Dear Mary Novello,—Your last letter was
a great disappointment to me, but I have been so accustomed to disappointments of
late, that I looked out for the pleasant points it contained to console me, and for
these I am very thankful. I should have written before, but I have been both ill
and rakish, which is a very bad way of making oneself better, at least anywhere but
in old places with old friends, and there it does not always do. Remember me
affectionately to the Lambs. There are no
Lambs here, nor Martin Burneys neither;
“though by your smiling you don’t seem to think so.” Smile as you
may, I find I cannot comfortably give up anybody whom I have been accustomed to
associate with the idea of friends in London; and besides, there are some men, like
Collins’s music, “by
distance made more sweet;” which is a sentiment I beg you will not turn to
ill account. How cheerful I find myself getting, when fancying myself in Percy
Street! I hope Mr. Clarke will find himself
quite healthy again in Somersetshire. He ought to be so, considering the prudence,
and the good nature, and the stout legs, and the pleasant little bookeries which he carries about with him; but then he must renounce
those devils and all their works, the cheesemonger and pieman. Perhaps he has; but
his complexion is like mine, and I remember what a world of back-
| 214 | RECOLLECTIONS OF WRITERS |
It is kind of you to tell me of the gratification which Mr. Holmes says I have been the means of giving him. Tell him I hope to give him more with my crotchets before I die, and receive as much from his crotchets. How much pleasure have you all given me! And this reminds me that I must talk a little to Novello; so no more at present, dear blackheaded, good-hearted, wilful woman, from yours most sincerely,
