9 May: Summer’s severity.

Here is an extract from a letter from the writer Charles Lamb to his friend Vincent Novello, the musician and publisher, May 9, 1826. May can occasionally feel as cold as March, as Lamb asserts, ready to put more coal on the fire.

Dear N.

You will not expect us to-morrow, I am sure, while these damn’d North Easters continue. We must wait the Zephyrs’ pleasures. By the bye, I was at Highgate on Wensday, the only one of the Party.  Yours truly C. LAMB.

Summer, as my friend Coleridge waggishly writes, has set in with its usual severity. Kind rememb’ces to Mrs. Novello &c.

from “The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb — Volume 6 Letters 1821-1842.

Beech trees in Maytime.

Twice a garden in London.

I continue to estimate my own-roof comforts highly. How could I remain all my life a lodger! My garden thrives (I am told) tho’ I have yet reaped nothing but some tiny sallad, and withered carrots. But a garden’s a garden anywhere, and twice a garden in London.

The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb — Vol 6 Letters 1821-1842.

Charles and Mary Lamb have moved out of their rented flat in Covent Garden to the outer suburb of Islington, where he has bought a house of his own. He is writing to Bernard Barton, the Quaker Poet on September 17, 1823. Lamb was then 48 years old, and took to gardening, as well as home-owning, with enthusiasm. This not-so-tiny salad was growing in a tiny patch of soil in Canterbury, and grew to edible size. Let’s look forward to growing and eating our own salads this coming summer!