The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb Volume V Part 48

LETTER 111

CHARLES LAMB TO JOHN RICKMAN

Sat.u.r.day Morning, July 16th, 1803.

Dear Rickman,--I enclose you a wonder, a letter from the shades. A dead body wants to return, and be inrolled _inter vivos_. 'Tis a gentle ghost, and in this Galvanic age it may have a chance.

Mary and I are setting out for the Isle of Wight. We make but a short stay, and shall pa.s.s the time betwixt that place and Portsmouth, where Fenwick is. I sadly wanted to explore the Peak this Summer; but Mary is against steering without card or compa.s.s, and we should be at large in Darbys.h.i.+re.

We shall be at home this night and to-morrow, if you can come and take a farewell pipe.

I regularly transmitted your Notices to the "Morning Post," but they have not been duly honoured. The fault lay not in me.--

Yours truly,

C. LAMB.

[I cannot explain the reference to the dead body. Mr. Bertram Dobell considers it to apply to an article which he believes Lamb to have written, called "An Appeal from the Shades," printed in the _London Magazine_, New Series, Vol. V. (see _Sidelights on Charles Lamb_, 1903, pages 140-152). I cannot, however, think that Lamb could write in 1803 in the deliberate manner of that essay; that the "Appeal" is by him; or that the reference in the letter is to an essay at all. I have no real theory to put forward; but it once occurred to me that the letter from the shades was from George Burnett, who had quarrelled with Rickman, may reasonably be believed to have threatened suicide, and had now possibly appealed to his mercy through Lamb. Later, Burnett entered the militia as a surgeon, and at the beginning of 1804 he left for Poland.

Following this should come a letter from Lamb to Rickman, dated July 27, 1803. It is part of one from Captain Burney describing the adventures of the Burneys and Lambs at Cowes. Lamb, says the Captain, on their way to Newport "very ingeniously and unconsciously cast loose the fastenings of the mast, so that mast, sprit, sails, and all the rest tumbled overboard with a crash." Lamb on his part is amusing about the Captain and Martin Burney, and says he longs for Holborn scenery again.]

LETTER 112

MARY LAMB TO SARAH STODDART

[Dated at end: September 21, 1803.]

My dear Sarah, I returned home from my visit yesterday, and was much pleased to find your letter; for I have been very anxious to hear how you are going on. I could hardly help expecting to see you when I came in; yet, though I should have rejoiced to have seen your merry face again, I believe it was better as it was--upon the whole; and, all things considered, it is certainly better you should go to Malta. The terms you are upon with your Lover does (as you say it will) appear wondrous strange to me; however, as I cannot enter into your feelings, I certainly can have nothing to say to it, only that I sincerely wish you happy in your own way, however odd that way may appear to me to be. I would begin now to advise you to drop all correspondence with William; but, as I said before, as I cannot enter into your feelings and views of things, _your ways not being my ways_, why should I tell you what I would do in your situation? So, child, take thy own ways, and G.o.d prosper thee in them!

One thing my advising spirit must say--use as little _Secrecy_ as possible; and, as much as possible, make a friend of your sister-in-law--you know I was not struck with her at first sight; but, upon your account, I have watched and marked her very attentively; and, while she was eating a bit of cold mutton in our kitchen, we had a serious conversation. From the frankness of her manner, I am convinced she is a person I could make a friend of; why should not you? We talked freely about you: she seems to have a just notion of your character, and will be fond of you, if you will let her.

My father had a sister lived with us--of course, lived with my Mother, her sister-in-law; they were, in their different ways, the best creatures in the world--but they set out wrong at first. They made each other miserable for full twenty years of their lives--my Mother was a perfect gentlewoman, my Aunty as unlike a gentlewoman as you can possibly imagine a good old woman to be; so that my dear Mother (who, though you do not know it, is always in my poor head and heart) used to distress and weary her with incessant and unceasing attention and politeness, to gain her affection. The old woman could not return this in kind, and did not know what to make of it--thought it all deceit, and used to hate my Mother with a bitter hatred; which, of course, was soon returned with interest. A little frankness, and looking into each other's characters at first, would have spared all this, and they would have lived, as they died, fond of each other for the last few years of their life. When we grew up, and harmonised them a little, they sincerely loved each other.

My Aunt and my Mother were wholly unlike you and your sister, yet in some degree theirs is the secret history I believe of all sisters-in-law--and you will smile when I tell you I think myself the only woman in the world who could live with a brother's wife, and make a real friend of her, partly from early observation of the unhappy example I have just given you, and partly from a knack I know I have of looking into people's real characters, and never expecting them to act out of it--never expecting another to do as I would in the same case. When you leave your Mother, and say, if you never shall see her again, you shall feel no remorse, and when you make a _jewish_ bargain with your _Lover_, all this gives me no offence, because it is your nature, and your temper, and I do not expect or want you to be otherwise than you are. I love you for the good that is in you, and look for no change. _But_, certainly, you ought to struggle with the evil that does most easily beset you--a total want of politeness in behaviour, I would say modesty of behaviour, but that I should not convey to you my idea of the word modesty; for I certainly do not mean that you want _real modesty_; and what is usually called false, or mock, modesty is [a quality] I certainly do not wish you to possess; yet I trust you know what I mean well enough.

_Secrecy_, though you appear all frankness, is certainly a grand failing of yours; it is likewise your _brother's_, and, therefore, a family failing--by secrecy, I mean you both want the habit of telling each other at the moment every thing that happens--where you go,--and what you do,--the free communication of letters and opinions just as they arrive, as Charles and I do,--and which is, after all, the only groundwork of friends.h.i.+p. Your brother, I will answer for [it,] will never tell his wife or his sister all that [is in] his mind--he will receive letters, and not [mention it]. This is a fault Mrs. Stoddart can never [tell him of;] but she can, and will, feel it: though, [on] the whole, and in every other respect, she is [very] happy with him. Begin, for G.o.d's sake, at the first, and tell her every thing that pa.s.ses. At first she may hear you with indifference; but in time this will gain her affection and confidence; show her all your letters (no matter if she does not show hers)--it is a pleasant thing for a friend to put into one's hand a letter just fresh from the post. I would even say, begin with showing her this, but that it is written freely and loosely, and some apology ought to be made for it--which I know not how to make, for I must write freely or not at all.

If you do this, she will tell your brother, you will say; and what then, quotha? It will beget a freer communication amongst you, which is a thing devoutly to be wished--

G.o.d bless you, and grant you may preserve your integrity, and remain unmarried and penniless, and make William a good and a happy wife.

Your affectionate friend,

M. LAMB.

Charles is very unwell, and my head aches. He sends his love: mine, with my best wishes, to your brother and sister.

I hope I shall get another letter from you.

Wednesday, 21st September, 1803.

[Sarah Stoddart was the sister of Dr. John Stoddart, who had just been appointed the King's and the Admiralty's Advocate at Malta, whither Miss Stoddart followed him. Her lover of that moment was a Mr. Turner, and William was an earlier lover still. Her sister-in-law was Mrs. John Stoddart, _nee_ Isabella Moncrieff, whom her brother had only just married.

"My Mother." This is the only reference to her mother in any of Mary Lamb's letters. The sister was Sarah Lamb, usually known as Aunt Hetty.]

LETTER 113

CHARLES LAMB TO WILLIAM G.o.dWIN

Nov. 8, 1803.

My dear Sir,--I have been sitting down for three or four days successively to the review, which I so much wished to do well, and to your satisfaction. But I can produce nothing but absolute flatness and nonsense. My health and spirits are so bad, and my nerves so irritable, that I am sure, if I persist, I shall teaze myself into a fever. You do not know how sore and weak a brain I have, or you would allow for many things in me which you set down for whims. I solemnly a.s.sure you that I never more wished to prove to you the value which I have for you than at this moment; but although in so seemingly trifling a service I cannot get through with it, I pray you to impute it to this one sole cause, ill health. I hope I am above subterfuge, and that you will do me this justice to think so.

You will give me great satisfaction by sealing my pardon and oblivion in a line or two, before I come to see you, or I shall be ashamed to come.--Your, with great truth,

C. LAMB.

LETTER 114

CHARLES LAMB TO WILLIAM G.o.dWIN

Nov. 10, 1803.

Dear G.o.dwin,--You never made a more unlucky and perverse mistake than to suppose that the reason of my not writing that cursed thing was to be found in your book. I a.s.sure you most sincerely that I have been greatly delighted with Chaucer. I may be wrong, but I think there is one considerable error runs through it, which is a conjecturing spirit, a fondness for filling out the picture by supposing what Chaucer did and how he felt, where the materials are scanty. So far from meaning to withhold from you (out of mistaken tenderness) this opinion of mine, I plainly told Mrs. G.o.dwin that I did find a _fault_, which I should reserve naming until I should see you and talk it over. This she may very well remember, and also that I declined naming this fault until she drew it from me by asking me if there was not too much fancy in the work. I then confessed generally what I felt, but refused to go into particulars until I had seen you. I am never very fond of saying things before third persons, because in the relation (such is human nature) something is sure to be dropped. If Mrs. G.o.dwin has been the cause of your misconstruction, I am very angry, tell her; yet it is not an anger unto death. I remember also telling Mrs. G. (which she may have _dropt_) that I was by turns considerably more delighted than I expected. But I wished to reserve all this until I saw you. I even had conceived an expression to meet you with, which was thanking you for some of the most exquisite pieces of criticism I had ever read in my life. In particular, I should have brought forward that on "Troilus and Cressida" and Shakespear which, it is little to say, delighted me, and instructed me (if not absolutely _instructed_ me, yet put into _full-grown sense_ many conceptions which had arisen in me before in my most discriminating moods). All these things I was preparing to say, and bottling them up till I came, thinking to please my friend and host, the author! when lo!

this deadly blight intervened.

I certainly ought to make great allowances for your misunderstanding me.

You, by long habits of composition and a greater command gained 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 school-boy 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. The same, till by habit I have acquired a mechanical command, I have felt in making paragraphs. 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 at a whole. This infirmity (which is nothing to brag of) may be seen in my two little compositions, the tale and my play, in both which no reader, however partial, can find any story. I wrote such stuff about Chaucer, and got into such digressions, quite irreducible into 1-1/5 column of a paper, that I was perfectly ashamed to show it you. However, it is become a serious matter that I should convince you I neither slunk from the task through a wilful deserting neglect, or through any (most imaginary on your part) distaste of Chaucer; and I will try my hand again, I hope with better luck. My health is bad and my time taken up, but all I can spare between this and Sunday shall be employed for you, since you desire it: and 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.

C. LAMB.

[Lamb's review of G.o.dwin's _Life of Chaucer_, issued in October, 1803, has not been identified. Perhaps it was never completed. Writing to Wordsworth, December 28, 1814, he says that his review of _The Excursion_ is the first he ever did.