[In the following essay, Woodbery considers Lamb's “Edax on Appetite” and “Hospita on the Immoderate Indulgence of the Pleasures of the Palate” as satirical attacks on the economic theories of Thomas Malthus, Jeremy Bentham, and others.]

In The Spirit of the Age, William Hazlitt captured in print the myth that Charles Lamb had ‘succeeded not by conforming to the Spirit of the Age, but in opposition to it. … His taste in French and German literature is somewhat defective: nor has he made much progress in the science of Political Economy or other abstruse studies’.¹ Lamb, however, was not as ignorant about economic matters as Hazlitt would lead us to believe. In a letter dated 28 November 1810, Lamb tells Hazlitt that he has sent to him a copy of Cobbett's Political Register for 24 November 1810, which contained Hazlitt's letter upon ‘Mr. Malthus and the Edinburgh Reviewers’.² (Hazlitt's Reply to Malthus had been criticized in the Edinburgh Review for August 1810). Lamb says ‘I sent you on Saturday a Cobbett containing your reply to Edinb. Rev. which I thought you would be glad to receive as an example of attention on the part of Mr. Cobbett to insert it so speedily’.³ Before closing, Lamb informs Hazlitt that Coleridge is going to write in the Courier against Cobbett and in favour of paper money.⁴ This letter suggests that Lamb was at least familiar with Hazlitt's arguments against Malthus as well as with Coleridge's observations on the bullion matter.

The letter also contains Lamb's first praise of roast pig. Hazlitt had sent him a pig which Lamb reports ‘hath turned out as good as I predicted. My fauces yet retain the sweet porcine odour.———’⁵ Consequently, the economic ideas of Malthus and Lamb's love of meat merge in this letter, a letter that may have been the catalyst for ‘Edax on Appetite’ and ‘Hospita on the Immoderate Indulgence of the Pleasures of the Palate’, two of Lamb's early satires. Commissioned by Leigh Hunt in 1810, these essays were published in the fourth number of Hunt's Reflector in 1811. In the satires, Lamb targets the popular economic principles of Malthus, Bentham, and the household economy urged by vegetarians whose ideas had recently been codified by J. F. Newton in The Return to Nature (1811).

In his Essay on Population, Malthus, arguing against the utopian rhetoric of Godwin, theorizes that the cause of social evil stems not from human institutions but rather from what he terms ‘the principle of population’, which states that ‘the power of population is indefinitely greater than the power in the earth to produce subsistence for men’.⁶ According to Malthus, Nature sanctioned this principle that arose from two postulates: that ‘food and sexual passion were both essential to human existence … and second, that while food increased only in arithmetical ratio, population when unchecked increased in geometrical ratio’.⁷ Further, Malthus also believed that in this natural state, misery and vice (starvation, war, sickness, prostitution) ‘were all as much of the essence of the human condition’ as the need for food and procreation.⁸ In contrast, Hazlitt found the mathematical computations of Malthus to be anti-humanistic. He believed that the ratios with which Malthus proved his arguments served only to deprive the poor of charity, thereby driving them further into vice and increasing their misery. In his Reply to the Essay on Population, Hazlitt heatedly points out that population could be controlled if need be by the will of man: ‘Till then, Mr. Malthus has no right to set up his arithmetical and geometrical ratios upon the face of the earth, and say they are the work of nature’.⁹ Hazlitt also argues that any serious attempt to relieve the working classes of their misery was in light of Malthus' theory ‘thought to be absurd and counter to the laws of nature’ since Malthus had proved that public benevolence could best be served with ‘meanness, pride and extravagance’.¹⁰

In addition to the popularity of Malthusian economics, the period from 1808 saw the Utilitarians' ideas ‘disseminated until they had become the working creed of industrialism, an inalienable part of the middle class mind’.¹¹ That man seeks pleasure and avoids pain became the cliché of the Utilitarians. Only out of self-interest then does man seek pleasure in power, wealth, sensual gratifications, or moral pursuits. Bentham believed that even hardened criminals could be convinced that it was in their best interest to reform and lead honest lives.

Lamb satirizes the ideas of these economists in ‘Edax on Appetite’ and ‘Hospita on the Immoderate Indulgence of the Pleasures of the Palate’. Edax has a problem; nature has endowed him with an insatiable appetite, not for wealth or sexual pleasure, but for food. And not just any food; although he will eat anything, he particularly craves meat, ‘the only legitimate aliment for human creatures since the flood’.¹² The idea of a man who suffers from an appetite which can never be satisfied and moreover who is powerless to correct such an appetite is contrary to Bentham's belief that man always does what is in his best interest: to seek pleasure and avoid pain. After all, the weak side of Bentham's conclusions, according to Hazlitt, is that Bentham has not ‘made sufficient allowance for the varieties of human nature, and the caprices and irregularities of the human will. … All pleasure is not … morally speaking equally a good; for all pleasure does not equally bear reflecting on. There are some tastes that are sweet in the mouth and bitter in the belly; and there is a similar contradiction and anomaly in the mind and heart of man’.¹³

Lamb's portrait of the suffering Edax is in keeping with Hazlitt's criticism of Bentham. Edax, ‘following the blameless dictates of nature’, finds food sweet in his mouth, but bitter in his belly since his appetite only grows larger the more he eats.¹⁴ Edax is obviously a different variety of human nature. His inordinate appetite also conflicts with the utilitarian belief that money is a greater pleasure than food. An elderly relative who was to leave the great eater a legacy of 300 pounds a year does not do so due to one of his eating frenzies. When invited to one of her card parties, Edax, in a ‘freak’ of appetite, ‘dispatched the whole meal intended for eleven persons,—fish, flesh, fowl, pastry,—to the springs of garnishing parsley, and the last fearful custard that quaked upon the board’ before suppertime was called.¹⁵ He offers this anecdote as proof that he would never prostitute his gift of nature ‘to the enlarging of [his] worldly substance’.¹⁶ For Edax, money is not a greater pleasure than food.

Edax is not even deterred from satisfying his demanding appetite by the constantly watchful ‘broad, unwinking eye of the world which nothing can elude’.¹⁷ The eye is reminiscent of the ‘invisible eye’ in Bentham's ideal prison—the Panopticon—where each prisoner imagines that he is being watched by the unseen oculus.¹⁸ The effect achieved by the eye at the prison is control, which makes possible the prisoner's rehabilitation. Unfortunately, the effect of society's eye on Edax does not help control his appetite. Hospita, spokeswoman in ‘Hospita on the Immoderate Indulgence of the Pleasures of the Palate’, the essay that follows ‘Edax’ in the Reflector number, despairs because Edax, a relative of her husband, often dines with them in spite of his inability to control his appetite. Hospita observes that even shame has no effect on the outrageous behavior of Edax.¹⁹ Here Lamb is possibly satirizing Hazlitt's argument that, contrary to Bentham's beliefs, man submits to the ‘hardships, privations, and dangers’ of life, not for ‘pleasure or profit’ but ‘for shame’.²⁰

In these essays, Lamb also satirizes the economic doctrine of Malthus. The great need of Edax for food conflicts with the Malthusian principle that man's need for sexual passions is as great as his need for food. Edax learns moral restraint at a young age from his strict and virtuous parents, a restraint not recognized by Malthus as a check to population growth. Lamb also satirized Malthus' belief that misery and vice are natural checks to population. The peculiar vice of Edax would reduce the food supply rather than check population growth. Hospita wonders about Edax: ‘Can he have read Mr. Malthus's Thoughts on the Ratio of Food to Population?’²¹

Hospita, plagued at her dinner parties by Edax, who keeps a joint of meat on the table even after the cheese and fruit are brought in, has serious misgivings about her husband's relative. She and her whole family feed entirely on vegetables, although she stoops to serve her guests animal food ‘out of common politeness’.²² According to Hospita, they are vegetarians because ‘animal food is neither wholesome nor natural to man’.²³ At her wit's end, Hospita explains to Mr. Reflector: ‘Such being the nature of our little household, you may guess what inroads into the economy of it,—what revolutions and turnings of things upside down, the example of such a feeder as Mr.——is calculated to produce’.²⁴ Lamb has two targets here: dogmatic vegetarians and the comparative anatomists.

J. F. Newton explains the beliefs of vegetarians in The Return to Nature (1811), his tract on the economy and value of a vegetable regimen. In Queen Mab, Shelley, a vegetarian on medical and moral grounds, summarizes his friend Newton's arguments in a footnote on the value of vegetarianism: ‘I hold that the depravity of the physical and moral nature of man originated in his unnatural habits of life. … All vice arose from the ruin of healthful innocence. Tyranny, superstition, commerce, and inequality, were then first known’.²⁵ However, the text of the poem is much more heated than the footnote as man breaks Nature's law and ‘slays the lamb that looks him in the face, / And horribly devours his mangled flesh’.²⁶

Support for the vegetarians' arguments came from the comparative anatomists who were studying man and apes to discover their similarities. The anatomists found that man's intestines were identical to those of apes; animals which are naturally herbivorous and eat only fruits and nuts. From these findings, the anatomists concluded that man is naturally a vegetarian.²⁷ Suffering Edax says that he will leave it to the ‘anatomists and the physicians’ to determine to ‘what unhappy figuration of the parts of the intestine [he] owe[s] this unnatural craving’.²⁸ He reflects: ‘What work will they make with their acids and alkalines, their serums and coagulums … and acrimonious juices to explain that cause which Nature, who willed the effect to punish me for my sins, may no less punish them for their presumption’.²⁹ Lamb's criticism of the presumption of the anatomists who imagine they can discover natural causes for Edax' disorder is no less pointed than his criticism of dogmatic vegetarians like Hospita who believe themselves morally superior to meat eaters. Newton and Shelley, both avid vegetarians, argue that man's fall originated from his unnatural eating habits. Lamb counters their argument with Edax' belief that Nature makes him suffer this perverted appetite in punishment for his sins.

Lamb's portrait of the righteously wronged Hospita is subtle in its satire. She worries that the meat devouring Edax will destroy the vegetarian ‘economy of her little household’ at the same time that she accuses Edax of ignoring the Malthusian argument of the ratio of food to population. Citing the Malthusian cliché, she does not recognize the contradiction here. According to Carl Woodring, vegetarians like Shelley and Newton used a natural law argument for vegetarianism in part to counter the Malthusian argument against the possibility of effective reform.³⁰ The natural law argument concluded that meat eating eventually resulted in capitalism, an economy, according to Newton, based on selfishness and greed. In contrast, the Malthusian argument allows wealthy capitalists to avoid charitable obligations without guilt, thus perpetuating the capitalist spirit of selfishness. For Malthus, reforms have no ultimate effect on a population already regulated by misery and vice.

In Intervals of Inspiration, Donald Reiman, in his analysis of ‘A Dissertation Upon Roast Pig’, wonders what Lamb's attitude is ‘towards the moral question of meat-eating as opposed to vegetarianism’.³¹ When ‘Edax’ and ‘Hospita’ are read together, I cannot help but conclude that Lamb has more sympathy for Edax than for Hospita, for meat-eaters than for vegetarians. Hospita is portrayed as righteous and judgmental of non-vegetarians, while the confessions of Edax, although satirical, serve to elicit the reader's sympathy.

Ultimately, then, the juxtaposition of these essays highlights Lamb's argument for acceptance of individual differences. Human weakness, such as Edax' surprising appetite, often places the individual at odds with the moral tenets of a particular economic theory. For example, evangelistic vegetarians promoted their programme as one that would eventually lead to a more perfect human race. Lamb, always tolerant of individual idiosyncrasies, was suspicious of schemes to perfect human nature. Once in 1804, Lamb had joined Coleridge, Holcroft, and Hazlitt at Godwin's house. In the midst of a heated exchange between Coleridge, Holcroft, and Godwin on the subject of ‘man as he is and man as he ought to be’, Lamb protested ‘Give me man as he ought not to be’.³²

So Edax, or man as he ought not to be, pleads for sympathy, a plea that is snubbed by Hospita, whose only worries are how Edax disturbs the ‘order and comfort of her meal’, the ‘economy’ of her little household, and the ratio of food to population.³³ Her final high-toned judgments of Edax contrast sharply with Edax' final request for humane consideration from his acquaintances for his peculiarity of constitution which is no crime. According to Edax, it is not ‘that which goes into the mouth [that] desecrates a man, but that which comes out of it,—such as sarcasm, bitter jests, mocks and taunts, and ill-natured observations’.³⁴ Yet Hospita ends not with sympathy but with queries for the hapless Edax, who she hopes will read her essay and heed her advice: ‘I wonder at a time like the present, when the scarcity of every kind of food is so painfully acknowledged, that shame had no effect upon him. … Can he think it reasonable that one man should consume the sustenance of many?’³⁵ She concludes not by trying to understand or help Edax, but by querelously asking Mr. Reflector to give his thoughts on the subject of excessive eating, especially animal food. Lamb's satiric point is that if Hospita really understood Malthus' theory, she would know that in his system reform does not work, especially reform of a single appetite. Behind her specious argument to save the food supply of the world by denying Edax his ‘joint of meat’, the reader senses a callous indictment that stems from selfish pecuniary motives and a self-righteous disregard of another's feelings.

E. V. Lucas in his biography of Lamb observes that the Reflector essays were ‘preliminary training’ for the later Elia essays, a training that Lamb did not make the fullest use of because ‘he was not yet ready to be the chartered egotist that he afterwards became: diffidence, humility, mistrust, stood in his way’.³⁶ Yet while ‘Edax’ and ‘Hospita’ may lack the subtlety of his later essays, they do reveal Lamb's thoughts on the economic doctrines in circulation around 1810 and his ability to make satiric use of them.

Notes

1. William Hazlitt, The Spirit of the Age (London, 1825) (hereafter Spirit of the Age), pp. 410, 411, 417.

2. The Letters of Charles and Mary Anne Lamb ed. Edwin W. Marrs, Jr. (3 vols., Ithaca, NY, 1975-8) (hereafter Marrs), ii. 68-70.

3. Marrs ii. 68.

4. Marrs ii. 69.

5. Marrs ii. 69.

6. Gertrude Himmelfarb, Victorian Minds (New York, 1968) (hereafter Himmelfarb), p. 90. Himmelfarb provides a basic understanding of Malthusian economics in her chapter ‘The Specter of Malthus’, pp. 82-110.

7. Himmelfarb 90.

8. Himmelfarb 90.

9. Quoted Herschel Baker, William Hazlitt, (Cambridge, Mass., 1962) (hereafter Baker), p. 163. The original is in The Complete Works of William Hazlitt ed. P. P. Howe (21 vols, London, 1930-4) (hereafter Howe), i. 243. Baker nicely summarizes Hazlitt's answers to Malthus. He also points out that a full discussion of the Hazlitt/Malthus controversy can be found in William Albrecht, William Hazlitt and the Malthusian Controversy, University of New Mexico Publications in Language and Literature, No. 4, 1950.

10. Baker 161; original in Howe i. 181.

11. Marilyn Butler, Peacock Displayed (London, 1979), p. 187.

12. The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb ed. E. V. Lucas (7 vols., London, 1903-5) (hereafter Works), i. 121.

13. Spirit of the Age 10.

14. Works i. 120.

15. Works i. 123.

16. Works i. 122.

17. Works i. 120.

18. Himmelfarb 35.

19. Works i. 126.

20. Spirit of the Age 21.

21. Works i. 126.

22. Works i. 125.

23. Works i. 125.

24. Works i. 126.

25. Shelley's Poetry and Prose ed. Donald H. Reiman and Sharon B. Powers (New York, 1977) (hereafter Reiman and Powers), p. 63, fn9. This footnote to Queen Mab viii. 218 contains excepts from Shelley's original footnote plus information on the beliefs of vegetarians and the research of the comparative anatomists around 1810-11.

26. Reiman and Powers 62-63.

27. Reiman and Powers 63 fn9.

28. Works i. 123.

29. Works i. 124.

30. Carl Woodring, Politics in English Romantic Poetry (Cambridge, Mass., 1970).

31. Donald Reiman, Intervals of Inspiration, (Florida, 1988), p. 73.

32. E. V. Lucas, The Life of Charles Lamb (5th ed., London, 1921) (hereafter Lucas).

33. Works i. 125, 126.

34. Works i. 124.

35. Works i. 126.

36. Lucas 373.