D’r T.—­[1]Moxon & Knowles are coming to Enfield on Sunday afternoon.  My poor shaken head cannot at present let me ask any dinner company; for two drinkings in a day, which must ensue, would incapacity me.  I am very poorly.  They can only get an Edmont’n stage, from which village ’tis but a 2 miles walk, & I have only inn beds to offer. Pray, join ’em if you can.  Our first morning stage to London is 1/2 past 8.  If that won’t suit your avocations, arrange with Ryle (or without him)—­but how can I separate him morally?—­logically and legally, poetically and critically I can,—­from you?  No disparagement (for a better Christian exists not)—­well arrange cum or absque illo—­this is latin—­ the first Sunday you can, morning.

I am poorly, but I always am on these occasions, a week or two.  Then I get sober,—­I mean less insober.  Yours till death; you are mine after.  Don’t mind a touch of pathos.  Love to Mrs. Talfourd.

The Edmonton stages come almost every hour from Snow Hill.

[Footnote 1:  Erratum, for M. & K. read K. & M. Booksellers after Authors.]

[Ryle, as I have already said, was Lamb’s executor, with Talfourd.  Hence the phrase to Talfourd, “you are mine after.”]

LETTER 603

(Fragment)

CHARLES LAMB TO CHARLES COWDEN CLARKE

[No date.  End of June, 1834.]

We heard the Music in the Abbey at Winchmore Hill! and the notes were incomparably soften’d by the distance.  Novello’s chromatics were distinctly audible.  Clara was faulty in B flat.  Otherwise she sang like an angel.  The trombone, and Beethoven’s walzes, were the best.  Who played the oboe?

[The letter refers to the performance of Handel’s “Creation” at the Musical Festival in Westminster Abbey on June 24, 1834, when Novello and Atwood were the organists, and Clara Novello one of the singers.]

LETTER 604

CHARLES LAMB TO JOHN FORSTER

[P.M.  June 25, 1834.]

D’r F.—­I simply sent for the Miltons because Alsop has some Books of mine, and I thought they might travel with them.  But keep ’em as much longer as you like.  I never trouble my head with other people’s quarrels, I do not always understand my own.  I seldom see them in Dover Street.  I know as little as the Man in the Moon about your joint transactions, and care as little.  If you have lost a little portion of my “good will,” it is that you do not come and see me.  Arrange with Procter, when you have done with your moving accidents.

Yours, ambulaturus,

C.L.

LETTER 605

CHARLES LAMB TO J. FULLER RUSSELL

[Summer, 1834.]

M’r Lamb’s compt’s and shall be happy to look over the lines as soon as ever Mr. Russell shall send them.  He is at Mr. Walden’s, Church, not Bury—­St, Edm’d.