Part 33 (2/2)
My wick hath a thief in it, but I can't muster courage to snuff it.
I inhale suffocation; I can't distinguish veal from mutton; nothing interests me. 'Tis twelve o'clock, and Thurtell is just now coming out upon the New Drop, Jack Ketch alertly tucking up his greasy sleeves to do the last office of mortality, yet cannot I elicit a groan or a moral reflection. If you told me the world will be at an end to-morrow, I should just say, 'Will it?' I have not volition enough left to dot my _i's_, much less to comb my eyebrows; my eyes are set in my head; my brains are gone out to see a poor relation in Moorflelds, and they did not say when they'd come back again; my skull is a Grub Street attic to let--not so much as a joint stool left in it; my hand writes, not I, from habit, as chickens run about a little, when their heads are off. O for a vigorous fit of gout, colic, toothache,--an earwig in my auditory, a fly in my visual organs; pain is life--the sharper, the more evidence of life; but this apathy, this death! Did you ever have an obstinate cold,--a six or seven weeks'
unintermitting chill and suspension of hope, fear, conscience, and every thing? Yet do I try all I can to cure it; I try wine, and spirits, and smoking, and snuff in unsparing quant.i.ties, but they all only seem to make me worse instead of better. I sleep in a damp room, but it does me no good; I come home late o' nights, but do not find any visible amendment!...
It is just fifteen minutes after twelve; Thurtell is by this time a good way on his journey, baiting at Scorpion perhaps; Ketch is bargaining for his cast coat and waistcoat; the Jew demurs at first at three half-crowns, but, on consideration that he may get somewhat by showing 'em in the town, finally closes.
WILLIAM HAZLITT
1778-1830
To Miss Sarah Stoddart
_A love-letter_
Tuesday night [_Jan._ 1808].
MY DEAR LOVE,
Above a week has pa.s.sed, and I have received no letter--not one of those letters 'in which I live, or have no life at all'. What is become of you? Are you married, hearing that I was dead (for so it has been reported)? Or are you gone into a nunnery? Or are you fallen in love with some of the amorous heroes of Boccaccio? Which of them is it? Is it with Chynon, who was transformed from a clown into a lover, and learned to spell by the force of beauty? Or with Lorenzo, the lover of Isabella, whom her three brethren hated (as your brother does me), who was a merchant's clerk? Or with Federigo Alberigi, an honest gentleman, who ran through his fortune, and won his mistress by cooking a fair falcon for her dinner, though it was the only means he had left of getting a dinner for himself? This last is the man; and I am the more persuaded of it, because I think I won your good liking myself by giving you an entertainment--of sausages, when I had no money to buy them with. Nay now, never deny it! Did I not ask your consent that very night after, and did you not give it? Well, I should be confoundedly jealous of those fine gallants, if I did not know that a living dog is better than a dead lion; though, now I think of it, Boccaccio does not in general make much of his lovers: it is his women who are so delicious. I almost wish I had lived in those times, and had been a little _more amiable_. Now if a woman had written the book, it would not have had this effect upon me: the men would have been heroes and angels, and the women nothing at all. Isn't there some truth in that? Talking of departed loves, I met my old flame the other day in the street. I did dream of her _one_ night since, and only one: every other night I have had the same dream I have had for these two months past. Now, if you are at all reasonable, this will satisfy you.
_Thursday morning_. The book is come. When I saw it I thought you had sent it back in a _huff_, tired out by my sauciness, and _coldness_, and delays, and were going to keep an account of dimities and sayes, or to salt pork and chronicle small beer as the dutiful wife of some fresh-looking, rural swain; so that you cannot think how surprised and pleased I was to find them all done. I liked your note as well or better than the extracts; it is just such a note as such a nice rogue as you ought to write after the _provocation_ you had received. I would not give a pin for a girl 'whose cheeks never tingle', nor for myself if I could not make them tingle sometimes. Now, though I am always writing to you about 'lips and noses', and such sort of stuff, yet as I sit by my fireside (which I do generally eight or ten hours a day), I oftener think of you in a serious, sober light. For, indeed, I never love you so well as when I think of sitting down with you to dinner on a boiled scrag-end of mutton, and hot potatoes. You please my fancy more then than when I think of you in--no, you would never forgive me if I were to finish the sentence. Now I think of it, what do you mean to be dressed in when we are married? But it does not much matter! I wish you would let your hair grow; though perhaps nothing will be better than 'the same air and look with which at first my heart was took'. But now to business. I mean soon to call upon your brother _in form_, namely, as soon as I get quite well, which I hope to do in about another _fortnight_; and then I hope you will come up by the coach as fast as the horses can carry you, for I long mightily to be in your ladys.h.i.+p's presence--to vindicate my character. I think you had better sell the small house, I mean that at 4.10, and I will borrow 100. So that we shall set off merrily in spite of all the prudence of Edinburgh. Goodbye, little dear!
TO HIS SON
_Marriage, and the choice of a profession_
[1822.]
... If you ever marry, I would wish you to marry the woman you like.
Do not be guided by the recommendations of friends. Nothing will atone for or overcome an original distaste. It will only increase from intimacy; and if you are to live separate, it is better not to come together. There is no use in dragging a chain through life, unless it binds one to the object we love. Choose a mistress from among your equals. You will be able to understand her character better, and she will be more likely to understand yours. Those in an inferior station to yourself will doubt your good intentions, and misapprehend your plainest expressions. All that you swear is to them a riddle or downright nonsense. You cannot by any possibility translate your thoughts into their dialect. They will be ignorant of the meaning of half you say, and laugh at the rest. As mistresses, they will have no sympathy with you; and as wives, you can have none with them.
Women care nothing about poets, or philosophers, or politicians. They go by a man's looks and manner. Richardson calls them 'an eye-judging s.e.x'; and I am sure he knew more about them than I can pretend to do.
If you run away with a pedantic notion that they care a pin's point about your head or your heart, you will repent it too late....
If I were to name one pursuit rather than another, I should wish you to be a good painter, if such a thing could be hoped. I have failed in this myself, and should wish you to be able to do what I have not--to paint like Claude, or Rembrandt, or Guido, or Vand.y.k.e, if it were possible. Artists, I think, who have succeeded in their chief object, live to be old, and are agreeable old men. Their minds keep alive to the last. Cosway's spirits never flagged till after ninety; and Nollekens, though nearly blind, pa.s.sed all his mornings in giving directions about some group or bust in his workshop. You have seen Mr.
Northcote, that delightful specimen of the last age. With what avidity he takes up his pencil, or lays it down again to talk of numberless things! His eye has not lost its l.u.s.tre, nor 'paled its ineffectual fire'. His body is but a shadow: he himself is a pure spirit. There is a kind of immortality about this sort of ideal and visionary existence that dallies with Fate and baffles the grim monster, Death. If I thought you could make as clever an artist, and arrive at such an agreeable old age as Mr. Northcote, I should declare at once for your devoting yourself to this enchanting profession; and in that reliance, should feel less regret at some of my own disappointments, and little anxiety on your account!
To CHARLES COWDEN CLARKE
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