would have seen Battle
Abbey on the way, but it is only shewn on a Monday. We are trying to
coax Charles into a Monday's excursion. And Bexhill we are also thinking
about. Yesterday evening we found out by chance the most beautiful view
I ever saw. It is called "The Lovers' Seat."... You have been here,
therefore you must have seen [it, or] is it only Mr. and Mrs. Faint who
have visited Hastings? [Tell Mrs.] Faint that though in my haste to get
housed I d[ecided on] ... ice's lodgings, yet it comforted all th ... to
know that I had a place in view.

I suppose you are so busy that it is not fair to ask you to write me a
line to say how you are going on. Yet if any one of you have half an
hour to spare for that purpose, it will be most thankfully received.
Charles joins with me in love to you all together, and to each one in
particular upstairs and downstairs.

Yours most affectionately, M. LAMB. June 18

[Mr. Hazlitt dates this letter 1825 or 1826, and considers it to refer
to a second visit to Hastings; but I think most probably it refers to
the 1823 visit, especially as the Lovers' Seat would assuredly have been
discovered then. Miss James was Mary Lamb's nurse. Mrs. Randal Norris
had been a Miss Faint.

There is a curious similarity between a passage in this letter and in
one of Byron's, written in 1814: "I have been swimming, and eating
turbot, and smuggling neat brandies, and silk handkerchiefs ... and
walking on cliffs and tumbling down hills."

A Hastings guide book for 1825 gives Mrs. Gibbs' address as 4 York
Cottages, near Priory Bridge. Near by, in Pelham Place, a Mr. Hogsflesh
had a lodging-house.]

LETTER 322

CHARLES LAMB TO BERNARD BARTON

[P.M. 10 July, 1823.]

Dear Sir--I shall be happy to read the MS. and to forward it; but T. and
H. must judge for themselves of publication. If it prove interesting (as
I doubt not) I shall not spare to say so, you may depend upon it.
Suppose you direct it to Acco'ts. Office, India House.

I am glad you have met with some sweetening circumstances to your
unpalatable draught. I have just returned from Hastings, where are
exquisite views and walks, and where I have given up my soul to walking,
and I am now suffering sedentary contrasts. I am a long time reconciling
to Town after one of these excursions. Home is become strange, and will
remain so yet a while. Home is the most unforgiving of friends and
always resents Absence; I know it