The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb
Chapter 358 : She promised to call on me before she left town but the weather having been very bad I

She promised to call on me before she left town but the weather having been very bad I suppose has prevented her. She received the letter which came through my brother's hands and I have learned from Mrs. Montagu that all your commissions are executed. It was Carlisle that she consulted, and she is to continue taking his prescriptions in the country. Mr. Monkhouse & Mr. Addison drank tea with us one evening last week. Miss Monkhouse is a very pleasing girl, she reminds me, a little, of Miss Hutchinson. I have not seen Henry Robinson for some days past, but I remember he told me he had received a letter from you, and he talked of Spanish papers which he should send to Mr. Southey. I wonder he does not write, for I have always understood him to be a very regular correspondent, and he seemed very proud of your letter. I am tolerably well, but I still affect the invalid--take medicines, and keep at home as much as I possibly can. Water-drinking, though I confess it to be a flat thing, is become very easy to me. Charles perseveres in it most manfully.

Coleridge is just in the same state as when I wrote last--I have not seen him since Sunday, he was then at Mr. Morgan's but talked of taking a lodging.

Phillips feels a certainty that he shall lose his election, for the new candidate is himself a Fellow of the Royal Society, and [it] is thought Sir Joseph Banks will favour him. It will now be soon decided.

My new maid is now sick in bed. Am I not unlucky? She would have suited me very well if she had been healthy, but I must send her away if she is not better tomorrow.

Charles promised to add a few lines, I will therefore leave him plenty of room, for he may perhaps think of something to entertain you. I am sure I cannot.

I hope you will not return to Grasmere till all fear of the Scarlet Fever is over, I rejoice to hear so good an account of the children and hope you will write often. When I write next I will endeavour to get a frank. This I cannot do but when the parliament is sitting, and as you seemed anxious about Miss Monkhouse I would not defer sending this, though otherwise it is not worth paying one penny for.

G.o.d bless you all.

Yours affectionately

M. LAMB.

LETTER 194

CHARLES LAMB TO Miss WORDSWORTH

(_Added to same letter_)

We are in a pickle. Mary from her affectation of physiognomy has hired a stupid big country wench who looked honest, as she thought, and has been doing her work some days but without eating--eats no b.u.t.ter nor meat, but prefers cheese with her tea for breakfast--and now it comes out that she was ill when she came with lifting her mother about (who is now with G.o.d) when she was dying, and with riding up from Norfolk 4 days and nights in the waggon. She got advice yesterday and took something which has made her bring up a quart of blood, and she now lies, a dead weight upon our humanity, in her bed, incapable of getting up, refusing to go into an hospital, having no body in town but a poor asthmatic dying Uncle, whose son lately married a drab who fills his house, and there is no where she can go, and she seems to have made up her mind to take her flight to heaven from our bed.--O G.o.d! O G.o.d!--for the little wheelbarrow which trundled the Hunchback from door to door to try the various charities of different professions of Mankind!

Here's her Uncle just crawled up, he is far liker Death than He. O the Parish, the Parish, the hospital, the infirmary, the charnel house, these are places meet for such guests, not our quiet mansion where nothing but affluent plenty and literary ease should abound.--Howard's House, Howard's House, or where the Parylitic descended thro' the sky-light (what a G.o.d's Gift) to get at our Savior. In this perplexity such topics as Spanish papers and Monkhouses sink into comparative insignificance. What shall we do?--If she died, it were something: gladly would I pay the coffin maker and the bellman and searchers--O Christ. C. L.

[Miss Monkhouse was the daughter of the Wordsworths' and Lambs' friend, Thomas Monkhouse.

"Mr. Addison." I have not traced this gentleman.

Miss Hutchinson was Sarah Hutchinson, sister of Mrs. Wordsworth.

"The Hunchback." In the _Arabian Nights_.

"Howard's House." This would be Cold-Bath Fields Prison, erected in 1794 upon some humane suggestions of Howard the Philanthropist.]

LETTER 195

CHARLES LAMB TO WILLIAM HAZLITT

Wednesday, November 28, 1810.

Dear Hazlitt--I sent you on Sat.u.r.day a Cobbett, containing your reply to the _Edinburgh Review_, which I thought you would be glad to receive as an example of attention on the part of Mr. Cobbett to insert it so speedily. Did you get it? We have received your pig, and return you thanks; it will be dressed in due form, with appropriate sauce, this day. Mary has been very ill indeed since you saw her; that is, as ill as she can be to remain at home. But she is a good deal better now, owing to a very careful regimen. She drinks nothing but water, and never goes out; she does not even go to the Captain's. Her indisposition has been ever since that night you left town; the night Miss W[ordsworth] came.

Her coming, and that d----d Mrs. G.o.dwin coming and staying so late that night, so overset her that she lay broad awake all that night, and it was by a miracle that she escaped a very bad illness, which I thoroughly expected. I have made up my mind that she shall never have any one in the house again with her, and that no one shall sleep with her, not even for a night; for it is a very serious thing to be always living with a kind of fever upon her; and therefore I am sure you will take it in good part if I say that if Mrs. Hazlitt comes to town at any time, however glad we shall be to see her in the daytime, I cannot ask her to spend a night under our roof. Some decision we must come to, for the hara.s.sing fever that we have both been in, owing to Miss Wordsworth's coming, is not to be borne; and I would rather be dead than so alive. However, at present, owing to a regimen and medicines which Tuthill has given her, who very kindly volunteer'd the care of her, she is a great deal quieter, though too much hara.s.sed by company, who cannot or will not see how late hours and society teaze her.

Poor Phillips had the cup dash'd out of his lips as it were. He had every prospect of the situation, when about ten days since one of the council of the R. Society started for the place himself, being a rich merchant who lately failed, and he will certainly be elected on Friday next. P. is very sore and miserable about it.

Coleridge is in town, or at least at Hammersmith. He is writing or going to write in the _Courier_ against Cobbett, and in favour of paper money.

No news. Remember me kindly to Sarah. I write from the office.

Yours ever, C. LAMB.

I just open'd it to say the pig, upon proof, hath turned out as good as I predicted. My fauces yet retain the sweet porcine odour. I find you have received the Cobbett. I think your paper complete.

Mrs. Reynolds, who is a sage woman, approves of the pig.

["A Cobbett." This was Cobbett's _Political Register_ for November 24, 1810, containing Hazlitt's letter upon "Mr. Malthus and the Edinburgh Reviewers," signed "The Author of a Reply to the _Essay on Population_."

Hazlitt's reply had been criticised in the _Edinburgh_ for August, probably only just published.

The postscript contains Lamb's first pa.s.sage in praise of roast pig.

I place next the following undated letter to G.o.dwin from Mr. Kegan Paul's _William G.o.dwin: His Friends and Contemporaries_, as it seems to be connected with the decision concerning visitors expressed in the letter to Hazlitt.]

LETTER 196

CHARLES LAMB TO WILLIAM G.o.dWIN

Dear G.o.dwin,--I have found it for several reasons indispensable to my comfort, and to my sister's, to have no visitors in the forenoon. If I cannot accomplish this I am determined to leave town.

I am extremely sorry to do anything in the slightest degree that may seem offensive to you or to Mrs. G.o.dwin, but when a general rule is fixed on, you know how odious in a case of this sort it is to make exceptions; I a.s.sure you I have given up more than one friends.h.i.+p in stickling for this point. It would be unfair to those from whom I have parted with regret to make exceptions, which I would not do for them.

Let me request you not to be offended, and to request Mrs. G. not to be offended, if I beg both your compliances with this wish. Your friends.h.i.+p is as dear to me as that of any person on earth, and if it were not for the necessity of keeping tranquillity at home, I would not seem so unreasonable.

If you were to see the agitation that my sister is in, between the fear of offending you and Mrs. G. and the difficulty of maintaining a system which she feels we must do to live without wretchedness, you would excuse this seeming strange request, which I send you with a trembling anxiety as to its reception with you, whom I would never offend. I rely on your goodness.

C. LAMB.

LETTER 197

MARY LAMB TO SARAH HAZLITT

[? End of 1810 or early 1811.]