1817 THE KENNEYS 505 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. NOTE [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. Lamb's friend Fanny Kelly is first mentioned by Lamb in this letter. Frances Maria Kelly (1790-1882), to give her her full name, was then playing at the Lyceum. We shall soon see much of her. "We've left the Temple pro tempore "-referring to the Dalston lodgings. "What lady I mean." Mrs. Godwin lived in Skinner Street. Manning, on his return from China, was wrecked near Sunda on February 17, 1817. The passengers were taken to St. Helena, and he did not reach England until the summer. This must give us the date of the present letter, previously attributed to October, 1816. George Dawe was not knighted. Probably it was rumoured that he was to be. His portrait of Princess Charlotte of Saxe-Coburg (who died in 1817 so soon after her marriage) was very popular. Louisa would be, I suppose, Louisa Holcroft. There was a Tom Holcroft, in whom later Lamb took some interest.] MY LETTER 226 MARY LAMB TO DOROTHY WORDSWORTH [P.M. November 21, 1817.] Y dear Miss Wordsworth, Your kind letter has given us very great pleasure, the sight of your hand writing was a most welcome surprize to us. We have heard good tidings of you by all our friends who were so fortunate as to visit you this summer, and rejoice to see it confirmed by yourself. You have quite the advantage in volunteering a letter. to so welcome a stranger. There is no merit in replying up We have left the Temple. I think you will be sorry to hear this. I know I have never been so well satisfied with thinking of you at Rydal Mount as when I could connect the idea of you with your own Grasmere Cottage. Our rooms were dirty and out of repair, and the inconveniences of living in chambers became every year more irksome, and so at last we mustered resolution enough to leave the good old place that so long had sheltered us-and here we are, living at a Brazier's shop, No. 20, in Russell Street, Covent Garden, a place all alive with noise and bustle, Drury Lane Theatre in sight from our front and Covent Garden from our back windows. The hubbub of the carriages returning from the play does not annoy me in the least-strange that it does not, for it is quite tremendous. I quite enjoy looking out of the window and listening to the calling up of the carriages and the squabbles of the coachmen and linkboys. It is the oddest scene to look down upon, I am sure you would be amused with it. It is well I am in a chearful place or I should have many misgivings about leaving the Temple. I look forward with great pleasure to the prospect of seeing my good friend Miss Hutchinson. I wish Rydal Mount with all its inhabitants enclosed were to be transplanted with her and to remain stationary in the midst of Covent Garden. I passed through the street lately where Mr. and Mrs. Wordsworth lodged; several fine new houses, which were then just rising out of the ground, are quite finished and a noble entrance made that way into Portland Place. I am very sorry for Mr. De Quincey-what a blunder the poor man made when he took up his dwelling among the mountains. I long to see my friend Py pos. Coleridge is still at Little Hampton with Mrs. Gillman, he has been so ill as to be confined to his room almost the whole time he has been there. Charles has had all his Hogarths bound in a book, they were sent home yesterday, and now that I have them all together and perceive the advantage of peeping close at them through my spectacles I am reconciled to the lossof them hanging round the room, which has been a great mortification to me-in vain I tried to console myself with looking at our new chairs and carpets, for we have got new chairs, and carpets covering all over our two sitting rooms, I missed my old friends and could not be comforted-then I would resolve to learn to look out of the window, a habit I never could attain in my life, and I have given it up as a thing quite impracticable yet when I was at Brighton last summer, the first week I never took my eyes off from the sea, not even to look in a book. I had not seen the sea for sixteen years. Mrs. Morgan, who was with us, kept her liking, and continued her seat in the window till the 1817 God bless you and yours. Love to all and each one. DE LETTER 226 (continued) M. LAMB. CHARLES LAMB TO DOROTHY WORDSWORTH EAR Miss Wordsworth, Here we are, transplanted from our native soil. I thought we never could have been torn up from the Temple. Indeed it was an ugly wrench, but like a tooth, now 'tis out and I am easy. We never can strike root so deep in any other ground. This, where we are, is a light bit of gardener's mold, and if they take us up from it, it will cost no blood and groans like mandrakes pull'd up. We are in the individual spot I like best in all this great city. The theatres with all [a few words cut away: Talfourd has "their noises. Covent Garden "] dearer to me than any gardens of Alcinous, where we are morally sure of the earliest peas and 'sparagus. Bow Street, where the thieves are examined, within a few yards of us. Mary had not been here four and twenty hours before she saw a Thief. She sits at the window working, and casually throwing out her eyes, she sees a concourse of people coming this way, with a constable to conduct the solemnity. These little incidents agreeably diversify a female life. It is a delicate subject, but is Mr. really married? and has he found a gargle to his mind? O how funny he did talk to me about her, in terms of such mild quiet whispering speculative profligacy. But did the animalcule and she crawl over the rubric together, or did they not? Mary has brought her part of this letter to an orthodox and loving conclusion, which is very well, for I have no room for pansies and remembrances. What a nice holyday I got on Wednesday by favor of a princess dying. [A line and signature cut away.] NOTE [The Lambs' house in Russell Street is now (1904) a fruiterer's: it has been rebuilt. Russell Street, Covent Garden, in those days was divided into Great Russell Street (from the Market to Brydges Street, now Catherine Street) and Little Russell Street (from Brydges Street to Drury Lane). The brazier, or ironmonger, was Mr. Owen, Nos. 20 and 21. The Wordsworths had moved to Rydal Mount in 1813. 66 "I am very sorry for Mr. De Quincey." Probably a reference to one of the opium-eater's illnesses. It was at Littlehampton that Coleridge met Henry Francis Cary, the translator of Dante, afterwards one of Lamb's friends. 66 Spot I like best in all this great city." See Vol. I. of this edition, page 155, for a little essay by Lamb on places of residence in London. “Mr. ✶ ✶ ✶” One can but conjecture as to these asterisks. De Quincey, who was very small, married at the close of 1816. "A princess dying "-Princess Charlotte of Saxe-Coburg. She was buried, amid national lamentation, on November 19, 1817.] D' LETTER 227 CHARLES LAMB TO JOHN PAYNE COLLIER The Garden of England, EAR J. P. C.,-I know how zealously you feel for our friend S. T. Coleridge; and I know that you and your family attended his lectures four or five years ago. He is in bad health and worse mind: and unless something is done to lighten his mind he will soon be reduced to his extremities; and even these are not in the best condition. I am sure that you will do for him what you can; but at present he seems in a mood to do for himself. He projects a new course, not of physic, nor of metaphysic, nor a new course of life, but a new course of lectures on Shakspear and Poetry. There is no man better qualified (always excepting number one); but I am pre-engaged for a series of dissertations on India and India-pendence, to be completed at the expense of the Company, in I know not (yet) how many volumes foolscap folio. I am busy getting up my Hindoo mythology; and for the purpose I am once more enduring Southey's Curse. To be serious, Coleridge's state and affairs make me so; and there are particular reasons just now, 1817 HAYDON'S PARTY 509 and have been any time for the last twenty years, why he should succeed. He will do so with a little encouragement. I have not seen him lately; and he does not know that I am writing. Yours (for Coleridge's sake) in haste, NOTE Č. LAMB. [The "Garden of England" of the address stands, of course, for Covent Garden. This is the first letter to Collier that has been preserved. John Payne Collier (1789-1883), known as a Shakespearian critic and editor of old plays and poems, was then a reporter on The Times. He had recently married. Wordsworth also wrote to Collier on this subject. Coleridge's lectures were delivered in 1818, beginning on January 27, in Flower-de-Luce Court. Their preservation we owe to Collier's shorthand notes. "My Hindoo mythology Southey's Curse❞—The Curse of Kehama.] LETTER 228 CHARLES LAMB TO BENJAMIN ROBERT HAYDON December [26], 1817. Y dear Haydon, I will come with pleasure to 22, Lisson Grove North, at Rossi's, half-way up, right-hand sideif I can find it. 20, Russell Court, Covent Garden East. NOTE Yours, C. LAMB. [The first letter that has been preserved to Haydon, the painter. Benjamin Robert Haydon (1786-1846) was then principally known by his "Judgment of Solomon": he was at this time at work upon his most famous picture, "Christ's Entry into Jerusalem." Lamb's note is in acceptance of the invitation to the famous dinner which Haydon gave on December 28, 1817, to Wordsworth, Keats, Monkhouse and others, with the Comptroller of Stamps thrown in. Haydon's Diary describes the evening with much humour. See Appendix, page 954.] |