by Charles Lamb
A pro pos, I think you wrong about my Play. All the omissions are right. And the supplementary Scene in which Sandford narrates the manner in which his master is affected, is the Best in the Book. It stands, where a Hodge podge of German puerilities used to stand. I insist upon it, that you like that Scene. Love me, love that scene. I will now transcribe the Londoner (No. 1) & wind up all with Affection & Humble Servant at the end. The Londoner8 (I write small, in regard to your good eyesight): ‘In compliance with my own particular humour, no less than with thy laudable curiosity, Reader, I proceed to give thee some accot. of my history & habits. I was born under the Nose of St Dunstan’s Steeple, just where the conflux of the eastern & western inhabitants of this two-fold City meet & justle in friendly opposition at Temple Bar. The same day, which gave me to the world, saw London happy in the celebration of her great Annual Feast. This I cannot help looking upon as a lively type or omen of the great good will, which I was destined to bear toward the City, resembling in kind that Solicitude, which every Chief Magistrate is supposed to feel for whatever concerns her interest & well being. Indeed I consider myself in some sort a speculative Lord Mayor of London: for tho’ circumstances unhappily preclude me from ever arriving at the dignity of a gold chain & spital sermon, yet thus much will I say of myself in truth, that Whittington himself with his Cat (just emblem of vigilance & a furred gown) never went beyond me in affection, which I bear to the Citizens. Shut out from serving them in the most honorable mode, I aspire to do them benefit in another scarcely less honorable: & if I cannot by virtue of office commit vice & irregularity to the material Counter, I will at least erect a spiritual one, where they shall be laid fast by the heels. In plain words, I will do my best endeavors to write them down. To return to Myself (from whence my zeal for the public good is perpetually causing me to digress) I will let thee, Reader, into certain more of my peculiarities. I was born (as you have heard) bred, & have past most part of my time in a crowd. This has begot in me an entire affection for that way of life, amounting to an almost insurmountable aversion from solitude & rural scenes. This aversion was never in[terrup]ted or suspended, except for a few years in the younger part of my Life, during a period, in whi[ch I ha]d fixed my affections upon a charming young woman. Every man, while the Passion is upon him, [is for a] ti[m]e at least addited to groves & meadows & purling streams. During this short period of my existence, I contracted just enough familiarity with rural objects, to understand tolerably well ever after the Poets, when they declaim in such passionate terms in favor of a country Life. For my own part, now the fit is long past, I have no hesitation in declaring, that a mob of happy faces, crowding up at the Pit Door of Drury Lane Theatre just at the hour of 5, give me ten thou’san[d] finer pleasures, than I ever received from all the flocks of silly sheep, that have whitened the plains of Arcadia or Epsom Downs. This passion for Crowds is no where feasted so full as in London. The man must have a rare recipe for melancholy, who can be dull in Fleet Street. I am naturally inclined to Hypochrondria; but in London it vanishes, like all other ills –. Often, when I have felt a weariness or distaste at home, have rushed out into her crowded Strand, and fed my humour till tears have wetted my cheek for inutterable sympathies with the multitudinous moving picture, which she never fails to present at all hours, like the shifting scenes of a skilful Pantomime. The very deformities of London, which give distaste to others, from habit do not displease me. The endless succession of Shops, where Fancy (miscalled Folly) is supplied with perpetual new gauds & toys, excite in me no puritanical aversion. I gladly behold every appetite supplied with its proper food. The obliging Customer, & the obliged Tradesman – things which live by bowing, & things which exist but for homage, do not affect me with disgust; from habit, I perceive nothing but urbanity, where other men, more refined, discover meanness. I love the very Smoke of London, because it has been the medium most familiar to my vision. I see grand principles of honor at work in the dirty ring, which encompasses two Combatants with fists, & principles of no less eternal justice in the tumultuous detectors of a pick-pocket. The salutary astonishment, with which an Execution is surveyed, convinces me more forcibly than an 100 vols. of abstract Polity, that the universal instinct of man in all ages has leaned to Order & good government. Thus, an Art of extracting morality from the commonest incidents of a Town Life is attained by the same well-natured Alchemy, with which the Forresters of Arden, in a beautiful country, ‘Found tongues in trees, books in the running brooks, Sermons in stones, & Good in ev’ry thing.’ Where has Spleen her food but in London? – humour, interest, curiosity, suck at her measureless breasts without a possibility of being satiated. Nursed amid her noise, her crowds, her beloved smoke, what have I been doing all my life, if I have not lent out my heart with usury to such scenes? Reader, in the course of my perigrinations about this Great City; it is hard, if I have not picked up Matters which may serve to amuse thee, as it has done me, a summer evening long. Farewell.’ –
What is all this about?, said Mrs Shandy –. A story of a Cock & a Bull, said Yorick;9 & so it is – but Manning will take good-naturedly what God will send him across the water: only I hope he wont shut his eyes & open his mouth, as the Children say, for that is a way to gape & not to read. Manning, continue your Laudable Purpose of making me your Register. I will render back all your Remarks, & I, not you, shall have received Usury by having read them. –
In the mean time, may the Great Spirit, have you in his keeping; & preserve our English-man from the inoculation of frivolity & sin upon French Earth. –
Allons (or what is it you say instead of good-bye?) –
Mary sends her kind Remembrance, & covets the Remarks equally with me.
C. LAMB
29. To Thomas Manning
London
24th Sep. 1802
My dear Manning
Since the date of my last letter I have been a traveller. A strong desire seized me of visiting remote regions. My first impulse was to go and see Paris. It was a trivial objection to my aspiring mind, that I did not understand a word of the language: since, I certainly intend some time in my life to see Paris and equally certainly intend never to learn the language: therefore that could be no objection. However I am very glad I did not go, because you had left Paris (I see) before I could have set out. – I believe, Stoddart1 promising to go with me another year prevented that plan. My next scheme (for to my restless ambitious mind London was become a bed of thorns) was to visit the far famed Peak in Derbyshire, where the Devil sits, they say, without breeches. This my purer mind rejected, as indelicate. And my final resolve was a Tour to the Lakes. I set out with Mary to Keswick, without giving Coleridge any notice, for my time being precious did not admit of it; he received us with all the hospitality in the world, and gave up his time to shew us all the wonders of the country. He dwells upon a small hill by the side of Keswick, in a comfortable house, quite enveloped on all sides by a net of mountains: great floundering bears & monsters they seem’d, all couchant & asleep. We got in in the evening, travelling in a Post Chaise from Pe[n]rith, in the midst of a gorgeous sun shine, which transmuted all the mountains into colours, purple &c. &c. We thought we had got into Fairy Land. But that went off (as it never came again, while we stayed, we had no more fine sun sets) and we entered Coleridge’s comfortable study just in the dusk, when the mountains were all dark with clouds upon their heads. Such an impression I never received from objects of sight before, nor do I suppose that I can ever again. Glorious creatures, fine old fellows, Skiddaw &c. I never shall forget ye, how ye lay about that night, like an intrenchment, gone to bed as it seemed for the night, but promising that ye were to be seen in the morning. Coleridge had got a blazing fire in his study, which is a large antique ill-shaped room, with an old fashioned organ, never play’d upon, big enough for a church, Shelves of scattered folios, an Eolian Harp, & an old sofa, half bed &c. And all looking out upon the last fading view of Skiddaw & his broad-breasted brethren: What a night! – Here we st
aid three full weeks, in which time I visited Wordsworth’s cottage, where we stayed a day or two with the Clarksons2 (good people & most hospitable, at whose house we tarried one day & night) & saw Lloyd. Wordsworths were gone to Calais. They have since been in London, & past much time with us: he is now gone into Yorkshire to be married, to a girl of small fortune, but he is in expectation of augmenting his own, in consequence of the death of Lord Lonsdale, who kept him out of his own, in conformity with a plan my Lord had taken up in early life of making every body unhappy. So we have seen Keswick, Grasmere, Ambleside, Ulswater (where the Clarksons live) and a place at the other end of Ulswater, I forget the name, to which we travelled on a very sultry day over the middle of Helvellyn. – We h[a]ve clambered up to the top of Skiddaw, & I have waded up the bed of Lodore. In fine I have satisfied myself, that there is such a thing as that, which tourists call romantic, which I very much suspected before: they make such a spluttering about it, and toss their splendid epithets around them, till they give as dim a light, as four oClock next morning the Lamps do after an illumination. Mary was excessively tired, when she got about half way up Skiddaw, but we came to a cold rill (than which nothing can be imagined more cold, running over cold stones) & with the reinforcemt. of a draught of cold water, she surmounted it most manfully. – O its fine black head & the bleak air a top of it, with a prospect of mountains all about & about, making you giddy, & then Scotland afar off & the border countries so famous in song & ballad –. It was a day that will stand out, like a mountain, I am sure, in my life. – But I am returned (I have now been come home near 3 weeks (I was a month out)) & you cannot conceive the degradation I felt at first, from being accustommed to wander free as air among mountains, & bathe in rivers without being controuled by any one, to come home & work: I felt very little. I had been dreaming I was a very great man. But that is going off, & I find I shall conform in time to that state of Life, to which it has pleased God to call me. Besides, after all, Fleet Street & the Strand are better places to live in for good & all than among Skiddaw: Still, I turn back to those great places, where I wandered about, participating in their greatness. After all I could not live in Skiddaw: I could spend a year, two, three years, among them, but I must have a prospect of seeing Fleet Street at the End of that time: or I should mope & pine away, I know. Still Skiddaw is a fine Creature. My habits are changing, I think; i.e. from drunk to sober: whether I shall be happier or no, remains to be proved. I shall certainly be more happy in a morning, but whether I shall not sacrifice the fat & the marrow & the kidneys, i.e. the Night, the glor[iou]s, care-drowning, night, that heals all our wrongs, pours wine into our mortifications, changes the scene from indifferent & flat to bright & brilliant –. O Manning, if I should have formed a diabolical resolution, by the time you come to England, of not admitting any spirituous liquors into my house, will you be my guest on such shame worthy terms? Is life, with such limitations, worth trying. – The truth is that my liquors bring a nest of friendly harpies about my house, who consume me. –
This is a pitiful tale to be read at St Gothard:3 but it is just now nearest my heart. – Fenwick4 is a ruined man. He is hiding himself from his Creditors, and has sent his wife & children into the Country. Fell, my other drunken companion (that has been: nam hic cæstus artemque repono)5 is turned Editor of a Naval Chronicle. Godwin (with a pitiful artificial Wife) continues a steady friend: tho’ the same facility does not remain of visiting him often. That Bitch has detached Marshall6 from his house: Marshall, the man who went to sleep when the Ancient Mariner was reading, the old steady, unalterable, friend of the Professor – –. Holcroft7 is not yet come to town. I expect to see him & will deliver your messag[e.] Ho[w I hat]e this part of a letter. [T]hings come crowding in to say, & no room for ’em. Some things are too little to be told, i.e. to have a preference: some are too big & circumstantial. – Thanks for yours, which was most delicious. Would I had been with you, benighted &c – I fear, my head is turned with wandering. I shall never be the same acquiesct. being. – farewell. –
Write again quickly, for I shall not like to hazard a letter, not knowing where the fates have carried you. farewell, my dear fellow.
C LAMB
30. To Thomas Manning
London
19th February 1803
My dear Manning,
The general scope of your letter afforded no indications of insanity, but some particular points raised a scruple. For God’s sake don’t think any more of ‘Independent Tartary.’ What have you to do among such Ethiopians? Is there no lineal descendant of Prester John?1
Is the chair empty? Is the sword unswayed? – depend upon’t they’ll never make you their king, as long as any branch of that great stock is remaining. I tremble for your Christianity. They’ll certainly circumcise you. Read Sir John Mandevil’s travels to cure you, or come over to England. There is a Tartarman now exhibiting at Exeter Change. Come and talk with him, and hear what he says first. Indeed, he is no very favorable specimen of his Countrymen! But perhaps the best thing you can do, is to try to get the idea out of your head. For this purpose repeat to yourself every night, after you have said your prayers, the words Independent Tartary, Independent Tartary, two or three times, and associate with them the idea of oblivion (’tis Hartley’s method2 with obstinate memories), or say, Independent, Independent, have I not already got an Independence? That was a clever way of the old puritans – pun-divinity. My dear friend, think what a sad pity it would be to bury such parts in heathen countries, among nasty, unconversable, horse-belching, Tartar people! Some say, they are Cannibals; and then conceive a Tartar-fellow eating my friend, and adding the cool malignity of mustard and vinegar! I am afraid ’tis the reading of Chaucer has misled you; his foolish stories about Cambuscan and the ring, and the horse of brass.3 Believe me, there’s no such things, ’tis all the poet’s invention; but if there were such darling things as old Chaucer sings, I would up behind you on the Horse of Brass, and frisk off for Prester John’s Country. But these are all tales; a Horse of Brass never flew, and a King’s daughter never talked with Birds! The Tartars, really, are a cold, insipid, smouchey set. You’ll be sadly moped (if you are not eaten) among them. Pray try and cure yourself. Take Hellebore4 (the counsel is Horace’s, ’twas none of my thought originally). Shave yourself oftener. Eat no saffron, for saffron-eaters contract a terrible Tartar-like yellow. Pray, to avoid the fiend. Eat nothing that gives the heart-burn. Shave the upper lip. Go about like an European. Read no books of voyages (they’re nothing but lies): only now and then a Romance, to keep the fancy under. Above all, don’t go to any sights of wild beasts. That has been your ruin. Accustom yourself to write familiar letters on common subjects to your friends in England, such as are of a moderate understanding. And think about common things more. There’s your friend Holcroft now, has written a play. You used to be fond of the drama. Nobody went to see it. Notwithstanding this, with an audacity perfectly original, he faces the town down in a preface, that they did like it very much. I have heard a waspish punster say, ‘Sir, why did you not laugh at my jest?’ But for a man boldly to face me out with, ‘Sir, I maintain it, you did laugh at my jest,’ is a little too much. I have seen H. but once. He spoke of you to me in honorable terms. H. seems to me to be drearily dull. Godwin is dull, but then he has a dash of affectation, which smacks of the coxcomb, and your coxcombs are always agreeable. I supped last night with Rickman, and met a merry natural captain, who pleases himself vastly with once having made a Pun at Otaheite in the O. language. ’Tis the same man who said Shakspeare he liked, because he was so much of the Gentleman. Rickman is a man ‘absolute in all numbers.’ I think I may one day bring you acquainted, if you do not go to Tartary first; for you’ll never come back. Have a care, my dear friend, of Anthropophagi! their stomachs are always craving. But if you do go among [them] pray contrive to stink as soon as you can that you may [not (?)] hang a [on (?)] hand at the Butcher’s. ’Tis terrible to be weighed out for 5d. a-pound. To sit at table
(the reverse of fishes in Holland), not as a guest, but as a meat.5
God bless you: do come to England. Air and exercise may do great things. Talk with some Minister. Why not your father?
God dispose all for the best. I have discharged my duty.
Your sincere frd,
C. LAMB
31. To Thomas Manning
16 Mitre Court Buildings Inner Temple
Saturday 24 [23] feb. 1805
Dear Manning,
We have executed your commissions. There was nothing for you at the White Horse. I have been very unwell since I saw you. A sad depression of spirits, a most unaccountable nervousness: from which I have been partially relieved by an odd accident. You knew Dick Hopkins the searing Scullion of Caius’? This fellow by industry and agility has thrust himself into the important situations (no sinecures believe me) of Cook to Trinity Hall & Cauis College: and the generous creature has contrived with the greatest delicacy imaginable to send me a present of Cambridge Brawn. What makes it the more extraordinary is that the man never saw me in his life that I know of. I suppose he has heard of me. I did not immediately recognize the donor: but one of Richard’s cards, which had accidentally fallen into the straw, detected him in a moment. Dick you know was always remarkable for flourishing. His card imports that ‘Orders (to-wit for Brawn) from any part of England, Scotland, or Ireland will be duly executed’ &c.. At first I thought of declining the present: but Richard knew my blind side when he pitched upon Brawn. Tis of all my hobbies the supreme in the eating way. He might have sent, sops from the pan, skimmings, crumplets, chips, hog’s lard, the tender brown judiciously scalped from a fillet of veal (dextrously replaced by a salamander) the tops of asparagus, fugitive livers, runaway gizzards of fowls, the eyes of martyr’d Pigs, tender effusions of laxative woodcocks, the red spawn of lobsters, leveret’s ears, and such pretty filchings common to cooks: but these had been ordinary presents, the every-day courtesies of Dish-washers to their sweethearts. Brawn was a noble thought. It is not every common Gullet-fancier than can properly esteem of it. It is like a picture of one of the choice old Italian masters. Its gusto is of that hidden sort. As Wordsworth sings of a modest poet: you must love him ere to you he will seem worthy of your love:1 so Brawn, you must taste it ere to you it will seem to have any taste at all. But tis nuts to the adept: those that will send out their tongue and feelers to find it out. It will be wooed & not unsought be won. Now Ham-essence, lobsters, turtle, such popular minions absolute court you, lay themselves out to strike you at first smack, like one of David’s Pictures (they call him Darveed) compared with the plain russet-coated wealth of a Titian or a Corregio, as I illustrated above. Such are the obvious glaring heathen virtues of a Corporation dinner compared with the reserved collegiate worth of Brawn.