Works of Charles and Mary Lamb. VI-VII. Letters
Charles Lamb to Vincent Novello, [14 May 1830]
Friday, [p.m. May 14, 1830.]
DEAR Novello,
Mary hopes you have not forgot you
are to spend a day with us on Wednesday. That it may be a long one, cannot you
secure places now for Mrs. Novello
yourself and the Clarkes? We have just
table room for four. Five make my good Landlady fidgetty; six, to begin to
fret; seven, to approximate to fever point. But seriously we shall prefer four
to two or three; we shall have from ½ past 10 to six, when the coach goes off,
to scent the country. And pray write now, to say you do
so come, for dear Mrs. Westwood else will be on the
tenters of incertitude.
Charles Cowden Clarke (1787-1877)
The schoolmate and friend of John Keats; he lectured on Shakespeare and European
literature and published
Recollections of Writers (1878).
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 Sabilla Novello [née Hehl] (1789-1854)
English author who married Vincent Novello in 1808 and had a family of eleven children,
among them Mary Cowden Clarke.
Vincent Novello (1781-1861)
English music publisher and friend of Charles Lamb, Leigh Hunt, and Percy Bysshe
Shelley.
