The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb Volume V Part 58

Write, I beg, by the return of the post; and as I am very anxious to hear whether you are, as I fear, dissatisfied with me, you shall, if you please, direct my letter to Nurse. Her direction is, Mrs. Grant, at Mr.

Smith's, _Maidenhead_, Ram Court, Fleet Street.

I was not able, you know, to notice, when I writ to Malta, your letter concerning an insult you received from a vile wretch there; and as I mostly show my letters to Charles, I have never named it since. Did it ever come to your brother's knowledge? Charles and I were very uneasy at your account of it. I wish I could see you.

Yours ever, M. LAMB.

I do not mean to continue a secret correspondence, but you must oblige me with this one letter. In future I will always show my letters before they go, which will be a proper check upon my wayward pen.

LETTER 142

CHARLES LAMB TO THOMAS MANNING

[P.M. Nov. 15, 1805.]

Dear Manning,--Certainly you could not have called at all hours from two till ten, for we have been only out of an evening Monday and Tuesday in this week. But if you think you have, your thought shall go for the deed. We did pray for you on Wednesday night. Oysters unusually luscious--pearls of extraordinary magnitude found in them. I have made bracelets of them--given them in cl.u.s.ters to ladies. Last night we went out in despite, because you were not come at your hour.

This night we shall be at home, so shall we certainly both Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday. Take your choice, mind I don't say of one, but choose which evening you will not, and come the other four.

Doors open at five o'clock. Sh.e.l.ls forced about nine. Every gentleman smokes or not as he pleases. O! I forgot, bring the 10, for fear you should lose it.

C. L.

[Here should come a letter from Mary Lamb to Mrs. Clarkson, dated December 25, 1805, printed by Mr. Macdonald. It states that Lamb has been latterly in indifferent health, and is unimportant.]

LETTER 143

CHARLES LAMB TO WILLIAM HAZLITT

Thursday, 15th Jan., 1806.

Dear Hazlitt,--G.o.dwin went to Johnson's yesterday about your business.

Johnson would not come down, or give any answer, but has promised to open the ma.n.u.script, and to give you an answer in one month. G.o.dwin will punctually go again (Wednesday is Johnson's open day) yesterday four weeks next: i.e. in one lunar month from this time. Till when Johnson positively declines giving any answer. I wish you joy on ending your Search. Mrs. H. was naming something about a Life of Fawcett, to be by you undertaken: the great Fawcett, as she explain'd to Manning, when he ask'd, _What Fawcett_? He innocently thought _Fawcett the player_. But Fawcett the Divine is known to many people, albeit unknown to the Chinese Enquirer. I should think, if you liked it, and Johnson declined it, that Phillips is the man. He is perpetually bringing out Biographies, Richardson, Wilkes, Foot, Lee Lewis, without number: little trim things in two easy volumes price 12s. the two, made up of letters to and from, sc.r.a.ps, posthumous trifles, anecdotes, and about forty pages of hard biography. You might dish up a Fawcetiad in 3 months, and ask 60 or 80 Pounds for it. I should dare say that Phillips would catch at it--I wrote to you the other day in a great hurry. Did you get it?

This is merely a Letter of business at G.o.dwin's request.

Lord Nelson is quiet at last. His ghost only keeps a slight fluttering in odes and elegies in newspapers, and impromptus, which could not be got ready before the funeral.

As for news--We have Miss Stoddart in our house, she has been with us a fortnight and will stay a week or so longer. She is one of the few people who are not in the way when they are with you. No tidings of Coleridge. Fenwick is coming to town on Monday (if no kind angel intervene) to surrender himself to prison. He hopes to get the Rules of the Fleet. On the same, or nearly the same, day, Fell, my other quondam co-friend and drinker, will go to Newgate, and his wife and 4 children, I suppose, to the Parish. Plenty of reflection and motives of grat.i.tude to the wise disposer of all things in us, whose prudent conduct has. .h.i.therto ensured us a warm fire and snug roof over our heads. _Nullum numen abest si sit Prudentia_.

Alas! Prudentia is in the last quarter of her tutelary s.h.i.+ning over me.

A little time and I--

But may be I may, at last, hit upon some mode of collecting some of the vast superfluities of this money-voiding town. Much is to be got, and I don't want much. All I ask is time and leisure; and I am cruelly off for them.

When you have the inclination, I shall be very glad to have a letter from you.--Your brother and Mrs. H., I am afraid, think hardly of us for not coming oftener to see them, but we are distracted beyond what they can conceive with visitors and visitings. I never have an hour for my head to work quietly its own workings; which you know is as necessary to the human system as sleep.

Sleep, too, I can't get for these d.a.m.n'd winds of a night: and without sleep and rest what should ensue? Lunacy. But I trust it won't.

Yours, dear H., mad or sober, C. LAMB.

[Hazlitt's business was finding a publisher for his abridgment of Search (see page 340). Johnson was Priestley's publisher. A letter to G.o.dwin from Coleridge in June, 1803 (see Kegan Paul's _Life of G.o.dwin_, ii., 96), had suggested such an abridgment, Coleridge adding that a friend of his would make it, and that he would write a preface and see the proofs through the press. Hence G.o.dwin's share in the matter. Coleridge's part of the transaction was not carried out.

Hazlitt's Life of Joseph Fawcett (?1758-1804), the poet and dissenting preacher of Walthamstow and Old Jewry, whom he had known intimately, was not written. The Fawcett of whom Manning, the Chinese Enquirer, was thinking was John Fawcett, famous as Dr. Pangloss and Caleb Quotem.

"The Fleet"--the prison for debtors in Farringdon Street. Closed in 1844. The Rules of the Fleet were the limits within which prisoners for debt were under certain conditions permitted to live: the north side of Ludgate Hill, the Old Bailey up to Fleet Lane, Fleet Lane to Fleet Market, and then back to Ludgate Hill. The Rules cost money: 10 for the first 100 of the debt and for every additional 100, 4. Later, Fenwick seems to have settled in America.

Here should come an undated letter to Hazlitt, accompanied by Tingry's _Painter's and Varnisher's Guide_, 1804. Hazlitt, who was then painting, seems to have wanted prints of trees, probably for a background. Lamb says that he has been hunting in shop windows for him. He adds: "To supply poetry and wildness, you may read the _American Farmer_ over again." The postscript runs, "Johnson shall not be forgot at his month's end."]

LETTER 144

CHARLES LAMB TO JOHN RICKMAN

Jan. 25th, 1806.

Dear Rickman,--You do not happen to have any place at your disposal which would suit a decayed Literatus? I do not much expect that you have, or that you will go much out of the way to serve the object, when you hear it is Fenwick. But the case is, by a _mistaking_ of his _turn_, as they call it, he is reduced, I am afraid, to extremities, and would be extremely glad of a place in an office. Now it does sometimes happen, that just as a man wants a place, a place wants him; and though this is a lottery to which none but G.B. would choose to trust his all, there is no harm just to call in at Despair's office for a friend, and see if _his_ number is come up (B.'s further case I enclose by way of episode).

Now, if you should happen, or anybody you know, to want a _hand_, here is a young man of solid but not brilliant genius, who would turn his hand to the making out dockets, penning a manifesto, or scoring a tally, not the worse (I hope) for knowing Latin and Greek, and having in youth conversed with the philosophers. But from these follies I believe he is thoroughly awakened, and would bind himself by a terrible oath never to imagine himself an extraordinary genius again.

Yours, &., C. LAMB.

[Mr. Hazlitt's text, which I follow here, makes Lamb appeal for Fenwick; but other editors say Fell--except Talfourd, who says F. If, as Lamb says in his previous letter, Fell was bound for Newgate and Fenwick only for the Fleet, probably it was Fenwick. But the matter is not very important. Fenwick and Fell both came into Lamb's life through G.o.dwin and at this point they drop out. The enclosure concerning George Burnett is missing.]

LETTER 145

CHARLES LAMB TO WILLIAM WORDSWORTH [Dated at end: February 1st, 1806.]

Dear Wordsworth--I have seen the Books which you ordered, booked at the White Horse Inn, Cripplegate, by the Kendal waggon this day 1st Feb'y.

1806; you will not fail to see after them in time. They are directed to you at Grasmere. We have made some alteration in the Editions since your sister's directions. The handsome quarto Spencer which she authorized Mary to buy for 2. 12. 6, when she brought it home in triumph proved to be _only the Fairy Queen_: so we got them to take it again and I have procured instead a Folio, which luckily contains, besides all the Poems, the view of the State of Ireland, which is difficult to meet with. The Spencer, and the Chaucer, being n.o.ble old books, we did not think Stockdale's modern volumes would look so well beside them; added to which I don't know whether you are aware that the Print is _excessive_ small, same as Eleg. Extracts, or smaller, not calculated for eyes in age; and Shakespear is one of the last books one should like to give up, perhaps the one just before the Dying Service in a large Prayer book. So we have used our own discretion in purchasing Pope's fine Quarto in six volumes, which may be read ad ultimam horam vitae. It is bound like Law Books (rather, half bound) and the Law Robe I have ever thought as comely and gentlemanly a garb as a Book would wish to wear. The state of the purchase then stands thus,

Urry's Chaucer 1. 16 -- Pope's Shakespeare 2. 2 -- Spenser 14 -- Milton 1. 5 -- Packing Case &c. 3. 6 ____________ 6. --. 6

Which your Brother immediately repaid us. He has the Bills for all (by his desire) except the Spenser, which we took no bill with (not looking to have our accounts audited): so for that and the Case he took a separate receipt for 17/6. N.B. there is writing in the Shakespear: but it is only variae lectiones which some careful gentleman, the former owner, was at the pains to insert in a very neat hand from 5 Commentators. It is no defacement. The fault of Pope's edition is, that he has comically and c.o.xcombically marked the Beauties: which is vile, as if you were to chalk up the cheek and across the nose of a handsome woman in red chalk to shew where the comeliest parts lay. But I hope the n.o.ble type and Library-appearance of the Books will atone for that. With the Books come certain Books and Pamphlets of G. Dyer, Presents or rather Decoy-ducks of the Poet to take in his thus-far obliged friends to buy his other works; as he takes care to inform them in M.S. notes to the t.i.tle Pages, "G. Dyer, Author of other Books printed for Longman &c." The books have lain at your dispatchful brother's a 12 months, to the great staling of most of the subjects. The three Letters and what is else written at the beginning of the respective _Presents_ will ascertain the division of the Property. If not, none of the Donees, I dare say, will grudge a community of property in this case. We were constrained to pack 'em how we could, for room. Also there comes W.

Hazlitt's book about Human Action, for Coleridge; a little song book for Sarah Coleridge; a Box for Hartley which your Brother was to have sent, but now devolved on us--I don't know from whom it came, but the things altogether were too much for Mr. (I've forgot his name) to take charge of; a Paraphrase on the King and Queen of Hearts, of which I being the Author beg Mr. Johnny Wordsworth's acceptance and opinion. _Liberal Criticism_, as G. Dyer declares, I am always ready to attend to!--And that's all, I believe. N.B. I must remain Debtor to Dorothy for 200 pens: but really Miss Stoddart (women are great gulfs of Stationery), who is going home to Salisbury and has been with us some weeks, has drained us to the very last pen: by the time S.T.C. pa.s.ses thro' London I reckon I shall be in full feather. No more news has transpired of that Wanderer. I suppose he has found his way to some of his German friends.

A propos of Spencer (you will find him mentioned a page or two before, near enough for an a propos), I was discoursing on Poetry (as one's apt to deceive onesself, and when a person is willing to _talk_ of what one likes, to believe that he also likes the same: as Lovers do) with a Young Gentleman of my office who is deep read in Anacreon Moore, Lord Strangford, and the princ.i.p.al Modern Poets, and I happen'd to mention Epithalamiums and that I could shew him a very fine one of Spencer's. At the mention of this, my Gentleman, who is a very fine Gentleman, and is brother to the Miss Evans who Coleridge so narrowly escaped marrying, p.r.i.c.ked up his ears and exprest great pleasure, and begged that I would give him leave to copy it: he did not care how long it was (for I objected the length), he should be very happy to see _any thing by him_.

Then pausing, and looking sad, he e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed POOR SPENCER! I begged to know the reason of his e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.o.n, thinking that Time had by this time softened down any calamities which the Bard might have endured--"Why, poor fellow!" said he "he has lost his Wife!" "Lost his Wife?" said I, "Who are you talking of?" "Why, Spencer," said he. "I've read the Monody he wrote on the occasion, and _a very pretty thing it is_." This led to an explanation (it could be delay'd no longer) that the sound Spencer, which when Poetry is talk'd of generally excites an image of an old Bard in a Ruff, and sometimes with it dim notions of Sir P. Sydney and perhaps Lord Burleigh, had raised in my Gentleman a quite contrary image of The Honourable William Spencer, who has translated some things from the German very prettily, which are publish'd with Lady Di. Beauclerk's Designs.