["Hang Work." This paragraph is the germ of the sonnet entitled "Work" which Lamb wrote fourteen years later (see the letter to Bernard Barton, Sept. 11, 1822). He seems always to have kept his thoughts in sight.
The "Farewell to Tobacco" was printed in the Reflector, No. IV., 1811 or 1812, and then in the Works, 1818 (see Notes to Vol. IV. of this edition). Lamb's farewell was frequently repeated; but it is a question whether he ever entirely left off smoking. Talfourd says that he did; but the late Mrs. Coe, who remembered Lamb at Widford about 1827-1830, credited him with the company of a black clay pipe. It was Lamb who, when Dr. Parr asked him how he managed to emit so much smoke, replied that he had toiled after it as other men after virtue. And Macready relates that he remarked in his presence that he wished to draw his last breath through a pipe and exhale it in a pun. Coleridge writing to Rickman (see The Life and Letters of John Rickman, 1912) says of Lamb and smoking: "Were it possible to win C.L. from the pipe, other things would follow with comparative ease, for till he gets a pipe I have regularly observed that he is contented with porter—and that the unconquerable appetite for spirit comes in with the tobacco—the oil of which, especially in the gluttonous manner in which he volcanizes it, acts as an instant poison on his stomach or lungs".
"Hestor Savory." See above.]
LETTER 139
MARY LAMB TO SARAH STODDART
[Early November, 1805.]
My dear Sarah,—Certainly you are the best letter-writer (besides writing the best hand) in the world. I have just been reading over again your two long letters, and I perceive they make me very envious. I have taken a brand new pen, and put on my spectacles, and am peering with all my might to see the lines in the paper, which the sight of your even lines had well nigh tempted me to rule: and I have moreover taken two pinches of snuff extraordinary, to clear my head, which feels more cloudy than common this fine, chearful morning.
All I can gather from your clear and, I have no doubt, faithful history of Maltese politics is, that the good Doctor, though a firm friend, an excellent fancier of brooches, a good husband, an upright Advocate, and, in short, all that they say upon tomb stones (for I do not recollect that they celebrate any fraternal virtues there) yet is but a moody brother, that your sister in law is pretty much like what all sisters in law have been since the first happy invention of the happy marriage state; that friend Coleridge has undergone no alteration by crossing the Atlantic,—for his friendliness to you, as well as all the oddities you mention, are just what one ought to look for from him; and that you, my dear Sarah, have proved yourself just as unfit to flourish in a little, proud Garrison Town as I did shrewdly suspect you were before you went there.
If I possibly can, I will prevail upon Charles to write to your brother by the conveyance you mention; but he is so unwell, I almost fear the fortnight will slip away before I can get him in the right vein. Indeed, it has been sad and heavy times with us lately: when I am pretty well, his low spirits throws me back again; and when he begins to get a little chearful, then I do the same kind office for him. I heartily wish for the arrival of Coleridge; a few such evenings as we have sometimes passed with him would wind us up, and set us a going again.
Do not say any thing, when you write, of our low spirits—it will vex Charles. You would laugh, or you would cry, perhaps both, to see us sit together, looking at each other with long and rueful faces, and saying, "how do you do?" and "how do you do?" and then we fall a-crying, and say we will be better on the morrow. He says we are like toothach and his friend gum bile—which, though a kind of ease, is but an uneasy kind of ease, a comfort of rather an uncomfortable sort.