Part 14 (1/2)
No Egyptian taskmaster ever devised a slavery like to that, our slavery.
No fractious operants ever turned out for half the tyranny which this necessity exercised upon us. Half a dozen jests in a day (bating Sundays too), why, it seems nothing! We make twice the number every day in our lives as a matter of course, and claim no Sabbatical exemptions. But then they come into our head. But when the head has to go out to them--when the mountain must go to Mahomet--
Reader, try it for once, only for one short twelvemonth.
It was not every week that a fas.h.i.+on of pink stockings came up; but mostly, instead of it, some rugged, untractable subject; some topic impossible to be contorted into the risible; some feature, upon which no smile could play; some flint, from which no process of ingenuity could procure a distillation. There they lay; there your appointed tale of brick-making was set before you, which you must finish, with or without straw, as it happened. The craving Dragon--_the Public_--like him in Bel's temple--must be fed; it expected its daily rations; and Daniel, and ourselves, to do us justice, did the best we could on this side bursting him.
MISS PATE [Sidenote: _M.M. Betham_]
A Miss Pate (when he heard of her, he asked if she was any relation to Mr. John _Head_, of Ipswich) was at a party, and he said, on hearing her name, ”Miss Pate I hate.” ”You are the first person who ever told me so, however,” said she. ”Oh! I mean nothing by it. If it had been Miss Dove, I should have said, Miss Dove I love, or Miss Pike I like.” ... Another, who was very much marked with the small-pox, looked as if the devil had ridden roughshod over her face. I saw him talking to her afterwards with great apparent interest, and noticed it, saying, ”I thought he had not liked her.” His reply was, ”I like her internals very well.”
THE LOST ORNAMENT [Sidenote: _Was.h.i.+ngton Allston_]
Lamb was present when a naval officer was giving an account of an action which he had been in, and, to ill.u.s.trate the carelessness and disregard of life at such times, said that a sailor had both his legs shot off, and as his s.h.i.+pmates were carrying him below, another shot came and took off his arms; they, thinking he was pretty much used up, though life was still in him, threw him out of a port. ”Shame, d----d shame,” stuttered our Lamb, ”he m-m-might have l-lived to have been an a-a-ornament to Society!”
YOUR HAT, SIR [Sidenote: _Crabb Robinson_]
I dined at Lamb's, and then walked with him to Highgate, self-invited.
There we found a large party. Mr. and Mrs. Green, the Aderses, Irving, Collins, R.A., a Mr. Taylor, a young man of talents in the Colonial Office, Basil Montagu, a Mr. Chance, and one or two others. It was a _rich_ evening. Coleridge talked his best, and it appeared better because he and Irving supported the same doctrines. His superiority was striking. The idea dwelt on was the higher character of the internal evidence of Christianity, as addressed to our immediate consciousness of our own wants and the necessity of a religion and a revelation. In a style not to me clear or intelligible, Irving and Coleridge both declaimed. The _advocatus diaboli_ for the evening was Mr. Taylor, who, in a way very creditable to his manners as a gentleman, but with little more than verbal cleverness, and an ordinary logic, and the confidence of a young man who has no suspicion of his own deficiencies, affirmed that those evidences which the Christian thinks he finds in his internal convictions, the Mahometan also thinks he has; and he affirmed that Mahomet had improved the condition of mankind. Lamb asked him whether he came in a turban or a hat.
ELIA'S TAIL [Sidenote: _J.B._]
When I first knew Charles Lamb, I ventured, one evening, to say something that I intended should pa.s.s for wit. ”Ha! very well; very well, indeed!” said he. ”Ben Jonson has said worse things” (I brightened up, but he went stammering on to the end of the sentence)--”and--and--and _better_!” A pinch of snuff concluded this compliment, which put a stop to my wit for the evening. I related the thing to Hazlitt, afterwards, who laughed. ”Aye,” said he, ”you are never sure of him till he gets to the end. His jokes would be the sharpest things in the world, but that they are blunted by his good-nature. He wants malice--which is a pity.” ”But,” said I, ”his words at first seemed so--” ”Oh! as for that,” replied Hazlitt, ”his sayings are generally like women's letters: all the pith is in the postscript.”
CHARLES AND HIS SISTER [Sidenote: _Mrs. Balmanno_]
Miss Lamb, although many years older than her brother, by no means looked so, but presented the pleasant appearance of a mild, rather stout, and comely maiden lady of middle age. Dressed with quaker-like simplicity in dove-coloured silk, with a transparent kerchief of snow-white muslin folded across her bosom, she at once prepossessed the beholder in her favour by an aspect of serenity and peace. Her manners were very quiet and gentle, and her voice low. She smiled frequently, but seldom laughed, partaking of the courtesies and hospitalities of her merry host and hostess with all the cheerfulness and grace of a most mild and kindly nature.
Her behaviour to her brother was like that of an admiring disciple; her eyes seldom absent from his face. Even when apparently engrossed in conversation with others, she would, by supplying some word for which he was at a loss, even when talking in a distant part of the room, show how closely her mind waited upon his. Mr. Lamb was in high spirits, sauntering about the room, with his hands crossed behind his back, conversing by fits and starts with those most familiarly known to him, but evidently mentally acknowledging Miss Kelly to be the _rara avis_ of his thoughts, by the great attention he paid to every word she uttered.
Truly pleasant it must have been to her, even though accustomed to see people listen breathless with admiration while she spoke, to find her words have so much charm for such a man as Charles Lamb.
He appeared to enjoy himself greatly, much to the gratification of Mrs.
Hood, who often interchanged happy glances with Miss Lamb, who nodded approvingly. He spoke much--with emphasis and hurry of words, sorely impeded by the stammering utterance which in him was not unattractive.
Miss Kelly (charming, natural Miss Kelly, who has drawn from her audiences more heart-felt tears and smiles than perhaps any other English actress), with quiet good-humour listened and laughed at the witty sallies of her host and his gifted friend, seeming as little an actress as it is possible to conceive. Once, however, when some allusion was made to a comic scene in a new play then just brought out, wherein she had performed to the life the character of a low-bred lady's-maid pa.s.sing herself off as her mistress, Miss Kelly arose, and with a kind of resistless ardour repeated a few sentences so inimitably that everybody laughed as much as if the real lady's-maid, and not the actress, had been before them; while she who had so well personated the part quietly resumed her seat without the least sign of merriment, as grave as possible. Most striking had been the transition from the calm, lady-like person, to the gay, loquacious soubrette; and not less so the sudden extinction of vivacity and resumption of well-bred decorum. This little scene for a few moments charmed everybody out of themselves, and gave a new impetus to conversation....
Mr. Lamb oddly walked all round the table, looking closely at any dish that struck his fancy before he would decide where to sit, telling Mrs.
Hood that he should by that means know how to select some dish that was difficult to carve, and take the trouble off her hands; accordingly, having jested in this manner, he placed himself with great deliberation before a lobster-salad, observing _that_ was the thing. On her asking him to take some roast fowl, he a.s.sented. ”What part shall I help you to, Mr. Lamb?” ”Back,” said he quickly; ”I always prefer the back.” My husband laid down his knife and fork, and, looking upwards, exclaimed: ”By heavens! I could not have believed it, if anybody else had sworn it.” ”Believed what?” said kind Mrs. Hood, anxiously, colouring to the temples, and fancying there was something amiss in the piece he had been helped to. ”Believe what? why, madam, that Charles Lamb was a backbiter?” Hood gave one of his short, quick laughs, gone almost ere it had come, whilst Lamb went off into a loud fit of mirth, exclaiming: ”Now, that's devilish good! I'll sup with you to-morrow night.” This eccentric flight made everybody very merry, and amidst a most amusing mixture of wit and humour, sense and nonsense, we feasted merrily, amidst jocose health-drinking, sentiments, speeches, and songs.
Mr. Hood, with inexpressible gravity in the upper part of his face and his mouth twitching with smiles, sang his own comic song, ”If you go to France, be sure you learn the lingo,” his pensive manner and feeble voice making it doubly ludicrous. Mr. Lamb, on being pressed to sing, excused himself in his own peculiar manner, but offered to p.r.o.nounce a Latin eulogium instead. This was accepted, and he accordingly stammered forth a string of Latin words; among which, as the name of Mrs. Hood frequently occurred, we ladies thought it was in praise of her. The delivery of his speech occupied about five minutes. On inquiring of a gentleman who sat next to me whether Mr. Lamb was praising Mrs. Hood, he informed me that it was by no means the case, the eulogium being on the lobster-salad!
IN A COACH [Sidenote: _Charles Lamb_]
The incidents of our journey were trifling, but you bade me tell them.
We had, then, in the coach a rather talkative gentleman, but very civil, all the way, and took up a servant-maid at Stamford, going to a sick mistress.... The _former_ engaged me in a discourse for full twenty miles on the probable advantages of Steam Carriages, which, being merely problematical, I bore my part in with some credit, in spite of my totally un-engineer-like faculties. But when, somewhere about Stanstead, he put an unfortunate question tome as to the ”probability of its turning out a good turnip season,” and when I, who am still less of an agriculturist than a steam-philosopher, not knowing a turnip from a potato-ground, innocently made answer that I believed it depended very much upon boiled legs of mutton, my unlucky reply set Miss Isola a-laughing to a degree that disturbed her tranquillity for the only moment in our journey. I am afraid my credit sank very low with my other fellow-traveller, who had thought he had met with a _well-informed pa.s.senger_, which is an accident so desirable in a stage coach. We were rather less communicative, but still friendly, the rest of the way.
KING DAVID AND THE GARDENER [Sidenote: _Anon._]