1810 HAZLITT AND COBBETT 425 thing to be always living with a kind of fever upon her; and therefore I am sure you will take it in good part if I say that if Mrs. Hazlitt comes to town at any time, however glad we shall be to see her in the daytime, I cannot ask her to spend a night under our roof. Some decision we must come to, for the harassing fever that we have both been in, owing to Miss Wordsworth's coming, is not to be borne; and I would rather be dead than so alive. However, at present, owing to a regimen and medicines which Tuthill has given her, who very kindly volunteer'd the care of her, she is a great deal quieter, though too much harassed by company, who cannot or will not see how late hours and society teaze her. He Poor Phillips had the cup dash'd out of his lips as it were. had every prospect of the situation, when about ten days since one of the council of the R. Society started for the place himself, being a rich merchant who lately failed, and he will certainly be elected on Friday next. P. is very sore and miserable about it. Coleridge is in town, or at least at Hammersmith. He is writing or going to write in the Courier against Cobbett, and in favour of paper money. No news. Remember me kindly to Sarah. I write from the office. I just open'd it to say the pig, upon proof, hath turned out as good as I predicted. My fauces yet retain the sweet porcine odour. I find you have received the Cobbett. I think your paper complete. Mrs. Reynolds, who is a sage woman, approves of the pig. NOTE ["A Cobbett." This was Cobbett's Political Register for November 24, 1810, containing Hazlitt's letter upon "Mr. Malthus and the Edinburgh Reviewers," signed "The Author of a Reply to the Essay on Population." Hazlitt's reply had been criticised in the Edinburgh for August, probably only just published. The postscript contains Lamb's first passage in praise of roast pig. I place here the following undated letter to Godwin from Mr. Kegan Paul's William Godwin His Friends and Contemporaries, as it seems to be connected with the decision concerning visitors expressed in the letter to Hazlitt :-] DEA CHARLES LAMB TO WILLIAM GODWIN EAR Godwin,-I have found it for several reasons indispensable to my comfort, and to my sister's, to have no visitors in the forenoon. If I cannot accomplish this I am determined to leave town. I am extremely sorry to do anything in the slightest degree that may seem offensive to you or to Mrs. Godwin, but when a general rule is fixed on, you know how odious in a case of this sort it is to make exceptions; I assure you I have given up more than one friendship in stickling for this point. It would be unfair to those from whom I have parted with regret to make exceptions, which I would not do for them. Let me request you not to be offended, and to request Mrs. G. not to be offended, if I beg both your compliances with this wish. Your friendship is as dear to me as that of any person on earth, and if it were not for the necessity of keeping tranquillity at home, I would not seem so unreasonable. If you were to see the agitation that my sister is in, between the fear of offending you and Mrs. G. and the difficulty of maintaining a system which she feels we must do to live without wretchedness, you would excuse this seeming strange request, which I send you with a trembling anxiety as to its reception with you, whom I would never offend. I rely on your goodness. C. LAMB. LETTER 189 MARY LAMB TO SARAH HAZLITT [? End of 1810 or early 1811.] Y dear Sarah,—I have taken a large sheet of paper, as if I MY were going to write a long letter; but that is by no means my intention, for I only have time to write three lines to notify what I ought to have done the moment I received your welcome letter. Namely, that I shall be very much joyed to see you. Every morning lately I have been expecting to see you drop in, even before your letter came; and I have been setting my wits to work to think how to make you as comfortable as the nature of our inhospitable habits will admit. I must work while you are here ; and I have been slaving very hard to get through with something before you come, that I may be quite in the way of it, and not teize you with complaints all day that I do not know what to do. I am very sorry to hear of your mischance. Mrs. Rickman has just buried her youngest child. I am glad I am an old maid; for, you see, there is nothing but misfortunes in the marriage state. Charles was drunk last night, and drunk the night before; which night before was at Godwin's, where we went, at a short summons from Mr. G., to play a solitary rubber, which was interrupted by 1811 CONVIVIAL NIGHTS 427 the entrance of Mr. and little Mrs. Liston; and after them came Henry Robinson, who is now domesticated at Mr. Godwin's fireside, and likely to become a formidable rival to Tommy Turner. We finished there at twelve o'clock (Charles and Liston brim-full of gin and water and snuff): after which Henry Robinson spent a long evening by our fireside at home; and there was much gin and water drunk, albeit only one of the party partook of it. And H. R. professed himself highly indebted to Charles for the useful information he gave him on sundry matters of taste and imagination, even after Charles could not speak plain for tipsiness. But still he swallowed the flattery and the spirits as savourily as Robinson did his cold water. Last night was to be a night, but it was not. There was a certain son of one of Martin's employers, one young Mr. Blake; to do whom honour, Mrs. Burney brought forth, first rum, then a single bottle of champaine, long kept in her secret hoard; then two bottles of her best currant wine, which she keeps for Mrs. Rickman, came out; and Charles partook liberally of all these beverages, while Mr. Young Blake and Mr. Ireton talked of high matters, such as the merits of the Whip Club, and the merits of red and white champaine. Do I spell that last word right? Rickman was not there, so Ireton had it all his own way. The alternating Wednesdays will chop off one day in the week from your jolly days, and I do not know how we shall make it up to you; but I will contrive the best I can. Phillips comes again pretty regularly, to the great joy of Mrs. Reynolds. Once more she hears the well-loved sounds of, 'How do you do, Mrs. Reynolds ? How does Miss Chambers do?' I have spun out my three lines amazingly. Now for family news. Your brother's little twins are not dead, but Mrs. John Hazlitt and her baby may be, for any thing I know to the contrary, for I have not been there for a prodigious long time. Mrs. Holcroft still goes about from Nicholson to Tuthil, and from Tuthil to Godwin, and from Godwin to Tuthil, and from Tuthil to Godwin, and from Godwin to Tuthil, and from Tuthil to Nicholson, to consult on the publication, or no publication, of the life of the good man, her husband. It is called the Life Everlasting. How does that same Life go on in your parts? Good bye, God bless you. I shall be glad to see you you come this way. when Yours most affectionately, M. LAMB. I am going in great haste to see Mrs. Clarkson, for I must get back to dinner, which I have hardly time to do. I wish that dear, good, amiable woman would go out of town. I thought she was clean gone; and yesterday there was a consultation of physicians held at her house, to see if they could keep her among them here a few weeks longer. NOTE [This letter is dated by Mr. Hazlitt November 30, 1810, but I doubt if that can be right. See extract from Crabb Robinson in the note to Letter 185, on page 422, testifying to Lamb's sobriety between November 9 and December 23. Liston was John Liston (1776 ?-1846), the actor, whose mock biography Lamb wrote some years later (see Vol. I. of this edition, page 248). His wife was a diminutive comedienne, famous as Queen Dollalolla in "Tom Thumb." Lamb may have knownListon through the Burneys, for he is said to have been an usher in Dr. Burney's school-Dr. Charles Burney, Captain Burney's brother. "Henry Robinson." Crabb Robinson's Diary shows us that his domestication by Godwin's fireside was not of long duration. I do not know who Tommy Turner was. Mr. Ireton was probably William Ayrton, the musical critic, a friend and neighbour of the Burneys, and later a friend of the Lambs, as we shall see. "The alternating Wednesdays." The Lambs seem to have given up their weekly Wednesday evening, which now became fortnightly. Later it was changed to Thursday and made monthly. Mrs. Reynolds had been a Miss Chambers.] LETTER 190 MARY LAMB TO MATILDA BETHAM [No date. ? 1811.] MY Y dear Matilda, Coleridge has given me a very chearful promise that he will wait on Lady Jerningham any day you will be pleased to appoint; he offered to write to you ; but I found it was to be done tomorrow, and as I am pretty well acquainted with his tomorrows, I thought good to let you know his determination today. He is in town today, but as he is often going to Hammersmith for a night or two, you had better perhaps send the invitation through me, and I will manage it for you as well as I can. You had better let him have four or five days' previous notice, and you had better send the invitation as soon as you can; for he seems tolerably well just now. I mention all these betters, because I wish to do the best I can for you, perceiving, as I do, it is a thing 1811 MISS DUNCAN 429 you have set your heart upon. He dined one [d]ay in company with Catilana (is that the way you spell her Italian name ?—I am reading Sallust, and had like to have written Catiline). How I should have liked, and how you would have liked, to have seen Coleridge and Catilana together! You have been very good of late to let me come and see you so seldom, and you are a little goodish to come so seldom here, because you stay away from a kind motive. But if you stay away always, as I fear you mean to do, I would not give one pin for your good intentions. In plain words, come and see me very soon; for though I be not sensitive as some people, I begin to feel strange qualms for having driven you from me. Yours affectionately, Alas! Wednesday shines no more to me now. M. LAMB. Miss Duncan played famously in the new comedy, which went off as famously. By the way, she put in a spiteful piece of wit, I verily believe of her own head; and methought she stared me full in the face. The words were "As silent as an author in company." Her hair and herself looked remarkably well. NOTE [I place this undated letter here on account of that which follows. Angelica Catalani (1782-1849) was the great singer. I find no record of Coleridge's meeting with her. "Miss Duncan." Praise of this lady in Miss Hardcastle and other parts will be found in Leigh Hunt's Critical Essays on the Performers of the London Theatres, 1807. At this time she was playing with the Drury Lane Company at the Lyceum. They produced several new plays.] LETTER 191 (Fragment) CHARLES LAMB TO JOHN MORGAN [Dated at end: March 8, 1811.] HERE-don't read any further, because the Letter is not Tintended for you but for Coleridge, who might perhaps not have opened it directed to him suo nomine. It is to invite C. to |