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Your very faithful Serv^t.

W M Thackeray

It may be taken for granted that the Manuscripts reached Thackeray in the course of a week. The lecture on Sterne and Goldsmith—the last of the series—was read at Willis’s Rooms on the afternoon of Thursday July 3, 1851.^[6] After a long delay, the Manuscripts were returned to Mr. Gibbs, with a comment on the man Sterne as revealed by the Journal. I give the letter just as Thackeray wrote it, save for erasures and substitutions:

Kensington

12 September [1851.]

Dear Sir

Immediately after my lectures I went abroad and beg your pardon for having forgotten in the hurry of my departure to return the MSS w^h. you were good enough to lend me. I am sorry that reading the Brahmin’s letters to his Brahmine did not increase my respect for the Reverend Laurence Sterne.

In his printed letters there is one XCII^[7] addressed to Lady P. full of love and despair for my Lady & pronouncing that he had got a ticket for Miss xxx benefit that night, which he might use if deprived of the superior delight of seeing Lady P. I looked in the Dramatic Register (I think is the name of the book) to find what lady took a benefit on a Tuesday, & found the names of 2, 1 at Covent Garden, & one at Drury Lane, on the same Tuesday evening, and no other Miss’s benefit on a Tuesday during the Season. Miss Poyntz I think is one of the names, but I’m 5 miles from the book as I write to you, and forget the lady’s name & the day.