen (a creature of all others best fitted to be a pattern of careful provision for a family) performs the most beautiful part of her maternal office. That it is that, in which judges deliberate, and senators take counsel. That a Speaker of the House of Commons at a debate, or a Lord Chancellor over a suit, will oftentimes _sit_ as long as many tailors. Lastly, let these scoffers take heed, lest themselves, while they mock at others, be found 'sitting in the seat of the scornful.'"

[66] "It is notorious that to call a man a _tailor_, is to heap the utmost contempt upon him which the language of the streets can convey. _Barber's clerk_ is an appellative less galling than this.

But there is a word, which, though apparently divested of all ill meaning, has for some people a far deeper sting than either. It is the insulting appellation of _governor_, with which a black-guard, not in anger, but in perfect good will, salutes your second-rate gentry, persons a little above his own cut. He rarely bestows it upon the topping gentry of all, but reserves it for those of a rank or two above his own, or whose garb is rather below their rank. It is a word of approximation. A friend of mine will be melancholy a great while after, from being saluted with it. I confess I have not altogether been unhonoured with it myself."

It is told of Lamb that he once said he would sit with anything but a hen or a tailor.

Page 200. _Motto._ From Virgil's _aeneid_, Book VI., lines 617, 618.

"There luckless Theseus sits, and shall sit for ever."

Page 201, line 25. _Beautiful motto._ Charles Brandon, Duke of Suffolk, who married Mary Tudor, sister of Henry VIII., appeared at a tournament with a saddle-cloth made half of frieze and half of cloth of gold. Each side had a symbolical motto. One ran:--

Cloth of frize, be not too bold, Though thou art match'd with cloth of gold.

The other:--

Cloth of gold do not despise, Though thou art match'd with cloth of frize.

Page 201, line 3 from foot. _Eliot's famous troop._ General George Augustus Eliott (afterwards Lord Heathfield), the defender of Gibraltar and the founder of the 15th or King's Own Royal Light Dragoons, now the 15th Hussars, whose first action was at Emsdorf. At the time that regiment was being collected, there was a strike of tailors, many of whom joined it. Eliott, one version of the incident says, wished to get men who never having ridden had not to unlearn any bad methods of riding. Later they were engaged against the Spaniards in Cuba in 1762-1763.

Page 202, line 6. _Speculative politicians._ Lamb was probably referring to Francis Place (1771-1854), the tailor-reformer, among whose friends were certain of Lamb's own--William Frend, for example.

Page 202. _Footnote._ "_Gladden life._" From Johnson's _Life of Edmund Smith_--"one who has gladdened life"; or possibly from Coombe's "Peasant of Auburn":--

And whilst thy breast matures each patriot plan That gladdens life and man endears to man.

Page 203, line 22. _Dr. Norris's famous narrative._ _The Narrative of Dr. Robert Norris concerning the strange and deplorable Frenzy of Mr.

John Dennis_ was a satirical squib by Pope against the critic John Dennis (1657-1734). The pa.s.sage referred to by Lamb runs:--

_Doct._ Pray, Sir, how did you contract the Swelling?

_Denn._ By a Criticism.

_Doct._ A Criticism! that's a Distemper I never read of in _Galen_.

_Denn._ S' Death, Sir, a Distemper! It is no Distemper, but a n.o.ble Art. I have sat fourteen Hours a Day at it; and are you a Doctor, and don't know there's a Communication between the Legs and the Brain?

_Doct._ What made you sit so many Hours, Sir?

_Denn._ _Cato_, Sir.

_Doct._ Sir, I speak of your Distemper, what gave you this Tumour?

_Denn._ _Cato, Cato, Cato._

Page 204, line 2. _Envious Junos._ Lucina, at Juno's bidding, sat cross-legged before Alcmena to prolong her travail. Sir Thomas Browne in his _Pseudodoxia Epidemica; or, Enquiry into Vulgar Errors_, Book V., speaks of the posture as "veneficious," and cites Juno's case.

Page 204, at the end. _Well known that this last-named vegetable._ This is the old joke about tailors "cabbaging," that is to say, stealing cloth. The term is thus explained in Phillips' _History of Cultivated Vegetables_:--

The word cabbage ... means the firm head or ball that is formed by the leaves turning close over each other.... From thence arose the cant word applied to tailors, who formerly worked at the private houses of their customers, where they were often accused of cabbaging: which means the rolling up of pieces of cloth instead of the list and shreds, which they claim as their due.

Lamb returned to this jest against tailors in his verses "Satan in Search of a Wife," in 1831.