As you will see, my Dear Ranken, this letter has been written half a century but I have been wandering about the country and forgot to finish it before I went. Long before this however I hope you are fundamentally cured and prepared to set up on your own bottom. Doubtless you will find a vast fund of nonsense in the former part of this ’pistle but if it serves to give you a minute’s amusement it will answer the object of
Yours sincerely
G. P. R. James.
Everybody seems to have written affectionately to Charles Ollier, the publisher—Lamb, Hunt, Keats, Shelley, and a host of others. His son, Edmund, ‘beheld Charles Lamb with infantile eyes and sat in poor Mary Lamb’s lap.’[[67]] James writes to the elder Ollier, from the Chateau du Buisson, Garumbourg, près Evreux, on August 7, 1829:
“My dear Mr. Ollier.
I take advantage of a friend’s departure for London, to write to you though I have nothing to say. I have done so much of my new book as I permit myself to do per diem and having nothing else to do my vile cacoethes scribendi prompts me to indite this epistle to your manifest trouble and annoyance. My father informs me you have been ill and calls your complaint ‘nothing but Dis-pep-sia.’ I hope and trust however that you have no such long word in your stomach, but if you have, nothing can be so good for it as crossing the water and visiting a friend in France. One of my visitors lately brought me over about twenty newspapers and also the information that my unfortunate Adra had never made her appearance. Incontinent, I fell into one of my accustomed fits of passion which was greatly increased by finding that in none of the twenty journals was any advertisement or mention whatever of Richelieu which together with the news that about four and twenty people had asked for Richelieu and could not get it in England, Scotland or Ireland, made me write instantly to Mr. Bentley a very flaming letter about printing Adra &c. &c. &c. I had written to Mr. Colburn sometime ago without his doing me the honor to answer me, and therefore I write not there again. I have since received an answer from Mr. R. Bentley and all has gone right. But I am most profanely ignorant of all news and therefore will beg you to answer me the following Qys. if you can.
Has Richelieu been reviewed in the New Monthly? Has it ever been advertised? Does the sale proceed as successfully as when I left London? Will you see that its first success does not make Mr. Colburn relax in his efforts in its favor? Will you manage the reviewing of Adra and take care that it be sent to and noticed by as many publications as possible? Will you see that the list of persons to whom I desired it to be sent and which I left in Burlington street be attended to? Will you let me know whether there be anything in which I can in any way serve or pleasure you? I am sincere and ever yours.
G. P. R. James.
This letter dated at Maxpoffle, near Melrose, Roxburghshire, 14th June 1832, is addressed to Allan Cunningham.
My Dear Sir: