by Charles Lamb
Farewell, while my specilla6 are sound.
Yours and yours,
C. LAMB.
66. To Mary Shelley
[No date: c. 18 January 1830]
Dear Mrs Shelly,1
If you ever run away, which is problematical, don’t run to a country village, which has been a market town, but is such no longer. Enfield, where we are, is seated most indifferently upon the borders of Middlesex, Essex, and Hertfordshire, partaking of the quiet dulness of the first, & the total want of interest pervading the two latter Counties. You stray into the Church yard, hoping to find a Cathedral. You think, I will go and look at the Print shops, and there is only one, where they sell Valentines. The chief Bookseller deals in prose versions of Melodrama, with plates of Ghosts and Murders, and other Subterranean passages. The tarts in the only Pastry-cook-looking shop are baked stale. The Macaroons are perennial, kept torpid in glass cases, excepting when Mrs **** gives a card party. There is no jewellers, but there’s a place where brass knobs are sold. You cast your dreary eyes about, up Baker Street, and it gets worse. There was something like a tape and thread shop at that end, but here – is two apples stuck between a farthings worth of ginger bread, & the children too poor to break stock.
The week days would be intolerable, but for the superior invention which they show here in making Sundays worse. Clowns stand about what was the Market place, and spit minute-ly to relieve ennui. Clowns, to whom Enfield trades-people are gentle people. Inland Clowns, Clods, and things below cows. They assemble to infect the air with dulness from Waltham marshes. They clear off o’ the Monday mornings, like other fogs. It is ice, but nobody slides, nobody tumbles down, nobody dies as I can see, or nobody cares if they do, the Doctors seem to have no Patients, there is no Accidents nor Offences, a good thief would be something in this well-governed Hamlet. We have for indoors amusement a Library without books, and the middle of the week hopes of a Sunday newspaper to link us by filmy associations to a world we are dead to. Regent Street was, and it is by difficult induction we infer that Charing Cross still is. There may be Plays. But nobody here seems to have heard of such contingencies.
You go out with a dog, and the dog comes home with you, and the difference is, he does not mind dirty stockings.
67. To William Wordsworth
[P.M. 22 January 1830]
And is it a year since we parted from you at the steps of Edmonton Stage? There are not now the years that there used to be. The tale of the dwindled age of men, reported of successional mankind, is true of the same man only. We do not live a year in a year now. ’Tis a punctum stans.1 The seasons pass us with indifference. Spring cheers not, nor winter heightens our gloom, Autumn hath foregone its moralities, they are hey-pass re-pass [as] in a show-box. Yet as far as last year occurs back, for they scarce shew a reflex now, they make no memory as heretofore –’twas sufficiently gloomy. Let the sullen nothing pass.
Suffice it that after sad spirits prolonged thro’ many of its months, as it called them, we have cast our skins, have taken a farewell of the pompous troublesome trifle calld housekeeping, and are settled down into poor boarders and lodgers at next door with an old couple, the Baucis and Baucida of dull Enfield. Here we have nothing to do with our victuals but to eat them, with the garden but to see it grow, with the tax gatherer but to hear him knock, with the maid but to hear her scolded. Scot and lot, butcher, baker, are things unknown to us save as spectators of the pageant. We are fed we know not how, quietists, confiding ravens. We have the otium pro dignitate,2 a respectable insignificance. Yet in the self condemned obliviousness, in the stagnation, some molesting yearnings of life, not quite kill’d, rise, prompting me that there was a London, and that I was of that old Jerusalem.
In dreams I am in Fleetmarket, but I wake and cry to sleep again. I die hard, a stubborn Eloisa in this detestable Paraclete.3 What have I gained by health? intolerable dulness. What by early hours and moderate meals? – a total blank. O never let the lying poets be believed, who ’tice men from the chearful haunts of streets – or think they mean it not of a country village. In the ruins of Palmyra I could gird myself up to solitude, or use to the snorings of the Seven Sleepers, but to have a little teazing image of a town about one, country folks that do not look like country folks, shops two yards square, half a dozen apples and two penn’orth of overlookd gingerbread for the lofty fruiterers of Oxford Street – and, for the immortal book and print stalls, a circulating library that stands still, where the shew-picture is a last year’s Valentine, and whither the fame of the last ten Scotch novels has not yet travel’d (marry, they just begin to be conscious of the Red Gauntlet),4 to have a new plasterd flat church, and to be wishing that it was but a Cathedral.
The very blackguards here are degenerate. The topping gentry, stock brokers. The passengers too many to ensure your quiet, or let you go about whistling, or gaping – too few to be the fine indifferent pageants of Fleet Street. Confining, room-keeping, thickest winter is yet more bearable here than the gaudy months. Among one’s books at one’s fire by candle one is soothed into an oblivion that one is not in the country, but with the light the green fields return, till I gaze, and in a calenture5 can plunge myself into Saint Giles’s. O let no native Londoner imagine that health, and rest, and innocent occupation, interchange of converse sweet and recreative study, can make the country any thing better than altogether odious and detestable. A garden was the primitive prison till man with promethean felicity and boldness luckily sinn’d himself out of it. Thence followed Babylon, Nineveh, Venice, London, haberdashers, goldsmiths, taverns, playhouses, satires, epigrams, puns – these all came in on the town part, and the thither side of innocence. Man found out inventions.
From my den I return you condolence for your decaying sight, not for any thing there is to see in the country, but for the miss of the pleasure of reading a London newspaper. The poets are as well to listen to, any thing high may, nay must, be read out – you read it to yourself with an imaginary auditor – but the light paragraphs must be glid over by the proper eye, mouthing mumbles their gossamery substance. ’Tis these trifles I should mourn in fading sight. A newspaper is the single gleam of comfort I receive here, it comes from rich Cathay with tidings of mankind. Yet I could not attend to it read out by the most beloved voice. But your eyes do not get worse, I gather. O for the collyrium of Tobias6 inclosed in a whiting’s liver to send you with no apocryphal good wishes! The last long time I heard from you, you had knock’d your head against something. Do not do so. For your head (I do not flatter) is not a nob, or the top of a brass nail, or the end of a nine pin – unless a Vulcanian hammer could fairly batter a Recluse out of it, then would I bid the smirch’d god knock and knock lustily, the two-handed skinker.
What a nice long letter Dorothy has written! Mary must squeeze out a line propriâ manu,7 but indeed her fingers have been incorrigibly nervous to letter writing for a long interval. ’Twill please you all to hear that, tho’ I fret like a lion in a net, her present health and spirits are better than they have been for some time past: she is absolutely three years and half younger, as I tell her, since we have adopted this boarding plan.
Our providers are an honest pair, dame Westwood and her husband – he, when the light of prosperity shined on them, a moderately thriving haberdasher within Bow Bells, retired since with something under a competence, writes himself parcel gentleman, hath borne parish offices, sings fine old sea songs at threescore and ten, sighs only now and then when he thinks that he has a son on his hands about 15, whom he finds a difficulty in getting out into the world, and then checks a sigh with muttering, as I once heard him prettily, not meaning to be heard, ‘I have married my daughter however,’ – takes the weather as it comes, outsides it to town in severest season, and a’ winter nights tells old stories not tending to literature, how comfortable to author-rid folks! and has one anecdote, upon which and about forty pounds a year he seems to have retired in green old age. It was how he was a rider in his youth,
travelling for shops, and once (not to baulk his employer’s bargain) on a sweltering day in August, rode foaming into Dunstable upon a mad horse to the dismay and expostulary wonderment of inn-keepers, hostlers &c. who declared they would not have bestrid the beast to win the Darby. Understand the creature gall’d to death and desperation by gad flies, cormorants winged, worse than beset Inachus’ daughter.
This he tells, this he brindles and burnishes on a’ winter’s eves, ’tis his star of set glory, his rejuvenescence to descant upon. Far from me be it (dii avertant)8 to look a gift story in the mouth, or cruelly to surmise (as those who doubt the plunge of Curtius)9 that the inseparate conjuncture of man and beast, the centaur-phenomenon that staggered all Dunstable, might have been the effect of unromantic necessity, that the horse-part carried the reasoning, willy nilly, that needs must when such a devil drove, that certain spiral configurations in the frame of Thomas Westwood unfriendly to alighting, made the alliance more forcible than voluntary. Let him enjoy his fame for me, nor let me hint a whisper that shall dismount Bellerophon. Put case he was an involuntary martyr, yet if in the fiery conflict he buckled the soul of a constant haberdasher to him, and adopted his flames, let Accident and He share the glory! You would all like Thomas Westwood.
How weak is painting to describe a man! Say that he stands four feet and a nail high by his own yard measure, which like the Sceptre of Agamemnon10 shall never sprout again, still you have no adequate idea, nor when I tell you that his dear hump, which I have favord in the picture, seems to me of the buffalo – indicative and repository of mild qualities, a budget of kindnesses, still you have not the man. Knew you old Norris of the Temple, 60 years ours and our father’s friend, he was not more natural to us than this old W. the acquaintance of scarce more weeks. Under his roof now ought I to take my rest, but that back-looking ambition tells me I might yet be a Londoner.
Well, if we ever do move, we have encumbrances the less to impede us: all our furniture has faded under the auctioneer’s hammer, going for nothing like the tarnishd frippery of the prodigal, and we have only a spoon or two left to bless us. Clothed we came into Enfield, and naked we must go out of it. I would live in London shirtless, bookless.
Henry Crabb is at Rome, advices to that effect have reach’d Bury. But by solemn legacy he bequeath’d at parting (whether he should live or die) a Turkey of Suffolk to be sent every succeeding Xmas to us and divers other friends. What a genuine old Bachelor’s action! I fear he will find the air of Italy too classic. His station is in the Hartz forest, his soul is Begoethed.11 Miss Kelly we never see; Talfourd not this half-year; the latter flourishes, but the exact number of his children, God forgive me, I have utterly forgotten, we single people are often out in our count there. Shall I say two? One darling I know they have lost within a twelvemonth, but scarce known to me by sight, and that was a second child lost.
We see scarce anybody. We have just now Emma with us for her holydays; you remember her playing at brag with Mr Quillinan at poor Monkhouse’s! She is grown an agreeable young woman; she sees what I write, so you may understand me with limitations. She was our inmate for a twelvemonth, grew natural to us, and then they told us it was best for her to go out as a Governess, and so she went out, and we were only two of us, and our pleasant house-mate is changed to an occasional visitor. If they want my sister to go out (as they call it) there will be only one of us. Heaven keep us all from this acceding to Unity!
Can I cram loves enough to you all in this little O? Excuse particularizing.
C. L.
68. To Dr J. Vale Asbury
[? April 1830]
Dear Sir,1
It is an observation of a wise man that ‘moderation is best in all things.’ I cannot agree with him ‘in liquor.’ There is a smoothness and oiliness in wine that makes it go down by a natural channel, which I am positive was made for that descending. Else, why does not wine choke us? could Nature have made that sloping lane, not to facilitate the down-going? She does nothing in vain. You know that better than I. You know how often she has helped you at a dead lift, and how much better entitled she is to a fee than yourself sometimes, when you carry off the credit. Still there is something due to manners and customs, and I should apologise to you and Mrs Asbury for being absolutely carried home upon a man’s shoulders thro’ Silver Street, up Parson’s Lane, by the Chapels (which might have taught me better), and then to be deposited like a dead log at Gaffar Westwood’s, who it seems does not ‘insure’ against intoxication. Not that the mode of conveyance is objectionable. On the contrary, it is more easy than a one-horse chaise. Ariel in the ‘Tempest’ says
On a Bat’s back do I fly,
After sunset merrily.
Now I take it that Ariel must sometimes have stayed out late of nights. Indeed, he pretends that ‘where the bee sucks, there lurks he,’ as much as to say that his suction is as innocent as that little innocent (but damnably stinging when he is provok’d) winged creature. But I take it, that Ariel was fond of metheglin,2 of which the Bees are notorious Brewers. But then you will say: what a shocking sight to see a middle-aged gentleman-and-a-half riding a Gentleman’s back up Parson’s Lane at midnight. Exactly the time for that sort of conveyance, when nobody can see him, nobody but Heaven and his own conscience; now Heaven makes fools, and don’t expect much from her own creation; and as for conscience, She and I have long since come to a compromise. I have given up false modesty, and she allows me to abate a little of the true. I like to be liked, but I don’t care about being respected. I don’t respect myself. But, as I was saying, I thought he would have let me down just as we got to Lieutenant Barker’s Coal-shed (or emporium) but by a cunning jerk I eased myself, and righted my posture. I protest, I thought myself in a palanquin;3 and never felt myself so grandly carried. It was a slave under me. There was I, all but my reason. And what is reason? and what is the loss of it? and how often in a day do we do without it, just as well? Reason is only counting, two and two makes four. And if on my passage home, I thought it made five, what matter? Two and two will just make four, as it always did, before I took the finishing glass that did my business. My sister has begged me to write an apology to Mrs A. and you for disgracing your party; now it does seem to me, that I rather honoured your party, for every one that was not drunk (and one or two of the ladies, I am sure, were not) must have been set off greatly in the contrast to me. I was the scapegoat. The soberer they seemed. By the way is magnesia good on these occasions?
iii pol: [? pil:] med: sum: ante noct: in rub: can:.4 I am no licentiate, but know enough of simples to beg you to send me a draught after this model. But still you’ll say (or the men and maids at your house will say) that it is not a seemly sight for an old gentleman to go home pick-a-back. Well, may be it is not. But I have never studied grace. I take it to be a mere superficial accomplishment. I regard more the internal acquisitions. The great object after supper is to get home, and whether that is obtained in a horizontal posture or perpendicular (as foolish men and apes affect for dignity) I think is little to the purpose. The end is always greater than the means. Here I am, able to compose a sensible rational apology, and what signifies how I got here? I have just sense enough to remember I was very happy last night, and to thank our kind host and hostess, and that’s sense enough, I hope
CHARLES LAMB.
N. B. – What is good for a desperate head-ache? Why, Patience, and a determination not to mind being miserable all day long. And that I have made my mind up to.
So, here goes. It is better than not being alive at all, which I might have been, had your man toppled me down at Lieut. Barker’s Coalshed. My sister sends her sober compliments to Mrs A. She is not much the worse.
Yours truly,
C. LAMB.
69. To Basil Montagu
[P.M. 13 July 1830]
Dear Montagu,1
I cannot pass over the disgraceful circumstance of my leaving No. 25 Bedford Square in liquor. But then, are not those kind friends, who for
4 years have been dissuading me from a country life, in part participation?
I seem to me in a confused manner to remember something about your putting up (a low phrase) for Woodstock.2 Now don’t think me impertinent in saying that for my own part I wish you unsuccessful. You have had thro’ life, what few can claim, a character. It has been that of perfect independence and individuality. You have been, & long may you be, Basil Montagu. Your individualism must be lost in a place where all is Party. What was Horne Tooke? What is Erskine?3 No Single Thoughted man of self-impulse can be in his place in the House of Commons. Having said so much, the impertinence of which you may impute to last night’s fumes, I will only add that if you persist for Woodstock, I am your man for any electioneering ballads, squibs, or dirty interference whatever, & most heartily wish you success.
Mayn’t I come again some day. I never tipsify twice running in the same house.
Basil Montagu Esqr, 25 Bedford Square.
C. L.
70. To George Dyer
Dec. 20, 1830.
Dear Dyer,
I would have written before to thank you for your kind letter, written with your own hand. It glads us to see your writing. It will give you pleasure to hear that, after so much illness, we are in tolerable health and spirits once more. Miss Isola intended to call upon you after her night’s lodging at Miss Buffam’s, but found she was too late for the stage. If she comes to town before she goes home, she will not miss paying her respects to Mrs Dyer and you, to whom she desires best love. Poor Enfield, that has been so peaceable hitherto, has caught the inflammatory fever,1 the tokens are upon her! and a great fire was blazing last night in the barns and haystacks of a farmer, about half a mile from us. Where will these things end? There is no doubt of its being the work of some ill-disposed rustic; but how is he to be discovered? They go to work in the dark with strange chemical preparations unknown to our forefathers. There is not even a dark lantern to have a chance of detecting these Guy Fauxes. We are past the iron age, and are got into the fiery age, undream’d of by Ovid. You are lucky in Clifford’s Inn where, I think, you have few ricks or stacks worth the burning. Pray keep as little corn by you as you can, for fear of the worst.
