board, but at desk and board, and is jealous of my morning aberrations.
I can not slip out to congratulate kinder unions. It is well she leaves
me alone o' nights--the damn'd Day-hag _BUSINESS_. She is even now
peeping over me to see I am writing no Love Letters. I come, my dear--
Where is the Indigo Sale Book?
Twenty adieus, my dear friends, till we meet.
Yours most truly, C. LAMB.
Leadenhall, 11 Nov. '24.
[Procter married Anne Skepper, step-daughter of Basil Montagu, in
October, 1824. One of their daughters was Adelaide Ann Procter.
"Agnise"--acknowledge. It has been suggested that Lamb favoured this old
word also on account of its superficial association with _agnus_, a
lamb.]
LETTER 355
CHARLES LAMB TO HENRY CRABB ROBINSON
[P.M. Nov. 20, 1824.]
Dr. R. Barren Field bids me say that he is resident at his brother
Henry's, a surgeon &c., a few doors west of Christ Church Passage
Newgate Street; and that he shall be happy to accompany you up thence to
Islington, when next you come our way, but not so late as you sometimes
come. I think we shall be out on Tuesd'y.
Yours ever
C. LAMB.
Sat'y.
[Barron Field, as I have said, had returned from New South Wales in June
of this year. Later he became Chief Justice at Gibraltar.]
LETTER 356
CHARLES LAMB TO SARAH HUTCHINSON
Desk II, Nov. 25 [1824].
My dear Miss Hutchinson, Mary bids me thank you for your kind letter. We
are a little puzzled about your where-abouts: Miss Wordsworth writes
Torkay, and you have queerly made it Torquay. Now Tokay we have heard
of, and Torbay, which we take to be the true _male_ spelling of the
place, but somewhere we fancy it to be on "Devon's leafy shores," where
we heartily wish the kindly breezes may restore all that is invalid
among you. Robinson is returned, and speaks much of you all. We shall be
most glad to hear good news from you from time to time. The best is,
Proctor is at last married. We have made sundry attempts to see the
Bride, but have accidentally failed, she being gone out a gadding.
We had promised our dear friends the Monkhouses, promised ourselves
rather, a visit to them at Ramsgate, but I thought it best, and Mary
seemed to have it at heart too, not to go far from home these last holy
days. It is connected with a sense of unsettlement, and secretly I know
she hoped that such abstinence would be friendly to her health. She
certainly has escaped her sad yearly visitation, whether in consequence
of it, or of faith in it, and we have to be thankful for a good 1824. To
get such a notion into our heads may go a great way another year. Not
that we quite confined ourselves; but assuming Islington to be head
quarters, we made timid flights to Ware, Watford &c. to try how the
trouts tasted, for a night out or so, not long enough to make the sense
of change oppressive, but sufficient to scour the rust of home.
Coleridge is not returned from the Sea. As a little scandal
may divert you recluses--we were in the Summer dining at a
Clergyman of Southey's "Church of England," at Hertford,
the same who officiated to Thurtell's last moments, and indeed
an old contemporary Blue of C.'s and mine at School. After
dinner we talked of C., and F. who is a mighty good fellow in
the main, but hath his cassock prejudices, inveighed against
the moral character of C. I endeavoured to enlighten him on
the subject, till having driven him out of some of his holds, he
stopt my mouth at once by appealing to me whether it was not
very well known that C. "at that very moment was living in
a state of open a------y with Mrs. * * * * * at Highgate?"
Nothing I could say serious or bantering after that
could remove the deep inrooted conviction of the whole company
assembled that such was the case! Of course you will
keep this quite close, for I would not involve my poor blundering
friend, who I dare say believed it all thoroughly. My
interference of course was imputed to the goodness of my heart,
that could imagine nothing wrong &c. Such it is if Ladies
will go gadding about with other people's husbands at watering
places. How careful we should be to avoid the appearance of
Evil. I thought this Anecdote might amuse you. It is not
worth resenting seriously; only I give it as a specimen of
orthodox candour. O Southey, Southey, how long would it
be before you would find one of us _Unitarians_ propagating
such unwarrantable Scandal! Providence keep you all from
the foul fiend Scandal, and send you back well and happy to
dear Gloster Place. C.L.
[Thomas Monkhouse, who was in a decline, had been ordered to Torquay.
Crabb Robinson had been in Normandy for some weeks. The too credulous
clergyman at Hertford was Frederick William Franklin, Master of the Blue
Coat school there (from 1801 to 1827), who was at Christ's Hospital with
Lamb.
"Mrs. * * * * * *." Mrs. Gillman.]
LETTER 357
CHARLES LAMB TO LEIGH HUNT
[No date. ? November, 1824.]
ILLUSTREZZIMO Signor,--I have obeyed your mandate to a tittle. I
accompany this with a volume. But what have you done with the first I
sent you?--have you swapt it with some lazzaroni for macaroni? or
pledged it with a gondolierer for a passage? Peradventuri the Cardinal
Gonsalvi took a fancy to it:--his Eminence has done my Nearness an
honour. 'Tis but a step to the Vatican. As you judge, my works do not
enrich the workman, but I get vat I can for 'em. They keep dragging me
on, a poor, worn mill-horse, in the eternal round of the damn'd
magazine; but 'tis they are blind, not I. Colburn (where I recognise
with delight the gay W. Honeycomb renovated) hath the ascendency.
I was with the Novellos last week. They have a large, cheap house and
garden, with a dainty library (magnificent) without books. But what will
make you bless yourself (I am too old for wonder), something has touched
the right organ in Vincentio at last. He attends a Wesleyan chapel on
Kingsland Green. He at first tried to laugh it off--he only went for the
singing; but the cloven foot--I retract--the Lamb's trotters--are at
length apparent. Mary Isabella attributes it to a lightness induced by
his headaches. But I think I see in it a less accidental influence.
Mister Clark is at perfect staggers! the whole fabric of his infidelity
is shaken. He has no one to join him in his coarse-insults and indecent
obstreperousnesses against Christianity, for Holmes (the bonny Holmes)
is gone to Salisbury to be organist, and Isabella and the Clark make but
a feeble quorum. The children have all nice, neat little clasped
pray-books, and I have laid out 7s. 8d. in Watts's Hymns for Christmas
presents for them. The eldest girl alone holds out; she has been at
Boulogne, skirting upon the vast focus of Atheism, and imported bad
principles in patois French. But the strongholds are crumbling. N.
appears as yet to have but a confused notion of the Atonement. It makes
him giddy, he says, to think much about it. But such giddiness is
spiritual sobriety.
Well, Byron is gone, and ------ is now the best poet in England. Fill up
the gap to your fancy. Barry Cornwall has at last carried the pretty A.
S. They are just in the treacle-moon. Hope it won't clog his wings--gaum
we used to say at school.
Mary, my sister, has worn me out with eight weeks' cold and toothache,
her average complement in the winter, and it will not go away. She is
otherwise well, and reads novels all day long. She has had an exempt
year, a good year, for which, forgetting the minor calamity, she and I
are most thankful.
Alsager is in a flourishing house, with wife and children about him, in
Mecklenburg Square--almost too fine to visit.
Barron Field is come home from Sydney, but as yet I can hear no tidings
of a pension. He is plump and friendly, his wife really a very superior
woman. He resumes the bar.
I have got acquainted with Mr. Irving, the Scotch preacher, whose fame
must have reached you. He is a humble disciple at the foot of Gamaliel
S.T.C. Judge how his own sectarists must stare when I tell you he has
dedicated a book to S.T.C., acknowledging to have learnt more of the
nature of Faith, Christianity, and Christian Church, from him than from
all the men he ever conversed with. He is a most amiable, sincere,
modest man in a room, this Boanerges in the temple. Mrs. Montague told
him the dedication would do him no good. "That shall be a reason for
doing it," was his answer. Judge, now, whether this man be a quack.
Dear H., take this imperfect notelet for a letter; it looks so much the
more like conversing on nearer terms. Love to all the Hunts, old friend
Thornton, and all.
Yours ever, C. LAMB.
[Leigh Hunt was still living at Genoa. Shelley and Byron, whom he had
left England to join, were both dead. Lamb, I assume, sent him a second
copy of _Elia_, with this letter.
Cardinal Gonsalvi was Ercole Gonsalvi (1757-1824), secretary to Pius
VII. and a patron of the arts. Lawrence painted him.
For the present state of the _London Magazine_ see next letter. Leigh
Hunt contributed to Colburn's _New Monthly Magazine_, among other
things, a series of papers on "The Months." Hunt also contributed an
account of the Honeycomb family, by Harry Honeycomb.
By Mary Isabella Lamb meant Mary Sabilla Novello, Vincent Novello's
wife. The eldest girl was Mary Victoria, afterwards the wife of Charles
Cowden Clarke, the Mr. Clark mentioned here. Novello (now living at
Shackleford Green) remained a good Roman Catholic to the end. Holmes was
Edward Holmes (1797-1859), a pupil of Cowden Clarke's father at Enfield
and schoolfellow of Keats. He had lived with the Novellos, studying
music, and later became a musical writer and teacher and the biographer
of Mozart.
Mrs. Barron Field was a Miss Jane Carncroft, to whom Lamb addressed some
album verses (see Vol. IV. of this edition). Leigh Hunt knew of Field's
return, for he had contributed to the _New Monthly_ earlier in the year
a rhymed letter to him in which he welcomed him home again.
Irving was Edward Irving (1792-1834), afterwards the founder of the
Catholic Apostolic sect, then drawing people to the chapel in Hatton
Garden, attached to the Caledonian Asylum. The dedication, to which Lamb
alludes more than once in his correspondence, was that of his work, _For
Missionaries after the Apostolical School, a series of orations in four
parts_, ... 1825. It runs:--
DEDICATION
TO
SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE, ESQ.
MY DEAR AND HONOURED FRIEND,
Unknown as you are, in the true character either of your mind or of your
heart, to the greater part of your countrymen, and misrepresented as
your works have been, by those who have the ear of the vulgar, it will
seem wonderful to many that I should make choice of you, from the circle
of my friends, to dedicate to you these beginnings of my thoughts upon
the most important subject of these or any times. And when I state the
reason to be, that you have been more profitable to my faith in orthodox
doctrine, to my spiritual understanding of the Word of God, and to my
right conception of the Christian Church, than any or all of the men
with whom I have entertained friendship and conversation, it will
perhaps still more astonish the mind, and stagger the belief, of those
who have adopted, as once I did myself, the misrepresentations which are
purchased for a hire and vended for a price, concerning your character
and works. You have only to shut your ear to what they ignorantly say of
you, and earnestly to meditate the deep thoughts with which you are
instinct, and give them a suitable body and form that they may live,
then silently commit them to the good sense of ages yet to come, in
order to be ranked hereafter amongst the most gifted sages and greatest
benefactors of your country. Enjoy and occupy the quiet which, after
many trials, the providence of God hath bestowed upon you, in the bosom
of your friends; and may you be spared until you have made known the
multitude of your thoughts, unto those who at present value, or shall
hereafter arise to value, their worth.
I have partaken so much high intellectual enjoyment from being admitted
into the close and familiar intercourse with which you have honoured me,
and your many conversations concerning the revelations of the Christian
faith have been so profitable to me in every sense, as a student and a
preacher of the Gospel, as a spiritual man and a Christian pastor, and
your high intelligence and great learning have at all times so kindly
stooped to my ignorance and inexperience, that not merely with the
affection of friend to friend, and the honour due from youth to
experienced age, but with the gratitude of a disciple to a wise and
generous teacher, of an anxious inquirer to the good man who hath helped
him in the way of truth, I do now presume to offer you the first-fruits
of my mind since it received a new impulse towards truth, and a new
insight into its depths, from listening to your discourse. Accept them
in good part, and be assured that however insignificant in themselves,
they are the offering of a heart which loves your heart, and of a mind
which looks up with reverence to your mind.
EDWARD IRVING.
"Old friend Thornton" was Leigh Hunt's son, Thornton Leigh Hunt, whom
Lamb had addressed in verse in 1815 as "my favourite child." He was now
fourteen.]
LETTER 358
CHARLES LAMB TO BERNARD BARTON AND LUCY BARTON
[P.M. December 1, 1824.]
Dear B.B.--If Mr. Mitford will send me a full and circumstantial
description of his desired vases, I will transmit the same to a
Gentleman resident at Canton, whom I think I have interest enough in to
take the proper care for their execution. But Mr. M. must have patience.
China is a great way off, further perhaps than he thinks; and his next
year's roses must be content to wither in a Wedgewood pot. He will
please to say whether he should like his Arms upon them, &c. I send
herewith some patterns which suggest themselves to me at the first blush
of the subject, but he will probably consult his own taste after all.
[Illustration: Handdrawn sketch]
The last pattern is obviously fitted for ranunculuses only. The two
former may indifferently hold daisies, marjoram, sweet williams, and
that sort. My friend in Canton is Inspector of Teas, his name Ball; and
I can think of no better tunnel. I shall expect Mr. M.'s decision.
Taylor and Hessey finding their magazine goes off very heavily at 2s.
6d. are prudently going to raise their price another shilling; and
having already more authors than they want, intend to increase the
number of them. If they set up against the New Monthly, they must change
their present hands. It is not tying the dead carcase of a Review to a
half-dead Magazine will do their business. It is like G.D. multiplying
his volumes to make 'em sell better. When he finds one will not go off,
he publishes two; two stick, he tries three; three hang fire, he is
confident that four will have a better chance.
And now, my dear Sir, trifling apart, the gloomy catastrophe of
yesterday morning prompts a sadder vein. The fate of the unfortunate
Fauntleroy makes me, whether I will or no, to cast reflecting eyes
around on such of my friends as by a parity of situation are exposed to
a similarity of temptation. My very style, seems to myself to become
more impressive than usual, with the change of theme. Who that standeth,
knoweth but he may yet fall? Your hands as yet, I am most willing to
believe, have never deviated into others' property. You think it
impossible that you could ever commit so heinous an offence. But so
thought Fauntleroy once; so have thought many besides him, who at last
have expiated, as he hath done. You are as yet upright. But you are a
Banker, at least the next thing to it. I feel the delicacy of the
subject; but cash must pass thro' your hands, sometimes to a great
amount. If in an unguarded hour--but I will hope better. Consider the
scandal it will bring upon those of your persuasion. Thousands would go
to see a Quaker hanged, that would be indifferent to the fate of a
Presbyterian, or an Anabaptist. Think of the effect it would have on the
sale of your poems alone; not to mention higher considerations. I
tremble, I am sure, at myself, when I think that so many poor victims of
the Law at one time of their life made as sure of never being hanged as
I in my presumption am too ready to do myself. What are we better than
they? Do we come into the world with different necks? Is there any
distinctive mark under our left ears? Are we unstrangulable? I ask you.
Think of these things. I am shocked sometimes at the shape of my own
fingers, not for their resemblance to the ape tribe (which is something)
but for the exquisite adaptation of them to the purposes of picking,
fingering, &c. No one that is so framed, I maintain it, but should
tremble.
Postscript for your Daughter's eyes only.
Dear Miss ---- Your pretty little letterets make me ashamed of my great
straggling coarse handwriting. I wonder where you get pens to write so
small. Sure they must be the pinions of a small wren, or a robin. If you
write so in your Album, you must give us glasses to read by. I have seen
a Lady's similar book all writ in following fashion. I think it pretty
and fanciful.
"O how I love in early dawn
To bend my steps o'er flowery dawn [lawn],"
which I think has an agreeable variety to the eye. Which I recommend to
your notice, with friend Elia's best wishes.
[The _London Magazine_ began a new series at half a crown with the
number for January, 1825. It had begun to decline very noticeably. The
_New Monthly Magazine_, to the January number of which Lamb contributed
his "Illustrious Defunct" essay, was its most serious rival. Lamb
returned to some of his old vivacity and copiousness in the _London
Magazine_ for January, 1825. To that number he contributed his
"Biographical Memoir of Mr. Liston" and the "Vision of Horns"; and to
the February number "Letter to an Old Gentleman," "Unitarian Protests"
and the "Autobiography of Mr. Munden."
"G.D."--George Dyer again.
"Fauntleroy." See note above. Fauntleroy's fate seems to have had great
fascination for Lamb. He returned to the subject, in the vein of this
letter, in "The Last Peach," a little essay printed in the _London
Magazine_ for April, 1825 (see Vol. I. of this edition); and in
_Memories of old Friends, being Extracts from the Journals and Letters
of Caroline Fox, ... from 1835 to 1871_, 1882, I find the following
entry:--
October 25 [l839].--G. Wightwick and others dined with us. He talked
agreeably about capital punishments, greatly doubting their having any
effect in preventing crime. Soon after Fauntleroy was hanged, an
advertisement appeared, "To all good Christians! Pray for the soul of
Fauntleroy." This created a good deal of speculation as to whether he
was a Catholic, and at one of Coleridge's soirées it was discussed for a
considerable time; at length Coleridge, turning to Lamb, asked, "Do you
know anything about this affair?" "I should think I d-d-d-did," said
Elia, "for I paid s-s-s-seven and sixpence for it!"
Lamb's postscript is written in extremely small characters, and --the
letters of the two lines of verse are in alternate red and black inks.
It was this letter which, Edward FitzGerald tells us, Thackeray pressed
to his forehead, with the remark "Saint Charles!" Hitherto, the
postscript not having been thought worthy of print by previous editors,
it was a little difficult to understand why this particular letter had
been selected for Thackeray's epithet. But when one thinks of the
patience with which, after making gentle fun of her father, Lamb sat
down to amuse Lucy Barton, and, as Thackeray did, thinks also of his
whole life, it becomes more clear.
Here should come a letter to Alaric A. Watts dated Dec. 28, 1824, in
reply to a request for a contribution to one of this inveterate
album-maker's albums. Lamb acquiesces. Later he came to curse the
things. Given in the Boston Bibliophile edition.]
LETTER 359
CHARLES LAMB TO JOHN BATES DIBDIN
[P.M. January II, 1825.]
My Dear Sir--Pray return my best thanks to your father for his little
volume. It is like all of his I have seen, spirited, good humoured, and
redolent of the wit and humour of a century ago. He should have lived
with Gay and his set. The Chessiad is so clever that I relish'd it in
spite of my total ignorance of the game. I have it not before me, but I
remember a capital simile of the Charwoman letting in her Watchman
husband, which is better than Butler's Lobster turned to Red. Hazard is
a grand Character, Jove in his Chair. When you are disposed to leave
your one room for my six, Colebrooke is where it was, and my sister begs
me to add that as she is disappointed of meeting your sister _your way_,
we shall be most happy to see her _our way_, when you have an even'g to
spare. Do not stand on ceremonies and introductions, but come at once. I
need not say that if you can induce your father to join the party, it
will be so much the pleasanter. Can you name an evening _next week_? I
give you long credit.
Meantime am as usual yours truly C.L.
E.I.H.
11 Jan. 25.
When I saw the Chessiad advertised by C.D. the Younger, I hoped it
might be yours. What title is left for you--
Charles Dibdin _the Younger, Junior_.
O No, you are Timothy.
[Charles Dibdin the Younger wrote a mock-heroic poem, "The Chessiad,"
which was published with _Comic Tales_ in 1825. The simile of the
charwoman runs thus:--
Now Morning, yawning, rais'd her from her bed,
Slipp'd on her wrapper blue and 'kerchief red,
And took from Night the key of Sleep's abode;
For Night within that mansion had bestow'd
The Hours of day; now, turn and turn about,
Morn takes the key and lets the Day-hours out;
Laughing, they issue from the ebon gate,
And Night walks in. As when, in drowsy state,
Some watchman, wed to one who chars all day,
Takes to his lodging's door his creeping way;
His rib, arising, lets him in to sleep,
While she emerges to scrub, dust, and sweep.
This is the lobster simile in _Hudibras_, Part II., Canto 2, lines
29-32:--
The sun had long since, in the lap
Of Thetis, taken out his nap,
And, like a lobster boiled, the morn
From black to red began to turn.
Hazard is the chief of the gods in the Chessiad's little drama.
"You are Timothy." See letter to Dibdin above.
I have included in Vol. I. of the present edition a review of Dibdin's
book, in the _New Times_, January 27, 1825, which both from internal
evidence and from the quotation of the charwoman passage I take to be by
Lamb, who was writing for that paper at that time.]
LETTER 360
CHARLES LAMB TO THOMAS ALLSOP
Jan. 17, 1825.
Dear Allsop--I acknowledge with thanks the receipt of a draft on Messrs.
Wms. for £81:11:3 which I haste to cash in the present alarming state of
the money market. Hurst and Robinson gone. I have imagined a chorus of
ill-used authors singing on the occasion:
What should we when Booksellers break?
We should rejoice
da Capo.
We regret exceed'ly Mrs. Allsop's being unwell. Mary or both will come
and see her soon. The frost is cruel, and we have both colds. I take
Pills again, which battle with your wine & victory hovers doubtful. By
the bye, tho' not disinclined to presents I remember our bargain to take
a dozen at sale price and must demur. With once again thanks and best
loves to Mrs. A.
Turn over--Yours, C. LAMB.
[Hurst and Robinson were publishers. Lamb took the idea for his chorus
from Davenant's version of "Macbeth" which he described in _The
Spectator_ in 1828 (see Vol. I. of the present edition). It is there a
chorus of witches--
We should rejoice when good kings bleed. ]
LETTER 361
CHARLES LAMB TO SARAH HUTCHINSON
[P.M. January 20, 1825.]
The brevity of this is owing to scratching it off at my desk amid
expected interruptions. By habit, I can write Letters only at office.