The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb Volume VI Part 26

I do not know what news to send you. You will have heard of Alsager's death, and your Son John's success in the Lottery. I say he is a wise man, if he leaves off while he is well. The weather is wet to weariness, but Mary goes puddling about a-shopping after a gown for the winter. She wants it good & cheap. Now I hold that no good things are cheap, pig-presents always excepted. In this mournful weather I sit moping, where I now write, in an office dark as Erebus, jammed in between 4 walls, and writing by Candle-light, most melancholy. Never see the light of the Sun six hours in the day, and am surprised to find how pretty it s.h.i.+nes on Sundays. I wish I were a Caravan driver or a Penny post man, to earn my bread in air & suns.h.i.+ne. Such a pedestrian as I am, to be tied by the legs, like a Fauntleroy, without the pleasure of his Exactions. I am interrupted here with an official question, which will take me up till it's time to go to dinner, so with repeated thanks & both our kindest rememb'ces to Mr. Collier & yourself, I conclude in haste.

Yours & his sincerely, C. LAMB.

from my den in Leadenhall,

2 Nov. 24.

On further enquiry Alsager is not dead, but Mrs. A. is bro't. to bed.

[Mrs. Collier was the mother of John Payne Collier. Alsager we have already met. Henry Fauntleroy was the banker, who had just been found guilty of forgery and on the day that Lamb wrote was sentenced to death.

He was executed on the 30th (see a later letter).]

LETTER 354

CHARLES LAMB TO B.W. PROCTER

[Dated at end: November 11, '24.]

My dear Procter,--

I do agnise a shame in not having been to pay my congratulations to Mrs.

Procter and your happy self, but on Sunday (my only morning) I was engaged to a country walk; and in virtue of the hypostatical union between us, when Mary calls, it is understood that I call too, we being univocal.

But indeed I am ill at these ceremonious inductions. I fancy I was not born with a call on my head, though I have brought one down upon it with a vengeance. I love not to pluck that sort of fruit crude, but to stay its ripening into visits. In probability Mary will be at Southampton Row this morning, and something of that kind be matured between you, but in any case not many hours shall elapse before I shake you by the hand.

Meantime give my kindest felicitations to Mrs. Procter, and a.s.sure her I look forward with the greatest delight to our acquaintance. By the way, the deuce a bit of Cake has come to hand, which hath an inauspicious look at first, but I comfort myself that that Mysterious Service hath the property of Sacramental Bread, which mice cannot nibble, nor time moulder.

I am married myself--to a severe step-wife, who keeps me, not at bed and board, but at desk and board, and is jealous of my morning aberrations.

I can not slip out to congratulate kinder unions. It is well she leaves me alone o' nights--the d.a.m.n'd Day-hag _BUSINESS_. She is even now peeping over me to see I am writing no Love Letters. I come, my dear-- Where is the Indigo Sale Book?

Twenty adieus, my dear friends, till we meet.

Yours most truly, C. LAMB.

Leadenhall, 11 Nov. '24.

[Procter married Anne Skepper, step-daughter of Basil Montagu, in October, 1824. One of their daughters was Adelaide Ann Procter.

"Agnise"--acknowledge. It has been suggested that Lamb favoured this old word also on account of its superficial a.s.sociation with _agnus_, a lamb.]

LETTER 355

CHARLES LAMB TO HENRY CRABB ROBINSON

[P.M. Nov. 20, 1824.]

Dr. R. Barren Field bids me say that he is resident at his brother Henry's, a surgeon &c., a few doors west of Christ Church Pa.s.sage Newgate Street; and that he shall be happy to accompany you up thence to Islington, when next you come our way, but not so late as you sometimes come. I think we shall be out on Tuesd'y.

Yours ever

C. LAMB.

Sat'y.

[Barron Field, as I have said, had returned from New South Wales in June of this year. Later he became Chief Justice at Gibraltar.]

LETTER 356

CHARLES LAMB TO SARAH HUTCHINSON

Desk II, Nov. 25 [1824].

My dear Miss Hutchinson, Mary bids me thank you for your kind letter. We are a little puzzled about your where-abouts: Miss Wordsworth writes Torkay, and you have queerly made it Torquay. Now Tokay we have heard of, and Torbay, which we take to be the true _male_ spelling of the place, but somewhere we fancy it to be on "Devon's leafy sh.o.r.es," where we heartily wish the kindly breezes may restore all that is invalid among you. Robinson is returned, and speaks much of you all. We shall be most glad to hear good news from you from time to time. The best is, Proctor is at last married. We have made sundry attempts to see the Bride, but have accidentally failed, she being gone out a gadding.

We had promised our dear friends the Monkhouses, promised ourselves rather, a visit to them at Ramsgate, but I thought it best, and Mary seemed to have it at heart too, not to go far from home these last holy days. It is connected with a sense of unsettlement, and secretly I know she hoped that such abstinence would be friendly to her health. She certainly has escaped her sad yearly visitation, whether in consequence of it, or of faith in it, and we have to be thankful for a good 1824. To get such a notion into our heads may go a great way another year. Not that we quite confined ourselves; but a.s.suming Islington to be head quarters, we made timid flights to Ware, Watford &c. to try how the trouts tasted, for a night out or so, not long enough to make the sense of change oppressive, but sufficient to scour the rust of home.

Coleridge is not returned from the Sea. As a little scandal may divert you recluses--we were in the Summer dining at a Clergyman of Southey's "Church of England," at Hertford, the same who officiated to Thurtell's last moments, and indeed an old contemporary Blue of C.'s and mine at School. After dinner we talked of C., and F. who is a mighty good fellow in the main, but hath his ca.s.sock prejudices, inveighed against the moral character of C. I endeavoured to enlighten him on the subject, till having driven him out of some of his holds, he stopt my mouth at once by appealing to me whether it was not very well known that C. "at that very moment was living in a state of open a------y with Mrs. * * * * * at Highgate?"

Nothing I could say serious or bantering after that could remove the deep inrooted conviction of the whole company a.s.sembled that such was the case! Of course you will keep this quite close, for I would not involve my poor blundering friend, who I dare say believed it all thoroughly. My interference of course was imputed to the goodness of my heart, that could imagine nothing wrong &c. Such it is if Ladies will go gadding about with other people's husbands at watering places. How careful we should be to avoid the appearance of Evil. I thought this Anecdote might amuse you. It is not worth resenting seriously; only I give it as a specimen of orthodox candour. O Southey, Southey, how long would it be before you would find one of us _Unitarians_ propagating such unwarrantable Scandal! Providence keep you all from the foul fiend Scandal, and send you back well and happy to dear Gloster Place. C.L.

[Thomas Monkhouse, who was in a decline, had been ordered to Torquay.

Crabb Robinson had been in Normandy for some weeks. The too credulous clergyman at Hertford was Frederick William Franklin, Master of the Blue Coat school there (from 1801 to 1827), who was at Christ's Hospital with Lamb.

"Mrs. * * * * * *." Mrs. Gillman.]

LETTER 357

CHARLES LAMB TO LEIGH HUNT

[No date. ? November, 1824.]

ILl.u.s.tREZZIMO Signor,--I have obeyed your mandate to a t.i.ttle. I accompany this with a volume. But what have you done with the first I sent you?--have you swapt it with some lazzaroni for macaroni? or pledged it with a gondolierer for a pa.s.sage? Peradventuri the Cardinal Gonsalvi took a fancy to it:--his Eminence has done my Nearness an honour. 'Tis but a step to the Vatican. As you judge, my works do not enrich the workman, but I get vat I can for 'em. They keep dragging me on, a poor, worn mill-horse, in the eternal round of the d.a.m.n'd magazine; but 'tis they are blind, not I. Colburn (where I recognise with delight the gay W. Honeycomb renovated) hath the ascendency.

I was with the Novellos last week. They have a large, cheap house and garden, with a dainty library (magnificent) without books. But what will make you bless yourself (I am too old for wonder), something has touched the right organ in Vincentio at last. He attends a Wesleyan chapel on Kingsland Green. He at first tried to laugh it off--he only went for the singing; but the cloven foot--I retract--the Lamb's trotters--are at length apparent. Mary Isabella attributes it to a lightness induced by his headaches. But I think I see in it a less accidental influence.

Mister Clark is at perfect staggers! the whole fabric of his infidelity is shaken. He has no one to join him in his coa.r.s.e-insults and indecent obstreperousnesses against Christianity, for Holmes (the bonny Holmes) is gone to Salisbury to be organist, and Isabella and the Clark make but a feeble quorum. The children have all nice, neat little clasped pray-books, and I have laid out 7s. 8d. in Watts's Hymns for Christmas presents for them. The eldest girl alone holds out; she has been at Boulogne, skirting upon the vast focus of Atheism, and imported bad principles in patois French. But the strongholds are crumbling. N.

appears as yet to have but a confused notion of the Atonement. It makes him giddy, he says, to think much about it. But such giddiness is spiritual sobriety.