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CHARLES LAMB The Salutation and Cat
'The Old Familiar Faces' 'I have been
laughing, I have been carousing,
Letter to Coleridge, June 14, 1796, �I have been drinking egg-hot and smoking Oronooko (associated circumstances, which ever forcibly recall to my mind our evenings and nights at the Salutation); my eyes and brain are heavy and asleep, but my heart is awake; and if words came as ready as ideas, and ideas as feelings, I could say ten hundred kind things. Coleridge, you know not my supreme happiness at having one on earth (though counties separate us) whom I can call a friend. Remember you those tender lines of Logan? �Our broken friendships we deplore, /And loves of youth that are no more; / No after friendships e'er can raise / Th' endearments of our early days, / And ne'er the heart such fondness prove, / As when we first began to love.' I am writing at random, and half-tipsy, what you may not equally understand, as you will be sober when you read it; but my sober and my half-tipsy hours you are alike a sharer in. Good night.
June 16, 1796, to Coleridge: �I am heartily sick of the every-day scenes of life. I shall half wish you unmarried (don't show this to Mrs. C.) for one evening only, to have the pleasure of smoking with you, and drinking egg-hot in some little smoky room in a pot-house, for I know not yet how I shall like you in a decent room, and looking quite happy.'
To STC, December 1, 1796. �White's book is at length reviewed in the Monthly; was it your doing, or Dyer's to whom I sent him? or rather do you not write in the Critical? for I observed in an Article of this Month's a line quoted out of that sonnet on Mrs. Siddons "with eager wondrin'g & perturb'd delight"�& a line from that sonnet would not readily have occurred to a stranger. That Sonnet, Coleridge, brings afresh to my mind the time when you wrote those on Bowles, Priestly, Burke�'twas 2 Christmas[e]s ago�& in that nice little smoky room at the Salutation, which is eve now continually presenting itself to my recollection, with all its associated train of pipes, tobacco, Egghot, welch Rabbits, metaphysics & Poetry�. Are we never to meet again?'
To STC, December 10, 1796: �I love Mrs. Coleridge for her excuses an hundredfold more dearly than if she heaped �line upon line,' out-Hannah-ing Hannah More, and had rather hear you sing �Did a very little baby' by your family fire-side, than listen to you when you were repeating one of Bowles's sweetest sonnets in your sweet manner, while we two were indulging sympathy, a solitary luxury, by the fireside at the Salutation.'
To STC, 16 January, 1797, �Lloyd takes up his abode at the Bull & Mouth Inn,�the Cat & Salutation would have had a charm more forcible for me�. O noctes c�n�que deum: Anglice, Welch rabbits, punch, & poesy.'
To STC, June 13 [12], 1797. Lamb is pleased to receive a letter from Coleridge at long last. �You have done well in writing to me. The little room (was it not a little one?) at the Salutation was already in the way of becoming a fading idea! it had begun to be classed in my memory with those �wanderings with a fair hair'd maid', in the recollection of which I feel I have no property.'
To STC, again describing his isolation - �I see nobody, and sit, and read or walk, alone, and hear nothing. I am quite lost to conversation from disuse...' - �But it is better to give than to receive; and I was a very patient hearer and docile scholar in our winter evening meetings at Mr. May's; was I not, Col.? What I have owed to thee, my heart can ne'er forget.' - (same letter) �I long, I yearn, with all the longings of a child do I desire to see you, to come among you�to see the young philosopher to thank Sara for her last year's invitation in person�to read your tragedy�to read over together our little book�to breath fresh air�to revive in me vivid images of "Salutation scenery." There is a sort of sacrilege in my letting such ideas slip out of my mind & memory ��' |