of “The Pen and the Album” suggests something akin to affection for
these pillaging little books when the right people owned them,--when
they belonged to “Chesham Place.” Locker tells a pleasant story of
meeting Thackeray in Pall Mall, on his way to Kensington, and offering
to join him in his walk. This offer was declined, Thackeray explaining
that he had some rhymes trotting through his head, and that he was
trying to polish them off in the course of a solitary stroll. A few
days later they met again, and Thackeray said, “I finished those
verses, and they are very nearly being very good. I call them ‘Mrs.
Katherine’s Lantern.’ I did them for Dickens’s daughter.”
“Very nearly being very good!” This is an author’s modest estimate.
Readers there are who have found them so absolutely good that they
leaven the whole heavy mass of album verse. Shall not a century of
extortion on the one side and debility on the other be forgiven,
because upon one blank page, the property of one thrice fortunate young
woman, were written these lines, fragrant with imperishable sentiment:--
When he was young as you are young,
When he was young, and lutes were strung,
And love-lamps in the casement hung.
But when we turn to Lamb, and find him driving his pen along its
unwilling way, and admitting ruefully that the road was hard, we see
the reverse of the medal, and we resent that inexplicable sweetness of
temper which left him defenceless before marauders.
My feeble Muse, that fain her best would
Write at command of Frances Westwood,
But feels her wits not in their best mood.
Why should Frances Westwood have commanded his services? Why should
Frances Brown, “engaged to a Mr. White,” have wrung from him a dozen
lines of what we should now call “copy”? She had no recognizable right
to that copy; but Lamb confided to Mrs. Moxon that he had sent it to
her at twenty-four hours’ notice, because she was going to be married
and start with her husband for India. Also that he had forgotten what
he had written, save only two lines:--
May your fame
And fortune, Frances, Whiten with your name!
of which conceit he was innocently proud.
Mrs. Moxon (Emma Isola) was herself an old and hardened offender. Her
album, enriched with the spoils of a predatory warfare, travelled far
afield, extorting its tribute of verse. We find Lamb first paying,
as was natural, his own tithes, and then actually aiding and abetting
injustice by sending the book to Mr. Procter (Barry Cornwall), with an
irresistible appeal for support.
“I have another favour to beg, which is the beggarliest of beggings;
a few lines of verse for a young friend’s album (six will be enough).
M. Burney will tell you who I want ’em for. A girl of gold. Six
lines--make ’em eight--signed Barry C----. They need not be very good,
as I chiefly want ’em as a foil to mine. But I shall be seriously
obliged by any refuse scraps. We are in the last ages of the world,
when St. Paul prophesied that women should be ‘headstrong lovers of
their own wills, having albums.’ I fled hither to escape the albumean
persecution, and had not been in my new house twenty-four hours when
a daughter of the next house came in with a friend’s album, to beg a
contribution, and, the following day, intimated she had one of her own.
Two more have sprung up since. ‘If I take the wings of the morning,
and fly unto the uttermost parts of the earth, there will albums be.’
New Holland has albums. The age is to be complied with.”
* * * * *
“Ask for this little book a token of remembrance from friends, and from
fellow students, and from wayfarers whom you may never see again. He
who gives you his name and a few kind words, gives you a treasure which
shall keep his memory green.”
So wrote Goethe--out of the abyss of German sentimentality--in his
son’s album; and the words have a pleasant ring of good fellowship
and unforced fraternity. They are akin to those gracious phrases with
which the French monarchy--“despotism tempered by epigram”--was wont
to designate the taxes that devoured the land. There was a charming
politeness in the assumption that taxes were free gifts, gladly given;
but those who gave them knew.
The Riverside Press
CAMBRIDGE . MASSACHUSETTS
U . S . A
FOOTNOTE:
[1] Beattie’s _Minstrel_.
TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES:
Italicized text is surrounded by underscores: _italics_.
Obvious typographical errors have been corrected.
Inconsistencies in hyphenation have been standardized.
Archaic or variant spelling has been retained.
The cover image for this eBook was created by the transcriber and is
entered into the public domain.