IT is very long since I have met with such an agreeable surprise as the sight of your letter, my kind young friend, afforded me. Such a nice letter as it is too. And what a pretty hand you write. I congratulate you on this attainment with great pleasure, because I have so often felt the disadvantage of my own wretched handwriting.
You wish for London news. I rely upon your sister Ann for gratifying you in this respect, yet I
have been endeavouring to recollect whom you might have seen here, and what may
have happened to them since, and this effort has only brought the image of
little Barbara Betham, unconnected with
any other person, so strongly before my eyes that I seem as if I had no other
subject to write upon. Now I think I see you with your feet propped upon the
fender, your two hands spread out upon your knees—an attitude you always chose
when we were in familiar confidential conversation together—telling me long
stories of your own home, where now you say you are “Moping on with
the same thing every day,” and which then presented nothing but
pleasant recollections to your mind. How well I remember your quiet steady face
bent over your book. One day, conscience struck at having wasted so much of
your precious time in reading, and feeling yourself, as you prettily said,
“quite useless to me,” you went to my drawers and hunted
out some unhemmed pocket-handkerchiefs, and by no means could I prevail upon
you to resume your story books till you had hemmed them all. I remember, too,
your teaching my little maid to read—your sitting with her a whole evening to
console her for the death of her sister; and that she in her turn endeavoured
to become a comforter to you, the next evening, when you wept at the sight of
Mrs. Holcroft, from whose school you
had recently eloped because you were not partial to sitting in the stocks.
Those tears, and a few you once dropped when my brother teased you about
| 1814 | THE MYSTERIOUS ROOM | 447 |
We still live in Temple Lane, but I am now sitting in a room you never saw. Soon after you left us we we[re] distressed by the cries of a cat, which seemed to proceed from the garrets adjoining to ours, and only separated from ours by a locked door on the farther side of my brother’s bedroom, which you know was the little room at the top of the kitchen stairs. We had the lock forced and let poor puss out from behind a pannel of the wainscot, and she lived with us from that time, for we were in gratitude bound to keep her, as she had introduced us to four untenanted, unowned rooms, and by degrees we have taken possession of these unclaimed apartments—First putting up lines to dry our clothes, then moving my brother’s bed into one of these, more commodious than his own room. And last winter, my brother being unable to pursue a work he had begun, owing to the kind interruptions of friends who were more at leisure than himself, I persuaded him that he might write at his ease in one of these rooms, as he could not then hear the door knock, or hear himself denied to be at home, which was sure to make him call out and convict the poor maid in a fib. Here, I said, he might be almost really not at home. So I put in an old grate, and made him a fire in the largest of these garrets, and carried in one table, and one chair, and bid him write away, and consider himself as much alone as if he were in a new lodging in the midst of Salisbury Plain, or any other wide unfrequented place where he could expect few visitors to break in upon his solitude. I left him quite delighted with his new acquisition, but in a few hours he came down again with a sadly dismal face. He could do nothing, he said, with those bare whitewashed walls before his eyes. He could not write in that dull unfurnished prison.
The next day, before he came home from his office, I had
gathered up various bits of old carpetting to cover the floor; and, to a little
break the blank look of the bare walls, I hung up a few old prints that used to
ornament the kitchen, and after dinner, with great boast of what an improvement
I had made, I took Charles once more into
his new study. A week of busy labours followed, in which I think you would not
have disliked to have been our assistant. My brother and I almost covered the
walls with prints, for which purpose he cut out every print from every book in
his old library, coming in every now and then to ask my leave to strip a fresh
poor author—which he might not do, you know, without my
| 448 | LETTERS OF C. AND M. LAMB | Nov. |
Your sister Ann will tell you that your friend Louisa is going to France. Miss Skepper is out of town, Mrs. Reynolds desires to be remembered to you, and so does my neighbour Mrs. Norris, who was your doctress when you were unwell, her three little children are grown three big children. The Lions still live in Exeter Change. Returning home through the Strand, I often hear them roar about twelve oclock at night. I never hear them without thinking of you, because you seemed so pleased with the sight of them, and said your young companions would stare when you told them you had seen a Lion.
And now my dear Barbara fare well, I have not written such a long letter a long time, but I am very sorry I had nothing amusing to write about. Wishing you may pass happily through the rest of your school days, and every future day of your life,
My brother sends his love to you, with the kind remembrance your letter shewed you have of us as I was. He joins with me in respects to your good father and mother, and to your brother John, who, if I do not mistake his name, is your tall young brother who was in search of a fair lady with a large fortune. Ask him if he has found her yet. You say you are not so tall as Louisa—you must be, you cannot so degenerate from the rest of your family. Now you have begun, I shall hope to have the pleasure of hearing from [you] again. I shall always receive a letter from you with very great delight.
