Mary in the Asylum again.--Lamb's Letter with a Poem of hers.--Her slow
Recovery.--Letters to Sarah Stoddart.--The _Tales from Shakespeare_
begun.--Hazlitt's Portrait of Lamb.--Sarah's Lovers.--The Farce of
_Mr. H._
1805-6.--Æt. 41-2.
The letter to Miss Wordsworth called forth a response; but, alas! Mary
was in sad exile when it arrived and Charles, with a heart full of
grief, wrote for her:--
"14th June 1805.
"Your long kind letter has not been thrown away (for it has given me
great pleasure to find you are all resuming your old occupations and
are better); but poor Mary, to whom it is addressed, cannot yet relish
it. She has been attacked by one of her severe illnesses and is at
present _from home_. Last Monday week was the day she left me and I
hope I may calculate upon having her again in a month or little more.
I am rather afraid late hours have, in this case, contributed to her
indisposition.... I have every reason to suppose that this illness,
like all the former ones, will be but temporary; but I cannot always
feel so. Meantime she is dead to me, and I miss a prop. All my
strength is gone, and I am like a fool, bereft of her co-operation. I
dare not think lest I should think wrong, so used am I to look up to
her in the least as in the biggest perplexity. To say all that I know
of her would be more than I think anybody could believe or even
understand; and when I hope to have her well again with me it would be
sinning against her feelings to go about to praise her, for I can
conceal nothing that I do from her. She is older and wiser and better
than I, and all my wretched imperfections I cover to myself by
resolutely thinking on her goodness. She would share life and death,
heaven and hell with me. She lives but for me; and I know I have been
wasting and teasing her life for five years past incessantly with my
cursed drinking and ways of going on. But even in this upbraiding of
myself I am offending against her for I know that she has clung to me
for better for worse; and if the balance has been against her hitherto
it was a noble trade....
"I cannot resist transcribing three or four lines which poor Mary made
upon a picture (a 'Holy Family') which we saw at an auction only one
week before she left home. She was then beginning to show signs of
ill-boding. They are sweet lines, and upon a sweet picture; but I send
them only as the last memorial of her:--
VIRGIN AND CHILD, L. da Vinci.
Maternal lady, with thy virgin grace,
Heaven-born thy Jesus seemeth sure,
And thou a virgin pure.
Lady most perfect, when thy angel face
Men look upon, they wish to be
A Catholic, Madonna fair, to worship thee.
"You had her lines about the 'Lady Blanch.' You have not had some
which she wrote upon a copy of a girl from Titian which I had hung up
where that print of Blanch and the Abbess (as she beautifully
interpreted two female figures from L. da Vinci) had hung in our room.
'Tis light and pretty:--
Who art thou, fair one, who usurp'st the place
Of Blanch, the lady of the matchless grace?
Come, fair and pretty tell to me
Who in thy life-time thou might'st be?
Thou pretty art and fair,
But with the Lady Blanch thou never must compare.
No need for Blanch her history to tell,
Whoever saw her face, they there did read it well;
But when I look on thee, I only know
There lived a pretty maid some hundred years ago.
"This is a little unfair, to tell so much about ourselves and to
advert so little to your letter, so full of comfortable tidings of you
all. But my own cares press pretty close upon me and you can make
allowances. That you may go on gathering strength and peace is my next
wish to Mary's recovery.
"I had almost forgot your repeated invitation. Supposing that Mary
will be well and able there is another _ability_ which you may guess
at which I cannot promise myself. In prudence we ought not to come.
This illness will make it still more prudential to wait. It is not a
balance of this way of spending our money against another way but an
absolute question of whether we shall stop now or go on wasting away
the little we have got beforehand which my wise conduct has already
encroached upon one half."
Pity it is that the little poem on the 'Lady Blanch' should have
perished, as I fear it has, if it contained as 'sweet lines' as the
foregoing.
Little more than a month after this (July 27), Charles writes cheerfully
to Manning:--
"My old housekeeper has shown signs of convalescence and will shortly
resume the power of the keys, so I shan't be cheated of my tea and
liquors. Wind in the West which promotes tranquillity. Have leisure
now to anticipate seeing thee again. Have been taking leave [it was a
very short leave] of tobacco in a rhyming address. Had thought _that
vein_ had long since closed up. Find I can rhyme and reason too. Think
of studying mathematics to restrain the fire of my genius which George
Dyer recommends. Have frequent bleedings at the nose which shows
plethoric. Maybe shall try the sea myself, that great scene of
wonders. Got incredibly sober and regular; shave oftener and hum a
tune to signify cheerfulness and gallantry.
"Suddenly disposed to sleep, having taken a quart of pease with bacon
and stout. Will not refuse nature who has done such things for me!
"Nurse! don't call me unless Mr. Manning comes.--What! the gentleman
in spectacles?--Yes.
_Dormit_. C. L.
"Saturday, Hot noon."
But although Mary was sufficiently recovered to return home at the end
of the summer she continued much shaken by the severity of this attack
and so also did her brother all through the autumn; as the following
letters to Sarah Stoddart and still more one already quoted (pp. 75-6)
show:--
"September 1805.
"Certainly you are the best letter-writer (besides writing the best
hand) in the world. I have just been reading over again your two long
letters and I perceive they make me very envious. I have taken a bran
new pen and put on my _spectacles_ and am peering with all my might to
see the lines in the paper which the sight of your even lines had
well-nigh tempted me to rule; and I have moreover taken two pinches of
snuff extraordinary to clear my head which feels more cloudy than
common this fine cheerful morning.
"All I can gather from your clear and, I have no doubt, faithful
history of Maltese politics is that the good doctor, though a firm
friend, an excellent fancier of brooches, a good husband, an upright
advocate and, in short, all that they say upon tombstones (for I do
not recollect that they celebrate any fraternal virtues there)--yet is
he but a _moody_ brother; that your sister-in-law is pretty much like
what all sisters-in-law have been since the first happy invention of
the marriage state; that friend Coleridge has undergone no alteration
by crossing the Atlantic [geography was evidently no part of Captain
Starkey's curriculum] for his friendliness to you as well as the
oddities you mention are just what one ought to look for from him; and
that you, my dear Sarah, have proved yourself just as unfit to
flourish in a little proud garrison town as I did shrewdly suspect you
were before you went there.
"If I possibly can I will prevail upon Charles to write to your brother
by the conveyance you mention; but he is so unwell I almost fear the
fortnight will slip away before I can get him in the right vein. Indeed,
it has been sad and heavy times with us lately. When I am pretty well
his low spirits throw me back again; and when he begins to get a little
cheerful then I do the same kind office for him. I heartily wish for the
arrival of Coleridge; a few such evenings as we have sometimes passed
with him would wind us up and set us going again.
"Do not say anything when you write of our low spirits; it will vex
Charles. You would laugh or you would cry, perhaps both, to see us sit
together looking at each other with long and rueful faces and saying
'How do you do?' and 'How do you do?' and then we fall a crying and say
we will be better on the morrow. He says we are like tooth-ache and his
friend gum-boil which, though a kind of ease, is but an uneasy kind of
ease, a comfort of rather an uncomfortable sort.
"I rejoice to hear of your mother's amendment; when you can leave her
with any satisfaction to yourself--which, as her sister, I think I
understand by your letter, is with her, I hope you may soon be able to
do--let me know upon what plan you mean to come to town. Your brother
proposed your being six months in town and six with your mother; but
he did not then know of your poor mother's illness. By his desire I
enquired for a respectable family for you to board with and from
Captain Burney I heard of one I thought would suit you at that time.
He particularly desires I would not think of your being with us, not
thinking, I conjecture, the house of a single man _respectable_
enough. Your brother gave me most unlimited orders to domineer over
you, to be the inspector of all your actions and to direct and govern
you with a stern voice and a high hand; to be, in short, a very elder
brother over you. Does the hearing of this, my meek pupil, make you
long to come to London? I am making all the proper enquiries, against
the time, of the newest and most approved modes (being myself mainly
ignorant in these points) of etiquette and nicely correct maidenly
manners.
"But to speak seriously. I mean, when we meet, that we will lay our
heads together and consult and contrive the best way of making the
best girl in the world the fine lady her brother wishes to see her and
believe me, Sarah, it is not so difficult a matter as one is apt to
imagine. I have observed many a demure lady who passes muster
admirably well who, I think, we could easily learn to imitate in a
week or two. We will talk of these things when we meet. In the
meantime I give you free leave to be happy and merry at Salisbury in
any way you can. Has the partridge season opened any communication
between you and William? As I allow you to be imprudent till I see
you, I shall expect to hear you have invited him to taste his own
birds. Have you scratched him out of your will yet? Rickman is married
and that is all the news I have to send you. I seem, upon looking over
my letter again, to have written too lightly of your distresses at
Malta; but, however I may have written, believe me I enter very
feelingly into all your troubles. I love you and I love your brother;
and between you, both of whom, I think, have been to blame, I know not
what to say--only this I say,--try to think as little as possible of
past miscarriages; it was perhaps so ordered by Providence that you
might return home to be a comfort to your mother."
No long holiday trip was to be ventured on while Mary continued thus
shaken and depressed. "We have been two tiny excursions this summer,
for three or four days each, to a place near Harrow and to Egham where
Cooper's Hill is and that is the total history of our rustication this
year", Charles tells Wordsworth. In October Mary gives a slightly
better account of herself:--
"I have made many attempts at writing to you, but it has always
brought your troubles and my own so strongly into my mind, that I have
been obliged to leave off and make Charles write for me. I am resolved
now, however few lines I write, this shall go; for I know, my kind
friend, you will like once more to see my own handwriting.
"I have been for these few days past in rather better spirits, so that
I begin almost to feel myself once more a living creature and to hope
for happier times; and in that hope I include the prospect of once
more seeing my dear Sarah in peace and comfort in our old garret. How
did I wish for your presence to cheer my drooping heart when I
returned home from banishment.
"Is your being with or near your poor dear mother necessary to her
comfort? Does she take any notice of you? And is there any prospect of
her recovery? How I grieve for her, for you....
"I went to the Admiralty, about your mother's pension; from thence I
was directed to an office in Lincoln's Inn.... They informed me it
could not be paid to any person but Mr. Wray without a letter of
attorney.... Do not let us neglect this business and make use of me in
any way you can.
"I have much to thank you and your kind brother for. I kept the dark
silk, as you may suppose. You have made me very fine; the brooch is
very beautiful. Mrs. Jeffries wept for gratitude when she saw your
present; she desires all manner of thanks and good wishes. Your maid's
sister has gone to live a few miles from town. Charles, however, found
her out and gave her the handkerchief.
"I want to know if you have seen William and if there is any prospect
in future there. All you said in your letter from Portsmouth that
related to him was so burnt in the fumigating that we could only make
out that it was unfavourable but not the particulars; tell us again
how you go on or if you have seen him. I conceit affairs will somehow
be made up between you at last.
"I want to know how your brother goes on. Is he likely to make a very
good fortune and in how long a time? And how is he in the way of home
comforts--I mean is he very happy with Mrs. Stoddart? This was a
question I could not ask while you were there and perhaps is not a
fair one now; but I want to know how you all went on and, in short,
twenty little foolish questions that one ought, perhaps, rather to ask
when we meet than to write about. But do make me a little acquainted
with the inside of the good doctor's house and what passes therein.
"Was Coleridge often with you? or did your brother and Col. argue long
arguments till between the two great argue-ers there grew a little
coolness; or perchance the mighty friendship between Coleridge and
your Sovereign governor, Sir Alexander Ball, might create a kind of
jealousy; for we fancy something of a coolness did exist from the
little mention of C. ever made in your brother's letters.
"Write us, my good girl, a long gossiping letter answering all these
foolish questions--and tell me any silly thing you can recollect--any,
the least particular, will be interesting to us and we will never tell
tales out of school; but we used to wonder and wonder how you all went
on; and when you was coming home we said 'Now we shall hear all from
Sarah.'
"God bless you, my dear friend.... If you have sent Charles any
commissions he has not executed write me word--he says he has lost or
mislaid a letter desiring him to inquire about a wig. Write two
letters--one of business and pensions and one all about Sarah Stoddart
and Malta.
"We have got a picture of Charles; do you think your brother would
like to have it? If you do, can you put us in a way how to send it?"
Mary's interest in her friend and her friend's affairs is so hearty
one cannot choose but share it and would gladly see what "the best
letter-writer in the world" had to tell of Coleridge and Stoddart and
the long arguments and little jealousies; and whether 'William' had
continued to dangle on, spite of distance and discouragement; and even
to learn that the old lady received her pension and her wig in safety.
But curiosity must remain unsatisfied for none of Miss Stoddart's
letters have been preserved.
"The picture of Charles" was, we may feel pretty sure, one which
William Hazlitt painted this year of Lamb 'in the costume of a
Venetian senator.' It is, on all accounts, a peculiarly interesting
portrait. Lamb was just thirty; and it gives, on the whole, a striking
impression of the nobility and beauty of form and feature which
characterised his head and partly realises Proctor's description--"a
countenance so full of sensibility that it came upon you like a new
thought which you could not help dwelling upon afterwards"; though the
subtle lines which gave that wondrous sweetness of expression to the
mouth are not fully rendered. Compared with the drawing by Hancock,
done when Lamb was twenty-three, engraved in Cottle's _Early
Recollections of Coleridge_, each may be said to corroborate the truth
of the other, allowing for difference of age and aspect,--Hancock's
being in profile, Hazlitt's (of which there is a good lithograph in
Barry Cornwall's _Memoir_) nearly full face. The print from it
prefixed to Fitzgerald's _Lamb_ is almost unrecognisable. It was the
last time Hazlitt took brush in hand, his grandson tells us; and it
comes as a pleasant surprise--an indication that he was too modest in
estimating his own gifts as a painter; and that the freshness of
feeling and insight he displayed as an art critic were backed by some
capacity for good workmanship.
It was whilst this portrait was being painted that the acquaintance
between Lamb and Hazlitt ripened into an intimacy which, with one or
two brief interruptions, was to be fruitful, invigorating on both
sides and life-long. Hazlitt was at this time staying with his brother
John, a successful miniature-painter and a member of the Godwin circle
much frequented by the Lambs.
"It is not well to be very poor which we certainly are at this
present," Mary had lately written. This it was which spurred her on to
undertake her first literary venture, the _Tales from Shakespeare_.
The nature of the malady from which she suffered made continuous
mental exertion distressing and probably injurious; so that without
this spur she would never, we may be sure, have dug and planted her
little plot in the field of literature and made of it a sweet and
pleasant place for the young where they may play and be nourished,
regardless of time and change. The first hint of any such scheme
occurs in a letter to Sarah Stoddart dated April 22, 1806, written the
very day she had left the Lambs:--
"I have heard that Coleridge was lately going through Sicily to Rome
with a party; but that, being unwell, he returned back to Naples. We
think there is some mistake in this account and that his intended
journey to Rome was in his former jaunt to Naples. If you know that at
that time he had any such intention will you write instantly? for I do
not know whether I ought to write to Mrs. Coleridge or not.
"I am going to make a sort of promise to myself and to you that I will
write you kind of journal-like letters of the daily what-we-do
matters, as they occur. This day seems to me a kind of new era in our
time. It is not a birthday, nor a new year's day, nor a leave-off
smoking day; but it is about an hour after the time of leaving you,
our poor Phoenix, in the Salisbury stage and Charles has just left me
to go to his lodgings [a room to work in free from the distraction of
constant visitors just hired experimentally] and I am holding a
solitary consultation with myself as to how I shall employ myself.
"Writing plays, novels, poems and all manner of such like vapouring
and vapourish schemes are floating in my head which, at the same time,
aches with the thought of parting from you and is perplext at the idea
of I cannot tell what-about-notion that I have not made you half so
comfortable as I ought to have done and a melancholy sense of the dull
prospect you have before you on your return home. Then I think I will
make my new gown; and now I consider the white petticoat will be
better candle-light work; and then I look at the fire and think if the
irons was but down I would iron my gowns--you having put me out of
conceit of mangling.
"So much for an account of my own confused head; and now for yours.
Returning home from the inn we took that to pieces and canvassed you,
as you know is our usual custom. We agreed we should miss you sadly,
and that you had been what you yourself discovered, _not at all in our
way_; and although, if the postmaster should happen to open this, it
would appear to him to be no great compliment yet you, who enter so
warmly into the interior of our affairs, will understand and value it
as well as what we likewise asserted that since you have been with us
you have done but one foolish thing, _vide_ Pinckhorn (excuse my bad
Latin, if it should chance to mean exactly contrary to what I intend).
We praised you for the very friendly way in which you regarded all our
whimsies and, to use a phrase of Coleridge, _understood us_. We had,
in short, no drawback on our eulogy on your merit except lamenting the
want of respect you have to yourself, the want of a certain dignity of
action, you know what I mean, which--though it only broke out in the
acceptance of the old justice's book and was, as it were, smothered
and almost extinct while you were here--yet is it so native a feeling
in your mind that you will do whatever the present moment prompts you
to do, that I wish you would take that one slight offence seriously to
heart and make it a part of your daily consideration to drive this
unlucky propensity, root and branch, out of your character. Then,
mercy on us, what a perfect little gentlewoman you will be!!!
"You are not yet arrived at the first stage of your journey; yet have
I the sense of your absence so strong upon me that I was really
thinking what news I had to send you, and what had happened since you
had left us. Truly nothing, except that Martin Burney met us in
Lincoln's Inn Fields and borrowed fourpence, of the repayment of which
sum I will send you due notice.
"_Friday._--Last night I told Charles of your matrimonial overtures
from Mr. White and of the cause of that business being at a
_standstill_. Your generous conduct in acquainting Mr. White with the
vexatious affair at Malta highly pleased him. He entirely approves of
it. You would be quite comforted to hear what he said on the subject.
"He wishes you success; and when Coleridge comes will consult with him
about what is best to be done. But I charge you be most strictly
cautious how you proceed yourself. Do not give Mr. W. any reason to
think you indiscreet; let him return of his own accord and keep the
probability of his doing so full in your mind; so, I mean, as to
regulate your whole conduct by that expectation. Do not allow yourself
to see, or in any way renew your acquaintance with William nor do any
other silly thing of that kind; for you may depend upon it he will be
a kind of spy upon you and, if he observes nothing that he disapproves
of you will certainly hear of him again in time.
"Charles is gone to finish the farce [_Mr. H._] and I am to hear it
read this night. I am so uneasy between my hopes and fears of how I
shall like it that I do not know what I am doing. I need not tell you
so for before I send this I shall be able to tell you all about it. If
I think it will amuse you I will send you a copy. _The bed was very
cold last night._
"I have received your letter and am happy to hear that your mother has
been so well in your absence, which I wish had been prolonged a
little, for you have been wanted to copy out the Farce, in the writing
of which I made many an unlucky blunder.
"The said Farce I carried (after many consultations of who was the
most proper person to perform so important an office) to Wroughton,
the manager of Drury Lane. He was very civil to me; said it did not
depend upon himself, but that he would put it into the proprietor's
hands, and that we should certainly have an answer from them.
"I have been unable to finish this sheet before, for Charles has taken
a week's holliday from his lodging to rest himself after his labour,
and we have talked of nothing but the Farce night and day; but
yesterday I carried it to Wroughton, and since it has been out of the
way our minds have been a little easier. I wish you had been with us
to have given your opinion. I have half a mind to scribble another
copy and send it you. I like it very much, and cannot help having
great hopes of its success.
"I would say I was very sorry for the death of Mr. White's father, but
not knowing the good old gentleman, I cannot help being as well
satisfied that he is gone, for his son will feel rather lonely, and
so, perhaps, he may chance to visit again Winterslow. You so well
describe your brother's grave lecturing letter, that you make me
ashamed of part of mine. I would fain re-write it, leaving out my
'_sage advice_'; but if I begin another letter something may fall out
to prevent me from finishing it, and, therefore, skip over it as well
as you can; it shall be the last I ever send you.
"It is well enough when one is talking to a friend to hedge in an odd
word by way of counsel now and then; but there is something mighty
irksome in its staring upon one in a letter, where one ought only to
see kind words and friendly remembrances.
"I have heard a vague report from the Dawes (the pleasant-looking
young lady we called upon was Miss Dawe) that Coleridge returned back
to Naples; they are to make further inquiries and let me know the
particulars. We have seen little or nothing of Manning since you went.
Your friend George Burnett calls as usual for Charles _to point out
something for him_. I miss you sadly, and but for the fidget I have
been in about the Farce, I should have missed you still more. I am
sorry you cannot get your money; continue to tell us all your
perplexities, and do not mind being called Widow Blackacre.
"Say all in your mind about your _Lover_; now Charles knows of it, he
will be as anxious to hear as me. All the time we can spare from
talking of the characters and plot of the Farce, we talk of you. I
have got a fresh bottle of brandy to-day; if you were here you should
have a glass, _three parts brandy_, so you should. I bought a pound of
bacon to-day, not so good as yours. I wish the little caps were
finished. I am glad the medicines and the cordials bore the fatigue of
their journey so well. I promise you I will write often, and _not mind
the postage_. God bless you. Charles does _not_ send his love because
he is not here. _Write as often as ever you can._ Do not work too
hard."
There is a little anecdote of Sarah Stoddart, told by her grandson,
which helps to mitigate our astonishment at Mary's too hospitable
suggestion in regard to the brandy. Lieutenant Stoddart would
sometimes, while sipping his grog, say to his children, "John, will
you have some?" "No thank you, father." "Sarah, will you?" "Yes,
please, father." "Not," adds Mr. Hazlitt, "that she ever indulged to
excess; but she was that sort of woman." Very far, certainly, from
"the perfect little gentlewoman" Mary hoped one day to see her; but
friendly, not without brains, with a kindly heart, and her worst
qualities such, surely, as spread themselves freely on the surface,
but strike no deep or poisonous roots. "Do not mind being called Widow
Blackacre," says Mary, alluding to one of the characters in
Wycherley's _Plain Dealer_. It certainly was not gratifying to be
likened to that "perverse, bustling, masculine, pettifogging, and
litigious" lady, albeit Macaulay speaks of her as Wycherley's happiest
creation.
When Hazlitt returned to Wem, Lamb sent him his first letter full of
friendly gossip:--
"... We miss you, as we foretold we should. One or two things have
happened which are beneath the dignity of epistolary communication,
but which, seated about our fireside at night (the winter hands of
pork have begun), gesture and emphasis might have talked into some
importance. Something about Rickman's wife, for instance; how tall she
is, and that she visits pranked up like a Queen of the May with green
streamers; a good-natured woman though, which is as much as you can
expect from a friend's wife, whom you got acquainted with a bachelor.
Something, too, about Monkey [Louisa Martin], which can't so well be
written; how it set up for a fine lady, and thought it had got lovers
and was obliged to be convinced of its age from the parish register,
where it was proved to be only twelve, and an edict issued that it
should not give itself airs yet this four years; and how it got leave
to be called Miss by grace. These, and such like hows were in my head
to tell you, but who can write? Also how Manning is come to town in
spectacles, and studies physic; is melancholy, and seems to have
something in his head which he don't impart. Then, how I am going to
leave off smoking.... You disappoint me in passing over in absolute
silence the Blenheim Leonardo. Didn't you see it? Excuse a lover's
curiosity. I have seen no pictures of note since, except Mr. Dawe's
gallery. It is curious to see how differently two great men treat the
same subject, yet both excellent in their way. For instance, Milton
and Mr. Dawe. Mr. D. has chosen to illustrate the story of Samson
exactly in the point of view in which Milton has been most happy; the
interview between the Jewish hero, blind and captive, and Dalilah.
Milton has imagined his locks grown again, strong as horsehair or
porcupine's bristles; doubtless shaggy and black, as being hairs
'which of a nation armed contained the strength.' I don't remember he
_says_ black; but could Milton imagine them to be yellow? Do you? Mr.
Dawe, with striking originality of conception, has crowned him with a
thin yellow wig; in colour precisely like Dyson's, in curl and
quantity resembling Mrs. Professor's (Godwin's wife); his limbs rather
stout, about such a man as my brother or Rickman, but no Atlas, nor
Hercules, nor yet so long as Dubois, the clown of Sadler's Wells. This
was judicious, taking the spirit of the story rather than the fact;
for doubtless God could communicate national salvation to the trust of
flax and tow as well as hemp and cordage, and could draw down a temple
with a golden tress, as soon as with all the cables of the British
navy....
"Wasn't you sorry for Lord Nelson? I have followed him in fancy ever
since I saw him in Pall Mall (I was prejudiced against him before),
looking just as a hero should look, and I have been very much cut
about it indeed. He was the only pretence of a great man we had.
Nobody is left of any name at all. His secretary died by his side. I
imagined him a Mr. Scott, to be the man you met at Hume's, but I learn
from Mrs. Hume it is not the same.... What other news is there, Mary?
What puns have I made in the last fortnight? You never remember them.
You have no relish for the comic. 'Oh, tell Hazlitt not to forget to
send the _American Farmer_. I daresay it's not as good as he fancies;
but a book's a book.'..."
Mary was no exclusive lover of her brother's old folios, his "ragged
veterans" and "midnight darlings," but a miscellaneous reader with a
decided leaning to modern tales and adventures--to "a story, well,
ill, or indifferently told, so there be life stirring in it," as Elia
has told.
It may be worth noting here that the Mr. Scott mentioned above, who
was not the secretary killed by Nelson's side, was his chaplain and,
though not killed, he received a wound in the skull of so curious a
nature as to cause occasionally a sudden suspension of memory. In the
midst of a sentence he would stop abruptly, losing, apparently, all
mental consciousness; and after a lapse of time, would resume at the
very word with which he had left off, wholly unaware of any breach of
continuity; as one who knew him has often related to me.