Times were changed indeed since Lamb could speak of himself as "alone, obscure, without a friend." Now friends and acquaintance thronged round him, till rest and quiet were almost banished from his fire-side; and though they were banished for the most part by social pleasures he dearly loved—hearty, simple, intellectual pleasures—the best of talk, with no ceremony and the least of expense, yet they had to be paid for by Mary and himself in fevered nerves, in sleep curtailed and endless interruptions to work. There were, besides, "social harpies who preyed on him for his liquors," whom he lacked firmness to shake off, in spite of those "dismal faces" consequent in Mary, of which she penitently accuses herself.
Apart from external distractions, the effort to write, especially any sort of task work, was often so painful to his irritable nerves that, as he said, it almost "teazed him into a fever," whilst Mary's anxious love and close sympathy made his distress her own. There is a letter to Godwin deprecating any appearance of unfriendliness in having failed to review his Life of Chaucer, containing a passage on this subject, which the lover of Lamb's writings and character (and who is one must needs be the other) will ponder with peculiar interest:—
"You, by long habits of composition, and a greater command over your own powers, cannot conceive of the desultory and uncertain way in which I (an author by fits) sometimes cannot put the thoughts of a common letter into sane prose. Any work which I take upon myself as an engagement will act upon me to torment, e.g. when I have undertaken, as three or four times I have, a schoolboy copy of verses for Merchant Taylors' boys at a guinea a copy, I have fretted over them in perfect inability to do them, and have made my sister wretched with my wretchedness for a week together. As to reviewing, in particular, my head is so whimsical a head that I cannot, after reading another man's book, let it have been never so pleasing, give any account of it in any methodical way. I cannot follow his train. Something like this you must have perceived of me in conversation. Ten thousand times I have confessed to you, talking of my talents, my utter inability to remember, in any comprehensive way, what I read. I can vehemently applaud, or perversely stickle at parts, but I cannot grasp a whole. This infirmity may be seen in my two little compositions, the tale and my play, in both which no reader, however partial, can find any story…. If I bring you a crude, wretched paper on Sunday, you must burn it and forgive me; if it proves anything better than I predict, may it be a peace-offering of sweet incense between us."
The two friends whose society was always soothing, were far away now. Coleridge, who could always 'wind them up and set them going again,' as Mary said, was still wandering they knew not where on the Continent, and Manning had, at last, carried out a long-cherished scheme and gone to China for four years which, however, stretched to twelve, as Lamb prophesied it would.
"I didn't know what your going was till I shook a last fist with you," says Lamb, "and then 'twas just like having shaken hands with a wretch on the fatal scaffold, for when you are down the ladder you never can stretch out to him again. Mary says you are dead, and there's nothing to do but to leave it to time to do for us in the end what it always does for those who mourn for people in such a case: but she'll see by your letter you are not quite dead. A little kicking and agony, and then—Martin Burney took me out a walking that evening, and we talked of Manning, and then I came home and smoked for you; and at twelve o'clock came home Mary and Monkey Louisa from the play, and there was more talk and more smoking, and they all seemed first-rate characters because they knew a certain person. But what's the use of talking about 'em? By the time you'll have made your escape from the Kalmucks, you'll have stayed so long I shall never be able to bring to your mind who Mary was, who will have died about a year before, nor who the Holcrofts were. Me, perhaps, you will mistake for Phillips, or confound me with Mr. Dawe, because you saw us together. Mary, whom you seem to remember yet, is not quite easy that she had not a formal parting from you. I wish it had so happened. But you must bring her a token, a shawl or something, and remember a sprightly little mandarin for our mantel-piece as a companion to the child I am going to purchase at the museum…. O Manning, I am serious to sinking almost, when I think that all those evenings which you have made so pleasant are gone perhaps for ever…. I will nurse the remembrance of your steadiness and quiet which used to infuse something like itself into our nervous minds. Mary used to call you our ventilator."
Mary's next letters to Miss Stoddart continue to fulfil her promise of writing a kind of journal:—
"June 2nd.
"You say truly that I have sent you too many make-believe letters. I do not mean to serve you so again if I can help it. I have been very ill for some days past with the tooth-ache. Yesterday I had it drawn, and I feel myself greatly relieved, but far from being easy, for my head and my jaws still ache; and being unable to do any business, I would wish to write you a long letter to atone for my former offences; but I feel so languid that I fear wishing is all I can do.
"I am sorry you are so worried with business, and I am still more sorry for your sprained ancle. You ought not to walk upon it. What is the matter between you and your good-natured maid you used to boast of? and what the devil is the matter with your aunt? You say she is discontented. You must bear with them as well as you can, for doubtless it is your poor mother's teazing that puts you all out of sorts. I pity you from my heart.
"We cannot come to see you this summer, nor do I think it advisable to come and incommode you when you for the same expense could come to us. Whenever you feel yourself disposed to run away from your troubles, come to us again. I wish it was not such a long, expensive journey, and then you could run backwards and forwards every month or two. I am very sorry you still hear nothing from Mr. White. I am afraid that is all at an end. What do you intend to do about Mr. Turner?… William Hazlitt, the brother of him you know, is in town. I believe you have heard us say we like him. He came in good time, for the loss of Manning made Charles very dull, and he likes Hazlitt better than anybody, except Manning. My tooth-ache has moped Charles to death; you know how he hates to see people ill….