Memoirs of William Hazlitt
Ch. XII 1808
Mary Lamb to Sarah Stoddart Hazlitt, 7 November 1809
“The dear, quiet, lazy, delicious month,” she
begins, “we spent with you is remembered by me with such ![]()
| | IMPRESSIONS LEFT BY THE VISIT. | 175 |
![]()
regret, that I feel
quite discontent and Winterslow-sick. I assure you I never passed such a
pleasant time in the country in my life, both in the house and out of it—the
card-playing quarrels, and a few gaspings for breath after your swift footsteps
up the high hills excepted, and those drawbacks are not unpleasant in the
recollection. We have got some salt butter, to make our toast seem like yours,
and we have tried to eat meat suppers, but that would not do, for we left our
appetites behind us. . . .
“I carried the baby-caps to Mrs. [John] Hazlitt, she was much pleased, and
vastly thankful. Mr. H. got fifty-four
guineas at Rochester, and has now several pictures in hand. He has been very
disorderly lately. . . .
“We had a good cheerful meeting on Wednesday: much
talk of Winterslow, its woods and its nice sunflowers. I did not so much like
Phillips at Winterslow, as I now
like him for having been with us at Winterslow. . . .
“I continue very well, and return you very sincere
thanks for my good health and improved looks, which have almost made Mrs. Godwin die with envy; she longs to come
to Winterslow as much as the spiteful elder sister did to go to the well for a
gift to spit diamonds. . . .
“Farewell. Love to William, and Charles’s love and good wishes for the speedy arrival of
the ‘Life of
Holcroft’ and the bearer thereof.
“Yours most affectionately,
“M. Lamb.
“Tuesday.”
![]()
| 176 |
THE WELL AT WINTERSLOW. |
|
![]()
“Charles
told Mrs. Godwin, Hazlitt had found a well in his garden
which, water being scarce in your country, would bring him in two hundred
a-year, and she came in great haste the next morning to ask me if it were
true.
“Mrs. Hazlitt,
“Winterslow, near Salisbury.”
Mary Jane Godwin [née Vial] (1768-1841)
The second wife of William Godwin, whom she married in 1801 after a previous relationship
in which was born her daughter Claire Clairmont (1798-1879). With her husband she was a
London bookseller.
John Hazlitt (1767-1837)
Miniaturist and portrait painter who studied under Joshua Reynolds, the elder brother of
the essayist. A radical and alcoholic, the
Gentleman's Magazine
reported that he “was, like his brother, of an irritable temperament.”
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).
Charles Lamb [Elia] (1775-1834)
English essayist and boyhood friend of Coleridge at Christ's Hospital; author of
Essays of Elia published in the
London
Magazine (collected 1823, 1833) and other works.
Molesworth Phillips (1755-1832)
He sailed with Captain Cook as a marine and upon his return married Susanna, sister of
Fanny Burney; in later life he was a friend of Robert Southey and Charles Lamb. Hazlitt
believed he was a government spy.
