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　　LETTER 424

　　CHARLES LAMB TO BERNARD BARTON

　　[P.M. 10 August, 1827.]

　　Dear B.B.—I have not been able to: answer you, for we have had, and are having (I just snatch a moment), our poor quiet retreat, to which we fled from society, full of company, some staying with us, and this moment as I write almost a heavy importation of two old Ladies has come in. Whither can I take wing from the oppression of human faces? Would I were in a wilderness of Apes, tossing cocoa nuts about, grinning and grinned at!

　　Mitford was hoaxing you surely about my Engraving, 'tis a little sixpenny thing, too like by half, in which the draughtsman has done his best to avoid flattery. There have been 2 editions of it, which I think are all gone, as they have vanish'd from the window where they hung, a print shop, corner of Great and Little Queen Streets, Lincolns Inn fields, where any London friend of yours may inquire for it; for I am (tho' you won't understand it) at Enfield (Mrs. Leishman's, Chase). We have been here near 3 months, and shall stay 2 or more, if people will let us alone, but they persecute us from village to village. So don't direct to Islington again, till further notice.

　　I am trying my hand at a Drama, in 2 acts, founded on Crabbe's "Confidant," mutatis mutandis.

　　You like the Odyssey. Did you ever read my "Adventures of Ulysses," founded on Chapman's old translation of it? for children or men. Ch. is divine, and my abridgment has not quite emptied him of his divinity. When you come to town I'll show it you.

　　You have well described your old fashioned Grand-paternall Hall. Is it not odd that every one's earliest recollections are of some such place. I had my Blakesware (Blakesmoor in the "London"). Nothing fills a childs mind like a large old Mansion [one or two words wafered over]; better if un-or-partially-occupied; peopled with the spirits of deceased members of [for] the County and Justices of the Quorum. Would I were buried in the peopled solitude of one, with my feelings at 7 years old.

　　Those marble busts of the Emperors, they seem'd as if they were to stand for ever, as they had stood from the living days of Rome, in that old Marble Hall, and I to partake of their permanency; Eternity was, while I thought not of Time. But he thought of me, and they are toppled down, and corn covers the spot of the noble old Dwelling and its princely gardens. I feel like a grasshopper that chirping about the grounds escaped his scythe only by my littleness. Ev'n now he is whetting one of his smallest razors to clean wipe me out, perhaps. Well!

　　["My Engraving"—Brook Pulham's caricature.

　　"You have well described your … Grand-paternall Hall." Barton wrote the following account of this house, the home of his step-grandfather at Tottenham; but I do not know whether it is the same that Lamb saw:—

　　My most delightful recollections of boyhood are connected with the fine old country-house in a green lane diverging from the high road which runs through Tottenham. I would give seven years of life as it now is, for a week of that which I then led. It was a large old house, with an iron palisade and a pair of iron gates in front, and a huge stone eagle on each pier. Leading up to the steps by which you went up to the hall door, was a wide gravel walk, bordered in summer time by huge tubs, in which were orange and lemon trees, and in the centre of the grass-plot stood a tub yet huger, holding an enormous aloe, The hall itself, to my fancy then lofty and wide as a cathedral would seem now, was a famous place for battledore and shuttlecock; and behind was a garden, equal to that of old Alcinous himself. My favourite walk was one of turf by a long straight pond, bordered with lime-trees. But the whole demesne was the fairy ground of my childhood; and its presiding genius was grandpapa. He must have been a very handsome man in his youth, for I remember him at nearly eighty, a very fine-looking one, even in the decay of mind and body. In the morning a velvet cap; by dinner, a flaxen wig; his features always expressive of benignity and placid cheerfulness. When he walked out into the garden, his cocked hat and amber-headed cane completed his costume. To the recollection of this delightful personage, I am, I think, indebted for many soothing and pleasing associations, with old age.

　　"Those marble busts of the Emperors." See the Elia essay "Blakesmoor in H——shire," in Vol. II, of this edition.] The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb — Volume 6