The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb
Chapter 429 : Major b.u.t.terworth has kindly supplied me with a copy of her letter to Mary Lamb whi

Major b.u.t.terworth has kindly supplied me with a copy of her letter to Mary Lamb which called forth Lamb's reply. It runs thus:--

Kentish Town, 22 July, 1827.

My dear Miss Lamb,

You have been long at Enfield--I hardly know yet whether you are returned--and I quit town so very soon that I have not time to--as I exceedingly wish--call on you before I go. Nevertheless believe (if such familiar expression be not unmeet from me) that I love you with all my heart--gratefully and sincerely--and that when I return I shall seek you with, I hope, not too much zeal--but it will be with great eagerness.

You will be glad to hear that I have every reason to believe that the worst of my pecuniary troubles are over--as I am promised a regular tho'

small income from my father-in-law. I mean to be very industrious _on other accounts_ this summer, so I hope nothing will go very ill with me or mine.

I am afraid Miss Kelly will think me dreadfully rude for not having availed myself of her kind invitation. Will you present my compliments to her, and say that my embara.s.sments, hara.s.sings and distance from town are the guilty causes of my omission--for which with her leave I will apologize in person on my return to London.

All kind and grateful remembrances to Mr. Lamb, he must not forget me nor like me one atom less than I delight to flatter myself he does now, when again I come to seize a dinner perforce at your cottage. Percy is quite well--and is reading with great extacy (_sic_) the Arabian Nights.

I shall return I suppose some one day in September. G.o.d bless you.

Yours affectionately,

MARY W. Sh.e.l.lEY.

_Commey fo_ is Lamb's _comme il faut_.

"In the 'Evangely.'" If by Evangely he meant Gospel, Lamb was a little confused here, I think. Probably Isaiah iv. I was in his mind: "and in that day seven women shall take hold of one man." But he may also have half remembered Luke xvii. 35.

"I am teaching Emma Latin." Mary Lamb contributed to _Blackwood's Magazine_ for June, 1829, the following little poem describing Emma Isola's difficulties in these lessons:--

TO EMMA, LEARNING LATIN, AND DESPONDING

Droop not, dear Emma, dry those falling tears, And call up smiles into thy pallid face, Pallid and care-worn with thy arduous race: In few brief months thou hast done the work of years.

To young beginnings natural are these fears.

A right good scholar shalt thou one day be, And that no distant one; when even she, Who now to thee a star far off appears, That most rare Latinist, the Northern Maid-- The language-loving Sarah[1] of the Lake-- Shall hail thee Sister Linguist. This will make Thy friends, who now afford thee careful aid, A recompense most rich for all their pains, Counting thy acquisitions their best gains.

[Footnote 1: Daughter of S.T. Coleridge, Esq.; an accomplished linguist in the Greek and Latin tongues, and translatress of a History of the Abipones.]

A letter to an anonymous correspondent, in the summer of 1827, has an amusing pa.s.sage concerning Emma Isola's Latin. Lamb says that they made Cary laugh by translating "Blast you" into such elegant verbiage as "Deus afflet tibi." He adds, "How some parsons would have goggled and what would Hannah More say? I don't like clergymen, but here and there one. Cary, the Dante Cary, is a model quite as plain as Parson Primrose, without a shade of silliness."

On July 21, 1827, is a letter to Mr. Dillon, whom I do not identify, saying that Lamb has been teaching Emma Isola Latin for the past seven weeks.

"a.s.s _in praesenti_." This was Boyer's joke, at Christ's Hospital (see Vol. I. of this edition).

Here should come a letter from Lamb to Edward White, of the India House, dated August 1, 1827, in which Lamb has some pleasantry about paying postages, and ends by heartily commending White to mind his ledger, and keep his eye on Mr. Chambers' balances.]

LETTER 421

CHARLES LAMB TO MRS. BASIL MONTAGU

[Summer, 1827.]

Dear Madam,--I return your List with my name. I should be sorry that any respect should be going on towards [Clarkson,] and I be left out of the conspiracy. Otherwise I frankly own that to pillarize a man's good feelings in his lifetime is not to my taste. Monuments to goodness, even after death, are equivocal. I turn away from Howard's, I scarce know why. Goodness blows no trumpet, nor desires to have it blown. We should be modest for a modest man--as he is for himself. The vanities of Life--Art, Poetry, Skill military, are subjects for trophies; not the silent thoughts arising in a good man's mind in lonely places. Was I C[larkson,] I should never be able to walk or ride near ------ again.

Instead of bread, we are giving him a stone. Instead of the locality recalling the n.o.blest moment of his existence, it is a place at which his friends (that is, himself) blow to the world, "What a good man is he!" I sat down upon a hillock at Forty Hill yesternight--a fine contemplative evening,--with a thousand good speculations about mankind.

How I yearned with cheap benevolence! I shall go and inquire of the stone-cutter, that cuts the tombstones here, what a stone with a short inscription will cost; just to say--"Here C. Lamb loved his brethren of mankind." Everybody will come there to love. As I can't well put my own name, I shall put about a subscription:

_s. d_.

Mrs. ---- 5 0 Procter 2 6 G. Dyer 1 0 Mr. G.o.dwin 0 0 Mrs. G.o.dwin 0 0 Mr. Irving a watch-chain.

Mr. ------- the proceeds of ------ first edition.*

___ ___ 8 6

I scribble in haste from here, where we shall be some time. Pray request Mr. M[ontagu] to advance the guinea for me, which shall faithfully be forthcoming; and pardon me that I don't see the proposal in quite the light that he may. The kindness of his motives, and his power of appreciating the n.o.ble pa.s.sage, I thoroughly agree in.

With most kind regards to him, I conclude, Dear Madam,

Yours truly, C. LAMB.

From Mrs. Leishman's, Chase, Enfield.

*A capital book, by the bye, but not over saleable.

[The memorial to Thomas Clarkson stands on a hill above Wade Mill, on the Buntingford Road, in Hertfords.h.i.+re.

Forty Hill is close to Enfield.

Edward Irving's watch-chain. The explanation of Lamb's joke is to be found in Carlyle's _Reminiscences_ (quoted also in Froude's _Life_, Vol.

I., page 326). Irving had put down as his contribution to some subscription list, at a public meeting, "an actual gold watch, which he said had just arrived to him from his beloved brother lately dead in India." This rather theatrical action had evidently amused Lamb as it had disgusted Carlyle.

The "first edition" of "Mr. -----" was, I suppose, Basil Montagu's work on Bacon, which Macaulay reviewed.]

LETTER 422

MARY LAMB TO LADY STODDART

[August 9, 1827.]

My dear Lady-Friend,--My brother called at our empty cottage yesterday, and found the cards of your son and his friend, Mr. Hine, under the door; which has brought to my mind that I am in danger of losing this post, as I did the last, being at that time in a confused state of mind--for at that time we were talking of leaving, and persuading ourselves that we were intending to leave town and all our friends, and sit down for ever, solitary and forgotten, here. Here we are; and we have locked up our house, and left it to take care of itself; but at present we do not design to extend our rural life beyond Michaelmas.

Your kind letter was most welcome to me, though the good news contained in it was already known to me. Accept my warmest congratulations, though they come a little of the latest. In my next I may probably have to hail you Grandmama; or to felicitate you on the nuptials of pretty Mary, who, whatever the beaux of Malta may think of her, I can only remember her round s.h.i.+ning face, and her "O William!"--"dear William!" when we visited her the other day at school. Present my love and best wishes--a long and happy married life to dear Isabella--I love to call her Isabella; but in truth, having left your other letter in town, I recollect no other name she has.

The same love and the same wishes--in futuro--to my friend Mary. Tell her that her "dear William" grows taller, and improves in manly looks and manlike behaviour every time I see him. What is Henry about? and what should one wish for him? If he be in search of a wife, I will send him out Emma Isola.

You remember Emma, that you were so kind as to invite to your ball? She is now with us; and I am moving heaven and earth, that is to say, I am pressing the matter upon all the very few friends I have that are likely to a.s.sist me in such a case, to get her into a family as a governess; and Charles and I do little else here than teach her something or other all day long.

We are striving to put enough Latin into her to enable her to begin to teach it to young learners. So much for Emma --for you are so fearfully far away, that I fear it is useless to implore your patronage for her.

I have not heard from Mrs. Hazlitt a long time. I believe she is still with Hazlitt's mother in Devons.h.i.+re.