Here also, dated February 7, should come a letter to William Hone, in which Lamb, after mentioning his sister’s illness, urges upon Hone the advisability of applying to the Literary Fund for some relief, and offers to support him in his appeal.]

LETTER 599

CHARLES LAMB TO Miss FRYER

Feb. 14, 1834.

Dear Miss Fryer,—­Your letter found me just returned from keeping my birthday (pretty innocent!) at Dover-street.  I see them pretty often.  I have since had letters of business to write, or should have replied earlier.  In one word, be less uneasy about me; I bear my privations very well; I am not in the depths of desolation, as heretofore.  Your admonitions are not lost upon me.  Your kindness has sunk into my heart.  Have faith in me!  It is no new thing for me to be left to my sister.  When she is not violent, her rambling chat is better to me than the sense and sanity of this world.  Her heart is obscured, not buried; it breaks out occasionally; and one can discern a strong mind struggling with the billows that have gone over it.  I could be nowhere happier than under the same roof with her.  Her memory is unnaturally strong; and from ages past, if we may so call the earliest records of our poor life, she fetches thousands of names and things that never would have dawned upon me again, and thousands from the ten years she lived before me.  What took place from early girlhood to her coming of age principally lives again (every important thing and every trifle) in her brain with the vividness of real presence.  For twelve hours incessantly she will pour out without intermission all her past life, forgetting nothing, pouring out name after name to the Waldens as a dream; sense and nonsense; truths and errors huddled together; a medley between inspiration and possession.  What things we are!  I know you will bear with me, talking of these things.  It seems to ease me; for I have nobody to tell these things to now.  Emma, I see, has got a harp! and is learning to play.  She has framed her three Walton pictures, and pretty they look.  That is a book you should read; such sweet religion in it—­next to Woolman’s! though the subject be baits and hooks, and worms, and fishes.  She has my copy at present to do two more from.

Very, very tired, I began this epistle, having been epistolising all the morning, and very kindly would I end it, could I find adequate expressions to your kindness.  We did set our minds on seeing you in spring.  One of us will indubitably.  But I am not skilled in almanac learning, to know when spring precisely begins and ends.  Pardon my blots; I am glad you like your book.  I wish it had been half as worthy of your acceptance as “John Woolman.”  But ’tis a good-natured book.

[Miss Fryer was a school-fellow of Mrs. Moxon’s.

I append another letter, undated, to the same lady.  It belongs obviously to an earlier period, but the exact position is unimportant:—­]