Hester Savory was the daughter of Joseph Savory, a goldsmith in the
Strand. She was born in 1777 and was thus by two years Lamb's junior.
She married, in July, 1802, Charles Stoke Dudley, a merchant, and she
died in February of the following year, and was buried at Bunhill
Fields. Lamb was living in Pentonville from the end of 1796 until 1799.
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Page 33. Dialogue between a Mother and Child. By Mary Lamb.
Charles Lamb, writing to Dorothy Wordsworth on June 2, 1804, says: "I send you two little copies of verses by Mary L—b." Then follow this "Dialogue" and the "Lady Blanch" verses on page 41. Lamb adds at the end: "I wish they may please you: we in these parts are not a little proud of them."
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Page 34. A Farewell to Tobacco.
First printed in The Reflector, No. IV., 1811.
Lamb had begun to think poetically of tobacco as early as 1803. Writing to Coleridge in April 13 of that year, he says:—"What do you think of smoking? I want your sober, average, noon opinion of it. I generally am eating my dinner about the time I should determine it. Morning is a girl, and can't smoke—she's no evidence one way or the other; and Night is so [? evidently] bought over, that he can't be a very upright judge. May be the truth is, that one pipe is wholesome; two pipes toothsome; three pipes noisome; four pipes fulsome; five pipes quarrelsome; and that's the sum on't. But that is deciding rather upon rhyme than reason."
Writing to William and Dorothy Wordsworth on September 28, 1805, Lamb remarked regarding his literary plans:—"Sometimes I think of a farce—but hitherto all schemes have gone off,—an idle brag or two of an evening vaporing out of a pipe, and going off in the morning—but now I have bid farewell to my 'Sweet Enemy' Tobacco, as you will see in my next page, I perhaps shall set soberly to work. Hang work!"
On the next page Lamb copied the "Farewell to Tobacco," adding:—"I wish you may think this a handsome farewell to my 'Friendly Traitress.' Tobacco has been my evening comfort and my morning curse for these five years: and you know how difficult it is from refraining to pick one's lips even when it has become a habit. This Poem is the only one which I have finished since so long as when I wrote 'Hester Savory' [in March, 1803]…. The 'Tobacco,' being a little in the way of Withers (whom Southey so much likes), perhaps you will somehow convey it to him with my kind remembrances."