before this, and do not quite understand why we have not. Mrs. N. and V.
[Vincent] promised us after the York expedition; a day being named
before, which fail'd. 'Tis not too late. The autumn leaves drop gold,
and Enfield is beautifuller--to a common eye--than when you lurked at
the Greyhound. Benedicks are close, but how I so totally missed you at
that time, going for my morning cup of ale duly, is a mystery. 'Twas
stealing a match before one's face in earnest. But certainly we had not
a dream of your appropinquity. I instantly prepared an Epithalamium, in
the form of a Sonata--which I was sending to Novello to compose--but
Mary forbid it me, as too light for the occasion--as if the subject
required anything heavy-- so in a tiff with her I sent no congratulation
at all. Tho' I promise you the wedding was very pleasant news to me
indeed. Let your reply name a day this next week, when you will come as
many as a coach will hold; such a day as we had at Dulwich. My very
kindest love and Mary's to Victoria and the Novellos. The enclosed is
from a friend nameless, but highish in office, and a man whose accuracy
of statement may be relied on with implicit confidence. He wants the
_exposé_ to appear in a newspaper as the "greatest piece of legal and
Parliamentary villainy he ever rememb'd," and he has had experience in
both; and thinks it would answer afterwards in a cheap pamphlet printed
at Lambeth in 8'o sheet, as 16,000 families in that parish are
interested. I know not whether the present _Examiner_ keeps up the
character of exposing abuses, for I scarce see a paper now. If so, you
may ascertain Mr. Hunt of the strictest truth of the statement, at the
peril of my head. But if this won't do, transmit it me back, I beg, per
coach, or better, bring it with you. Yours unaltered, C. LAMB.
[Clarke had married Mary Victoria Novello on July 5, 1828, and they had
spent their honeymoon at the Greyhound, Enfield, unknown to the Lambs.
See the next letter.
"The enclosed." This has vanished. Hunt was Leigh Hunt.]
LETTER 464
CHARLES LAMB TO VINCENT NOVELLO
[Enfield, November 6, 1828.]
My dear Novello,--I am afraid I shall appear rather tardy in offering my
congratulations, however sincere, upon your daughter's marriage. The
truth is, I had put together a little Serenata upon the occasion, but
was prevented from sending it by my sister, to whose judgment I am apt
to defer too much in these kind of things; so that, now I have her
consent, the offering, I am afraid, will have lost the grace of
seasonableness. Such as it is, I send it. She thinks it a little too
old-fashioned in the manner, too much like what they wrote a century
back. But I cannot write in the modern style, if I try ever so hard. I
have attended to the proper divisions for the music, and you will have
little difficulty in composing it. If I may advise, make Pepusch your
model, or Blow. It will be necessary to have a good second voice, as the
stress of the melody lies there:--
SERENATA, FOR TWO VOICES,
_On the Marriage of Charles Cowden Clarke, Esqre., to Victoria,
eldest daughter of Vincent Novello, Esqre._
DUETTO
Wake th' harmonious voice and string,
Love and Hymen's triumph sing,
Sounds with secret charms combining,
In melodious union joining,
Best the wondrous joys can tell,
That in hearts united dwell.
RECITATIVE
_First Voice_.--To young Victoria's happy fame
Well may the Arts a trophy raise,
Music grows sweeter in her praise.
And, own'd by her, with rapture speaks her name.
To touch the brave Cowdenio's heart,
The Graces all in her conspire;
Love arms her with his surest dart,
Apollo with his lyre.
AIR
The list'ning Muses all around her
Think 'tis Phoebus' strain they hear;
And Cupid, drawing near to wound her,
Drops his bow, and stands to hear.
RECITATIVE
_Second Voice_.--While crowds of rivals with despair
Silent admire, or vainly court the Fair,
Behold the happy conquest of her eyes,
A Hero is the glorious prize!
In courts, in camps, thro' distant realms renown'd,
Cowdenio comes!--Victoria, see,
He comes with British honour crown'd,
Love leads his eager steps to thee.
AIR
In tender sighs he silence breaks,
The Fair his flame approves,
Consenting blushes warm her cheeks,
She smiles, she yields, she loves.
RECITATIVE
_First Voice_.--Now Hymen at the altar stands,
And while he joins their faithful hands,
Behold! by ardent vows brought down,
Immortal Concord, heavenly bright,
Array'd in robes of purest light,
Descends, th' auspicious rites to crown.
Her golden harp the goddess brings;
Its magic sound
Commands a sudden silence all around,
And strains prophetic thus attune the strings.
DUETTO
_First Voice_.-- The Swain his Nymph possessing,
_Second Voice_.-- The Nymph her swain caressing,
_First and Second_.-- Shall still improve the blessing,
For ever kind and true.
_Both_.-- While rolling years are flying,
Love, Hymen's lamp supplying,
With fuel never dying,
Shall still the flame renew.
To so great a master as yourself I have no need to suggest that the
peculiar tone of the composition demands sprightliness, occasionally
checked by tenderness, as in the second air,--
She smiles,--she yields,--she loves.
Again, you need not be told that each fifth line of the two first
recitatives requires a crescendo.
And your exquisite taste will prevent your falling into the error of
Purcell, who at a passage similar to _that_ in my first air,
Drops his bow, and stands to hear,
directed the first violin thus:--
Here the first violin must drop his _bow_.
But, besides the absurdity of disarming his principal performer of so
necessary an adjunct to his instrument, in such an emphatic part of the
composition too, which must have had a droll effect at the time, all
such minutiae of adaptation are at this time of day very properly
exploded, and Jackson of Exeter very fairly ranks them under the head of
puns.
Should you succeed in the setting of it, we propose having it performed
(we have one very tolerable second voice here, and Mr. Holmes, I dare
say, would supply the minor parts) at the Greyhound. But it must be a
secret to the young couple till we can get the band in readiness.
Believe me, dear Novello,
Yours truly,
C. LAMB.
Enfield, 6 Nov., '28.
[Mrs. Cowden Clarke remarks in her notes on this letter that the
references to Purcell and to Jackson of Exeter are inventions. For Mr.
Holmes see note above.
Here should come a letter from Lamb to Laman Blanchard, dated Enfield,
November 9, 1828, thanking him for a book and dedication. Samuel Laman
Blanchard (1804-1845), afterwards known as a journalist, had just
published, through Harrison Ainsworth, a little volume entitled _Lyric
Offerings_, which was dedicated to Lamb. After Lamb's death Blanchard
contributed to the _New Monthly Magazine_ some additional Popular
Fallacies.]
LETTER 465
CHARLES LAMB TO THOMAS HOOD
Late autumn, 1828.
Enfield.
Dear Lamb--You are an impudent varlet; but I will keep your secret. We
dine at Ayrton's on Thursday, and shall try to find Sarah and her two
spare beds for that night only. Miss M. and her tragedy may be dished:
so may not you and your rib. Health attend you.
Yours, T. HOOD, ESQ.
Miss Bridget Hood sends love.
[In _The Gem_, 1829, in addition to his poem, "On an Infant Dying as
Soon as Born," Lamb was credited with the following piece of prose,
entitled "A Widow," which was really the work of Hood (see letter
above):--
A WIDOW
Hath always been a mark for mockery:--a standing butt for wit to
level at. Jest after jest hath been huddled upon her close cap, and
stuck, like burrs, upon her weeds. Her sables are a perpetual "Black
Joke."
Satirists--prose and verse--have made merry with her bereavements.
She is a stock character on the stage. Farce bottleth up her
crocodile tears, or labelleth her empty lachrymatories. Comedy
mocketh her precocious flirtations--Tragedy even girdeth at her
frailty, and twitteth her with "the funeral baked meats coldly
furnishing forth the marriage tables."
I confess when I called the other day on my kinswoman G.--then in
the second week of her widowhood--and saw her sitting, her young boy
by her side, in her recent sables, I felt unable to reconcile her
estate with any risible associations. The Lady with a skeleton
moiety--in the old print, in Bowles' old shop window--seemed but a
type of her condition. Her husband,--a whole hemisphere in love's
world--was deficient. One complete side--her left--was
death-stricken. It was a matrimonial paralysis, unprovocative of
laughter. I could as soon have tittered at one of those melancholy
objects that drag their poor dead-alive bodies about the streets.
It seems difficult to account for the popular prejudice against lone
women. There is a majority, I trust, of such honest, decorous
mourners as my kinswoman: yet are Widows, like the Hebrew, a proverb
and a byeword amongst nations. From the first putting on of the
sooty garments, they become a stock joke--chimney-sweep or
blackamoor is not surer--by mere virtue of their nigritude.
Are the wanton amatory glances of a few pairs of graceless eyes,
twinkling through their cunning waters, to reflect so evil a light
on a whole community? Verily the sad benighted orbs of that noble
relict--the Lady Rachel Russell--blinded through unserene drops for
her dead Lord,--might atone for such oglings!
Are the traditional freaks of a Dame of Ephesus, or a Wife of Bath,
or a Queen of Denmark, to cast so broad a shadow over
a whole sisterhood. There must be, methinks, some more general
infirmity--common, probably, to all Eve-kind--to justify so sweeping
a stigma.
Does the satiric spirit, perhaps, institute splenetic comparisons
between the lofty poetical pretensions of posthumous tenderness and
their fulfilment? The sentiments of Love especially affect a high
heroical pitch, of which the human performance can present, at best,
but a burlesque parody. A widow, that hath lived only for her
husband, should die with him. She is flesh of his flesh, and bone of
his bone; and it is not seemly for a mere rib to be his survivor.
The prose of her practice accords not with the poetry of her
professions. She hath done with the world,--and you meet her in
Regent Street. Earth hath now nothing left for her--but she swears
and administers. She cannot survive him--and invests in the _Long_
Annuities.
The romantic fancy resents, and the satiric spirit records, these
discrepancies. By the conjugal theory itself there ought to be no
Widows; and, accordingly, a class, that by our milder manners is
merely ridiculed, on the ruder banks of the Ganges is literally
_roasted_. C. LAMB.
"Miss M. and her tragedy." I fancy Miss M. would be Miss Mitford, and
her tragedy "Rienzi," produced at Drury Lane October 9, 1828. It was a
success. Hood's rib would probably be the play I have not identified.
See letter to Barton of October 11.
Here, a little out of its order, might come a letter from Lamb to Hood,
December 17, 1828, which is facsimiled in a privately-printed American
bibliography of Lamb, the owner of which declines to let not only me but
the Boston Bibliophile Society include it with the correspondence. In it
Lamb expresses regret, not so much that Hood had signed "The Widow" with
Lamb's name, but that an unfortunately ambiguous jest, pointed out to
him by certain friends, had crept into it. He asks that the subject may
never be referred to again.
Here perhaps should come a note to Miss Reynolds, Hood's sister-in-law,
accompanying Lamb's Essay on Hogarth.]
LETTER 466
CHARLES LAMB TO EDWARD MOXON
[No date. Dec., 1828.]
Dear M.,--As I see no blood-marks on the Green Lanes Road, I conclude
you got in safe skins home. Have you thought of inquiring Miss Wilson's
change of abode? Of the 2 copies of my drama I want one sent to
Wordsworth, together with a complete copy of Hone's "Table Book," for
which I shall be your debtor till we meet. Perhaps Longman will take
charge of this parcel. The other is for Coleridge at Mr. Gilman's,
Grove, Highgate, which may be sent, or, if you have a curiosity to see
him you will make an errand with it to him, & tell him we mean very soon
to come & see him, if the Gilmans can give or get us a bed. I am ashamed
to be so troublesome. Pray let Hood see the "Ecclectic Review"--a rogue!
The 2'd parts of the Blackwood you may make waste paper of. Yours truly,
C.L.
[I do not identify Miss Wilson. Lamb's drama was "A Wife's Trial" in
_Blackwood_ for December, 1828. The same number of the _Eclectic Review_
referred to Hood's parody of Lamb, "The Widow," as profaning Leslie's
picture of the widow by its "heartless ribaldry." By the 2d parts of
_Blackwood_ Lamb referred, I imagine, to the pages on which his play was
not printed.]
LETTER 467
CHARLES LAMB TO BERNARD BARTON
[P.M. December 5, 1828.]
Dear B.B.--I am ashamed to receive so many nice Books from you, and to
have none to send you in return; You are always sending me some fruits
or wholesome pot-herbs, and mine is the garden of the Sluggard, nothing
but weeds or scarce they. Nevertheless if I knew how to transmit it, I
would send you Blackwood's of this month, which contains a little Drama,
to have your opinion of it, and how far I have improved, or otherwise,
upon its prototype. Thank you for your kind Sonnet. It does me good to
see the Dedication to a Christian Bishop. I am for a Comprehension, as
Divines call it, but so as that the Church shall go a good deal more
than halfway over to the Silent Meeting house. I have ever said that the
Quakers are the only _Professors_ of Christianity as I read it in the
Evangiles; I say _Professors_--marry, as to practice, with their gaudy
hot types and poetical vanities, they are much at one with the sinful.
Martin's frontispiece is a very fine thing, let C.L. say what he please
to the contrary. Of the Poems, I like them as a volume better than any
one of the preceding; particularly, Power and Gentleness; The Present;
Lady Russell--with the exception that I do not like the noble act of
Curtius, true or false, one of the grand foundations of old Roman
patriotism, to be sacrificed to Lady R.'s taking notes on her husband's
trial. If a thing is good, why invidiously bring it into light with
something better? There are too few heroic things in this world to admit
of our marshalling them in anxious etiquettes of precedence. Would you
make a poetn on the Story of Ruth (pretty Story!) and then say, Aye, but
how much better is the story of Joseph and his Brethren! To go on, the
Stanzas to "Chalon" want the _name_ of Clarkson in the body of them; it
is left to inference. The Battle of Gibeon is spirited again--but you
sacrifice it in last stanza to the Song at Bethlehem. Is it quite
orthodox to do so. The first was good, you suppose, for that
dispensation. Why set the word against the word? It puzzles a weak
Christian. So Watts's Psalms are an implied censure on David's. But as
long as the Bible is supposed to be an equally divine Emanation with the
Testament, so long it will stagger weaklings to have them set in
opposition. Godiva is delicately touch'd. I have always thought it a
beautiful story characteristic of old English times. But I could not
help amusing myself with the thought--if Martin had chosen this subject
for a frontispiece, there would have been in some dark corner a white
Lady, white as the Walker on the waves--riding upon some mystical
quadruped --and high above would have risen "tower above tower a massy
structure high" the Tenterden steeples of Coventry, till the poor Cross
would scarce have known itself among the clouds, and far above them all,
the distant Clint hills peering over chimney pots, piled up,
Ossa-on-Olympus fashion, till the admiring Spectator (admirer of a noble
deed) might have gone look for the Lady, as you must hunt for the other
in the Lobster. But M. should be made Royal Architect. What palaces he
would pile--but then what parliamentary grants to make them good!
ne'ertheless I like the frontispiece. The Elephant is pleasant; and I am
glad you are getting into a wider scope of subjects. There may be too
much, not religion, but too many _good words_ into a book, till it
becomes, as Sh. says of religion, a rhapsody of words. I will just name
that you have brought in the Song to the Shepherds in four or five if
not six places. Now this is not good economy. The Enoch is fine; and
here I can sacrifice Elijah to it, because 'tis illustrative only, and
not disparaging of the latter prophet's departure. I like this best in
the Book. Lastly, I much like the Heron, 'tis exquisite: know you Lord
Thurlow's Sonnet to a Bird of that sort on Lacken water? If not, 'tis
indispensable I send it you, with my Blackwood, if you tell me how best
to send them. Fludyer is pleasant. You are getting gay and Hood-ish.
What is the Enigma? money--if not, I fairly confess I am foiled--and
sphynx must [_here are words crossed through_] 4 times I've tried to
write eat--eat me--and the blotting pen turns it into cat me. And now I
will take my leave with saying I esteem thy verses, like thy present,
honour thy frontispicer, and right-reverence thy Patron and Dedicatee,
and am, dear B.B.
Yours heartily, C.L.
Our joint kindest Loves to A.K. and your Daughter.
[Barton's new book was _A New Year's Eve and other Poems_, 1828,
dedicated to Charles Richard Sumner, Bishop of Winchester. This volume
contains Barton's "Fireside Quatrains to Charles Lamb" (quoted in Vol.
IV.) and also the following "Sonnet to a Nameless Friend," whom I take
to be Lamb:--
SONNET TO A NAMELESS FRIEND
In each successive tome that bears _my_ name
Hast thou, though veiled _thy own_ from public eyes,
Won from my muse that willing sacrifice
Which worth and talents such as thine should claim:
And I should close my minstrel task with shame,
Could I forget the indissoluble ties
Which every grateful thought of thee supplies
To one who deems thy friendship more than fame.
Accept then, thus imperfectly, once more,
The homage of thy poet and thy friend;
And should thy partial praise my lays commend,
Versed as thou art in all the gentle lore
Of English poesy's exhaustless store,
Whom I most love they never can offend.
Martin's frontispiece represented Christ walking on the water. Lamb
recalls his remarks in a previous letter about this painter, who though
he never became Royal Architect was the originator of the present Thames
Embankment. Macaulay, in his essay on Southey's edition of the
_Pilgrim's Progress_, in the _Edinburgh_ for December, 1831, makes some
very similar remarks about Martin and the way in which he would probably
paint Lear.
In the poem "Lady Rachel Russell; or, A Roman Hero and an English
Heroine Compared," Barton compared the act of Curtius, who leaped into
the gulf in the Forum, with Lady Russell standing beside her lord.
Chalon was the painter of a portrait of Thomas Clarkson.
The "Battle of Gibeon" is a poem inspired by Martin's picture of Joshua;
the last stanza runs thus:--
Made known by marvels awfully sublime!
Yet far more glorious in the Christian's sight
Than these stern terrors of the olden time,
The gentler splendours of that peaceful night,
When opening clouds displayed, in vision bright,
The heavenly host to Bethlehem's shepherd train,
Shedding around them more than cloudless light!
"Glory to God on high!" their opening strain,
Its chorus, "Peace on Earth!" its theme Messiah's reign!
"In the Lobster." Referring to that part of a lobster which is called
Eve.
"The Elephant." Some mildly humorous verses "To an Elephant."
"As Sh. says of religion"--Shakespeare, I assume, in "Hamlet," III., 4,
47, 48:--
And sweet Religion makes
A rhapsody of words.
I quote in the Appendix the poem which Lamb liked best. Barton had
written a poem called "Syr Heron." This is Lord Thurlow's sonnet, of
which Lamb was very fond. He quoted it in a note to his _Elia_ essay on
the sonnets of Sidney in the _London Magazine_, and copied it into his
album:--
TO A BIRD, THAT HAUNTED THE WATERS OF LACKEN, IN THE WINTER
O melancholy Bird, a winter's day,
Thou standest by the margin of the pool,
And, taught by God, dost thy whole being school
To Patience, which all evil can allay.
God has appointed thee the fish thy prey;
And giv'n thyself a lesson to the fool
Unthrifty, to submit to moral rule,
And his unthinking course by thee to weigh.
There need not schools, nor the professor's chair,
Though these be good, true wisdom to impart:
He, who has not enough, for these, to spare,
Of time, or gold, may yet amend his heart,
And teach his soul, by brooks, and rivers fair:
Nature is always wise in every part.
"Fludyer" was a poem to Sir Charles Fludyer on the devastation effected
on his marine villa at Felixstowe by the encroachments of the sea. The
answer to the enigma, Mrs. FitzGerald (Lucy Barton) told Canon Ainger,
was not money but an auctioneer's hammer.
Here should come a letter from Lamb to Louisa Holcroft, dated December
5, 1828. Louisa Holcroft was a daughter of Thomas Holcroft, Lamb's
friend, whose widow married Kenney. A good letter with some excellent
nonsense about measles in it.]
LETTER 468
CHARLES LAMB TO CHARLES COWDEN CLARKE
[December, 1828.]
My dear three C.'s--The way from Southgate to Colney Hatch thro' the
unfrequentedest Blackberry paths that ever concealed their coy bunches
from a truant Citizen, we have accidentally fallen upon--the giant Tree
by Cheshunt we have missed, but keep your chart to go by, unless you
will be our conduct--at present I am disabled from further flights than
just to skirt round Clay Hill, with a peep at the fine back woods, by
strained tendons, got by skipping a skipping-rope at 53--heu mihi non
sum qualis. But do you know, now you come to talk of walks, a ramble of
four hours or so--there and back--to the willow and lavender plantations
at the south corner of Northaw Church by a well dedicated to Saint
Claridge, with the clumps of finest moss rising hillock fashion, which I
counted to the number of two hundred and sixty, and are called
"Claridge's covers"--the tradition being that that saint entertained so
many angels or hermits there, upon occasion of blessing the waters? The
legends have set down the fruits spread upon that occasion, and in the
Black Book of St. Albans some are named which are not supposed to have
been introduced into this island till a century later. But waiving the
miracle, a sweeter spot is not in ten counties round; you are knee deep
in clover, that is to say, if you are not above a middling man's height;
from this paradise, making a day of it, you go to see the ruins of an
old convent at March Hall, where some of the painted glass is yet whole
and fresh.
If you do not know this, you do not know the capabilities of this
country, you may be said to be a stranger to Enfield. I found it out one
morning in October, and so delighted was I that I did not get home
before dark, well a-paid.
I shall long to show you the clump meadows, as they are called; we might
do that, without reaching March Hall. When the days are longer, we might
take both, and come home by Forest Cross, so skirt over Pennington and
the cheerful little village of Churchley to Forty Hill.
But these are dreams till summer; meanwhile we should be most glad to
see you for a lesser excursion--say, Sunday next, you and _another_, or
if more, best on a weekday with a notice, but o' Sundays, as far as a
leg of mutton goes, most welcome. We can squeeze out a bed. Edmonton
coaches run every hour, and my pen has run out its quarter. Heartily
farewell.
[Much of the "Lamb country" touched upon in this letter is now built on.
In my large edition I give a map of Lamb's favourite walking region.
"The giant Tree by Cheshunt" is Goff's Oak.
"The Black Book of St. Albans." The Black Books exposed abuses in the
church.]
LETTER 469
CHARLES LAMB TO T.N. TALFOURD
[No date. End of 1828.]
Dear Talfourd,--You could not have told me of a more friendly thing than
you have been doing. I am proud of my namesake. I shall take care never
to do any dirty action, pick pockets, or anyhow get myself hanged, for
fear of reflecting ignominy upon your young Chrisom. I have now a motive
to be good. I shall not _omnis moriar_;--my name borne down the black
gulf of oblivion.
I shall survive in eleven letters, five more than Caesar. Possibly I
shall come to be knighted, or more: Sir C.L. Talfourd, Bart.!
Yet hath it an authorish twang with it, which will wear out my name for
poetry. Give him a smile from me till I see him. If you do not drop down
before, some day in the _week after next_ I will come and take one
night's lodging with you, if convenient, before you go hence. You shall
name it. We are in town to-morrow _speciali gratia_, but by no
arrangement can get up near you.
Believe us both, with greatest regards, yours and Mrs. Talfourd's.
CHARLES LAMB-PHILO-TALFOURD
I come as near it as I can.
[This may be incorrectly dated, but I place it here because in that to
Hood of December 17, summarised above, Lamb speaks of his godson at
Brighton.
Talfourd (who himself dates this letter 1829) had named his latest child
Charles Lamb Talfourd. The boy lived only until 1835. I quote in the
Appendix the verses which Talfourd wrote on his death. Another of Lamb's
name children, Charles Lamb Kenney, grew to man's estate and became a
ready writer.]
LETTER 470
CHARLES LAMB TO GEORGE DYER
[No date. ? January, 1829.]