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　　LETTER 321

　　MARY LAMB TO MRS. RANDAL NORRIS

　　Hastings, at Mrs. Gibbs, York Cottage, Priory, No. 4. [June 18, 1823.]

　　My dear Friend,—Day after day has passed away, and my brother has said, "I will write to Mrs. [? Mr.] Norris to-morrow," and therefore I am resolved to write to Mrs. Norris to-day, and trust him no longer. We took our places for Sevenoaks, intending to remain there all night in order to see Knole, but when we got there we chang'd our minds, and went on to Tunbridge Wells. About a mile short of the Wells the coach stopped at a little inn, and I saw, "Lodgings to let" on a little, very little house opposite. I ran over the way, and secured them before the coach drove away, and we took immediate possession: it proved a very comfortable place, and we remained there nine days. The first evening, as we were wandering about, we met a lady, the wife of one of the India House clerks, with whom we had been slightly acquainted some years ago, which slight acquaintance has been ripened into a great intimacy during the nine pleasant days that we passed at the Wells. She and her two daughters went with us in an open chaise to Knole, and as the chaise held only five, we mounted Miss James upon a little horse, which she rode famously. I was very much pleased with Knole, and still more with Penshurst, which we also visited. We saw Frant and the Rocks, and made much use of your Guide Book, only Charles lost his way once going by the map. We were in constant exercise the whole time, and spent our time so pleasantly that when we came here on Monday we missed our new friends and found ourselves very dull. We are by the seaside in a still less house, and we have exchanged a very pretty landlady for a very ugly one, but she is equally attractive to us. We eat turbot, and we drink smuggled Hollands, and we walk up hill and down hill all day long. In the little intervals of rest that we allow ourselves I teach Miss James French; she picked up a few words during her foreign Tour with us, and she has had a hankering after it ever since.

　　We came from Tunbridge Wells in a Postchaise, and would have seen Battle Abbey on the way, but it is only shewn on a Monday. We are trying to coax Charles into a Monday's excursion. And Bexhill we are also thinking about. Yesterday evening we found out by chance the most beautiful view I ever saw. It is called "The Lovers' Seat."… You have been here, therefore you must have seen [it, or] is it only Mr. and Mrs. Faint who have visited Hastings? [Tell Mrs.] Faint that though in my haste to get housed I d[ecided on] … ice's lodgings, yet it comforted all th … to know that I had a place in view.

　　I suppose you are so busy that it is not fair to ask you to write me a line to say how you are going on. Yet if any one of you have half an hour to spare for that purpose, it will be most thankfully received. Charles joins with me in love to you all together, and to each one in particular upstairs and downstairs.

　　Yours most affectionately, M. LAMB. June 18

　　[Mr. Hazlitt dates this letter 1825 or 1826, and considers it to refer to a second visit to Hastings; but I think most probably it refers to the 1823 visit, especially as the Lovers' Seat would assuredly have been discovered then. Miss James was Mary Lamb's nurse. Mrs. Randal Norris had been a Miss Faint.

　　There is a curious similarity between a passage in this letter and in one of Byron's, written in 1814: "I have been swimming, and eating turbot, and smuggling neat brandies, and silk handkerchiefs … and walking on cliffs and tumbling down hills."

　　A Hastings guide book for 1825 gives Mrs. Gibbs' address as 4 York Cottages, near Priory Bridge. Near by, in Pelham Place, a Mr. Hogsflesh had a lodging-house.] The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb — Volume 6