Works of Charles and Mary Lamb. VI-VII. Letters
Charles Lamb to Leigh Hunt, [11? December 1827]
[No date. December, 1827.]
DEAR H.,—I am here
almost in the eleventh week of the longest illness my sister ever had, and no symptoms of amendment.
Some had begun, but relapsed with a change of nurse. If she ever gets well, you
will like my house, and I shall be happy to show you Enfield country.
As to my head, it is perfectly at your or any one’s
service; either M[e]yers’ or
Hazlitt’s, which last (done
fifteen or twenty years since) White, of
the Accountant’s office, India House, has; he lives in Kentish Town: I
forget where, but is to be found in Leadenhall daily. Take your choice. I
should be proud to hang up as an alehouse sign even; or, rather, I care not
about my head or anything, but how we are to get well again, for I am tired
out.
God bless you and yours from the worst calamity.—Yours
truly,
Kindest remembrances to Mrs.
Hunt. H.’s is
in a queer dress. M.’s would
be preferable ad populum.
William Hazlitt (1778-1830)
English essayist and literary critic; author of
Characters of
Shakespeare's Plays (1817),
Lectures on the English Poets
(1818), and
The Spirit of the Age (1825).
James Henry Leigh Hunt (1784-1859)
English poet, journalist, and man of letters; editor of
The
Examiner and
The Liberal; friend of Byron, Keats, and
Shelley.
Marianne Hunt [née Kent] (1787-1857)
The daughter of Anne Kent and wife of Leigh Hunt; they were married in 1809. Charles
MacFarlane, who knew her in the 1830s, described her as “his mismanaging, unthrifty
wife, the most barefaced, persevering, pertinacious of mendicants.”
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.
Henry Hoppner Meyer (1783-1847)
Portrait painter and engraver educated at Christ's Hospital whose subjects included
George Dyer, Charles Lamb, and Leigh Hunt.
Edward White (1840 fl.)
A clerk at the East India House where he was a friend and colleague of Charles Lamb; he
was an amateur painter and connoisseur of art.
