The Lambs of London (18 page)

“This cherry nose,

These yellow cowslip cheeks,

Are gone, are gone!

Lovers, make moan;

His eyes were green as leeks!”

She only grew restless when her brother stepped forward in the role of Oberon and began to recite the final speech:

“To the best bride-bed will we,

Which by us shall blessed be;

And the issue there create

Ever shall be fortunate.”

She sighed very loudly when he spoke the line,
“Ever true in loving be,”
and then suddenly leaned forward as if intending to pray. But her arms were dangling by her sides. As Tom Coates said later, “She died as quietly as she had lived.” The cause of her death was later pronounced to be “disorder of the arteries.”

W
ILLIAM IRELAND DID NOT
abandon the world of writing. He published more than sixty-seven books, among them
Ballads in Imitation of the Antients
and
Neglected Genius. A Poem Illustrating the Untimely and Unfortunate Fate of Many British Poets. Containing Imitations of Their Different Styles.

He also opened a subscription library in Kennington. Among the books that he sent out to borrowers was
Tales from Shakespeare
by Charles and Mary Lamb. He never again alluded to his own Shakespearian adventure. But every year, on the anniversary of Mary Lamb’s death, he left a bouquet of red flowers beside her grave at St. Andrew’s, Holborn. Charles Lamb grew old in the service of the East India Company, together with Tom Coates and Benjamin Milton, and was buried in the same churchyard.

A NOTE ABOUT THE AUTHOR

PETER ACKROYD
is a master of the historical novel:
The Last Testament of Oscar Wilde
won the Somerset Maugham Award;
Hawksmoor
was awarded both the Whitbread Novel of the Year and the
Guardian
fiction prize; and
Chatterton
was short-listed for the Booker Prize. His most recent historical novel was
The Clerkenwell Tales
. He is also the author of
Shakespeare: The Biography
and the Ackroyd’s Brief Lives series.

ALSO BY PETER ACKROYD

Fiction

The Great Fire of London

The Last Testament of Oscar Wilde

Hawksmoor

Chatterton

First Light

English Music

The House of Doctor Dee

Dan Leno and the Limehouse Golem

Milton in America

The Plato Papers

The Clerkenwell Tales

Nonfiction

Dressing Up: Transvestism and Drag:

The History of an Obsession

London: The Biography

Albion: The Origins of the English Imagination

Biography

Ezra Pound and His World

T. S. Eliot

Dickens

Blake

The Life of Thomas More

Shakespeare: The Biography

Ackroyd’s Brief Lives

Chaucer

J.M.W. Turner

Poetry

Ouch!

The Diversions of Purley and Other Poems

Criticism

Notes for a New Culture

The Collection: Journalism, Reviews,

Essays, Short Stories, Lectures

edited by Thomas Wright

FIRST ANCHOR BOOKS EDITION, JANUARY 2007

Copyright © 2006 by Peter Ackroyd

All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Anchor Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, and in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto. Originally published in hardcover in the United States by Doubleday, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, in 2006.

Anchor Books and colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Ackroyd, Peter, 1949–

The Lambs of London / Peter Ackroyd.—1st. ed. in the U.S.A.

p. cm.

1. Young men—England—London—Fiction. 2. Antiquarian booksellers—England—London—Fiction. 3. London (England)—Intellectual life—19th century—Fiction. I. Title.

PR6051.C64L27 2006

823'.914—dc22

2005055930

www.anchorbooks.com

eISBN: 978-0-307-38702-8

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