friends I have left, are in trouble. A branch of them (and they of the
best stock of God's creatures, I believe) is establishing a school at
Carlisle. Her name is Louisa Martin, her address 75 Castle Street,
Carlisle; her qualities (and her motives for this exertion) are the most
amiable, most upright. For thirty years she has been tried by me, and on
her behaviour I would stake my soul. O if you can recommend her, how
would I love you--if I could love you better. Pray, pray, recommend her.
She is as good a human creature,--next to my Sister, perhaps the most
exemplary female I ever knew. Moxon tells me, you would like a Letter
from me. You shall have one. _This_ I cannot mingle up with any nonsense
which you usually tolerate from, C. LAMB. Need he add loves to Wife,
Sister, and all? Poor Mary is ill again, after a short lucid interval of
4 or 5 months. In short, I may call her half dead to me.
Good you are to me. Yours with fervor of friendship; for ever
turn over
If you want references, the Bishop of Carlisle may be one. Louisa's
Sister, (as good as she, she cannot be better tho' she tries,) educated
the daughters of the late Earl of Carnarvon, and he settled a handsome
Annuity on her for life. In short all the family are a sound rock. The
present Lord Carnarvon married Howard of Graystock's Sister.
[Wordsworth has written on the wrapper, "Lamb's last letter."
We met the Martins in the early correspondence. It was Louisa whom, many
years, before, Lamb used to call "Monkey."
Here should come Lamb's last letter to Thomas Manning, dated May 10,
1834. Mary has, he says, been ill for nigh twenty weeks; "she is, I
hope, recovering." "I struggle to town rarely, and then to see London,
with little other motive--for what is left there hardly? The streets and
shops entertaining ever, else I feel as in a desert, and get me home to
my cave." Once a month, he adds, he passes a day with Cary at the
Museum. When Mary was getting better in the previous year she would read
all the auctioneers' advertisements on the walk. "These are _my_
Play-bills," she said. "I walk 9 or 10 miles a day, always up the road,
dear Londonwards." Addressed to Manning at Puckeridge.
Manning lived on, an eccentric recluse, until 1840.
Here perhaps should come the following melancholy letter to Talfourd,
which Mr. Dobell permits me to print:--]
LETTER 602
CHARLES LAMB TO T.N. TALFOURD
[No date. Early 1834?]
D'r T.--[1]Moxon & Knowles are coming to Enfield on Sunday _afternoon_.
My poor shaken head cannot at present let me ask any dinner company; for
two drinkings in a day, which must ensue, would incapacity me. I am very
poorly. They can only get an Edmont'n stage, from which village 'tis but
a 2 miles walk, & I have only _inn beds_ to offer. _Pray_, join 'em if
you can. Our first morning stage to London is 1/2 past 8. If that won't
suit your avocations, arrange with Ryle (or without him)--but how can I
separate him morally?--logically and legally, poetically and critically
I can,--from you? No disparagement (for a better Christian exists
not)--well arrange _cum_ or _absque illo_--this is latin-- the first
Sunday you can, _morning_.
I am poorly, but I always am on these occasions, a week or two. Then I
get sober,--I mean less insober. Yours till death; you are mine _after_.
Don't mind a touch of pathos. Love to Mrs. Talfourd.
The Edmonton stages come almost every hour from Snow Hill.
[Footnote 1: Erratum, for M. & K. read K. & M. Booksellers _after_
Authors.]
[Ryle, as I have already said, was Lamb's executor, with Talfourd. Hence
the phrase to Talfourd, "you are mine after."]
LETTER 603
(_Fragment_)
CHARLES LAMB TO CHARLES COWDEN CLARKE
[No date. End of June, 1834.]
We heard the Music in the Abbey at Winchmore Hill! and the notes were
incomparably soften'd by the distance. Novello's chromatics were
distinctly audible. Clara was faulty in B flat. Otherwise she sang like
an angel. The trombone, and Beethoven's walzes, were the best. Who
played the oboe?
[The letter refers to the performance of Handel's "Creation" at the
Musical Festival in Westminster Abbey on June 24, 1834, when Novello and
Atwood were the organists, and Clara Novello one of the singers.]
LETTER 604
CHARLES LAMB TO JOHN FORSTER
[P.M. June 25, 1834.]
D'r F.--I simply sent for the Miltons because Alsop has some Books of
mine, and I thought they might travel with them. But keep 'em as much
longer as you like. I never trouble my head with other people's
quarrels, I do not always understand my own. I seldom see them in Dover
Street. I know as little as the Man in the Moon about your joint
transactions, and care as little. If you have lost a little portion of
my "good will," it is that you do not come and see me. Arrange with
Procter, when you have done with your moving accidents.
Yours, ambulaturus,
C.L.
LETTER 605
CHARLES LAMB TO J. FULLER RUSSELL
[Summer, 1834.]
M'r Lamb's compt's and shall be happy to look over the lines as soon as
ever Mr. Russell shall send them. He is at Mr. Walden's, Church, _not
Bury_--St, Edm'd.
_Line_ 10. "Ween," and "wist," and "wot," and "eke" are antiquated
frippery, and unmodernize a poem rather than give it an antique air, as
some strong old words may do. "I guess," "I know," "I knew," are quite
as significant.
31. Why "ee"--barbarous Scoticism!--when "eye" is much better and chimes
to "cavalry"? A sprinkling of dis-used words where all the style else is
after the approved recent fashion teases and puzzles.
37. [Anon the storm begins to slake, The sullen clouds to melt
away, The moon becalmed in a blue lake Looks down with melancholy ray.]
The moon becalmed in a blue lake would be more apt to _look up_. I see
my error--the sky is the lake--and beg you to laugh at it.
59. What is a maiden's "een," south of the Tweed? You may as well call
her prettily turned ears her "lugs."
"On the maiden's lugs they fall" (verse 79).
144. "A coy young Miss" will never do. For though you are presumed to be
a modern, writing only of days of old, yet you should not write a word
purely unintelligible to your heroine. Some understanding should be kept
up between you. "Miss" is a nickname not two centuries old; came in at
about the Restoration. The "King's Misses" is the oldest use of it I can
remember. It is Mistress Anne Page, not Miss Page. Modern names and
usages should be kept out of sight in an old subject. W. Scott was sadly
faulty in this respect.
208. [Tear of sympathy.] Pity's sacred dew. Sympathy is a young lady's
word, rife in modern novels, and is almost always wrongly applied. To
sympathize is to feel--_with_, not simply _for_ another. I write
verses and _sympathize_ with you. You have the tooth ache, I have not;
I feel for you, I cannot sympathize.
243. What is "sheen"? Has it more significance than "bright"? Richmond
in its old name was Shene. Would you call an omnibus to take you to
Shene? How the "all's right" man would stare!
363. [The violet nestled in the shade,
Which fills with perfume all the glade,
Yet bashful as a timid maid
Thinks to elude the searching eye
Of every stranger passing by,
Might well compare with Emily.]
A strangely involved simile. The maiden is likend [_sic_] to a _violet_
which has been just before likened to a _maid_. Yet it reads prettily,
and I would not have it alter'd.
420. "Een" come again? In line 407 you speak it out "eye," bravely like
an Englishman.
468. Sorceresses do not entice by wrinkles, but, being essentially aged,
appear in assumed beauty.
[This communication and that which follows (with trifling omissions)
were sent to _Notes and Queries_ by the late Mr. J. Fuller Russell,
F.S.A., with this explanation: "I was residing at Enfield in the
Cambridge Long Vacation, 1834, and--perhaps to the neglect of more
improving pursuits--composed a metrical novel, named 'Emily de Wilton,'
in three parts. When the first of them was completed, I ventured to
introduce myself to Charles Lamb (who was living at Edmonton at the
time), and telling him what I had done, and that I had 'scarcely heart
to proceed until I had obtained the opinion of a competent judge
respecting my verses,' I asked him to 'while away an idle hour in their
perusal,' adding, 'I fear you will think me very rude and very
intrusive, but I am one of the most nervous souls in Christendom.'
Moved, possibly, by this diffident (not to say unusual) confession, Elia
speedily gave his consent."
The poem was never printed. Lamb's pains in this matter serve to show
how kindly disposed he was in these later years to all young men; and
how exact a sense of words he had.
In the British Museum is preserved a sheet of similar comments made by
Lamb upon a manuscript of P.G. Patmore's, from which I have quoted a few
passages above. In _Charles Lamb and the Lloyds_ will also be found a
number of interesting criticisms on a translation of Homer.]
LETTER 606
CHARLES LAMB TO J. FULLER RUSSELL
[Summer, 1834.]
Sir,--I hope you will finish "Emily." The story I cannot at this stage
anticipate. Some looseness of diction I have taken liberty to advert to.
It wants a little more severity of style. There are too many
prettinesses, but parts of the Poem are better than pretty, and I thank
you for the perusal.
Your humble Servt.
C. LAMB.
Perhaps you will favour me with a call while you stay.
Line 42. "The old abbaye" (if abbey _was_ so spelt) I do not object to,
because it does not seem your own language, but humoursomely adapted to
the "how folks called it in those times."
82. "Flares"! Think of the vulgarism "flare up;" let it be "burns."
112. [In her pale countenance is blent
The majesty of high intent
With meekness by devotion lent,
And when she bends in prayer
Before the Virgin's awful shrine,--
The rapt enthusiast might deem
The seraph of his brightest dream,
Were meekly kneeling there.]
"Was" decidedly, not "were." The deeming or supposition, is of a
reality, not a contingency. The enthusiast does not deem that a thing
may be, but that it _is_.
118. [When first young Vernon's flight she knew,
The lady deemed the tale untrue.]
"Deemed"! This word is just repeated above; say "thought" or "held."
"Deem" is half-cousin to "ween" and "wot."
143. [By pure intent and soul sincere
Sustained and nerved, I will not fear
Reproach, shame, scorn, the taunting jeer,
And worse than all, a father's sneer.]
A father's "sneer"? Would a high-born man in those days _sneer_ at a
daughter's disgrace--would he _only_ sneer?
Reproach, and biting shame, and--worse
Than all--the estranged father's curse.
I only throw this hint out in a hurry.
177. "Stern and _sear_"? I see a meaning in it, but no word is good that
startles one at first, and then you have to make it out: "drear,"
perhaps. Then why "to minstrel's glance"? "To fancy's eye," you would
say, not "to fiddler's eye."
422. A knight thinks, he don't "trow."
424. "Mayhap" is vulgarish. Perchance.
464. "Sensation" is a philosophic prose word. Feeling.
27. [The hill, where ne'er rang woodman's stroke,
Was clothed with elm and spreading oak,
Through whose black boughs the moon's mild ray
As hardly strove to win a way,
As pity to a miser's heart.]
Natural illustrations come more naturally when by _them_ we expound
mental operations than when we deduce from natural objects similes of
the mind's workings. The miser's struggle thus compared is a beautiful
image. But the storm and clouds do not inversely so readily suggest the
miser.
160. [Havock and Wrath, his maniac bride,
Wheel o'er the conflict, &c.]
These personified gentry I think are not in taste. Besides, Fear has
been pallid any time these 2,000 years. It is mixing the style of
Aeschylus and the _Last Minstrel_.
175. Bracy is a good rough vocative. No better suggests itself, unless
Grim, Baron Grimm, or Grimoald, which is Saxon, or Grimbald! Tracy would
obviate your objection [that the name Bracy occurs in _Ivanhoe_] but
Bracy is stronger.
231. [The frown of night
Conceals him, and bewrays their sight.]
Betrays. The other has an _unlucky association_.
243. [The glinting moon's half-shrouded ray.]
Why "glinting," Scotch, when "glancing" is English?
421. [Then solemnly the monk did say,
(The Abbot of Saint Mary's gray,)
The leman of a wanton youth
Perhaps may gain her father's _ruth_,
But _never_ on his injured breast
May lie, caressing and caressed.
Bethink you of the vow you made
When your light daughter, all distraught,
From yonder slaughter-plain was brought,
That if in some secluded cell
She might till death securely dwell,
The house of God should share her wealth.]
Holy abbots surely never so undisguisedly blurted out their secular
aims.
I think there is so much of this kind of poetry, that it would not be
_very taking_, but it is well worthy of pleasing a private circle. One
blemish runs thro', the perpetual accompaniment of natural images.
Seasons of the year, times of day, phases of the moon, phenomena of
flowers, are quite as much your _dramatis personae_ as the warriors and
the ladies. This last part is as good as what precedes.
LETTER 607
CHARLES LAMB TO CHARLES WENTWORTH DILKE
[No date. End of July, 1834.]
Dear Sir, I am totally incapable of doing what you suggest at present,
and think it right to tell you so _without delay_. It would shock me,
who am shocked enough already, to sit down to _write_ about it. I have
no letters of poor C. By and bye what scraps I have shall be yours. Pray
excuse me. It is not for want of obliging you, I assure you. For your
Box we most cordially feel thankful. I shall be your debtor in my poor
way. I do assure you I am incapable.
Again, excuse me
Yours sincerely
C.L.
[Coleridge's death had occurred on July 25, in his sixty-second year;
and Dilke had written to Lamb asking for some words on that event, for
_The Athenaeum_. A little while later a request was made by John Forster
that Lamb would write something for the album of a Mr. Keymer. It was
then that Lamb wrote the few words that stand under the title "On the
Death of Coleridge" (see Vol. I.). Forster wrote thus of the effect of
Coleridge's death upon Lamb:--
He thought of little else (his sister was but another portion of
himself) until his own great spirit joined his friend. He had a
habit of venting his melancholy in a sort of mirth. He would, with
nothing graver than a pun, "cleanse his bosom of the perilous stuff
that weighed" upon it. In a jest, or a few light phrases, he would
lay open the last recesses of his heart. So in respect of the death
of Coleridge. Some old friends of his saw him two or three weeks
ago, and remarked the constant turning and reference of his mind. He
interrupted himself and them almost every instant with some play of
affected wonder, or astonishment, or humorous melancholy, on the
words, "_Coleridge is dead_." Nothing could divert him from that,
for the thought of it never left him.
Wordsworth said that Coleridge's death hastened Lamb's.]
LETTER 608
CHARLES LAMB TO REV. JAMES GILLMAN
Mr. Walden's, Church Street,
Edmonton, August 5, 1834.
My dear Sir,--The sad week being over, I must write to you to say, that
I was glad of being spared from attending; I have no words to express my
feeling with you all. I can only say that when you think a short visit
from me would be acceptable, when your father and mother shall be able
to see me _with comfort_, I will come to the bereaved house. Express to
them my tenderest regards and hopes that they will continue our friends
still. We both love and respect them as much as a human being can, and
finally thank them with our hearts for what they have been to the poor
departed.
God bless you all,
C. LAMB.
[Talfourd writes: "Shortly after, assured that his presence would be
welcome, Lamb went to Highgate. There he asked leave to see the nurse
who had attended upon Coleridge; and being struck and affected by the
feeling she manifested towards his friend, insisted on her receiving
five guineas from him."
Here should come a letter to J.H. Green dated August 26, 1834, thanking
him for a copy of Coleridge's will and offering to send all letters,
etc., and "fragments of handwriting from leaves of good old books."]
LETTER 609
CHARLES AND MARY LAMB TO H.F. CARY
Sept. 12, 1834.
"By Cot's plessing we will not be absence at the grace."
DEAR C.,--We long to see you, and hear account of your peregrinations,
of the Tun at Heidelburg, the Clock at Strasburg, the statue at
Rotterdam, the dainty Rhenish and poignant Moselle wines, Westphalian
hams, and Botargoes of Altona. But perhaps you have seen nor tasted any
of these things.
Yours, very glad to claim you back again to your proper centre, books
and Bibliothecae,
C. AND M. LAMB.
I have only got your note just now _per negligentiam per iniqui Moxoni_.
[Charles and Mary Lamb at this time were supposed to dine at Cary's on
the third Wednesday in every month. When the plan was suggested by Cary,
Lamb was for declining, but Mary Lamb said, "Ah, when we went to
Edmonton, I told Charles that something would turn up, and so it did,
you see."]
LETTER 610
CHARLES LAMB TO H.F. CARY
Oct., 1834.
I protest I know not in what words to invest my sense of the shameful
violation of hospitality, which I was guilty of on that fatal Wednesday.
Let it be blotted from the calendar. Had it been committed at a layman's
house, say a merchant's or manufacturer's, a cheesemonger's' or
greengrocer's, or, to go higher, a barrister's, a member of
Parliament's, a rich banker's, I should have felt alleviation, a drop of
self-pity. But to be seen deliberately to go out of the house of a
clergyman drunk! a clergyman of the Church of England too! not that
alone, but of an expounder of that dark Italian Hierophant, an
exposition little short of _his_ who dared unfold the Apocalypse: divine
riddles both and (without supernal grace vouchsafed) Arks not to be
fingered without present blasting to the touchers. And, then, from what
house! Not a common glebe or vicarage (which yet had been shameful), but
from a kingly repository of sciences, human and divine, with the primate
of England for its guardian, arrayed in public majesty, from which the
profane vulgar are bid fly. Could all those volumes have taught me
nothing better! With feverish eyes on the succeeding dawn I opened upon
the faint light, enough to distinguish, in a strange chamber not
immediately to be recognised, garters, hose, waistcoat, neckerchief,
arranged in dreadful order and proportion, which I knew was not mine
own. 'Tis the common symptom, on awaking, I judge my last night's
condition from. A tolerable scattering on the floor I hail as being too
probably my own, and if the candlestick be not removed, I assoil myself.
But this finical arrangement, this finding everything in the morning in
exact diametrical rectitude, torments me. By whom was I divested?
Burning blushes! not by the fair hands of nymphs, the Buffam Graces?
Remote whispers suggested that I _coached_ it home in triumph--far be
that from working pride in me, for I was unconscious of the locomotion;
that a young Mentor accompanied a reprobate old Telemachus; that, the
Trojan like, he bore his charge upon his shoulders, while the wretched
incubus, in glimmering sense, hiccuped drunken snatches of flying on the
bats' wings after sunset. An aged servitor was also hinted at, to make
disgrace more complete: one, to whom my ignominy may offer further
occasions of revolt (to which he was before too fondly inclining) from
the true faith; for, at a sight of my helplessness, what more was needed
to drive him to the advocacy of independency? Occasion led me through
Great Russell Street yesterday. I gazed at the great knocker. My feeble
hands in vain essayed to lift it. I dreaded that Argus Portitor, who
doubtless lanterned me out on that prodigious night. I called the
Elginian marbles. They were cold to my suit. I shall never again, I
said, on the wide gates unfolding, say without fear of thrusting back,
in a light but a peremptory air, "I am going to Mr. Cary's." I passed by
the walls of Balclutha. I had imaged to myself a zodiac of third
Wednesdays irradiating by glimpses the Edmonton dulness. I dreamed of
Highmore! I am de-vited to come on Wednesdays. Villanous old age that,
with second childhood, brings linked hand in hand her inseparable twin,
new inexperience, which knows not effects of liquor. Where I was to have
sate for a sober, middle-aged-and-a-half gentleman, literary too, the
neat-fingered artist can educe no notions but of a dissolute Silenus,
lecturing natural philosophy to a jeering Chromius or a Mnasilus. Pudet.
From the context gather the lost name of ----.
["The Buffam Graces." Lamb's landladies at Southampton Buildings.
"I passed by the walls of Balclutha." From Ossian. Lamb uses this
quotation in his _Elia_ essay on the South-Sea House.
"Highmore." I cannot explain this reference.
Not long before Mrs. Procter's death a letter from Charles Lamb to Mrs.
Basil Montagu was sold, in which Lamb apologised for having become
intoxicated while visiting her the night before. Some one mentioned the
letter in Mrs. Procter's presence. "Ah," she said, "but they haven't
seen the second letter, which I have upstairs, written next day, in
which he said that my mother might ask him again with safety as he never
got drunk twice in the same house." Unhappily, a large number of Lamb's
and other letters were burned by Mrs. Procter.]
LETTER 611
CHARLES LAMB TO H.F. CARY
[Oct. 18, 1834.]
Dear Sir,--The unbounded range of munificence presented to my choice
staggers me. What can twenty votes do for one hundred and two widows? I
cast my eyes hopeless among the viduage. N.B.--Southey might be ashamed
of himself to let his aged mother stand at the top of the list, with his
£100 a year and butt of sack. Sometimes I sigh over No. 12, Mrs.
Carve-ill, some poor relation of mine, no doubt. No. 15 has my wishes;
but then she is a Welsh one. I have Ruth upon No. 21. I'd tug hard for
No. 24. No. 25 is an anomaly: there can be no Mrs. Hogg. No. 34 ensnares
me. No. 73 should not have met so foolish a person. No. 92 may bob it as
she likes; but she catches no cherry of me. So I have even fixed at
hap-hazard, as you'll see.
Yours, every third Wednesday,
C.L.
[Talfourd states that the note is in answer to a letter enclosing a list
of candidates for a Widow's Fund Society, for which he was entitled to
vote. A Mrs. Southey headed the list.
Here, according to Mr. Hazlitt's dating, should come a note from Lamb to
Mrs. Randal Norris, belonging to November, in which Lamb says that he
found Mary on his return no worse and she is now no better. He sends all
his nonsense that he can scrape together and hopes the young ladies will
like "Amwell" (_Mrs. Leicester's School_).]
LETTER 612
CHARLES LAMB TO MR. CHILDS
Monday. Church Street, EDMONTON (not Enfield, as you erroneously direct
yours). [? Dec., 1834.]
Dear Sir,--The volume which you seem to want, is not to be had for love
or money. I with difficulty procured a copy for myself. Yours is gone to
enlighten the tawny Hindoos. What a supreme felicity to the author (only
he is no traveller) on the Ganges or Hydaspes (Indian streams) to meet a
smutty Gentoo ready to burst with laughing at the tale of Bo-Bo! for
doubtless it hath been translated into all the dialects of the East. I
grieve the less, that Europe should want it. I cannot gather from your
letter, whether you are aware that a second series of the Essays is
published by Moxon, in Dover-street, Piccadilly, called "The Last Essays
of Elia," and, I am told, is not inferior to the former. Shall I order a
copy for you, and will you accept it? Shall I _lend_ you, at the same
time, my sole copy of the former volume (Oh! return it) for a month or
two? In return, you shall favour me with the loan of one of those
Norfolk-bred grunters that you laud so highly; I promise not to keep it
above a day. What a funny name Bungay is! I never dreamt of a
correspondent thence. I used to think of it as some Utopian town or
borough in Gotham land. I now believe in its existence, as part of merry
England!
[_Some lines scratched out._]
The part I have scratched out is the best of the letter. Let me have
your commands.
CH. LAMB, _alias_ ELIA.
[Talfourd thus explains this letter: "In December, 1834, Mr. Lamb
received a letter from a gentleman, a stranger to him--Mr. Childs of
Bungay, whose copy of _Elia_ had been sent on an Oriental voyage, and
who, in order to replace it, applied to Mr. Lamb." Mr. Childs was a
printer. His business subsequently became that of Messrs. R.&R. Clark,
which still flourishes.