CHARLES LAMB TO BERNARD BARTON

[P.M. March 23, 1825.]

Wednesday.

Dear B.B.--I have had no impulse to write, or attend to any single object but myself, for weeks past. My single self. I by myself I. I am sick of hope deferred. The grand wheel is in agitation that is to turn up my Fortune, but round it rolls and will turn up nothing. I have a glimpse of Freedom, of becoming a Gentleman at large, but I am put off from day to day. I have offered my resignation, and it is neither accepted nor rejected. Eight weeks am I kept in this fearful suspence.

Guess what an absorbing stake I feel it. I am not conscious of the existence of friends present or absent. The E.I. Directors alone can be that thing to me--or not.--

I have just learn'd that nothing will be decided this week. Why the next? Why any week? It has fretted me into an itch of the fingers, I rub 'em against Paper and write to you, rather than not allay this s...o...b..ta.

While I can write, let me adjure you to have no doubts of Irving. Let Mr. Mitford drop his disrespect. Irving has prefixed a dedication (of a Missionary Subject 1st part) to Coleridge, the most beautiful cordial and sincere. He there acknowledges his obligation to S.T.C. for his knowledge of Gospel truths, the nature of a Xtian Church, etc., to the talk of S.T.C. (at whose Gamaliel feet he sits weekly) [more] than to that of all the men living. This from him--The great dandled and petted Sectarian--to a religious character so equivocal in the world's Eye as that of S.T.C., so foreign to the Kirk's estimate!--Can this man be a Quack? The language is as affecting as the Spirit of the Dedication.

Some friend told him, "This dedication will do you no Good," _i.e._ not in the world's repute, or with your own People. "That is a reason for doing it," quoth Irving.

I am thoroughly pleased with him. He is firm, outspeaking, intrepid--and docile as a pupil of Pythagoras.

You must like him.

Yours, in tremors of painful hope,

C. LAMB.

[In the first paragraphs Lamb refers to the great question of his release from the India House.

In a letter dated February 19, 1825, of Mary Russell Mitford, who looked upon Irving as quack absolute, we find her discussing the preacher with Charles Lamb.]

LETTER 367

CHARLES LAMB TO HENRY CRABB ROBINSON

[March 29], 1825.

I have left the d------d India House for Ever!

Give me great joy.

C. LAMB.

[Robinson states in his Reminiscences of Coleridge, Wordsworth and Lamb, preserved in MS. at Dr. Williams' Library: "A most important incident in Lamb's life, tho' in the end not so happy for him as he antic.i.p.ated, was his obtaining his discharge, with a pension of almost 400 a year, from the India House. This he announced to me by a note put into my letter box: 'I have left the India House. D------ Time. I'm all for eternity.'

He was rather more than 50 years of age. I found him and his Sister in high spirits when I called to wish them joy on the 22 of April. 'I never saw him so calmly cheerful,' says my journal, 'as he seemed then.'" See the next letters for Lamb's own account of the event.]

LETTER 368

CHARLES LAMB TO WILLIAM WORDSWORTH

Colebrook Cottage,

6 April, 1825.

Dear Wordsworth, I have been several times meditating a letter to you concerning the good thing which has befallen me, but the thought of poor Monkhouse came across me. He was one that I had exulted in the prospect of congratulating me. He and you were to have been the first partic.i.p.ators, for indeed it has been ten weeks since the first motion of it.

Here I am then after 33 years slavery, sitting in my own room at 11 o'Clock this finest of all April mornings a freed man, with 441 a year for the remainder of my life, live I as long as John Dennis, who outlived his annuity and starved at 90. 441, i.e. 450, with a deduction of 9 for a provision secured to my sister, she being survivor, the Pension guaranteed by Act Georgii Tertii, &c.

I came home for ever on Tuesday in last week. The incomprehensibleness of my condition overwhelm'd me. It was like pa.s.sing from life into Eternity. Every year to be as long as three, i.e. to have three times as much real time, time that is my own, in it! I wandered about thinking I was happy, but feeling I was not. But that tumultuousness is pa.s.sing off, and I begin to understand the nature of the gift. Holydays, even the annual month, were always uneasy joys: their conscious fugitiveness--the craving after making the most of them. Now, when all is holyday, there are no holydays. I can sit at home in rain or shine without a restless impulse for walkings. I am daily steadying, and shall soon find it as natural to me to be my own master, as it has been irksome to have had a master. Mary wakes every morning with an obscure feeling that some good has happened to us.

Leigh Hunt and Montgomery after their releas.e.m.e.nts describe the shock of their emanc.i.p.ation much as I feel mine. But it hurt their frames. I eat, drink, and sleep sound as ever. I lay no anxious schemes for going hither and thither, but take things as they occur. Yesterday I excursioned 20 miles, to day I write a few letters. Pleasuring was for fugitive play days, mine are fugitive only in the sense that life is fugitive. Freedom and life co-existent.

At the foot of such a call upon you for gratulation, I am ashamd to advert to that melancholy event. Monkhouse was a character I learnd to love slowly, but it grew upon me, yearly, monthly, daily. What a chasm has it made in our pleasant parties! His n.o.ble friendly face was always coming before me, till this hurrying event in my life came, and for the time has absorpt all interests. In fact it has shaken me a little. My old desk companions with whom I have had such merry hours seem to reproach me for removing my lot from among them. They were pleasant creatures, but to the anxieties of business, and a weight of possible worse ever impending, I was not equal. Tuthill and Gilman gave me my certificates. I laughed at the friendly lie implied in them, but my sister shook her head and said it was all true. Indeed this last winter I was jaded out, winters were always worse than other parts of the year, because the spirits are worse, and I had no daylight. In summer I had daylight evenings. The relief was hinted to me from a superior power, when I poor slave had not a hope but that I must wait another 7 years with Jacob--and lo! the Rachel which I coveted is bro't to me--

Have you read the n.o.ble dedication of Irving's "Missionary Orations" to S.T.C. Who shall call this man a Quack hereafter? What the Kirk will think of it neither I nor Irving care. When somebody suggested to him that it would not be likely to do him good, videlicet among his own people, "That is a reason for doing it" was his n.o.ble answer.

That Irving thinks he has profited mainly by S.T.C., I have no doubt.

The very style of the Ded. shows it.

Communicate my news to Southey, and beg his pardon for my being so long acknowledging his kind present of the "Church," which circ.u.mstances I do not wish to explain, but having no reference to himself, prevented at the time. a.s.sure him of my deep respect and friendliest feelings.

Divide the same, or rather each take the whole to you, I mean you and all yours. To Miss Hutchinson I must write separate. What's her address?

I want to know about Mrs. M.

Farewell! and end at last, long selfish Letter!

C. LAMB.

[Lamb expanded the first portion of this letter into the _Elia_ essay "The Superannuated Man," which ought to be read in connection with it (see Vol. II. of the present edition).

Leigh Hunt and James Montgomery, the poet, had both undergone imprisonment for libel.

At a Court of Directors of the India House held on March 29, 1825, it was resolved "that the resignation of Mr. Charles Lamb of the Accountant General's Office, on account of certified ill-health, be accepted, and, it appearing that he has served the Company faithfully for 33 years, and is now in the receipt of an income of 730 per annum, he be allowed a pension of 450 (four hundred and fifty pounds) per annum, under the provisions of the act of the 53 Geo. III., cap. 155, to commence from this day."]

LETTER 369

CHARLES LAMB TO BERNARD BARTON

[P.M. April 6, 1825.]

Dear B.B.--My spirits are so tumultuary with the novelty of my recent emanc.i.p.ation, that I have scarce steadiness of hand, much more mind, to compose a letter.

I am free, B.B.--free as air.

The little bird that wings the sky Knows no such Liberty!