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　　LETTER 184

　　MARY LAMB TO SARAH HAZLITT

　　November 7th, 1809.

　　My dear Sarah—The dear, quiet, lazy, delicious month we spent with you is remembered by me with such regret, that I feel quite discontent & Winterslow-sick. I assure you, I never passed such a pleasant time in the country in my life, both in the house & out of it, the card playing quarrels, and a few gaspings for breath after your swift footsteps up the high hills excepted, and those drawbacks are not unpleasant in the recollection. We have got some salt butter to make our toast seem like yours, and we have tried to eat meat suppers, but that would not do, for we left our appetites behind us; and the dry loaf, which offended you, now comes in at night unaccompanied; but, sorry am I to add, it is soon followed by the pipe and the gin bottle. We smoked the very first night of our arrival.

　　Great news! I have just been interrupted by Mr. Daw, who comes to tell me he was yesterday elected a Royal Academician. He said none of his own friends voted for him; he got it by strangers, who were pleased with his picture of Mrs. White. Charles says he does not believe Northcote ever voted for the admission of any one. Though a very cold day, Daw was in a prodigious sweat, for joy at his good fortune.

　　More great news! my beautiful green curtains were put up yesterday, and all the doors listed with green baize, and four new boards put to the coal-hole, and fastening hasps put to the window, and my died Manning silk cut out.

　　Yesterday was an eventful day: for yesterday too Martin Burney was to be examined by Lord Eldon, previous to his being admitted as an Attorney; but he has not yet been here to announce his success.

　　I carried the baby-caps to Mrs. [John] Hazlitt; she was much pleased, and vastly thankful. Mr. [John] H. got fifty-four guineas at Rochester, and has now several pictures in hand.

　　I am going to tell you a secret, for —— says she would be sorry to have it talked of. One night —— came home from the ale-house, bringing with him a great, rough, ill-looking fellow, whom he introduced to —— as Mr. Brown, a gentleman he had hired as a mad keeper, to take care of him, at forty pounds a year, being ten pounds under the usual price for keepers, which sum Mr. Brown had agreed to remit out of pure friendship. It was with great difficulty, and by threatening to call in the aid of watchmen and constables, that —— could prevail on Mr. Brown to leave the house.

　　We had a good chearful meeting on Wednesday: much talk of Winterslow, its woods & its nice sun flowers. I did not so much like Phillips at Winterslow, as I now like him for having been with us at Winterslow. We roasted the last of his 'beach, of oily nut prolific,' on Friday, at the Captain's. Nurse is now established in Paradise, alias the Incurable Ward [of Westminster Hospital]. I have seen her sitting in most superb state, surrounded by her seven incurable companions. They call each other ladies. Nurse looks as if she would be considered as the first lady in the ward: only one seemed at [all] like to rival her in dignity.

　　A man in the India House has resigned, by which Charles will get twenty pounds a year; and White has prevailed on him to write some more lottery-puffs. If that ends in smoke, the twenty pounds is a sure card, and has made us very joyful.

　　I continue very well, & return you very sincere thanks for my good health and improved looks, which have almost made Mrs. Godwin die with envy; she longs to come to Winterslow as much as the spiteful elder sister did to go to the well for a gift to spit diamonds—

　　Jane and I have agreed to boil a round of beef for your suppers, when you come to town again. She, Jane, broke two of the Hogarth glasses while we were away—whereat I made a great noise.

　　Farewel. Love to William, and Charles's love and good wishes for the speedy arrival of the Life of Holcroft, & the bearer thereof.

　　Yours most affectionately,

　　M. LAMB.

　　Tuesday.

　　Charles told Mrs. Godwin, Hazlitt had found a well in his garden, which, water being scarce in your country, would bring him in two hundred a year; and she came in great haste the next morning to ask me if it were true. Your brother and his &c. are quite well.

　　[George Dawe had just been elected not Royal Academician but Associate.

　　He became full R.A. in 1814.

　　Mrs. White was the wife of Anthony White, the surgeon, who had been apprenticed to Sir Anthony Carlisle.

　　Northcote was James Northcote, R.A., whose Conversations Hazlitt recorded some years later.

　　Martin Burney never made a successful lawyer. His life was destined to be unhappy and unprofitable, as we shall see later.

　　"I am going to tell you a secret." In the absence of the original these blanks cannot be filled in, nor are they important.

　　"Lottery puffs." See note on page 340.

　　"The spiteful elder sister." This story is in Grimm, I think.

　　"The Life of Holcroft." The Memoirs of Thomas Holcroft, begun by Holcroft and finished by Hazlitt, although completed in 1810, was not published until 1816.

　　Here should come a letter from Lamb to Robert Lloyd, dated January 1, 1810, thanking him for a turkey. Lamb mentions that his 1809 holiday had been spent in Wiltshire, where he saw Salisbury Cathedral and Stonehenge. He adds that Coleridge's Friend is occasionally sublime. This was the last letter of the correspondence. Robert Lloyd died on October 26, 1811. Lamb wrote in the Gentleman's Magazine a memoir of him, which will be found in Vol. I. of this edition.] The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb — Volume 5