Hone, however, had the rules of the King's Bench at the time. Beckey was
the Lambs' servant and tyrant; she had been Hazlitt's. Patmore described
her at some length in his reminiscences of Lamb.
"Chatty-Briant"--Chateaubriand.]
LETTER 420
CHARLES LAMB TO MRS. PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY
Enfield, July 26th, 1827.
Dear Mrs. Shelley,--At the risk of throwing away some fine thoughts, I
must write to say how pleased we were with your very kind remembering of
us (who have unkindly run away from all our friends) before you go.
Perhaps you are gone, and then my tropes are wasted. If any piece of
better fortune has lighted upon you than you expected, but less than we
wish you, we are rejoiced. We are here trying to like solitude, but have
scarce enough to justify the experiment. We get some, however. The six
days are our Sabbath; the seventh--why, Cockneys will come for a little
fresh air, and so--
But by _your month_, or October at furthest, we hope to see Islington: I
like a giant refreshed with the leaving off of wine, and Mary, pining
for Mr. Moxon's books and Mr. Moxon's society. Then we shall meet.
I am busy with a farce in two acts, the incidents tragi-comic. I can do
the dialogue _commey fo_: but the damned plot--I believe I must omit it
altogether. The scenes come after one another like geese, not
marshalling like cranes or a Hyde Park review. The story is as simple as
G[eorge] D[yer], and the language plain as his spouse. The characters
are three women to one man; which is one more than laid hold on him in
the "Evangely." I think that prophecy squinted towards my drama.
I want some Howard Paine to sketch a skeleton of artfully succeeding
scenes through a whole play, as the courses are arranged in a cookery
book: I to find wit, passion, sentiment, character, and the like
trifles: to lay in the dead colours,--I'd Titianesque 'em up: to mark
the channel in a cheek (smooth or furrowed, yours or mine), and where
tears should course I'd draw the waters down: to say where a joke should
come in or a pun be left out: to bring my _personae_ on and off like a
Beau Nash; and I'd Frankenstein them there: to bring three together on
the stage at once; they are so shy with me, that I can get no more than
two; and there they stand till it is the time, without being the season,
to withdraw them.
I am teaching Emma Latin to qualify her for a superior governess-ship;
which we see no prospect of her getting. 'Tis like feeding a child with
chopped hay from a spoon. Sisyphus--his labours were as nothing to it.
Actives and passives jostle in her nonsense, till a deponent enters,
like Chaos, more to embroil the fray. Her prepositions are suppositions;
her conjunctions copulative have no connection in them; her concords
disagree; her interjections are purely English "Ah!" and "Oh!" with a
yawn and a gape in the same tongue; and she herself is a lazy,
block-headly supine. As I say to her, ass _in praesenti_ rarely makes a
wise man _in futuro_.
But I daresay it was so with you when you began Latin, and a good while
after.
Good-by! Mary's love.
Yours truly, C. LAMB.
[This is the second letter to Mrs. Shelley, _née_ Mary Wollstonecraft
Godwin, the widow of the poet and the author of _Frankenstein_. She had
been living in England since 1823; and in 1826 had issued anonymously
_The Last Man_. That she kept much in touch with the Lambs' affairs we
know by her letters to Leigh Hunt.
Major Butterworth has kindly supplied me with a copy of her letter to
Mary Lamb which called forth Lamb's reply. It runs thus:--
Kentish Town, 22 July, 1827.
My dear Miss Lamb,
You have been long at Enfield--I hardly know yet whether you are
returned--and I quit town so very soon that I have not time to--as I
exceedingly wish--call on you before I go. Nevertheless believe (if such
familiar expression be not unmeet from me) that I love you with all my
heart--gratefully and sincerely--and that when I return I shall seek you
with, I hope, not too much zeal--but it will be with great eagerness.
You will be glad to hear that I have every reason to believe that the
worst of my pecuniary troubles are over--as I am promised a regular tho'
small income from my father-in-law. I mean to be very industrious _on
other accounts_ this summer, so I hope nothing will go very ill with me
or mine.
I am afraid Miss Kelly will think me dreadfully rude for not having
availed myself of her kind invitation. Will you present my compliments
to her, and say that my embarassments, harassings and distance from town
are the guilty causes of my omission--for which with her leave I will
apologize in person on my return to London.
All kind and grateful remembrances to Mr. Lamb, he must not forget me
nor like me one atom less than I delight to flatter myself he does now,
when again I come to seize a dinner perforce at your cottage. Percy is
quite well--and is reading with great extacy (_sic_) the Arabian Nights.
I shall return I suppose some one day in September. God bless you.
Yours affectionately,
MARY W. SHELLEY.
_Commey fo_ is Lamb's _comme il faut_.
"In the 'Evangely.'" If by Evangely he meant Gospel, Lamb was a little
confused here, I think. Probably Isaiah iv. I was in his mind: "and in
that day seven women shall take hold of one man." But he may also have
half remembered Luke xvii. 35.
"I am teaching Emma Latin." Mary Lamb contributed to _Blackwood's
Magazine_ for June, 1829, the following little poem describing Emma
Isola's difficulties in these lessons:--
TO EMMA, LEARNING LATIN, AND DESPONDING
Droop not, dear Emma, dry those falling tears,
And call up smiles into thy pallid face,
Pallid and care-worn with thy arduous race:
In few brief months thou hast done the work of years.
To young beginnings natural are these fears.
A right good scholar shalt thou one day be,
And that no distant one; when even she,
Who now to thee a star far off appears,
That most rare Latinist, the Northern Maid--
The language-loving Sarah[1] of the Lake--
Shall hail thee Sister Linguist. This will make
Thy friends, who now afford thee careful aid,
A recompense most rich for all their pains,
Counting thy acquisitions their best gains.
[Footnote 1: Daughter of S.T. Coleridge, Esq.; an accomplished linguist
in the Greek and Latin tongues, and translatress of a History of the
Abipones.]
A letter to an anonymous correspondent, in the summer of 1827, has an
amusing passage concerning Emma Isola's Latin. Lamb says that they made
Cary laugh by translating "Blast you" into such elegant verbiage as
"Deus afflet tibi." He adds, "How some parsons would have goggled and
what would Hannah More say? I don't like clergymen, but here and there
one. Cary, the Dante Cary, is a model quite as plain as Parson Primrose,
without a shade of silliness."
On July 21, 1827, is a letter to Mr. Dillon, whom I do not identify,
saying that Lamb has been teaching Emma Isola Latin for the past seven
weeks.
"Ass _in praesenti_." This was Boyer's joke, at Christ's Hospital (see
Vol. I. of this edition).
Here should come a letter from Lamb to Edward White, of the India House,
dated August 1, 1827, in which Lamb has some pleasantry about paying
postages, and ends by heartily commending White to mind his ledger, and
keep his eye on Mr. Chambers' balances.]
LETTER 421
CHARLES LAMB TO MRS. BASIL MONTAGU
[Summer, 1827.]
Dear Madam,--I return your List with my name. I should be sorry that any
respect should be going on towards [Clarkson,] and I be left out of the
conspiracy. Otherwise I frankly own that to pillarize a man's good
feelings in his lifetime is not to my taste. Monuments to goodness, even
after death, are equivocal. I turn away from Howard's, I scarce know
why. Goodness blows no trumpet, nor desires to have it blown. We should
be modest for a modest man--as he is for himself. The vanities of
Life--Art, Poetry, Skill military, are subjects for trophies; not the
silent thoughts arising in a good man's mind in lonely places. Was I
C[larkson,] I should never be able to walk or ride near ------ again.
Instead of bread, we are giving him a stone. Instead of the locality
recalling the noblest moment of his existence, it is a place at which
his friends (that is, himself) blow to the world, "What a good man is
he!" I sat down upon a hillock at Forty Hill yesternight--a fine
contemplative evening,--with a thousand good speculations about mankind.
How I yearned with cheap benevolence! I shall go and inquire of the
stone-cutter, that cuts the tombstones here, what a stone with a short
inscription will cost; just to say--"Here C. Lamb loved his brethren of
mankind." Everybody will come there to love. As I can't well put my own
name, I shall put about a subscription:
_s. d_.
Mrs. ---- 5 0
Procter 2 6
G. Dyer 1 0
Mr. Godwin 0 0
Mrs. Godwin 0 0
Mr. Irving a watch-chain.
Mr. ------- the proceeds of ------ first edition.*
___ ___
8 6
I scribble in haste from here, where we shall be some time. Pray request
Mr. M[ontagu] to advance the guinea for me, which shall faithfully be
forthcoming; and pardon me that I don't see the proposal in quite the
light that he may. The kindness of his motives, and his power of
appreciating the noble passage, I thoroughly agree in.
With most kind regards to him, I conclude, Dear Madam,
Yours truly, C. LAMB.
From Mrs. Leishman's, Chase, Enfield.
*A capital book, by the bye, but not over saleable.
[The memorial to Thomas Clarkson stands on a hill above Wade Mill, on
the Buntingford Road, in Hertfordshire.
Forty Hill is close to Enfield.
Edward Irving's watch-chain. The explanation of Lamb's joke is to be
found in Carlyle's _Reminiscences_ (quoted also in Froude's _Life_, Vol.
I., page 326). Irving had put down as his contribution to some
subscription list, at a public meeting, "an actual gold watch, which he
said had just arrived to him from his beloved brother lately dead in
India." This rather theatrical action had evidently amused Lamb as it
had disgusted Carlyle.
The "first edition" of "Mr. -----" was, I suppose, Basil Montagu's work
on Bacon, which Macaulay reviewed.]
LETTER 422
MARY LAMB TO LADY STODDART
[August 9, 1827.]
My dear Lady-Friend,--My brother called at our empty cottage yesterday,
and found the cards of your son and his friend, Mr. Hine, under the
door; which has brought to my mind that I am in danger of losing this
post, as I did the last, being at that time in a confused state of
mind--for at that time we were talking of leaving, and persuading
ourselves that we were intending to leave town and all our friends, and
sit down for ever, solitary and forgotten, here. Here we are; and we
have locked up our house, and left it to take care of itself; but at
present we do not design to extend our rural life beyond Michaelmas.
Your kind letter was most welcome to me, though the good news contained
in it was already known to me. Accept my warmest congratulations, though
they come a little of the latest. In my next I may probably have to hail
you Grandmama; or to felicitate you on the nuptials of pretty Mary, who,
whatever the beaux of Malta may think of her, I can only remember her
round shining face, and her "O William!"--"dear William!" when we
visited her the other day at school. Present my love and best wishes--a
long and happy married life to dear Isabella--I love to call her
Isabella; but in truth, having left your other letter in town, I
recollect no other name she has.
The same love and the same wishes--in futuro--to my friend Mary. Tell
her that her "dear William" grows taller, and improves in manly looks
and manlike behaviour every time I see him. What is Henry about? and
what should one wish for him? If he be in search of a wife, I will send
him out Emma Isola.
You remember Emma, that you were so kind as to invite to your ball? She
is now with us; and I am moving heaven and earth, that is to say, I am
pressing the matter upon all the very few friends I have that are likely
to assist me in such a case, to get her into a family as a governess;
and Charles and I do little else here than teach her something or other
all day long.
We are striving to put enough Latin into her to enable her to begin to
teach it to young learners. So much for Emma --for you are so fearfully
far away, that I fear it is useless to implore your patronage for her.
I have not heard from Mrs. Hazlitt a long time. I believe she is still
with Hazlitt's mother in Devonshire.
I expect a pacquet of manuscript from you: you promised me the office of
negotiating with booksellers, and so forth, for your next work. Is it in
good forwardness? or do you grow rich and indolent now? It is not
surprising that your Maltese story should find its way into Malta; but I
was highly pleased with the idea of your pleasant surprise at the sight
of it. I took a large sheet of paper, in order to leave Charles room to
add something more worth reading than my poor mite.
May we all meet again once more!
M. LAMB.
LETTER 423
CHARLES LAMB TO SIR JOHN STODDART
(_Same letter: Lamb's share_)
Dear Knight--Old Acquaintance--'Tis with a violence to the _pure
imagination_ (_vide_ the "Excursion" _passim_) that I can bring myself
to believe I am writing to Dr. Stoddart once again, at Malta. But the
deductions of severe reason warrant the proceeding. I write from
Enfield, where we are seriously weighing the advantages of dulness over
the over-excitement of too much company, but have not yet come to a
conclusion. What is the news? for we see no paper here; perhaps you can
send us an old one from Malta. Only, I heard a butcher in the
market-place whisper something about a change of ministry. I don't know
who's in or out, or care, only as it might affect _you_. For domestic
doings, I have only to tell, with extreme regret, that poor Elisa
Fenwick (that was)--Mrs. Rutherford--is dead; and that we have received
a most heart-broken letter from her mother--left with four
grandchildren, orphans of a living scoundrel lurking about the pothouses
of Little Russell Street, London: they and she--God help 'em!--at New
York. I have just received Godwin's third volume of the _Republic_,
which only reaches to the commencement of the Protectorate. I think he
means to spin it out to his life's thread. Have you seen Fearn's
_Anti-Tooke_? I am no judge of such things--you are; but I think it very
clever indeed. If I knew your bookseller, I'd order it for you at a
venture: 'tis two octavos, Longman and Co. Or do you read now? Tell it
not in the Admiralty Court, but my head aches _hesterno vino_. I can
scarce pump up words, much less ideas, congruous to be sent so far. But
your son must have this by to-night's post.[_Here came a passage
relating to an escapade of young Stoddart, then at the Charterhouse,
which, probably through Lamb's intervention, was treated leniently. Lamb
helped him--with his imposition-- Gray's "Elegy" into Greek elegiacs_.]
Manning is gone to Rome, Naples, etc., probably to touch at Sicily,
Malta, Guernsey, etc.; but I don't know the map. Hazlitt is resident at
Paris, whence he pours his lampoons in safety at his friends in England.
He has his boy with him. I am teaching Emma Latin. By the time you can
answer this, she will be qualified to instruct young ladies: she is a
capital English reader: and S.T.C. acknowledges that a part of a passage
in Milton she read better than he, and part he read best, her part being
the shorter. But, seriously, if Lady St------ (oblivious pen, that was
about to write _Mrs._!) could hear of such a young person wanted (she
smatters of French, some Italian, music of course), we'd send our loves
by her. My congratulations and assurances of old esteem. C.L.
[Stoddart had been appointed in 1826 Chief-Justice and Justice of the
Vice-Admiralty Court in Malta and had been knighted in the same year.
His daughter Isabella had just married. Lady Stoddart's literary efforts
did not, I think, reach print.
"The deductions of severe reason." See the quotation from Cottle in the
letter to Manning of November, 1802.
"A change of ministry." On Liverpool's resignation early in 1827 Canning
had been called in to form a new Ministry, which he effected by an
alliance with the Whigs.
"Godwin's _Republic_"--_History of the Commonwealth of England_, in
four volumes, 1824-1828.
"Fearn's _Anti-Tooke_"--_Anti-Tooke; or, An Analysis of the Principles
and Structure of Language Exemplified in the English Tongue_, 1824.
Here should come a note from Lamb to Hone, dated August 10, 1827, in
which Lamb expresses regret for Matilda Hone's illness.]
LETTER 424
CHARLES LAMB TO BERNARD BARTON
[P.M. 10 August, 1827.]
Dear B.B.--I have not been able to: answer you, for we have had, and
are having (I just snatch a moment), our poor quiet retreat, to which we
fled from society, full of company, some staying with us, and this
moment as I write almost a heavy importation of two old Ladies has come
in. Whither can I take wing from the oppression of human faces? Would I
were in a wilderness of Apes, tossing cocoa nuts about, grinning and
grinned at!
Mitford was hoaxing you surely about my Engraving, 'tis a little
sixpenny thing, too like by half, in which the draughtsman has done his
best to avoid flattery. There have been 2 editions of it, which I think
are all gone, as they have vanish'd from the window where they hung, a
print shop, corner of Great and Little Queen Streets, Lincolns Inn
fields, where any London friend of yours may inquire for it; for I am
(tho' you _won't understand_ it) at Enfield (Mrs. Leishman's, Chase). We
have been here near 3 months, and shall stay 2 or more, if people will
let us alone, but they persecute us from village to village. So don't
direct to _Islington_ again, till further notice.
I am trying my hand at a Drama, in 2 acts, founded on Crabbe's
"Confidant," mutatis mutandis.
You like the Odyssey. Did you ever read my "Adventures of Ulysses,"
founded on Chapman's old translation of it? for children or _men_. Ch.
is divine, and my abridgment has not quite emptied him of his divinity.
When you come to town I'll show it you.
You have well described your old fashioned Grand-paternall Hall. Is it
not odd that every one's earliest recollections are of some such place.
I had my Blakesware (Blakesmoor in the "London"). Nothing fills a childs
mind like a large old Mansion [_one or two words wafered over_]; better
if un-or-partially-occupied; peopled with the spirits of deceased
members of [for] the County and Justices of the Quorum. Would I were
buried in the peopled solitude of one, with my feelings at 7 years old.
Those marble busts of the Emperors, they seem'd as if they were to stand
for ever, as they had stood from the living days of Rome, in that old
Marble Hall, and I to partake of their permanency; Eternity was, while I
thought not of Time. But he thought of me, and they are toppled down,
and corn covers the spot of the noble old Dwelling and its princely
gardens. I feel like a grasshopper that chirping about the grounds
escaped his scythe only by my littleness. Ev'n now he is whetting one of
his smallest razors to clean wipe me out, perhaps. Well!
["My Engraving"--Brook Pulham's caricature.
"You have well described your ... Grand-paternall Hall." Barton wrote
the following account of this house, the home of his step-grandfather at
Tottenham; but I do not know whether it is the same that Lamb saw:--
My most delightful recollections of boyhood are connected with the
fine old country-house in a green lane diverging from the high road
which runs through Tottenham. I would give seven years of life as it
now is, for a week of that which I then led. It was a large old
house, with an iron palisade and a pair of iron gates in front, and
a huge stone eagle on each pier. Leading up to the steps by which
you went up to the hall door, was a wide gravel walk, bordered in
summer time by huge tubs, in which were orange and lemon trees, and
in the centre of the grass-plot stood a tub yet huger, holding an
enormous aloe, The hall itself, to my fancy then lofty and wide as a
cathedral would seem now, was a famous place for battledore and
shuttlecock; and behind was a garden, equal to that of old Alcinous
himself. My favourite walk was one of turf by a long straight pond,
bordered with lime-trees. But the whole demesne was the fairy ground
of my childhood; and its presiding genius was grandpapa. He must
have been a very handsome man in his youth, for I remember him at
nearly eighty, a very fine-looking one, even in the decay of mind
and body. In the morning a velvet cap; by dinner, a flaxen wig; his
features always expressive of benignity and placid cheerfulness.
When he walked out into the garden, his cocked hat and amber-headed
cane completed his costume. To the recollection of this delightful
personage, I am, I think, indebted for many soothing and pleasing
associations, with old age.
"Those marble busts of the Emperors." See the _Elia_ essay "Blakesmoor
in H----shire," in Vol. II, of this edition.]
LETTER 425
CHARLES LAMB TO BERNARD BARTON
28th of Aug., 1827.
I have left a place for a wafer, but can't find it again.
Dear B.B.--I am thankful to you for your ready compliance with my
wishes. Emma is delighted with your verses, to which I have appended
this notice "The 6th line refers to the child of a dear friend of the
author's, named Emma," without which it must be obscure; and have sent
it with four Album poems of my own (your daughter's with _your_ heading,
requesting it a place next mine) to a Mr. Fraser, who is to be editor of
a more superb Pocket book than has yet appeared by far! the property of
some wealthy booksellers, but whom, or what its name, I forgot to ask.
It is actually to have in it schoolboy exercises by his present Majesty
and the late Duke of York, so Lucy will come to Court; how she will be
stared at! Wordsworth is named as a Contributor. Frazer, whom I have
slightly seen, is Editor of a forth-come or coming Review of foreign
books, and is intimately connected with Lockhart, &c. so I take it that
this is a concern of Murray's. Walter Scott also contributes mainly. I
have stood off a long time from these Annuals, which are ostentatious
trumpery, but could not withstand the request of Jameson, a particular
friend of mine and Coleridge.
I shall hate myself in frippery, strutting along, and vying finery with
Beaux and Belles
with "Future Lord Byrons and sweet L.E.L.'s."--
Your taste I see is less simple than mine, which the difference of our
persuasions has doubtless effected. In fact, of late you have so
frenchify'd your style, larding it with hors de combats, and au
desopoirs, that o' my conscience the Foxian blood is quite dried out of
you, and the skipping Monsieur spirit has been infused. Doth Lucy go to
Balls? I must remodel my lines, which I write for her. I hope A.K. keeps
to her Primitives. If you have any thing you'd like to send further, I
don't know Frazer's address, but I sent mine thro' Mr. Jameson, 19 or 90
Cheyne Street, Totnam Court road. I dare say an honourable place wou'd
be given to them; but I have not heard from Frazer since I sent mine,
nor shall probably again, and therefore I do not solicit it as from him.
Yesterday I sent off my tragi comedy to Mr. Kemble. Wish it luck. I made
it all ('tis blank verse, and I think, of the true old dramatic cut) or
most of it, in the green lanes about Enfield, where I am and mean to
remain, in spite of your peremptory doubts on that head.
Your refusal to lend your poetical sanction to my Icon, and your reasons
to Evans, are most sensible. May be I may hit on a line or two of my own
jocular. May be not.
Do you never Londonize again? I should like to talk over old poetry with
you, of which I have much, and you I think little. Do your Drummonds
allow no holydays? I would willingly come and w[ork] for you a three
weeks or so, to let you loose. Would I could sell or give you some of my
Leisure! Positively, the best thing a man can have to do is nothing, and
next to that perhaps--good works.
I am but poorlyish, and feel myself writing a dull letter; poorlyish
from Company, not generally, for I never was better, nor took more
walks, 14 miles a day on an average, with a sporting dog--Dash--you
would not know the plain Poet, any more than he doth recognize James
Naylor trick'd out au deserpoy (how do you spell it.) En Passant, J'aime
entendre da mon bon hommè sur surveillance de croix, ma pas l'homme
figuratif--do you understand me?