that I should open a bottle of orange; for ray meat turns into a stone when any one dines with me if I have not wine. Wine can mollify stones; then that wine turns into acidity, acerbity, misanthropy, a hatred of my interrupters—(God bless 'em! I love some of 'em dearly)—and with the hatred a still greater aversion to their going away. Bad is the dead sea they bring upon me, choking and deadening; but worse is the deader dry sand they leave me on if they go before bed-time. Come never, I would say to these spoilers of my dinner; but if you come, never go!... Evening company I should always like had I any mornings, but I am saturated with human faces (divine forsooth!) and voices all the golden morning; and five evenings in a week would be as much as I should covet to be in company; but I assure you that is a wonderful week in which I can get two or one to myself. I am never C. L., but always C. L. & Co. He who thought it not good for man to be alone preserve me from the more prodigious monstrosity of being never by myself! I forget bed-time, but even there these sociable frogs clamber up to annoy me."...
It was during the Russell Street days that the Lambs made the acquaintance of Vincent Novello. He had a little daughter, Mary Victoria, afterwards Mrs. Cowden-Clarke, whose heart Mary won, leaving many sweet and happy impressions of herself graven there, which eventually took shape in her Recollections of Writers. Mrs. Novello had lost a baby in the spring of 1820, and from the quiet of Stoke Newington Mary wrote her a sweet letter of condolence:—
"Spring, 1820.
"Since we heard of your sad sorrow, you have
