1815 "C. LAMB COMMENCING GENTLEMAN" 475 seemed to have stood there ever since they had sate in them. I write sad nonsense about these things, but I wish you had heard Charles talk his nonsense over and over again about his visit to Franklin, and how he then first felt himself commencing gentleman and had eggs for his breakfast." Charles Lamb commencing gentle man! A lady who is sitting by me seeing what I am doing says I remind her of her husband, who acknowledged that the first love letter he wrote to her was a copy of one he had made use of on a former occasion. This is no letter, but if you give me any encouragement to write again you shall have one entirely to yourself: a little encouragement will do, a few lines to say you are well and remember us. I will keep this tomorrow, maybe Charles will put a few lines to it-I always send off a humdrum letter of mine with great satisfaction if I can get him to freshen it up a little at the end. Let me beg my love to your sister Johanna with many thanks. I have much pleasure in looking forward to her nice bacon, the maker of which I long have had a great desire to see. God bless you, my dear Miss Hutchinson, I remain ever Augst, 20. LETTER 211 (continued) M. LAMB. [Charles Lamb adds :—] DEAR MISS HUTCHINSON, I subscribe most willingly to all my sister says of her Enjoyment at Cambridge. She was in silent raptures all the while there, and came home riding thro' the air (her 1st long outside journey) triumphing as if she had been graduated. I remember one foolish-pretty expression she made use of, "Bless the little churches how pretty they are," as those symbols of civilized life opened upon her view one after the other on this side Cambridge. You cannot proceed a mile without starting a steeple, with its little patch of villagery round it, enverduring the waste. I don't know how you will pardon part of her letter being a transcript, but writing to another Lady first (probably as the easiest task*) it was unnatural not to give you an accot of what had so freshly delighted her, and would have been a piece of transcendant rhetorick (above her modesty) to have given two different accounts of a simple and univocal pleasure. Bless me how learned I write! but I always forget myself when I write to Ladies. One cannot tame one's erudition down to their merely English apprehensions. But this and all other faults you will excuse from yours truly C. LAMB. Our kindest loves to Joanna, if she will accept it from us who are merely nominal to her, and to the child and child's parent. Yours again C. L. [Mary Lamb adds this footnote :—] *"Easiest Task." Not the true reason, but Charles had so connected Coleridge & Cambridge in my mind, by talking so much of him there, and a letter coming so fresh from him, in a manner that was the reason I wrote to them first. I 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. NOTE [I have no idea why this charming letter was held back when Talfourd copied the Lamb-Wordsworth correspondence. I am very glad to be able to print it now. 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 (see page 405). "Oliver Cromwell." The portrait by Cooper at Sidney Sussex College. Marmaduke 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 212 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 1815 MATILDA BETHAM 477 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. If I knew where to find you I would call upon you. Should 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. Yours most affectionately M. LAMB. NOTE [The letter refers again to The Lay of Marie. Here should come a letter from Lamb to Matilda Betham (franked by John Rickman, September 13, 1815), not available for this edition, in which Lamb apologises for delay in revising Miss Betham's Lay of Marie. Mary Matilda Betham, whom we have already met, had written a very charming poem on the subject of Marie, a poetess who figured among the Anglo-Norman trouveurs of the thirteenth century. Both Lamb and Southey helped her with counsel. The poem was published in 1816. In another undated letter on the same subject (printed by Mr. W. C. Hazlitt in The Lambs) Lamb expresses his willingness to finish the proofs of The Lay of Marie (he calls it just "Mary "), but says he cannot undertake anything else. Apparently he found the task impossible, and Mary Lamb had just been taken ill again. The next letter, which is undated, refers to the same matter.] DR LETTER 213 CHARLES LAMB TO MATILDA BETHAM 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. 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? I 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. 1815 MARY LAMB'S ILLNESS NOTE 479 [In the passage concerning work and leisure we see another hint of the sonnet (printed on page 646) which Lamb was to write a little later. "Otium cum vel "Ease either with or without dignity." Here should come two notes to William Ayrton, printed by Mr. Macdonald, referring to the musical use of the word "air.”] DE LETTER 214 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 Letter, for Mary has been ill and gone from home 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. I 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 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. God bless you. I hear nothing from Coleridge. Yours truly C. LAMB. |