Chapter 283

CHARLES LAMB TO JOHN FORSTER

[? Late April, 1832.]

One day in my life Do come. C.L.

I have placed poor Mary at Edmonton--

I shall be very glad to see the Hunch Back and Straitback the 1st Even'g they can come. I am very poorly indeed. I have been cruelly thrown out. Come and don't let me drink too much. I drank more yesterday than I ever did any one day in my life.

C.L.

Do come.

Cannot your Sister come and take a half bed--or a whole one? Which, alas, we have to spare.

[Mary Lamb would have been taken to Walden House, Edmonton, where mental patients were received. A year later the Lambs moved there altogether.

The Hunchback would be Knowles; the Straitback I do not recognise.

John Forster (1812-1876), whom we now meet for the first time, one of Lamb's last new friends, was the author, later, of _Lives of the Statesmen of the Commonwealth_ and the Lives also of Goldsmith and of Landor and Dickens, whose close friend he was. His _Life of Pym_, which was in Vol. II. of the _Statesman_, did not appear until 1837, but I assume that he had ridden the hobby for some years.]