December 5 Friday – Sam gave his “Sandwich Islands” lecture at Queen’s Concert Rooms, London [MTPO]. These lectures were given to full and enthusiastic houses and were consistently successful. Stoddard wrote that after his lectures Sam “always felt amiable, and met the people who came to shake hands…and cheerfully gave autographs.” Stoddard observed that “Lecturing excited him and got him started and he would talk for hours.” Stoddard also saw a melancholy side of Sam back at the Langham after lectures, with Sam drinking several cocktails:

Very, very often these nightly talks became a lament. He [Sam] was always afraid of dying in the poorhouse. The burden of his woe was that he would grow old and lose the power of interesting an audience, and become unable to write, and then what would become of him? He had trained himself to do nothing else. He could not work with his hands. There could be no escape. The poorhouse was his destiny. And he’d drink cocktails and grow more and more gloomy and blue until he fairly wept at the misery of his own future [MTL 5: 477-8].

John Colburne wrote to Sam. This is what the MTP calls a “ghost letter,” being referred to somewhere but with no known text. It’s possible this will surface in time [MTP].