The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb Volume VI Part 5

[Oct. 27, 1821.]

I Come, Grimalkin! Dalston, near Hackney, 27th Oct'r. One thousand 8 hundred and twenty one years and a wee-bit since you and I were redeemed. I doubt if _you_ are done properly yet.

[A further letter to Ayrton, dated from Dalston, October 30, is printed by Mr. Macdonald, in which Lamb speaks of his sister's illness and the death of his brother John, who died on October 26, aged fifty-eight. It is reasonable to suppose that Lamb, when the above note was written, was unaware of his brother's death (see note to Letter 284 on page 610). On October 26, however, he had written to the editor of the _London Magazine_ saying that he was most uncomfortably situated at home and expecting some trouble which might prevent further writing for some time--which may have been an allusion to his brother's illness or to signs of Mary Lamb's approaching malady.

Here should come a note to William Hone, evidently in reply to a comment on Lamb's essay on "Saying Grace."

Here should come a letter from Lamb to Rickman, dated November 20, 1821, referring to Admiral Burney's death. "I have been used to death lately.

Poor Jim White's departure last year first broke the spell. I had been so fortunate as to have lost no friends in that way for many long years, and began to think people did not die." He says that Mary Lamb has recovered from a long illness and is pretty well resigned to John Lamb's death.]

LETTER 283

CHARLES LAMB TO S.T. COLERIDGE

March 9th, 1822.

Dear C.,--It gives me great satisfaction to hear that the pig turned out so well--they are interesting creatures at a certain age--what a pity such buds should blow out into the maturity of rank bacon! You had all some of the crackling --and brain sauce--did you remember to rub it with b.u.t.ter, and gently dredge it a little, just before the crisis? Did the eyes come away kindly with no Oedipean avulsion? Was the crackling the colour of the ripe pomegranate? Had you no complement of boiled neck of mutton before it, to blunt the edge of delicate desire? Did you flesh maiden teeth in it? Not that I sent the pig, or can form the remotest guess what part Owen could play in the business. I never knew him give anything away in my life. He would not begin with strangers. I suspect the pig, after all, was meant for me; but at the unlucky juncture of time being absent, the present somehow went round to Highgate. To confess an honest truth, a pig is one of those things I could never think of sending away. Teals, wigeons, snipes, barn-door fowl, ducks, geese--your tame villatic things--Welsh mutton, collars of brawn, sturgeon, fresh or pickled, your potted char, Swiss cheeses, French pies, early grapes, muscadines, I impart as freely unto my friends as to myself. They are but self-extended; but pardon me if I stop somewhere--where the fine feeling of benevolence giveth a higher smack than the sensual rarity--there my friends (or any good man) may command me; but pigs are pigs, and I myself therein am nearest to myself. Nay, I should think it an affront, an undervaluing done to Nature who bestowed such a boon upon me, if in a churlish mood I parted with the precious gift. One of the bitterest pangs of remorse I ever felt was when a child--when my kind old aunt had strained her pocketstrings to bestow a sixpenny whole plum-cake upon me. In my way home through the Borough, I met a venerable old man, not a mendicant, but thereabouts--a look-beggar, not a verbal pet.i.tionist; and in the c.o.xcombry of taught-charity I gave away the cake to him. I walked on a little in all the pride of an Evangelical peac.o.c.k, when of a sudden my old aunt's kindness crossed me--the sum it was to her--the pleasure she had a right to expect that I--not the old impostor --should take in eating her cake--the cursed ingrat.i.tude by which, under the colour of a Christian virtue, I had frustrated her cherished purpose. I sobbed, wept, and took it to heart so grievously, that I think I never suffered the like--and I was right. It was a piece of unfeeling hypocrisy, and proved a lesson to me ever after. The cake has long been masticated, consigned to dunghill with the ashes of that unseasonable pauper.

But when Providence, who is better to us all than our aunts, gives me a pig, remembering my temptation and my fall, I shall endeavour to act towards it more in the spirit of the donor's purpose.

Yours (short of pig) to command in everything. C.L.

[This letter probably led to the immediate composition of the _Elia_ essay "A Dissertation on Roast Pig" (see Vol. II. of the present edition), which was printed in the _London Magazine_ for September, 1822. See also "Thoughts on Presents of Game," Vol. I. of this edition.

"Owen." Lamb's landlord in Russell Street.

"My kind old aunt... the Borough." This is rather perplexing. Lamb, to the best of our knowledge, never as a child lived anywhere but in the Temple. His only aunt of whom we know anything lived with the family also in the Temple. But John Lamb's will proves Lamb to have had two aunts. The reference to the Borough suggests therefore that the aunt in question was not Sarah Lamb (Aunt Hetty) but her sister.]

LETTER 284

CHARLES LAMB TO WILLIAM WORDSWORTH

20th March, 1822.

My dear Wordsworth--A letter from you is very grateful, I have not seen a Kendal postmark so long! We are pretty well save colds and rheumatics, and a certain deadness to every thing, which I think I may date from poor John's Loss, and another accident or two at the same time, that has made me almost bury myself at Dalston, where yet I see more faces than I could wish. Deaths over-set one and put one out long after the recent grief. Two or three have died within this last two twelvem'ths, and so many parts of me have been numbed. One sees a picture, reads an anecdote, starts a casual fancy, and thinks to tell of it to this person in preference to every other--the person is gone whom it would have peculiarly suited. It won't do for _another_. Every departure destroys a cla.s.s of sympathies. There's Capt. Burney gone!--what fun has whist now?

what matters it what you lead, if you can no longer fancy him looking over you? One never hears any thing, but the image of the particular person occurs with whom alone almost you would care to share the intelligence. Thus one distributes oneself about--and now for so many parts of me I have lost the market. Common natures do not suffice me.

Good people, as they are called, won't serve. I want individuals. I am made up of queer points and I want so many answering needles. The going away of friends does not make the remainder more precious. It takes so much from them as there was a common link. A. B. and C. make a party. A.

dies. B. not only loses A. but all A.'s part in C. C. loses A.'s part in B., and so the alphabet sickens by subtraction of interchangeables. I express myself muddily, capite dolente. I have a dulling cold. My theory is to enjoy life, but the practice is against it. I grow ominously tired of official confinement. Thirty years have I served the Philistines, and my neck is not subdued to the yoke. You don't know how wearisome it is to breathe the air of four pent walls without relief day after day, all the golden hours of the day between 10 and 4 without ease or interposition. Taedet me harum quotidianarum formarum, these pestilential clerk faces always in one's dish. O for a few years between the grave and the desk! they are the same, save that at the latter you are outside the machine. The foul enchanter--letters four do form his name--Busirane is his name in h.e.l.l--that has curtailed you of some domestic comforts, hath laid a heavier hand on me, not in present infliction, but in taking away the hope of enfranchis.e.m.e.nt. I dare not whisper to myself a Pension on this side of absolute incapacitation and infirmity, till years have sucked me dry. Otium c.u.m indignitate. I had thought in a green old age (O green thought!) to have retired to Ponder's End--emblematic name how beautiful! in the Ware road, there to have made up my accounts with Heaven and the Company, toddling about between it and Cheshunt, anon stretching on some fine Izaac Walton morning to Hoddesdon or Amwell, careless as a Beggar, but walking, walking ever, till I fairly walkd myself off my legs, dying walking!

The hope is gone. I sit like Philomel all day (but not singing) with my breast against this thorn of a Desk, with the only hope that some Pulmonary affliction may relieve me. Vide Lord Palmerston's report of the Clerks in the war office (Debates, this morning's Times) by which it appears in 20 years, as many Clerks have been coughd and catarrhd out of it into their freer graves.

Thank you for asking about the Pictures. Milton hangs over my fire side in Covt. Card, (when I am there), the rest have been sold for an old song, wanting the eloquent tongue that should have set them off!

You have gratifyd me with liking my meeting with Dodd. For the Malvolio story--the thing is become in verity a sad task and I eke it out with any thing. If I could slip out of it I sh'd be happy, but our chief reputed a.s.sistants have forsaken us. The opium eater crossed us once with a dazzling path, and hath as suddenly left us darkling; and in short I shall go on from dull to worse, because I cannot resist the Bookseller's importunity--the old plea you know of authors, but I believe on my part sincere.

Hartley I do not so often see, but I never see him in unwelcome hour. I thoroughly love and honor him.

I send you a frozen Epistle, but it is winter and dead time of the year with me. May heaven keep something like spring and summer up with you, strengthen your eyes and make mine a little lighter to encounter with them, as I hope they shall yet and again, before all are closed.

Yours, with every kind rem'be.

C.L.

I had almost forgot to say, I think you thoroughly right about presentation copies. I should like to see you print a book I should grudge to purchase for its size. D----n me, but I would have it though!

[John Lamb's will left everything to his brother. We must suppose that his widow was independently provided for. I doubt if the brothers had seen each other except casually for some time. The _Elia_ essay "My Relations" contains John Lamb's full-length portrait under the name of James Elia.

Captain Burney died on November 17, 1821,

"The foul enchanter--letters four do form his name." From Coleridge's war eclogue, "Fire, Famine and Slaughter," where the letters form the name of Pitt. Here they stand for Joseph Hume, not Lamb's friend, but Joseph Hume, M.P. (1777-1855), who had attacked with success abuses in the East India Company; had revised economically the system of collecting the revenue, thus touching Wordsworth as Distributor of Stamps; and had opposed Vansittart's scheme for the reduction of pension charges.

"_Vide_ Lord Palmerston's report." In the _Times_ of March 21 is the report of a debate on the estimates. Palmerston proved a certain amount of reduction of salary in the War Office. Incidentally he remarked that "since 1810 not fewer than twenty-six clerks had died of pulmonary complaints, and disorders arising from sedentary habits."

Milton was the portrait, already described, which had been left to Lamb.

Lamb gave it as a dowry to Emma Isola when she became Mrs. Moxon.

"My meeting with Dodd ... Malvolio story." In the essay "The Old Actors," in the London Magazine for February, 1822 (see Vol. II. of this edition).

"Our chief reputed a.s.sistants." Hazlitt had left the _London Magazine_; Scott, the original editor, was dead.

De Quincey, whose _Confessions of an Opium-Eater_ were appearing in its pages, has left a record of a visit to the Lambs about this time. See his "London Reminiscences."

"Hartley." Hartley Coleridge, then a young man of twenty-five, was living in London after the unhappy sudden termination of his Oxford career.

Here should come a brief note to Mrs. Norris, dated March 26, 1822, given in the Boston Bibliophile edition.

Here should come a letter from Lamb to William G.o.dwin, dated April 13, in which Lamb remarks that he cannot think how G.o.dwin, who in his writings never expresses himself disrespectfully of any one but his Maker, can have given offence to Rickman. This reminds one of G.o.dwin's remark about Coleridge, "G.o.d bless him--to use a vulgar expression," as recorded by Coleridge in one of his letters. Lamb also said of G.o.dwin (and to him) that he had read more books that were not worth reading than any man in England.]

LETTER 285

CHARLES LAMB TO W. HARRISON AINSWORTH

[Dated at end: May 7, 1822.]

Dear Sir,--I have read your poetry with pleasure. The tales are pretty and prettily told, the language often finely poetical. It is only sometimes a little careless, I mean as to redundancy. I have marked certain pa.s.sages (in pencil only, which will easily obliterate) for your consideration. Excuse this liberty. For the distinction you offer me of a dedication, I feel the honor of it, but I do not think it would advantage the publication. I am hardly on an eminence enough to warrant it. The Reviewers, who are no friends of mine--the two big ones especially who make a point of taking no notice of anything I bring out--may take occasion by it to decry us both. But I leave you to your own judgment. Perhaps, if you wish to give me a kind word, it will be more appropriate _before your republication of Tourneur_.

The "Specimens" would give a handle to it, which the poems might seem to want. But I submit it to yourself with the old recollection that "beggars should not be chusers" and remain with great respect and wis.h.i.+ng success to both your publications

Your obe't. Ser't.