Selected Prose

by Charles Lamb

  Really our case is one which calls for the interference of the chancellor. He should see, as in cases of other lunatics, that commissions are only issued out against proper objects; and not a whole race be proscribed, because some dreaming Chaldean, two thousand years ago, fancied a canine resemblance in some star or other, that was supposed to predominate over addle brains, with as little justice as Mercury was held to be influential over rogues and swindlers; no compliment I am sure to either star or planet. Pray attend to my complaint, Mr Editor, and speak a good word for us this hot weather.

  Your faithful, though sad dog,

  POMPEY.

  (Every-day Book, July 1825)

  34. A Character

  A desk at the Bank of England is primâ facie not the point in the world that seems best adapted for an insight into the characters of men; yet something may be gleaned from the barrenest soil. There is EGOMET,1 for instance. By the way, how pleasant it is to string up one’s acquaintance thus, in the grumbler’s corner of some newspaper, and for them to know nothing at all about it; nay, for them to read their own characters and suspect nothing of the matter. Blessings on the writer who first made use of Roman names. It is only calling Tomkins – Caius; and Jenkins – Titus; or whipping Hopkins upon the back of Scævola, and you have the pleasure of executing sentence with no pain to the offender. This hanging in effigy is delightful; it evaporates the spleen without souring the blood, and is altogether the most gentlemanly piece of Jack-Ketchery2 imaginable.

  EGOMET, then, has been my desk-fellow for thirty years. He is a remarkable species of selfishness. I do not mean that he is attentive to his own gain; I acquit him of that common-place manifestation of the foible. I shoot no such small deer. But his sin is a total absorption of mind in things relating to himself – his house – his horse – his stable – his gardener, &c. Nothing that concerns himself can he imagine to be indifferent to you. – He does my sympathy too much honour. The worst is, he takes no sort of interest whatever in your horse, house, stable, gardener, &c. If you begin a discourse about your own household economy and small matters, he treats it with the most mortifying indifference. He has discarded all pronouns for the first-personal. His inattention, or rather aversion, to hear, is no more than what is a proper return to a self-important babbler of his own little concerns; but then, if he will not give, why should he expect to receive, a hearing? ‘There is no reciprocity in this.’

  There is an egotism of vanity; but his is not that species either. He is not vain of any talent, or indeed properly of any thing he possesses; but his doings and sayings, his little pieces of good or ill luck, the sickness of his maid, the health of his pony, the question whether he shall ride or walk home to-day to Clapham, the shape of his hat or make of his boot; his poultry, and how many eggs they lay daily – are the never ending topics of his talk. Your goose might lay golden eggs without exciting in him a single curiosity to hear about it.

  He is alike throughout; his large desk, which abuts on mine – nimium vicini,3 alas! is a vast lumber chest composed of every scrap of most insignificant paper, even to dinner invitation cards, every fragment that has been addressed to him, or in any way has concerned himself. My elbow aches with being perpetually in the way of his sudden jerking of it up, which he does incessantly to hunt for some worthless scrap of the least possible self-reference; this he does without notice, and without ceremony. I should like to make a bonfire of the ungainful mass – but I should not like it either; with it would fall down at once all the structure of his pride – his fane of Diana,4 his treasure, his calling, the business he came into the world to do.

  I said before, he is not avaricious – not egotistical in the vain sense of the word either; therefore the term selfishness, or egotism, is improperly applied to his distemper; it is the sin of self-fullness. Neither is himself, properly speaking, an object of his contemplation at all; it is the things which belong or refer to himself. His conversation is one entire soliloquy; or it may be said to resemble Robinson Crusoe’s self-colloquies in his island: you are the parrot sitting by. Begin a story, however modest, of your own concerns (something of real interest perhaps), and the little fellow contracts and curls up into his little self immediately, and, with shut ears, sits unmoved, self-centred, as remote from your joys or sorrows as a Pagod5 or a Lucretian Jupiter.

  LEPUS.

  (New Times, 25 August 1825)

  35. Charles Lamb’s Autobiography1

  Charles Lamb, born in the Inner Temple, 10 February, 1775; educated in Christ’s Hospital; afterwards a clerk in the Accountants’ Office, East India House; pensioned off from that service, 1825, after thirty-three years’ service; is now a gentleman at large, can remember few specialities in his life worth noting, except that he once caught a swallow flying (teste suâ manu).2 Below the middle stature; cast of face slightly Jewish, with no Judaic tinge in his complexional religion; stammers abominably, and is therefore more apt to discharge his occasional conversation in a quaint aphorism, or a poor quibble, than in set and edifying speeches; has consequently been libelled as a person always aiming at wit, which, as he told a dull fellow that charged him with it, is at least as good as aiming at dulness: a small eater, but not drinker; confesses a partiality for the production of the Juniper-Berry; was a fierce smoker of tobacco, but may be resembled to a volcano burnt out, emitting only now and then a casual puff. Has been guilty of obtruding upon the Public a Tale, in prose, called Rosamund Gray; a Dramatic sketch, named John Woodvil; a Farewell Ode to Tobacco, with sundry other Poems, and light prose matter, collected in Two slight crown octavos, and pompously christened his Works, tho’ in fact they were his Recreations; and his true works may be found on the Shelves of Leadenhall Street,3 filling some hundred folios. He is also the true Elia, whose Essays are extant in a little volume, published a year or two since; and rather better known from that name without a meaning, than from any thing he has done, or can hope to do, in his own. He also was the first to draw the Public attention to the old English Dramatists, in a work called ‘Specimens of English Dramatic Writers who lived about the Time of Shakspeare,’ published about fifteen years since. In short, all his merits and demerits to set forth would take to the end of Mr Upcott’s book, and then not be told truly.

  He died 18, much lamented.*

  Witness his hand,

  CHARLES LAMB.

  10 Apr. 1827.

  LETTERS

  1. To Samuel Taylor Coleridge

  [27 May 1796]

  Dear C—

  Make yourself perfectly easy about May.1 I paid his bill, when I sent your clothes. I was flush of money, & am so still to all the purposes of a single life, so give yourself no further concern about it. The money would be superfluous to me, if I had it.

  With regard to Allen,2 – the woman he has married has some money, I have heard about £200 a year, enough for the maintenance of herself & children; one of whom is a girl nine years old! so Allen has dipt betimes into the cares of a family. I very seldom see him, & do not know whether he has given up the Westminster hospital.

  When Southey becomes as modest as his predecessor Milton, & publishes his Epics in duodecimo I will read ’em, – a Guinea a book is somewhat exorbitant, nor have I the opportunity of borrowing the work. The extracts from it in the Monthly Review & the short passages in your Watchman3 seem to me much superior to any thing in his partnership account with Lovell –

  Your poems I shall procure forthwith. There were noble lines in what you inserted in one of your Numbers from Religious musings, but I thought them elaborate. I am somewhat glad you have given up that Paper – it must have been dry, unprofitable, & of ‘dissonant mood’ to your disposition. I wish you success in all your undertakings & am glad to hear you are employed about the Evidences of Religion. There is need of multiplying such books an hundred fold in this philosophical age to prevent converts to Atheism, for they seem too tough disputants to meddle with afterwards – I am sincerely sorry for Allen, as a family man particular
ly –

  Le Grice4 is gone to make puns in Cornwall. He has got a tutorship to a young boy, living with his Mother a widow Lady. He will of course initiate him quickly in ‘whatsoever things are lovely, honorable, & of good report.’ He has cut Miss Hunt compleatly, – the poor Girl is very ill on the Occasion, but he laughs at it, & justifies himself by saying ‘she does not see him laugh!’ Coleridge, I know not what suffering scenes you have gone through at Bristol, – my life has been somewhat diversified of late. The 6 weeks that finished last year & began this your very humble servant spent very agreeably in a mad house at Hoxton –. I am got somewhat rational now, & dont bite any one. But mad I was – & many a vagary my imagination played with me, enough to make a volume if all told –

  My Sonnets I have extended to the Number of nine since I saw you, & will some day communicate to you –

  I am beginning a poem in blank verse, which if I finish I publish –

  White5 is on the eve of publishing (he took the hint from Vortigern) Original letters of Falstaff Shallow &c – a copy you shall have when it comes out. They are without exception the best imitations I ever saw –

  Coleridge it may convince you of my regards for you when I tell you my head ran on you in my madness as much almost as on another Person, who I am inclined to think was the more immediate cause of my temporary frenzy –. The sonnet I send you has small merit as poetry but you will be curious to read it when I tell you it was written in my prison house in one of my lucid Intervals

  to my sister

  If from my lips some angry accents fell,

  Peevish complaint, or harsh reproof unkind,

  Twas but the Error of a sickly mind,

  And troubled thoughts, clouding the purer well,

  & waters clear, of Reason: & for me

  Let this my verse the poor atonement be,

  My verse, which thou to praise: wast ever inclined

  Too highly, & with a partial eye to see

  No Blemish: thou to me didst ever shew

  Fondest affection, & woudst oftimes lend

  An ear to the desponding, love sick Lay,

  Weeping my sorrows with me, who repay

  But ill the mighty debt, of love I owe,

  Mary, to thee, my sister & my friend –

  With these lines, & with that sisters kindest remembrances to C— I conclude –

  Yours Sincerely

  LAMB

  Your conciones ad populum6 are the most eloquent politics that ever came in my way.

  Write, when convenient – not as a task, for here is nothing in this letter to answer –

  You may inclose under cover to me at the India house what letters you please, for they come post free. – –

  We cannot send our remembrances to Mrs C— not having seen her, but believe me our best good wishes attend you both –

  My civic & poetic compt’s to Southey if at Bristol –. Why, he is a very Leviathan of Bards – the small minow I –

  2. To Samuel Taylor Coleridge

  [27 September 1796]

  My dearest friend –

  White or some of my friends or the public papers by this time may have informed you of the terrible calamities that have fallen on our family. I will only give you the outlines. My poor dear dearest sister in a fit of insanity has been the death of her own mother. I was at hand only time enough to snatch the knife out of her grasp. She is at present in a mad house, from whence I fear she must be moved to an hospital. God has preserved to me my senses, – I eat and drink and sleep, and have my judgment I believe very sound. My poor father was slightly wounded, and I am left to take care of him and my aunt. Mr Norris of the Bluecoat school has been very kind to us, and we have no other friend, but thank God I am very calm and composed, and able to do the best that remains to do. Write, – as religious a letter as possible – but no mention of what is gone and done with – with me the former things are passed away, and I have something more to do than to feel –

  God almighty

  have us all in

  his keeping. –

  C. LAMB

  mention nothing of poetry. I have destroyed every vestige of past vanities of that kind. Do as you please, but if you publish, publish mine (I give free leave) without name or initial, and never send me a book, I charge you, you[r] own judgment will convince you not to take any notice of this yet to your dear wife. – You look after your family, – I have reason and strength left to take care of mine. I charge you don’t think of coming to see me. Write. I will not see you if you come. God almighty love you and all of us –

  3. To Samuel Taylor Coleridge

  [3 October 1796]

  My dearest friend,

  your letter was an inestimable treasure to me. It will be a comfort to you, I know, to know that our prospects are somewhat brighter. My poor dear dearest sister, the unhappy & unconscious instrument of the Almighty’s judgments to our house, is restored to her senses; to a dreadful sense & recollection of what has past, awful to her mind & impressive (as it must be to the end of life) but temper’d with religious resignation, & the reasonings of a sound judgment, which in this early stage knows how to distinguish between a deed committed in a transcient fit of frenzy, & the terrible guilt of a Mother’s murther. I have seen her. I found her this morning calm & serene, far very very far from an indecent forgetful serenity; she has a most affectionate & tender concern for what has happened. Indeed from the beginning, frightful & hopeless as her disorder seemed, I had confidence enough in her strength of mind, & religious principle, to look forward to a time when even she might recover tranquillity. God be praised, Coleridge, wonderful as it is to tell, I have never once been otherwise than collected, & calm; even on the dreadful day & in the midst of the terrible scene I preserved a tranquillity, which bystanders may have construed into indifference, a tranquillity not of despair; is it folly or sin in me to say that it was a religious principle that most supported me? I allow much to other favorable circumstances. I felt that I had something else to do than to regret; on that first evening my Aunt was laying insensible, to all appearance like one dying, – my father, with his poor forehead plaisterd over from a wound he had received from a daughter dearly loved by him, & who loved him no less dearly, – my mother a dead & murder’d corpse in the next room – yet was I wonderfully supported. I closed not my eyes in sleep that night, but lay without terrors & without despair. I have lost no sleep since. I had been long used not to rest in things of sense, had endeavord after a comprehension of mind, unsatisfied with the ‘ignorant present time,’ & this kept me up. I had the whole weight of the family thrown on me, for my brother, little disposed (I speak not without tenderness for him) at any time to take care of old age & infirmities had now, with his bad leg, an exemption from such duties, & I was now left alone. One little incident may serve to make you understand my way of managing my mind. Within a day or 2 after the fatal one, we drest for dinner a tongue, which we had had salted for some weeks in the house. As I sat down a feeling like remorse struck me, – this tongue poo[r] Mary got for me, & can I partake of it now, when she is far away – a thought occurred & relieve[d] me, – if I give into this way of feeling, there is not a chair, a room, an object in our rooms, that will not awaken the keenest griefs, I must rise above such weaknesses –. I hope this was not want of true feeling. I did not let this carry me tho’ too far. On the very 2d day (I date from the day of horrors) as is usual in such cases there were a matter of 20 people I do think supping in our room –. They prevailed on me to eat with them (for to eat I never refused) they were all making merry! in the room, – some had come from friendship, some from busy curiosity, & some from Interest; I was going to partake with them, when my recollection came that my poor dead mother was lying in the next room, the very next room, a mother who thro’ life wished nothing but her children’s welfare – indignation, the rage of grief, something like remorse, rushed upon my mind in an agony of emotion, – I found my way mechanically to the adjoin[in]g room, & f
ell on my knees by the side of her coffin, asking forgiveness of heaven, & sometimes of her, for forgetting her so soon. Tranquillity returned, & it was the only violent emotion that master’d me, & I think it did me good. –

  I mention these things because I hate concealment, & love to give a faithful journal of what passes within me. Our friends have been very good. Sam LeGrice1 who was then in town was with me the 3 or 4 first days, & was as a brother to me, gave up every hour of his time, to the very hurting of his health & spirits, in constant attendance & humoring my poor father. Talk’d with him, read to him, play’d at cr[ib]bage with Him (for so short is the old man’s recollection, that he was playing at cards, as tho’ nothing had happened, while the Coroner’s Inquest was sitting over the way!) Samuel wept tenderly when he went away, for his Mother wrote him a very severe letter on his loitering so long in town, & he was forced to go. Mr Norris of Christ Hospital has been as a father to me, Mrs Norris as a Mother, tho’ we had few claims on them. A Gentleman brother to my Godmother, from whom we never had right or reason to expect any such assistance, sent my father twenty pounds, – & to crown all these God’s blessings to our family at such a time, an old Lady, a cousin of my father & Aunts, a Gentlewoman of fortune, is to take my Aunt & make her comfortable for the short remainder of her days. –

  My Aunt is recover’d & as well as ever, & highly pleased at thoughts of going, – & has generously given up the interest of her little money (which was formerly paid my Father for her board) wholely & solely to my Sister’s use. Reckoning this we have, Daddy & I for our two selves & an old maid servant to look after him, when I am out, which will be necessary, £170 or £180 (rather) a year out of which we can spare 50 or 60 at least for Mary, while she stays at Islington, where she must & shall stay during her father’s life for his & her comfort. I know John will make speeches about it, but she shall not go into an hospital. The good Lady of the Mad house, & her daughter, an elegant sweet behaved young Lady, love her & are taken with her amazingly, & I know from her own mouth she loves them, & longs to be with them as much –. Poor thing, they say she was but the other morning saying, she knew she must go to Bethlem for life; that one of her brother’s would have it so, but the other would wish it Not, but he obliged to go with the stream; that she had often as she passed Bedlam thought it likely ‘here it may be my fate to end my days’ – conscious of a certain flightiness in her poor head oftentimes, & mindful of more than one severe illness of that Nature before. A Legacy of £100 which my father will have at Xmas, & this 20 I mentioned before with what is in the house, will much more than set us Clear, – if my father, an old servant maid, & I can’t live & live comfortably on £130 or £120 a year2 we ought to burn by slow fires, & I almost would, that Mary might not go into an hospital. Let me not leave one unfavorable impression on your mind respecting my Brother. Since this has happened he has been very kind & brotherly; but I fear for his mind, – he has taken his ease in the world, & is not fit himself to struggle with difficulties, nor has much accustomed himself to throw himself into their way, – & I know his language is already, ‘Charles, you must take care of yourself, you must not abridge yourself of a single pleasure you have been used to’ &c &c. & in that style of talking. But you, a necessarian,3 can respect a difference of mind, & love what is amiable in a character not perfect. He has been very good, but I fear for his mind. Thank God, I can unconnect myself with him, & shall manage all my father’s monies in future myself, if I take charge of Daddy, which poor John has not even hinted a wish, at any future time even, to share with me –