Almost 200 years ago, Charles Lamb wrote a letter to Dr. J. Vale Asbury saying that the principle of moderation is best in all things had an obvious exception: liquor.
Lamb made arguments in favor of the enthusiastic consumption alcohol but admitted he could see the other side:
But then you will say: What a shocking sight to see a middle-aged gentleman-and-a-half riding a Gentleman’s back up Parson’s Lane at midnight. Exactly the time for that sort of conveyance, when nobody can see him, nobody but Heaven and his own conscience; now Heaven makes fools, and don’t expect much from her own creation; and as for conscience, She and I have long come to a compromise. I have given up false modesty, and she allows me to abate a little of the true.
Lamb had been directed by his sister, Mary, to write an apology to the Dr. and his wife for having enjoyed their dinner party entirely too much.
Lamb suggested that if the party hadn’t been so thoroughly enjoyable he wouldn’t have been tempted to enjoy it so thoroughly. It’s an eccentric apology, written by an eccentric personality. It ends with Lamb asking the doctor if he knows a cure for a desperate headache.
When I first read Lamb’s essays, I knew that I’d be reading him for the rest of my life. But his stature rose when I read his letters.
In my mind, Lamb and Roy Bedichek are the great letter writers.
• Source: The Portable Charles Lamb, edited and introduced by John Mason Brown; New York: The Viking Press, 1964, pp. 192-4. The letter to Dr. Asbury is believed to have been written in April 1830.
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