Chapter 231

CHARLES LAMB TO JAMES GILLMAN

Chase-Side, Enfield, 26th Oct., 1829.

Dear Gillman,--Allsop brought me your kind message yesterday. How can I account for having not visited Highgate this long time? Change of place seemed to have changed me. How grieved I was to hear in what indifferent health Coleridge has been, and I not to know of it! A little school divinity, well applied, may be healing. I send him honest Tom of Aquin; that was always an obscure great idea to me: I never thought or dreamed to see him in the flesh, but t'other day I rescued him from a stall in Barbican, and brought him off in triumph. He comes to greet Coleridge's acceptance, for his shoe-latchets I am unworthy to unloose. Yet there are pretty pro's and con's, and such unsatisfactory learning in him. Commend me to the question of etiquette-- "_utrum annunciatio debuerit fieri per angelum_"--_Quaest. 30, Articilus 2_. I protest, till now I had thought Gabriel a fellow of some mark and livelihood, not a simple esquire, as I find him. Well, do not break your lay brains, nor I neither, with these curious nothings. They are nuts to our dear friend, whom hoping to see at your first friendly hint that it will be convenient, I end with begging our very kindest loves to Mrs. Gillman. We have had a sorry house of it here. Our spirits have been reduced till we were at hope's end what to do-- obliged to quit this house, and afraid to engage another, till in extremity I took the desperate resolve of kicking house and all down, like Bunyan's pack; and here we are in a new life at board and lodging, with an honest couple our neighbours. We have ridded ourselves of the cares of dirty acres; and the change, though of less than a week, has had the most beneficial effects on Mary already. She looks two years and a half younger for it. But we have had sore trials.

God send us one happy meeting!--Yours faithfully,

C. LAMB.

["The question of etiquette." See the _Summa Theologies_, Pars Tertia, Quest. XXX., Articulus II. It would be interesting to know whether Lamb remembered an earlier letter in which he had set Coleridge some similar "nuts."

"In a new life." The Lambs moved next door, to the Westwoods. The house, altered externally, still stands (1912) and is known as "Westwood Cottage."]