William Hone to Dr. West, 28 November, 1840

1.1.1.

Mr. Woollaston interrupted me yesterday while scratching to you, hence I abruptly concluded to save the post, & now again trouble you.

If I was not sufficiently explicit, will you see Mr. Blewitt.² He is prepared to receive you & to explicate — I write him by this post for I fear you may yet mistake as to the Certificates & without them nothing can be done, and they must go in on Tuesday next

Shepherd, do with as you can. He writes from his present address, 42 Marsham St. Westminster. I can do nothing for him until the grant comes from the Literary Fund, whence must come his amount. Perhaps, meanwhile, the £2. will pacify him, or there will be a writ & costs for he is distressed & [desirous?] on having all. He ought to have all — it was for bread which we have eaten. We go in debt for nothing here. I dread debt.

Deeply I regret to give you, my Friend, trouble. That underlining means what it denotes. I am pained by what you say of this ["I and up"?], and by imagining what you ought to think of me if I could be insensible to the pangs which such sayings & doings cost. Let us think a moment of Charles Lamb. He depicted the heart when, in his "Last Essays," he described, "a lad, apparently very poor, very infirm, & very patient," going to Margate with the hope of being admitted into the Infirmary for Sea-bathing & getting cured of incurable scrofula, & who when asked whether he had any friends there, replied "he had no friends"³ — Wheugh! was it the same Elia who afterwards told of Captain Jackson at his Cottage on the Bath Road? The little bit of the poor boy demolishes all the "false" pretences of that lying braggart. I hate Captn Jackson — am sorry you introduced me to him — he is a fellow whom you and me (shouldn't it be I) would [cut?], if he were a king. Poor Lamb went too much among the actors. It is the worst thing he wrote — for it is the falsest. Don't be angry with me for saying so, but I cann't help it. Love my "poor boy" aboard the Old Margate Hoy — Poor Mary Lamb, "Cousin Bridget," has relapsed again, & its an hour beyond my usual bed-time. Good night. "Holy Angels guard thy head." You remember the tune. I do.