And another thing

Are famous writers accident-prone? Some are

3 November 2007

Paul Johnson on what one should and should not know about a writer

I relish little pieces of information about people. A sharp-eyed Frenchman, Philarète Chasles, described Charles Lamb as ‘purely intellectual’ as his body was ‘ridiculous’, his legs ‘almost imperceptible’, ‘poor little spindles, clothed in stockings of Chinese silk, ending in impossible feet, encased in large shoes, which placed flatly on the ground advanced slowly in the manner of a webfooted creature’. After dinner he would fall asleep, but so lightly that the state of slumber appeared to descend on him like gossamer, and he never made the slightest sound of breathing. When he awoke, equally gently, almost imperceptibly, he would immediately say: ‘Diddle, diddle, dumpkins!’ A lot of people who knew him spoke of the ‘spirituality of his body’, as though its material existence was of no account. When drunk, he could be carried on the back of a coachman upstairs to his bedchamber, without trouble. Yet he was not minute. For two centuries, the wine merchants Berry Brothers in St James’s Street used to weigh distinguished customers on their big scales, and keep a record of the findings. They persuaded Charles Lamb to be weighed on 14 June 1814 and, the note in their register reads: ‘in boots, 9 stone 31/2 pounds’.