LETTER 236 CHARLES LAMB TO BARRON FIELD Aug. 31st, 1817. MY Y dear Barron,--The bearer of this letter so far across the seas is Mr. Lawrey, who comes out to you as a missionary, and whom I have been strongly importuned to recommend to you as a most worthy creature by Mr. Fenwick, a very old, honest friend of mine, of whom, if my memory does not deceive me, you have had some knowledge heretofore as editor of the "Statesman "- -a man of talent, and patriotic. If you can show him any facilities in his arduous undertaking, you will oblige us much. Well, and how does the land of thieves use you? and how do you pass your time in your extra-judicial intervals? Going about the streets with a lantern, like Diogenes, looking for an honest man? You may look long enough, I fancy. Do give me some notion of the manners of the inhabitants where you are. They don't thieve all day long, do they? No human property could stand such continuous battery. And what do they do when they an't stealing? Have you got a theatre? What pieces are performed? Shakespear's, I suppose-not so much for the poetry, as for his having once been in danger of leaving his country on account of certain "small deer." Have you poets among you? Cursed plagiarists, I fancy, if you have any. I would not trust an idea or a pockethandkerchief of mine among 'em. You are almost competent to answer Lord Bacon's problem, whether a nation of atheists can subsist together. You are practically in one : "So thievish 'tis, that the eighth commandment itself Our old honest world goes on with little perceptible variation. Of course you have heard of poor Mitchell's death, and that G. Dyer is one of Lord Stanhope's residuaries. I am afraid he has not touched much of the residue yet. He is positively as lean as Cassius. Barnes is going to Demerara or Essequibo, I am not quite certain which. A[lsager] is turned actor. He came out in genteel comedy at Cheltenham this season, and has hopes of a London engagement. 1817 To the Antipodes 529 For my own history, I am just in the same spot, doing the same thing (videlicet, little or nothing,) as when you left me; only I have positive hopes that I shall be able to conquer that inveterate habit of smoking which you may remember I indulged in. I think of making a beginning this evening, viz., Sunday 31st August, 1817, not Wednesday, 2nd Feb., 1818, as it will be perhaps when you read this for the first time. There is the difficulty of writing from one end of the globe (hemispheres I call 'em) to another! Why, half the truths I have sent you in this letter will become lies before they reach you, and some of the lies (which I have mixed for variety's sake, and to exercise your judgment in the finding of them out) may be turned into sad realities before you shall be called upon to detect them. Such are the defects of going by different chronologies. Your now is not my now; and again, your then is not my then; but my now may be your then, and vice versa. Whose head is competent to these things? How does Mrs. Field get on in her geography? Does she know where she is by this time? I am not sure sometimes you are not in another planet; but then I don't like to ask Capt. Burney, or any of those that know anything about it, for fear of exposing my ignorance. Our kindest remembrances, however, to Mrs. F., if she will accept of reminiscences from another planet, or at least another hemisphere. C. L. [This is Lamb's first letter that has been preserved to Barron Field. Barron Field (1786-1846) was a lawyer, a son of Henry Field, apothecary to Christ's Hospital, and brother of a fellow-clerk of Lamb's in the India House. He had also been a contributor to Leigh Hunt's Reflector in 1810-1812. Field was appointed Judge of the Supreme Court of New South Wales, whither he sailed in 1816, reaching Sydney in February, 1817. His wife was a Miss Jane Carncroft. This letter forms the groundwork of Lamb's Elia essay on "Distant Correspondents " (see Vol. II.), which may be read with it as an example of the difference in richness between Lamb's epistolary and finished literary style. "So thievish 'tis The Ancient Mariner : A perversion of Coleridge's lines, in So lonely 'twas, that God himself Scarce seemed there to be. "Poor Mitchell's death." This may have been one of the lies referred to a little lower. If so, Thomas Mitchell (1783-1845) was probably intended, as he had been at Christ's Hospital, and was a friend of Leigh Hunt's, and might thus have known Lamb and Field. He translated Aristophanes. The only Mitchell of any importance who died in 1817 was Colonel Mitchell, who commanded a brigade at Waterloo; but Lamb would hardly know any. thing of him. George Dyer, who had been tutor in the family of the third Earl of Stanhope (Citizen Stanhope), was one of the ten executors to whom that peer's estate was left, after paying a few legacies. Among them was another of Lamb's acquaintances, Joseph Jekyll, mentioned in the Elia essay on the Old Benchers. Dyer repudiated the office, but the heir persuaded him to accept an annuity. Thomas Barnes (1785-1841), another old Christ's Hospitaller, and a contributor to The Reflector, became editor of The Times in 1817. His projected journey was one of the "lies"; nor did Alsager, another Times man, whom we have already met, turn actor.] LETTER 237 CHARLES LAMB TO JAMES AND LOUISA KENNEY DEAR Londres, October, [1817]. EAR Friends,---It is with infinite regret I inform you that the pleasing privilege of receiving letters, by which I have for these twenty years gratified my friends and abused the liberality of the Company trading to the Orient, is now at an end. A cruel edict of the Directors has swept it away altogether. The devil sweep away their patronage also. Rascals who think nothing of sponging upon their employers for their Venison and Turtle and Burgundy five days in a week, to the tune of five thousand pounds in a year, now find out that the profits of trade will not allow the innocent communication of thought between their underlings and their friends in distant provinces to proceed untaxed, thus withering up the heart of friendship and making the news of a friend's good health worse than indifferent, as tidings to be deprecated as bringing with it ungracious expenses. Adieu, gentle correspondence, kindly conveyance of soul, interchange of love, of opinions, of puns and what not! Henceforth a friend that does not stand in visible or palpable distance to me, is nothing to me. They have not left to the bosom of friendship even that cheap intercourse of sentiment the twopenny medium. The upshot is, you must not direct any more letters through me. To me 1817 Mrs. Godwin 531 you may annually, or biennially, transmit a brief account of your goings on [on] a single sheet, from which after I have deducted as much as the postage comes to, the remainder will be pure pleasure. But no more of those pretty commissions and counter commissions, orders and revoking of orders, obscure messages and obscurer explanations, by which the intellects of Marshall and Fanny used to be kept in a pleasing perplexity, at the moderate rate of six or seven shillings a week. In short, you must use me no longer as a go-between. Henceforth I write up NO THOROUGHFARE. Well, and how far is Saint Valery from Paris; and do you get wine and walnuts tolerable; and the vintage, does it suffer from the wet? I take it, the wine of this season will be all wine and water; and have you any plays and green rooms, and Fanny Kellies to chat with of an evening; and is the air purer than the old gravel pits, and the bread so much whiter, as they say? Lord, what things you see that travel! I dare say the people are all French wherever you go. What an overwhelming effect that must have! I have stood one of 'em at a time, but two I generally found overpowering, I used to cut and run; but, then, in their own vineyards may be they are endurable enough. They say marmosets in Senegambia are so pleasant as the day's long, jumping and chattering in the orange twigs; but transport 'em, one by one, over here into England, they turn into monkeys, some with tails, some without, and are obliged to be kept in cages. I suppose you know we've left the Temple pro tempore. By the way, this conduct has caused strange surmises in a good lady of our acquaintance. She lately sent for a young gentleman of the India House, who lives opposite her, at Monroe's, the flute shop in Skinner Street, Snow Hill,-I mention no name, you shall never get out of me what lady I mean,-on purpose to ask all he knew about us. I had previously introduced him to her whist-table. Her inquiries embraced every possible thing that could be known of me, how I stood in the India house, what was the amount of my salary, what it was likely to be hereafter, whether I was thought to be clever in business, why I had taken country lodgings, why at Kingsland in particular, had I friends in that road, was anybody expected to visit me, did I wish for visitors, would an unexpected call be gratifying or not, would it be better if she sent beforehand, did anybody come to see me, wasn't there a gentleman of the name of Morgan, did he know him, didn't he come to see me, did he know how Mr. Morgan lived, she never could make out how they were maintained, was it true that he lived out of the profits of a linendraper's shop in Bishopsgate Street (there she was a little right, and a little wrong-M. is a gentleman tobacconist); in short, she multiplied demands upon him till my friend, who is neither overmodest nor nervous, declared he quite shuddered. After laying as bare to her curiosity as an anatomy he trembled to think what she would ask next. My pursuits, inclinations, aversions, attachments (some, my dear friends, of a most delicate nature), she lugged 'em out of him, or would, had he been privy to them, as you pluck a horse-bean from its iron stem, not as such tender rosebuds should be pulled. The fact is I am come to Kingsland, and that is the real truth of the matter, and nobody but yourselves should have extorted such a confession from me. I suppose you have seen by the Papers that Manning is arrived in England. He expressed some mortifications at not finding Mrs. Kenney in England. He looks a good deal sunburnt, and is got a little reserved, but I hope it will wear off. You will see by the Papers also that Dawe is knighted. He has been painting the Princess of Coborg and her husband. This is all the news I could think of. Write to us, but not by us, for I have near ten correspondents of this latter description, and one or other comes pouring in every day, till my purse strings and heart strings crack. Bad habits are not broken at once. I am sure you will excuse the apparent indelicacy of mentioning this, but dear is my shirt, but dearer is my skin, and it's too late when the steed is stole, to shut the door.-Well, and does Louisa grow a fine girl, is she likely to have her mother's complexion, and does Tom polish in French air-Henry I mean—and Kenney is not so fidgety, and YOU sit down sometimes for a quiet half-hour or so, and all is comfortable, no bills (that you call writs) nor anything else (that you are equally sure to miscall) to annoy you? Vive la gaite de cœur et la bell pastime, vive la beau France et revive ma cher Empreur. C. LAMB. [James Kenney and his wife were now living at St. Valery. Marshall was Godwin's old friend, whom we have already seen, and Fanny was Fanny Holcroft. |