r, My very good friend, and Charles Clarke's father in law,
Vincent Novello, wishes to shake hands with you. Make him play you a
tune. He is a damn'd fine musician, and what is better, a good man and
true. He will tell you how glad we should be to have Mrs. Dyer and you
here for a few days. Our young friend, Miss Isola, has been here
holydaymaking, but leaves us tomorrow.

Yours Ever CH. LAMB.

Enfield.

[_Added in a feminine hand_:] Emma's love to Mr. and Mrs. Dyer.

[The date of this note is pure conjecture on my part, but is
unimportant. Novello had become Charles Clarke's father-in-law in 1828,
and Emma Isola, who was now teaching the children of a clergyman named
Williams, at Fornham, in Suffolk, spent her Christmas holidays with the
Lambs that year.

Here, perhaps, should come an undated letter from Lamb to Louisa Martin.
Lamb begins "Dear Monkey," and refers to his "niece," Mrs. Dowden, and
some business which she requires him to transact, Mrs. Dowden being Mrs.
John Lamb's daughter-in-law. Lamb describes himself as "a sick cat that
loves to be alone on housetops or at cellar bottoms."]

LETTER 471

CHARLES LAMB TO B.W. PROCTER

[19th Jan., 1829.]

My dear Procter,--I am ashamed to have not taken the drift of your
pleasant letter, which I find to have been pure invention. But jokes are
not suspected in Boeotian Enfield. We are plain people; and our talk is
of corn, and cattle, and Waltham markets. Besides, I was a little out of
sorts when I received it. The fact is, I am involved in a case which has
fretted me to death; and I have no reliance, except on you, to extricate
me. I am sure you will give me your best legal advice, having no
professional friend besides but Robinson and Talfourd, with neither of
whom at present I am on the best terms. My brother's widow left a will,
made during the lifetime of my brother, in which I am named sole
executor, by which she bequeaths forty acres of arable property, which
it seems she held under Covert Baron, unknown to my brother, to the
heirs of the body of Elizabeth Dowden, her married daughter by a first
husband, in fee-simple, recoverable by fine--_invested_ property, mind;
for there is the difficulty--subject to leet and quit-rent; in short,
worded in the most guarded terms, to shut out the property from Isaac
Dowden, the husband. Intelligence has just come of the death of this
person in India, where he made a w