LETTER 107

CHARLES LAMB TO S. T. COLERIDGE

April 13th, 1803.

My dear Coleridge,--Things have gone on better with me since you left me. I expect to have my old housekeeper home again in a week or two. She has mended most rapidly. My health too has been better since you took away that Montero cap. I have left off cayenned eggs and such bolsters to discomfort. There was death in that cap. I mischievously wished that by some inauspicious jolt the whole contents might be shaken, and the coach set on fire. For you said they had that property. How the old Gentleman, who joined you at Grantham, would have clappt his hands to his knees, and not knowing but it was an immediate visitation of God that burnt him, how pious it would have made him; him, I mean, that brought the Influenza with him, and only took places for one--a damn'd old sinner, he must have known what he had got with him! However, I wish the cap no harm for the sake of the _head it fits_, and could be content to see it disfigure my healthy sideboard again. [_Here is a paragraph erased._]

What do you think of smoking? I want your sober, _average noon opinion_ of it. I generally am eating my dinner about the time I should determine it. [_Another small erasure._]

Morning is a Girl, and can't smoke--she's no evidence one way or other; and Night is so evidently _bought over_, that _he_ can't be a very upright Judge. May be the truth is, that _one_ pipe is wholesome, _two_ pipes toothsome, _three_ pipes noisome, _four_ pipes fulsome, _five_ pipes quarrelsome; and that's the _sum_ on't. But that is deciding rather upon rhyme than reason.... After all, our instincts _may_ be best. Wine, I am sure, good, mellow, generous Port, can hurt nobody, unless they take it to excess, which they may easily avoid if they observe the rules of temperance.

Bless you, old Sophist, who next to Human Nature taught me all the corruption I was capable of knowing--And bless your Montero Cap, and your trail (which shall come after you whenever you appoint), and your wife and children--Pi-pos especially.

When shall we two smoke again? Last night I had been in a sad quandary of spirits, in what they call the evening; but a pipe and some generous Port, and King Lear (being alone), had its effects as a remonstrance. I went to bed pot-valiant. By the way, may not the Ogles of Somersetshire be remotely descended from King Lear?

Love to Sara, and ask her what gown she means that Mary has got of hers. I know of none but what went with Miss Wordsworth's things to Wordsworth, and was paid for out of their money. I allude to a part which I may have read imperfectly in a letter of hers to you.

C. L.

[Coleridge had been in London early in April and had stayed with Lamb in the Temple. From the following letter to his wife, dated April 4, we get light on Lamb's allusion to his "old housekeeper," _i.e._, Mary Lamb, and her rapid mending:--

"I had purposed not to speak of Mary Lamb, but I had better write it than tell it. The Thursday before last she met at Rickman's a Mr. Babb, an old friend and admirer of her mother. The next day she _smiled_ in an ominous way; on Sunday she told her brother that she was getting bad, with great agony. On Tuesday morning she laid hold of me with violent agitation and talked wildly about George Dyer. I told Charles there was not a moment to lose; and I did not lose a moment, but went for a hackney-coach and took her to the private mad-house at Hugsden. She was quite calm, and said it was the best to do so. But she wept bitterly two or three times, yet all in a calm way. Charles is cut to the heart."

Lamb's first articulate doubts as to smoking are expressed in this letter. One may perhaps take in this connection the passage on tobacco and alcohol in the "Confessions of a Drunkard" (see Vol. I.).

"Montero cap"--a recollection of _Tristram Shandy_.

The Ogles and King Lear (_i.e._, leer)--merely a pun.]