Works of Charles and Mary Lamb. VI-VII. Letters
Charles Lamb to Jane Payne Collier, 2 November 1824
[Dated at end: November 2, 1824.]
DEAR Mrs.
Collier—We receive so much pig from your kindness, that I really
have not phrase enough to vary successive acknowledgmts.
I think I shall get a printed form to serve on all
occasions.
To say it was young, crisp, short, luscious, dainty-toed,
is but to say what all its predecessors have been. It was eaten on Sunday ![]()
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and Monday, and doubts only exist as to which
temperature it eat best, hot or cold. I incline to the latter. The Petty-feet
made a pretty surprising prœ-gustation for supper on Saturday night, just as I
was loathingly in expectation of bren-cheese. I spell as I speak.
I do not know what news to send you. You will have heard of
Alsager’s death, and your
Son John’s success in the
Lottery. I say he is a wise man, if he leaves off while he is well. The weather
is wet to weariness, but Mary goes
puddling about a-shopping after a gown for the winter. She wants it good &
cheap. Now I hold that no good things are cheap, pig-presents always excepted.
In this mournful weather I sit moping, where I now write, in an office dark as
Erebus, jammed in between 4 walls, and writing by Candlelight, most melancholy.
Never see the light of the Sun six hours in the day, and am surprised to find
how pretty it shines on Sundays. I wish I were a Caravan driver or a Penny post
man, to earn my bread in air & sunshine. Such a pedestrian as I am, to be
tied by the legs, like a Fauntleroy,
without the pleasure of his Exactions. I am interrupted here with an official
question, which will take me up till it’s time to go to dinner, so with
repeated thanks & both our kindest remembces to
Mr. Collier & yourself, I
conclude in haste.
Yours & his sincerely,
C. Lamb.
from my den in Leadenhall,
2 Nov. 24.
On further enquiry Alsager is not dead, but Mrs.
A. is brot. to bed.
Ann Allsop [née Dean] (d. 1877 c.)
The wife of Thomas Allsop, biographer of Coleridge, whom she married in 1824; she was a
society hostess, not the actress Fanny Alsop, daughter of Dorothy Jordan.
Thomas Massa Alsager (1779-1846)
Journalist and music critic for the
Times; he was the friend of
Leigh Hunt and Thomas Barnes; John Keats was reading Alsager's copy of Chapman's poems when
he wrote the famous sonnet.
Jane Collier [née Payne] (1768-1833)
The daughter of a London sugar refiner, in 1786 she married John Dyer Collier; she was
the mother of the antiquary John Payne Collier.
John Dyer Collier (1762-1825)
The father of John Payne Collier. Originally a wool merchant, he edited the
Monthly Register (1802-3), was a reporter for the
Times and
Morning Chronicle (1808-15), and edited the
Critical
Review in its final year.
John Payne Collier (1789-1883)
English poet, journalist, antiquary, and learned editor of Shakespeare and Spenser; his
forgeries of historical documents permanently tarnished his reputation.
Henry Fauntleroy (1784-1824)
English banker who embezzled spectacular sums and after a very public trial was hung at
Newgate Prison before a crowd estimated at 100,000.
Mary Anne Lamb (1764-1847)
Sister of Charles Lamb with whom she wrote Tales from Shakespeare (1807). She lived with
her brother, having killed their mother in a temporary fit of insanity.
