MY dear Manning—I didn’t know what your going was till I shook a
last fist with you, and then ’twas just like having shaken hands with a
wretch on the fatal scaffold, and when you are down the ladder, you can never
stretch out to him again. Mary says you
are dead, and there’s nothing to do but to leave it to time to do for us
in the end what it always does for those who mourn for people in such a case.
But she’ll see by your letter you are not quite dead. A little kicking
and agony, and then ——. Martin
Burney took me out a walking that
evening, and we talked of Mister Manning; and then I came
home and smoked for you; and at twelve o’Clock came home
Mary and Monkey
Louisa from the play, and there was more talk and more smoking,
and they all seemed first-rate characters, because they knew a certain person.
But what’s the use of talking about ’em? By the time you’ll
have made your escape from the Kalmuks, you’ll have staid so long I shall
never be able to bring to your mind who Mary was, who will
have died about a year before, nor who the Holcrofts were! Me perhaps you will mistake for
Phillips, or confound me with Mr. Daw, because you saw us together.
Mary (whom you seem to remember yet) is not quite easy
that she had not a formal parting from you. I wish it had so happened. But you
must bring her a token, a shawl or something, and remember a sprightly little
Mandarin for our mantle-piece, as a companion to the Child I am going to
purchase at the Museum. She says you saw her writings about the other day, and
she wishes you should know what they are. She is doing for Godwin’s bookseller twenty of Shakspear’s plays, to be made into Children’s tales. Six are
already done by her, to wit, ‘The Tempest,’ ‘Winter’s Tale,’
‘Midsummer
Night,’ ‘Much Ado,’ ‘Two Gentlemen of Verona,’ and ‘Cymbeline:’ ‘The Merchant of
Venice’ is in forwardness. I have done ‘Othello’ and ‘Macbeth,’ and mean to
do all the tragedies. I think it will be popular among the little people.
Besides money. It is to bring in 60 guineas. Mary has done
them capitally, I think you’d think. These are the humble amusements we
propose, while you are gone to plant the cross of Christ among barbarous Pagan
anthropophagi. Quam homo homini præstat! but then, perhaps,
you’ll get murder’d, and we shall die in our beds with a fair
literary reputation. Be sure, if you see any of those people whose heads do
grow beneath
| 1806 | FAREWELL TO MANNING | 349 |
God bless you in every way you can form a wish. May He give you health, and safety, and the accomplishment of all your objects, and return you again to us, to gladden some fireside or other (I suppose we shall be moved from the Temple). I will nurse the remembrance of your steadiness and quiet, which used to infuse something like itself into our nervous minds. Mary called you our ventilator. Farewell, and take her best wishes and mine.
One thing more. When you get to Canton, you will most likely see a young friend of mine, Inspector of Teas, named Ball. He is a very good fellow and I should like to have my name talked of in China. Give my kind remembrances to the same Ball.
