My Friends and Acquaintance
Charles Lamb VI
Charles Lamb to Peter George Patmore, 19 July 1827
“Dear P.—I am so poorly! I have
been to a funeral, where I made a pun, to the consternation of the rest of the
mourners. And we had wine. I can’t describe to you the howl which the
widow set up at proper intervals. Dash could, for it
was not unlike what he makes.
“The letter I sent you was one directed to the care of
E. White, India House, for
Mrs. Hazlitt. Which Mrs. Hazlitt I don’t yet know,
but A. has taken it to France on ![]()
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speculation. Really it is embarrassing. There is Mrs. present H., Mrs. late
H., and Mrs. John H., and
to which of the three Mrs. Wiggins’s
it appertains I don’t know. I wanted to open it, but it’s
transportation.
“I am sorry you are plagued about your book. I would
strongly recommend you to take for one story Massinger’s ‘Old Law.’ It is exquisite. I can
think of no other.
“Dash is frightful this
morning. He whines and stands up on his hind legs. He misses
Beckey, who is gone to town. I took him to Barnet the
other day, and he couldn’t eat his victuals after it. Pray God his
intellects be not slipping.
“Mary is gone out
for some soles. I suppose it’s no use to ask you to come and partake of
’em; else there’s a steam-vessel.
“I am doing a tragi-comedy in two acts, and have got on tolerably; but it will be
refused, or worse. I never had luck with anything my name was put to.
“Oh, I am so poorly! I waked it
at my cousin’s the
bookbinder’s, who is now with God; or if he is not, it’s no fault
of mine.
“We hope the frank wines do not disagree ![]()
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with Mrs. Patmore.
By the way, I like her.
“Did you ever taste frogs? Get them, if you can. They
are like little Lilliput rabbits, only a thought nicer.
“Christ, how sick I am!—not of the world, but of the
widow’s shrub. She’s sworn under £6000, but I think she perjured
herself. She howls in E la, and I comfort her in B flat.
You understand music?
“If you haven’t got Massinger, you have nothing to do but go to the first
bibliotheque you can light upon at Boulogne, and ask for it (Gifford’s Edition), and if they
haven’t got it, you can have “Athalie,” par Monsieur Racine, and make the best of it. But
that ‘Old
Law’’s delicious.*
“‘No shrimps!’ (That’s in answer to
* This refers to a series of tales that I was writing,
(since published under the title of, “Chatsworth, or the Romance of a
Week,”) for the subject of one of which he had
recommended me to take “The Old Law.” As Lamb’s critical faculties (as
displayed in the celebrated “specimens” which created an
era in the dramatic taste of England) were not surpassed by those of
any writer of his day, the reader may like to see a few
“specimens” of some notes which Lamb
took the pains to make on two of the tales that were |
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Mary’s question about how the soles
are to be done.)
“I am uncertain where this wandering
shown to him. I give these the
rather that there is occasionally blended with their critical nicety of
tact, a drollery that is very characteristic of the writer. I shall
leave these notes and verbal criticisms to speak for themselves, after
merely explaining that they are written on separate bits of paper, each
note having a numerical reference to that page of the MS. in which
occurs the passage commented on. “Besides the words ‘riant’ and
‘Euphrosyne,’ the sentence is senseless. ‘A sweet
sadness’ capable of inspiring ‘a more grave joy”—than what?—than demonstrations of mirth? Odd if it had not been. I had once a
wry aunt, which may make me dislike the
phrase.
“‘Pleasurable:’—no word is good
that is awkward to spell. (Query.) Welcome or Joyous.
“‘Steady
self-possession rather than undaunted
courage,’ &c. The two things are not opposed
enough. You mean, rather than rash fire of valor in
action.” “‘Looking like a heifer,’ I fear
wont do in prose. (Qy.) ‘Like to some spotless
heifer,’—or,‘that you might have compared her to some
‘spotless heifer,’ &c.—or,’ Like to some
sacrificial heifer of old.’ I should prefer, ‘garlanded
with flowers as for a sacrifice’—and cut the cow
altogether.” “(Say) ‘Like the muttering of some
strange spell,’omitting the demon,—they are subject to spells, they don’t use them.” “‘Feud’
here (and before and after) is wrong. (Say) old malice, or,
difference. Feud is of clans. It
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letter may reach you. What you mean by Poste
Restante, God knows. Do you mean I must pay the postage? So I do
to Dover.
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might be applied to family quarrels, but is quite improper to individual
fallings out.”
“‘Apathetic’ Vile word.
“‘Mechanically,’
faugh!—insensibly—involuntarily—in-anything-ly but
mechanically.”
“Calianax’s character should be somewhere briefly
drawn, not left to be dramatically inferred.”
“‘Surprised and almost vexed while it
troubled her.’ (awkward.) Better, ‘in a way that while it
deeply troubled her, could not but surprise and vex her to think it
should be a source of trouble at all.”
“‘Reaction’ is vile slang.
‘Physical’—vile word.”
“Decidedly, Dorigen should simply propose to him to remove the
rocks as ugly or dangerous, not as affecting her with fears for her husband.
The idea of her husband should be excluded from a promise which is
meant to be frank upon impossible conditions.
She cannot promise in one breath infidelity to him, and make the
conditions a good to him. Her reason for hating the rocks is good, but
not to be expressed here.”
“Insert after ‘to whatever consequences it
might lead,’—‘Neither had Arviragus been disposed to interpose a husband’s
authority to prevent the execution of this rash vow, was he unmindful
of that older and more solemn vow which, in the young days of their
marriage, he had imposed upon himself, in no instance to control the
settled purpose or determination of his wedded wife;—so that by the
chains of a double contract he seemed bound to abide by her decision in
this instance, whatever it might be.’”
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“We had a merry passage with the widow at the Commons.
She was howling—part howling and part giving directions to the proctor—when
crash! down went my sister through a crazy chair, and made the clerks grin, and
I grinned, and the widow tittered—and then I knew that she
was not inconsolable. Mary was
more frightened than hurt.
“She’d make a good match for anybody (by she, I
mean the widow.)
“‘If he bring but a relict away He is happy, nor heard to complain.’ |
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“Procter has got
a wen growing out at the nape of his neck, which his wife wants him to have cut
off; but I think it rather an agreeable excrescence—like his poetry—redundant.
Hone has hanged himself for debt.
Godwin was taken up for picking
pockets. Beckey takes to bad courses. Her father was blown
up in a steam machine. The coroner found it Insanity. I should not like him to
sit on my letter.*
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* The reader need scarcely be told that all the above
items of home news are pure fiction.
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“Do you observe my direction? Is it Gallic?—Classical?*
“Do try and get some frogs. You must ask for
‘grenouilles’ (green-eels). They don’t understand
‘frogs,’ though it’s a common phrase with us.
“If you go through Bulloign (Boulogne) enquire if old
Godfrey is living, and
how he got home from the Crusades. He must be a very old man now.
“If there is anything new in politics or literature in
France, keep it till I see you again, for I’m in no hurry.
Chatty-Briant (Chateaubriand) is well, I hope.
“I think I have no more news; only give both our loves
(‘all three,’ says Dash) to Mrs. Patmore, and bid her get quite well, as I
am at present, bating qualms, and the grief incident to losing a valuable
relation.
“C. L.”
“Londres, July 19, 1827.
François-René, viscomte de Chateaubriand (1768-1848)
French romantic poet and diplomat, author of
The Genius of
Christianity (1802). He was a supporter of the Bourbon restoration. He was
ambassador to Great Britain in 1822.
William Godwin (1756-1836)
English novelist and political philosopher; author of
An Inquiry
concerning the Principles of Political Justice (1793) and
Caleb
Williams (1794); in 1797 he married Mary Wollstonecraft.
Isabella Hazlitt [née Shaw] (1791-1869)
The second wife of William Hazlitt, whom she married in 1824; she was the daughter of
James Shaw and had been formerly married to Henry Bridgwater of Grenada.
Sarah Hazlitt [née Stoddart] (1774-1840)
The daughter of John Stoddart (1742-1803), lieutenant in the Royal Navy; she married
William Hazlitt in 1808 and was divorced in 1822.
William Hone (1780-1842)
English bookseller, radical, and antiquary; he was an associate of Bentham, Mill, and
John Cam Hobhouse.
Charles Lamb [Elia] (1775-1834)
English essayist and boyhood friend of Coleridge at Christ's Hospital; author of
Essays of Elia published in the
London
Magazine (collected 1823, 1833) and other works.
Mary Anne Lamb (1764-1847)
Sister of Charles Lamb with whom she wrote Tales from Shakespeare (1807). She lived with
her brother, having killed their mother in a temporary fit of insanity.
Charles Lovekin (1780 c.-1827)
London bookbinder, the son of Joseph Lovekin, bridle cutter; he was a cousin of Charles
and Mary Lamb.
Philip Massinger (1583-1649)
Jacobean playwright; author of
A New Way to Pay Old Debts (1625);
his works were edited by William Gifford (1805, 1813).
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).
Jean Racine (1639-1699)
French neoclassical playwright, author of
Andromaque (1667),
Bajazet (1672),
Mithridate (1673) and Phèdre
(1677).
William Shenstone (1714-1763)
English poet and landscape gardener; author of
The Schoolmistress
(1737, 1742) "A Pastoral Ballad" (1743).
Edward White (1840 fl.)
A clerk at the East India House where he was a friend and colleague of Charles Lamb; he
was an amateur painter and connoisseur of art.
