in which Lamb remarks that he cannot think how Godwin, who in his
writings never expresses himself disrespectfully of any one but his
Maker, can have given offence to Rickman. This reminds one of Godwin's
remark about Coleridge, "God bless him--to use a vulgar expression," as
recorded by Coleridge in one of his letters. Lamb also said of Godwin
(and to him) that he had read more books that were not worth reading
than any man in England.]
LETTER 285
CHARLES LAMB TO W. HARRISON AINSWORTH
[Dated at end: May 7, 1822.]
Dear Sir,--I have read your poetry with pleasure. The tales are pretty
and prettily told, the language often finely poetical. It is only
sometimes a little careless, I mean as to redundancy. I have marked
certain passages (in pencil only, which will easily obliterate) for your
consideration. Excuse this liberty. For the distinction you offer me of
a dedication, I feel the honor of it, but I do not think it would
advantage the publication. I am hardly on an eminence enough to warrant
it. The Reviewers, who are no friends of mine--the two big ones
especially who make a point of taking no notice of anything I bring
out--may take occasion by it to decry us both. But I leave you to your
own judgment. Perhaps, if you wish to give me a kind word, it will be
more appropriate _before your republication of Tourneur_.
The "Specimens" would give a handle to it, which the poems might seem to
want. But I submit it to yourself with the old recollection that
"beggars should not be chusers" and remain with great respect and
wishing success to both your publications
Your obe't. Ser't.
C. LAMB.
No hurry at all for Tourneur.
Tuesday 7 May '22.
[William Harrison Ainsworth (1805-1882), afterwards known as a novelist,
was then articled to a Manchester solicitor, but had begun his literary
career. The book to which Lamb refers was called _The Works of Cheviot
Tichburn_, 1822, and was dedicated to him in the following terms:--"To
my friend Charles Lamb, as a slight mark of gratitude for his kindness
and admiration of his character, these poems are inscribed."
Ainsworth was meditating an edition of the works of Cyril Tourneur,
author of "The Atheist's Tragedy," to whom Lamb had drawn attention in
the _Dramatic Specimens_, 1808. The book was never published.]
LETTER 286
CHARLES LAMB TO WILLIAM GODWIN
May 16, 1822.
Dear Godwin--I sincerely feel for all your trouble. Pray use the
enclosed £50, and pay me when you can. I shall make it my business to
see you very shortly.
Yours truly
C. LAMB.
[Owing largely to a flaw in the title-deed of his house at 41 Skinner
Street, which he had to forfeit, Godwin had come upon poverty greater
than any he had previously suffered, although he had been always more or
less necessitous. Lamb now lent him £50. In the following year, after
being mainly instrumental in putting on foot a fund for Godwin's
benefit, he transformed this loan into a gift. An appeal was issued in
1823 asking for; £600, the following postscript to which, in Lamb's
hand, is preserved at the South Kensington Museum:--
"There are few circumstances belonging to the case which are not
sufficiently adverted to in the above letter.
"Mr. Godwin's opponent declares himself determined to act against him
with the last degree of hostility: the law gives him the power the first
week in November to seize upon Mr. Godwin's property, furniture, books,
&c. together with all his present sources of income for the support of
himself and his family. Mr. Godwin has at this time made considerable
progress in a work of great research, and requiring all the powers of
his mind, to the completion of which he had lookd for future pecuniary
advantage. His mind is at this moment so entirely occupied in this work,
that he feels within himself the firmness and resolution that no
_prospect_ of evil or calamity shall draw him off from it or suspend his
labours. But the _calamity itself_, if permitted to arrive, will produce
the physical impossibility for him to proceed. His books and the
materials of his work, as well as his present sources of income, will be
taken from him. Those materials have been the collection of several
years, and it would require a long time to replace them, if they could
ever be replaced.
"The favour of an early answer is particularly requested, that the
extent of the funds supplied may as soon as possible be ascertained,
particularly as any aid, however kindly intended, will, after the lapse
of a very few weeks, become useless to the purpose in view."
The signatories to the appeal were: Crabb Robinson (£30), William Ayrton
(£10), John Murray (£10 10s.), Charles Lamb (£50), Lord Francis
Leveson-Gower (£10), Lord Dudley (£50), the Hon. W. Lamb (£20) and Sir
James Macintosh (£10). Other contributions were: Lord Byron, £26 5s.;
T.M. Alsager, £10; and "A B C, by Charles Lamb," £10. A B C was Sir
Walter Scott.
The work on which Godwin was then labouring was his _History of the
Commonwealth_, 1824-1828. His new home was in the Strand. In 1833 he
received the post of Yeoman Usher of the Exchequer, which he held till
his death in 1836, although its duties had vanished ere then.]
LETTER 287
CHARLES LAMB TO MRS. JOHN LAMB
22 May 1822.
Dear Mrs. Lamb, A letter has come to Arnold for Mrs. Phillips, and, as I
have not her address, I take this method of sending it to you. That old
rogue's name is Sherwood, as you guessed, but as I named the shirts to
him, I think he must have them. Your character of him made me almost
repent of the bounty.
You must consider this letter as Mary's--for writing letters is such a
trouble and puts her to such twitters (family modesty, you know; it is
the way with me, but I try to get over it) that in pity I offer to do it
for her.--
We hold our intention of seeing France, but expect to see you here
first, as we do not go till the 20th of next month. A steam boat goes to
Dieppe, I see.--
Christie has not sent to me, and I suppose is in no hurry to settle the
account. I think in a day or two (if I do not hear from you to the
contrary) I shall refresh his memory.
I am sorry I made you pay for two Letters. I Peated it, and re-peated
it.
Miss Wright is married, and I am a hamper in her debt, which I hope will
now not be remembered. She is in great good humour, I hear, and yet out
of spirits.
Where shall I get such full flavor'd Geneva again?
Old Mr. Henshaw died last night precisely at 1/2 past 11.--He has been
open'd by desire of Mrs. McKenna; and, where his heart should have been,
was found a stone. Poor Arnold is inconsolable; and, not having shaved
since, looks deplorable.
With our kind remembrances to Caroline and your friends
We remain yours affectionaly C.L. AND M. LAMB.
[_Occupying the entire margin up the left-hand side of the letter is, in
Mary Lamb's hand_:--]
I thank you for your kind letter, and owe you one in return, but Charles
is in such a hurry to send this to be franked.
Your affectionate sister
M. LAMB.
[_On the right-hand margin, beside the paragraph about Mr. Henshaw, is
written in the same hand, underlined_:--]
He is not dead.
[John Lamb's widow had been a Mrs. Dowden, with an unmarried daughter,
probably the Caroline referred to. The letter treats of family matters
which could not now be explained even if it were worth while. The Lambs
were arranging a visit to Versailles, to the Kenneys. Mr. Henshaw was
Lamb's godfather, a gunsmith.]
LETTER 288
(_Fragment_)
CHARLES LAMB TO MARY LAMB (in Paris).
[August, 1822.]
Then you must walk all along the Borough side of the Seine facing the
Tuileries. There is a mile and a half of print shops and book stalls. If
the latter were but English. Then there is a place where the Paris
people put all their dead people and bring em flowers and dolls and
ginger bread nuts and sonnets and such trifles. And that is all I think
worth seeing as sights, except that the streets and shops of Paris are
themselves the best sight.
[The Lambs had left England for France in June. While they were there
Mary Lamb was taken ill again--in a diligence, according to Moore--and
Lamb had to return home alone, leaving a letter, of which this is the
only portion that has been preserved, for her guidance on her recovery.
It is also the only writing from Lamb to his sister that exists. Mary
Lamb, who had taken her nurse with her in case of trouble, was soon well
again, and in August had the company of Crabb Robinson in Paris. Mrs.
Aders was also there, and Foss, the bookseller in Pall Mall, and his
brother. And it was on this visit that the Lambs met John Howard Payne,
whom we shall shortly see.]
LETTER 289
CHARLES LAMB TO JOHN CLARE
India House, 31 Aug., 1822.
Dear Clare--I thank you heartily for your present. I am an inveterate
old Londoner, but while I am among your choice collections, I seem to be
native to them, and free of the country. The quantity of your
observation has astonished me. What have most pleased me have been
Recollections after a Ramble, and those Grongar Hill kind of pieces in
eight syllable lines, my favourite measure, such as Cowper Hill and
Solitude. In some of your story-telling Ballads the provincial phrases
sometimes startle me. I think you are too profuse with them. In poetry
_slang_ of every kind is to be avoided. There is a rustick Cockneyism,
as little pleasing as ours of London. Transplant Arcadia to Helpstone.
The true rustic style, the Arcadian English, I think is to be found in
Shenstone. Would his Schoolmistress, the prettiest of poems, have been
better, if he had used quite the Goody's own language? Now and then a
home rusticism is fresh and startling, but where nothing is gained in
expression, it is out of tenor. It may make folks smile and stare, but
the ungenial coalition of barbarous with refined phrases will prevent
you in the end from being so generally tasted, as you deserve to be.
Excuse my freedom, and take the same liberty with my _puns_.
I send you two little volumes of my spare hours. They are of all sorts,
there is a methodist hymn for Sundays, and a farce for Saturday night.
Pray give them a place on your shelf. Pray accept a little volume, of
which I have [a] duplicate, that I may return in equal number to your
welcome presents.
I think I am indebted to you for a sonnet in the London for August.
Since I saw you I have been in France, and have eaten frogs. The nicest
little rabbity things you ever tasted. Do look about for them. Make Mrs.
Clare pick off the hind quarters, boil them plain, with parsley and
butter. The fore quarters are not so good. She may let them hop off by
themselves.
Yours sincerely,
CHAS. LAMB.
[John Clare (1793-1864) was the Northamptonshire poet whom the _London
Magazine_ had introduced to fame. Octavius Gilchrist had played to him
the same part that Capell Lofft had to Bloomfield. His first volume,
_Poems Descriptive of Rural Life and Scenery_, was published in January,
1820; his next, _The Village Minstrel_, in September of the next year.
These he had probably sent to Lamb. Helpstone was Clare's birthplace.
Lamb's two little return volumes were his _Works_. The sonnet in the
August _London Magazine_ was not signed by Clare. It runs thus:--
TO ELlA
ELIA, thy reveries and vision'd themes
To Care's lorn heart a luscious pleasure prove;
Wild as the mystery of delightful dreams,
Soft as the anguish of remember'd love:
Like records of past days their memory dances
Mid the cool feelings Manhood's reason brings,
As the unearthly visions of romances
Peopled with sweet and uncreated things;--
And yet thy themes thy gentle worth enhances!
Then wake again thy wild harp's tenderest strings,
Sing on, sweet Bard, let fairy loves again
Smile in thy dreams, with angel ecstacies;
Bright o'er our souls will break the heavenly strain
Through the dull gloom of earth's realities.
Clare addressed to Lamb a sonnet on his _Dramatic Specimens_ which was
printed in Hone's _Year Book_ in 1831.
Here should come a letter from Lamb to Ayrton dated Sept. 5, 1822,
referring to the writer's "drunken caput" and loss of memory.
Here should come a letter from Lamb to Mrs. James Kenney, dated Sept.
11, 1822, in which Lamb says that Mary Lamb had reached home safely from
France, and that she failed to smuggle Crabb Robinson's waistcoat. He
adds that the Custom House people could not comprehend how a waistcoat,
marked Henry Robinson, could be a part of Miss Lamb's wearing apparel.
At the end of the letter is a charming note to Mrs. Kenney's little
girl, Sophy, whom Lamb calls his dear wife. He assures her that the few
short days of connubial felicity which he passed with her among the
pears and apricots of Versailles were some of the happiest of his life.]
LETTER 290
CHARLES LAMB TO BERNARD BARTON
India House, 11 Sept. 1822.
Dear Sir--You have misapprehended me sadly, if you suppose that I meant
to impute any inconsistency (in your writing poetry) with your religious
profession. I do not remember what I said, but it was spoken sportively,
I am sure. One of my levities, which you are not so used to as my older
friends. I probably was thinking of the light in which your so indulging
yourself would appear to _Quakers_, and put their objection in my own
foolish mouth. I would eat my words (provided they should be written on
not very coarse paper) rather than I would throw cold water upon your,
and my once, harmless occupation. I have read Napoleon and the rest with
delight. I like them for what they are, and for what they are not. I
have sickened on the modern rhodomontade & Byronism, and your plain
Quakerish Beauty has captivated me. It is all wholesome cates, aye, and
toothsome too, and withal Quakerish. If I were George Fox, and George
Fox Licenser of the Press, they should have my absolute IMPRIMATUR. I
hope I have removed the impression.
I am, like you, a prisoner to the desk. I have been chained to that
gally thirty years, a long shot. I have almost grown to the wood. If no
imaginative poet, I am sure I am a figurative one. Do "Friends" allow
puns? _verbal_ equivocations?--they are unjustly accused of it, and I
did my little best in the "imperfect Sympathies" to vindicate them.
I am very tired of clerking it, but have no remedy. Did you see a sonnet
to this purpose in the Examiner?--
"Who first invented Work--and tied the free
And holy-day rejoycing spirit down
To the ever-haunting importunity
Of business, in the green fields, and the town--
To plough--loom--anvil--spade--&, oh, most sad,
To this dry drudgery of the desk's dead wood?
Who but the Being Unblest, alien from good,
Sabbathless Satan! he who his unglad
Task ever plies 'mid rotatory burnings,
That round and round incalculably reel--
For wrath Divine hath made him like a wheel--
In that red realm from whence are no returnings;
Where toiling and turmoiling ever and aye
He, and his Thoughts, keep pensive worky-day."
C.L.
I fancy the sentiment exprest above will be nearly your own, the
expression of it probably would not so well suit with a follower of John
Woolman. But I do not know whether diabolism is a part of your creed, or
where indeed to find an exposition of your creed at all. In feelings and
matters not dogmatical, I hope I am half a Quaker. Believe me, with
great respect, yours
C. LAMB.
I shall always be happy to see, or hear from you.--
[This is the first of the letters to Bernard Barton (1784-1849), a clerk
in a bank at Woodbridge, in Suffolk, who was known as the Quaker poet.
Lamb had met him at a _London Magazine_ dinner at 13 Waterloo Place, and
had apparently said something about Quakers and poetry which Barton, on
thinking it over, had taken too seriously. Bernard Barton was already
the author of four volumes of poetry, of which _Napoleon and other
Poems_ was the latest, published in 1822. Lamb's essay on "Imperfect
Sympathies" had been printed in the _London Magazine_ for August, 1821.
For John Woolman, see note on page 93. The sonnet "Work" had been
printed in the _Examiner_, August 29, 1819.]
LETTER 291
CHARLES LAMB TO BARRON FIELD
Sept. 22, 1822.
My dear F.,--I scribble hastily at office. Frank wants my letter
presently. I & sister are just returned from Paris!! We have eaten
frogs. It has been such a treat! You know our monotonous general Tenor.
Frogs are the nicest little delicate things--rabbity-flavoured. Imagine
a Lilliputian rabbit! They fricassee them; but in my mind, drest
seethed, plain, with parsley and butter, would have been the decision of
Apicius. Shelley the great Atheist has gone down by water to eternal
fire! Hunt and his young fry are left stranded at Pisa, to be adopted by
the remaining duumvir, Lord Byron--his wife and 6 children & their maid.
What a cargo of Jonases, if they had foundered too! The only use I can
find of friends, is that they do to borrow money of you. Henceforth I
will consort with none but rich rogues. Paris is a glorious picturesque
old City. London looks mean and New to it, as the town of Washington
would, seen after _it_. But they have no St. Paul's or Westminster
Abbey. The Seine, so much despised by Cockneys, is exactly the size to
run thro' a magnificent street; palaces a mile long on one side, lofty
Edinbro' stone (O the glorious antiques!): houses on the other. The
Thames disunites London & Southwark. I had Talma to supper with me. He
has picked up, as I believe, an authentic portrait of Shakspere. He paid
a broker about £40 English for it. It is painted on the one half of a
pair of bellows--a lovely picture, corresponding with the Folio head.
The bellows has old carved wings round it, and round the visnomy is
inscribed, near as I remember, not divided into rhyme--I found out the
rhyme--
"Whom have we here,
Stuck on this bellows,
But the Prince of good fellows,
Willy Shakspere?"
At top--
"O base and coward luck!
To be here stuck.--POINS."
At bottom--
"Nay! rather a glorious lot is to him assign'd,
Who, like the Almighty, rides upon the wind.--PISTOL."
This is all in old carved wooden letters. The countenance smiling,
sweet, and intellectual beyond measure, even as He was immeasurable. It
may be a forgery. They laugh at me and tell me Ireland is in Paris, and
has been putting off a portrait of the Black Prince. How far old wood
may be imitated I cannot say. Ireland was not found out by his
parchments, but by his poetry. I am confident no painter on either side
the Channel could have painted any thing near like the face I saw.
Again, would such a painter and forger have expected £40 for a thing, if
authentic, worth £4000? Talma is not in the secret, for he had not even
found out the rhymes in the first inscription. He is coming over with
it, and, my life to Southey's Thalaba, it will gain universal faith.
The letter is wanted, and I am wanted. Imagine the blank filled up with
all kind things.
Our joint hearty remembrances to both of you. Yours as ever,
C. LAMB.
[Frank was Francis John Field, Barron Field's brother, in the India
House.
Shelley was drowned on July 8, 1822.
Talma was François Joseph Talma (1763-1826), the great French tragedian.
Lamb, introduced by John Howard Payne, saw him in "Regulus," but not
understanding French was but mildly interested. "Ah," said Talma in the
account by James Kenney printed in Henry Angelo's _Pic Nic_, "I was not
very happy to-night; you must see me in 'Scylla.'" "Incidit in Scyllam,"
said Lamb, "qui vult vitare Charybdiro." "Ah, you are a rogue; you are a
great rogue," was Talma's reply. Talma had bought a pair of bellows with
Shakespeare's head on it. Lamb's belief in the authenticity of this
portrait was misplaced, as the following account from _Chambers'
Journal_ for September 27, 1856, will show:--
About the latter part of the last century, one Zincke, an artist of
little note, but grandson of the celebrated enameller of that name,
manufactured fictitious Shakespeares by the score.... The most famous of
Zincke's productions is the well-known Talma Shakespeare, which gentle
Charles Lamb made a pilgrimage to Paris to see; and when he did see,
knelt down and kissed with idolatrous veneration. Zincke painted it on a
larger panel than was necessary for the size of the picture, and then
cut away the superfluous wood, so as to leave the remainder in the shape
of a pair of bellows.... Zincke probably was thinking of "a muse of
fire" when he adopted this strange method of raising the wind; but he
made little by it, for the dealer into whose hands the picture passed,
sold it as a curiosity, not an original portrait, for £5. The buyer,
being a person of ingenuity, and fonder of money than curiosities,
fabricated a series of letters to and from Sir Kenelm Digby, and,
passing over to France, _planted_--the slang term used among the less
honest of the curiosity-dealing fraternity--the picture and the letters
in an old château near Paris. Of course a confederate managed to
discover the _plant_, in the presence of witnesses, and great was the
excitement that ensued. Sir Kenelm Digby had been in France in the reign
of Charles I., and the fictitious correspondence _proved_ that the
picture was an original, and had been painted by Queen Elizabeth's
command, on the lid of her favourite pair of bellows!
It really would seem that the more absurd a deception is, the better it
succeeds. All Paris was in delight at possessing an original
Shakespeare, while the London amateurs were in despair at such a
treasure being lost to England. The ingenious person soon found a
purchaser, and a high price recompensed him for his trouble. But more
remains to be told. The happy purchaser took his treasure to Ribet, the
first Parisian picture-cleaner of the day, to be cleaned. Ribet set to
work; but we may fancy his surprise as the superficial _impasto_ of
Zincke washed off beneath the sponge, and Shakespeare became a female in
a lofty headgear adorned with blue ribbons.
In a furious passion the purchaser ran to the seller. "Let us talk over
the affair quietly," said the latter; "I have been cheated as well as
you: let us keep the matter secret; if we let the public know it, all
Paris and even London too, will be laughing at us. I will return you
your money, and take back the picture, if you will employ Ribet to
restore it to the same condition as it was in when you received it."
This fair proposition was acceded to, and Ribet restored the picture;
but as he was a superior artist to Zincke, he greatly improved it, and
this improvement was attributed to his skill as a cleaner. The secret
being kept, and the picture, improved by cleaning, being again in the
market, Talma, the great Tragedian, purchased it at even a higher price
than that given by the first buyer. Talma valued it highly, enclosed it
in a case of morocco and gold, and subsequently refused 1000 Napoleons
for it; and even when at last its whole history was disclosed, he still
cherished it as a genuine memorial of the great bard.
By kind permission of Mr. B.B. MacGeorge, the owner both of the letter
and bellows, I was enabled to give a reproduction of the portrait in my
large edition.
Ireland was the author of "Vortigern," the forged play attributed to
Shakespeare.]
LETTER 292
CHARLES LAMB TO JOHN HOWARD PAYNE
[Autumn, 1822.]
Dear Payne--A friend and fellow-clerk of mine, Mr. White (a good fellow)
coming to your parts, I would fain have accompanied him, but am forced
instead to send a part of me, verse and prose, most of it from 20 to 30
years old, such as I then was, and I am not much altered.
Paris, which I hardly knew whether I liked when I was in it, is an
object of no small magnitude with me now. I want to be going, to the
Jardin des Plantes (is that right, Louisa?) with you to Pere de la
Chaise, La Morgue, and all the sentimentalities. How is Talma, and his
(my) dear Shakspeare?
N.B.--My friend White knows Paris thoroughly, and does not want a guide.
We did, and had one. We both join in thanks. Do you remember a Blue-Silk
Girl (English) at the Luxembourg, that did not much seem to attend to
the Pictures, who fell in love with you, and whom I fell in love
with--an inquisitive, prying, curious Beauty--where is she?
_Votre Très Humble Serviteur_,
CHARLOIS AGNEAU,
_alias_ C. LAMB.
Guichy is well, and much as usual. He seems blind to all the
distinctions of life, except to those of sex. Remembrance to Kenny and
Poole.