The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb — Volume 2 · Chapter 64"elia."
This chapter is not translated yet. You are reading the original.
[Footnote 1: "Clearly a fictitious appellation; for if we admit the latter of these names to be in a manner English, what is Leigh? Christian nomenclature knows no such."]
[Footnote 2: "It is clearly of transatlantic origin."]
[Footnote 3: See page 15 of this volume.]
[Footnote 4: "Imperfectus adhuc infans genetricis ab alvo Eripitur, patrioque tener (si credere dignum est) Insuitur femori— Tutaque bis geniti sunt incunabula Bacchi.
"Metamorph. lib. iii., 310."]
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Page 48. ALL FOOLS' DAY.
London Magazine, April, 1821.
Page 49, line 1. Empedocles. Lamb appended this footnote in the London Magazine:—
He who, to be deem'd A god, leap'd fondly into Etna's flames.
Paradise Lost, III., lines 470-471 [should be 469-470].
Page 49, line 5. Cleombrotus. Lamb's London Magazine footnote:—
He who, to enjoy Plato's Elysium, leap'd into the sea.
Paradise Lost, III., lines 471-472.
Page 49, line 8. Plasterers at Babel. Lamb's London Magazine note:—
The builders next of Babel on the plain Of Sennaar.
Paradise Lost, III., lines 466-467.
Page 49, line 10. My right hand. Lamb, it is probably unnecessary to remind the reader, stammered too.
Page 49, line 13 from foot. Duns, Duns Scotus (1265?-1308?), metaphysician, author of De modis significandi sive Grammatica Speculativa and other philosophic works. Known as Doctor Subtilis. There was nothing of Duns in the London Magazine; the sentence ran: "Mr. Hazlitt, I cannot indulge you in your definitions." This was at a time when Lamb and Hazlitt were not on good terms.
Page 49, last line. Honest R——. Lamb's Key gives "Ramsay, London Library, Ludgate Street; now extinct." I have tried in vain to find out more about Ramsay. The London Library was established at 5 Ludgate Street in 1785. Later, the books were lodged at Charles Taylor's house in Hatton Garden, and were finally removed to the present London Institute in Finsbury Circus.
Page 50, line 6. Good Granville S——. Lamb's Key gives Granville Sharp. This was the eccentric Granville Sharp, the Quaker abolitionist (1735-1813).
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Page 51. A QUAKER'S MEETING.
London Magazine, April, 1821.
Lamb's connection with Quakers was somewhat intimate throughout his life. In early days he was friendly with the Birmingham Lloyds—Charles, Robert and Priscilla, of the younger generation, and their father, Charles Lloyd, the banker and translator of Horace and Homer (see Charles Lamb and the Lloyds, 1898); and later with Bernard Barton, the Quaker poet of Woodbridge. Also he had loved from afar Hester Savory, the subject of his poem "Hester" (see Vol. IV.). A passage from a letter written in February, 1797, to Coleridge, bears upon this essay:—"Tell Lloyd I have had thoughts of turning Quaker, and have been reading, or am rather just beginning to read, a most capital book, good thoughts in good language, William Penn's 'No Cross, No Crown,' I like it immensely. Unluckily I went to one of his meetings, tell him, in St. John Street [Clerkenwell] yesterday, and saw a man under all the agitations and workings of a fanatic, who believed himself under the influence of some 'inevitable presence.' This cured me of Quakerism; I love it in the books of Penn and Woolman, but I detest the vanity of a man thinking he speaks by the Spirit…."
Both Forster and Hood tell us that Lamb in outward appearance resembled a Quaker.
Page 52, line 13. The uncommunicating muteness of fishes. Lamb had in mind this thought on the silence of fishes when he was at work on John Woodvil. Simon remarks, in the exquisite passage (Vol. IV.) in reply to the question, "What is it you love?"
The fish in th' other element That knows no touch of eloquence.
Page 53, second quotation. "How reverend …" An adaptation of Congreve's description of York Minster in "The Mourning Bride" (Mary Lamb's "first play"), Act I., Scene 1:—
How reverend is the face of this tall pile … Looking tranquillity!
Page 53, middle. Fox and Dewesbury. George Fox (1624-1691) founded the Society of Friends. William Dewesbury was one of Fox's first colleagues, and a famous preacher. William Penn (1644-1718), the founder of Pennsylvania, was the most illustrious of the early converts to Quakerism. Lamb refers to him again, before his judges, in the essay on "Imperfect Sympathies," page 73. George Fox's Journal was lent to Lamb by a friend of Bernard Barton's in 1823. On returning it, Lamb remarked (February 17, 1823):—"I have quoted G.F. in my 'Quaker's Meeting' as having said he was 'lifted up in spirit' (which I felt at the time to be not a Quaker phrase),' and the Judge and Jury were as dead men under his feet.' I find no such words in his Journal, and I did not get them from Sewell, and the latter sentence I am sure I did not mean to invent. I must have put some other Quaker's words into his mouth."
Sewel was a Dutchman—William Sewel (1654-1720). His title runs: History of the Rise, Increase and Progress of the Christian People called Quakers, written originally in Low Dutch by W. Sewel, and by himself translated into English, 1722. James Naylor (1617-1660) was one of the early Quaker martyrs—"my favourite" Lamb calls him in a letter. John Woolman (1720-1772) was an American Friend. His principal writings are to be found in A Journal of the Life, Gospel Labours, and Christian Experiences of that faithful minister of Jesus Christ, John Woolman, late of Mount Holly in the Province of Jersey, North America, 1795. Modern editions are obtainable.
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Page 56. THE OLD AND THE NEW SCHOOLMASTER.
London Magazine, May, 1821.
Page 56, line 9. Ortelius … Arrowsmith. Abraham Ortellius (1527-1598), the Dutch geographer and the author of Theatrum Orbis Terræ, 1570. Aaron Arrowsmith (1750-1823) was a well-known cartographer at the beginning of the nineteenth century. Lamb would perhaps have known something of his Atlas of Southern India, a very useful work at the East India House.
Page 56, line 13. A very dear friend. Barren Field (see the essay on "Distant Correspondents").
Page 56, line 10 from foot. My friend M. Thomas Manning (1772-1840), the mathematician and traveller, and Lamb's correspondent.
Page 56, last line. "On Devon's leafy shores." From Wordsworth's Excursion, III.
Page 57, line 16. Daily jaunts. Though Lamb was then (1821) living at 20 Great Russell Street, Covent Garden, he rented rooms at 14 Kingsland Row, Dalston, in which to take holidays and do his literary work undisturbed. At that time Dalston, which adjoins Shackleton, was the country and Kingsland Green an open space opposite Lamb's lodging.
Page 58, line 23. The North Pole Expedition. This would probably be Sir John Franklin's expedition which set out in 1819 and ended in disaster, the subject of Franklin's book, Narrative of a Journey to the Shores of the Polar Sea in the years 1819, 20, 21, 22 (1823). Sir John Ross made an expedition in 1818, and Sir William Edward Parry in 1819, and again in 1821-1823 with Lyon. The panorama was possibly at Burford's Panorama in the Strand, afterwards moved to Leicester Square.
Page 60, line 17. Tractate on Education. Milton's Tractate on Education, addressed to his friend, Samuel Hartlib, was published in 1644. The quotation above is from that work. This paragraph of Lamb's essay was afterwards humorously expanded in his "Letter to an Old Gentleman whose Education has been Neglected" (see Vol. I.).
Page 60, last line. Mr. Bartley's Orrery. George Bartley (1782?-1858), the comedian, lectured on astronomy and poetry at the Lyceum during Lent at this time. An orrery is a working model of the solar system. The Panopticon was, I assume, a forerunner of the famous Panopticon in Leicester Square.
Page 61, line 8. "Plaything for an hour." A quotation, from Charles and Mary Lamb's Poetry for Children—"Parental Recollections":—
A child's a plaything for an hour.
Page 63, end of essay. "Can I reproach her for it." After these words, in the London Magazine, came:—
"These kind of complaints are not often drawn from me. I am aware that I am a fortunate, I mean a prosperous man. My feelings prevent me from transcribing any further."
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Page 63. VALENTINE'S DAY.
This essay first appeared in The Examiner, February 14 and 15, 1819, and again in The Indicator, February 14, 1821. Signed ***
Page 64, line 18. Twopenny postman. Hone computed, in his Every-Day Book, Vol. I., 1825, that "two hundred thousand letters beyond the usual daily average annually pass through the two-penny post-office in London on Valentine's Day." The Bishop's vogue is now (1911) almost over.
Page 65, line 15 from foot. E.B. Lamb's Key gives "Edward Burney, half brother of Miss Burney." This was Edward Francis Burney (1760-1848), who illustrated many old authors, among them Richardson.
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Page 66. IMPERFECT SYMPATHIES.
London Magazine, August, 1821, where the title ran: "Jews, Quakers, Scotchmen, and other Imperfect Sympathies."
Page 69, line 18 from foot. A print … after Leonardo. The Virgin of the Rocks. See Vol. IV. for Lamb's and his sister's verses on this picture. Crabb Robinson's MS. diary tells us that the Scotchman was one Smith, a friend of Godwin. His exact reply to Lamb's remark about "my beauty" was: "Why, sir, from all I have heard of you, as well as from what I have myself seen, I certainly entertain a very high opinion of your abilities, but I confess that I have not formed any opinion concerning your personal pretensions."
Page 70, line 10. The poetry of Burns. "Burns was the god of my idolatry," Lamb wrote to Coleridge in 1796. Coleridge's lines on Burns, "To a Friend who had declared his intention of writing no more poetry," were addressed to Lamb. Barry Cornwall records seeing Lamb kiss his copy of the poet.
Page 70, line 17. You can admire him. In the London Magazine Lamb added:—
"I have a great mind to give up Burns. There is certainly a bragging spirit of generosity, a swaggering assertion of independence, and all that, in his writings."
Page 70, line 18. Smollett. Tobias George Smollett (1721-1771), the novelist, came of a Dumbartonshire family. Rory was Roderick Random's schoolboy name. His companion was Strap. See Roderick Random, Chapter XIII., for the passage in question. Smollett continued the History of England of David Hume (1711-1776), also a Scotchman, and one of the authors whom Lamb could not read (see "Detached Thoughts on Books and Reading," page 196).
Lamb's criticism of Scotchmen did not pass without comment. The pleasantest remark made upon it was that of Christopher North (John Wilson) some dozen years later (after he had met Lamb), in a Blackwood paper entitled "Twaddle on Tweedside" (May, 1833), wherein he wrote:—
Charles Lamb ought really not to abuse Scotland in the pleasant way he so often does in the sylvan shades of Enfield; for Scotland loves Charles Lamb; but he is wayward and wilful in his wisdom, and conceits that many a Cockney is a better man even than Christopher North. But what will not Christopher forgive to Genius and Goodness? Even Lamb bleating libels on his native land. Nay, he learns lessons of humanity, even from the mild malice of Elia, and breathes a blessing on him and his household in their Bower of Rest.
Coleridge was much pleased by this little reference to his friend. He described it as "very sweet indeed" (see his Table Talk, May 14, 1833).
Page 70, line 14 from foot. Hugh of Lincoln. Hugh was a small Lincoln boy who, tradition states, was tortured to death by the Jews. His dead body being touched by a blind woman, she received sight.
Many years earlier Lamb had spoken of the Jew in English society with equal frankness (see his note to the "Jew of Malta" in the Dramatic Specimens).
Page 71, line 18. B——. John Braham, née Abraham (1774?-1856), the great tenor. Writing to Manning in 1808, Lamb says:—"Do you like Braham's singing? The little Jew has bewitched me. I follow him like as the boys followed Tom the Piper. He cures me of melancholy as David cured Saul…. I was insensible to music till he gave me a new sense…. Braham's singing, when it is impassioned, is finer than Mrs. Siddons's or Mr. Kemble's acting! and when it is not impassioned it is as good as hearing a person of fine sense talking. The brave little Jew!"
Two years later Lamb tells Manning of Braham's absence from London, adding: "He was a rare composition of the Jew, the gentleman, and the angel; yet all these elements mixed up so kindly in him that you could not tell which preponderated." In this essay Lamb refers to Braham's singing in Handel's oratorio "Israel in Egypt." Concerning Braham's abandonment of the Jewish faith see Lamb's sarcastic essay "The Religion of Actors," Vol. I., page 338.
Page 73, line 17 from foot. I was travelling. Lamb did not really take part in this story. It was told him by Sir Anthony Carlisle (1768-1840), the surgeon, as he confessed to his Quaker friend, Bernard Barton (March 11, 1823), who seemed to miss its point. Lamb described Carlisle as "the best story-teller I ever heard."
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Page 74. WITCHES, AND OTHER NIGHT-FEARS.
London Magazine, October, 1821.
Compare with this essay Maria Howe's story of "The Witch Aunt," in Mrs. Leicester's School (see Vol. III.), which Lamb had written thirteen years earlier.
Page 75, line 12 from foot. History of the Bible, by Stackhouse. Thomas Stackhouse (1677-1752) was rector of Boldon, in Durham; his New History of the Holy Bible from the Beginning of the World to the Establishment of Christianity—the work in question—was published in 1737.
Page 75, line 6 from foot. The Witch raising up Samuel. This paragraph was the third place in which Lamb recorded his terror of this picture of the Witch of Endor in Stackhouse's Bible, but the first occasion in which he took it to himself. In one draft of John Woodvil (see Vol. IV.), the hero says:—
I can remember when a child the maids Would place me on their lap, as they undrest me, As silly women use, and tell me stories Of Witches—make me read "Glanvil on Witchcraft," And in conclusion show me in the Bible, The old Family Bible, with the pictures in it, The 'graving of the Witch raising up Samuel, Which so possest my fancy, being a child, That nightly in my dreams an old Hag came And sat upon my pillow.
Then again, in Mrs. Leicester's School, in the story of Maria Howe, called "The Witch Aunt," one of the three stories in that book which Lamb wrote, Stackhouse's Bible is found once more. In my large edition I give a reproduction of the terrible picture. Page 77, foot. Dear little T.H. This was the unlucky passage which gave Southey his chief text in his criticism of Elia as a book wanting "a sounder religious feeling," and which led to Lamb's expostulatory "Letter" (see Vol. I.). Southey commented thus:—
This poor child, instead of being trained up in the way in which he should go, had been bred in the ways of modern philosophy; he had systematically been prevented from knowing anything of that Saviour who said, "Suffer little children to come unto Me, and forbid them not; for of such is the Kingdom of Heaven;" care had been taken that he should not pray to God, nor lie down at night in reliance upon His good Providence!
T.H. was Thornton Hunt, Leigh Hunt's eldest son and Lamb's "favourite child" (see verses to him in Vol. IV.).
Page 79, line 18 from foot. Barry Cornwall. Bryan Waller Procter (1787-1874), Lamb's friend. The reference is to "A Dream," a poem in Barry Cornwall's Dramatic Scenes, 1819, which Lamb greatly admired. See his sonnet to the poet in Vol. IV., where it is mentioned again.
Page 80, last paragraph of essay. In the original MS. of this essay (now in the Dyce and Forster collection at South Kensington) the last paragraph ran thus:—
"When I awoke I came to a determination to write prose all the rest of my life; and with submission to some of our young writers, who are yet diffident of their powers, and balancing perhaps between verse and prose, they might not do unwisely to decide the preference by the texture of their natural dreams. If these are prosaic, they may depend upon it they have not much to expect in a creative way from their artificial ones. What dreams must not Spenser have had!"
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Page 80. MY RELATIONS.
London Magazine, June, 1821.
Page 80, beginning. At that point of life. Lamb was forty-six on February 10, 1821.
Page 80, line 12 of essay. I had an aunt. Aunt Hetty, who died in 1797 (see the essay on "Christ's Hospital").
Page 81, line 6. The chapel in Essex-street. The headquarters of "that heresy," Unitarianism. Lamb was at first a Unitarian, but afterwards dropped away from all sects.
Page 81, line 23. Brother, or sister, I never had any—to know them. Lamb is writing strictly as the imagined Elia, Elia being Lamb in mind rather than Lamb in fact. It amused him to present his brother John and his sister Mary as his cousins James and Bridget Elia. We have here an excellent example of his whimsical blending of truth and invention: brothers and sisters he denies, yet admits one sister, Elizabeth, who died in both their infancies. Lamb had in reality two sisters named Elizabeth, the former of whom he never knew. She was born in 1762. The second Elizabeth, his parents' fifth child, was born in 1768, seven years before Charles. Altogether the Lambs had seven children, of whom only John (born 1763), Mary Anne (born 1764) and Charles (born 1775) grew up. Again Lamb confesses to several cousins in Hertfordshire, and to two others. The two others were fictitious, but it was true that he had Hertfordshire relations (see the essay "Mackery End, in Hertfordshire").
John Lamb's character is perhaps sufficiently described in this essay and in "Dream-Children." He was a well-to-do official in the South-Sea House, succeeding John Tipp as accountant. Crabb Robinson found him too bluff and noisy to be bearable; and he once knocked Hazlitt down in a dispute about painting. He died on October 26, 1821, to his brother's great grief, leaving Charles everything. He married late in life a Mrs. Dowden. Probably she had her own money and needed none of her second husband's. Hence the peculiarity of the will. Mrs. John Lamb died in 1826.
John Lamb's sympathy with animals led him to write in 1810 a pamphlet entitled A Letter to the Right Hon. William Windham, on his opposition to Lord Erskine's Bill for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals—Mr. Windham having expressed it as his opinion that the subject was not one for legislation. Lamb sent the pamphlet to Crabb Robinson on February 7, 1810, saying:—"My Brother whom you have met at my rooms (a plump good looking man of seven and forty!) has written a book about humanity, which I transmit to you herewith. Wilson the Publisher has put it in his head that you can get it Reviewed for him. I dare say it is not in the scope of your Review—but if you could put it into any likely train, he would rejoyce. For alas! our boasted Humanity partakes of Vanity. As it is, he teazes me to death with chusing to suppose that I could get it into all the Reviews at a moment's notice.—I!! who have been set up as a mark for them to throw at and would willingly consign them all to Hell flames and Megæra's snaky locks.
"But here's the Book—and don't shew it Mrs. Collier, for I remember she makes excellent Eel soup, and the leading points of the Book are directed against that very process."
This is the passage—one red-hot sentence—concerning eels:—
"If an eel had the wisdom of Solomon, he could not help himself in the ill-usage that befalls him; but if he had, and were told, that it was necessary for our subsistence that he should be eaten, that he must be skinned first, and then broiled; if ignorant of man's usual practice, he would conclude that the cook would so far use her reason as to cut off his head first, which is not fit for food, as then he might be skinned and broiled without harm; for however the other parts of his body might be convulsed during the culinary operations, there could be no feeling of consciousness therein, the communication with the brain being cut off; but if the woman were immediately to stick a fork into his eye, skin him alive, coil him up in a skewer, head and all, so that in the extremest agony he could not move, and forthwith broil him to death: then were the same Almighty Power that formed man from the dust, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, to call the eel into a new existence, with a knowledge of the treatment he had undergone, and he found that the instinctive disposition which man has in common with other carnivorous animals, which inclines him to cruelty, was not the sole cause of his torments; but that men did not attend to consider whether the sufferings of such insignificant creatures could be lessened: that eels were not the only sufferers; that lobsters and other shell fish were put into cold water and boiled to death by slow degrees in many parts of the sea coast; that these, and many other such wanton atrocities, were the consequence of carelessness occasioned by the pride of mankind despising their low estate, and of the general opinion that there is no punishable sin in the ill-treatment of animals designed for our use; that, therefore, the woman did not bestow so much thought on him as to cut his head off first, and that she would have laughed at any considerate person who should have desired such a thing; with what fearful indignation might he inveigh against the unfeeling metaphysician that, like a cruel spirit alarmed at the appearance of a dawning of mercy upon animals, could not rest satisfied with opposing the Cruelty Prevention Bill by the plea of possible inconvenience to mankind, highly magnified and emblazoned, but had set forth to the vulgar and unthinking of all ranks, in the jargon of proud learning, that man's obligations of morality towards the creatures subjected to his use are imperfect obligations!"
The poem "The Beggar-Man," in Poetry for Children, 1809 (see Vol. III.), was also from John Lamb's pen.
Page 85, asterisks. Society for the Relief of—Distrest Sailors, says Lamb's Key.
Page 86, last line of essay. "Through the green plains of pleasant Hertfordshire." This line occurs in a sonnet of Lamb's written many years before the essay (see Vol. IV.). Probably, however, Lamb did not invent it, for (the late W.J. Craig pointed out) in Leland's Itinerary, which Lamb must have known, if only on account of the antiquary's remarks on Hertfordshire, is quoted a poem by William Vallans (fl. 1578-1590), "The Tale of the Two Swans," containing the line—
The fruitful fields of pleasant Hertfordshire—
which one can easily understand would have lingered in Lamb's mind very graciously.
In the London Magazine the essay ended with the words, "Till then, Farewell."
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Page 86. MACKERY END, IN HERTFORDSHIRE.
London Magazine, July, 1821. Reprinted in Elia, 1823, as written, save for the omission of italics from many passages.
Bridget Elia, who is met also in "Mrs. Battle," in "My Relations," and in "Old China," was, of course, Mary Lamb.
Page 86, line 11 from foot. She must have a story. Thomas Westwood, in his reminiscences of the Lambs in later years, printed in Notes and Queries, speaks of Mary Lamb's passion for novel-reading in the Enfield days, when he was a boy.
Page 87, line 6. Margaret Newcastle. Lamb's devotion to this lady is expressed again in the essay on "The Two Races of Men," in the essay on Beggars, and in "Detached Thoughts on Books and Reading."
Page 87, line 8. Free-thinkers … William Godwin, perhaps alone among Lamb's friends, quite answers to the description of leader of novel philosophies and systems; but there had been also Thomas Holcroft and John Thelwall among the Lambs' acquaintance. And Hazlitt and Leigh Hunt would come within this description.
Page 87, foot. Good old English reading. The reference is to Samuel Salt's library in the Temple (see note to "The Old Benchers of the Inner Temple").
Page 88, line 14. Mackery End. The farmhouse still stands, although new front rooms have been added. At the end of the present hall, one passes through what was in Lamb's time the front door, and thereafter the house is exactly as it used to be save that its south windows have been filled in. By kind invitation of Mr. Dolphin Smith, the farmer, who had been there over forty years, I spent in 1902 some time in the same parlour in which the Lambs had been entertained. Harpenden, on the north-west, has grown immensely since Lamb's day, and the houses at the Folly, between Wheathampstead and the Cherry Trees, are new; but Mackery End, or Mackrye End as the farmer's waggons have it, remains unencroached upon. Near by is the fine old mansion which is Mackery End house proper; Lamb's Mackery End was the farm.
Lamb's first visit there must have been when he was a very little boy—somewhere about 1780. Probably we may see recollections of it in Mary Lamb's story "The Farmhouse" in Mrs. Leicester's School (see Vol. III. of this edition).
Page 88, line 18. A great-aunt. Mary Field, Lamb's grandmother, was Mary Bruton, whose sister married, as he says, a Gladman, and was the great-aunt mentioned. The present occupier of the farm is neither Gladman nor Bruton; but both names are still to be found in the county. A Miss Sarah Bruton, a direct descendant of Lamb's great-aunt, was living at Wheathampstead in 1902. She had on her walls two charming oval portraits of ancestresses, possibly—for she was uncertain as to their identity—two of the handsome sisters whom Lamb extols.
Writing to Manning, May 28, 1819, Lamb says:—"How are my cousins, the Gladmans of Wheathampstead, and farmer Bruton? Mrs. Bruton is a glorious woman.
"Hail, Mackery End!
"This is a fragment of a blank verse poem which I once meditated, but got no further."
Page 89, verse. "But thou, that didst appear so fair …" From Wordsworth's "Yarrow Visited," Stanza 6. Writing to Wordsworth in 1815, Lamb said of this stanza that he thought "no lovelier" could be found in "the wide world of poetry." From a letter to Taylor, of the London Magazine, belonging to the summer of 1821, we gather that the proof-reader had altered the last word of the third line to "air" to make it rhyme to "fair." Lamb says: "Day is the right reading, and I implore you to restore it."
Page 90, line 4. B.F. Barron Field (see note to "Distant Correspondents"), then living in Sydney, where he composed, and had printed for private circulation in 1819, a volume of poems reviewed by Lamb (see Vol. I.), in 1819, one of which was entitled "The Kangaroo." It was the first book printed in Australia. Field edited Heywood for the old Shakespeare Society. Although a Field, he was no kinsman of Lamb's.
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Page 90. MODERN GALLANTRY.
London Magazine, November, 1822.
De Quincey writes in "London Reminiscences" concerning the present essay:—
Among the prominent characteristics of Lamb, I know not how it is that I have omitted to notice the peculiar emphasis and depth of his courtesy. This quality was in him a really chivalrous feeling, springing from his heart, and cherished with the sanctity of a duty. He says somewhere in speaking of himself[?] under the mask of a third person, whose character he is describing, that, in passing a servant girl, even at a street-crossing, he used to take off his hat. Now, the spirit of Lamb's gallantry would have prompted some such expression of homage, though the customs of the country would not allow it to be literally fulfilled, for the very reason that would prompt it—viz., in order to pay respect—since the girl would, in such a case, suppose a man laughing at her. But the instinct of his heart was to think highly of female nature, and to pay a real homage (not the hollow demonstration of outward honour which a Frenchman calls his "homage," and which is really a mask for contempt) to the sacred idea of pure and virtuous womanhood.
Barry Cornwall has the following story in his Memoir of Lamb:—
Lamb, one day, encountered a small urchin loaded with a too heavy package of grocery. It caused him to tremble and stop. Charles inquired where he was going, took (although weak) the load upon his own shoulder, and managed to carry it to Islington, the place of destination. Finding that the purchaser of the grocery was a female, he went with the urchin before her, and expressed a hope that she would intercede with the poor boy's master, in order to prevent his being over-weighted in future. "Sir," said the dame, after the manner of Tisiphone, frowning upon him, "I buy my sugar and have nothing to do with the man's manner of sending it." Lamb at once perceived the character of the purchaser, and taking off his hat, said, humbly, "Then I hope, ma'am, you'll give me a drink of small beer." This was of course refused. He afterwards called upon the grocer, on the boy's behalf. With what effect I do not know.
Page 90, line 2 of essay. Upon the point of gallantry. Here, in the London Magazine, came the words:—
"as upon a thing altogether unknown to the old classic ages. This has been defined to consist in a certain obsequiousness, or deferential respect, paid to females, as females."
Page 92, line 3. Joseph Paice. Joseph Paice was, as Lamb pointed out to Barton in a letter in January, 1830, a real person, and all that Lamb records. According to Miss Anne Manning's Family Pictures, 1860, Joseph Paice, who was a friend of Thomas Coventry, took Lamb into his office at 27 Bread Street Hill somewhere in 1789 or 1790 to learn book-keeping and business habits. He passed thence to the South-Sea House and thence to the East India House. Miss Manning (who was the author of Flemish Interiors) helps to fill out Lamb's sketch into a full-length portrait. She tells us that Mr. Paice's life was one long series of gentle altruisms and the truest Christianities.
Charles Lamb speaks of his holding an umbrella over a market-woman's fruit-basket, lest her store should be spoilt by a sudden shower; and his uncovering his head to a servant-girl who was requesting him to direct her on her way. These traits are quite in keeping with many that can still be authenticated:—his carrying presents of game himself, for instance, to humble friends, who might ill have spared a shilling to a servant; and his offering a seat in his hackney-coach to some poor, forlorn, draggled beings, who were picking their way along on a rainy day. Sometimes these chance guests have proved such uncongenial companions, that the kind old man has himself faced the bad weather rather than prolong the acquaintance, paying the hackney-coachman for setting down the stranger at the end of his fare. At lottery times, he used to be troubled with begging visits from certain improvident hangers-on, who had risked their all in buying shares of an unlucky number. About the time the numbers were being drawn, there would be a ring at the gate-bell, perhaps at dinner time. His spectacles would be elevated, an anxious expression would steal over his face, as he half raised himself from his seat, to obtain a glance at the intruder—"Ah, I thought so, I expected as much," he would gently say. "I expected I should soon have a visit from poor Mrs. —— or Mrs. ——. Will you excuse me, my dear madam," (to my grandmother) "for a moment, while I just tell her it is quite out of my power to help her?" counting silver into his hand all the time. Then, a parley would ensue at the hall-door—complainant telling her tale in a doleful voice: "My good woman, I really cannot," etc.; and at last the hall-door would be shut. "Well, sir," my grandmother used to say, as Mr. Paice returned to his seat, "I do not think you have sent Mrs. —— away quite penniless." "Merely enough for a joint of meat, my good madam—just a trifle to buy her a joint of meat."
Family Pictures should be consulted by any one who would know more of this gentleman and of Susan Winstanly.
Page 92, line 5. Edwards. Thomas Edwards (1699-1757), author of Canons of Criticism, 1748. The sonnet in question, which was modelled on that addressed by Milton to Cyriack Skinner, was addressed to Paice, as the author's nephew, bidding him carry on the family line. Paice, however, as Lamb tells us, did not marry.
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Page 94. THE OLD BENCHERS OF THE INNER TEMPLE.
London Magazine, September, 1821.
Lamb's connection with the Temple was fairly continuous until 1817, when he was thirty-eight. He was born at No. 2 Crown Office Row in 1775, and he did not leave it, except for visits to Hertfordshire, until 1782, when he entered Christ's Hospital. There he remained, save for holidays, until 1789, returning then to Crown Office Row for the brief period between leaving school and the death of Samuel Salt, under whose roof the Lambs dwelt, in February, 1792. The 7 Little Queen Street, the 45 and 36 Chapel Street, Pentonville, and the first 34 Southampton Buildings (with Gutch) periods, followed; but in 1801 Lamb and his sister were back in the Temple again, at 16 Mitre Court Buildings, since rebuilt. They moved from there, after a brief return to 34 Southampton Buildings, to 4 Inner Temple Lane (since rebuilt and now called Johnson's Buildings) in 1809, where they remained until the move to 20 Great Russell Street in 1817. With each change after that (except for another and briefer sojourn in Southampton Buildings in 1830), Lamb's home became less urban. His last link with the Temple may be said to have snapped with the death of Randal Morris, sub-treasurer of the Inner Temple, in 1827 (see "A Death-Bed"), although now and then he slept at Crabb Robinson's chambers.
The Worshipful Masters of the Bench of the Hon. Society of the Inner Temple—to give the Benchers their full title—have the government of the Inner Temple in their hands.
Page 97, line 12 from foot, J——ll. Joseph Jekyll, great-nephew of Joseph Jekyll, Master of the Rolls, well known as a wit and diner-out. He became a Bencher in 1795, and was made a Master in Chancery in 1815, through the influence of the Prince Regent. Under his direction the hall of the Inner Temple and the Temple Church were restored, and he compiled a little book entitled Facts and Observations relating to the Temple Church and the Monuments contained in it, 1811. He became a K.C. in 1805, and died in 1837, aged eighty-five. Jekyll was a friend of George Dyer, and was interested in Lamb's other friends, the Norrises. & letter from him, thanking Lamb for a copy of the Last Essays of Elia, is printed in Mr. W.C. Hazlitt's The Lambs. He had another link of a kind with Lamb in being M.P. for "sweet Calne in Wiltshire." Jekyll's chambers were at 6 King's Bench Walk. On the same staircase lived for a while George Colman the Younger.
Page 97, line 9 from foot. Thomas Coventry. Thomas Coventry became a Bencher in 1766. He was the nephew of William, fifth Earl of Coventry, and resided at North Cray Place, near Bexley, in Kent, and in Serjeant's Inn, where he died in 1797, in his eighty-fifth year. He is buried in the Temple Church. Coventry was a sub-governor of the South-Sea House, and it was he who presented Lamb's friend, James White, to Christ's Hospital. He was M.P. for Bridport from 1754 to 1780. As an illustration of Coventry's larger benefactions it may be remarked that he presented £10,000 worth of South Sea stock to Christ's Hospital in 1782.
Page 98, line 9. Samuel Salt. Samuel Salt was the son of the Rev. John Salt, of Audley, in Staffordshire; and he married a daughter of Lord Coventry, thus being connected with Thomas Coventry by marriage. He was M.P. for Liskeard for some years, and a governor of the South-Sea House. Samuel Salt, who became a Bencher in 1782, rented at No. 2 Crown Office Row two sets of chambers, in one of which the Lamb family dwelt. John Lamb, Lamb's father, who is described as a scrivener in Charles's Christ's Hospital application form, was Salt's right-hand man, not only in business, but privately, while Mrs. Lamb acted as housekeeper and possibly as cook. Samuel Salt played the part of tutelary genius to John Lamb's two sons. It was he who arranged for Charles to be nominated for Christ's Hospital (by Timothy Yeats); probably he was instrumental also in getting him into the East India House; and in all likelihood it was he who paved the way for the younger John Lamb's position in the South-Sea House. It was also Samuel Salt who gave to Charles and Mary the freedom of his library (see the reference in the essay on "Mackery End"): a privilege which, to ourselves, is the most important of all. Salt died in February, 1792, and is buried in the vault of the Temple Church. He left to John Lamb £500 in South Sea stock and a small annual sum, and to Elizabeth Lamb £200 in money; but with his death the prosperity of the family ceased.
Page 98, line 21. Lovel. See below.
Page 98, line 9 from foot. Miss Blandy. Mary Blandy was the daughter of Francis Blandy, a lawyer at Henley-on-Thames. The statement that she was to inherit £10,000 induced an officer in the marines, named Cranstoun, a son of Lord Cranstoun, to woo her, although he already had a wife living. Her father proving hostile, Cranstoun supplied her with arsenic to bring about his removal. Mr. Blandy died on August 14, 1751. Mary Blandy was arrested, and hanged on April 6 in the next year, after a trial which caused immense excitement. The defence was that Miss Blandy was ignorant of the nature of the powder, and thought it a means of persuading her father to her point of view. In this belief the father, who knew he was being tampered with, also shared. Cranstoun avoided the law, but died in the same year. Lamb had made use of Salt's faux pas, many years earlier, in "Mr. H." (see Vol. IV.).
Page 99, line 13. His eye lacked lustre. At these words, in the London Magazine, came this passage:—
"Lady Mary Wortley Montague was an exception to her sex: she says, in one of her letters, 'I wonder what the women see in S. I do not think him by any means handsome. To me he appears an extraordinary dull fellow, and to want common sense. Yet the fools are all sighing for him.'"
I have not found the passage.
Page 99, line 14. Susan P——. This is Susannah Peirson, sister of the Peter Peirson to whom we shall come directly. Samuel Salt left her a choice of books in his library, together with a money legacy and a silver inkstand, hoping that reading and reflection would make her life "more comfortable." B——d Row would be Bedford Row.
Page 99, line 12 from foot, F., the counsel. I cannot be sure who this was. The Law Directory of that day does not help.
Page 99, foot. Elwes. John Elwes, the miser (1714-1789), whose Life was published in 1790 after running through The World—the work of Topham, that paper's editor, who is mentioned in Lamb's essay on "Newspapers."
Page 100, line 15. Lovel. Lovel was the name by which Lamb refers to his father, John Lamb. We know nothing of him in his prime beyond what is told in this essay, but after the great tragedy, there are in the Letters glimpses of him as a broken, querulous old man. He died in 1799. Of John Lamb's early days all our information is contained in this essay, in his own Poetical Pieces, where he describes his life as a footman, and in the essay on "Poor Relations," where his boyish memories of Lincoln are mentioned. Of his verses it was perhaps too much (though prettily filial) to say they were "next to Swift and Prior;" but they have much good humour and spirit. John Lamb's poems were printed in a thin quarto under the title Poetical Pieces on Several Occasions. The dedication was to "The Forty-Nine Members of the Friendly Society for the Benefit of their Widows, of whom I have the honour of making the Number Fifty," and in the dedicatory epistle it is stated that the Society was in some degree the cause of Number Fifty's commencing author, on account of its approving and printing certain lines which were spoken by him at an annual meeting it the Devil Tavern. The first two poetical pieces are apologues on marriage and the happiness that it should bring, the characters being drawn from bird life. Then follow verses written for the meetings of the Society, and miscellaneous compositions. Of these the description of a lady's footman's daily life, from within, has a good deal of sprightliness, and displays quite a little mastery of the mock-heroic couplet. The last poem is a long rhymed version of the story of Joseph. With this exception, for which Lamb's character-sketch does not quite prepare us, it is very natural to think of the author as Lovel. One of the pieces, a familiar letter to a doctor, begins thus:—
My good friend, For favours to my son and wife, I shall love you whilst I've life, Your clysters, potions, help'd to save, Our infant lambkin from the grave.
The infant lambkin was probably John Lamb, but of course it might have been Charles. The expression, however, proves that punning ran in the family. Lamb's library contained his father's copy of Hudibras.
Lamb's phrase, descriptive of his father's decline, is taken with a variation from his own poems—from the "Lines written on the Day of my Aunt's Funeral" (Blank Verse, 1798):—
One parent yet is left,—a wretched thing, A sad survivor of his buried wife A palsy-smitten, childish, old, old man, A semblance most forlorn of what he was— A merry cheerful man.
Page 100, line 17. "Flapper." This is probably an allusion to the flappers in Gulliver's Travels—the servants who, in Laputa, carried bladders with which every now and then they flapped the mouths and ears of their employers, to recall them to themselves and disperse their meditations.
Page 100, line 9 from foot. Better was not concerned. At these words, in the London Magazine, came:—
"He pleaded the cause of a delinquent in the treasury of the Temple so effectually with S. the then treasurer—that the man was allowed to keep his place. L. had the offer to succeed him. It had been a lucrative promotion. But L. chose to forego the advantage, because the man had a wife and family."
Page 101, line 10. Bayes. Mr. Bayes is the author and stage manager in Buckingham's "Rehearsal." This phrase is not in the play and must have been John Lamb's own, in reference to Garrick.
Page 101, line 23. Peter Pierson. Peter Peirson (as his name was rightly spelled) was the son of Peter Peirson of the parish of St. Andrew's, Holborn, who lived probably in Bedford Row. He became a Bencher in 1800, died in 1808, and is buried in the Temple Church. When Charles Lamb entered the East India House in April, 1792, Peter Peirson and his brother, John Lamb, were his sureties.
Page 101, line 11 from foot. Our great philanthropist. Probably John Howard, whom, as we have seen in the essay on "Christ's Hospital," Lamb did not love. He was of singular sallowness.
Page 101, line 9 from foot. Daines Barrington. Daines Barrington (1727-1800), the correspondent of Gilbert White, many of whose letters in The Natural History of Selborne are addressed to him. Indeed it was Barrington who inspired that work:—a circumstance which must atone for his exterminatory raid on the Temple sparrows. His Chambers were at 5 King's Bench Walk. Barrington became a Bencher in 1777 and died in 1800. He is buried in the Temple Church. His Episcopal brother was Shute Barrington (1734-1826), Bishop successively of Llandaff, Salisbury and Durham.
Page 102, line 1. Old Barton. Thomas Barton, who became a Bencher in 1775 and died in 1791. His chambers were in King's Bench Walk. He is buried in the vault of the Temple Church.
Page 102, line 6. Read. John Reade, who became a Bencher in 1792 and died in 1804. His rooms were in Mitre Court Buildings.
Page 102, line 6. Twopenny. Richard, Twopenny was not a Bencher, but merely a resident in the Temple. He was strikingly thin. Twopenny was stockbroker to the Bank of England, and died in 1809.
Page 102, line 8. Wharry. John Wharry, who became a Bencher in 1801, died in 1812, and was buried in the Temple Church.
Page 102, line 22. Jackson. This was Richard Jackson, some time M.P. for New Romney, to whom Johnson, Boswell tells us, refused the epithet "Omniscient" as blasphemous, changing it to "all knowing." He was made a Bencher in 1770 and died in 1787.
Page 102, foot. Mingay. James Mingay, who was made a Bencher in 1785, died in 1812. He was M.P. for Thetford and senior King's Counsel. He was also Recorder of Aldborough, Crabbe's town. He lived at 4 King's Bench Walk.
Page 103, line 1. Baron Maseres. This was Francis Maseres (1731-1824), mathematician, reformer and Cursiter Baron of the Exchequer. He lived at 5 King's Bench Walk, and at Reigate, and wore a three-cornered hat and ruffles to the end. In April, 1801, Lamb wrote to Manning:—"I live at No. 16 Mitre-court Buildings, a pistol-shot off Baron Maseres'. You must introduce me to the Baron. I think we should suit one another mainly. He Jives on the ground floor, for convenience of the gout; I prefer the attic story, for the air. He keeps three footmen and two maids; I have neither maid nor laundress, not caring to be troubled with them! His forte, I understand, is the higher mathematics; my turn, I confess, is more to poetry and the belles lettres. The very antithesis of our characters would make up a harmony. You must bring the Baron and me together."
Baron Maseres, who was made a Bencher in 1774, died in 1824.
Page 104, line 13. Hookers and Seldens. Richard Hooker (1554?-1600), the "judicious," was Master of the Temple. John Selden (1584-1654), the jurist, who lived in Paper Buildings and practised law in the Temple, was buried in the Temple Church with much pomp.
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Page 104. GRACE BEFORE MEAT.
London Magazine, November, 1821.
This was the essay, Lamb suggested, which Southey may have had in mind when in an article in the Quarterly Review he condemned Elia as wanting "a sounder religious feeling." In his "Letter to Southey" (Vol. I.), which contained Lamb's protest against Southey's strictures, he wrote:—"I am at a loss what particular essay you had in view (if my poor ramblings amount to that appellation) when you were in such a hurry to thrust in your objection, like bad news, foremost.—Perhaps the Paper on 'Saying Graces' was the obnoxious feature. I have endeavoured there to rescue a voluntary duty—good in place, but never, as I remember, literally commanded—from the charge of an undecent formality. Rightly taken, sir, that paper was not against graces, but want of grace; not against the ceremony, but the carelessness and slovenliness so often observed in the performance of it."
Page 108, line 12 from foot. C——. Coleridge; but Lamb may really have said it.
Page 108, foot. The author of the Rambler. Veal pie with prunes in it was perhaps Dr. Johnson's favourite dish.
Page 109, line 10. Dagon. The fish god worshipped by the Philistines. See Judges xvi. 23 and I Samuel v. for the full significance of Lamb's reference.
Page 110, line 16. C.V.L. Charles Valentine le Grice. Later in life, in 1798, Le Grice himself became a clergyman.
Page 110, line 19. Our old form at school. The Christ's Hospital graces in Lamb's day were worded thus:—