The Hazlitts again.--Letters to Mrs. Hazlitt, and Two Visits to
Winterslow.--Birth of Hazlitt's Son.
1808-13.--Æt. 44-49.
Hazlitt and his Bride had, for the present, settled down in Sarah's
cottage at Winterslow; so Mary continued to send them every now and
then a pretty budget of gossip:--
"Dec. 10, 1808.
"I hear of you from your brother, but you do not write yourself, nor
does Hazlitt. I beg that one or both of you will amend this fault as
speedily as possible, for I am very anxious to hear of your health....
You cannot think how very much we miss you and H. of a Wednesday
evening. All the glory of the night, I may say, is at an end. Phillips
makes his jokes, and there is none to applaud him; Rickman argues, and
there is no one to oppose him. The worst miss of all to me is that,
when we are in the dismals, there is now no hope of relief from any
quarter whatsoever. Hazlitt was most brilliant, most ornamental as a
Wednesday-man; but he was a more useful one on common days, when he
dropt in after a quarrel or a fit of the glooms. The Sheffington is
quite out now, my brother having got drunk with claret and Tom
Sheridan. This visit and the occasion of it is a profound secret, and
therefore I tell it to nobody but you and Mrs. Reynolds. Through the
medium of Wroughton, there came an invitation and proposal from T. S.
that C. L. should write some scenes in a speaking Pantomime, the other
parts of which Tom now, and his father formerly, have manufactured
between them. So, in the Christmas holidays, my brother and his two
great associates, we expect, will be all three damned together, that
is, I mean, if Charles' share, which is done and sent in, is accepted.
"I left this unfinished yesterday in the hope that my brother would
have done it for me; his reason for refusing me was 'no exquisite
reason'; for it was because he must write a letter to Manning in three
or four weeks, and therefore he could not be always writing letters,
he said. I wanted him to tell your husband about a great work which
Godwin is going to publish, [an _Essay on Sepulchres_] to enlighten
the world once more, and I shall not be able to make out what it is.
He (Godwin) took his usual walk one evening, a fortnight since, to the
end of Hatton Garden and back again. During that walk a thought came
into his mind which he instantly set down and improved upon till he
brought it, in seven or eight days, into the compass of a reasonable
sized pamphlet. To propose a subscription to all well-disposed people
to raise a certain sum of money, to be expended in the care of a cheap
monument for the former and the future great dead men--the monument to
be a white cross with a wooden slab at the end, telling their names
and qualifications. This wooden slab and white cross to be perpetuated
to the end of time. To survive the fall of empires and the destruction
of cities by means of a map which was, in case of an insurrection
among the people, or any other cause by which a city or country may be
destroyed, to be carefully preserved, and then when things got again
into their usual order, the white-cross-wooden-slab-makers were to go
to work again and set them in their former places. This, as nearly as
I can tell you, is the sum and substance of it; but it is written
remarkably well, in his very best manner, for the proposal (which
seems to me very like throwing salt on a sparrow's tail to catch him)
occupies but half a page, which is followed by very fine writing on
the benefits he conjectures would follow if it were done. Very
excellent thoughts on death and on our feelings concerning dead
friends and the advantages an old country has over a new one, even in
the slender memorials we have of great men who once flourished.
"Charles is come home and wants his dinner, and so the dead men must
be no more thought on. Tell us how you go on and how you like
Winterslow and winter evenings. Noales (Knowles) has not got back
again, but he is in better spirits. John Hazlitt was here on
Wednesday, very sober. Our love to Hazlitt.
"There came this morning a printed prospectus from S. T. Coleridge,
Grasmere, of a weekly paper to be called _The Friend_--a flaming
Prospectus--I have no time to give the heads of it--to commence first
Saturday in January. There came also a notice of a Turkey from Mr.
Clarkson, which I am more sanguine in expecting the accomplishment of
than I am of Coleridge's prophecy."
A few weeks after the date of this letter Sarah had a little son. He
lived but six months; just long enough for his father's restless,
dissatisfied heart to taste for once the sweetness of a tie unalloyed
with any bitterness, and the memory of it never faded out. There is a
pathetic allusion in one of his latest essays to a visit to the
neglected spot where the baby was laid, and where still "as the
nettles wave in a corner of the churchyard over his little grave, the
welcome breeze helps to refresh me and ease the tightness at my
breast."
In March of this year, too, died one of the most conspicuous members of
Lamb's circle, Thomas Holcroft; dear to Godwin, but not, perhaps, a
great favourite with the Lambs. He was too dogmatic and disputatious,--a
man who would pull you up at every turn for a definition, which, as
Coleridge said, was like setting up perpetual turnpikes along the road
to truth. Hazlitt undertook to write his life.
The visit to Winterslow which had been so often talked of before
Sarah's marriage was again under discussion and, on June 2nd, Mary,
full of thoughtful consideration for her hosts that were to be, writes
jointly with Martin Burney:--
"'You may write to Hazlitt that I will _certainly_ go to Winterslow,
as my father has agreed to give me £5 to bear my expences, and has
given leave that I may stop till that is spent, leaving enough to
defray my carriage on 14th July.'
"So far Martin has written, and further than that I can give you no
intelligence, for I do not yet know Phillips' intentions; nor can I
tell you the exact time when we can come; nor can I positively say we
shall come at all; for we have scruples of conscience about there
being so many of us. Martin says if you can borrow a blanket or two he
can sleep on the floor without either bed or mattress, which would
save his expenses at the Hut; for if Phillips breakfasts there he must
do so too, which would swallow up all his money. And he and I have
calculated that if he has no inn expenses he may as well spare that
money to give you for a part of his roast beef. We can spare you also
just five pounds. You are not to say this to Hazlitt, lest his
delicacy should be alarmed; but I tell you what Martin and I have
planned that if you happed to be empty-pursed at this time, you may
think it as well to make him up a bed in the best kitchen. I think it
very probable that Phillips will come, and if you do not like such a
crowd of us, for they both talk of staying a whole month, tell me so,
and we will put off our visit till next summer.
"Thank you very much for the good work you have done for me. Mrs.
Stoddart also thanks you for the gloves. How often must I tell you
never to do any needle-work for anybody but me?...
"I cannot write any more, for we have got a noble life of Lord Nelson,
lent us for a short time by my poor relation the bookbinder, and I
want to read as much of it as I can."
The death of the baby and one of Mary's severe attacks of illness
combined to postpone the visit till autumn; but, when it did come to
pass, it completely restored her, and left lasting remembrance of its
pleasures both with hosts and guests. Charles tells Coleridge (Oct.
30): "The journey has been of infinite service to Mary. We have had
nothing but sunshiny days, and daily walks from eight to twenty miles
a day. Have seen Wilton, Salisbury, Stonehenge, &c. Her illness lasted
just six weeks; it left her weak, but the country has made us whole."
And Mary herself wrote to Sarah (Nov. 7): "The dear, quiet, lazy,
delicious month we spent with you is remembered by me with such regret
that I feel quite discontented and Winterslow-sick. I assure you I
never passed such a pleasant time in the country in my life, both in
the house and out of it, the card-playing quarrels, and a few gaspings
for breath after your swift footsteps up the high hills excepted, and
those drawbacks are not unpleasant in the recollection. We have got
some salt butter to make our toast seem like yours, and we have tried
to eat meat suppers, but that would not do, for we left our appetites
behind us; and the dry loaf which offended you now comes in at night
unaccompanied; but sorry I am to add, it is soon followed by the pipe
and the gin-bottle. We smoked the very first night of our arrival.
"Great news! I have just been interrupted by Mr. Dawe, who comes to
tell me he was yesterday elected an Academician. He said none of his
own friends voted for him; he got it by strangers who were pleased
with his picture of Mrs. White. Charles says he does not believe
Northcote ever voted for the admission of any one. Though a very cold
day, Dawe was in a prodigious sweat for joy at his good fortune.
"More great news! My beautiful green curtains were put up yesterday,
and all the doors listed with green baize, and four new boards put to
the coal-hole, and fastening hasps put to the window, and my died
Manning silk cut out.
"Yesterday was an eventful day, for yesterday, too, Martin Burney was
to be examined by Lord Eldon, previous to his being admitted as an
attorney; but he has not been here yet to announce his success.
"I carried the baby-caps to Mrs. John Hazlitt. She was much pleased
and vastly thankful. Mr. H. got fifty-four guineas at Rochester, and
has now several pictures in hand.
"I am going to tell you a secret, for ---- says she would be sorry to
have it talked of. One night ---- came home from the ale-house,
bringing with him a great rough, ill-looking fellow, whom he
introduced to ---- as Mr. Brown, a gentleman he had hired as a
mad-keeper to take care of him at forty pounds a year, being ten
pounds under the usual price for keepers, which sum Mr. Brown had
agreed to remit out of pure friendship. It was with great difficulty
and by threatening to call in the aid of a watchman and constables
that ---- could prevail on Mr. Brown to leave the house.
"We had a good chearful meeting on Wednesday; much talk of Winterslow,
its woods and its nice sunflowers. I did not so much like Phillips at
Winterslow as I now like him for having been with us at Winterslow. We
roasted the last of his 'beach of oily nut prolific' on Friday at the
Captain's. Nurse is now established in Paradise, _alias_ the incurable
ward of Westminster Hospital. I have seen her sitting in most superb
state, surrounded by her seven incurable companions. They call each
other ladies. Nurse looks as if she would be considered as the first
lady in the ward; only one seemed like to rival her in dignity.
"A man in the India House has resigned, by which Charles will get
twenty pounds a year, and White has prevailed upon him to write some
more lottery puffs. If that ends in smoke, the twenty pounds is a sure
card, and has made us very joyful. I continue very well and return you
my sincere thanks for my good health and improved looks, which have
almost made Mrs. Godwin die with envy; she longs to come to Winterslow
as much as the spiteful elder sister did to go to the well for a gift
to spit diamonds.
"Jane and I have agreed to boil a round of beef for your suppers when
you come to town again. She, Jane, broke two of the Hogarth glasses
while we were away; whereat I made a great noise.
"Farewell. Love to William, and Charles' love and good wishes for the
speedy arrival of the Life of Holcroft and the bearer thereof. Charles
told Mrs. Godwin Hazlitt had found a well in his garden which, water
being scarce in your country, would bring him in two hundred a year;
and she came in great haste the next morning to ask me if it were
true."
Hazlitt, too, remembered to the end of his life those golden autumn
days; "Lamb among the villagers like the most capricious poet Ovid
among the Goths;" the evening walks with him and Mary to look at 'the
Claude Lorraine skies melting from azure into purple and gold, and to
gather mushrooms that sprung up at our feet to throw into our hashed
mutton at supper.'
When Lamb called to congratulate Mr. Dawe on his good fortune his
housekeeper seemed embarrassed, owned that her master was alone, but
ushered in the visitor with reluctance. For why? "At his easel stood
D. with an immense spread of canvas before him, and by his side--a
live goose. Under the rose he informed me that he had undertaken to
paint a transparency for Vauxhall, against an expected visit of the
Allied Sovereigns. I smiled at an engagement so derogatory to his
new-born honours; but a contempt of small gains was never one of D.'s
foibles. My eyes beheld crude forms of warriors, kings rising under
his brush upon this interminable stretch of cloth. The Volga, the Don,
the Dnieper were there, or their representative river gods, and Father
Thames clubbed urns with the Vistula. Glory with her dazzling eagle
was not absent, nor Fame nor Victory. The shade of Rubens might have
evoked the mighty allegories. But what was the goose? He was evidently
sitting for a something. D. at last informed me that he could not
introduce the Royal Thames without his _swans_. That he had inquired
the price of a live swan, and it being more than he was prepared to
give for it, he had bargained with the poulterer for the _next thing
to it_, adding significantly that it would do to roast after it had
served its turn to paint swans by." (Lamb's _Recollections of a Royal
Academician_.)
The following year the visit to Winterslow was repeated, but not with
the same happy results. In a letter written during his stay to Mr.
Basil Montague Charles says: "My head has received such a shock by an
all-night journey on the top of the coach that I shall have enough to
do to nurse it into its natural pace before I go home. I must devote
myself to imbecility; I must be gloriously useless while I stay here.
The city of Salisbury is full of weeping and wailing. The bank has
stopped payment, and everybody in the town kept money at it or has got
some of its notes. Some have lost all they had in the world. It is the
next thing to seeing a city with the plague within its walls; and I do
suppose it to be the unhappiest county in England this, where I am
making holiday. We purpose setting out for Oxford Tuesday fortnight,
and coming thereby home. But no more night-travelling; my head is sore
(understand it of the inside) with that deduction from my natural rest
which I suffered coming down. Neither Mary nor I can spare a morsel of
our rest, it is incumbent on us to be misers of it."
The visit to Oxford was paid, Hazlitt accompanying them and much
enhancing the enjoyment of it, especially of a visit to the picture
gallery at Blenheim. "But our pleasant excursion has ended sadly for
one of us," he tells Hazlitt on his return. "My sister got home very
well (I was very ill on the journey) and continued so till Monday
night, when her complaint came on, and she is now absent from home. I
think I shall be mad if I take any more journeys with two experiences
against it. I have lost all wish for sights."
It was a long attack; at the end of October Mary was still "very weak
and low-spirited," and there were domestic misadventures not
calculated to improve matters.
"We are in a pickle," says Charles to Wordsworth. "Mary, from her
affectation of physiognomy, has hired a stupid, big, country wench,
who looked honest as she thought, and has been doing her work some
days, but without eating; and now it comes out that she was ill when
she came, with lifting her mother about (who is now with God) when she
was dying, and with riding up from Norfolk four days and nights in the
waggon, and now she lies in her bed a dead weight upon our humanity,
incapable of getting up, refusing to go to an hospital, having nobody
in town but a poor asthmatic uncle, and she seems to have made up her
mind to take her flight to heaven from our bed. Oh for the little
wheelbarrow which trundled the hunchback from door to door to try the
various charities of different professions of mankind! Here's her
uncle just crawled up, he is far liker death than she. In this
perplexity such topics as Spanish papers and Monkhouses sink into
insignificance. What shall we do?"
The perplexity seems to have cleared itself up somehow speedily, for
in a week's time Mary herself wrote to Mrs. Hazlitt, not very
cheerfully, but with no allusion to this particular disaster:--
"Nov. 30, 1810.
"I have taken a large sheet of paper, as if I were going to write a
long letter; but that is by no means my intention, for I have only
time to write three lines to notify what I ought to have done the
moment I received your welcome letter; namely, that I shall be very
much joyed to see you. Every morning lately I have been expecting to
see you drop in, even before your letter came; and I have been setting
my wits to work to think how to make you as comfortable as the nature
of our inhospitable habits will admit. I must work while you are here,
and I have been slaving very hard to get through with something before
you come, that I may be quite in the way of it, and not teize you with
complaints all day that I do not know what to do.
"I am very sorry to hear of your mischance. Mrs. Rickman has just
buried her youngest child. I am glad I am an old maid, for you see
there is nothing but misfortunes in the marriage state. Charles was
drunk last night, and drunk the night before; which night before was
at Godwin's, where we went, at a short summons from Mr. G., to play a
solitary rubber, which was interrupted by the entrance of Mr. and
little Mrs. Liston; and after them came Henry Robinson, who is now
domesticated at Mr. Godwin's fireside, and likely to become a
formidable rival to Tommy Turner. We finished there at twelve o'clock,
Charles and Liston brim full of gin and water and snuff, after which
Henry Robinson spent a long evening by our fireside at home, and there
was much gin and water drunk, albeit only one of the party partook of
it, and H. R. professed himself highly indebted to Charles for the
useful information he gave him on sundry matters of taste and
imagination, even after Charles could not speak plain for tipsiness.
But still he swallowed the flattery and the spirits as savourily as
Robinson did his cold water.
"Last night was to be a night, but it was not. There was a certain son
of one of Martin's employers, one young Mr. Blake, to do whom honour
Mrs. Burney brought forth, first rum, then a single bottle of
champaine, long kept in her secret hoard; then two bottles of her best
currant wine, which she keeps for Mrs. Rickman, came out; and Charles
partook liberally of all these beverages, while Mr. Young Blake and
Mr. Ireton talked of high matters, such as the merits of the Whip
Club, and the merits of red and white champaine. Do I spell that last
word right? Rickman was not there, so Ireton had it all his own way.
"The alternating Wednesdays will chop off one day in the week from
your jolly days, and I do not know how we shall make it up to you, but
I will contrive the best I can. Phillips comes again pretty regularly,
to the great joy of Mrs Reynolds. Once more she hears the well-loved
sounds of 'How do you do, Mrs. Reynolds? and how does Miss Chambers
do?'
"I have spun out my three lines amazingly; now for family news. Your
brother's little twins are not dead, but Mrs. John Hazlitt and her
baby may be for anything I know to the contrary, for I have not been
there for a prodigious long time. Mrs. Holcroft still goes about from
Nicholson to Tuthill, and Tuthill to Godwin, and from Godwin to
Nicholson, to consult on the publication or no publication of the life
of the good man, her husband. It is called _The Life Everlasting_. How
does that same Life go on in your parts? Goodbye, God bless you. I
shall be glad to see you when you come this way.
"I am going in great haste to see Mrs. Clarkson, for I must get back
to dinner, which I have hardly time to do. I wish that dear, good,
amiable woman would go out of town. I thought she was clean gone, and
yesterday there was a consultation of physicians held at her house to
see if they could keep her among them here a few weeks longer."
The concluding volumes of this same _Life Everlasting_ remained
unprinted somewhere in a damp hamper, Mr. Carew Hazlitt tells us: for,
in truth, the admirable fragment of autobiography Holcroft dictated on
his death-bed contained the cream of the matter, and was all the
public cared to listen to.
Mary continuing "in a feeble and tottering condition," Charles found
it needful to make a decisive stand on her behalf against the
exhaustion and excitement of incessant company, and especially against
the disturbed rest, which resulted from sharing her room with a guest.
"Nov. 28, 1810.
"Mary has been very ill indeed since you saw her," he wrote to
Hazlitt, "as ill as she can be to remain at home. But she is a good
deal better now, owing to a very careful regimen. She drinks nothing
but water, and never goes out; she does not even go to the Captain's.
Her indisposition has been ever since that night you left town, the
night Miss Wordsworth came. Her coming, and that d----d Mrs. Godwin
coming and staying so late that night so overset her that she lay
broad awake all that night, and it was by a miracle that she escaped a
very bad illness, which I thoroughly expected. I have made up my mind
that she shall never have any one in the house again with her, and
that no one shall sleep with her, not even for a night; for it is a
very serious thing to be always living with a kind of fever upon her,
and therefore I am sure you will take it in good part if I say that if
Mrs. Hazlitt comes to town at any time, however glad we shall be to
see her in the day-time, I cannot ask her to spend a night under our
roof. Some decision we must come to; for the harassing fever that we
have both been in, owing to Miss Wordsworth's coming, is not to be
borne, and I would rather be dead than so alive. However, owing to a
regimen and medicines which Tuthill has given her, who very kindly
volunteered the care of her, she is a great deal quieter, though too
much harassed by company, who cannot or will not see how late hours
and Society teaze her."
The next letter to Sarah is a cheerful one, as the occasion demanded.
It is also the last to her that has been preserved, probably the last
that was written; for, a few months later, Hazlitt fairly launched
himself on a literary career in London, and took up his abode next
door to Jeremy Bentham, at 19 York Street, Westminster,--once Milton's
house.
"Oct. 2, 1811.
"I have been a long time anxiously expecting the happy news that I
have just received. I address you because, as the letter has been
lying some days at the India House, I hope you are able to sit up and
read my congratulations on the little live boy you have been so many
years wishing for. As we old women say, 'May he live to be a great
comfort to you!' I never knew an event of the kind that gave me so
much pleasure as the little long-looked-for-come-at-last's arrival;
and I rejoice to hear his honour has begun to suck. The word was not
distinctly written, and I was a long time making out the solemn fact.
I hope to hear from you soon, for I am anxious to know if your nursing
labours are attended with any difficulties. I wish you a happy
_getting-up_ and a merry christening!
"Charles sends his love; perhaps, though, he will write a scrap to
Hazlitt at the end. He is now looking over me. He is always in my way,
for he has had a month's holiday at home. But I am happy to say they
end on Monday, when mine begin, for I am going to pass a week at
Richmond with Mrs. Burney. She has been dying, but she went to the
Isle of Wight and recovered once more, and she is finishing her
recovery at Richmond. When there, I mean to read novels and play at
Piquet all day long."
"My blessing and heaven's be upon him," added Charles, "and make him
like his father, with something a better temper and a smoother head of
hair, and then all the men and women must love him."...