The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb Volume V Part 37

[No date. ? April, 1801.]

Dear Manning,--I sent to Brown's immediately. Mr. Brown (or Pijou, as he is called by the moderns) denied the having received a letter from you.

The one for you he remembered receiving, and remitting to Leadenhall Street; whither I immediately posted (it being the middle of dinner), my teeth unpicked. There I learned that if you want a letter set right, you must apply at the first door on the left hand before one o'clock. I returned and picked my teeth. And this morning I made my application in form, and have seen the vagabond letter, which most likely accompanies this. If it does not, I will get Rickman to name it to the Speaker, who will not fail to lay the matter before Parliament the next sessions, when you may be sure to have all abuses in the Post Department rectified.

N.B. There seems to be some informality epidemical. You direct yours to me in Mitre Court; my true address is Mitre Court Buildings. By the pleasantries of Fortune, who likes a joke or a _double entendre_ as well as the best of her children, there happens to be another Mr. Lamb (that there should be two!!) in Mitre Court.

Farewell, and think upon it.

C. L.

[Here should come a letter from Lamb to Robert Lloyd, dated April 6, 1801, in praise of Jeremy Taylor, particularly the _Holy Dying_. Lamb recommends Lloyd to read the story of the Ephesian matron in the eighth section.

Here also should come a letter from Lamb to Robert Lloyd, dated June 26, 1801, containing a very interesting criticism of George Frederick Cooke's acting as Richard III. at Covent Garden. Lamb wrote for the _Morning Post_, January 8, 1802, a criticism of Cooke in this part, which will be found in Vol. I. of the present edition.]

LETTER 86

CHARLES LAMB TO WILLIAM G.o.dWIN

June 29, 1801.

Dear Sir,--Doctor Christy's Brother and Sister are come to town, and have shown me great civilities. I in return wish to requite them, having, _by G.o.d's grace_, principles of generosity _implanted_ (as the moralists say) in my nature, which have been duly cultivated and watered by good and religious friends, and a pious education. They have picked up in the northern parts of the island an astonis.h.i.+ng admiration of the great author of the New Philosophy in England, and I have ventured to promise their taste an evening's gratification by seeing Mr. G.o.dwin _face_ to _face!!!!!_ Will you do them and me _in_ them the pleasure of drinking tea and supping with me at the _old_ number 16 on Friday or Sat.u.r.day next? An early nomination of the day will very much oblige yours sincerely,

CH. LAMB.

[Dr. Christy's brother and sister I do not identify.]

LETTER 87

CHARLES LAMB TO WALTER WILSON

August 14th, 1801.

Dear Wilson.--I am extremely sorry that any serious difference should subsist between us on account of some foolish behaviour of mine at Richmond; you knew me well enough before--that a very little liquor will cause a considerable alteration in me.

I beg you to impute my conduct solely to that, and not to any deliberate intention of offending you, from whom I have received so many friendly attentions. I know that you think a very important difference in opinion with respect to some more serious subjects between us makes me a dangerous companion; but do not rashly infer, from some slight and light expressions which I may have made use of in a moment of levity in your presence, without sufficient regard to your feelings--do not conclude that I am an inveterate enemy to all religion. I have had a time of seriousness, and I have known the importance and reality of a religious belief.

Latterly, I acknowledge, much of my seriousness has gone off, whether from new company or some other new a.s.sociations; but I still retain at bottom a conviction of the truth, and a certainty of the usefulness of religion. I will not pretend to more gravity or feeling than I at present possess; my intention is not to persuade you that any great alteration is probable in me; sudden converts are superficial and transitory; I only want you to believe that I have _stamina_ of seriousness within me, and that I desire nothing more than a return of that friendly intercourse which used to subsist between us, but which my folly has suspended.

Believe me, very affectionately yours,

C. LAMB.

[Walter Wilson (1781-1847) was, perhaps, at this time, or certainly previously, in the India House with Lamb. Later he became a bookseller, and then, inheriting money, he entered at the Inner Temple. We meet him again later in the correspondence, in connection with his _Life of Defoe_, 1830.

One wonders if the following pa.s.sage in Hazlitt's essay "On Coffee-House Politicians" in _Table Talk_ has any reference to the Richmond incident:--

"Elia, the grave and witty, says things not to be surpa.s.sed in essence: but the manner is more painful and less a relief to my own thoughts.

Some one conceived he could not be an excellent companion, because he was seen walking down the side of the Thames, _pa.s.sibus iniquis_, after dining at Richmond. The objection was not valid."]

LETTER 88

CHARLES LAMB TO THOMAS MANNING

[August,] 1801.

Dear Manning,--I have forborne writing so long (and so have you, for the matter of that), until I am almost ashamed either to write or to forbear any longer. But as your silence may proceed from some worse cause than neglect--from illness, or some mishap which may have befallen you--I begin to be anxious. You may have been burnt out, or you may have married, or you may have broken a limb, or turned country parson; any of these would be excuse sufficient for not coming to my supper. I am not so unforgiving as the n.o.bleman in "Saint Mark." For me, nothing new has happened to me, unless that the poor "Albion" died last Sat.u.r.day of the world's neglect, and with it the fountain of my puns is choked up for ever.

All the Lloyds wonder that you do not write to them. They apply to me for the cause. Relieve me from this weight of ignorance, and enable me to give a truly oracular response.

I have been confined some days with swelled cheek and rheumatism--they divide and govern me with a viceroy-headache in the middle. I can neither write nor read without great pain. It must be something like obstinacy that I choose this time to write to you in after many months interruption.

I will close my letter of simple inquiry with an epigram on Mackintosh, the "Vindiciae Gallicae"-man--who has got a place at last--one of the last I _did_ for the "Albion";--

"Though thou'rt like Judas, an apostate black, In the resemblance one thing thou dost lack; When he had gotten his ill-purchas'd pelf, He went away, and wisely hanged himself: This thou may do at last, yet much I doubt, If thou hast any _Bowels_ to gush out!"

Yours, as ever,

C. LAMB.

[The Albion was at the time of its decease owned and edited by John Fenwick, a friend of Lamb's whom we shall meet again. Lamb told the story in the _Elia_ essay on "Newspapers" in the following pa.s.sage:--

"From the office of the _Morning Post_ (for we may as well exhaust our Newspaper Reminiscences at once) by change of property in the paper, we were transferred, mortifying exchanged to the office of the Albion Newspaper, late Rackstrow's Museum, in Fleet Street. What a transition-- from a handsome apartment, from rose-wood desks, and silver inkstands, to an office--no office, but a _den_ rather, but just redeemed from the occupation of dead monsters, of which it seemed redolent--from the centre of loyalty and fas.h.i.+on, to a focus of vulgarity and sedition!

Here in murky closet, inadequate from its square contents to the receipt of the two bodies of Editor, and humble paragraph-maker, together at one time, sat in the discharge of his new Editorial functions (the 'BiG.o.d'

of _Elia_) the redoubted John Fenwick.

"F., without a guinea in his pocket, and having left not many in the pockets of his friends whom he might command, had purchased (on tick doubtless) the whole and sole Editors.h.i.+p, Proprietors.h.i.+p, with all the rights and t.i.tles (such as they were worth) of the Albion, from one Lovell; of whom we know nothing, save that he had stood in the pillory for a libel on the Prince of Wales. With this hopeless concern--for it had been sinking ever since its commencement, and could now reckon upon not more than a hundred subscribers--F. resolutely determined upon pulling down the Government in the first instance, and making both our fortunes by way of corollary. For seven weeks and more did this infatuated Democrat go about borrowing seven s.h.i.+lling pieces, and lesser coin, to meet the daily demands of the Stamp Office, which allowed no credit to publications of that side in politics. An outcast from politer bread, we attached our small talents to the forlorn fortunes of our friend. Our occupation now was to write treason.

"Recollections of feelings--which were all that now remained from our first boyish heats kindled by the French Revolution, when if we were misled, we erred in the company of some, who are accounted very good men now--rather than any tendency at this time to Republican doctrines-- a.s.sisted us in a.s.suming a style of writing, while the paper lasted, consonant in no very under-tone to the right earnest fanaticism of F.

Our cue was now to insinuate, rather than recommend, possible abdications. Blocks, axes, Whitehall tribunals, were covered with flowers of so cunning a periphrasis--as Mr. Bayes says, never naming the _thing_ directly--that the keen eye of an Attorney-General was insufficient to detect the lurking snake among them. There were times, indeed, when we signed for our more gentleman-like occupation under Stuart. But with change of masters it is ever change of service. Already one paragraph, and another, as we learned afterwards from a gentleman at the Treasury, had begun to be marked at that office, with a view of its being submitted at least to the attention of the proper Law Officers-- when an unlucky, or rather lucky epigram from our pen, aimed at Sir J------s M------h, who was on the eve of departing for India to reap the fruits of his apostacy, as F. p.r.o.nounced it, (it is hardly worth particularising), happening to offend the nice sense of Lord, or, as he then delighted to be called, Citizen Stanhope, deprived F. at once of the last hopes of a guinea from the last patron that had stuck by us; and breaking up our establishment, left us to the safe, but somewhat mortifying, neglect of the Crown Lawyers."

There are, however, in Lamb's account, written thirty years afterwards, some errors. He pa.s.sed rather from the _Albion_ to the _Post_ than from the _Post_ to the _Albion_ (see the notes in Vol. II.). Sir James Mackintosh was not in 1801 on the eve of departing for India: he did not get the post of Recorders.h.i.+p of Bombay until two years later. The epigram probably referred to an earlier rumour of a post for him. His apostasy consisted in recanting in 1800 from the opinions set forth in his _Vindiciae Gallicae_, 1791, a book supporting the French Revolutionists, and in becoming a close friend of his old enemy Burke. I have not succeeded in finding a file of the Albion, nor, I believe, has any one else.

"The n.o.bleman in 'St. Mark.'" Lamb was thinking of Luke xiv. 16-24.]