The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb
Chapter 424 : Dear Robinson,--I called upon you this morning, and found that you were gone to visit

Dear Robinson,--I called upon you this morning, and found that you were gone to visit a dying friend. I had been upon a like errand. Poor Norris has been lying dying for now almost a week, such is the penalty we pay for having enjoyed a strong const.i.tution! Whether he knew me or not, I know not, or whether he saw me through his poor glazed eyes; but the group I saw about him I shall not forget. Upon the bed, or about it, were a.s.sembled his wife and two daughters, and poor deaf Richard, his son, looking doubly stupified. There they were, and seemed to have been sitting all the week. I could only reach out a hand to Mrs. Norris.

Speaking was impossible in that mute chamber. By this time I hope it is all over with him. In him I have a loss the world cannot make up. He was my friend and my father's friend all the life I can remember. I seem to have made foolish friends.h.i.+ps ever since. Those are friends.h.i.+ps which outlive a second generation. Old as I am waxing, in his eyes I was still the child he first knew me. To the last he called me Charley. I have none to call me Charley now. He was the last link that bound me to the Temple. You are but of yesterday. In him seem to have died the old plainness of manners and singleness of heart. Letters he knew nothing of, nor did his reading extend beyond the pages of the "Gentleman's Magazine." Yet there was a pride of literature about him from being amongst books (he was librarian), and from some sc.r.a.ps of doubtful Latin which he had picked up in his office of entering students, that gave him very diverting airs of pedantry. Can I forget the erudite look with which, when he had been in vain trying to make out a black-letter text of Chaucer in the Temple Library, he laid it down and told me that--"in those old books, Charley, there is sometimes a deal of very indifferent spelling;" and seemed to console himself in the reflection! His jokes, for he had his jokes, are now ended, but they were old trusty perennials, staples that pleased after _decies repet.i.ta_, and were always as good as new. One song he had, which was reserved for the night of Christmas-day, which we always spent in the Temple. It was an old thing, and spoke of the flat bottoms of our foes and the possibility of their coming over in darkness, and alluded to threats of an invasion many years blown over; and when he came to the part

"We'll still make 'em run, and we'll still make 'em sweat, In spite of the devil and Brussels Gazette!"

his eyes would sparkle as with the freshness of an impending event. And what is the "Brussels Gazette" now? I cry while I enumerate these trifles. "How shall we tell them in a stranger's ear?" His poor good girls will now have to receive their afflicted mother in an inaccessible hovel in an obscure village in Herts, where they have been long struggling to make a school without effect; and poor deaf Richard--and the more helpless for being so--is thrown on the wide world.

My first motive in writing, and, indeed, in calling on you, was to ask if you were enough acquainted with any of the Benchers, to lay a plain statement before them of the circ.u.mstances of the family. I almost fear not, for you are of another hall. But if you can oblige me and my poor friend, who is now insensible to any favours, pray exert yourself. You cannot say too much good of poor Norris and his poor wife.

Yours ever, CHARLES LAMB.

[This letter, describing the death of Randal Norris, Sub-Treasurer and Librarian of the Inner Temple, was printed with only very slight alterations in Hone's _Table Book_, 1827, and again in the _Last Essays of Elia_, 1833, under the t.i.tle "A Death-Bed." It was, however, taken out of the second edition, and "Confessions of a Drunkard" subst.i.tuted, in deference to the wishes of Norris's family. Mrs. Norris, as I have said, was a native of Widford, where she had known Mrs. Field, Lamb's grandmother. With her son Richard, who was deaf and peculiar, Mrs.

Norris moved to Widford again, where the daughters, Miss Betsy and Miss Jane, had opened a school--G.o.ddard House; which they retained until a legacy restored the family prosperity. Soon after that they both married, each a farmer named Tween. They survived until quite recently.

Mrs. Coe, an old scholar at the Misses Morris's school in the twenties, gave me, in 1902, some reminiscences of those days, from which I quote a pa.s.sage or so:--

When he joined the Norrises' dinner-table he kept every one laughing. Mr. Richard sat at one end, and some of the school children would be there too. One day Mr. Lamb gave every one a fancy name all round the table, and made a verse on each. "You are so-and-so," he said, "and you are so-and-so," adding the rhyme.

"What's he saying? What are you laughing at?" Mr. Richard asked testily, for he was short-tempered. Miss Betsy explained the joke to him, and Mr. Lamb, coming to his turn, said--only he said it in verse--"Now, d.i.c.k, it's your turn. I shall call you Gruborum; because all you think of is your food and your stomach." Mr. Richard pushed back his chair in a rage and stamped out of the room. "Now I've done it," said Mr. Lamb: "I must go and make friends with my old chum. Give me a large plate of pudding to take to him." When he came back he said, "It's all right. I thought the pudding would do it." Mr. Lamb and Mr. Richard never got on very well, and Mr.

Richard didn't like his teasing ways at all; but Mr. Lamb often went for long walks with him, because no one else would. He did many kind things like that.

There used to be a half-holiday when Mr. Lamb came, partly because he would force his way into the schoolroom and make seriousness impossible. His head would suddenly appear at the door in the midst of lessons, with "Well, Betsy! How do, Jane?" "O, Mr. Lamb!" they would say, and that was the end of work for that day. He was really rather naughty with the children. One of his tricks was to teach them a new kind of catechism (Mrs. Coe does not remember it, but we may rest a.s.sured, I fear, that it was secular), and he made a great fuss with Lizzie Hunt for her skill in saying the Lord's Prayer backwards, which he had taught her.

"We'll still make 'em run..." Garrick's "Hearts of Oak," sung in "Harlequin's Invasion."

"How shall we tell them in a stranger's ear?" A quotation from Lamb himself, in the lines "Written soon after the Preceding Poem," in 1798 (see Vol. IV.).]

LETTER 406

CHARLES LAMB TO HENRY CRABB ROBINSON

[No date. Jan. 20, 1827.]

Dear R.N. is dead. I have writ as nearly as I could to look like a letter meant for _your eye only_. Will it do?

Could you distantly hint (do as your own judgment suggests) that if his son could be got in as Clerk to the new Subtreasurer, it would be all his father wish'd? But I leave that to you. I don't want to put you upon anything disagreeable.

Yours thankfully

C.L.

[The reference at the beginning is to the preceding letter, which was probably enclosed with this note.

Here should come a note to Allsop dated Jan. 25, 1827, complaining of the cold.]

LETTER 407

CHARLES LAMB TO HENRY CRABB ROBINSON

[Dated by H.C.R. Jan. 29, 1827.]

Dear Robinson, If you have not seen Mr. Gurney, leave him quite alone for the present, I have seen Mr. Jekyll, who is as friendly as heart can desire, he entirely approves of my formula of pet.i.tion, and gave your very reasons for the propriety of the "little village of Hertf's.h.i.+re."

Now, Mr. G. might not approve of it, and then we should clash. Also, Mr.

J. wishes it to be presented next week, and Mr. G. might fix earlier, which would be aukward. Mr. J. was so civil to me, that I _think it would be better NOT for you to show him that letter you intended_.

Nothing can increase his zeal in the cause of poor Mr. Norris. Mr.

Gardiner will see you with this, and learn from you all about it, & consult, if you have seen Mr. G. & he has fixed a time, how to put it off. Mr. J. is most friendly to the boy: I think you had better not teaze the Treasurer any more about _him_, as it may make him less friendly to the Pet.i.tion

Yours Ever

C.L.

[Writing to Dorothy Wordsworth on February 13, 1827, Robinson says: "The Lambs are well. I have been so busy that I have not lately seen them.

Charles has been occupied about the affair of the widow of his old friend Norris whose death he has felt. But the health of both is good."

Gurney would probably be John Gurney (afterwards Baron Gurney), the counsel and judge. Jekyll was Joseph Jekyll, the wit, mentioned by Lamb in his essay on "The Old Benchers of the Inner Temple." He was a friend of George Dyer.]

LETTER 408

CHARLES LAMB TO HENRY CRABB ROBINSON

[Dated by H.C. R. Jan., 1827.]

Dear R. do not say any thing to Mr. G. about the day _or_ Pet.i.tion, for Mr. Jekyll wishes it to be next week, and thoroughly approves of my formula, and Mr. G. might not, and then they will clash. Only speak to him of Gardner's wish to have the Lad. Mr. Jekyll was excessive friendly. C.L.

[The matter referred to is still the Norrises' welfare. Mr. Hazlitt says that an annuity of 80 was settled by the Inn on Mrs. Norris.

Here perhaps should come a letter from Lamb to Allsop, printed by Mr.

Fitzgerald, urging Allsop to go to Highgate to see Coleridge and tell him of the unhappy state of his, Allsop's, affairs. In Crabb Robinson's _Diary_ for February 1, 1827, I read: "I went to Lamb. Found him in trouble about his friend Allsop, who is a ruined man. Allsop is a very good creature who has been a generous friend to Coleridge." Writing of his troubles in _Letters, Conversations and Recollections of S.T.

Coleridge_, Allsop says: "Charles Lamb, Charles and Mary Lamb, 'union is part.i.tion,' were never wanting in the hour of need."]

LETTER 409

CHARLES LAMB TO B.R. HAYDON

[March, 1827.]

Dear Raffaele Haydon,--Did the maid tell you I came to see your picture, not on Sunday but the day before? I think the face and bearing of the Bucephalus-tamer very n.o.ble, his flesh too effeminate or painty. The skin of the female's back kneeling is much more carnous. I had small time to pick out praise or blame, for two lord-like Bucks came in, upon whose strictures my presence seemed to impose restraint: I plebeian'd off therefore.

I think I have hit on a subject for you, but can't swear it was never executed,--I never heard of its being,--"Chaucer beating a Franciscan Friar in Fleet Street." Think of the old dresses, houses, &c. "It seemeth that both these learned men (Gower and Chaucer) were of the Inner Temple; for not many years since Master Buckley did see a record in the same house where Geoffry Chaucer was fined two s.h.i.+llings for beating a Franciscan Friar in Fleet Street." _Chaucer's Life by T.