CHARLES LAMB TO JAMES GILLMAN

[Dated at end: 2 May, 1821.]

Dear Sir--You dine so late on Friday, it will be impossible for us to go
home by the eight o'clock stage. Will you oblige us by securing us beds
at some house from which a stage goes to the Bank in the morning? I
would write to Coleridge, but cannot think of troubling a dying man with
such a request.

Yours truly, C. LAMB.


If the beds in the town are all engaged, in consequence of Mr. Mathews's
appearance, a hackney-coach will serve. Wednes'y. 2 May '21.

We shall neither of us come much before the time.


[Mrs. Mathews (who was half-sister of Fanny Kelly) described this
evening in her _Memoirs_ of her husband, 1839. Her account of Lamb is
interesting:--

Mr. Lamb's first approach was not prepossessing. His figure was
small and mean; and no man certainly was ever less beholden to his
tailor. His "bran" new _suit_ of black cloth (in which he affected
several times during the day to take great pride, and to cherish as
a novelty that he had long looked for and wanted) was drolly
contrasted with his very rusty silk stockings, shown from his knees,
and his much too large _thick_ shoes, without polish. His shirt