The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb Volume V Part 86

Coleridge's literary plans were destined to change. The _Biographia Literaria_ was published alone in 1817, and _Sibylline Leaves_ alone later in the same year.--"Remorse" had been acted at Calne in June for the second time, a previous visit having been paid in 1813. Coleridge gave the manager a "flaming testimonial."--Lady Beaumont was the wife of Sir George Beaumont.

"Oliver Cromwell." The portrait by Cooper at Sidney Suss.e.x College.

F.W. Franklin was with Lamb at Christ's Hospital. Afterwards he became Master of the Blue Coat School at Hertford. He is mentioned in the _Elia_ essay on Christ's Hospital.]

LETTER 223

MARY LAMB TO MATILDA BETHAM

[No date. ? Late summer, 1815.]

My dear Miss Betham,--My brother and myself return you a thousand thanks for your kind communication. We have read your poem many times over with increased interest, and very much wish to see you to tell you how highly we have been pleased with it. May we beg one favour?--I keep the ma.n.u.script in the hope that you will grant it. It is that, either now or when the whole poem is completed, you will read it over with us. When I say with _us_, of course I mean Charles. I know that you have many judicious friends, but I have so often known my brother spy out errors in a ma.n.u.script which has pa.s.sed through many judicious hands, that I shall not be easy if you do not permit him to look yours carefully through with you; and also you _must_ allow him to correct the press for you.

If I knew where to find you I would call upon you. Should you feel nervous at the idea of meeting Charles in the capacity of a _severe censor_, give me a line, and I will come to you any where, and convince you in five minutes that he is even timid, stammers, and can scarcely speak for modesty and fear of giving pain when he finds himself placed in that kind of office. Shall I appoint a time to see you here when he is from home? I will send him out any time you will name; indeed, I am always naturally alone till four o'clock. If you are nervous about coming, remember I am equally so about the liberty I have taken, and shall be till we meet and laugh off our mutual fears.

Yours most affectionately M. LAMB.

LETTER 224

CHARLES LAMB TO MATILDA BETHAM [No date. 1815].

Dear Miss Betham,--That accursed word trill has vexed me excessively. I have referred to the MS. and certainly the printer is exonerated, it is much more like a _tr_ than a _k_. But what shall I say of myself?

If you can trust me hereafter, I will be more careful. I will go thro'

the Poem, unless you should feel more safe by doing it yourself. In fact a second person looking over a proof is liable to let pa.s.s anything that sounds plausible. The act of looking it over seeming to require only an attention to the words that they have the proper component letters, one scarce thinks then (or but half) of the sense.--You will find one line I have ventured to alter in 3'd sheet. You had made hope & yoke rhime, which is intolerable. Every body can see & carp at a bad rhime or no rhime. It strikes as slovenly, like bad spelling.

I found out another _sung_ but I could not alter it, & I would not delay the time by writing to you. Besides it is not at all conspicuous--it comes in by the bye 'the strains I sung.' The other obnoxious word was in an eminent place, at the beginning of her Lay, when all ears are upon her.

I must conclude hastily, dear M. B.

Yours C. L.

[These letters refer to _The Lay of Marie_. In Mr. Ernest Betham's _A House of Letters_ will be found six other letters (see pp. 161, 163, 164, 166, 232) all bearing upon Matilda Betham's poem.]

LETTER 225

CHARLES LAMB TO MATILDA BETHAM

Dr Miss Betham,--All this while I have been tormenting myself with the thought of having been ungracious to you, and you have been all the while accusing yourself. Let us absolve one another & be quits. My head is in such a state from incapacity for business that I certainly know it to be my duty not to undertake the veriest trifle in addition. I hardly know how I can go on. I have tried to get some redress by explaining my health, but with no great success. No one can tell how ill I am, because it does not come out to the exterior of my face, but lies in my scull deep & invisible. I wish I was leprous & black jaundiced skin-over, and [? or] that all was as well within as my cursed looks. You must not think me worse than I am. I am determined not to be overset, but to give up business rather and get 'em to allow me a trifle for services past. O that I had been a shoe-maker or a baker, or a man of large independ't fortune. O darling Laziness! heaven of Epicurus! Saints Everlasting Rest! that I could drink vast potations of thee thro' unmeasured Eternity. Otium _c.u.m_ vel _sine_ dignitate. Scandalous, dishonorable, any-kind-of-_repose_. I stand not upon the _dignified_ sort. Accursed d.a.m.ned desks, trade, commerce, business--Inventions of that old original busybody brainworking Satan, Sabbathless restless Satan--

A curse relieves. Do you ever try it?

A strange Letter this to write to a Lady, but mere honey'd sentences will not distill. I dare not ask who revises in my stead. I have drawn you into a sc.r.a.pe. I am ashamed, but I know no remedy. My unwellness must be my apology. G.o.d bless you (tho' he curse the India House & fire it to the ground) and may no unkind Error creep into Marie, may all its readers like it as well as I do & everybody about you like its kind author no worse. Why the devil am I never to have a chance of scribbling my own free thoughts, verse or prose, again? Why must I write of Tea & Drugs & Price Goods & bales of Indigo--farewell.

C. LAMB.

[_Written at head of Letter on margin the following_:--]

Mary goes to her Place on Sunday--I mean your maid, foolish Mary. She wants a very little brains only to be an excellent Serv. She is excellently calculated for the country, where n.o.body has brains.

[Mr. Ernest Betham, in _A House of Letters_, dates the foregoing June 1, 1816; but I place it here none the less.

In the pa.s.sage concerning work and leisure we see another hint of the sonnet on "Work" which Lamb was to write a little later.

Here should come two notes to William Ayrton, printed by Mr. Macdonald, referring to the musical use of the word "air."]

LETTER 226

CHARLES LAMB TO SARAH HUTCHINSON

Thursday 19 Oct. 1815.

My brother is gone to Paris.

Dear Miss H.--I am forced to be the replier to your Letter, for Mary has been ill and gone from home these five weeks yesterday. She has left me very lonely and very miserable. I stroll about, but there is no rest but at one's own fireside, and there is no rest for me there now. I look forward to the worse half being past, and keep up as well as I can. She has begun to show some favorable symptoms. The return of her disorder has been frightfully soon this time, with scarce a six month's interval.

I am almost afraid my worry of spirits about the E. I. House was partly the cause of her illness, but one always imputes it to the cause next at hand; more probably it comes from some cause we have no control over or conjecture of. It cuts sad great slices out of the time, the little time we shall have to live together. I don't know but the recurrence of these illnesses might help me to sustain her death better than if we had had no partial separations. But I won't talk of death. I will imagine us immortal, or forget that we are otherwise; by G.o.d's blessing in a few weeks we may be making our meal together, or sitting in the front row of the Pit at Drury Lane, or taking our evening walk past the theatres, to look at the outside of them at least, if not to be tempted in. Then we forget we are a.s.sailable, we are strong for the time as rocks, the wind is tempered to the shorn Lambs. Poor C. Lloyd, and poor Priscilla, I feel I hardly feel enough for him, my own calamities press about me and involve me in a thick integument not to be reached at by other folks'

misfortunes. But I feel all I can, and all the kindness I can towards you all. G.o.d bless you. I hear nothing from Coleridge. Yours truly

C. LAMB.

[Mary Lamb had recovered from her preceding attack in February. She did not recover from the present illness until December.

"The wind is tempered to the shorn Lambs." "'But G.o.d tempers the wind,'

said Maria, 'to the shorn lamb'" (Sterne's _Sentimental Journey_). Also in Henri Estienne (1594).

"Poor C. Lloyd, and poor Priscilla." Priscilla Wordsworth (_nee_ Lloyd) died this month, aged thirty-three. Charles Lloyd having just completed his translation of the tragedies of Alfieri, published in 1815, had been prostrated by the most serious visitation of his malady that he had yet suffered.]

LETTER 227

CHARLES LAMB TO THOMAS MANNING Dec. 25th, 1815.