More Pleasures of Reading

[french frank]

I started this thread on the old boards and it turned into a bit of a quiz which wasn't quite what I intended: it was more to share savoured bits of writing which gave particular pleasure for some reason. However, quiz or no quiz:

"I remember a touch of conscience in this kind at school. My good old aunt, who never parted from me at the end of a holiday without stuffing a sweet-meat, or some nice thing, into my pocket, had dismissed me one evening with a smoking plum-cake, fresh from the oven. In my way to school (it was over London bridge) a grey-headed old beggar saluted me (I have no doubt at this time of day that he was a counterfeit). I had no pence to console him with, and in the vanity of self-denial, and the very coxcombry of charity, school-boy-like, I made him a present of - the whole cake! I walked on a little, buoyed up, as one is on such occasions, with a sweet soothing of self-satisfaction; but before I had got to the end of the bridge, my better feelings returned, and I burst into tears, thinking how ungrateful I had been to my good aunt, to go and give her good gift away to a stranger, that I had never seen before, and who might be a bad man for aught I knew; and then I thought of the pleasure my aunt would be taking in thinking that I - I myself, and not another - would eat her nice cake - and what should I say to her the next time I saw her - how naughty I was to part with her pretty present - and the odour of that spicy cake came back upon my recollection, and the pleasure and the curiosity I had taken in seeing her make it, and her joy when she sent it to the oven, and how disappointed she would feel that I had never had a bit of it in my mouth at last - and I blamed my impertinent spirit of aims-giving, and out-of-place hypocrisy of goodness, and above all I wished never to see the face again of that insidious, good-for-nothing, old grey impostor."


I have to confess that I recognise both that sense of childish ingratitude and the hypocrisy of giving 'charitably' but with disdain rather than love.

[vinteuil]

French Frank - thanks for reintroducing this thread - its predecessor was entertaining (even if it sometimes turned too competitive). Given the style - and also knowing what you have said recently you've been reading - I assume this is Lamb?

[french frank]

French Frank - thanks for reintroducing this thread - its predecessor was entertaining (even if it sometimes turned too competitive). Given the style - and also knowing what you have said recently you've been reading - I assume this is Lamb?

It is indeed, one little detail of the very well-known Dissertation upon Roast Pig which I had completely forgotten. Or perhaps it didn't strike me as remarkable last time I read the essay, which was a very long time ago. The rest of the essay was also funnier than I remember - though again it could be my sense of humour which has changed with the years.

[french frank]

I remind me of members of our family who get a humorous book as a present at Christmas and continually read out bits to the rest of those present, to the high amusement of one and the gradually increasing irritation of the rest.

Here's another bit, this time from Mrs. Battle's Opinions on Whist:

"The old lady, with a smile, confessed the soundness of my logic; and to her approbation of my arguments on her favourite topic that evening, I have always fancied myself indebted for the legacy of a curious cribbage board, made of the finest Sienna marble, which her maternal uncle (old Walter Plumer, whom I have elsewhere celebrated) brought with him from Florence:—this, and a trifle of five hundred pounds, came to me at her death.

The former bequest (which I do not least value) I have kept with religious care; though she herself, to confess a truth, was never greatly taken with cribbage. It was an essentially vulgar game, I have heard her say,—disputing with her uncle, who was very partial to it. She could never heartily bring her mouth to pronounce “go”—or “that’s a go.” She called it an ungrammatical game. The pegging teased her. I once knew her to forfeit a rubber (a five dollar stake), because she would not take advantage of the turn-up knave, which would have given it her, but which she must have claimed by the disgraceful tenure of declaring “two for his heels.”There is something extremely genteel in this sort of self-denial."

[PatrickOD]

ff, despite my reading something else at the moment, you have forced me to dig out an old copy of a book on Lamb, so taken have I been with your 'readings'.
I give you a short sketch by Hazlitt, with an accompanying editor's note:

Coleridge is the only person who can talk to all sorts of people, on all sorts of subjects, without caring a farthing for their understanding one word he says - and HE talks only for admiration and to be listened to, and accordingly the least interruption puts him out. I firmly believe he would make just the same impression on half his audience, if he purposely repeated absolute nonsense with the same voice and manner and inexhaustible flow of undulating speech! In general, wit shines only by reflection. You must take your cue from your company - must rise as they rise, and sink as they fall. You must see that your good things, your knowing allusions, are not flung away, like the pearls in the adage. What a check it is to be asked a foolish question; to find that the first principles are not understood! You are thrown on your back immediately, the conversation is stopped like a country-dance by those who do not know the figure. But when a set of adepts, of illuminati, get about a question, it is worth while to hear them talk. They may snarl and quarrel over it, like dogs; but they pick it bare to the bone, they masticate it thoroughly.

This was the case formerly at Lamb's, where we used to have many lively skirmishes at their Thursday evening parties. I doubt whether the Small-coal man's musical parties could exceed them.

the Small-coal man. Thomas Britton (1654-1714), a coal dealer in Clerkenwell, inhabited a loft over his coal-house, and on Thursday evenings for almost forty years concerts were given in this room in which the greatest performers of the day, including Handel, took part. To the end of his life he carried his coal sacks in the streets.

[Simon]

Thomas Britton (1654-1714), a coal dealer in Clerkenwell, inhabited a loft over his coal-house, and on Thursday evenings for almost forty years concerts were given in this room in which the greatest performers of the day, including Handel, took part.

Fascinating! Thanks.

[salymap]

It makes me want to read Lamb, another gap in my education. Thanks FF

[Chris Newman]

I too am tempted to try Lamb. Many years ago I read the Tales from Shakespeare too (and am pleased to say to my great benefit) but have neglected the rest. Thanks, ff.

[french frank]

What a check it is to be asked a foolish question; to find that the first principles are not understood! You are thrown on your back immediately, the conversation is stopped like a country-dance by those who do not know the figure. But when a set of adepts, of illuminati, get about a question, it is worth while to hear them talk. They may snarl and quarrel over it, like dogs; but they pick it bare to the bone, they masticate it thoroughly.

It makes me think of how a Radio 3 discussion should be!

I have a companion volume to the Lamb with essays by Hazlitt (both selections). What didn't emerge from Carlo Gébler's play (and no reason why it should - it was a separate issue), and which came as a surprise to me, was how deeply immersed he was with so many of the writers of his day, Hazlitt and Coleridge included, of course, and how both Charles and Mary were central in the earnest debates. Charles, particularly, was regarded as a lively and social character.

Thanks for Hazlitt on Coleridge - I had just read Lamb on his close friend Coleridge last night. Lamb wrote 'The Death of Coleridge' on 21 Nov, 1834, and barely a month later he himself was dead. An interesting passage to compare with Hazlitt's:

"Great in his writings, he was greatest in his conversation. In him was disproved that old maxim, that we should allow every one his share of talk. He would talk from morn to dewy eve, nor cease till far midnight; yet who ever would interrupt him? who would obstruct that continuous flow of converse, fetched from Helicon or Zion? He had the tact of making the unintelligible seem plain. Many who read the abstruser parts of his 'Friend' would complain that his works did not answer to his spoken wisdom. They were identical. But he had a tone in oral delivery which seemed to convey sense to those who were otherwise imperfect recipients."

[vinteuil]

"I used to walk out at this time with Mr. and Miss Lamb of an evening, to look at the Claude Lorraine skies over our heads melting from azure into purple and gold, and to gather mushrooms, that sprung up at our feet, to throw into our hashed mutton at supper. I was at that time an enthusiastic admirer of Claude, and could dwell for ever on one or two of the finest prints from him hung round my little room; the fleecy flocks, the bending trees, the winding streams, the groves, the nodding temples, the air-wove hills, and distant sunny vales; and tried to translate them into their lovely living hues."

[french frank]

Ha! I learned quite a bit more about Hazlitt when I researched an article for the ODNB on his friend Peter Patmore (father of Coventry Patmore), another friend of Lamb's. Hazlitt wrote a work called the Liber Amoris about his infatuation with a young girl, and Patmore was his literary 'confidant'. Much odium attached to both of them at the time ...

I'd forgotten Hazlitt also painted. He copied a lot of paintings in the Louvre and produced this portrait of Lamb:

[vinteuil]

"Seven miles to the north of Venice, the banks of sand, which near the city rise little above low-water mark, attain by degrees a higher level, and knit themselves at last into fields of salt morass, raised here and there into shapeless mounds, and intercepted by narrow creeks of sea. One of the feeblest of these inlets, after winding for some time among buried fragments of masonry, and knots of sunburnt weeds whitened with webs of fucus, stays itself in an utterly stagnant pool beside a plot of greener grass covered with ground ivy and violets. On this mound is built a rude brick campanile, of the commonest Lombardic type, which if we ascend towards evening (and there are none to hinder us, the door of its ruinous staircase swinging idly on its hinges), we may command from it one of the most notable scenes in this wide world of ours. Far as the eye can reach, a waste of wild sea moor, of a lurid ashen gray; not like our northern moors with their jet-black pools and
purple heath, but lifeless, the color of sackcloth, with the corrupted sea-water soaking through the roots of its acrid weeds, and gleaming hither and thither through its snaky channels. No gathering of fantastic mists, nor coursing of clouds across it; but melancholy clearness ofspace in the warm sunset, oppressive, reaching to the horizon of its level gloom. To the very horizon, on the north-east; but, to the north and west, there is a blue line of higher land along the border of it,
and above this, but farther back, a misty band of mountains, touched with snow. To the east, the paleness and roar of the Adriatic, louder at momentary intervals as the surf breaks on the bars of sand; to the south, the widening branches of the calm lagoon, alternately purple and pale green, as they reflect the evening clouds or twilight sky; and almost beneath our feet, on the same field which sustains the tower we gaze from, a group of four buildings, two of them little larger than
cottages (though built of stone, and one adorned by a quaint belfry), the third an octagonal chapel, of which we can see but little more than the flat red roof with its rayed tiling, the fourth, a considerable church with nave and aisles, but of which, in like manner, we can see little but the long central ridge and lateral slopes of roof, which the sunlight separates in one glowing mass from the green field beneath and gray moor beyond. There are no living creatures near the buildings, nor any vestige of village or city round about them. They lie like a little company of ships becalmed on a far-away sea.

Then look farther to the south. Beyond the widening branches of the lagoon, and rising out of the bright lake into which they gather, there are a multitude of towers, dark, and scattered among square-set shapes of clustered palaces, a long and irregular line fretting the southern sky.

Mother and daughter, you behold them both in their widowhood, - TORCELLO and VENICE."

[Don Petter]

At the moment the rude brick campanile is covered by scaffolding, but the area is no less evocative.

[Pianorak]

" . . . We came to you about a practical matter, and an urgent one. We want to remove a crying scandal from the island. The habits of Miss W., as I think I pointed out, are shocking to all decent folks. I suppose you won't deny that?"

"I remember your using those words. They struck me as remarkable because, for my own part, I have not yet discovered any man, woman, or child who could shock me. Some persons make a profession of being scandalized. I am profoundly distrustful of them. It is the prerogative of vulgarians to be shocked. If I ever felt inclined to blush, it would not be at the crooked behaviour of men, but at their crooked intellectual processes. Whenever a so-called scandal comes my way, I thank God for the opportunity of seeing something new and learning something to my advantage."

[french frank]

I'm finding it very hard to keep up with these gaps in my reading. Going back, for the moment, to Msg #12, I've never read The Stones of Venice. The only Ruskin I seem to see in secondhand bookshops is either Sesame and Lilies or The Crown of Wild Olive, neither of which appealed enough to tempt me. But I ought to have read The Stones of Venice. I have a nice, cheap little hotel in Venice where I stay: a month there with Ruskin would just the thing .