The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 85, November, 1864

Advise me, dear Editor, on this painful heart-malady. Tell me, do you feel anything allied to it in yourself? Do you never feel an itching, as it were,—a dactylomania,—or am I alone? You have my honest confession. My next may appear from Bow Street.

Suspensurus.

Delightful as the essays of Elia are, Lamb did not spend all the "riches of his wit" in their production. His letters—so full are they of "the salt and fineness of wit,"—so richly humorous and so deliciously droll,—so rammed and crammed with the oddest conceits and the wildest fancies, and the quaintest, queerest thoughts, ideas, and speculations—are scarcely inferior to his essays. Indeed, some of the best and most admired of the essays are but extended letters. The germ of the immortal dissertation on "Roast Pig" is contained in a letter to Coleridge; the essay entitled "Distant Correspondents" is hardly more than a transcript of a private letter to Barron Field; and the original sketch of "The Gentle Giantess" was given in a letter to Miss Wordsworth.

In the following letter—which is not included in Talfourd's "Life and Letters of Charles Lamb," and will therefore be new to most readers—Lamb writes very much in the manner in which Shakspeare's fools and jesters—in some respects the wisest and thoughtfullest characters in his works—talk. If his words be "light as air," they vent "truths deep as the centre." If the Fool in "Lear" had written letters to his friends and acquaintances, I think they would have marvellously resembled this epistle to Patmore; and if, in saying this, I compliment the Fool, I hope I do not derogate from the genius of Elia. Jaques, it will be remembered, after hearing the "motley fool" moral on the time, declared that "motley's the only wear"; and I opine that Lamb would consider it no small praise to be likened, in wit, wisdom, and eloquence, to Touchstone, or to the Clown in "Twelfth Night."

TO P. G. PATMORE

Dear P.,—I am 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 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 speculation. Really it is embarrassing. There is Mrs. present H., Mrs. late H., and Mrs. John H.; and to which of the three Mrs. Wigginses 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 with Mrs. Patmore. By the way, I like her.

Did you ever taste frogs? Get them, if you can. They are little Liliput rabbits, only a thought nicer.

Christ, how sick I am!—not of the world, but of the widow's shrub. She's sworn under six thousand pounds; 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 bibliothèque 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 Mary's question about how the soles are to be done.)

I am uncertain where this wandering 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.

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."Shenstone.

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.6

Do you observe my direction? Is it Gaelic?—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], inquire 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 [Châteaubriand] 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.

Of all the essays of Elia, the paper on "Roast Pig" is perhaps the most read, the most quoted, the most admired. 'T is even better, says an epicurean friend of mine, than the "crisp, tawny, well-watched, not over-roasted crackling" it descants upon so eloquently. Certainly Lamb never writes so richly and so delightfully as when he discourses of the dainties and delicacies of the table.

Though all our readers are doubtlessly familiar with Elia's beautiful little article entitled "Thoughts on Presents of Game," very few of them have read the letter he wrote in acknowledgment of a present of a pig from a farmer and his wife. 'T is a rare bit, a choice morsel of Lamb's best and most delicious humor, and will be perused with great pleasure and satisfaction by all admirers of its witty and eccentric author. Here it is.

TO A FARMER AND HIS WIFE

Twelfth Day, 1823.

The pig was above my feeble praise. It was a dear pigmy. There was some contention as to who should have the ears; but, in spite of his obstinacy, (deaf as these little creatures are to advice,) I contrived to get at one of them.

It came in boots, too, which I took as a favor. Generally these pretty toes—pretty toes!—are missing; but I suppose he wore them to look taller.

He must have been the least of his race. His little foots would have gone into the silver slipper. I take him to have been a Chinese and a female.

If Evelyn could have seen him, he would never have farrowed two such prodigious volumes; seeing how much good can be contained in—how small a compass!

He crackled delicately.

I left a blank at the top of my letter, not being determined which to address it to: so farmer and farmer's wife will please to divide our thanks. May your granaries be full, and your rats empty, and your chickens plump, and your envious neighbors lean, and your laborers busy, and you as idle and as happy as the day is long!

Vive l'Agriculture!How do you make your pigs so little?They are vastly engaging at the age:I was so myself.Now I am a disagreeable old hog,A middle-aged gentleman-and-a-half.My faculties, thank God, are not much impaired!

I have my sight, hearing, taste, pretty perfect; and can read the Lord's Prayer in common type, by the help of a candle, without making many mistakes.

Believe me, that, while my faculties last, I shall ever cherish a proper appreciation of your many kindnesses in this way, and that the last lingering relish of past favors upon my dying memory will be the smack of that little ear. It was the left ear, which is lucky. Many happy returns,—not of the pig, but of the New Year, to both!

Mary, for her share of the pig and the memoirs, desires to send the same.

Yours truly,C. Lamb.

TO WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT

ON HIS SEVENTIETH BIRTHDAY

November 3, 1864Calm priest of Nature, her maternal handLed thee, a reverent child,To mountain-altars, by the lonely strand,And through the forest wild.Haunting her temple, filled with love and awe,To thy responsive youthThe harmonies of her benignant lawRevealed consoling truth.Thenceforth, when toiling in the grasp of CareAmid the eager throng,A votive seer, her greetings thou didst bear,Her oracles prolong.The vagrant winds and the far heaving mainBreathed in thy chastened rhyme,Their latent music to the soul again,Above the din of time.The seasons, at thy call, renewed the spellThat thrilled our better years,The primal wonder o'er our spirits fell,And woke the fount of tears.And Faith's monition, like an organ's strain,Followed the sea-bird's flight,The river's bounteous flow, the ripening grain,And stars' unfathomed light.In the dank woods and where the meadows gleam,The lowliest flower that smiledTo wisdom's vigil or to fancy's dreamThy gentle thought beguiled.They win fond glances in the prairie's sweep,And where the moss-clumps lie,A welcome find when through the mould they creep,A requiem when they die.Unstained thy song with passion's fitful huesOr pleasure's reckless breath,For Nature's beauty to thy virgin museWas solemnized by death.O'er life's majestic realm and dread repose,Entranced with holy calm,From the rapt soul of boyhood then uproseThe memorable psalm.And roaming lone beneath the woodland shades,Thy meditative prayerIn the umbrageous aisles and choral gladesWe murmur unaware;Or track the ages with prophetic cheer,Lured by thy chant sublime,Till bigotry and kingcraft disappearIn Freedom's chosen clime,—While on her ramparts with intrepid mien,O'er faction's angry sea,Thy voice proclaims, undaunted and serene,The watchwords of the free.Not in vague tones or tricks of verbal artThe plaint and pæan rung:Thine the clear utterance of an earnest heart,The limpid Saxon tongue.Our country's minstrel! in whose crystal verseWith tranquil joy we traceHer native glories, and the tale rehearseOf her primeval race,—Blest are thy laurels, that unchallenged crownWorn brow and silver hair,For truth and manhood consecrate renown,And her pure triumph share!

HOUSE AND HOME PAPERS

BY CHRISTOPHER CROWFIELD

X

Our gallant Bob Stephens, into whose life-boat our Marianne has been received, has lately taken the mania of house-building into his head. Bob is somewhat fastidious, difficult to please, fond of domesticities and individualities; and such a man never can fit himself into a house built by another, and accordingly house-building has always been his favorite mental recreation. During all his courtship as much time was taken up in planning a future house as if he had money to build one, and all Marianne's patterns, and the backs of half their letters, were scrawled with ground-plans and elevations. But latterly this chronic disposition has been quickened into an acute form by the falling-in of some few thousands to their domestic treasury,—left as the sole residuum of a painstaking old aunt, who took it into her head to make a will in Bob's favor, leaving, among other good things, a nice little bit of land in a rural district half an hour's railroad-ride from Boston.

So now ground-plans thicken, and my wife is being consulted morning, noon, and night, and I never come into the room without finding their heads close together over a paper, and hearing Bob expatiate on his favorite idea of a library. He appears to have got so far as this, that the ceiling is to be of carved oak, with ribs running to a boss overhead, and finished mediævally with ultramarine blue and gilding,—and then away he goes sketching Gothic patterns of book-shelves which require only experienced carvers, and the wherewithal to pay them, to be the divinest things in the world.

Marianne is exercised about china-closets and pantries, and about a bed-room on the ground-door,—for, like all other women of our days, she expects not to have strength enough to run up-stairs oftener than once or twice a week; and my wife, who is a native genius in this line, and has planned in her time dozens of houses for acquaintances, wherein they are at this moment living happily, goes over every day with her pencil and ruler the work of rearranging the plans, according as the ideas of the young couple veer and vary.

One day Bob is importuned to give two feet off from his library for a closet in the bed-room,—but resists like a Trojan. The next morning, being mollified by private domestic supplications, Bob yields, and my wife rubs out the lines of yesterday, two feet come off the library, and a closet is constructed. But now the parlor proves too narrow,—the parlor-wall must be moved two feet into the hall. Bob declares this will spoil the symmetry of the latter, and if there is anything he wants, it is a wide, generous, ample hall to step into when you open the front-door.

"Well, then," says Marianne, "let's put two feet more into the width of the house."

"Can't, on account of the expense, you see," says Bob. "You see, every additional foot of outside wall necessitates so many more bricks, so much more flooring, so much more roofing, etc."

And my wife, with thoughtful brow, looks over the plans, and considers how two feet more are to be got into the parlor without moving any of the walls.

"I say," says Bob, bending over her shoulder, "here, take your two feet in the parlor, and put two more feet on to the other side of the hall-stairs"; and he dashes heavily with his pencil.

"Oh, Bob!" exclaims Marianne, "there are the kitchen-pantries! you ruin them,—and no place for the cellar-stairs!"

"Hang the pantries and cellar-stairs!" says Bob, "Mother must find a place for them somewhere else. I say the house must be roomy and cheerful, and pantries and those things may take care of themselves; they can be put somewhere well enough. No fear but you will find a place for them somewhere. What do you women always want such a great enormous kitchen for?"

"It is not any larger than is necessary," said my wife, thoughtfully; "nothing is gained by taking off from it."

"What if you should put it all down into a basement," suggests Bob, "and so get it all out of sight together?"

"Never, if it can be helped," said my wife. "Basement-kitchens are necessary evils, only to be tolerated in cities where land is too dear to afford any other."

So goes the discussion till the trio agree to sleep over it. The next morning an inspiration visits my wife's pillow. She is up and seizes plans and paper, and before six o'clock has enlarged the parlor very cleverly, by throwing out a bow-window. So waxes and wanes the prospective house, innocently battered down and rebuilt with India-rubber and black-lead. Doors are cut out to-night, and walled up to-morrow,—windows knocked out here and put in there, as some observer suggests possibilities of too much or too little draught. Now all seems finished, when, lo, a discovery! There is no fireplace nor stove-flue in my lady's bed-room, and can be none without moving the bathing-room. Pencil and India-rubber are busy again, and for a while the whole house seems to threaten to fall to pieces with the confusion of the moving; the bath-room wanders like a ghost, now invading a closet, now threatening the tranquillity of the parlor, till at last it is laid by some unheard-of calculations of my wife's, and sinks to rest in a place so much better that everybody wonders it never was thought of before.

"Papa," said Jennie, "it appears to me people don't exactly know what they want when they build; why don't you write a paper on house-building?"

"I have thought of it," said I, with the air of a man called to settle some great reform. "It must be entirely because Christopher has not written that our young people and mamma are tangling themselves daily in webs which are untangled the next day."

"You see," said Jennie, "they have only just so much money, and they want everything they can think of under the sun. There's Bob been studying architectural antiquities, and nobody knows what, and sketching all sorts of curly-whorlies; and Marianne has her notions about a parlor and boudoir and china-closets and bedroom-closets; and Bob wants a baronial hall; and mamma stands out for linen-closets and bathing-rooms and all that; and so among them all it will just end in getting them head over ears in debt."

The thing struck me as not improbable.

"I don't know, Jennie, whether my writing an article is going to prevent all this; but as my time in the 'Atlantic' is coming round, I may as well write on what I am obliged to think of, and so I will give a paper on the subject to enliven our next evening's session."

So that evening, when Bob and Marianne had dropped in as usual, and while the customary work of drawing and rubbing-out was going on at Mrs. Crowfield's sofa, I produced my paper and read as follows:—

OUR HOUSE

There is a place called "Our House," which everybody knows of. The sailor talks of it in his dreams at sea. The wounded soldier, turning in his uneasy hospital-bed, brightens at the word,—it is like the dropping of cool water in the desert, like the touch of cool fingers on a burning brow. "Our house," he says feebly, and the light comes back into his dim eyes,—for all homely charities, all fond thoughts, all purities, all that man loves on earth or hopes for in heaven, rise with the word.

"Our house" may be in any style of architecture, low or high. It may be the brown old farm-house, with its tall well-sweep, or the one-story gambrel-roofed cottage, or the large, square, white house, with green blinds, under the wind-swung elms of a century, or it may be the log-cabin of the wilderness, with its one room,—still there is a spell in the memory of it beyond all conjurations. Its stone and brick and mortar are like no other; its very clapboards and shingles are dear to us, powerful to bring back the memories of early days, and all that is sacred in home-love.

"Papa is getting quite sentimental," whispered Jennie, loud enough for me to hear. I shook my head at her impressively, and went on undaunted.

There is no one fact of our human existence that has a stronger influence upon us than the house we dwell in,—especially that in which our earlier and more impressible years are spent. The building and arrangement of a house influence the health, the comfort, the morals, the religion. There have been houses built so devoid of all consideration for the occupants, so rambling and hap-hazard in the disposal of rooms, so sunless and cheerless and wholly without snugness or privacy, as to make it seem impossible to live a joyous, generous, rational, religious family-life in them.

There are, we shame to say, in our cities things called houses, built and rented by people who walk erect and have the general air and manner of civilized and Christianized men, which are so inhuman in their building that they can only be called snares and traps for souls,—places where children cannot well escape growing up filthy and impure,—places where to form a home is impossible, and to live a decent, Christian life would require miraculous strength.

A celebrated British philanthropist, who had devoted much study to the dwellings of the poor, gave it as his opinion that temperance-societies were a hopeless undertaking in London, unless these dwellings underwent a transformation. They were so squalid, so dark, so comfortless, so constantly pressing upon the senses foulness, pain, and inconvenience, that it was only by being drugged with gin and opium that their miserable inhabitants could find heart to drag on life from day to day. He had himself tried the experiment of reforming a drunkard by taking him from one of these loathsome dens and enabling him to rent a tenement in a block of model lodging-houses which had been built under his supervision. The young man had been a designer of figures for prints; he was of a delicate frame, and a nervous, susceptible temperament. Shut in one miserable room with his wife and little children, without the possibility of pure air, with only filthy, fetid water to drink, with the noise of other miserable families resounding through the thin partitions, what possibility was there of doing anything except by the help of stimulants, which for a brief hour lifted him above the perception of these miseries? Changed at once to a neat flat, where, for the same rent as his former den, he had three good rooms, with water for drinking, house-service, and bathing freely supplied, and the blessed sunshine and air coming in through windows well arranged for ventilation, he became in a few weeks a new man. In the charms of the little spot which he could call home, its quiet, its order, his former talent came back to him, and he found strength, in pure air and pure water and those purer thoughts of which they are the emblems, to abandon burning and stupefying stimulants.

The influence of dwelling-houses for good or for evil—their influence on the brain, the nerves, and, through these, on the heart and life—is one of those things that cannot be enough pondered by those who build houses to sell or rent.

Something more generous ought to inspire a man than merely the percentage which he can get for his money. He who would build houses should think a little on the subject. He should reflect what houses are for,—what they may be made to do for human beings. The great majority of houses in cities are not built by the indwellers themselves,—they are built for them, by those who invest their money in this way, with little other thought than the percentage which the investment will return.

For persons of ample fortune there are, indeed, palatial residences, with all that wealth can do to render life delightful. But in that class of houses which must be the lot of the large majority, those which must be chosen by young men in the beginning of life, when means are comparatively restricted, there is yet wide room for thought and the judicious application of money.

In looking over houses to be rented by persons of moderate means, one cannot help longing to build,—one sees so many ways in which the same sum which built an inconvenient and unpleasant house might have been made to build a delightful one.

"That's so!" said Bob, with emphasis. "Don't you remember, Marianne, how many dismal, commonplace, shabby houses we trailed through?"

"Yes," said Marianne. "You remember those houses with such little squeezed rooms and that flourishing staircase, with the colored-glass china-closet window and no butler's sink?"

"Yes," said Bob; "and those astonishing, abominable stone abortions that adorned the door-steps. People do lay out a deal of money to make houses look ugly, it must be confessed."

"One would willingly," said Marianne, "dispense with frightful stone ornaments in front, and with heavy mouldings inside, which are of no possible use or beauty, and with showy plaster cornices and centre-pieces in the parlor-ceilings, and even with marble mantels, for the luxury of hot and cold water in each chamber, and a couple of comfortable bath-rooms. Then, the disposition of windows and doors is so wholly without regard to convenience! How often we find rooms, meant for bed-rooms, where really there is no good place for either bed or dressing-table!"

Here my wife looked up, having just finished re-drawing the plans to the latest alteration.

"One of the greatest reforms that could be, in these reforming days," she observed, "would be to have women architects. The mischief with houses built to rent is that they are all mere male contrivances. No woman would ever plan chambers where there is no earthly place to set a bed except against a window or door, or waste the room in entries that might be made into closets. I don't see, for my part, apropos to the modern movement for opening new professions to the female sex, why there should not be well-educated female architects. The planning and arrangement of houses, and the laying-out of grounds, are a fair subject of womanly knowledge and taste. It is the teaching of Nature. What would anybody think of a bluebird's nest that had been built entirely by Mr. Blue without the help of his wife?"