The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb Volume VI Part 99

"By Cot's plessing we will not be absence at the grace."

DEAR C.,--We long to see you, and hear account of your peregrinations, of the Tun at Heidelburg, the Clock at Strasburg, the statue at Rotterdam, the dainty Rhenish and poignant Moselle wines, Westphalian hams, and Botargoes of Altona. But perhaps you have seen nor tasted any of these things.

Yours, very glad to claim you back again to your proper centre, books and Bibliothecae,

C. AND M. LAMB.

I have only got your note just now _per negligentiam per iniqui Moxoni_.

[Charles and Mary Lamb at this time were supposed to dine at Cary's on the third Wednesday in every month. When the plan was suggested by Cary, Lamb was for declining, but Mary Lamb said, "Ah, when we went to Edmonton, I told Charles that something would turn up, and so it did, you see."]

LETTER 610

CHARLES LAMB TO H.F. CARY

Oct., 1834.

I protest I know not in what words to invest my sense of the shameful violation of hospitality, which I was guilty of on that fatal Wednesday.

Let it be blotted from the calendar. Had it been committed at a layman's house, say a merchant's or manufacturer's, a cheesemonger's' or greengrocer's, or, to go higher, a barrister's, a member of Parliament's, a rich banker's, I should have felt alleviation, a drop of self-pity. But to be seen deliberately to go out of the house of a clergyman drunk! a clergyman of the Church of England too! not that alone, but of an expounder of that dark Italian Hierophant, an exposition little short of _his_ who dared unfold the Apocalypse: divine riddles both and (without supernal grace vouchsafed) Arks not to be fingered without present blasting to the touchers. And, then, from what house! Not a common glebe or vicarage (which yet had been shameful), but from a kingly repository of sciences, human and divine, with the primate of England for its guardian, arrayed in public majesty, from which the profane vulgar are bid fly. Could all those volumes have taught me nothing better! With feverish eyes on the succeeding dawn I opened upon the faint light, enough to distinguish, in a strange chamber not immediately to be recognised, garters, hose, waistcoat, neckerchief, arranged in dreadful order and proportion, which I knew was not mine own. 'Tis the common symptom, on awaking, I judge my last night's condition from. A tolerable scattering on the floor I hail as being too probably my own, and if the candlestick be not removed, I a.s.soil myself.

But this finical arrangement, this finding everything in the morning in exact diametrical rect.i.tude, torments me. By whom was I divested?

Burning blushes! not by the fair hands of nymphs, the Buffam Graces?

Remote whispers suggested that I _coached_ it home in triumph--far be that from working pride in me, for I was unconscious of the locomotion; that a young Mentor accompanied a reprobate old Telemachus; that, the Trojan like, he bore his charge upon his shoulders, while the wretched incubus, in glimmering sense, hiccuped drunken s.n.a.t.c.hes of flying on the bats' wings after sunset. An aged servitor was also hinted at, to make disgrace more complete: one, to whom my ignominy may offer further occasions of revolt (to which he was before too fondly inclining) from the true faith; for, at a sight of my helplessness, what more was needed to drive him to the advocacy of independency? Occasion led me through Great Russell Street yesterday. I gazed at the great knocker. My feeble hands in vain essayed to lift it. I dreaded that Argus Port.i.tor, who doubtless lanterned me out on that prodigious night. I called the Elginian marbles. They were cold to my suit. I shall never again, I said, on the wide gates unfolding, say without fear of thrusting back, in a light but a peremptory air, "I am going to Mr. Cary's." I pa.s.sed by the walls of Balclutha. I had imaged to myself a zodiac of third Wednesdays irradiating by glimpses the Edmonton dulness. I dreamed of Highmore! I am de-vited to come on Wednesdays. Villanous old age that, with second childhood, brings linked hand in hand her inseparable twin, new inexperience, which knows not effects of liquor. Where I was to have sate for a sober, middle-aged-and-a-half gentleman, literary too, the neat-fingered artist can educe no notions but of a dissolute Silenus, lecturing natural philosophy to a jeering Chromius or a Mnasilus. Pudet.

From the context gather the lost name of ----.

["The Buffam Graces." Lamb's landladies at Southampton Buildings.

"I pa.s.sed by the walls of Balclutha." From Ossian. Lamb uses this quotation in his _Elia_ essay on the South-Sea House.

"Highmore." I cannot explain this reference.

Not long before Mrs. Procter's death a letter from Charles Lamb to Mrs.

Basil Montagu was sold, in which Lamb apologised for having become intoxicated while visiting her the night before. Some one mentioned the letter in Mrs. Procter's presence. "Ah," she said, "but they haven't seen the second letter, which I have upstairs, written next day, in which he said that my mother might ask him again with safety as he never got drunk twice in the same house." Unhappily, a large number of Lamb's and other letters were burned by Mrs. Procter.]

LETTER 611

CHARLES LAMB TO H.F. CARY

[Oct. 18, 1834.]

Dear Sir,--The unbounded range of munificence presented to my choice staggers me. What can twenty votes do for one hundred and two widows? I cast my eyes hopeless among the viduage. N.B.--Southey might be ashamed of himself to let his aged mother stand at the top of the list, with his 100 a year and b.u.t.t of sack. Sometimes I sigh over No. 12, Mrs.

Carve-ill, some poor relation of mine, no doubt. No. 15 has my wishes; but then she is a Welsh one. I have Ruth upon No. 21. I'd tug hard for No. 24. No. 25 is an anomaly: there can be no Mrs. Hogg. No. 34 ensnares me. No. 73 should not have met so foolish a person. No. 92 may bob it as she likes; but she catches no cherry of me. So I have even fixed at hap-hazard, as you'll see.

Yours, every third Wednesday,

C.L.

[Talfourd states that the note is in answer to a letter enclosing a list of candidates for a Widow's Fund Society, for which he was ent.i.tled to vote. A Mrs. Southey headed the list.

Here, according to Mr. Hazlitt's dating, should come a note from Lamb to Mrs. Randal Norris, belonging to November, in which Lamb says that he found Mary on his return no worse and she is now no better. He sends all his nonsense that he can sc.r.a.pe together and hopes the young ladies will like "Amwell" (_Mrs. Leicester's School_).]

LETTER 612

CHARLES LAMB TO MR. CHILDS

Monday. Church Street, EDMONTON (not Enfield, as you erroneously direct yours). [? Dec., 1834.]

Dear Sir,--The volume which you seem to want, is not to be had for love or money. I with difficulty procured a copy for myself. Yours is gone to enlighten the tawny Hindoos. What a supreme felicity to the author (only he is no traveller) on the Ganges or Hydaspes (Indian streams) to meet a s.m.u.tty Gentoo ready to burst with laughing at the tale of Bo-Bo! for doubtless it hath been translated into all the dialects of the East. I grieve the less, that Europe should want it. I cannot gather from your letter, whether you are aware that a second series of the Essays is published by Moxon, in Dover-street, Piccadilly, called "The Last Essays of Elia," and, I am told, is not inferior to the former. Shall I order a copy for you, and will you accept it? Shall I _lend_ you, at the same time, my sole copy of the former volume (Oh! return it) for a month or two? In return, you shall favour me with the loan of one of those Norfolk-bred grunters that you laud so highly; I promise not to keep it above a day. What a funny name Bungay is! I never dreamt of a correspondent thence. I used to think of it as some Utopian town or borough in Gotham land. I now believe in its existence, as part of merry England!

[_Some lines scratched out._]

The part I have scratched out is the best of the letter. Let me have your commands.

CH. LAMB, _alias_ ELIA.

[Talfourd thus explains this letter: "In December, 1834, Mr. Lamb received a letter from a gentleman, a stranger to him--Mr. Childs of Bungay, whose copy of _Elia_ had been sent on an Oriental voyage, and who, in order to replace it, applied to Mr. Lamb." Mr. Childs was a printer. His business subsequently became that of Messrs. R.&R. Clark, which still flourishes.

This letter practically disposes of the statement made by more than one bibliographer that a second edition of Elia was published in 1833. The tale of Bo-Bo is in the "Dissertation on Roast Pig."

Lamb sent Mr. Childs a copy of _John Woodvil_, in which he wrote:--]

LETTER 613

FROM THE AUTHOR

In great haste, the Pig was _faultless_,--we got decently merry after it and chirpt and sang "Heigh! Bessy Bungay!" in honour of the Sender. Pray let me have a line to say you got the Books; keep the _1st vol._--two or three months, so long as it comes home at last.

LETTER 614

CHARLES LAMB TO MRS. GEORGE DYER

Dec. 22nd, 1834.

Dear Mrs. Dyer,--I am very uneasy about a _Book_ which I either have lost or left at your house on Thursday. It was the book I went out to fetch from Miss Buffam's, while the tripe was frying. It is called Phillip's Theatrum Poetarum; but it is an English book. I think I left it in the parlour. It is Mr. Cary's book, and I would not lose it for the world. Pray, if you find it, book it at the Swan, Snow Hill, by an Edmonton stage immediately, directed to Mr. Lamb, Church-street, Edmonton, or write to say you cannot find it. I am quite anxious about it. If it is lost, I shall never like tripe again.

With kindest love to Mr. Dyer and all,