The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb Volume V Part 82

Dr Sargus--This is to give you notice that I have parted with the Cottage to Mr. Grig Jun'r. to whom you will pay rent from Michaelmas last. The rent that was due at Michaelmas I do not wish you to pay me. I forgive it you as you may have been at some expences in repairs.

Yours CH. LAMB.

Inner Temple Lane, London, 23 Feb., 1815.

[In 1812 Lamb inherited, through his G.o.dfather, Francis Fielde, who is mentioned in the _Elia_ essay "My First Play," a property called b.u.t.ton Snap, near Puckeridge, in Hertfords.h.i.+re, consisting of a small cottage and about an acre of ground. In 1815 he sold it for 50, and the foregoing letter is an intimation of the transaction to his tenant. The purchaser, however, was not a Mr. Grig, but a Mr. Greg (see notes to "My First Play" in Vol. II. of this edition). In my large edition I give a picture of the cottage.

I append here an undated letter to Joseph Hume which belongs to a time posterior to the sale of the cottage. It refers to Tuthill's candidature for the post of physician to St. Luke's Hospital.

The letter is printed in Mr. Kegan Paul's _William G.o.dwin: His Friends and Acquaintances_, as though it were written to G.o.dwin, and all Lamb's editors follow in a.s.suming the Philosopher to be the recipient, but internal evidence practically proves that Hume was addressed; for there is the reference to Mrs. Hume and her daughters, and G.o.dwin lived not in Kensington but in Skinner Street.]

LETTER 214

CHARLES LAMB TO JOSEPH HUME

"Bis dat qui dat cito."

[No date.]

I hate the pedantry of expressing that in another language which we have sufficient terms for in our own. So in plain English I very much wish you to give your vote to-morrow at Clerkenwell, instead of Sat.u.r.day. It would clear up the brows of my favourite candidate, and stagger the hands of the opposite party. It commences at nine. How easy, as you come from Kensington (_a propos_, how is your excellent family?) to turn down Bloomsbury, through Leather Lane (avoiding Lay Stall St. for the disagreeableness of the name). Why, it brings you in four minutes and a half to the spot renowned on northern milestones, "where Hicks' Hall formerly stood." There will be good cheer ready for every independent freeholder; where you see a green flag hang out go boldly in, call for ham, or beef, or what you please, and a mug of Meux's Best. How much more gentleman-like to come in the front of the battle, openly avowing one's sentiments, than to lag in on the last day, when the adversary is dejected, spiritless, laid low. Have the first cut at them. By Sat.u.r.day you'll cut into the mutton. I'd go cheerfully myself, but I am no freeholder (Fuimus Troes, fuit Ilium), but I sold it for 50. If they'd accept a copy-holder, we clerks are naturally _copy_-holders.

By the way, get Mrs. Hume, or that agreeable Amelia or Caroline, to stick a bit of green in your hat. Nothing daunts the adversary more than to wear the colours of your party. Stick it in c.o.c.kade-like. It has a martial, and by no means disagreeable effect.

Go, my dear freeholder, and if any chance calls you out of this transitory scene earlier than expected, the coroner shall sit lightly on your corpse. He shall not too anxiously enquire into the circ.u.mstances of blood found upon your razor. That might happen to any gentleman in shaving. Nor into your having been heard to express a contempt of life, or for scolding Louisa for what Julia did, and other trifling incoherencies.

Yours sincerely, C. LAMB.

["Lay Stall St." This street, which is still found in Clerkenwell, was of course named from one of the laystalls or public middens which were a feature of London when sanitation was in its infancy.

"Where Hicks' Hall formerly stood." Hicks' Hall, the old Sessions House of the County of Middles.e.x, stood in St. John Street, Clerkenwell, until its demolition in 1782, when the justices removed to the new Sessions House on Clerkenwell Green. The milestones on the Great North Road, which had long been measured from Hicks' Hall, were reinscribed "---- Miles from the spot where Hicks' Hall formerly stood." Thus Hicks' Hall remained a household word long after it had ceased to exist. The adventures of Jedediah Jones in search of "the spot where Hicks' Hall formerly stood" are amusingly set forth in Knight's _London_, Vol. I., pages 242-244.

We meet Hume's daughters again in Letter 540. I append a letter with no date, which may come here:--]

LETTER 215

CHARLES LAMB TO [MRS. HUME?]

[No date.]

Dear Mrs. H.: Sally who brings this with herself back has given every possible satisfaction in doing her work, etc., but the fact is the poor girl is oppressed with a ladylike melancholy, and cannot bear to be so much alone, as she necessarily must be in our kitchen, which to say the truth is d.a.m.n'd solitary, where she can see nothing and converse with nothing and not even look out of window. The consequence is she has been caught shedding tears all day long, and her own comfort has made it indispensable to send her home. Your cheerful noisy children-crowded house has made her feel the change so much the more.

Our late servant always complained of the _want of children_, which she had been used to in her last place. One man's meat is another man's poison, as they say. However, we are eternally obliged to you, as much as if Sally could have staid. We have got an old woman coming, who is too stupid to know when she is alone and when she is not.

Yours truly, C. LAMB, for self and sister.

Have you heard from ......

[I take it that Mrs. H. is Mrs. Hume, because Hume had a large family.

It was of him, in his paternal light, that Lamb said, "one fool makes many."]

LETTER 216

CHARLES LAMB TO WILLIAM WORDSWORTH [P.M. partly illegible. April 7, 1815.]

The conclusion of this epistle getting gloomy, I have chosen this part to desire our kindest Loves to Mrs. Wordsworth and to _Dorothea_. Will none of you ever be in London again?

Dear Wordsw'th, you have made me very proud with your successive book presents. I have been carefully through the two volumes to see that nothing was omitted which used to be there. I think I miss nothing but a Character in Ant.i.thet. manner which I do not know why you left out; the moral to the boys building the giant, the omission whereof leaves it in my mind less complete; and one admirable line gone (or something come in stead of it) "the stone-chat and the glancing sand-piper," which was a line quite alive. I demand these at your hand. I am glad that you have not sacrificed a verse to those scoundrels. I would not have had you offer up the poorest rag that lingered upon the stript shoulders of little Alice Fell, to have atoned all their malice. I would not have given 'em a red cloak to save their souls. I am afraid lest that subst.i.tution of a sh.e.l.l (a flat falsification of the history) for the household implement as it stood at first, was a kind of tub thrown out to the beast, or rather thrown out for him. The tub was a good honest tub in its place, and nothing could fairly be said against it. You say you made the alteration for the "friendly reader," but the malicious will take it to himself. d.a.m.n 'em; if you give 'em an inch &c. The preface is n.o.ble and such as you should write: I wish I could set my name to it--Imprimatur--but you have set it there yourself, and I thank you. I had rather be a door-keeper in your margin, than have their proudest text swelling with my eulogies. The poems in the volumes which are new to me are so much in the old tone that I hardly received them as novelties. Of those, of which I had no previous knowlege, the four yew trees and the mysterious company which you have a.s.sembled there, most struck me--"Death the Skeleton and Time the Shadow--" It is a sight not for every youthful poet to dream of--it is one of the last results he must have gone thinking-on for years for. Laodamia is a very original poem; I mean original with reference to your own manner. You have nothing like it. I should have seen it in a strange place, and greatly admired it, but not suspected its derivation. Let me in this place, for I have writ you several letters without naming it, mention that my brother, who is a picture collector, has picked up an undoubtable picture of Milton. He gave a few s.h.i.+llings for it, and could get no history with it, but that some old lady had had it for a great many years. Its age is ascertainable from the state of the canvas, and you need only see it to be sure that it is the original of the heads in the Tonson Editions, with which we are all so well familiar. Since I saw you I have had a treat in the reading way which comes not every day. The Latin Poems of V. Bourne, which were quite new to me. What a heart that man had, all laid out upon town scenes, a proper counterpoise to _some people's_ rural extravaganzas. Why I mention him is that your Power of Music reminded me of his poem of the balad singer in the Seven Dials. Do you remember his epigram on the old woman who taught Newton the A. B.

C., which after all, he says, he hesitates not to call Newton's _Principia_. I was lately fatiguing myself with going thro' a volume of fine words by _L'd. Thurlow_--excellent words, and if the heart could live by words alone, it could desire no better regale--but what an aching vacuum of matter; I don't stick at the madness of it, for that is only a consequence of shutting his eyes and thinking he is in the age of the old Elisabeth poets; from thence I turned to V. Bourne--what a sweet unpretending pretty-mannered _matter-ful_ creature, sucking from every flower, making a flower of every thing, his diction all Latin and his thoughts all English. Bless him, Latin wasn't good enough for him, why wasn't he content with the language which Gay and Prior wrote in.

I am almost sorry that you printed Extracts from those first Poems, or that you did not print them at length. They do not read to me as they do all together. Besides they have diminished the value of the original (which I possess) as a curiosity. I have hitherto kept them distinct in my mind as referring to a particular period of your life. All the rest of your poems are so much of a piece, they might have been written in the same week--these decidedly speak of an earlier period. They tell more of what you had been reading.

We were glad to see the poems by a female friend. The one of the wind is masterly, but not new to us. Being only three, perhaps you might have clapt a D. at the corner and let it have past as a printer's mark to the uninitiated, as a delightful hint to the better-instructed. As it is, Expect a formal criticism on the Poems of your female friend, and she must expect it.

I should have written before, but I am cruelly engaged and like to be.

On Friday I was at office from 10 in the morning (two hours dinner except) to 11 at night, last night till 9. My business and office business in general has increased so. I don't mean I am there every night, but I must expect a great deal of it. I never leave till 4--and do not keep a holyday now once in ten times, where I used to keep all red letter days, and some fine days besides which I used to dub Nature's holydays. I have had my day. I had formerly little to do. So of the little that is left of life I may reckon two thirds as dead, for Time that a man may call his own is his Life, and hard work and thinking about it taints even the leisure hours, stains Sunday with workday contemplations--this is Sunday, and the headache I have is part late hours at work the 2 preceding nights and part later hours over a consoling pipe afterw'ds. But I find stupid acquiescence coming over me.

I bend to the yoke, and it is almost with me and my household as with the man and his consort--

To them each evening had its glittering star And every Sabbath day its golden sun--

To such straits am I driven for the Life of life, Time--O that from that superfluity of Holyday leisure my youth wasted "Age might but take some hours youth wanted not.--" N.B. I have left off spirituous liquors for 4 or more months, with a moral certainty of its lasting. Farewell, dear Wordsworth.

[Wordsworth had just brought out, with Longmans, his _Poems_ ...

_including Lyrical Ballads and the Miscellaneous Pieces of the Author_, 1815, in two volumes. The "Character in the Ant.i.thetical Manner" was omitted from all editions of Wordsworth's poems between 1800 and 1836.

In the 1800 version of "Rural Architecture" there had been these last lines, expunged in the editions of 1805 and 1815, but restored with a slight alteration in later editions:--

--Some little I've seen of blind boisterous works In Paris and London, 'mong Christians or Turks, Spirits busy to do and undo: At remembrance whereof my blood sometimes will flag, --Then, light-hearted Boys, to the top of the Crag; And I'll build up a Giant with you.

In the original form of the "Lines Left upon a Seat in a Yew Tree" there had been these lines:--

His only visitants a straggling sheep, The stone-chat, or the glancing sand-piper.

Wordsworth had altered them to:--

His only visitants a straggling sheep, The stone-chat, or the sand-lark, restless Bird, Piping along the margin of the lake.

In the 1820 edition Wordsworth put back the original form.