by Charles Lamb
Do me the favor to leave off the business which you may be at present upon, and go immediately to the Kitchens of Trinity & Caius’, and make my most respectful compli[ments] to Mr Richard Hopkins, and assure him that his Brawn is most excellent, and that I am moreover obliged to him for his inuendo about Salt water & Bran: which I shall not fail to improve. I leave it to you whether you shall chuse to pay him the civility of asking him to dinner while you stay in Cambridge, or in whatever other way you may best like to shew your gratitude to my friend. Richard Hopkins considered in many points of view is a very extraordinary character. – Adieu. I hope to see you to supper in London soon, where we will taste Richard’s brawn, and drink his health in a chearful but moderate cup. We have not many such men in any rank of life as Mr R. Hopkins. Crisp the Barber of St Mary’s was just such another. I wonder he never sent me any little token, some chestnuts, or a puff, or two pound of hair: just to remember him by. Gifts are like nails. Præsens ut absens: that is, your Present makes amends for your absence. –
Yours.
C LAMB
32. To Thomas Manning
Jan. 2nd, 1810
Dear Manning,
When I last wrote to you, I was in lodgings. I am now in chambers, No. 4, Inner Temple Lane, where I should be happy to see you any evening. Bring any of your friends, the Mandarins, with you. I have two sitting-rooms: I call them so par excellence, for you may stand, or loll, or lean, or try any posture in them; but they are best for sitting; not squatting down Japanese fashion, but the more decorous use of the posteriors which European usage has consecrated. I have two of these rooms on the third floor, and five sleeping, cooking, &c., rooms, on the fourth floor. In my best room is a choice collection of the works of Hogarth, an English painter of some humour. In my next best are shelves containing a small but well-chosen library. My best room commands a court, in which there are trees and a pump, the water of which is excellent – cold with brandy, and not very insipid without. Here I hope to set up my rest, and not quit till Mr Powell, the undertaker, gives me notice that I may have possession of my last lodging. He lets lodgings for single gentlemen. I sent you a parcel of books by my last, to give you some idea of the state of European literature. There comes with this two volumes, done up as letters, of minor poetry, a sequel to ‘Mrs Leicester’;1 the best you may suppose mine; the next best are my coadjutor’s; you may amuse yourself in guessing them out; but I must tell you mine are both one-third in quantity of the whole. So much for a very delicate subject. It is hard to speak of one’s self, &c. Holcroft had finished his life when I wrote to you, and Hazlitt has since finished his life – I do not mean his own life, but he has finished a life of Holcroft,2 which is going to press. Tuthill is Dr Tuthill. I continue Mr Lamb. I have published a little book for children on titles of honour: and to give them some idea of the difference of rank and gradual rising, I have made a little scale, supposing myself to receive the following various accessions of dignity from the king, who is the fountain of honour – As at first, 1, Mr C. Lamb; 2, C. Lamb, Esq.; 3, Sir C. Lamb, Bart; 4, Baron Lamb of Stamford;* 5, Viscount Lamb; 6, Earl Lamb; 7, Marquis Lamb; 8, Duke Lamb. It would look like quibbling to carry it on further, and especially as it is not necessary for children to go beyond the ordinary titles of sub-regal dignity in our own country, otherwise I have sometimes in my dreams imagined myself still advancing, as 9th, King Lamb; 10th, Emperor Lamb; 11th, Pope Innocent, higher than which is nothing but the Lamb of God. Puns I have not made many (nor punch much), since the date of my last; one I cannot help relating. A constable in Salisbury Cathedral was telling me that eight people dined at the top of the spire of the cathedral; upon which I remarked, that they must be very sharp-set. But in general I cultivate the reasoning part of my mind more than the imaginative. Do you know Kate *********? I am stuffed out so with eating turkey for dinner, and another turkey for supper yesterday (turkey in Europe and turkey in Asia), that I can’t jog on. It is New-Year here. That is, it was New-Year half a-year back, when I was writing this. Nothing puzzles me more than time and space, and yet nothing puzzles me less, for I never think about them. Miss Knap is turned midwife. Never having had a child herself, she can’t draw any wrong analogies from her own case. Dr Stoddart has had Twins. There was five shillings to pay the Nurse. Mrs Godwin was impannelled on a jury of Matrons last Session. She saved a criminal’s life by giving it as her opinion that –. The judge listened to her with the greatest deference. The Persian ambassador is the principal thing talked of now. I sent some people to see him worship the sun on Primrose Hill at half past six in the morning, 28th November; but he did not come, which makes me think the old fire-worshippers are a sect almost extinct in Persia. Have you trampled on the Cross yet? The Persian ambassador’s name is Shaw Ali Mirza. The common people call him Shaw Nonsense. While I think of it, I have put three letters besides my own three into the India post for you, from your brother, sister, and some gentleman whose name I forget. Will they, have they, did they, come safe? The distance you are at, cuts up tenses by the root. I think you said you did not know Kate *********. I express her by nine stars, though she is but one, but if ever one star differed from another in glory –. You must have seen her at her father’s. Try and remember her. Coleridge is bringing out a paper in weekly numbers, called the ‘Friend,’ which I would send, if I could; but the difficulty I had in getting the packets of books out to you before deters me; and you’ll want something new to read when you come home. It is chiefly intended to puff off Wordsworth’s poetry; but there are some noble things in it by the by. Except Kate, I have had no vision of excellence this year, and she passed me like the queen on her coronation day; you don’t know whether you saw her or not. Kate is fifteen: I go about moping, and sing the old pathetic ballad I used to like in my youth –
She’s sweet Fifteen,
I’m one year more.
Mrs Bland sung it in boy’s clothes the first time I heard it. I sometimes think the lower notes in my voice are like Mrs Bland’s. That glorious singer Braham, one of my lights, is fled. He was for a season. He was a rare composition of the Jew, the gentleman, and the angel, yet all these elements mixed up so kindly in him, that you could not tell which predominated; but he is gone, and one Phillips is engaged instead. Kate is vanished, but Miss B****** is always to be met with!
Queens drop away, while blue-legg’d Maukin thrives;
And courtly Mildred dies while country Madge survives.
That is not my poetry, but Quarles’s; but haven’t you observed that the rarest things are the least obvious? Don’t show anybody the names in this letter. I write confidentially, and wish this letter to be considered as private. Hazlitt has written a grammar for Godwin; Godwin sells it bound up with a treatise of his own on language, but the grey mare is the better horse. I don’t allude to Mrs Godwin, but to the word grammar, which comes near to grey mare, if you observe, in sound. That figure is called paranomasia in Greek. I am sometimes happy in it. An old woman begged of me for charity. ‘Ah! sir,’ said she, ‘I have seen better days’; ‘So have I, good woman,’ I replied; but I meant literally, days not so rainy and overcast as that on which she begged: she meant more prosperous days. Mr Dawe is made associate of the Royal Academy. By what law of association I can’t guess. Mrs Holcroft, Miss Holcroft, Mr and Mrs Godwin, Mr and Mrs Hazlitt, Mrs Martin and Louisa, Mrs Lum, Capt Burney, Mrs Burney, Martin Burney, Mr Rickman, Mrs Rickman, Dr Stoddart, William Dollin, Mr Thompson, Mr and Mrs Norris, Mr Fenwick, Mrs Fenwick, Miss Fenwick, a man that saw you at our house one day, and a lady that heard me speak of you; Mrs Buffam that heard Hazlitt mention you, Dr Tuthill, Mrs Tuthill, Colonel Harwood, Mrs Harwood, Mr Collier, Mrs Collier, Mr Sutton, Nurse, Mr Fell, Mrs Fell, Mr Marshall, are very well, and occasionally inquire after you.
[I remain yours ever,
CH. LAMB
Mary sends her love.
33. To William Wordsworth
9th Aug 1815
Dear Wordsworth,
We
acknowledge with pride the receit of both your handwritings, and desire to be ever had in kindly remembrance by you both & by Dorothy. Miss Hutchinson had just transmitted us a letter containing, among other chearful matter, the annunciation of a child born. Nothing of consequence has turned up in our parts since your departure. Mary and I felt quite queer after your taking leave (you W. W.) of us in St Giles’s. We wished we had seen more of you, but felt we had scarce been sufficiently acknowleging for the share we had enjoyed of your company. We felt as if we had been not enough expressive of our pleasure. But our manners both are a little too much on this side of too-much-cordiality. We want presence of mind and presence of heart. What we feel comes too late like an after thought impromptu. But perhaps you observed nothing of that which we have been painfully conscious of and are every day in our intercourse with those we stand affected to through all the degrees of love. Robinson is on the Circuit. Our Pangyrist I thought had forgotten one of the objects of his youthful admiration, but I was agreeably removed from that scruple by the laundress knocking at my door this morning almost before I was up with a present of fruit from my young friend &c –. There is something inexpressibly pleasant to me in these presents. Be it fruit, or fowl, or brawn, or what not. Books are a legitimate cause of acceptance. If presents be not the soul of friendship, undoubtedly they are the most spiritual part of the body of that intercourse. There is too much narrowness of thinking in this point. The punctilio of acceptance methinks is too confined and straitlaced. I could be content to receive money, or clothes, or a joint of meat from a friend; why should he not send me a dinner as well as a dessert? I would taste him in the beasts of the field and thro’ all creation. Therefore did the basket of fruit of the juvenile Talfourd not displease me. Not that I have any thoughts of bartering or reciprocating these things. To send him any thing in return would be to reflect suspicion of mercenariness upon what I know he meant a free will offering. Let him overcome me in bounty. In this strife a generous nature loves to be overcome. Alsager1 (whom you term Alsinger – and indeed he is rather singer than sager, no reflection upon his naturals neither) is well and in harmony with himself & the world. I dont know how he and those of his constitution keep their nerves so nicely balanced as they do. Or have they any? or are they made of packthread? He is proof against weather, ingratitude, meat under done, every weapon of fate. I have just now a jagged end of a tooth pricking against my tongue, which meets it half way in a wantonness of provocation, and there they go at it, the tongue pricking itself like the viper against the file, and the tooth galling all the gum inside & out to torture, tongue & tooth, tooth & tongue, hard at [it], and I to pay the reckoning, till all my mouth is as hot as brimstone, & I’d venture the roof of my mouth that at this moment, at which I conjecture my full-happinessed friend is picking his crackers, that not one of the double rows of ivory in his privileged mouth has as much as a flaw in it, but all perform their functions, & having performed it, expect to be picked (luxurious steeds!) & rubbed down. I dont think he could be robbed, or could have his house set on fire, or ever want money. I have heard him express a similar opinion of his own impassibility. I keep acting here Heautontimorumenos.2 M. Burney has been to Calais & has come home a travelld monsieur. He speaks nothing but the Gallic Idiom. Field is on circuit. So now I believe I have given account of most that you saw at our cabin. Have you seen a curious letter in Morn Chron by C. Ll. the Genius of Absurdity respecting Bonapartes suing out his Habeas Corpus.3 That man is his own Moon. He has no need of ascending into that gentle planet for mild influences. You wish me some of your leisure. I have a glimmering aspect, a chink-light of liberty before me which I pray God prove not fallacious. My remonstrances have stirred up others to remonstrate, and altogether there is a plan for separating certain parts of business from our department, which if it take place will produce me more time, i.e. my evenings free. It may be a means of placing me in a more conspicuous situation which will knock at my nerves another way, but I wait the issue in submission. If I can but begin my own day at 4 oClock in the afternoon, I shall think myself to have Eden days of peace & liberty to what I have had. As you say, how a man can fill 3 volumes up with an Essay on the Drama4 is wonderful. I am sure a very few sheets would hold all I had to say on the subject, and yet I dare say ********** as Von Slagel ***. Did you ever read Charron on Wisdom? or Patrick’s Pilgrim?5 if neither, you have two great pleasures to come. I mean some day to attack Caryl on Job, six Folios. What any man can write, surely I may read. If I do but get rid of auditing Warehousekeepers Accts. & get no worse-harassing task in the place of it, what a lord of Liberty I shall be. I shall dance & skip and make mouths at the invisible event, and pick the thorns out of my pillow & throw them at rich mens night caps, & talk blank verse hoity toity, and sing a Clerk I was in London Gay, ban, ban Ca-caliban, like the emancipated monster & go where I like up this street or down that ally –
Adieu & pray that it may be my luck. Good be to you all
C LAMB
34. To William Wordsworth
SIR,
PLEASE TO STATE THE WEIGHTS AND AMOUNTS OF THE FOLLOWING LOTS OF
SOLD SALE, 181 FOR
YOUR OBEDIENT SERVANT,
ACCOUNTANT’S OFFICE,
26 Apr 1816
Dear W.
I have just finished the pleasing task of correcting the Revise of the Poems and letter.1 I hope they will come out faultless. One blunder I saw and shuddered at. The hallucinating rascal had printed battered for battened, this last not conveying any distinct sense to his gaping soul. The Reader (as they call ’em) had discovered it & given it the marginal brand, but the substitutory n had not yet appeared. I accompanied his notice with a most pathetic address to the printer not to neglect the Correction. I know how such a blunder would ‘batten at your Peace.’ With regard to the works, the Letter I read with unabated satisfaction. Such a thing was wanted, called for. The parallel of Cotton with Burns I heartily approve; Iz. Walton hallows any page in which his reverend name appears. ‘Duty archly bending to purposes of general benevolence’ is exquisite. The Poems I endeavored not to understand, but to read them with my eye alone, and I think I succeeded. (Some people will do that when they come out, you’ll say.) As if I were to luxuriate tomorrow at some Picture Gallery I was never at before, and going by to day by chance, found the door open, had but 5 minutes to look about me, peeped in, just such a chastised peep I took with my mind at the lines my luxuriating eye was coursing over unrestrained, – not to anticipate another days fuller satisfaction. Coleridge is printing Xtabel by Ld. Byron’s recommendation to Murray, with what he calls a vision Kubla Khan – which said vision he repeats so enchantingly that it irradiates & brings heaven & Elysian bowers into my parlour while he sings or says it, but there is an observation Never tell thy dreams, and I am almost afraid that Kubla Khan is an owl that wont bear day light, I fear lest it should be discovered by the lantern of typography & clear reducting to letters, no better than nonsense or no sense. When I was young I used to chant with extacy mild Arcadians ever blooming,2 till somebody told me it was meant to be nonsense. Even yet I have a lingering attachment to it, and think it better than Windsor forest, Dying Xtians address &c –. C has sent his Tragedy to D. L. T. it cannot be acted this season, & by their manner of receiving it, I hope he will be able to alter it to make them accept it for next. He is at present under the medical care of a Mr Gilman3 (Killman?) a Highgate Apothecary, where he plays at leaving off Laud—m. – I think his essentials not touched, he is very bad, but then he wonderfully picks up another day, and his face when he repeats his verses hath its ancient glory, an Arch angel a little damaged. –
Will Miss H. pardon our not replying at length to her kind Letter? We are not quiet enough. Morgan is with us every day, going betwixt Highgate & the Temple. Coleridge is absent but 4 miles, & the neighborhood of such a man is as exciting as the presence of 50 ordinary Persons. Tis enough to be within the whiff & wind of his genius, for us not to possess our souls in quiet.
If I lived with him or the Author of the Excursion, I should in a very little time lose my own identity, & be dragged along in the current of other peoples thoughts, hampered in a net. How cool I sit in this office, with no possible interruption further than what I may term material; there is not as much metaphysics in 36 of the people here as there is in the first page of Lockes treatise on the Human understanding, or as much poetry as in any ten lines of the Pleasure of Hope or more natural Beggars Petition.4 I never entangle myself in any of their speculations. Interruption’s, if I try to write a letter even, I have dreadful. Just now within 4 lines I was call’d off for ten minutes to consult dusty old books for the settlement of obsolete Errors. I hold you a guinea you dont find the Chasm where I left off, so excellently the wounded sense closed again & was healed. – N. B. Nothing said above to the contrary but that I hold the personal presence of the two mentioned potent spirits at a rate as high as any, but I pay dearer, what amuses others robs me of my self, my mind is positively discharged into their greater currents, but flows with a welling violence. As to your question about work, it is far less oppressive to me than it was, from circumstances; it takes all the golden part of the day away, a solid lump from ten to four, but it does not kill my peace as before. Someday or other I shall be in a taking5 again. My head akes & you have had enough. God bless you.
