1816 George III. 523 old woman shewed it to us. She had lived twenty six years there and spoke with such a hearty love of our good old King, whom all the world seems to have forgotten, that it did me good to hear her. She was as proud in pointing out the plain furniture (and I am sure you are now sitting in a larger and better furnished room) of a small room in which the King always dined, nay more proud of the simplicity of her royal master's taste, than any shower of Carlton House can be in showing the fine things there, and so she was when she made us remark the smallness of one of the Princesses' bedrooms, and said she slept and also dressed in that little room. There are a great many good pictures but I was most pleased with one of the King when he was about two years old, such a pretty little white-headed boy. I cannot express how much pleasure a letter from you gives us. If I could promise my self I should be always as well as I am now, I would say I will be a better correspondent in future. If Charles has time to add a line I shall be less ashamed to send this hasty scrawl. Love to all and every one. How much I should like once more to see Miss Wordsworth's handwriting, if she would but write a postscript to your next, which I look to receive in a few days. Yours affectionately [Charles Lamb adds at the head :—] M. LAMB. Mary has barely left me room to say How d'ye. I have received back the Examiner containing the delicate enquiry into certain infirm parts of S. T. C.'s character. What is the general opinion of it? Farewell. My love to all. ["Miss Brent." Mrs. Morgan's sister. C. LAMB. Crabb Robinson had been in the Lake Country in September and October. of "To a shop near the Temple." Possibly to Mr. A Flower-de-Luce Court, mentioned by Lamb in the footnote to his essay "On the Melancholy of Tailors" (see Vol. I.). "Our good old King "-George Carlton House was the home of the probably his sister) detested-as his and other squibs (see Vol. IV.) show. III., then in retirement. Regent, whom Lamb (and " Triumph of the Whale' Here should come a letter to Rickman, dated December 30, 1816. The chief news in it is that George Dyer has been made one of Lord Stanhope's ten Residuary Legatees. This, says Lamb, will settle Dyer's fate: he will have to throw his dirty glove at some one and marry.] LETTER 234 MARY LAMB TO SARAH HUTCHINSON [No date. ? Late 1816.] My dear Miss Hutchinson, I had intended to write you a long letter, but as my frank is dated I must send it off with a bare acknowledgment of the receipt of your kind letter. One question I must hastily ask you. Do you think Mr. Wordsworth would have any reluctance to write (strongly recommending to their patronage) to any of his rich friends in London to solicit employment for Miss Betham as a Miniature Painter? If you give me hopes that he will not be averse to do this, I will write to you more fully stating the infinite good he would do by performing so irksome a task as I know asking favours to be. In brief, she has contracted debts for printing her beautiful poem of " Marie," which like all things of original excellence does not sell at all. These debts have led to little accidents unbecoming a woman and a poetess to suffer. Retirement with such should be voluntary. [Charles Lamb adds :-] The Bell rings. I just snatch the Pen out of my sister's hand to finish rapidly. Wordswth, may tell De Q that Miss B's price for a Virgin and Child is three guineas. Yours (all of you) ever C. L. ["De Q"-Thomas de Quincey (1785-1859), the "opium-eater," then living at Grasmere. Lamb and De Quincey had first met in 1804; but it was not until 1821 that they became really intimate, when Lamb introduced him to the London Magazine. Miss Betham painted miniature portraits, among others, of Mrs. S. T. Coleridge and Sara Coleridge. Here should come a note to William Ayrton dated April 18, 1817, thanking him for much pleasure at "Don Giovanni" (see note to next letter). Somewhen in 1816 should come a letter from Lamb to Leigh Hunt on the publication of The Story of Rimini, mentioned in Leigh Hunt's Correspondence, of which this is the only sentence 1817 Music and Rhyme 525 that is preserved: "The third Canto is in particular my favourite : we congratulate you most sincerely on the trait [? taste] of your prison fruit."] There'd be many a damn let At my presumption Being a fellow of no gumption. By the way, tell me candidly how you relish This, which they call The lapidary style? The late Mr. Mellish And coxcombical. My friend the Poet Laureat, Was the first who tried it; But Mellish could never abide it. But it signifies very little what Mellish said, Because he is dead. For who can confute A body that's mute ?— Or who would fight With a senseless sprite ?— Or think of troubling An impenetrable old goblin And stiff as stone, To convince him with arguments pro and con, As if some live logician, Bred up at Merton, Or Mr. Hazlitt, the Metaphysician Hey, Mr. Ayrton ! With all your rare tone. For tell me how should an apparition Though you talk'd for ever,— When his ear itself, By which he must hear, or not hear at all, 1817 A Brighton Holiday Or put the case (For more grace) It were a female spectre- In long speeches, With her tongue as dry as dust, Where no peaches, 527 Nor lemons, nor limes, nor oranges hang, With their sweet drench, The fiery pangs which the worms inflict, Which the corpse may dislike, but can ne'er contradict- With all your rare tone I am. C. LAMB. [The text is from Ayrton's transcript in a private volume lately in the possession of Mr. Edward Ayrton, lettered Lamb's Works, Vol. III., uniform with the 1818 edition. William Ayrton (1777-1858), a friend and neighbour of the Burneys, and a member of Lamb's whist-playing set, was a musical critic, and at this time director of the King's Theatre in the Haymarket, where he had just produced Mozart's "Don Giovanni." His wife was Marianne Arnold, sister of Samuel James Arnold, manager of the Lyceum Theatre. "You might pit me for height against Kean." This was so. Edmund Kean was small in stature, though not so "immaterially" built as Lamb is said to have been. "Mr. Mellish." Possibly the Joseph Charles Mellish who translated Schiller. The Laureate, Southey, had first tried the lapidary style in "Gooseberry Pie"; later, without rhymes, in "Thalaba." Some time in the intervening three months before the next letter the Lambs went to Brighton for their holiday.] |