The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb

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LETTER 444

CHARLES LAMB TO EDWARD MOXON

[P.M. Dec. 22, 1827.]

My dear Moxon, I am at length able to tell you that we are all doing well, and shall be able soon to see our friends as usual. If you will venture a winter walk to Enfield tomorrow week (Sunday 3Oth) you will find us much as usual; we intend a delicious quiet Christmas day, dull and friendless, for we have not spirits for festivities. Pray communicate the good news to the Hoods, and say I hope he is better. I should be thankful for any of the books you mention, but I am so apprehensive of their miscarriage by the stage,—at all events I want none just now. Pray call and see Mrs. Lovekin, I heard she was ill; say we shall be glad to see them some fine day after a week or so.

May I beg you to call upon Miss James, and say that we are quite well, and that Mary hopes she will excuse her writing herself yet; she knows that it is rather troublesome to her to write. We have rec’d her letter. Farewell, till we meet.

Yours truly,

C. LAMB.

Enfield.

LETTER 445

CHARLES LAMB TO BERNARD BARTON

[No date. End of 1827.]

My dear B.—We are all pretty well again and comfortable, and I take a first opportunity of sending the Adventures of Ulysses, hoping that among us—Homer, Chapman, and C’o.—we shall afford you some pleasure. I fear, it is out of print, if not, A.K. will accept it, with wishes it were bigger; if another copy is not to be had, it reverts to me and my heirs for ever. With it I send a trumpery book; to which, without my knowledge, the Editor of the Bijoux has contributed Lucy’s verses: I am asham’d to ask her acceptance of the trash accompanying it. Adieu to Albums—for a great while, I said when I came here, and had not been fixed two days but my Landlord’s daughter (not at the Pot house) requested me to write in her female friend’s, and in her own; if I go to [blank space: something seems to be missing] thou art there also, O all pervading ALBUM! All over the Leeward Islands, in Newfoundland, and the Back Settlements, I understand there is no other reading. They haunt me. I die of Albo-phobia!

["A trumpery book.” I have not found it. Writing in the Englishman’s Magazine in 1831, in a review of his own Album Verses, Lamb amplifies his sentiments on albums (see Vol. I.).]