William Godwin: his Friends and Contemporaries
Ch. IX. 1812-1819
William Godwin to Mary Jane Godwin, 16 July 1817
“And so this letter will actually find you on English
ground! . . . . News when we meet. We are all well. William has been uncommonly well. Two or three times we have
been threatened with a storm since you left us, but all is tranquil now.
“I forgot to tell you in my last that Mr and Miss
Lamb set out for Brighton on the 26th ult., to pass a month of
holiday-making. Mrs Morgan went in their
company
“Come, then, my love! We are trying to get everything
ready, so that your nice eye may find nothing to be offended with. This week
was our wash. Esther is all on the qui vive, saying, What will my mistress
expect me to have done? The cook preserves her composure, and thinks it would
be unbecoming her station to betray the symptoms of a perturbed mind.”
William Godwin jun. (1803-1832)
The son of William and Mary Jane Godwin; he was a reporter for the
Morning Chronicle who died of cholera.
Charles Lamb [Elia] (1775-1834)
English essayist and boyhood friend of Coleridge at Christ's Hospital; author of
Essays of Elia published in the
London
Magazine (collected 1823, 1833) and other works.
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.
Mary Anne Morgan [née Brent] (1828 fl.)
The wife of John James Morgan (d. 1820) whom she married 15 December 1800; her sister
Charlotte lived with the family.
