The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb Volume I Part 27

"How long is it ago? (quod he).

"By my faith (quod I) about twenty-one years.

"Tus.h.!.+ (quod he), this is a worthy miracle!

"In good faith (quod I), never wist I that any man could tell that he had any other beginning. And methinketh that this is as great a miracle as the raising of a dead man." [Book I., Chapter 10.]

Diabolical Possession was a rag of the old abomination, which this Contunder of Heresies thought himself obliged no less to wrap tightly about the loins of his faith, than any of the _splendiores panni_ of the old red Harlot. But (read with allowance for the belief of the times) the narrative will be found affecting, particularly in what relates to the parents of the damsel, "rich, and sore abashed."

----"Amongst which (_true miracles_) I durst boldly tell you for one, the wonderful work of G.o.d, that was within these few years wrought, in the house of a right wors.h.i.+pful knight, Sir Roger Wentworth, upon divers of his children, and specially one of his daughters, a very fair young gentlewoman of twelve years of age, in marvellous manner vexed and tormented by our ghostly enemy the devil, her mind alienated and raving with despising and blasphemy of G.o.d, and hatred of all hallowed things, with knowledge and perceiving of the hallowed from the unhallowed, all were she nothing warned thereof. And after that moved in her own mind, and monished by the will of G.o.d, to go to our Lady of Ippiswitche. In the way of which pilgrimage, she prophesied and told many things done and said at the same time in other places, which were proved true, and many things said, lying in her trance, of such wisdom and learning, that right cunning men highly marvelled to hear of so young an unlearned maiden, when herself wist not what she said, such things uttered and spoken, as well learned men might have missed with a long study, and finally being brought and laid before the Image of our Blessed Lady, was there in the sight of many wors.h.i.+pful people so grievously tormented, and in face, eyen, look and countenance, so griesly changed, and her mouth drawn aside, and her eyen laid out upon her cheeks, that it was a terrible sight to behold. And after many marvellous things at the same time shewed upon divers persons by the devil through G.o.d's sufferance, as well all the remnant as the maiden herself, in the presence of all the company, restored to their good state perfectly cured and suddenly. And in this matter no pretext of begging, no suspicion of feigning? no possibility of counterfeiting, no simpleness in the seers, her father and mother right honourable and rich, _sore abashed to see such chances in their children_, the witnesses great number, and many of great wors.h.i.+p, wisdom and good experience, the maid herself too young to feign [and the fas.h.i.+on itself too strange for any man to feign], and the end of the matter virtuous, the virgin so moved in her mind with the miracle, that she forthwith for aught her father could do, forsook the world, and professed religion in a very good and G.o.dly company at the Mynoresse, where she hath lived well and graciously ever since." [Book I., Chapter 16.]

I shall trouble you with one Excerpt more, from a "Dialogue of Comfort against Tribulation;" because the style of it is solemn and weighty; and because it was written by More in his last imprisonment in the Tower, preparatory to his sentence. After witnessing his treatment of Sir John Hytton, and his brethren, we shall be inclined to mitigate some of our remorse, that More should have suffered death himself _for conscience sake_. The reader will not do this pa.s.sage justice, if he do not read it as part of a sermon; and as putting himself into the feelings of an auditory of More's Creed and Times.

----"But some men now when this calling of G.o.d [any tribulation]

causeth them to be sad, they be loth to leave their sinful l.u.s.ts that hang in their hearts, and specially if they have any such kind of living, as they must needs leave off, or fall deeper in sin: or if they have done so many great wrongs, that they have many 'mends to make, that must (if they follow G.o.d) 'minish much their money, then are these folks (alas) woefully bewrapped, for G.o.d p.r.i.c.keth upon them of his great goodness still, and the grief of this great pang pincheth them at the heart, and of wickedness they wry away, and fro this tribulation they turn to their flesh for help, and labour to shake off this thought, and then they mend their pillow, and lay their head softer, and a.s.say to sleep; and when that will not be, then they find a talk awhile with them that lie by them. If that cannot be neither, then they lie and long for day, and then get them forth about their worldly wretchedness, the matter of their prosperity, the self-same sinful things with which they displease G.o.d most, and at length with many times using this manner, G.o.d utterly casteth them off. And then they set nought neither by G.o.d nor Devil. * * * But alas! when death cometh, then cometh again their sorrow, then will no soft bed serve, nor no company make him merry, then must he leave his outward wors.h.i.+p and comfort of his glory, and lie panting in his bed as if he were on a pine-bank, then cometh his fear of his evil life and his dreadful death. Then cometh the torment, his c.u.mbered conscience and fear of his heavy judgment.

Then the devil draweth him to despair with imagination of h.e.l.l, and suffereth him not then to take it for a fable. And yet if he do, then findeth it the wretch no fable. * * * Some have I seen even in their last sickness set up in their death-bed underpropped with pillows take their play-fellows to them, and comfort themselves with cards, and this they said did ease them well to put fantasies out of their heads; and what fantasies trow you? such as I told you right now of, their own lewd life and peril of their soul, of heaven and of h.e.l.l that irked them to think of, and therefore cast it out with cards' play as long as ever thy might, till the pure pangs of death pulled their heart fro their play, and put them in the case they could not reckon their game. And then left them their gameners, and slily slunk away, and long was it not ere they galped up the ghost.

And what game they came then to, that G.o.d knoweth and not I. I pray G.o.d it were good, but I fear it very sore."

THE CONFESSIONS OF H. F. V. H. DELAMORE, ESQ.

(1821)

SACKVILLE-STREET, _25th March, 1821_.

Mr. Editor,--A correspondent in your last number,[41] blesses his stars, that he was never yet in the pillory; and, with a confidence which the uncertainty of mortal accidents but weakly justifies, goes on to predict that he never shall be. Twelve years ago, had a Sibyl prophesied to me, that I should live to be set in a worse place, I should have struck her for a lying beldam. There are degradations below that which he speaks of.

[41] Elia:--Chapter on Ears.

I come of a good stock, Mr. Editor. The Delamores are a race singularly tenacious of their honour; men who, in the language of Edmund Burke, feel a stain like a wound. My grand uncle died of a fit of the sullens for the disgrace of a public whipping at Westminster. He had not then attained his fourteenth year. Would I had died young!

For more than five centuries, the current of our blood hath flowed unimpeachably. And must it stagnate now?

Can a family be tainted backwards?--can posterity purchase disgrace for their progenitors?--or doth it derogate from the great Walter of our name, who received the sword of knighthood in Cressy field, that one of his descendants once sate * * * * * * * * * * *?

Can an honour, fairly achieved in _quinto Edwardi Tertii_, be reversed by a slip _in quinquagesimo Georgii Tertii_?--how stands the law?--what _dictum_ doth the college deliver?--O Clarencieux! O Norroy!

Can a reputation, gained by hard watchings on the cold ground, in a suit of mail, be impeached by hard watchings on the cold ground in other circ.u.mstances--was the endurance equal?--why is the guerdon so disproportionate?

A priest mediated the ransom of the too valorous Reginald, of our house, captived in Lord Talbot's battles. It was a clergyman, who by his intercession abridged the period of my durance.

Have you touched at my wrongs yet, Mr. Editor?--or must I be explicit as to my grievance?

Hush, my heedless tongue.

Something bids me--"Delamore, be ingenuous."

Once then, and only once----

Star of my nativity, hide beneath a cloud, while I reveal it!

Ancestors of Delamore, lie low in your wormy beds, that no posthumous hearing catch a sound!

Let no eye look over thee, while thou shalt peruse it, reader!

Once----

these legs, with Kent in the play, though for far less enn.o.bling considerations, did wear "cruel garters."

Yet I protest it was but for a thing of nought--a fault of youth, and warmer blood--a calendary inadvertence I may call it--or rather a temporary obliviousness of the day of the week--timing my Saturnalia amiss.----

Streets of Barnet, infamous for civil broils, ye saw my shame!--did not your Red Rose rise again to dye my burning cheek?

It was but for a pair of minutes, or so--yet I feel, I feel, that the gentry of the Delamores is extinguished for ever.----

Try to forget it, reader.----

(Signed) HENRY FRANCIS VERE HARRINGTON

DELAMORE.

THE GENTLE GIANTESS

(1822)

The widow Blacket, of Oxford, is the largest female I ever had the pleasure of beholding. There may be her parallel upon the earth, but surely I never saw it. I take her to be lineally descended from the maid's aunt of Brainford, who caused Master Ford such uneasiness. She hath Atlantean shoulders; and, as she stoopeth in her gait--with as few offences to answer for in her own particular as any of Eve's daughters--her back seems broad enough to bear the blame of all the peccadillos that have been committed since Adam. She girdeth her waist--or what she is pleased to esteem as such--nearly up to her shoulders, from beneath which, that huge dorsal expanse, in mountainous declivity, emergeth. Respect for her alone preventeth the idle boys, who follow her about in shoals, whenever she cometh abroad, from getting up and riding.--But her presence infallibly commands a reverence. She is indeed, as the Americans would express it, something awful. Her person is a burthen to herself, no less than to the ground which bears her. To her mighty bone, she hath a pinguitude withal, which makes the depth of winter to her the most desirable season. Her distress in the warmer solstice is pitiable. During the months of July and August, she usually renteth a cool cellar, where ices are kept, whereinto she descendeth when Sirius rageth. She dates from a hot Thursday--some twenty-five years ago. Her apartment in summer is pervious to the four winds. Two doors, in north and south direction, and two windows, fronting the rising and the setting sun, never closed, from every cardinal point, catch the contributory breezes. She loves to enjoy what she calls a quadruple draught. That must be a shrewd zephyr, that can escape her. I owe a painful face-ach, which oppresses me at this moment, to a cold caught, sitting by her, one day in last July, at this receipt of coolness. Her fan in ordinary resembleth a banner spread, which she keepeth continually on the alert to detect the least breeze. She possesseth an active and gadding mind, totally incommensurate with her person. No one delighteth more than herself in country exercises and pastimes. I have pa.s.sed many an agreeable holiday with her in her favourite park at Woodstock. She performs her part in these delightful ambulatory excursions by the aid of a portable garden chair. She setteth out with you at a fair foot gallop, which she keepeth up till you are both well breathed, and then she reposeth for a few seconds. Then she is up again, for a hundred paces or so, and again resteth--her movement, on these sprightly occasions, being something between walking and flying.

Her great weight seemeth to propel her forward, ostrich-fas.h.i.+on. In this kind of relieved marching I have traversed with her many scores of acres on these well-wooded and well-watered domains. Her delight at Oxford is in the public walks and gardens, where, when the weather is not too oppressive, she pa.s.seth much of her valuable time. There is a bench at Maudlin, or rather, situated between the frontiers of that and * * * * * *'s college--some litigation latterly, about repairs, has vested the property of it finally in * * * * * *'s--where at the hour of noon she is ordinarily to be found sitting--so she calls it by courtesy--but in fact, pressing and breaking of it down with her enormous settlement; as both those Foundations, who, however, are good-natured enough to wink at it, have found, I believe, to their cost.

Here she taketh the fresh air, princ.i.p.ally at vacation times, when the walks are freest from interruption of the younger fry of students. Here she pa.s.seth her idle hours, not idly, but generally accompanied with a book--blest if she can but intercept some resident Fellow (as usually there are some of that brood left behind at these periods); or stray Master of Arts (to most of them she is better known than their dinner bell); with whom she may confer upon any curious topic of literature. I have seen these shy gownsmen, who truly set but a very slight value upon female conversation, cast a hawk's eye upon her from the length of Maudlin grove, and warily glide off into another walk--true monks as they are, and ungently neglecting the delicacies of her polished converse, for their own perverse and uncommunicating solitariness!

Within doors her princ.i.p.al diversion is music, vocal and instrumental, in both which she is no mean professor. Her voice is wonderfully fine; but till I got used to it, I confess it staggered me. It is for all the world like that of a piping bulfinch, while from her size and stature you would expect notes to drown the deep organ. The shake, which most fine singers reserve for the close or cadence, by some unaccountable flexibility, or tremulousness of pipe, she carrieth quite through the composition; so that her time, to a common air or ballad, keeps double motion, like the earth--running the primary circuit of the tune, and still revolving upon its own axis. The effect, as I said before, when you are used to it, is as agreeable as it is altogether new and surprising. The s.p.a.cious apartment of her outward frame lodgeth a soul in all respects disproportionate. Of more than mortal make, she evinceth withal a trembling sensibility, a yielding infirmity of purpose, a quick susceptibility to reproach, and all the train of diffident and blus.h.i.+ng virtues, which for their habitation usually seek out a feeble frame, an attenuated and meagre const.i.tution. With more than man's bulk, her humours and occupations are eminently feminine. She sighs--being six foot high. She languisheth--being two feet wide. She worketh slender sprigs upon the delicate muslin--her fingers being capable of moulding a Colossus. She sippeth her wine out of her gla.s.s daintily--her capacity being that of a tun of Heidelburg. She goeth mincingly with those feet of hers--whose solidity need not fear the black ox's pressure. Softest, and largest of thy s.e.x, adieu! by what parting attribute may I salute thee--last and best of the t.i.tanesses--Ogress, fed with milk instead of blood--not least, or least handsome, among Oxford's stately structures--Oxford, who, in its deadest time of vacation, can never properly be said to be empty, having thee to fill it.

ELIA.

LETTER TO AN OLD GENTLEMAN WHOSE EDUCATION HAS BEEN NEGLECTED

_To the Editor of the London Magazine_

(1823)