Correspondence with Sarah Stoddart.--Hazlitt.--A Courtship and Wedding
at which Mary is Bridesmaid.
1806-8.--Æt. 42-44.
To return to domestic affairs, as faithfully reported to Sarah by Mary
whilst the _Tales_ were in progress:--
"May 14, 1806.
"No intention of forfeiting my promise, but want of time has prevented
me from continuing my _journal_. You seem pleased with the long stupid
one I sent, and, therefore, I shall certainly continue to write at
every opportunity. The reason why I have not had any time to spare is
because Charles has given himself some hollidays after the hard labour
of finishing his farce; and, therefore, I have had none of the evening
leisure I promised myself. Next week he promises to go to work again.
I wish he may happen to hit upon some new plan to his mind for another
farce [_Mr. H._ was accepted, but not yet brought out]. When once
begun, I do not fear his perseverance, but the hollidays he has
allowed himself I fear will unsettle him. I look forward to next week
with the same kind of anxiety I did to the new lodging. We have had,
as you know, so many teazing anxieties of late, that I have got a kind
of habit of foreboding that we shall never be comfortable, and that he
will never settle to work, which I know is wrong, and which I will try
with all my might to overcome; for certainly if I could but see things
as they really are, our prospects are considerably improved since the
memorable day of Mrs. Fenwick's last visit. I have heard nothing of
that good lady or of the Fells since you left us.
"We have been visiting a little to Norris's, Godwin's, and last night
we did not come home from Captain Burney's till two o'clock; the
_Saturday night_ was changed to Friday, because Rickman could not be
there to-night. We had the best _tea things_, and the litter all
cleared away, and everything as handsome as possible, Mrs. Rickman
being of the party. Mrs. Rickman is much increased in size since we
saw her last, and the alteration in her strait shape wonderfully
improves her. Phillips was there, and Charles had a long batch of
cribbage with him, and upon the whole we had the most chearful evening
I have known there a long time. To-morrow we dine at Holcroft's. These
things rather fatigue me; but I look for a quiet week next week, and
hope for better times. We have had Mrs. Brooks and all the Martins,
and we have likewise been there, so that I seem to have been in a
continual bustle lately. I do not think Charles cares so much for the
Martins as he did, which is a fact you will be glad to hear, though
you must not name them when you write; always remember when I tell you
anything about them, not to mention their names in return.
"We have had a letter from your brother by the same mail as yours I
suppose; he says he does not mean to return till summer, and that is
all he says about himself; his letter being entirely filled with a
long story about Lord Nelson--but nothing more than what the papers
have been full of--such as his last words, &c. Why does he tease you
with so much _good advice_; is it merely to fill up his letters, as he
filled ours with Lord Nelson's exploits? or has any new thing come out
against you? Has he discovered Mr. Curse-a-rat's correspondence? I
hope you will not write to that _news-sending_ gentleman any more. I
promised never more to give my _advice_, but one may be allowed to
_hope_ a little; and I also hope you will have something to tell me
soon about Mr. White. Have you seen him yet? I am sorry to hear your
mother is not better, but I am in a hoping humour just now, and I
cannot help hoping that we shall all see happier days. The bells are
just now ringing for the taking of the _Cape of Good Hope_.
"I have written to Mrs. Coleridge to tell her that her husband is at
Naples. Your brother slightly named his being there, but he did not
say that he had heard from him himself. Charles is very busy at the
office; he will be kept there to-day till seven or eight o'clock; and
he came home very _smoky and drinky_ last night, so that I am afraid a
hard day's work will not agree very well with him.
"O dear! what shall I say next? Why, this I will say next, that I wish
you was with me; I have been eating a mutton chop all alone, and I
have just been looking in the pint porter-pot which I find quite
empty, and yet I am still very dry. If you was with me, we would have
a glass of brandy and water; but it is quite impossible to drink
brandy and water by one's-self; therefore, I must wait with patience
till the kettle boils. I hate to drink tea alone, it is worse than
dining alone. We have got a fresh cargo of biscuits from Captain
Burney's. I have----
"May 14.--Here I was interrupted, and a long, tedious interval has
intervened, during which I have had neither time nor inclination to
write a word. The lodging, that pride of your heart and mine, is given
up, and _here he is again_--Charles, I mean--as unsettled and
undetermined as ever. When he went to the poor lodging after the
holidays I told you he had taken, he could not endure the solitariness
of them, and I had no rest for the sole of my foot till I promised to
believe his solemn protestations that he could and would write as well
at home as there. Do you believe this?
"I have no power over Charles; he will do what he will do. But I ought
to have some little influence over myself; and, therefore, I am most
manfully resolving to turn over a new leaf with my own mind. Your
visit, though not a very comfortable one to yourself, has been of
great use to me. I set you up in my fancy as a kind of _thing_ that
takes an interest in my concerns; and I hear you talking to me, and
arguing the matter very learnedly when I give way to despondency. You
shall hear a good account of me and the progress I make in altering my
fretful temper to a calm and quiet one. It is but once being thorowly
convinced one is wrong, to make one resolve to do so no more; and I
know my dismal faces have been almost as great a drawback upon
Charles's comfort, as his feverish, teazing ways have been upon mine.
Our love for each other has been the torment of our lives hitherto. I
am most seriously intending to bend the whole force of my mind to
counteract this, and I think I see some prospect of success.
"Of Charles ever bringing any work to pass at home, I am very
doubtful; and of the farce succeeding, I have little or no hope; but
if I could once get into the way of being chearful myself, I should
see an easy remedy in leaving town and living cheaply, almost wholly
alone; but till I do find we really are comfortable alone, and by
ourselves, it seems a dangerous experiment. We shall certainly stay
where we are till after next Christmas; and in the meantime, as I told
you before, all my whole thoughts shall be to _change_ myself into
just such a chearful soul as you would be in a lone house, with no
companion but your brother, if you had nothing to vex you; nor no
means of wandering after _Curse-a-rats_. Do write soon; though I write
all about myself, I am thinking all the while of you, and I am uneasy
at the length of time it seems since I heard from you. Your mother and
Mr. White is running continually in my head; and this _second winter_
makes me think how cold, damp, and forlorn your solitary house will
feel to you. I would your feet were perched up again on our
fender." ...
If ever a woman knew how to keep on the right side of that line which,
in the close companionship of daily life is so hard to find, the line
that separates an honest faithful friend from "a torment of a
monitor," and could divine when and how to lend a man a helping hand
against his own foibles, and when to forbear and wait patiently, that
woman was Mary Lamb.
Times were changed indeed since Lamb could speak of himself as "alone,
obscure, without a friend." Now friends and acquaintance thronged
round him, till rest and quiet were almost banished from his
fire-side; and though they were banished for the most part by social
pleasures he dearly loved--hearty, simple, intellectual pleasures--the
best of talk, with no ceremony and the least of expense, yet they had
to be paid for by Mary and himself in fevered nerves, in sleep
curtailed and endless interruptions to work. There were, besides,
"social harpies who preyed on him for his liquors," whom he lacked
firmness to shake off, in spite of those "dismal faces" consequent in
Mary, of which she penitently accuses herself.
Apart from external distractions, the effort to write, especially any
sort of task work, was often so painful to his irritable nerves that,
as he said, it almost "teazed him into a fever," whilst Mary's anxious
love and close sympathy made his distress her own. There is a letter
to Godwin deprecating any appearance of unfriendliness in having
failed to review his _Life of Chaucer_, containing a passage on this
subject, which the lover of Lamb's writings and character (and who is
one must needs be the other) will ponder with peculiar interest:--
"You, by long habits of composition, and a greater command over your
own powers, cannot conceive of the desultory and uncertain way in
which I (an author by fits) sometimes cannot put the thoughts of a
common letter into sane prose. Any work which I take upon myself as an
engagement will act upon me to torment, _e.g._ when I have undertaken,
as three or four times I have, a schoolboy copy of verses for Merchant
Taylors' boys at a guinea a copy, I have fretted over them in perfect
inability to do them, and have made my sister wretched with my
wretchedness for a week together. As to reviewing, in particular, my
head is so whimsical a head that I cannot, after reading another man's
book, let it have been never so pleasing, give any account of it in
any methodical way. I cannot follow his train. Something like this you
must have perceived of me in conversation. Ten thousand times I have
confessed to you, talking of my talents, my utter inability to
remember, in any comprehensive way, what I read. I can vehemently
applaud, or perversely stickle at _parts,_ but I cannot grasp a whole.
This infirmity may be seen in my two little compositions, the tale and
my play, in both which no reader, however partial, can find any
story.... If I bring you a crude, wretched paper on Sunday, you must
burn it and forgive me; if it proves anything better than I predict,
may it be a peace-offering of sweet incense between us."
The two friends whose society was always soothing, were far away now.
Coleridge, who could always 'wind them up and set them going again,'
as Mary said, was still wandering they knew not where on the
Continent, and Manning had, at last, carried out a long-cherished
scheme and gone to China for four years which, however, stretched to
twelve, as Lamb prophesied it would.
"I didn't know what your going was till I shook a last fist with you,"
says Lamb, "and then 'twas just like having shaken hands with a wretch
on the fatal scaffold, for when you are down the ladder you never can
stretch out to him again. Mary says you are dead, and there's nothing
to do but to leave it to time to do for us in the end what it always
does for those who mourn for people in such a case: but she'll see by
your letter you are not quite dead. A little kicking and agony, and
then--Martin Burney _took me out_ a walking that evening, and we
talked of Manning, and then I came home and smoked for you; and at
twelve o'clock came home Mary and Monkey Louisa from the play, and
there was more talk and more smoking, and they all seemed first-rate
characters because they knew a certain person. But what's the use of
talking about 'em? By the time you'll have made your escape from the
Kalmucks, you'll have stayed so long I shall never be able to bring to
your mind who Mary was, who will have died about a year before, nor
who the Holcrofts were. Me, perhaps, you will mistake for Phillips, or
confound me with Mr. Dawe, because you saw us together. Mary, whom you
seem to remember yet, is not quite easy that she had not a formal
parting from you. I wish it had so happened. But you must bring her a
token, a shawl or something, and remember a sprightly little mandarin
for our mantel-piece as a companion to the child I am going to
purchase at the museum.... O Manning, I am serious to sinking almost,
when I think that all those evenings which you have made so pleasant
are gone perhaps for ever.... I will nurse the remembrance of your
steadiness and quiet which used to infuse something like itself into
our nervous minds. Mary used to call you our ventilator."
Mary's next letters to Miss Stoddart continue to fulfil her promise of
writing a kind of journal:--
"June 2nd.
"You say truly that I have sent you too many make-believe letters. I
do not mean to serve you so again if I can help it. I have been very
ill for some days past with the tooth-ache. Yesterday I had it drawn,
and I feel myself greatly relieved, but far from being easy, for my
head and my jaws still ache; and being unable to do any business, I
would wish to write you a long letter to atone for my former offences;
but I feel so languid that I fear wishing is all I can do.
"I am sorry you are so worried with business, and I am still more
sorry for your sprained ancle. You ought not to walk upon it. What is
the matter between you and your good-natured maid you used to boast
of? and what the devil is the matter with your aunt? You say she is
discontented. You must bear with them as well as you can, for
doubtless it is your poor mother's teazing that puts you all out of
sorts. I pity you from my heart.
"We cannot come to see you this summer, nor do I think it advisable to
come and incommode you when you for the same expense could come to us.
Whenever you feel yourself disposed to run away from your troubles,
come to us again. I wish it was not such a long, expensive journey,
and then you could run backwards and forwards every month or two. I am
very sorry you still hear nothing from Mr. White. I am afraid that is
all at an end. What do you intend to do about Mr. Turner?... William
Hazlitt, the brother of him you know, is in town. I believe you have
heard us say we like him. He came in good time, for the loss of
Manning made Charles very dull, and he likes Hazlitt better than
anybody, except Manning. My tooth-ache has moped Charles to death; you
know how he hates to see people ill....
"When I write again, you will hear tidings of the farce, for Charles
is to go in a few days to the managers to inquire about it. But that
must now be a next year's business too, even if it does succeed, so
it's all looking forward and no prospect of present gain. But that's
better than no hopes at all, either for present or future times....
Charles smokes still, and will smoke to the end of the chapter. Martin
[Burney] has just been here. My _Tales_ (_again_) and Charles' Farce
have made the boy mad to turn author, and he has made the _Winter's
Tale_ into a story; but what Charles says of himself is really true of
Martin, for he can _make nothing at all of it_, and I have been
talking very eloquently this morning to convince him that nobody can
write farces, &c. under thirty years of age; and so, I suppose, he
will go home and new-model his farce.
"What is Mr. Turner, and what is likely to come of him? And how do you
like him? And what do you intend to do about it? I almost wish you to
remain single till your mother dies, and then come and live with us,
and we would either get you a husband, or teach you how to live
comfortably without. I think I should like to have you always, to the
end of our lives, living with us; and I do not know any reason why
that should not be, except for the great fancy you seem to have for
marrying, which after all is but a hazardous kind of affair; but,
however, do as you like; every man knows best what pleases himself
best.
"I have known many single men I should have liked in my life (_if it
had suited them_) for a husband; but very few husbands have I ever
wished was mine, which is rather against the state in general; but one
never is disposed to envy wives their good husbands. So much for
marrying--but, however, get married if you can.
"I say we shall not come and see you, and I feel sure we shall not;
but if some sudden freak was to come into our wayward heads, could you
at all manage? Your mother we should not mind, but I think still it
would be so vastly inconvenient. I am certain we shall not come, and
yet _you_ may tell me when you write if it would be horribly
inconvenient if we did; and do not tell me any lies, but say truly
whether you would rather we did or not.
"God bless you, my dearest Sarah! I wish for your sake I could have
written a very amusing letter; but do not scold, for my head aches
sadly. Don't mind my head-ache, for before you get this it will be
well, being only from the pains of my jaws and teeth. Farewell."
"July 2nd.
"Charles and Hazlitt are going to Sadler's Wells, and I am amusing
myself in their absence with reading a manuscript of Hazlitt's, but
have laid it down to write a few lines to tell you how we are going
on. Charles has begged a month's hollidays, of which this is the first
day, and they are all to be spent at home. We thank you for your kind
invitations, and were half-inclined to come down to you; but after
mature deliberation, and many wise consultations--such as you know we
often hold--we came to the resolution of staying quietly at home, and
during the hollidays we are both of us to set stoutly to work and
finish the tales. We thought if we went anywhere and left them undone,
they would lay upon our minds, and that when we returned we should
feel unsettled, and our money all spent besides; and next summer we
are to be very rich, and then we can afford a long journey somewhere;
I will not say to Salisbury, because I really think it is better for
you to come to us. But of that we will talk another time.
"The best news I have to send you is that the Farce is accepted; that
is to say, the manager has written to say it shall be brought out when
an opportunity serves. I hope that it may come out by next Christmas.
You must come and see it the first night; for if it succeeds it will
be a great pleasure to you, and if it should not we shall want your
consolation; so you must come.
"I shall soon have done my work, and know not what to begin next. Now,
will you set your brains to work and invent a story, either for a
short child's story, or a long one that would make a kind of novel, or
a story that would make a play. Charles wants me to write a play, but
I am not over-anxious to set about it. But, seriously, will you draw
me out a sketch of a story, either from memory of anything you have
read, or from your own invention, and I will fill it up in some way or
other....
"I met Mrs. Fenwick at Mrs. Holcroft's the other day. She looked
placid and smiling, but I was so disconcerted that I hardly knew how
to sit upon my chair. She invited us to come and see her, but we did
not invite her in return, and nothing at all was said in an
explanatory sort, so that matter rests for the present." [Perhaps the
little imbroglio was the result of some effort on Mary's part to
diminish the frequency of the undesirable Mr. Fenwick's visits. He was
a good-for-nothing; but his wife's name deserves to be remembered
because she nursed Mary Wollstonecraft tenderly and devotedly in her
last illness.] "I am sorry you are altogether so uncomfortable; I
shall be glad to hear you are settled at Salisbury: that must be
better than living in a lone house companionless, as you are. I wish
you could afford to bring your mother up to London, but that is quite
impossible. Mrs. Wordsworth is brought to bed, and I ought to write to
Miss Wordsworth and thank her for the information, but I suppose I
shall defer it till another child is coming. I do so hate writing
letters. I wish all my friends would come and live in town. It is not
my dislike to writing letters that prevents my writing to you, but
sheer want of time, I assure you, because you care not how stupidly I
write so as you do but hear at the time what we are about.
"Let me hear from you soon, and do let me hear some good news, and
don't let me hear of your walking with sprained ancles again; no
business is an excuse for making yourself lame.
"I hope your poor mother is better, and Aunty and Maid jog on pretty
well; remember me to them all in due form and order. Charles's love
and our best wishes that all your little busy affairs may come to a
prosperous conclusion."
"Friday evening.
"They (Hazlitt and Charles) came home from Sadler's Wells so dismal
and dreary dull on Friday evening, that I gave them both a good
scolding, _quite a setting to rights_; and I think it has done some
good, for Charles has been very chearful ever since. I begin to hope
the _home hollidays_ will go on very well. Write directly, for I am
uneasy about your _Lovers_; I wish something was settled. God bless
you." ...
Sarah's lovers continued a source of lively if 'uneasy' interest to
Mary. The enterprising young lady had now another string to her bow;
indeed, matters this time went so far that the question of settlements
was raised and Mary wrote a letter in which her "advising spirit"
shows itself as wise as it was unobtrusive, as candid as it was
tolerant. Dr. Stoddart clearly estimated her judgment and tact, after
his fashion, as highly as Coleridge and Wordsworth did after theirs.
Mary wrote:--
"October 22.
"I thank you a thousand times for the beautiful work you have sent me.
I received the parcel from a strange gentleman yesterday. I like the
patterns very much. You have quite set me up in finery; but you should
have sent the silk handkerchief too; will you make a parcel of that
and send it by the Salisbury coach? I should like to have it in a few
days, because we have not yet been to Mr. Babb's, and that
handkerchief would suit this time of year nicely. I have received a
long letter from your brother on the subject of your intended
marriage. I have no doubt but you also have one on this business,
therefore it is needless to repeat what he says. I am well pleased to
find that, upon the whole, he does not seem to see it in an
unfavourable light. He says that if Mr. Dowling is a worthy man he
shall have no objection to become the brother of a farmer; and he
makes an odd request to me, that I shall set out to Salisbury to look
at and examine into the merits of the said Mr. D., and speaks very
confidently as if you would abide by my determination. A pretty sort
of an office truly! Shall I come? The objections he starts are only
such as you and I have already talked over--such as the difference in
age, education, habits of life, &c.
"You have gone too far in this affair for any interference to be at
all desirable; and if you had not, I really do not know what my wishes
would be. When you bring Mr. Dowling at Christmas, I suppose it will
be quite time enough for me to sit in judgment upon him; but my
examination will not be a very severe one. If you fancy a very young
man, and he likes an elderly gentlewoman, if he likes a learned and
accomplished lady, and you like a not very learned youth, who may need
a little polishing, which probably he will never acquire; it is all
very well, and God bless you both together, and may you be both very
long in the same mind!
"I am to assist you too, your brother says, in drawing up the marriage
settlements, another thankful office! I am not, it seems, to suffer
you to keep too much money in your own power, and yet I am to take
care of you in case of bankruptcy; and I am to recommend to you, for
the better management of this point, the serious perusal of _Jeremy
Taylor_, his opinion on the marriage state, especially his advice
against _separate interests_ in that happy state; and I am also to
tell you how desirable it is that the husband should have the entire
direction of all money concerns, except, as your good brother adds, in
the case of his own family, when the money, he observes, is very
properly deposited in Mrs. Stoddart's hands, she being better suited
to enjoy such a trust than any other woman, and therefore it is fit
that the general rule should not be extended to her.
"We will talk over these things when you come to town; and as to
settlements, which are matters of which I--I never having had a penny
in my own disposal--never in my life thought of; and if I had been
blessed with a good fortune, and that marvellous blessing to boot, a
good husband, I verily believe I should have crammed it all uncounted
into his pocket. But thou hast a cooler head of thine own, and I
daresay will do exactly what is expedient and proper; but your
brother's opinion seems somewhat like Mr. Barwis's, and I daresay you
will take it into due consideration; yet, perhaps, an offer of your
own money to take a farm may make _uncle_ do less for his nephew, and
in that case Mr. D. might be a loser by your generosity. Weigh all
these things well, and if you can so contrive it, let your brother
_settle_ the _settlements_ himself when he returns, which will most
probably be long before you want them.
"You are settled, it seems, in the very house which your brother most
dislikes. If you find this house very inconvenient, get out of it as
fast as you can, for your brother says he sent you the fifty pounds to
make you comfortable; and by the general tone of his letter I am sure
he wishes to make you easy in money matters; therefore, why straiten
yourself to pay the debt you owe him, which I am well assured he never
means to take? Thank you for the letter, and for the picture of pretty
little chubby nephew John. I have been busy making waiskoats and
plotting new work to succeed the _Tales_; as yet I have not hit upon
anything to my mind.
"Charles took an emendated copy of his farce to Mr. Wroughton, the
manager, yesterday. Mr. Wroughton was very friendly to him, and
expressed high approbation of the farce; but there are two, he tells
him, to come out before it; yet he gave him hopes that it will come
out this season; but I am afraid you will not see it by Christmas. It
will do for another jaunt for you in the spring. We are pretty well
and in fresh spirits about this farce. Charles has been very good
lately in the matter of _Smoking_.
"When you come bring the gown you wish to sell, Mrs. Coleridge will be
in town then, and if she happens not to fancy it, perhaps some other
person may.
"Coleridge, I believe, is gone home, he left us with that design; but
we have not heard from him this fortnight....
"My respects to Coridon, mother, and aunty. Farewell. My best wishes
are with you.
"When I saw what a prodigious quantity of work you had put into the
finery, I was quite ashamed of my unreasonable request. I will never
serve you so again, but I do dearly love worked muslin."
So Coleridge was come back at last. "He is going to turn lecturer, on
Taste, at the Royal Institution," Charles tells Manning. And the Farce
came out and failed. "We are pretty stout about it," he says to
Wordsworth; "but, after all, we had rather it had succeeded. You will
see the prologue in most of the morning papers. It was received with
such shouts as I never witnessed to a prologue. It was attempted to be
encored. How hard!--a thing I merely did as a task, because it was
wanted, and set no great store by; and _Mr. H._!! The number of
friends we had in the house, my brother and I being in public offices,
was astonishing, but they yielded at length to a few hisses. A hundred
hisses! (D--n the word, I write it like kisses--how different!) a
hundred hisses outweigh a thousand claps. The former come more
directly from the heart. Well 'tis withdrawn and there is an end.
Better luck to us."
Sarah's visit came to pass, and proved an eventful one to her. For at
the Lambs she now saw frequently their new friend, quite another
William than he of "English partridge memory," William Hazlitt; and
the intercourse between them soon drifted into a queer kind of
courtship, and finally the courtship into marriage. Mary's next
letters give piquant glimpses of the wayward course of their
love-making. If her sympathies had been ready and unfailing in the
case of the unknown lovers, Messrs. White, Dowling, Turner, and
mysterious _Curse-a-rat_, this was an affair of deep and heartfelt
interest:--
"Oct. 1807.
"I am two letters in your debt, but it has not been so much from
idleness, as a wish to see how your comical love affair would turn
out. You know I make a pretence not to interfere, but like all old
maids I feel a mighty solicitude about the event of love stories. I
learn from the lover that he has not been so remiss in his duty as you
supposed. His effusion, and your complaints of his inconstancy,
crossed each other on the road. He tells me his was a very strange
letter, and that probably it has affronted you. That it was a strange
letter I can readily believe; but that you were affronted by a strange
letter is not so easy for me to conceive, that not being your way of
taking things. But, however it may be, let some answer come either to
him or else to me, showing cause why you do not answer him. And pray,
by all means, preserve the said letter, that I may one day have the
pleasure of seeing how Mr. Hazlitt treats of love.
"I was at your brother's on Thursday. Mrs. Stoddart tells me she has
not written, because she does not like to put you to the expense of
postage. They are very well. Little Missy thrives amazingly. Mrs.
Stoddart conjectures she is in the family-way again, and those kind of
conjectures generally prove too true. Your other sister-in-law, Mrs.
Hazlitt, was brought to bed last week of a boy, so that you are likely
to have plenty of nephews and nieces. Yesterday evening we were at
Rickman's, and who should we find there but Hazlitt; though if you do
not know it was his first invitation there, it will not surprise you
as much as it did us. We were very much pleased, because we dearly
love our friends to be respected by our friends. The most remarkable
events of the evening were, that we had a very fine pine apple, that
Mr. Phillips, Mr. Lamb, and Mr. Hazlitt played at cribbage in the most
polite and gentlemanly manner possible, and that I won two rubbers at
whist.
"I am glad Aunty left you some business to do. Our compliments to her
and to your mother. Is it as cold at Winterslow as it is here? How do
the Lions go on? I am better, and Charles is tolerably well. Godwin's
new tragedy [Antonio] will probably be damned the latter end of next
week [which it was]. Charles has written the prologue. Prologues and
epilogues will be his death. If you know the extent of Mrs. Reynolds'
poverty, you will be glad to hear Mr. Norris has got ten pounds a year
for her from the Temple Society. She will be able to make out pretty
well now.
"Farewell. Determine as wisely as you can in regard to Hazlitt, and if
your determination is to have him, Heaven send you many happy years
together. If I am not mistaken I have concluded letters on the Corydon
courtship with this same wish. I hope it is not ominous of change;
for, if I were sure you would not be quite starved to death nor beaten
to a mummy, I should like to see Hazlitt and you come together if (as
Charles observes) it were only for the joke's sake. Write instantly to
me."
"Dec. 21.
"I have deferred answering your last letter in hopes of being able to
give you some intelligence that might be useful to you; for I every
day expected that Hazlitt or you would communicate the affair to your
brother; but as the doctor is silent upon the subject, I conclude he
knows nothing of the matter. You desire my advice, and therefore I
tell you I think you ought to tell your brother as soon as possible;
for, at present, he is on very friendly visiting terms with Hazlitt
and, if he is not offended by too long concealment, will do everything
in his power to serve you. If you chuse that I should tell him I will;
but I think it would come better from you. If you can persuade Hazlitt
to mention it, that would be still better; for I know your brother
would be unwilling to give credit to you, because you deceived
yourself in regard to Corydon. Hazlitt, I know, is shy of speaking
first; but I think it of such great importance to you to have your
brother friendly in the business that, if you can overcome his
reluctance, it would be a great point gained. For you must begin the
world with ready money--at least an hundred pounds; for if you once go
into furnished lodgings, you will never be able to lay by money to buy
furniture. If you obtain your brother's approbation he might assist
you, either by lending or otherwise. I have a great opinion of his
generosity, where he thinks it would be useful.
"Hazlitt's brother is mightily pleased with the match, but he says you
must have furniture, and be clear in the world at first setting out,
or you will be always behind-hand. He also said he would give you what
furniture he could spare. I am afraid you can bring but few things
away from your own house. What a pity that you have laid out so much
money on your cottage, that money would just have done. I most
heartily congratulate you on having so well got over your first
difficulties; and now that it is quite settled, let us have no more
fears. I now mean not only to hope and wish but to persuade myself
that you will be very happy together. Endeavour to keep your mind as
easy as you can. You ought to begin the world with a good stock of
health and spirits; it is quite as necessary as ready money at first
setting out. Do not teize yourself about coming to town. When your
brother learns how things are going on, we shall consult him about
meetings and so forth; but at present, any hasty step of that kind
would not answer, I know. If Hazlitt were to go down to Salisbury, or
you were to come up here without consulting your brother, you know it
would never do. Charles is just come into dinner: he desires his love
and best wishes."
Perhaps the reader will, like Mary, be curious to see one of the
lover's letters in this "comical love affair." Fortunately one, the
very one, it seems, which Sarah's crossed and was preserved at Mary's
particular request, is given in the Hazlitt _Memoirs_ and runs thus:--
"MY DEAR LOVE,
"Above a week has passed and I have received no letter--not one of
those letters 'in which I live or have no life at all.' What is become
of you? Are you married, hearing that I was dead (for so it has been
reported)? or are you gone into a nunnery? or are you fallen in love
with some of the amorous heroes of Boccaccio? Which of them is it? Is
it Chynon, who was transformed from a clown into a lover, and learned
to spell by the force of beauty? or with Lorenzo the lover of
Isabella, whom her three brethren hated (as your brother does me), who
was a merchant's clerk? or with Federigo Alberigi, an honest gentleman
who ran through his fortune, and won his mistress by cooking a fair
falcon for her dinner, though it was the only means he had left of
getting a dinner for himself? This last is the man; and I am the more
persuaded of it because I think I won your good liking myself by
giving you an entertainment--of sausages, when I had no money to buy
them with. Nay now, never deny it! Did not I ask your consent that
very night after, and did you not give it? Well, I should be
confoundedly jealous of those fine gallants if I did not know that a
living dog is better than a dead lion; though now I think of it
Boccaccio does not in general make much of his lovers; it is his women
who are so delicious. I almost wish I had lived in those times and had
been a little _more amiable_. Now if a woman had written the book, it
would not have had this effect upon me: the men would have been heroes
and angels, and the women nothing at all. Isn't there some truth in
that? Talking of departed loves, I met my old flame the other day in
the street. I did dream of her _one_ night since, and only one: every
other night I have had the same dream I have had for these two months
past. Now if you are at all reasonable, this will satisfy you.
"_Thursday morning_.--The book is come. When I saw it I thought that
you had sent it back in a huff, tired out by my sauciness and
_coldness_ and delays, and were going to keep an account of dimities
and sayes, or to salt pork and chronicle small beer as the dutiful
wife of some fresh-looking rural swain; so that you cannot think how
surprised and pleased I was to find them all done. I liked your note
as well or better than the extracts; it is just such a note as such a
nice rogue as you ought to write after the _provocation_ you had
received. I would not give a pin for a girl 'whose cheeks never
tingle,' nor for myself if I could not make them tingle sometimes. Now
though I am always writing to you about 'lips and noses' and such sort
of stuff, yet as I sit by my fireside (which I generally do eight or
ten hours a day) I oftener think of you in a serious sober light. For
indeed I never love you so well as when I think of sitting down with
you to dinner on a boiled scrag of mutton and hot potatoes. You please
my fancy more then than when I think of you in ----; no, you would
never forgive me if I were to finish the sentence. Now I think of it,
what do you mean to be dressed in when we are married? But it does not
much matter! I wish you would let your hair grow; though perhaps
nothing will be better than 'the same air and look with which at first
my heart was took.' But now to business. I mean soon to call upon your
brother _in form_, namely, as soon as I get quite well, which I hope
to do in about another _fortnight_; and then I hope you will come up
by the coach as fast as the horses can carry you, for I long mightily
to be in your ladyship's presence to vindicate my character. I think
you had better sell the small house, I mean that at £4 10s., and I
will borrow £100, so that we shall set off merrily in spite of all the
prudence of Edinburgh.
"Good-bye, little dear!"
Poor Sarah! That "want of a certain dignity of action," nay, of a due
"respect for herself," which Mary lamented in her, had been discovered
but too quickly by her lover and reflected back, as it was sure to be,
in his attitude towards her.
Charles, also, as an interested and amused spectator of the unique
love-affair, reports progress to Manning in a letter of Feb. 26th,
1808:--
"Mary is very thankful for your remembrance of her; and with the least
suspicion of mercenariness, as the silk, the _symbolum materiale_ of
your friendship, has not yet appeared. I think Horace says somewhere
_nox longa_. I would not impute negligence or unhandsome delays to a
person whom you have honoured with your confidence; but I have not
heard of the silk or of Mr. Knox save by your letter. May be he
expects the first advances! or it may be that he has not succeeded in
getting the article on shore, for it is among the _res prohibitæ et
non nisi smuggle-ationis viâ fruendæ_. But so it is, in the
friendships between _wicked men_ the very expressions of their
good-will cannot but be sinful. A treaty of marriage is on foot
between William Hazlitt and Miss Stoddart. Something about settlements
only retards it. She has somewhere about £80 a year, to be £120 when
her mother dies. He has no settlement except what he can claim from
the parish. _Pauper est tamen, sed amat._ The thing is therefore in
abeyance. But there is love a-both sides."
In the same month Mary wrote Sarah a letter showing she was alive to
the fact that a courtship which appeared to on-lookers, if not to the
lover himself, much in the light of a good joke, was not altogether a
re-assuring commencement of so serious an affair as marriage. She had
her misgivings, and no wonder, as to how far the easy-going,
comfort-loving, matter-of-fact Sarah, was fit for the difficult
happiness of life-long companionship with a man of ardent genius and
morbid, splenetic temperament, to whom ideas were meat drink and
clothing, while the tangible entities bearing those names were likely
to be precariously supplied. Still Mary liked both the lovers so well
she could not choose but that hope should preponderate over fear.
Meeting as they did by the Lambs' fireside, each saw the other to the
best advantage. For, in the glow of Mary's sympathy and faith and the
fine stimulating atmosphere of Charles' genius, Hazlitt's shyness had
first melted away; his thoughts had broken the spell of self-distrust
that kept them pent in uneasy silence and had learned to flow forth in
a strong and brilliant current, whilst the lowering frown which so
often clouded his handsome, eager face was wont to clear off. There,
too, Sarah's unaffected good sense and hearty, friendly nature had
free play, and perhaps Mary's friendship even reflected on her a tinge
of the ideal to veil the coarser side of her character:--
"I have sent your letter and drawing" [of Middleton Cottage, Winterslow,
where Sarah was living], Mary writes, "off to Wem [Hazlitt's father's
in Shropshire], where I conjecture Hazlitt is. He left town on
Saturday afternoon without telling us where he was going. He seemed
very impatient at not hearing from you. He was very ill, and I suppose
is gone home to his father's to be nursed. I find Hazlitt has
mentioned to you the intention which we had of asking you up to town,
which we were bent on doing; but, having named it since to your
brother, the doctor expressed a strong desire that you should not come
to town to be at any other house but his own, for he said it would
have a very strange appearance. His wife's father is coming to be with
them till near the end of April, after which time he shall have full
room for you. And if you are to be married he wishes that you should
be married with all the proper decorums _from his house_. Now though
we should be most willing to run any hazards of disobliging him if
there were no other means of your and Hazlitt's meeting, yet as he
seems so friendly to the match it would not be worth while to alienate
him from you and ourselves too, for the slight accommodation which the
difference of a few weeks would make; provided always, and be it
understood, that if you and H. make up your minds to be married before
the time in which you can be at your brother's, our house stands open
and most ready at a moment's notice to receive you. Only we would not
quarrel unnecessarily with your brother. Let there be a clear
necessity shown and we will quarrel with anybody's brother.
"Now, though I have written to the above effect, I hope you will not
conceive but that both my brother and I had looked forward to your
coming with unmixed pleasure, and are really disappointed at your
brother's declaration; for, next to the pleasure of being married, is
the pleasure of making or helping marriages forward.
"We wish to hear from you that you do not take our seeming change of
purpose in ill part, for it is but seeming on our part, for it was my
brother's suggestion, by him first mentioned to Hazlitt, and cordially
approved by me; but your brother has set his face against it, and it
is better to take him along with us in our plans, if he will
good-naturedly go along with us, than not.
"The reason I have not written lately has been that I thought it
better to leave you all to the workings of your own minds in this
momentous affair, in which the inclinations of a bystander have a
right to form a wish, but not to give a vote.
"Being, with the help of wide lines, at the end of my last page, I
conclude with our kind wishes and prayers for the best."
The wedding day was fixed, and Mary was to be bridesmaid.
"Do not be angry that I have not written to you," she says. "I have
promised your brother to be at your wedding, and that favour you must
accept as an atonement for my offences. You have been in no want of
correspondence lately, and I wished to leave you both to your own
inventions.
"The border you are working for me I prize at a very high rate,
because I consider it as the last work you can do for me, the time so
fast approaching that you must no longer work for your friends. Yet my
old fault of giving away presents has not left me, and I am desirous
of even giving away this your last gift. I had intended to have given
it away without your knowledge, but I have intrusted my secret to
Hazlitt and I suppose it will not remain a secret long, so I
condescend to consult you.
"It is to Miss Hazlitt to whose superior claim I wish to give up my
right to this precious worked border. Her brother William is her great
favourite and she would be pleased to possess his bride's last work.
Are you not to give the fellow border to one sister-in-law, and
therefore has she not a just claim to it? I never heard, in the annals
of weddings (since the days of Nausicaa, and she only washed her old
gowns for that purpose) that the brides ever furnished the apparel of
their maids. Besides I can be completely clad in your work without it;
for the spotted muslin will serve both for cap and hat (_nota bene_,
my hat is the same as yours), and the gown you sprigged for me has
never been made up, therefore I can wear that--or, if you like better,
I will make up a new silk which Manning has sent me from China.
Manning would like to hear I wore it for the first time at your
wedding. It is a very pretty light colour, but there is an objection
(besides not being your work, and that is a very serious objection),
and that is, Mrs. Hazlitt tells me that all Winterslow would be in an
uproar if the bridesmaid was to be dressed in anything but white, and
although it is a very light colour, I confess we cannot call it white,
being a sort of dead-whiteish bloom colour. Then silk, perhaps, in a
morning is not so proper, though the occasion, so joyful, might
justify a full dress. Determine for me in this perplexity between the
sprig and the China-Manning silk. But do not contradict my whim about
Miss Hazlitt having the border, for I have set my heart upon the
matter. If you agree with me in this, I shall think you have forgiven
me for giving away your pin--that was a _mad_ trick; but I had many
obligations and no money. I repent me of the deed, wishing I had it
now to send to Miss H. with the border; and I cannot, will not give
her the Doctor's pin, for having never had any presents from gentlemen
in my young days, I highly prize all they now give me, thinking my
latter days are better than my former.
"You must send this same border in your own name to Miss Hazlitt,
which will save me the disgrace of giving away your gift, and make it
amount merely to a civil refusal.
"I shall have no present to give you on your marriage, nor do I expect
I shall be rich enough to give anything to baby at the first
christening; but at the second or third child's, I hope to have a
coral or so to spare out of my own earnings. Do not ask me to be
godmother, for I have an objection to that; but there is, I believe,
no serious duties attaching to a bridesmaid, therefore I come with a
willing mind, bringing nothing with me but many wishes, and not a few
hopes, and a very little fear of happy years to come."
If, as may be hoped, the final decision was in favour of the
'dead-whiteish-bloom-China-Manning' silk the Winterslow folk were
spared all painful emotions on the subject, as the wedding took place
at St. Andrew's, Holborn (May-Day morning, 1808), Dr. and Mrs.
Stoddart and Charles and Mary Lamb the chief, perhaps the only guests.
The comedy of the courtship merging into the solemnity of marriage was
the very occasion to put Lamb into one of his wildest moods; "I had
like to have been turned out several times during the ceremony," he
confessed to Southey afterwards. "Anything awful makes me laugh. I
misbehaved once at a funeral. Yet can I read about these ceremonies
with pious and proper feelings. The realities of life only seem the
mockeries."