it called them, we have cast our skins, have taken a farewell of the
pompous troublesome trifle calld housekeeping, and are settled down into
poor boarders and lodgers at next door with an old couple, the Baucis
and Baucida of dull Enfield. Here we have nothing to do with our
victuals but to eat them, with the garden but to see it grow, with the
tax gatherer but to hear him knock, with the maid but to hear her
scolded. Scot and lot, butcher, baker, are things unknown to us save as
spectators of the pageant. We are fed we know not how, quietists,
confiding ravens. We have the otium pro dignitate, a respectable
insignificance. Yet in the self condemned obliviousness, in the
stagnation, some molesting yearnings of life, not quite kill'd, rise,
prompting me that there was a London, and that I was of that old
Jerusalem. In dreams I am in Fleetmarket, but I wake and cry to sleep
again. I die hard, a stubborn Eloisa in this detestable Paraclete. What
have I gained by health? intolerable dulness. What by early hours and
moderate meals?--a total blank. O never let the lying poets be believed,
who 'tice men from the chearful haunts of streets--or think they mean it
not of a country village. In the ruins of Palmyra I could gird myself up
to solitude, or muse to the snorings of the Seven Sleepers, but to have
a little teazing image of a town about one, country folks that do not
look like country folks, shops two yards square, half a dozen apples and
two penn'orth of overlookd gingerbread for the lofty fruiterers of
Oxford Street--and, for the immortal book and print stalls, a
circulating library that stands still, where the shew-picture is a last
year's Valentine, and whither the fame of the last ten Scotch novels has
not yet travel'd (marry, they just begin to be conscious of the Red
Gauntlet), to have a new plasterd flat church, and to be wishing that it
was but a Cathedral. The very blackguards here are degenerate. The
topping gentry, stock brokers. The passengers too many to ensure your
quiet, or let you go about whistling, or gaping--too few to be the fine
indifferent pageants of Fleet Street. Confining, room-keeping thickest
winter is yet more bearable here than the gaudy months. Among one's
books at one's fire by candle one is soothed into an oblivion that one
is not in the country, but with the light the green fields return, till
I gaze, and in a calenture can plunge myself into Saint Giles's. O let
no native Londoner imagine that health, and rest, and innocent
occupation, interchange of converse sweet and recreative study, can make
the country any thing better than altogether odious and detestable. A
garden was the primitive prison till man with promethean felicity and
boldness luckily sinn'd himself out of it. Thence followd Babylon,
Nineveh, Venice, London, haberdashers, goldsmiths, taverns, playhouses,
satires, epigrams, puns--these all came in on the town part, and the
thither side of innocence. Man found out inventions.
From my den I return you condolence for your decaying sight, not for any
thing there is to see in the country, but for the miss of the pleasure
of reading a London newspaper. The poets are as well to listen to, any
thing high may, nay must, be read out--you read it to yourself with an
imaginary auditor--but the light paragraphs must be glid over by the
proper eye, mouthing mumbles their gossamery substance. 'Tis these
trifles I should mourn in fading sight. A newspaper is the single gleam
of comfort I receive here, it comes from rich Cathay with tidings of
mankind. Yet I could not attend to it read out by the most beloved
voice. But your eyes do not get worse, I gather. O for the collyrium of
Tobias inclosed in a whiting's liver to send you with no apocryphal good
wishes! The last long time I heard from you, you had knock'd your head
against something. Do not do so. For your head (I do not flatter) is not
a nob, or the top of a brass nail, or the end of a nine pin--unless a
Vulcanian hammer could fairly batter a Recluse out of it, then would I
bid the smirch'd god knock and knock lustily, the two-handed skinker.
What a nice long letter Dorothy has written! Mary must squeeze out a
line propriâ manu, but indeed her fingers have been incorrigibly nervous
to letter writing for a long interval. 'Twill please you all to hear
that, tho' I fret like a lion in a net, her present health and spirits
are better than they have been for some time past: she is absolutely
three years and a half younger, as I tell her, since we have adopted
this boarding plan. Our providers are an honest pair, dame Westwood and
her husband--he, when the light of prosperity shined on them, a
moderately thriving haberdasher within Bow Bells, retired since with
something under a competence, writes himself parcel gentleman, hath
borne parish offices, sings fine old sea songs at threescore and ten,
sighs only now and then when he thinks that he has a son on his hands
about 15, whom he finds a difficulty in getting out into the world, and
then checks a sigh with muttering, as I once heard him prettily, not
meaning to be heard, "I have married my daughter however,"--takes the
weather as it comes, outsides it to town in severest season, and a'
winter nights tells old stories not tending to literature, how
comfortable to author-rid folks! and has _one anecdote_, upon which and
about forty pounds a year he seems to have retired in green old age. It
was how he was a _rider_ in his youth, travelling for shops, and once
(not to baulk his employer's bargain) on a sweltering day in August,
rode foaming into Dunstable upon a _mad horse_ to the dismay and
expostulary wonderment of innkeepers, ostlers &c. who declared they
would not have bestrid the beast to win the Darby. Understand the
creature gall'd to death and desperation by gad flies, cormorants
winged, worse than beset Inachus' daughter. This he tells, this he
brindles and burnishes on a' winter's eves, 'tis his star of set glory,
his rejuvenescence to descant upon. Far from me be it (dii avertant) to
look a gift story in the mouth, or cruelly to surmise (as those who
doubt the plunge of Curtius) that the inseparate conjuncture of man and
beast, the centaur-phenomenon that staggerd all Dunstable, might have
been the effect of unromantic necessity, that the horse-part carried the
reasoning, willy nilly, that needs must when such a devil drove, that
certain spiral configurations in the frame of Thomas Westwood unfriendly
to alighting, made the alliance more forcible than voluntary. Let him
enjoy his fame for me, nor let me hint a whisper that shall dismount
Bellerophon. Put case he was an involuntary martyr, yet if in the fiery
conflict he buckled the soul of a constant haberdasher to him, and
adopted his flames, let Accident and He share the glory! You would all
like Thomas Westwood.
[Illustration: Hand drawn sketch]
How weak is painting to describe a man! Say that he stands four feet and
a nail high by his own yard measure, which like the Sceptre of Agamemnon
shall never sprout again, still you have no adequate idea, nor when I
tell you that his dear hump, which I have favord in the picture, seems
to me of the buffalo--indicative and repository of mild qualities, a
budget of kindnesses, still you have not the man. Knew you old Norris of
the Temple, 60 years ours and our father's friend, he was not more
natural to us than this old W. the acquaintance of scarce more weeks.
Under his roof now ought I to take my rest, but that back-looking
ambition tells me I might yet be a Londoner. Well, if we ever do move,
we have encumbrances the less to impede us: all our furniture has faded
under the auctioneer's hammer, going for nothing like the tarnishd
frippery of the prodigal, and we have only a spoon or two left to bless
us. Clothed we came into Enfield, and naked we must go out of it. I
would live in London shirtless, bookless. Henry Crabb is at Rome,
advices to that effect have reach'd Bury. But by solemn legacy he
bequeath'd at parting (whether he should live or die) a Turkey of
Suffolk to be sent every succeeding Xmas to us and divers other friends.
What a genuine old Bachelor's action! I fear he will find the air of
Italy too classic. His station is in the Hartz forest, his soul is
_Bego'ethed_. Miss Kelly we never see; Talfourd not this half-year; the
latter flourishes, but the exact number of his children, God forgive me,
I have utterly forgotten, we single people are often out in our count
there. Shall I say two? One darling I know they have lost within a
twelvemonth, but scarce known to me by sight, and that was a second
child lost. We see scarce anybody. We have just now Emma with us for her
holydays; you remember her playing at brag with Mr. Quillinan at poor
Monkhouse's! She is grown an agreeable young woman; she sees what I
write, so you may understand me with limitations. She was our inmate for
a twelvemonth, grew natural to us, and then they told us it was best for
her to go out as a Governess, and so she went out, and we were only two
of us, and our pleasant house-mate is changed to an occasional visitor.
If they want my sister to go out (as they call it) there will be only
one of us. Heaven keep us all from this acceding to Unity!
Can I cram loves enough to you all in this little O? Excuse
particularizing.
C.L.
LETTER 499
MARY LAMB TO DOROTHY WORDSWORTH
(_Same letter_)
My dear Miss Wordsworth, Charles has left me space to fill up with my
own poor scribble; which I must do as well as I can, being quite out of
practise, and after he has been reading his queer letter out to us I can
hardly put down in a plain style all I had to tell you, how pleasant
your handwriting was to me. He has lumped you all together in one rude
remembrance at the end, but I beg to send my love individually and by
name to Mr. and Mrs. Wordsworth, to Miss Hutchinson, whom we often talk
of, and think of as being with you always, to the dutiful good daughter
and patient amanuensis Dora, and even to Johanna, whom we have not seen,
if she will accept it. Charles has told you of my long illness and our
present settlement, which I assure you is very quiet and comfortable to
me, and to him too, if he would own it. I am very sorry we shall not see
John, but I never go to town, nor my brother but at his quarterly visits
at the India House, and when he does, he finds it melancholy, so many of
our old friends being dead or dispersed, and the very streets, he says
altering every day. Many thanks for your Letter and the nice news in it,
which I should have replied to more at large than I see he has done. I
am sure it deserved it. He has not said a word about your intentions for
Rome, which I sincerely wish you health one day to accomplish. In that
case we may meet by the way. We are so glad to hear dear _little_
William is doing well. If you knew how happy your letters made us you
would write I know more frequently. Pray think of this. How chearfully
should we pay the postage _every week_.
Your affectionate
MARY LAMB.
["Baucis and Baucida." A slip, I suppose, for Philemon and Baucis (Ovid,
_Metamorphoses_).
_Redgauntlet_ dated from 1824.
"In a calenture." A calenture is a form of fever at sea in which the
sufferer believes himself to be surrounded by green fields, and often
leaps overboard. Wordsworth describes one in "The Brothers."
"A Recluse"--Wordsworth's promised poem, that was never completed. First
printed in 1888.
Inachus' daughter was Io, persecuted by a malignant insect sent by Juno.
"Henry Crabb." Crabb Robinson was a personal friend of Goethe's. He had
spent some days with him at Weimar in the summer of 1829. Goethe told
Robinson that he admired Lamb's sonnet "The Family Name."
"Mr. Quillinan"--Edward Quillinan, afterwards Wordsworth's son-in-law.
"Johanna." Joanna Hutchinson, Mrs. Wordsworth's sister. Joanna of the
laugh.
"John." John Wordsworth, Wordsworth's eldest son, was now twenty-six;
William, Wordsworth's second son, no longer little, was nineteen.]
LETTER 500
CHARLES LAMB TO BERNARD BARTON
[P.M. 25 February, 1830.]
Dear B.B.--To reply to you by return of post, I must gobble up my
dinner, and dispatch this in propriâ Personâ to the office, to be in
time. So take it from me hastily, that you are perfectly welcome to
furnish A.C. with the scrap, which I had almost forgotten writing. The
more my character comes to be known, the less my veracity will come to
be suspected. Time every day clears up some suspected narrative of
Herodotus, Bruce, and others of us great Travellers. Why, that Joseph
Paice was as real a person as Joseph Hume, and a great deal pleasanter.
A careful observer of life, Bernard, has no need to invent. Nature
romances it for him. Dinner plates rattle, and I positively shall incur
indigestion by carrying it half concocted to the Post House. Let me
congratulate you on the Spring coming in, and do you in return condole
with me for the Winter going out. When the old one goes, seldome comes a
better. I dread the prospect of Summer, with his all day long days. No
need of his assistance to make country places dull. With fire and candle
light, I can dream myself in Holborn. With lightsome skies shining in to
bed time, I can not. This Meseck, and these tents of Kedar--I would
dwell in the skirts of Jericho rather, and think every blast of the
coming in Mail a Ram's Horn. Give me old London at Fire and Plague
times, rather than these tepid gales, healthy country air, and
purposeless exercise. Leg of mutton absolutely on the table.
Take our hasty loves and short farewell.
C.L.
[A.C. was Allan Cunningham, who wanted Lamb's letter on Blake (see
above) for his _Lives of the Painters_. It was not, however, used there
until included in Mrs. Charles Heaton's edition in Bohn's Library.
"Bruce"--the Abyssinian explorer, whom the Christ's Hospital boys used
to emulate, as Lamb tells us in the _Elia_ essay on Newspapers.
"Joseph Paice"--a Director of the South-Sea Company and Lamb's first
employer, of whom he writes in the _Elia_ essay on "Modern Gallantry"
(see notes to Vol. II.).
Here should come a letter to Moxon, February 21, 1830, saying that a
letter has just arrived from Mrs. Williams indicating that Miss Isola
was not well and must have a long holiday. The illness increased very
rapidly, becoming a serious attack of brain fever.]
LETTER 501
CHARLCHARLES TO MRS. WILLIAMS
[February 26, 1830.]
Dear Madam,--May God bless you for your attention to our poor Emma! I am
so shaken with your sad news I can scarce write. She is too ill to be
removed at present; but we can only say that if she is spared, when that
can be practicable, we have always a home for her. Speak to her of it,
when she is capable of understanding, and let me conjure you to let us
know from day to day, the state she is in. But one line is all we crave.
Nothing we can do for her, that shall not be done. We shall be in the
terriblest suspense. We had no notion she was going to be ill. A line
from anybody in your house will much oblige us. I feel for the situation
this trouble places you in.
Can I go to her aunt, or do anything? I do not know what to offer. We
are in great distress. Pray relieve us, if you can, by somehow letting
us know. I will fetch her here, or anything. Your kindness can never be
forgot. Pray excuse my abruptness. I hardly know what I write. And take
our warmest thanks. Hoping to hear something, I remain, dear Madam,
Yours most faithfully,
C. LAMB.
Our grateful respects to Mr. Williams.
LETTER 502
CHARLES LAMB TO MRS. WILLIAMS
Enfield, 1 March, 1830.
Dear Madam,--We cannot thank you enough. Your two words "much better"
were so considerate and good. The good news affected my sister to an
agony of tears; but they have relieved us from such a weight. We were
ready to expect the worst, and were hardly able to bear the good
hearing. You speak so kindly of her, too, and think she may be able to
resume her duties. We were prepared, as far as our humble means would
have enabled us, to have taken her from all duties. But, far better for
the dear girl it is that she should have a prospect of being useful.
I am sure you will pardon my writing again; for my heart is so full,
that it was impossible to refrain. Many thanks for your offer to write
again, should any change take place. I dare not yet be quite out of
fear, the alteration has been so sudden. But I will hope you will have a
respite from the trouble of writing again. I know no expression to
convey a sense of your kindness. We were in such a state expecting the
post. I had almost resolved to come as near you as Bury; but my sister's
health does not permit my absence on melancholy occasions. But, O, how
happy will she be to part with me, when I shall hear the agreeable news
that I may come and fetch her. She shall be as quiet as possible. No
restorative means shall be wanting to restore her back to you well and
comfortable.
She will make up for this sad interruption of her young friend's
studies. I am sure she will--she must--after you have spared her for a
little time. Change of scene may do very much for her. I think this last
proof of your kindness to her in her desolate state can hardly make her
love and respect you more than she has ever done. O, how glad shall we
be to return her fit for her occupation. Madam, I trouble you with my
nonsense; but you would forgive me, if you knew how light-hearted you
have made two poor souls at Enfield, that were gasping for news of their
poor friend. I will pray for you and Mr. Williams. Give our very best
respects to him, and accept our thanks. We are happier than we hardly
know how to bear. God bless you! My very kindest congratulations to Miss
Humphreys.
Believe me, dear Madam,
Your ever obliged servant,
C. LAMB.
LETTER 503
CHARLES LAMB TO SARAH HAZLITT
March 4th, 1830.
Dear Sarah,--I was meditating to come and see you, but I am unable for
the walk. We are both very unwell, and under affliction for poor Emma,
who has had a very dangerous brain fever, and is lying very ill at Bury,
from whence I expect a summons to fetch her. We are very sorry for your
confinement. Any books I have are at your service. I am almost, I may
say _quite_, sure that letters to India pay no postage, and may go by
the regular Post Office, now in St. Martin's le Grand. I think any
receiving house would take them--
I wish I could confirm your hopes about Dick Norris. But it is quite a
dream. Some old Bencher of his surname is made _Treasurer_ for the year,
I suppose, which is an annual office. Norris was Sub-Treasurer, quite a
different thing. They were pretty well in the Summer, since when we have
heard nothing of them. Mrs. Reynolds is better than she has been for
years; she is with a disagreeable woman that she has taken a mighty
fancy to out of spite to a rival woman she used to live and quarrel
with; she grows quite _fat_, they tell me, and may live as long as I do,
to be a tormenting rent-charge to my diminish'd income. We go on pretty
comfortably in our new plan. I will come and have a talk with you when
poor Emma's affair is settled, and will bring books. At present I am
weak, and could hardly bring my legs home yesterday after a much shorter
stroll than to Northaw. Mary has got her bonnet on for a short
expedition. May you get better, as the Spring comes on. She sends her
best love with mine.
C.L.
[Addressed to "Mrs. Hazlitt, Mrs. Tomlinson's, Northaw, near Potter's
Bar, Herts."
Mrs. Hazlitt was in later years a sufferer from rheumatism. Dick Norris
was the son of Randal Norris. He had retired to Widford. Mrs. Reynolds,
Lamb's old schoolmistress and dependant, we have met.]
LETTER 504
CHARLES LAMB TO MRS. WILLIAMS
Enfield, 5 Mar., 1830.
Dear Madam,--I feel greatly obliged by your letter of Tuesday, and
should not have troubled you again so soon, but that you express a wish
to hear that our anxiety was relieved by the assurances in it. You have
indeed given us much comfort respecting our young friend, but
considerable uneasiness respecting your own health and spirits, which
must have suffered under such attention. Pray believe me that we shall
wait in quiet hope for the time when I shall receive the welcome summons
to come and relieve you from a charge, which you have executed with such
tenderness. We desire nothing so much as to exchange it with you.
Nothing shall be wanting on my part to remove her with the best judgment
I can, without (I hope) any necessity for depriving you of the services
of your valuable housekeeper. Until the day comes, we entreat that you
will spare yourself the trouble of writing, which we should be ashamed
to impose upon you in your present weak state. Not hearing from you, we
shall be satisfied in believing that there has been no relapse.
Therefore we beg that you will not add to your troubles by unnecessary,
though _most kind_, correspondence. Till I have the pleasure of thanking
you personally, I beg you to accept these written acknowledgments of all
your kindness. With respects to Mr. Williams and sincere prayers for
both your healths, I remain,
Your ever obliged servant,
C. LAMB.
My sister joins me in respects and thanks.
LETTER 505
CHARLES LAMB TO JAMES GILLMAN
March 8th, 1830.
My dear G.,--Your friend Battin (for I knew him immediately by the
smooth satinity of his style) must excuse me for advocating the cause of
his friends in Spitalfields. The fact is, I am retained by the Norwich
people, and have already appeared in their paper under the signatures of
"Lucius Sergius," "Bluff," "Broad-Cloth,"
"No-Trade-to-the-Woollen-Trade," "Anti-plush," &c., in defence of
druggets and long camblets. And without this pre-engagement, I feel I
should naturally have chosen a side opposite to ----, for in the silken
seemingness of his nature there is that which offends me. My flesh
tingles at such caterpillars. He shall not crawl me over. Let him and
his workmen sing the old burthen,
"Heigh ho, ye weavers!"
for any aid I shall offer them in this emergency. I was over Saint
Luke's the other day with my friend Tuthill, and mightily pleased with
one of his contrivances for the comfort and amelioration of the
students. They have double cells, in which a pair may lie feet to feet
horizontally, and chat the time away as rationally as they can. It must
certainly be more sociable for them these warm raving nights. The
right-hand truckle in one of these friendly recesses, at present vacant,
was preparing, I understood, for Mr. Irving. Poor fellow! it is time he
removed from Pentonville. I followed him as far as to Highbury the other
day, with a mob at his heels, calling out upon Ermigiddon, who I suppose
is some Scotch moderator. He squinted out his favourite eye last Friday,
in the fury of possession, upon a poor woman's shoulders that was crying
matches, and has not missed it. The companion truck, as far as I could
measure it with my eye, would conveniently fit a person about the length
of Coleridge, allowing for a reasonable drawing up of the feet, not at
all painful. Does he talk of moving this quarter? You and I have too
much sense to trouble ourselves with revelations; marry, to the same in
Greek you may have something professionally to say. Tell C. that he was
to come and see us some fine day. Let it be before he moves, for in his
new quarters he will necessarily be confined in his conversation to his
brother prophet. Conceive the two Rabbis foot to foot, for there are no
Gamaliels there to affect a humbler posture! All are masters in that
Patmos, where the law is perfect equality--Latmos, I should rather say,
for they will be Luna's twin darlings; her affection will be ever at the
full. Well; keep _your_ brains moist with gooseberry this mad March, for
the devil of exposition seeketh dry places.
C.L.
[The letter is assigned to the Rev. James Gillman by some editors; but I
think that a mistake. See the reference below to a medical matter.
Battin was interested in the Spitalfields weavers to the detriment of
the Norwich.
Major Butterworth in a letter to _Notes and Queries_, March 24, 1906,
thus explains the reference to Battin:--
"In lately going over the pages of _The New Monthly Magazine_ for
1826 I came across a paragraph in the June number, extracted from a
daily newspaper, in which the following occurs: 'Great merit is due
to Mr. Lamb junior for his exertions to relieve the weavers of
Norwich.'...
"As his 'Reminiscences of Juke Judkins, Esq.,' was printed in the
same number of the _Magazine_, Lamb's attention would no doubt be
arrested by the remarks about his namesake, which would probably be
retained in his memory, to be used subsequently, as occasion served,
in mystifying his friend."
Tuthill, whom we have met, was one of the physicians at St. Luke's
Hospital for the insane.
"He squinted out...." Irving had sight only in one eye, an obliquity
caused, it is suggested, by lying when a baby in a wooden cradle, the
sides of which prevented the other from gathering light.
"To the same in Greek." An atrocious pun, which I leave to the reader to
discover. Gillman was a doctor.]
LETTER 506
CHARLES LAMB TO WILLIAM AYRTON
Mr. Westwood's, Chase Side, Enfield,
14th March, 1830.