The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb
Chapter 420 : "Somebody's insipid wife." In the Popular Fallacy "That You Must L

"Somebody's insipid wife." In the Popular Fallacy "That You Must Love Me and Love My Dog," in the February number, Lamb had spoken of Honorius'

"vapid wife."

Barton and his daughter visited Lamb at Colebrooke Cottage somewhen about this time. Mrs. FitzGerald, in 1893, wrote out for me her recollections of the day. Lamb, who was alone, opened the door himself.

He sent out for a luncheon of oysters. The books on his shelves, Mrs.

FitzGerald remembered, retained the price-labels of the stalls where he had bought them. She also remembered a portrait over the fireplace. This would be the Milton. In the _Gem_ for 1831 was a poem by Barton, "To Milton's Portrait in a Friend's Parlour."]

LETTER 391

CHARLES LAMB TO S.T. COLERIDGE

March 22nd, 1826.

Dear C.,--We will with great pleasure be with you on Thursday in the next week early. Your finding out my style in your nephew's pleasant book is surprising to me. I want eyes to descry it. You are a little too hard upon his morality, though I confess he has more of Sterne about him than of Sternhold. But he saddens into excellent sense before the conclusion. Your query shall be submitted to Miss Kelly, though it is obvious that the pantomime, when done, will be more easy to decide upon than in proposal. I say, do it by all means. I have Decker's play by me, if you can filch anything out of it. Miss Gray, with her kitten eyes, is an actress, though she shows it not at all, and pupil to the former, whose gestures she mimics in comedy to the disparagement of her own natural manner, which is agreeable. It is funny to see her bridling up her neck, which is native to F.K.; but there is no setting another's manners upon one's shoulders any more than their head. I am glad you esteem Manning, though you see but his husk or shrine. He discloses not, save to select wors.h.i.+ppers, and will leave the world without any one hardly but me knowing how stupendous a creature he is. I am perfecting myself in the "Ode to Eton College" against Thursday, that I may not appear uncla.s.sic. I have just discovered that it is much better than the "Elegy."

In haste, C.L.

P.S.--I do not know what to say to your _latest_ theory about Nero being the Messiah, though by all accounts he was a 'nointed one.

["Next week early." Canon Ainger's text here has: "May we venture to bring Emma with us?"

"Your nephew's pleasant book"--Henry Nelson Coleridge's _Six Months in the West Indies in 1825_. In the last chapter but one of the book is an account of the slave question, under the t.i.tle "Planters and Slaves."

"Sternhold"--Thomas Sternhold, the coadjutor of Hopkins in paraphrasing the Psalms.

"The pantomime." Coleridge seems to have had some project for modernising Dekker for f.a.n.n.y Kelly. Mr. d.y.k.es Campbell suggested that the play to be treated was "Old Fortunatus."

"Miss Gray." I have found nothing of this lady.

"Manning." Writing to Robert Lloyd twenty-five years earlier Lamb had said of Manning: "A man of great Power--an enchanter almost.--Far beyond Coleridge or any man in power of impressing --when he gets you alone he can act the wonders of Egypt. Only he is lazy, and does not always put forth all his strength; if he did, I know no man of genius at all comparable to him."

"Against Thursday." Coleridge was "at home" on Thursday evenings.

Possibly on this occasion some one interested in Gray was to be there, or the allusion may be a punning one to Miss Gray.

"Your _latest_ theory." I cannot explain this.]

LETTER 392

CHARLES LAMB TO H.F. CARY

April 3, 1826.

Dear Sir,--It is whispered me that you will not be unwilling to look into our doleful hermitage. Without more preface, you will gladden our cell by accompanying our old chums of the London, Darley and Allan Cunningham, to Enfield on Wednesday. You shall have hermit's fare, with talk as seraphical as the novelty of the divine life will permit, with an innocent retrospect to the world which we have left, when I will thank you for your hospitable offer at Chiswick, and with plain hermit reasons evince the necessity of abiding here.

Without hearing from you, then, you shall give us leave to expect you. I have long had it on my conscience to invite you, but spirits have been low; and I am indebted to chance for this awkward but most sincere invitation.

Yours, with best love to Mrs. Cary, C. LAMB.

Darley knows all about the coaches. Oh, for a Museum in the wilderness!

[Cary, who had been afternoon lecturer at Chiswick and curate of the Savoy, this year took up his post as a.s.sistant Keeper of the Printed Books at the British Museum. George Darley, who wrote some notes to Gary's _Dante_, we have met. Allan Cunningham was the Scotch poet and the author of the Lives of the Painters, the "Giant" of the _London Magazine_. The Lambs seem to have been spending some days at Enfield.

Here should come a note from Lamb to Ollier asking for a copy of the April _New Monthly Magazine_ for himself, and one for his Chinese friend (Manning) if his jests are in.]

LETTER 393

CHARLES LAMB TO VINCENT NOVELLO

[P.M. May 9, 1826.]

Dear N. You will not expect us to-morrow, I am sure, while these d.a.m.n'd North Easters continue. We must wait the Zephyrs' pleasures. By the bye, I was at Highgate on Wensday, the only one of the Party.

Yours truly C. LAMB.

_Summer_, as my friend Coleridge waggishly writes, has set in with its usual severity.

Kind rememb'ces to Mrs. Novello &c.

LETTER 394

CHARLES LAMB TO BERNARD BARTON

[P.M. May 16, 1826.]

Dear B.B.--I have had no spirits lately to begin a letter to you, though I am under obligations to you (how many!) for your neat little poem, 'Tis just what it professes to be, a simple tribute in chaste verse, serious and sincere. I do not know how Friends will relish it, but we out-lyers, Honorary Friends, like it very well. I have had my head and ears stuff'd up with the East winds. A continual ringing in my brain of bells jangled, or The Spheres touchd by some raw Angel. It is not George 3 trying the 100th psalm? I get my music for nothing. But the weather seems to be softening, and will thaw my stunnings. Coleridge writing to me a week or two since begins his note--"Summer has set in with its usual Severity." A cold Summer is all I know of disagreeable in cold. I do not mind the utmost rigour of real Winter, but these smiling hypocrites of Mays wither me to death. My head has been a ringing Chaos, like the day the winds were made, before they submitted to the discipline of a weather-c.o.c.k, before the Quarters were made. In the street, with the blended noises of life about me, I hear, and my head is lightened, but in a room the hubbub comes back, and I am deaf as a Sinner. Did I tell you of a pleasant sketch Hood has done, which he calls _Very Deaf Indeed_? It is of a good nat.u.r.d stupid looking old gentleman, whom a footpad has stopt, but for his extreme deafness cannot make him understand what he wants; the unconscious old gentleman is extending his ear-trumpet very complacently, and the fellow is firing a pistol into it to make him hear, but the ball will pierce his skull sooner than the report reach his sensorium. I chuse a very little bit of paper, for my ear hisses when I bend down to write. I can hardly read a book, for I miss that small soft voice which the idea of articulated words raises (almost imperceptibly to you) in a silent reader. I seem too deaf to see what I read. But with a touch or two of returning Zephyr my head will melt. What Lyes you Poets tell about the May! It is the most ungenial part of the Year, cold crocuses, cold primroses, you take your blossoms in Ice --a painted Sun--

Unmeaning joy around appears, And Nature smiles as if she sneers.

It is ill with me when I begin to look which way the wind sits. Ten years ago I literally did not know the point from the broad end of the Vane, which it was the [?that] indicated the Quarter. I hope these ill winds have blowd _over_ you, as they do thro' me. Kindest rememb'ces to you and yours. C.L.

["Your neat little poem." It is not possible to trace this poem.

Probably, I think, the "Stanzas written for a blank leaf in Sewell's History of the Quakers," printed in _A Widow's Tale_, 1827.

"George 3." Byron's "Vision of Judgment" thus closes:--

King George slipp'd into Heaven for one; And when the tumult dwindled to a calm, I left him practising the hundredth psalm.

This is Hood's sketch, in his _Whims and Oddities_:--