DEAR Miss
Hutchinson—You want to know all about my gaol delivery. Take it
then. About 12 weeks since I had a sort of intimation that a resignation might
be well accepted from me. This was a kind bird’s whisper. On that hint I
spake. Gilman and Tuthill furnishd me with certificates of
wasted health and sore spirits—not much more than the truth, I promise you—and
for 9 weeks I was kept in a fright—I had gone too far to recede, and they might
take advantage and dismiss me with a much less sum than I had reckoned on.
However Liberty came at last with a liberal provision. I have given up what I
could have lived on in the country, but have enough to live here by managemt. and scribbling occasionally. I would not go back to
my prison for seven
| 678 | LETTERS OF C. AND M. LAMB | May |
You will ask how I bear my freedom. Faith, for some days I was staggered. Could not comprehend the magnitude of my deliverance, was confused, giddy, knew not whether I was on my head or my heel as they say. But those giddy feelings have gone away, and my weather glass stands at a degree or two above
I have a kind letter from the Wordswths congratulatory not a little.
It is a damp, I do assure you, amid all my prospects that I can receive none from a quarter upon which I had calculated, almost more than from any, upon receiving congratulations. I had grown to like poor M. more and more. I do not esteem a soul living or not living more warmly than I had grown to esteem and value him. But words are vain. We have none of us to count upon many years. That is the only cure for sad thoughts. If only some died, and the rest were permanent on earth, what a thing a friend’s death would be then!
I must take leave, having put off answering [a load] of letters to this morning, and this, alas! is the 1st. Our kindest remembrances to Mrs. Monkhouse and believe us
