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　　LETTER 292

　　CHARLES LAMB TO JOHN HOWARD PAYNE

　　[Autumn, 1822.]

　　Dear Payne—A friend and fellow-clerk of mine, Mr. White (a good fellow) coming to your parts, I would fain have accompanied him, but am forced instead to send a part of me, verse and prose, most of it from 20 to 30 years old, such as I then was, and I am not much altered.

　　Paris, which I hardly knew whether I liked when I was in it, is an object of no small magnitude with me now. I want to be going, to the Jardin des Plantes (is that right, Louisa?) with you to Pere de la Chaise, La Morgue, and all the sentimentalities. How is Talma, and his (my) dear Shakspeare?

　　N.B.—My friend White knows Paris thoroughly, and does not want a guide. We did, and had one. We both join in thanks. Do you remember a Blue-Silk Girl (English) at the Luxembourg, that did not much seem to attend to the Pictures, who fell in love with you, and whom I fell in love with—an inquisitive, prying, curious Beauty—where is she?

　　Votre Très Humble Serviteur,

　　CHARLOIS AGNEAU,

　　alias C. LAMB.

　　Guichy is well, and much as usual. He seems blind to all the distinctions of life, except to those of sex. Remembrance to Kenny and Poole.

　　[John Howard Payne (1792-1852) was born in New York. He began life as an actor in 1809 as Young Norval in "Douglas," and made his English début in 1813 in the same part. For several years he lived either in London or Paris, where among his friends were Washington Irving and Talma. He wrote a number of plays, and in one of them, "Clari, or the Maid of Milan," is the song "Home, Sweet Home," with Bishop's music, on which his immortality rests. Payne died in Tunis, where he was American Consul, in 1852, and when in 1883 he was reinterred at Washington, it was as the author of "Home, Sweet Home." He seems to have been a charming but ill-starred man, whom to know was to love.

　　Mr. White was Edward White of the India House, by whom Lamb probably sent a copy of the 1818 edition of his Works. Louisa was Louisa Holcroft. Guichy was possibly the Frenchman, mentioned by Crabb Robinson, with whom the Lambs had travelled to France. Poole was, I imagine, John Poole, the dramatist, author of burlesque plays in the London Magazine and later of "Paul Pry," which, it is quite likely, he based on Lamb's sketch "Tom Pry."] The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb — Volume 6