Selected Prose

by Charles Lamb

  THE GYPSY’S MALISON

  Suck, baby, suck, Mother’s love grows by giving,

  Drain the sweet founts that only thrive by wasting;

  Black Manhood comes, when riotous guilty living

  Hands thee the cup that shall be death in tasting.

  Kiss, baby, kiss, Mother’s lips shine by kisses,

  Choke the warm breath that else would fall in blessings;

  Black Manhood comes, when turbulent guilty blisses

  Tend thee the kiss that poisons ’mid caressings.

  Hang, baby, hang, mother’s love loves such forces,

  Choke the fond neck that bends still to thy clinging;

  Black Manhood comes, when violent lawless courses

  Leave thee a spectacle in rude air swinging.

  So sang a wither’d Sibyl energetical,

  And bann’d the ungiving door with lips prophetical.

  Barry, study that sonnet. It is curiously and perversely elaborate. ’Tis a choking subject, and therefore the reader is directed to the structure of it. See you! and was this a fourteener to be rejected by a trumpery annual? forsooth, ’twould shock all mothers; and may all mothers, who would so be shocked, bed dom’d! as if mothers were such sort of logicians as to infer the future hanging of their child from the theoretical hangibility (or capacity of being hanged, if the judge pleases) of every infant born with a neck on. Oh B. C., my whole heart is faint, and my whole head is sick (how is it?) at this damned, canting, unmasculine unbxwdy (I had almost said) age! Don’t show this to your child’s mother or I shall be Orpheusized, scattered into Hebrus. Damn the King, lords, commons, and specially (as I said on Muswell Hill on a Sunday when I could get no beer a quarter before one) all Bishops, Priests, and Curates. Vale.

  61. To Henry Crabb Robinson

  [P.M. 27 February 1829]

  Dear R.,

  Expectation was alert on the receit of your strange-shaped present,1 while yet undisclosed from its fusc envelope. Some said, ’tis a viol da Gamba, others pronounced it a fiddle. I myself hoped it a Liquer case pregnant with Eau di Vie and such odd Nectar. When midwifed into daylight, the gossips were at loss to pronounce upon its species. Most took it for a marrow spoon, an apple scoop, a banker’s guinea shovel. At length its true scope appeared, its drift – to save the backbone of my sister stooping to scuttles. A philanthropic intent, borrowed no doubt from some of the Colliers. You save people’s backs one way, and break ’em again by loads of obligation. The spectacles are delicate and Vulcanian. No lighter texture than their steel did the cuckoldy blacksmith frame to catch Mrs Vulcan and the Captain in. For ungalled forehead, as for back unbursten, you have Mary’s thanks. Marry, for my own peculium of obligation, ’twas supererogatory. A second part of Pamela was enough in conscience. Two Pamelas in a house is too much without two Mr B.’s2 to reward ’em.

  Mary, who is handselling her new aerial perspectives upon a pair of old worsted stockings trod out in Cheshunt lanes, sends love. I, great good liking. Bid us a personal farewell before you see the Vactican.

  CHAS. LAMB, Enfield.

  62. To Henry Crabb Robinson

  [P.M. 10 April 1829]

  Dear Robinson,

  We are afraid you will slip from us from England without again seeing us. It would be charity to come and see me. I have these three days been laid up with strong rheumatic pains, in loins, back, shoulders. I shriek sometimes from the violence of them. I get scarce any sleep, and the consequence is, I am restless, and want to change sides as I lie, and I cannot turn without resting on my hands, and so turning all my body all at once like a log with a lever. While this rainy weather lasts, I have no hope of alleviation. I have tried flannels and embrocation in vain. Just at the hip joint the pangs sometimes are so excruciating, that I cry out. It is as violent as the cramp, and far more continuous. I am ashamed to whine about these complaints to you, who can ill enter into them. But indeed they are sharp. You go about, in rain or fine at all hours without discommodity. I envy you your immunity at a time of life not much removed from my own. But you owe your exemption to temperance, which it is too late for me to pursue. I in my life time have had my good things. Hence my frame is brittle – yours strong as brass. I never knew any ailment you had. You can go out at night in all weathers, sit up all hours. Well, I don’t want to moralise. I only wish to say that if you are inclined to a game of Doubly Dumby,1 I would try and bolster up myself in a chair for a rubber or so. My days are tedious, but less so and less painful than my nights. May you never know the pain and difficulty I have in writing so much. Mary, who is most kind, joins in the wish.

  C. LAMB.

  63. To Henry Crabb Robinson

  [P.M. 17 April 1829]

  I do not confess to mischief. It was the subtlest diabolical piece of malice, heart of man has contrived. I have no more rheumatism than that poker. Never was freer from all pains and aches. Every joint sound, to the tip of the ear from the extremity of the lesser toe. The report of thy torments1 was blown circuitously here from Bury. I could not resist the jeer. I conceived you writhing, when you should just receive my congratulations. How mad you’d be. Well, it is not in my method to inflict pangs. I leave that to heaven. But in the existing pangs of a friend, I have a share. His disquietude crowns my exemption. I imagine you howling, and pace across the room,

  shooting out my free arms legs &c. this way and that way, with an assurance of not kindling a spark of pain from them. I deny that Nature meant us to sympathise with agonies. Those face-contortions, retortions, distortions, have the merriness of antics. Nature meant them for farce – not so pleasant to the actor indeed, but Grimaldi2 cries when we laugh, and ’tis but one that suffers to make thousands rejoyce.

  You say that Shampooing is ineffectual. But per se it is good, to show the introv[ol]utions, extravolutions, of which the animal frame is capable. To show what the creature is receptible of, short of dissolution.

  You are worst of nights, a’nt you?

  Twill be as good as a Sermon to you to lie abed all this night, and meditate the subject of the day. ’Tis Good Friday. How appropriate!

  Think when but your little finger pains you, what endured to white-wash you and the rest of us.

  Nobody will be the more justified for your endurance. You won’t save the soul of a mouse. ’Tis a pure selfish pleasure.

  You never was rack’d, was you? I should like an authentic map of those feelings.

  You seem to have the flying gout.

  You can scarcely scrue a smile out of your face – can you? I sit at immunity, and sneer ad libitum.3

  ’Tis now the time for you to make good resolutions. I may go on breaking ’em, for any thing the worse I find myself.

  Your Doctor seems to keep you on the long cure. Precipitate healings are never good.

  Don’t come while you are so bad. I shan’t be able to attend to your throes and the dumbee at once.

  I should like to know how slowly the pain goes off. But don’t write, unless the motion will be likely to make your sensibility more exquisite.

  Your affectionate and truly healthy friend

  C. LAMB.

  Mary thought a Letter from me might amuse you in your torment –

  64. To Bernard Barton

  Enfield Chase Side

  Saturday 25 July A.D. 1829. – 11 A.M.

  There – a fuller plumper juiceier date never dropt from Idumean palm.1 Am I in the dateive case now? if not, a fig for dates, which is more than a date is worth. I never stood much affected to these limitary specialities. Least of all since the date of my superannuation.

  in the report of Lucy’s restoration. Would I could send you as good news of my poor Lucy.2 But some wearisome weeks I must remain lonely yet. I have had the loneliest time near 10 weeks, broken by a short apparition of Emma3 for her holydays, whose departure only deepend the returning solitude, and by 10 days I have past in Town. But Town, with all my native hankering after it, is not what it was. The streets, the shops are lef
t, but all old friends are gone. And in London I was frightfully convinced of this as I past houses and places – empty caskets now. I have ceased to care almost about any body. The bodies I cared for are in graves, or dispersed. My old Clubs, that lived so long and flourish’d so steadily, are crumbled away. When I took leave of our adopted young friend at Charing Cross, ’twas heavy unfeeling rain, and I had no where to go. Home have I none – and not a sympathising house to turn to in the great city. Never did the waters of the heaven pour down on a forlorner head. Yet I tried 10 days at a sort of a friend’s house, but it was large and straggling – one of the individuals of my old long knot of friends, card players, pleasant companions – that have tumbled to pieces into dust and other things – and I got home on Thursday, convinced that I was better to get home to my hole at Enfield, and hide like a sick cat in my corner.

  Less than a month I hope will bring home Mary. She is at Fulham, looking better in her health than ever, but sadly rambling, and scarce showing any pleasure in seeing me, or curiosity when I should come again. But the old feelings will come back again, and we shall drown old sorrows over a game at Picquet again. But ’tis a tedious cut out of a life of sixty four, to lose twelve or thirteen weeks every year or two. And to make me more alone, our illtemperd maid is gone, who with all her airs, was yet a home piece of furniture, a record of better days; the young thing that has succeeded her is good and attentive, but she is nothing – and I have no one here to talk over old matters with. Scolding and quarreling have something of familiarity and a community of interest – they imply acquaintance – they are of resentment, which is of the family of dearness. I can neither scold nor quarrel at this insignificant implement of household services; she is less than a cat, and just better than a deal Dresser. What I can do, and do overdo, is to walk, but deadly long are the days – these summer all-day days, with but a half hour’s candlelight and no firelight. I do not write, tell your kind inquisitive Eliza,4 and can hardly read.

  In the ensuing Blackwood will be an old rejected farce5 of mine, which may be new to you, if you see that same dull Medley. What things are all the Magazines now! I contrive studiously not to see them. The popular New Monthly is perfect trash. Poor Hessey, I suppose you see, has failed. Hunt and Clarke too. Your ‘Vulgar truths’ will be a good name – and I think your prose must please – me at least – but ’tis useless to write poetry with no purchasers. ’Tis cold work Authorship without something to puff one into fashion. Could you not write something on Quakerism – for Quakers to read – but nominally addrest to Non Quakers? explaining your dogmas – waiting on the Spirit – by the analogy of human calmness and patient waiting on the judgment? I scarcely know what I mean, but to make Non Quakers reconciled to your doctrines, by shewing something like them in mere human operations – but I hardly understand myself, so let it pass for nothing.

  I pity you for over-work, but I assure you no-work is worse. The mind preys on itself, the most unwholesome food. I brag’d formerly that I could not have too much time. I have a surfeit. With few years to come, the days are wearisome. But weariness is not eternal. Something will shine out to take the load off, that flags me, which is at present intolerable. I have killed an hour or two in this poor scrawl. I am a sanguinary murderer of time, and would kill him inchmeal just now. But the snake is vital. Well, I shall write merrier anon. –’Tis the present copy of my countenance I send – and to complain is a little to alleviate. – May you enjoy yourself as far as the wicked wood will let you – and think that you are not quite alone, as I am. Health to Lucia and to Anna and kind remembces.

  Yours forlorn.

  C. L.

  65. To James Gillman

  30 Nov., 1829.

  Dear G.,

  The excursionists reached home, and the good town of Enfield a little after four, without slip or dislocation. Little has transpired concerning the events of the back-journey, save that on passing the house of ’Squire Mellish,1 situate a stone-bow’s cast from the hamlet, Father Westwood, with good-natured wonderment, exclaimed, ‘I cannot think what is gone of Mr Mellish’s rooks. I fancy they have taken flight somewhere; but I have missed them two or three years past.’ All this while, according to his fellow-traveller’s report, the rookery was darkening the air above with undiminished population, and deafening all ears but his with their cawings. But nature has been gently withdrawing such phenomena from the notice of Thomas Westwood’s2 senses, from the time he began to miss the rooks. T. Westwood has passed a retired life in this hamlet of thirty or forty years, living upon the minimum which is consistent with gentility, yet a star among the minor gentry, receiving the bows of the tradespeople and courtesies of the alms’ women daily. Children venerate him not less for his external show of gentry, than they wonder at him for a gentle rising endorsation of the person, not amounting to a hump, or if a hump, innocuous as the hump of the buffalo, and coronative of as mild qualities. ’Tis a throne on which patience seems to sit – the proud perch of a self-respecting humility, stooping with condescension. Thereupon the cares of life have sate, and rid him easily. For he has thrid the augustiæ domûs3 with dexterity. Life opened upon him with comparative brilliancy. He set out as a rider or traveller for a wholesale house, in which capacity he tells of many hair-breadth escapes that befell him; one especially, how he rode a mad horse into the town of Devizes; how horse and rider arrived in a foam, and to the utter consternation of the expostulating hostlers, innkeepers, &c. It seems it was sultry weather, piping hot; the steed tormented into frenzy with gad-flies, long past being roadworthy; but safety and the interest of the house he rode for were incompatible things; a fall in serge cloth was expected; and a mad entrance they made of it. Whether the exploit was purely voluntary, or partially; or whether a certain personal defiguration in the man part of this extraordinary centaur (non-assistive to partition of natures) might not enforce the conjunction, I stand not to inquire. I look not with ’skew eyes into the deeds of heroes. The hosier that was burnt with his shop, in Field-lane, on Tuesday night, shall have past to heaven for me like a Marian Martyr, provided always, that he consecrated the fortuitous incremation with a short ejaculation in the exit, as much as if he had taken his state degrees of martyrdom in formâ4 in the market vicinage. There is adoptive as well as acquisitive sacrifice. Be the animus what it might, the fact is indisputable, that this composition was seen flying all abroad, and mine host of Daintry may yet remember its passing through his town, if his scores are not more faithful than his memory. After this exploit (enough for one man), Thomas Westwood seems to have subsided into a less hazardous occupation; and in the twenty-fifth year of his age we find him a haberdasher in Bow Lane: yet still retentive of his early riding (though leaving it to rawer stomachs), and Christmasly at night sithence to this last, and shall to his latest Christmas, hath he, doth he, and shall he, tell after supper the story of the insane steed and the desperate rider. Save for Bedlam or Luke’s no eye could have guessed that melting day what house he rid for. But he reposes on his bridles, and after the ups and downs (metaphoric only) of a life behind the counter – hard riding sometimes, I fear, for poor T. W. – with the scrapings together of the shop, and one anecdote, he hath finally settled at Enfield; by hard economising, gardening, building for himself, hath reared a mansion, married a daughter, qualified a son for a counting-house, gotten the respect of high and low, served for self or substitute the greater parish offices: hath a special voice at vestries; and, domiciliating us, hath reflected a portion of his house-keeping respectability upon your humble servants. We are greater, being his lodgers, than when we were substantial renters. His name is a passport to take off the sneers of the native Enfielders against obnoxious foreigners. We are endenizened. Thus much of T. Westwood have I thought fit to acquaint you, that you may see the exemplary reliance upon Providence with which I entrusted so dear a charge as my own sister to the guidance of a man that rode the mad horse into Devizes. To come from his heroic character, all the amiable qualities of domes
tic life concentre in this tamed Bellerophon.5 He is excellent over a glass of grog; just as pleasant without it; laughs when he hears a joke, and when (which is much oftener) he hears it not; sings glorious old sea songs on festival nights; and but upon a slight acquaintance of two years, Coleridge, is as dear a deaf old man to us, as old Norris, rest his soul! was after fifty. To him and his scanty literature (what there is of it, sound) have we flown from the metropolis and its cursed annualists, reviewers, authors, and the whole muddy ink press of that stagnant pool.

  Now, Gillman again, you do not know the treasure of the Fullers. I calculate on having massy reading till Christmas. All I want here, is books of the true sort, not those things in boards that moderns mistake for books – what they club for at book clubs.

  I did not mean to cheat you with a blank side; but my eye smarts, for which I am taking medicine, and abstain, this day at least, from any aliments but milk-porridge, the innocent taste of which I am anxious to renew after a half-century’s disacquaintance. If a blot fall here like a tear, it is not pathos, but an angry eye.