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　　LETTER 110

　　MARY LAMB TO DOROTHY WORDSWORTH

　　[Dated at end: July 9. P.M. July 11, 1803.]

　　My dear Miss Wordsworth—We rejoice with exceeding great joy to hear the delightful tidings you were so very kind to remember to send us—I hope your dear sister is perfectly well, and makes an excellent nurse. Are you not now the happiest family in the world?

　　I have been in better health and spirits this week past than since my last illness—I continued so long so very weak & dejected I began to fear I should never be at all comfortable again. I strive against low spirits all I can, but it is a very hard thing to get the better of.

　　I am very uneasy about poor Coleridge, his last letters are very melancholy ones. Remember me affectionately to him and Sara. I hope you often see him.

　　Southey is in town. He seems as proud of his little girl as I suppose your brother is of his boy; he says his home is now quite a different place to what it used to be. I was glad to hear him say this—it used to look rather chearless.

　　We went last week with Southey and Rickman and his sister to Sadlers Wells, the lowest and most London-like of all our London amusements—the entertainments were Goody Two Shoes, Jack the Giant Killer, and Mary of Buttermere! Poor Mary was very happily married at the end of the piece, to a sailor her former sweetheart. We had a prodigious fine view of her father's house in the vale of Buttermere—mountains very like large haycocks, and a lake like nothing at all. If you had been with us, would you have laughed the whole time like Charles and Miss Rickman or gone to sleep as Southey and Rickman did?

　　Stoddart is in expectation of going soon to Malta as Judge Advocate; it is likely to be a profitable situation, fifteen hundred a year or more. If he goes he takes with him his sister, and, as I hear from her as a very great secret, a wife; you must not mention this because if he stays in England he may not be rich enough to marry for some years. I do not know why I should trouble you with a secret which it seems I am unable to keep myself and which is of no importance to you to hear; if he succeeds in this appointment he will be in a great bustle, for he must set out to Malta in a month. In the mean time he must go to Scotland to marry and fetch his wife, and it is a match against her parents' consent, and they as yet know nothing of the Malta expedition; so that he expects many difficulties, but the young lady and he are determined to conquer them. He then must go to Salisbury to take leave of his father and mother, who I pity very much, for they are old people and therefore are not very likely ever to see their children again.

　　Charles is very well and very good—I mean very sober, but he is very good in every sense of the word, for he has been very kind and patient with me and I have been a sad trouble to him lately. He has shut out all his friends because he thought company hurt me, and done every thing in his power to comfort and amuse me. We are to go out of town soon for a few weeks, when I hope I shall get quite stout and lively.

　　You saw Fenwick when you was with us—perhaps you remember his wife and children were with his brother, a tradesman at Penzance. He (the brother), who was supposed to be in a great way of business, has become a bankrupt; they are now at Penzance without a home and without money; and poor Fenwick, who has been Editor of a country newspaper lately, is likely soon to be quite out of employ; I am distressed for them, for I have a great affection for Mrs. Fenwick.

　　How pleasant your little house and orchard must be now. I almost wish I had never seen it. I am always wishing to be with you. I could sit upon that little bench in idleness day long. When you have a leisure hour, a letter from [you], kind friend, will give me the greatest pleasure.

　　We have money of yours and I want you to send me some commission to lay it out. Are you not in want of anything? I believe when we go out of town it will be to Margate—I love the seaside and expect much benefit from it, but your mountain scenery has spoiled us. We shall find the flat country of the Isle of Thanet very dull.

　　Charles joins me in love to your brother and sister and the little John. I hope you are building more rooms. Charles said I was so long answering your letter Mrs. Wordsworth would have another little one before you received it. Our love and compliments to our kind Molly, I hope she grows younger and happier every day. When, and where, shall I ever see you again? Not I fear for a very long time, you are too happy ever to wish to come to London. When you write tell me how poor Mrs. Clarkson does.

　　God bless you and yours.

　　I am your affectionate friend,

　　M. LAMB.

　　July 9th.

　　[Wordsworth's eldest child, John, was born on June 18, 1803. Southey's little girl was Edith, born in September of the preceding year. It was Southey who made the charming remark that no house was complete unless it had in it a child rising six years, and a kitten rising six months.

　　Coleridge had been ill for some weeks after his visit to London. He was about to visit Scotland with the Wordsworths.

　　Mary of Buttermere was Mary Robinson, the Beauty of Buttermere, whom the swindler John Hatfield had married in October, 1802, under the false name of Hope. Mary was the daughter of the landlord of the Fish Inn at Buttermere, and was famous in the Lake Country for her charm. Coleridge sent to the Morning Post in October some letters on the imposture, and Mary's name became a household word. Hatfield was hanged in September, 1803. Funds were meanwhile raised for Mary, and she ultimately married a farmer, after being the subject of dramas, ballads and novels.

　　The play which the Lambs saw was by Charles Dibdin the Younger, produced on April 11, 1803. Its title was "Edward and Susan; or, The Beauty of Buttermere." A benefit performance for the real Beauty of Buttermere was promised. Both Grimaldi and Belzoni were among the evening's entertainers.

　　Stoddart was the King's and the Admiralty's Advocate at Malta from 1803 to 1807. He married Isabella Moncrieff in 1803. His sister was Sarah Stoddart, of whom we are about to hear much.

　　According to the next letter the Lambs went not to Margate, but to the

　　Isle of Wight—to Cowes, with the Burneys.

　　Molly was an old cottager at Grasmere whom the Lambs had been friendly with on their northern visit.

　　Mrs. Clarkson, the wife of Thomas Clarkson, was Catherine Buck. She survived her husband, who died in 1846.] The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb — Volume 5