I feel that I have too lightly passed over the interesting account you sent me of your late disappointment. It was not because I did not feel and compl[ete]ly enter into the affair with you. You surprise and please me with the frank and generous way in which you deal with your Lovers, taking a refusal from their so prudential hearts with a better grace and more good humour than other women accept a suitor's service. Continue this open artless conduct, and I trust you will at last find some man who has sense enough to know you are well worth risking a peaceable life of poverty for. I shall yet live to see you a poor, but happy, English wife.
Remember me most affectionately to Coleridge; and I thank you again and again for all your kindness to him. To dear Mrs. Stoddart and your brother, I beg my best love; and to you all I wish health and happiness, and a soon return to Old England.
I have sent to Mr. Burrel's for your kind present; but unfortunately he is not in town. I am impatient to see my fine silk handkerchiefs; and I thank you for them, not as a present, for I do not love presents, but as a [word illegible] remembrance of your old friend. Farewell.
I am, my best Sarah,
Your most affectionate friend,
MARY LAMB.
Good wishes, and all proper remembrances, from old nurse, Mrs. Jeffries,
Mrs. Reynolds, Mrs. Rickman, &c. &c. &c.
Long live Queen Hoop-oop-oop-oo, and all the old merry phantoms!
LETTER 123
CHARLES LAMB TO SARAH STODDART (Same letter)
My dear Miss Stoddart,—Mary has written so fully to you, that I have nothing to add but that, in all the kindness she has exprest, and loving desire to see you again, I bear my full part. You will, perhaps, like to tear this half from the sheet, and give your brother only his strict due, the remainder. So I will just repay your late kind letter with this short postscript to hers. Come over here, and let us all be merry again.