Works of Charles and Mary Lamb. VI-VII. Letters
Charles Lamb to William Wordsworth, [May 1828
DEAR Wordsworth, we had meant to have tried to see Mrs. Wordsworth and Dora next Wednesday, but we are intercepted by
a violent toothache which Mary has got by
getting up ![]()
| 776 | LETTERS OF C. AND M. LAMB | 1828 |
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next morning after parting with you,
to be with my going off at ½ past 8 Holborn. We are poor travellers, and
moreover we have company (damn ’em) good people, Mr. Hone and an old
crony not seen for 20 years, coming here on Tuesday, one stays
night with us, and Mary doubts my power to get up time
enough, and comfort enough, to be so far as you are. Will you name a day in the
same or coming week that we can come to you in the morning, for it would plague
us not to see the other two of you, whom we cannot individualize from you,
before you go. It is bad enough not to see your Sister Dorothy.
God bless you sincerely
C. Lamb.
William Hone (1780-1842)
English bookseller, radical, and antiquary; he was an associate of Bentham, Mill, and
John Cam Hobhouse.
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.
Dora Quillinan [née Wordsworth] (1804-1847)
The daughter of William Wordsworth who in 1841 married the poet Edward Quillinan despite
her father's concerns about his debts.
Walter Wilson (1781-1847)
The illegitimate son of John Walter, founder of the
Times; he was
a London bookseller and collector who published a three-volume life of Defoe (1830).
Dorothy Wordsworth (1771-1855)
The sister of William Wordsworth who transcribed his poems and kept his house; her
journals and letters were belatedly published after her death.
William Wordsworth (1770-1850)
With Coleridge, author of
Lyrical Ballads (1798), Wordsworth
survived his early unpopularity to succeed Robert Southey as poet laureate in 1843.
