Works of Charles and Mary Lamb. VI-VII. Letters
Charles Lamb to Bryan Waller Procter, [19 January 1829]
MY dear Procter,—I am ashamed to have not taken the drift of your
pleasant letter, which I find to have been pure invention. But jokes are not
suspected in Bœotian Enfield. We are ![]()
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plain
people; and our talk is of corn, and cattle, and Waltham markets. Besides, I
was a little out of sorts when I received it. The fact is, I am involved in a
case which has fretted me to death; and I have no reliance, except on you, to
extricate me. I am sure you will give me your best legal advice, having no
professional friend besides but Robinson
and Talfourd, with neither of whom at
present I am on the best terms. My brother’s
widow left a will, made during the lifetime of my brother, in
which I am named sole executor, by which she bequeaths forty acres of arable
property, which it seems she held under Covert Baron, unknown to my brother, to
the heirs of the body of Elizabeth Dowden, her married
daughter by a first husband, in fee-simple, recoverable by fine—invested
property, mind; for there is the difficulty—subject to leet and quitrent; in
short, worded in the most guarded terms, to shut out the property from
Isaac Dowden, the husband. Intelligence has just come
of the death of this person in India, where he made a will, entailing this
property (which seem’d entangled enough already) to the heirs of his
body, that should not be born of his wife; for it seems by the law in India,
natural children can recover. They have put the cause into Exchequer process,
here removed by Certiorari from the native Courts; and the question is, whether
I should, as executor, try the cause here, or again re-remove it to the Supreme
Sessions at Bangalore? (which I understand I can, or plead a hearing before the
Privy Council here). As it involves all the little property of
Elizabeth Dowden, I am anxious to take the fittest
steps, and what may be least expensive. Pray assist me, for the case is so
embarrassed, that it deprives me of sleep and appetite. M. Burney thinks there is a case like it in
Chapt. 170, sect. 5, in Fearne’s Contingent Remainders. Pray read it over with him
dispassionately, and let me have the result. The complexity lies in the
questionable power of the husband to alienate. . . .
I had another favour to beg, which is the beggarliest of
beggings.
A few lines of verse for a young friend’s Album (six
will be enough). M. Burney will tell you
who she is I want ’em for. A girl of gold. Six lines—make ’em
eight—signed Barry C‚——. They need not
be very good, as I chiefly want ’em as a foil to mine. But I shall be
seriously obliged by any refuse scrap. We are in the last ages of the world,
when St. Paul prophesied that women should be
“headstrong, lovers of their own wills, having Albums.”
I fled hither to escape the Albumean persecution, and had not been in my new
house twenty-four hours, when the daughter of the next house came in with a
friend’s Album to beg a contribution, and the following day intimated she
had one of her own. Two more have sprung up since. If I take the wings of the
morning and fly unto the uttermost parts of the earth, there will Albums be.
New ![]()
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Holland has Albums. But the age
is to be complied with. M. B. will tell you the sort of
girl I request the ten lines for. Somewhat of a pensive cast, what you admire.
The lines may come before the Law question, as that can not be determined
before Hilary Term, and I wish your deliberate judgment on that. The other may
be flimsy and superficial. And if you have not burnt your returned letter, pray
re-send it me, as a monumental token of my stupidity. ’Twas a little
unthinking of you to touch upon a sore subject. Why, by dabbling in those
accursed Albums, I have become a byword of infamy all over the kingdom. I have
sicken’d decent women for asking me to write in Albums. There be
“dark jests” abroad, Master Cornwall; and some
riddles may live to be clear’d up. And ’tis not every saddle is put
on the right steed; and forgeries and false Gospels are not peculiar to the Age
following the Apostles. And some tubs don’t stand on their right bottoms.
Which is all I wish to say in these ticklish Times—and so your Servant,
Martin Charles Burney (1788-1852)
The son of Admiral James Burney and nephew of Fanny Burney; he was a lawyer on the
western circuit, and a friend of Leigh Hunt, the Lambs, and Hazlitts.
Mrs. John Lamb (d. 1825)
The widow of Isaac Dowden who married John Lamb, brother of Charles Lamb.
St Paul (5 c.-67 c.)
Apostle to the Gentiles.
Bryan Waller Procter [Barry Cornwall] (1787-1874)
English poet; a contemporary of Byron at Harrow, and friend of Leigh Hunt and Charles
Lamb. He was the author of several volumes of poem and
Mirandola, a
tragedy (1821).
Henry Crabb Robinson (1775-1867)
Attorney, diarist, and journalist for
The Times; he was a founder
of the Athenaeum Club.
Sir Thomas Noon Talfourd (1795-1854)
English judge, dramatist, and friend of Charles Lamb who contributed articles to the
London Magazine and
New Monthly
Magazine.
