The Atlantic Monthly Part 7
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 Ma.s.singer, you have nothing to do but go to the first bibliotheque 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," G.o.d knows. Do you mean I must pay the postage?
So I do, to Dover.
We had a merry pa.s.sage 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 t.i.ttered; _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. G.o.dwin 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.[F]
Do you observe my direction? Is it Gaelic?--cla.s.sical?
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 G.o.dfrey 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 [Chateaubriand]
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 ent.i.tled "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 compa.s.s!
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 G.o.d, 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.
FOOTNOTES:
[B] "Who this modern poet was," says Mr. Collier, "is a secret worth discovering." The wood-cut on the t.i.tle of the pamphlet is an a.s.s with a wreath of laurel round his neck.
[C] Milton, _from memory_.
[D] Fletcher, in the "Faithful Shepherdess." The Satyr offers to Clorin
"grapes whose l.u.s.ty blood Is the learned poet's good; Sweeter yet did never crown The head of Bacchus; nuts more brown Than the _squirrels'
teeth_ that crack them."
[E] Fauntleroy.
[F] The reader, says Mr. Patmore, need not be told that all the above items of home-news are pure fiction.
TO WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT.
ON HIS SEVENTIETH BIRTHDAY.