The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb
Chapter 283 : The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb.Vol. 5.by Edited by E. V. Lucas.PREFACE This editio

The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb.

Vol. 5.

by Edited by E. V. Lucas.

PREFACE

This edition of the correspondence of Charles and Mary Lamb contains 618 letters, of which 45 are by Mary Lamb alone. It is the only edition to contain all Mary Lamb's letters and also a reference to, or abstract of, every letter of Charles Lamb's that cannot, for reasons of copyright, be included. Canon Ainger's last edition contains 467 letters and the _Every-man's Library Edition_ contains 572. In 1905 the Boston Bibliophile Society, a wealthy a.s.sociation of American collectors, issued privately--since privately one can do anything--an edition in six volumes (limited to 453 sets) of the correspondence of Charles and Mary Lamb, containing everything that was available, which means practically everything that was known: the number reaching a total of 762 letters; but it will be many years before such a collection can be issued in England, since each of the editions here has copyright matter peculiar to itself. My attempt to induce the American owner of the largest number of new letters to allow me to copy them from the Boston Bibliophile edition has proved fruitless.

And here a word as to copyright in such doc.u.ments in England, the law as most recently laid down being established upon a set of sixteen of Lamb's letters which unhappily are not (except in very brief abstract) in the present edition. These letters, chiefly to Robert Lloyd, were first published in _Charles Lamb and the Lloyds_, under my editors.h.i.+p, in 1900, the right to make copies and publish them having been acquired by Messrs. Smith, Elder & Co. from Mrs. Steeds, a descendant of Charles Lloyd. The originals were then purchased by Mr. J. M. Dent, who included copies in his edition of Lamb's letters, under Mr. Macdonald's editors.h.i.+p, in 1903. Meanwhile Messrs. Smith, Elder & Co. had sold their rights in the letters to Messrs. Macmillan for Canon Ainger's edition, and when Mr. Dent's edition was issued Messrs. Macmillan with Messrs.

Smith, Elder & Co. brought an action. Mr. Dent thereupon acquired from Mr. A. H. Moxon, the son of Emma Isola, Lamb's residuary legatee, all his rights as representing the original author. The case was heard before Mr. Justice Kekewich early in 1906. The judge held that "the proprietor of the author's ma.n.u.script in the case of letters, as in the case of any other ma.n.u.script, meant the owner of the actual paper on which the matter was written, and that in the case of letters the recipient was the owner. No doubt the writer could restrain the recipient from publis.h.i.+ng, and so could the writer's representatives after death; but although they had the right to restrain others from publis.h.i.+ng, it did not follow that they had the right to publish and acquire copyright. This right was given to the proprietor of the ma.n.u.script, who, although he could be restrained from publis.h.i.+ng by the writer's personal representatives, yet, if not so restrained, could publish and acquire copyright."

Mr. Dent appealed against this verdict and his appeal was heard on October 31 and November 7, 1906, when the decision of Mr. Justice Kekewich was upheld with a clearer definition of the right of restraint.

The Court, in deciding (I quote again from Mr. MacGillivray's summary) that "the proprietors of ma.n.u.script letters were, after the writer's death, ent.i.tled to the copyright in them when published, were careful to make it clear that they did not intend to overrule the authority of those cases where a deceased man's representatives have been held ent.i.tled to restrain the publication of his private letters by the recipients or persons claiming through them. The Court expressly affirmed the common law right of the writer and his representatives in unpublished letters. It did not follow that because the copyright, if there was publication, would be in the person who, being proprietor of the author's ma.n.u.script, first published, that that person would be ent.i.tled to publish. The common law right would be available to enable the legal personal representatives, under proper circ.u.mstances, to restrain publication." That is how the copyright law as regards letters stands to-day (1912).

The present edition has been revised throughout and in it will be found much new material. I have retained from the large edition only such notes as bear upon the Lambs and the place of the letters in their life, together with such explanatory references as seemed indispensable. For the sources of quotations and so forth the reader must consult the old edition.

For permission to include certain new letters I have to thank the Master of Magdalene, Mr. Ernest Betham, Major b.u.t.terworth, Mr. Bertram Dobell, Mr. G. Dunlop, and Mr. E. D. North of New York.

As an example of other difficulties of editing, at any given time, the correspondence of Charles and Mary Lamb, I may say that while these volumes were going through the press, Messrs. Sotheby offered for sale new letters by both hands, the existence of which was unknown equally to English editors and to Boston Bibliophiles. The most remarkable of them is a joint letter from sister and brother to Louisa Martin, their child-friend (to whom Lamb wrote the verses "The Ape"), dated March 28, 1809. Mary begins, and Charles then takes the pen and becomes mischievous. Thus, "Hazlitt's child died of swallowing a bag of white paint, which the poor little innocent thing mistook for sugar candy. It told its mother just before it died, that it did not like soft sugar candy, and so it came out, which was not before suspected. When it was opened several other things were found in it, particularly a small hearth brush, two golden pippins, and a letter which I had written to Hazlitt from Bath. The letter had nothing remarkable in it." ... The others are from brother and sister to Miss Kelly, the actress, whom Lamb, in 1819, wished to marry. The first, March 27, 1820, is from Mary Lamb saying that she has taken to French as a recreation and has been reading Racine. The second is from Lamb, dated July 6, 1825, thanking Miss Kelly for tickets at Arnold's theatre, the Lyceum, and predicting the success of his farce "The p.a.w.nbroker's Daughter." How many more new letters are still to come to light, who shall say?

In Mr. Bedford's design for the cover of this edition certain Elian symbolism will be found. The upper coat of arms is that of Christ's Hospital, where Lamb was at school; the lower is that of the Inner Temple, where he was born and spent many years. The figures at the bells are those which once stood out from the facade of St. Dunstan's Church in Fleet Street, and are now in Lord Londesborough's garden in Regent's Park. Lamb shed tears when they were removed. The tricksy sprite and the candles (brought by Betty) need no explanatory words of mine.

E. V. L.

THE LETTERS OF CHARLES AND MARY LAMB

1796-1820

LETTER 1

CHARLES LAMB TO S. T. COLERIDGE

[Postmark May 27, 1796.]

DEAR C---- make yourself perfectly easy about May. I paid his bill, when I sent your clothes. I was flush of money, and am so still to all the purposes of a single life, so give yourself no further concern about it.

The money would be superfluous to me, if I had it.

With regard to Allen,--the woman he has married has some money, I have heard about 200 a year, enough for the maintenance of herself & children, one of whom is a girl nine years old! so Allen has dipt betimes into the cares of a family. I very seldom see him, & do not know whether he has given up the Westminster hospital.

When Southey becomes as modest as his predecessor Milton, and publishes his Epics in duodecimo, I will read 'em,--a Guinea a book is somewhat exorbitant, nor have I the opportunity of borrowing the Work. The extracts from it in the Monthly Review and the short pa.s.sages in your Watchman seem to me much superior to any thing in his partners.h.i.+p account with Lovell.

Your poems I shall procure forthwith. There were n.o.ble lines in what you inserted in one of your Numbers from Religious Musings, but I thought them elaborate. I am somewhat glad you have given up that Paper--it must have been dry, unprofitable, and of "dissonant mood" to your disposition. I wish you success in all your undertakings, and am glad to hear you are employed about the Evidences of Religion. There is need of multiplying such books an hundred fold in this philosophical age to _prevent_ converts to Atheism, for they seem too tough disputants to meddle with afterwards. I am sincerely sorry for Allen, as a family man particularly.

Le Grice is gone to make puns in Cornwall. He has got a tutors.h.i.+p to a young boy, living with his Mother, a widow Lady. He will of course initiate him quickly in "whatsoever things are lovely, honorable, and of good report." He has cut Miss Hunt compleatly,--the poor Girl is very ill on the Occasion, but he laughs at it, and justifies himself by saying, "she does not see him laugh." Coleridge, I know not what suffering scenes you have gone through at Bristol--my life has been somewhat diversified of late. The 6 weeks that finished last year and began this your very humble servant spent very agreeably in a mad house at Hoxton--I am got somewhat rational now, and don't bite any one. But mad I was--and many a vagary my imagination played with me, enough to make a volume if all told.

My Sonnets I have extended to the number of nine since I saw you, and will some day communicate to you.

I am beginning a poem in blank verse, which if I finish I publish.

White is on the eve of publis.h.i.+ng (he took the hint from Vortigern) Original letters of Falstaff, Shallow &c--, a copy you shall have when it comes out. They are without exception the best imitations I ever saw.

Coleridge, it may convince you of my regards for you when I tell you my head ran on you in my madness, as much almost as on another Person, who I am inclined to think was the more immediate cause of my temporary frenzy.

The sonnet I send you has small merit as poetry but you will be curious to read it when I tell you it was written in my prison-house in one of my lucid Intervals.

TO MY SISTER

If from my lips some angry accents fell, Peevish complaint, or harsh reproof unkind, 'Twas but the error of a sickly mind, And troubled thoughts, clouding the purer well, And waters clear, of Reason; and for me, Let this my verse the poor atonement be, My verse, which thou to praise wast ever inclined Too highly, and with a partial eye to see No blemish: thou to me didst ever shew Fondest affection, and woud'st oftimes lend An ear to the desponding love sick lay, Weeping my sorrows with me, who repay But ill the mighty debt of love I owe, Mary, to thee, my sister and my friend.

With these lines, and with that sister's kindest remembrances to C----, I conclude--

Yours sincerely

LAMB.

Your Conciones ad populum are the most eloquent politics that ever came in my way.

Write, when convenient--not as a task, for there is nothing in this letter to answer.

You may inclose under cover to me at the India house what letters you please, for they come post free.

We cannot send our remembrances to Mrs. C---- not having seen her, but believe me our best good wishes attend you both.

My civic and poetic compts to Southey if at Bristol.--Why, he is a very Leviathan of Bards--the small minnow I--

[This is the earliest letter of Lamb's that has come down to us. On February 10, 1796, he was just twenty-one years old, and was now living at 7 Little Queen Street (since demolished) with his father, mother, Aunt Sarah Lamb (known as Aunt Hetty), Mary Lamb and, possibly, John Lamb. John Lamb, senior, was doing nothing and had, I think, already begun to break up: his old master, Samuel Salt, had died in February, 1792. John Lamb, the son (born June 5, 1763), had a clerks.h.i.+p at the South-Sea House; Charles Lamb had begun his long period of service in the India House; and Mary Lamb (born December 3, 1764) was occupied as a mantua-maker.

At this time Coleridge was twenty-three; he would be twenty-four on October 21. His military experiences over, he had married Sara Fricker on October 4, 1795 (a month before Southey married her sister Edith), and was living at Bristol, on Redcliffe Hill. The first number of _The Watchman_ was dated on March 1, 1796; on May 13, 1796, it came to an end. On April 16, 1796, Cottle had issued Coleridge's _Poems on Various Subjects_, containing also four "effusions" by Charles Lamb (Nos. VII., XI., XII. and XIII.), and the "Religious Musings." Southey, on bad terms with Coleridge, partly on account of Southey's abandonment of Pantisocracy, was in Lisbon. His _Joan of Arc_ had just been published by Cottle in quarto at a guinea. Previously he had collaborated in _The Fall of Robespierre_, 1794, with Coleridge and Robert Lovell. Each, one evening, had set forth to write an act by the next. Southey and Lovell did so, but Coleridge brought only a part of his. Lovell's being useless, Southey rewrote his act, Coleridge finished his at leisure, and the result was published. Robert Lovell (1770?-1796) had also been a.s.sociated with Coleridge and Southey in Pantisocracy and was their brother-in-law, having married Mary Fricker, another of the sisters.

When, in 1795, Southey and Lovell had published a joint volume of _Poems_, Southey took the pseudonym of Bion and Lovell of Moschus.

May was probably the landlord of the Salutation and Cat. The London Directory for 1808 has "William May, Salutation Coffee House, 17 Newgate Street." We must suppose that when Coleridge quitted the Salutation and Cat in January, 1795, he was unable to pay his bill, and therefore had to leave his luggage behind. Cottle's story of Coleridge being offered free lodging by a London inn-keeper, if he would only talk and talk, must then either be a pretty invention or apply to another landlord, possibly the host of the Angel in Butcher Hall Street.

Allen was Robert Allen, a schoolfellow of Lamb and Coleridge, and Coleridge's first friend. He was born on October 18, 1772. Both Lamb and Leigh Hunt tell good stories of him at Christ's Hospital, Lamb in _Elia_ and Hunt in his _Autobiography_. From Christ's Hospital he went to University College, Oxford, and it was he who introduced Coleridge and Hucks to Southey in 1794. Probably, says Mr. E. H. Coleridge, it was he who brought Coleridge and John Stoddart (afterwards Sir John, and Hazlitt's brother-in-law) together. On leaving Oxford he seems to have gone to Westminster to learn surgery, and in 1797 he was appointed Deputy-Surgeon to the 2nd Royals, then in Portugal. He married a widow with children; at some time later took to journalism, as Lamb's reference in the _Elia_ essay on "Newspapers" tells us; and he died of apoplexy in 1805.

Coleridge's employment on the _Evidences of Religion_, whatever it may have been, did not reach print.

Le Grice was Charles Valentine Le Grice (1773-1858), an old Christ's Hospitaller and Grecian (see Lamb's _Elia_ essays on "Christ's Hospital"

and "Grace before Meat"). Le Grice pa.s.sed to Trinity College, Cambridge.

He left in 1796 and became tutor to William John G.o.dolphin Nicholls of Trereife, near Penzance, the only son of a widowed mother. Le Grice was ordained in 1798 and married Mrs. Nicholls in 1799. Young Nicholls died in 1815 and Mrs. Le Grice in 1821, when Le Grice became sole owner of the Trereife property. He was inc.u.mbent of St. Mary's, Penzance, for some years. Le Grice was a witty, rebellious character, but he never fulfilled the promise of his early days. It has been conjectured that his skill in punning awakened Lamb's ambition in that direction. Le Grice saw Lamb next in 1834, at the Bell at Edmonton. His recollections of Lamb were included by Talfourd in the _Memorials_, and his recollections of Coleridge were printed in the _Gentleman's Magazine_, December, 1834. I know nothing of Miss Hunt.

Of Lamb's confinement in a madhouse we know no more than is here told.

It is conjectured that the "other person" to whom Lamb refers a few lines later was Ann Simmons, a girl at Widford for whom he had an attachment that had been discouraged, if not forbidden, by her friends.