1815 The "Severe Censor" 503 make this apology perhaps quite unnecessarily, but I am of a very jealous temper myself, and more than once recollect having been offended at seeing kind expressions which had particularly pleased me in a friend's letter repeated word for word to another-Farewell once more. [I have no idea why this charming letter was held back when Talfourd copied the Lamb-Wordsworth correspondence. The name of the young man who showed the Lambs such courtesy is not known. 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 Sussex 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.] MY LETTER 223 MARY LAMB TO MATILDA BETHAM [No date. ? Late summer, 1815.] Y 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 manuscript 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 manuscript which has passed 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. Should If I knew where to find you I would call upon you. 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. EAR Miss Betham,-That accursed word trill has vexed referred to the MS. and ce the printer is exonerated, it is much more like a tr than a k. But what shall I say of myself? I If you can trust me hereafter, I will be more careful. 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 pass 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 3d 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.] 1815 DR A Letter to a Lady LETTER 225 CHARLES LAMB TO MATILDA BETHAM 505 R 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 independt fortune. O darling Laziness! heaven of Epicurus! Saints Everlasting Rest! that I could drink vast potations of thee thro' unmeasured Eternity. Otium cum vel sine dignitate. Scandalous, dishonerable, any-kind-of-repose. I stand not upon the dignified sort. Accursed damned 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 scrape. I am ashamed, but I know no remedy. My unwellness must be my apology. God 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 nobody 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 passage 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. EAR Miss H.-I am forced to be the replier to your I 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. 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 God'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 assailable, 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 1815 Christmas in China 507 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. I hear nothing from Coleridge. Yours truly God bless you. C. LAMB. [Mary Lamb had recovered from her preceding attack in February. She did not recover from the present illness until De cember. "The wind is tempered to the shorn Lambs." "But God 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 (née Lloyd) died this month, aged thirty-three. 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.] DEAR LETTER 227 CHARLES LAMB TO THOMAS MANNING Dec. 25th, 1815. EAR old friend and absentee,-This is Christmas-day 1815 with us; what it may be with you I don't know, the 12th of June next year perhaps; and if it should be the consecrated season with you, I don't see how you can keep it. You have no turkeys; you would not desecrate the festival by offering up a withered Chinese bantam, instead of the savoury grand Norfolcian holocaust, that smokes all around my nostrils at this moment from a thousand firesides. Then what puddings have you? Where will you get holly to stick in your churches, or churches to stick your dried tea-leaves (that must be the substitute) in? What memorials you can have of the holy time, I see not. A chopped missionary or two may keep up the thin idea of Lent and the wilderness; but what standing evidence have you of the Nativity ?-'tis our rosy-cheeked, homestalled divines, whose faces shine to the tune of unto us a child; faces fragrant with the mince-pies of half a century, that alone can authenticate the cheerful mystery-I feel. I feel my bowels refreshed with the holy tide-my zeal is great against the unedified heathen. Down with the Pagodas -down with the idols-Ching-chong-fo--and his foolish priest |