Lamb's Autobiography
By EDMUND BLUNDEN
TEMTY years ago the Boston Bibliophile Society, whose funds
• must have been in excellent state, caused to be privately
• printed an edition of all the Letters of Lamb then known. Those who have seen it will recall the handsome way in which it was done, and particularly the first volume, a folio, con- taining a profusion of complete facsimiles of letters. Those who never saw it have probably missed a number of the pleasant things which, not being for publication, it could assemble. For otherwise there were conflicting points of copyright—and these persisted. To those who had more than a reader's interest in the matter it was clear that the next great edition of Lamb's Letters would be best undertaken by Mr. Lucas, who had already accomplished the finest work that way, subject to the copyright trouble. No one seemed to combine as he could the energy and intuition of Elian scholar- ship with the diplomacy called for by apparently discordant interests.
Mr. Lucas has now settled any doubts that arose in the lengthy interval, and orchestrated everything and everybody concerned. Perhaps, indeed, some English owners of letters by Lamb have missed the symphony. A paragraph of his Introduction records that, in contrast with American collectors, Our own have scarcely made any response to the preparatory appeals published by Mr. Lucas. It is also the sad fact that the notebooks so methodically filled by the late Major Butterworth (who used, I understand, to serve out pills to the Border Regiment with one hand while he explicated Lamb's pages with the other) have not been available. But with these exceptions the performance has been unani- mously supported. Mr. Lucas pays his tribute to the collections Made for a new edition of the Letters by that devoted and faultless enquirer Mrs. Anderson ; her posthumous help has not been the least reason why the present three volumes supersede, in range and in sidelight, even the aforesaid Boston Bibliophile rarity. To that the lucky few will still return at 'Ones, but only, as I suppose, on one account : Lamb's letters may be best apprehended in his own handwriting, artfully inflectional, and the new edition for all its fine pro- duction lacks facsimiles of the manuscript.
It has an index. If that were all, it would be a distinction denied to many publications ; but this index is itself a dowry. As a former contributor to the Athenaeum Lamb might be merry over the fact that an ex-editor of that journal, Mr. Vernon Rendall, should spend such tithe and erudition on the minutiae of his letters. Here, for example, is a list of Lamb's Work as an artist (and that at any rate is reproduced in the text). It includes pictures of corkscrews (five), Cottle (" from memory . . . perhaps the left eye has hardly justice done it "), legs (C, Lamb's), vases (for the inspiration of Chinese artisans) and Westwood (" how weak is painting to describe a man !"). Another list' determines " some aversions "—Jews and Scotsmen are not there, but the second Mrs. Godwin is, together With Sundays, the country, and return from a bad play. The total number of letters, to which Mary Lamb contributes Only a half-century, is over a thousand—far more than have ever represented Lamb as a correspondent in print till now. Mr. Lucas agrees with those who feel that even Lamb's hastiest and briefest notes retain some tincture of his profound singularity, and must not be edited out. Towards the end of his life Lamb grew more inclined to laconic messages, which Ins young friends naturally did not throw away when they had read them. There was only one' Charles Lamb. His brevities had depth. Again, he had some aspiring acquaintances
— The Letters of Charles Lamb, to which are added those of his sister Mary Lamb. Edited by E. V. Lucas. 3 vols. (Dent and Methuen. £3.)
whose standing with him scarcely commanded copious ex- pression. That civil friend to genius, Thomas Allsop, received from him a good many letters of what one may call birthday- telegram length. But the collection which Mr. Lucas has been enabled to bring out does not owe its numerical superiority over the others to a too great sprinkling of scraps. " Mr. Lamb requests the pleasure of Mr. Pryor's company at supper stwneasys itioasegneIanregrealclyritappearedieall Friday evening next " is not at all typical of the accessions. It has never been Mr. Lucgarsea' Lamb ; his view of Lamb'sy n in annotations, not lectures. And so it is with the present edition of the Letters. " As to the value and importance of these letters, their good sense, their wit, their humanity, their fun, their timeliness and timelessness, I have nothing fresh to say ; the book is the evidence." This position is probably what Lamb would have admired and even what he intended as a legacy to his readers, alike in his general writings and in his letters. principal The pr response he seems to require of us is an apprehension of his mood and his meaning, and he fights shy of anything like study circles. His letters engage the mind in a delightful exercise, but it is not of that kind which results in disquisitions on the doctrine of the enclitic Dc. It is analogous to our vigilance and constructive curiosity through the scenes of some great novel. For Lamb, as much as any human being can do, shaped and controlled his personal relationships, and (without artificiality) treated his very walks and Visitings like an artist. He idealised people, places and episodes just enough—even his indignations have that quality. Throughout his life he had a desire to write a good play, and in that wish he failed—but there was the larger theatre of his experience in which he achieved something Shakespearean, and the letters are the outline of that beautiful union of emotions and abilities' and many- coloured life. I would offer an instance of Lamb's seeing even his diffi- culties with an ultimate enjoyment, in his malediction on Taylor the original publisher of " Elia." One other great writer was moved to anger by Taylor's methods or attitude, namely Landor, who wrote letters on the occasion. Landor's rage is mere rage, and reduces itself to the assertion that the bookseller is no gentleman. Lamb, when Taylor coldly interrupts the preparation of the Last Essays of Elia with a demand for copyright. fees, is equally angry, but does not leave himself punching holes in the empty air. He makes a comic ceremony of it ; a Lutheran denunciation is concocted, " The out-law to the Mosaic dispensation !—unworthy to have seen Moses's behind—to Iay his desecrating hands upon Elia Has the irreverent ark-toucher been struck blind I wonder — ? The more I think of him, the less I think of him. His meanness is invisible with aid of solar micro- scope, my moral eye smarts at hiin. The less flea that bites little fleas I The great Beast the beggarly nit I More when we meet." Lamb's Letters, then, though they contain plenty of thinking on every sort of subject, from Blake's pictures to agricultural distress, from promised heavens to present cookery, are the life-drama of one man—perhaps the cleverest of his generation, certainly the least ambitious and at the same time the most resolute in preserving his aims. This sensitive and long-sus- tained action, involving a host of remarkable but dissimilar friends, is seen much as Lamb saw it through the unsurpassed medium of his own immediate comments. After a century, these often require some explanatory information, and the notes compiled by Mr. Lucas give it almost wherever it is required ; but they do not deprive each reader of " marking the play " for himself, and, as Lamb meant, approaching Lamb alone.
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