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　　LETTER 334

　　CHARLES LAMB TO SARAH HAZLITT

　　[No date. Early November, 1823.]

　　Dear Mrs. H.,—Sitting down to write a letter is such a painful operation to Mary, that you must accept me as her proxy. You have seen our house. What I now tell you is literally true. Yesterday week George Dyer called upon us, at one o'clock (bright noon day) on his way to dine with Mrs. Barbauld at Newington. He sat with Mary about half an hour, and took leave. The maid saw him go out from her kitchen window; but suddenly losing sight of him, ran up in a fright to Mary. G.D., instead of keeping the slip that leads to the gate, had deliberately, staff in hand, in broad open day, marched into the New River. He had not his spectacles on, and you know his absence. Who helped him out, they can hardly tell; but between 'em they got him out, drenched thro' and thro'. A mob collected by that time and accompanied him in. "Send for the Doctor!" they said: and a one-eyed fellow, dirty and drunk, was fetched from the Public House at the end, where it seems he lurks, for the sake of picking up water practice, having formerly had a medal from the Humane Society for some rescue. By his advice, the patient was put between blankets; and when I came home at four to dinner, I found G.D. a-bed, and raving, light-headed with the brandy-and-water which the doctor had administered. He sung, laughed, whimpered, screamed, babbled of guardian angels, would get up and go home; but we kept him there by force; and by next morning he departed sobered, and seems to have received no injury. All my friends are open-mouthed about having paling before the river, but I cannot see that, because a.. lunatic chooses to walk into a river with his eyes open at midday, I am any the more likely to be drowned in it, coming home at midnight.

　　I had the honour of dining at the Mansion House on Thursday last, by special card from the Lord Mayor, who never saw my face, nor I his; and all from being a writer in a magazine! The dinner costly, served on massy plate, champagne, pines, &c.; forty-seven present, among whom the Chairman and two other directors of the India Company. There's for you! and got away pretty sober! Quite saved my credit!

　　We continue to like our house prodigiously. Does Mary Hazlitt go on with her novel, or has she begun another? I would not discourage her, tho' we continue to think it (so far) in its present state not saleable.

　　Our kind remembrances to her and hers and you and yours.—

　　Yours truly, C. LAMB.

　　I am pleased that H. liked my letter to the Laureate.

　　[Addressed to "Mrs. Hazlitt, Alphington, near Exeter." This letter is the first draft of the Elia essay "Amicus Redivivus," which was printed in the London Magazine in December, 1823. George Dyer, who was then sixty-eight, had been getting blind steadily for some years. A visit to Lamb's cottage to-day, bearing in mind that the ribbon of green between iron railings that extends along Colebrooke Row was at that time an open stream, will make the nature of G.D.'s misadventure quite plain.

　　"Mary Hazlitt"-the daughter of John Hazlitt, the essayist's brother.

　　"I am pleased that H. liked my letter to the Laureate." Hazlitt wrote, in the essay "On the Pleasures of Hating," "I think I must be friends with Lamb again, since he has written that magnanimous Letter to Southey, and told him a piece of his mind!" Coleridge also approved of it, and Crabb Robinson's praise was excessive.

　　Here should come a note from Lamb to Mrs. Shelley dated Nov. 12, 1823, saying that Dyer walked into the New River on Sunday week at one o'clock with his eyes open.] The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb — Volume 6