The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb Volume VI Part 32

Love and recollects to all the Wms. Doras, Maries round your Wrekin.

Mary is capitally well.

Do write to Sir G.B. for I am shyish of applying to him.

[Coleridge had been appointed to one of the ten Royal a.s.sociates.h.i.+ps of the newly chartered Royal Society of Literature, thus becoming ent.i.tled to an annuity of 100 guineas. An essay was expected from each a.s.sociate.

Coleridge wrote on the _Prometheus_ of Aeschylus, and read it on May 18.

His book was _Aids to Reflection_. See note on page 734.

"I shall miss my thirds." Lamb's pension was two-thirds of his stipend.

"Some d-----d people." A hint for Lamb's Popular Fallacy on Home, soon to be written.

"Round your Wrekin." Lamb repeats this phrase twice in the next few months. He got it from the Dedication to Farquhar's play "The Recruiting Officer"--"To all friends round the Wrekin."

Here perhaps should come a letter to Mrs. Norris printed in the Boston Bibliophile edition containing some very interesting comic verses on England somewhat in the manner of _Don Juan_--

I like the weather when it's not too rainy, That is, I like two months of every year,

and so on.]

LETTER 373

CHARLES LAMB TO CHARLES CHAMBERS

[Undated. ? May, 1825.]

With regard to a John-dory, which you desire to be particularly informed about, I honour the fish, but it is rather on account of Quin who patronised it, and whose taste (of a _dead_ man) I had as lieve go by as anybody's (Apicius and Heliogabalus excepted--this latter started nightingales' tongues and peac.o.c.ks' brains as a garnish).

Else in _itself_, and trusting to my own poor single judgment, it hath not that moist mellow oleaginous gliding smooth descent from the tongue to the palate, thence to the stomach, &c., that your Brighton Turbot hath, which I take to be the most friendly and familiar flavor of any that swims--most genial and at home to the palate.

Nor has it on the other hand that fine falling off flakiness, that oleaginous peeling off (as it were, like a sea onion), which endears your cod's head & shoulders to some appet.i.tes; that manly firmness, combined with a sort of womanish coming-in-pieces, which the same cod's head & shoulders hath, where the whole is easily separable, pliant to a knife or a spoon, but each individual flake presents a pleasing resistance to the opposed tooth. You understand me--these delicate subjects are necessarily obscure.

But it has a third flavor of its own, perfectly distinct from Cod or Turbot, which it must be owned may to some not injudicious palates render it acceptable--but to my unpractised tooth it presented rather a crude river-fish-flavor, like your Pike or Carp, and perhaps like them should have been tamed & corrected by some laborious & well chosen sauce. Still I always suspect a fish which requires so much of artificial settings-off. Your choicest relishes (like nature's loveliness) need not the foreign aid of ornament, but are when unadorned (that is, with nothing but a little plain anchovy & a squeeze of lemon) then adorned the most. However, I shall go to Brighton again next Summer, and shall have an opportunity of correcting my judgment, if it is not sufficiently informed. I can only say that when Nature was pleased to make the John Dory so notoriously deficient in outward graces (as to be sure he is the very Rhinoceros of fishes, the ugliest dog that swims, except perhaps the Sea Satyr, which I never saw, but which they say is terrible), when she formed him with so few external advantages, she might have bestowed a more elaborate finish in his parts internal, & have given him a relish, a sapor, to recommend him, as she made Pope a Poet to make up for making him crooked.

I am sorry to find that you have got a knack of saying things which are not true to shew your wit. If I had no wit but what I must shew at the expence of my virtue or my modesty, I had as lieve be as stupid as * * *

at the Tea Warehouse. Depend upon it, my dear Chambers, that an ounce of integrity at our death-bed will stand us in more avail than all the wit of Congreve or... For instance, you tell me a fine story about Truss, and his playing at Leamington, which I know to be false, because I have advice from Derby that he was whipt through the Town on that very day you say he appeared in some character or other, for robbing an old woman at church of a seal ring. And Dr. Parr has been two months dead. So it won't do to scatter these untrue stories about among people that know any thing. Besides, your forte is not invention. It is _judgment_, particularly shown in your choice of dishes. We seem in that instance born under one star. I like you for liking hare. I esteem you for disrelis.h.i.+ng minced veal. Liking is too cold a word.--I love you for your n.o.ble attachment to the fat unctuous juices of deer's flesh & the green unspeakable of turtle. I honour you for your endeavours to esteem and approve of my favorite, which I ventured to recommend to you as a subst.i.tute for hare, bullock's heart, and I am not offended that you cannot taste it with _my_ palate. A true son of Epicurus should reserve one taste peculiar to himself. For a long time I kept the secret about the exceeding deliciousness of the marrow of boiled knuckle of veal, till my tongue weakly ran riot in its praises, and now it is prost.i.tute & common.--But I have made one discovery which I will not impart till my dying scene is over, perhaps it will be my last mouthful in this world: delicious thought, enough to sweeten (or rather make savoury) the hour of death. It is a little square bit about this size in or near the knuckle bone of a fried joint of... fat I can't call it nor lean

[Ill.u.s.tration: Handrawn sketch]

neither altogether, it is that beautiful compound, which Nature must have made in Paradise Park venison, before she separated the two substances, the dry & the oleaginous, to punish sinful mankind; Adam ate them entire & inseparate, and this little taste of Eden in the knuckle bone of a fried... seems the only relique of a Paradisaical state. When I die, an exact description of its topography shall be left in a cupboard with a key, inscribed on which these words, "C. Lamb dying imparts this to C. Chambers as the only worthy depository of such a secret." You'll drop a tear....

[Charles Chambers was the brother of John Chambers (see above). He had been at Christ's Hospital with Lamb and subsequently became a surgeon in the Navy. He retired to Leamington and practised there until his death, somewhen about 1857, says Mr. Hazlitt. He seems to have inherited some of the epicure's tastes of his father, the "sensible clergyman in Warwicks.h.i.+re" who, Lamb tells us in "Thoughts on Presents of Game,"

"used to allow a pound of Epping to every hare."

This letter adds one more to the list of Lamb's gustatory raptures, and it is remarkable as being his only eulogy of fish. Mr. Hazlitt says that the date September 1, 1817, has been added by another hand; but if the remark about Dr. Parr is true (he died March 6, 1825) the time is as I have stated. Fortunately the date in this particular case is unimportant. Mr. Hazlitt suggests that the stupid person in the Tea Warehouse was Bye, whom we met recently.

Of Truss we know nothing. The name may be a misreading of Twiss (Horace Twiss, 1787-1849, politician, buffoon, and Mrs. Siddons' nephew), who was quite a likely person to be lied about in joke at that time.

Here should come a note to Allsop dated May 29, 1825, changing an appointment: "I am as mad as the devil." Given in the Boston Bibliophile edition.]

LETTER 374

CHARLES LAMB TO S.T. COLERIDGE

[? June, 1825.]

My dear Coleridge,--With pain and grief, I must entreat you to excuse us on Thursday. My head, though externally correct, has had a severe concussion in my long illness, and the very idea of an engagement hanging over for a day or two, forbids my rest; and I get up miserable.

I am not well enough for company. I do a.s.sure you, no other thing prevents my coming. I expect Field and his brothers this or to-morrow evening, and it worries me to death that I am not ostensibly ill enough to put 'em off. I will get better, when I shall hope to see your nephew.

He will come again. Mary joins in best love to the Gillmans. Do, I earnestly entreat you, excuse me. I a.s.sure you, again, that I am not fit to go out yet.

Yours (though shattered), C. LAMB.

Tuesday.

[This letter has previously been dated 1829, but I think wrongly. Lamb had no long illness then, and Field was then in Gibraltar, where he was Chief-Justice. Lamb's long illness was in 1825, when Coleridge's Thursday evenings at Highgate were regular. Coleridge's nephew may have been one of several. I fancy it was the Rev. Edward Coleridge. Henry Nelson Coleridge had already left, I think, for the West Indies.]

LETTER 375

CHARLES LAMB TO HENRY COLBURN (?)

[Dated at end: June 14 (? 1825).]

Dear Sir,

I am quite ashamed, after your kind letter, of having expressed any disappointment about my remuneration. It is quite equivalent to the value of any thing I have yet sent you. I had Twenty Guineas a sheet from the London; and what I did for them was more worth that sum, than any thing, I am afraid, I can now produce, would be worth the lesser sum. I used up all my best thoughts in that publication, and I do not like to go on writing worse & worse, & feeling that I do so. I want to try something else. However, if any subject turns up, which I think will do your Magazine no discredit, you shall have it at _your_ price, or something between _that_ and my old price. I prefer writing to seeing you just now, for after such a letter as I have received from you, in truth I am ashamed to see you. We will never mention the thing again.

Your obliged friend & Serv't

C. LAMB.

June 14.

[In the absence of any wrapper I have a.s.sumed this note to be addressed to Colburn, the publisher of the _New Monthly Magazine_. Lamb's first contribution to that periodical was "The Ill.u.s.trious Defunct" (see Vol.

I. of this edition) in January, 1825. A year later he began the "Popular Fallacies," and continued regularly for some months.]

LETTER 376