F. . . . " 222 [111] Field.
B.F. . . " 238 [118] Baron Field, brother of Frank.
Lord C. . " 243 [121] Lord Camelford.
Sally W----r . " 248 [123] Sally Winter.
J.W. . . " 248 [123] Jas. White, author of _Falstaff's
Letters_.
St. L. . . " 268 [133] No meaning.
B., Rector of ---- " 268 [133] No meaning.
The _London Magazine_, with John Scott (1783-1821) as its editor was
founded in 1820 by Baldwin, Cradock & Joy. Its first number was dated
January, 1820, and Lamb's first contribution was in the number for
August, 1820. Lamb had known Scott as editor of _The Champion_ in
1814, but, according to Talfourd, it was Hazlitt who introduced Lamb
to the _London Magazine_.
John Scott, who was the author of two interesting books of travel,
_A Visit to Paris in 1814_ and _Paris Re-visited_ in 1815, was an
admirable editor, and all was going exceedingly well until he plunged
into a feud with _Blackwood's Magazine_ in general, and John Gibson
Lockhart in particular, the story of which in full may be read in
Mr. Lang's _Life and Letters of Lockhart_, 1896. In the duel which
resulted Scott was shot above the hip. The wound was at first thought
lightly of, but Scott died on February 27, 1821--an able man much
regretted.
The magazine did not at first show signs of Scott's loss; it continued
to bear the imprint of its original publishers and its quality
remained very high. With Lamb and Hazlitt writing regularly this
could hardly be otherwise. But four months after the death of Scott
and eighteen months after its establishment the _London Magazine_
passed into the hands of the publishers Taylor & Hessey, the first
number with their imprint being dated August, 1821. Although for a
while no diminution of merit was perceptible and rather an access
of gaiety--for Taylor brought Hood with him and John Hamilton
Reynolds--yet the high editorial standards of Scott ceased to be
applied. Thenceforward the decline of the magazine was steady.
John Taylor (1781-1864), senior partner in the firm of Taylor &
Hessey, was known as the identifier of Sir Philip Francis with the
author of "Junius," on which subject he had issued three books.
Although unfitted for the post, he acted as editor of the _London
Magazine_ until it was again sold in 1825.
With the beginning of 1825 Taylor made a change in the magazine. He
started a new series, and increased the size and the price. But the
experiment did not answer; the spirit had evaporated; and in the
autumn he sold it to Henry Southern (1799-1853), who had founded
the _Retrospective Review_ in 1820. The last number of the _London
Magazine_ to bear Taylor & Hessey's name, and (in my opinion) to
contain anything by Lamb, was August, 1825. We have no definite
information on the matter, but there is every indication in Lamb's
_Letters_ that Taylor was penurious and not clever in his relations
with contributors. Scott Lamb seems to have admired and liked; but
even in Scott's day payment does not seem to have been prompt. Lamb
was paid, according to Barry Cornwall, two or three times the amount
of other writers, who received for prose a pound a page. But Lamb
himself says that the rate for him was twenty guineas a sheet, a sheet
being sixteen pages; and he told Moore that he had received £170 for
two years' Elia. In a letter to Barton in January, 1823, Lamb remarks:
"B---- [Baldwin] who first engaged me as 'Elia' has not paid me up yet
(nor any of us without repeated mortifying appeals)."
The following references to the _London_ in Lamb's letters to Barton
tell the story of its decadence quite clearly enough. In May,
1823:--"I cannot but think _the London_ drags heavily. I miss Janus
[Wainewright]. And O how it misses Hazlitt--Procter, too, is affronted
(as Janus has been) with their abominable curtailment of his things."
Again, a little later, in September:--"The 'London' I fear falls
off.--I linger among its creaking rafters, like the last rat. It will
topple down, if they don't get some Buttresses. They have pulled down
three, W. Hazlitt, Procter, and their best stay, kind light-hearted
Wainwright, their Janus."
In January, 1824, at the beginning of his eight months' silence:--"The
London must do without me for a time, a time, and half a time, for I
have lost all interest about it."
Again, in December, 1824:--"Taylor & Hessey finding their magazine
goes off very heavily at 2s. 6d., are prudently going to raise their
price another shilling; and having already more authors than they
want, intend to increase the number of them. If they set up against
the New Monthly, they must change their present hands. It is not tying
the dead carcase of a Review to a half-dead Magazine will do their
business."
In January, 1825 (to Sarah Hutchinson):--"You ask about the editor of
the Lond. I know of none. This first specimen [of a new series] is
flat and pert enough to justify subscribers, who grudge at t'other
shilling."
Next month Lamb writes, again to Barton:--"Our second Number [of the
new series] is all trash. What are T. & H. about? It is whip syllabub,
'thin sown with aught of profit or delight'. Thin sown! not a germ of
fruit or corn. Why did poor Scott die! There was comfort in writing
with such associates as were his little band of scribblers, some gone
away, some affronted away, and I am left as the solitary widow [in one
of Barton's poems] looking for watercresses."
Finally, in August, 1825:--"Taylor has dropt the 'London'. It was
indeed a dead weight. It was Job in the Slough of Despond. I shuffle
off my part of the pack, and stand like Christian with light and merry
shoulders."
In addition to Lamb and Hazlitt the _London Magazine_ had more or
less regular contributions, in its best days, from De Quincey, Allan
Cunningham (Nalla), T.G. Wainewright, afterwards the poisoner, but
in those days an amusing weaver of gay artificial prose, John Clare,
Bernard Barton, H.F. Cary, Richard Ayton, George Darley, Thomas Hood,
John Hamilton Reynolds, Sir John Bowring, John Poole, B.W. Procter;
while among occasional writers for it were Thomas Carlyle, Landor and
Julius Hare.
The essay, "Stage Illusion," in the number for August, 1825, was,
I believe, the last that Lamb contributed. (In this connection see
Mr. Bertram Dobell's _Sidelights on Charles Lamb_, 1903.) Lamb then
passed over to Colburn's _New Monthly Magazine_, where the "Popular
Fallacies" appeared, together with certain other of his later essays.
His last contribution to that magazine was dated September, 1826. In
1827 he was chiefly occupied in selecting Garrick play extracts for
Hone's _Table Book_, at the British Museum, and for a while after that
he seems to have been more interested in writing acrostics and album
verses than prose. In 1831, however, Moxon's _Englishman's Magazine_
offered harbourage for anything Lamb cared to give it, and a brief
revival of Elia (under the name of Peter) resulted. With its death in
October, 1831, Lamb's writing career practically ceased.
* * * * *
Page 1. THE SOUTH-SEA HOUSE.
_London Magazine_, August, 1820.
Although the "Bachelor's Complaint of the Behaviour of Married
People," "Valentine's Day," and "On the Acting of Munden," were all
written before this essay, it is none the less the first of the
essays of Elia. I have remarked, in the notes to a small edition of
_Elia_, that it is probably unique in literature for an author to
find himself, as Lamb did, in his forty-fourth year, by recording
impressions gathered in his seventeenth; but I think now that Lamb
probably visited his brother at the South-Sea House from time to time
in later years, and gathered other impressions then. I am led to this
conclusion partly by the fact that Thomas Tame was not appointed
Deputy-Accountant until four or five years after Lamb had left.
We do not know exactly what Lamb's duties were at the South-Sea
House or how long he was there: probably only for the twenty-three
weeks--from September, 1791--mentioned in the receipt below,
discovered by Mr. J.A. Rutter in a little exhibition of documents
illustrative of the South Sea Bubble in the Albert Museum at Exeter:--
Rec'd 8th feby 1792 of the Honble South Sea Company by the hands
of their Secretary Twelve pounds 1s. 6d. for 23 weeks attendance
in the Examiners Office.
£12 1 6. CHAS. LAMB.
This shows that Lamb's salary was half a guinea weekly, paid
half-yearly. His brother John was already in the service of the
Company, where he remained till his death, rising to Accountant. It
has been conjectured that it was through his influence that Charles
was admitted, with the view of picking up book-keeping; but the real
patron and introducer was Joseph Pake, one of the directors, whom we
meet on page 92. Whether Lamb had ideas of remaining, or whether he
merely filled a temporary gap in the Examiners' Office, we cannot
tell. He passed to the East India House in the spring of 1792.
The South Sea Company was incorporated in 1710. The year of the Bubble
was 1720. The South-Sea House, remodelled, is now a congeries of
offices.
Page 2, line 11. _Forty years ago_. To be accurate, twenty-eight to
thirty.
Page 3, line 1. _Accounts ... puzzle me_. Here Elia begins his
"matter-of-lie" career. Lamb was at this time in the Accountants'
Office of the India House, living among figures all day.
Page 3, line 7 from foot. _Evans_. William Evans. The Directories of
those days printed lists of the chief officials in some of the public
offices, and it is possible to trace the careers of the clerks whom
Lamb names. All are genuine. Evans, whose name is given one year as
Evan Evans, was appointed cashier (or deputy-cashier) in 1792.
Page 4, line 4. _Ready to imagine himself one_. Lamb was fond of this
conceit. See his little essay "The Last Peach" (Vol. I.), and the
mischievous letter to Bernard Barton, after Fauntleroy's trial,
warning him against peculation.
Page 4, line 7. _Anderton's_. Either the coffee-shop in Fleet Street,
now Anderton's Hotel, or a city offshoot of it. The portrait, if it
ever was in existence, is no longer known there.
Page 5, line 17. _John Tipp_. John Lamb succeeded Tipp as Accountant
somewhen about 1806.
Page 5, line 27. _I know not, etc._ This parenthesis was not in the
_London Magazine_, but the following footnote was appended to the
sentence:--
"I have since been informed, that the present tenant of them is
a Mr. Lamb, a gentleman who is happy in the possession of some
choice pictures, and among them a rare portrait of Milton, which
I mean to do myself the pleasure of going to see, and at the same
time to refresh my memory with the sight of old scenes. Mr.
Lamb has the character of a right courteous and communicative
collector."
Mr. Lamb was, of course, John Lamb, or James Elia (see the essay "My
Relations"), then (in 1820) Accountant of the South-Sea House. He left
the Milton to his brother. It is now in America.
Page 6, line 5 from foot. _Henry Man_. This was Henry Man (1747-1790),
deputy-secretary of the South-Sea House from 1776, and an author
of light trifles in the papers, and of one or two books. The
_Miscellaneous Works in Verse and Prose of the late Henry Man_ was
published in 1802, among the subscribers being three of the officials
named in this essay--John Evans, R. Plumer, and Mr. Tipp, and also
Thomas Maynard, who, though assigned to the Stock Exchange, is
probably the "childlike, pastoral M----" of a later paragraph. Small
politics are for the most part kept out of Man's volumes, which are
high-spirited rather than witty, but this punning epigram (of which
Lamb was an admirer) on Lord Spencer and Lord Sandwich may be
quoted:--
Two Lords whose names if I should quote,
Some folks might call me sinner:
The one invented _half a coat_,
The other _half a dinner_.
Such lords as these are useful men,
Heaven sends them to console one;
Because there's now not one in ten,
That can procure a _whole one_.
Page 7, line 13. _Plumer_. Richard Plumer (spelled Plomer in the
directories), deputy-secretary after Man. Lamb was peculiarly
interested in the Plumers from the fact that his grandmother, Mrs.
Field, had been housekeeper of their mansion at Blakesware, near Ware
(see notes to "Dream-Children" and "Blakesmoor in H----shire"). The
fine old Whig was William Plumer, who had been her employer, and was
now living at Gilston. He died in 1821.
The following passage from the memoir of Edward Cave (1691-1754),
which Dr. Johnson wrote for the _Gentleman's Magazine_ (which Cave
established) in 1754, shows that Lamb was mistaken about Plumer:--
He [Cave] was afterwards raised to the office of clerk of the
franks, in which he acted with great spirit and firmness; and
often stopped franks which were given by members of parliament to
their friends; because he thought such extension of a peculiar
right illegal. This raised many complaints, and having stopped,
among others, a frank given to the old dutchess of _Marlborough_
by Mr. _Walter Plummer_, he was cited before the house, as for
breach of privilege, and accused, I suppose very unjustly,
of opening letters to detect them. He was treated with great
harshness and severity, but declining their questions by pleading
his oath of secrecy, was at last dismissed. And it must be
recorded to his honour, that when he was ejected from his office,
he did not think himself discharged from his trust, but continued
to refuse to his nearest friends any information about the
management of the office.
I borrow from Canon Ainger an interesting note on Walter Plumer,
written in the eighteen-eighties, showing that Lamb was mistaken on
other matters too:--
The present Mr. Plumer, of Allerton, Totness, a grandson of
Richard Plumer of the South-Sea House, by no means acquiesces in
the tradition here recorded as to his grandfather's origin. He
believes that though the links are missing, Richard Plumer was
descended in regular line from the Baronet, Sir Walter Plumer,
who died at the end of the seventeenth century. Lamb's memory
has failed him here in one respect. The "Bachelor Uncle," Walter
Plumer, uncle of William Plumer of Blakesware, was most certainly
not a bachelor (see the pedigree of the family in Cussans'
_Hertfordshire_).
Page 7, line 10 from foot. M----. According to the Key to the initials
and blanks in some of the essays, which Lamb filled in for a curious
correspondent, M---- stood for one Maynard. "Maynard, hang'd himself"
is Lamb's entry. He was chief clerk in the Old Annuities and Three Per
Cents, 1788-1793.
* * * * *
Page 8. OXFORD IN THE VACATION.
_London Magazine_, October, 1820, where it is dated at the end,
"August 5, 1820. From my rooms facing the Bodleian." My own belief
is that Lamb wrote the essay at Cambridge, under the influence of
Cambridge, where he spent a few weeks in the summers of 1819 and 1820,
and transferred the scene to Oxford by way of mystification. He knew
Oxford, of course, but he had not been there for some years, and it
was at Cambridge that he met Dyer and saw the Milton MSS.
Concerning a visit to Oxford (in 1810), Hazlitt had written, in his
_Table Talk_ essay "On the Conversation of Authors," in the preceding
(the September) number of the _London Magazine_:--
L---- [that is, Lamb] once came down into the country to see us.
He was "like the most capricious poet Ovid among the Goths." The
country people thought him an oddity, and did not understand his
jokes. It would be strange if they had; for he did not make any
while he staid. But when we crossed the country to Oxford, then he
spoke a little. He and the old colleges were hail-fellow well-met;
and in the quadrangles, he "walked gowned."
The quotation is a reference to Lamb's sonnet, "I was not Trained in
Academic Bowers," written at Cambridge in 1819:--
Yet can I fancy, wandering 'mid thy towers,
Myself a nursling, Granta, of thy lap;
My brow seems tightening with the Doctor's cap,
And I walk _gownèd_.
Page 8, line 6 from foot. _Agnize_. Lamb was fond of this word. I
have seen it stated ingeniously that it was of his own coinage--from
_agnus_, a lamb--but the derivation is _ad gnoscere_, to acknowledge,
to recognise, and the word is to be found in other places--in
"Othello," for example (Act I., Scene 3, line 232):--
I do agnise
A natural and prompt alacrity.
Page 9, middle. _Red-letter days_. See note on page 351. The holidays
at the India House, which are given in the London directories of
Lamb's early time there, make a considerable list. But in 1820 the
Accountants' Office, where Lamb was, kept only five days in the year.
Page 10, line 11. _I can here ... enact the student._ Lamb had
distilled the matter of this paragraph into his sonnet, "I was not
Trained in Academic Bowers," written at Cambridge in August of the
preceding year (see above and Vol. IV.).
Page 11, line 12 from foot. _Unsettle my faith._ At this point, in the
_London Magazine_, Lamb appended the footnote:--
"There is something to me repugnant, at any time, in written hand.
The text never seems determinate. Print settles it. I had thought
of the Lycidas as of a full-grown beauty--as springing up with all
its parts absolute--till, in evil hour, I was shown the original
written copy of it, together with the other minor poems of its
author, in the Library of Trinity, kept like some treasure to be
proud of. I wish they had thrown them in the Cam, or sent them,
after the latter cantos of Spenser, into the Irish Channel. How
it staggered me to see the fine things in their ore! interlined,
corrected! as if their words were mortal, alterable, displaceable
at pleasure! as if they might have been otherwise, and just
as good! as if inspirations were made up of parts, and those
fluctuating, successive, indifferent! I will never go into the
work-shop of any great artist again, nor desire a sight of his
picture, till it is fairly off the easel; no, not if Raphael were
to be alive again, and painting another Galatea."
In the Appendix to Vol. I., page 428, I have printed a passage from
the original MS. of _Comus_, which there is reason to believe was
contributed to the _London Magazine_ by Lamb.
Page 11, line 9 from foot. _G.D._ George Dyer (1755-1841), Lamb's
friend for many years. This is the first mention of him in the essays;
but we shall meet him again, particularly in "Amicus Redivivus."
George Dyer was educated at Christ's Hospital long before Lamb's
time there, and, becoming a Grecian, had entered Emmanuel College,
Cambridge. He became at first an usher in Essex, then a private tutor
to the children of Robert Robinson, the Unitarian, whose life he
afterwards excellently wrote, then an usher again, at Northampton, one
of his colleagues being John Clarke, father of Lamb's friend, Charles
Cowden Clarke. In 1792 he settled in Clifford's Inn as a hack; wrote
poems, made indexes, examined libraries for a great bibliographical
work (never published), and contributed "all that was original" to
Valpy's classics in 141 volumes. Under this work his sight gave way;
and he once showed Hazlitt two fingers the use of which he had lost
in copying out MSS. of Procrus and Plotinus in a fine Greek hand.
Fortunately a good woman took him under her wing; they were married in
1825; and Dyer's last days were happy. His best books were his _Life
of Robert Robinson_ and his _History of the University and Colleges
of Cambridge_. Lamb and his friends laughed at him and loved him. In
addition to the stories told by Lamb in his letters and essays, there
are amusing characteristics of Dyer in Crabb Robinson's diary, in
Leigh Hunt, in Hazlitt, in Talfourd, and in other places. All bear
upon his gentleness, his untidiness and his want of humour. One of
the most famous stories tells of Dyer's criticism of Williams, the
terrible Ratcliffe Highway murderer. Dyer, who would never say an ill
word of any one, was asked his opinion of this cold-blooded assassin
of two families. "He must," he replied after due thought, "be rather
an eccentric character."
Page 12, line 10. _Injustice to him._ In the _London Magazine_ the
following footnote came here, almost certainly by Lamb:--
"Violence or injustice certainly none, Mr. Elia. But you will
acknowledge that the charming unsuspectingness of our friend has
sometimes laid him open to attacks, which, though savouring (we
hope) more of waggery than malice--such is our unfeigned respect
for G.D.--might, we think, much better have been omitted. Such was
that silly joke of L[amb], who, at the time the question of the
Scotch Novels was first agitated, gravely assured our friend--who
as gravely went about repeating it in all companies--that Lord
Castlereagh had acknowledged himself to be the author of Waverly!
_Note--not by Elia."_
Page 12, line 11. _"Strike an abstract idea."_ I do not find this
quotation--if it be one; but when John Lamb once knocked Hazlitt down,
during an argument on pigments, Hazlitt refrained from striking back,
remarking that he was a metaphysician and dealt not in blows but in
ideas. Lamb may be slyly remembering this.
Page 12, line 15. C----. Cambridge. Dyer added a work on _Privileges
of the University if Cambridge_ to his _History_.
Page 12, line 8 from foot. _Our friend M.'s._ Basil Montagu, Q.C.
(1770-1851), legal writer, philanthropist, editor of Bacon, and the
friend of Wordsworth and Coleridge. The Mrs. M. here referred to was
Montagu's third wife, a Mrs. Skepper. It was she who was called by
Edward Irving "the noble lady," and to whom Carlyle addressed some
early letters. A.S. was Anne Skepper, afterwards Mrs. Bryan Waller
Procter, a fascinating lady who lived to a great age and died as
recently as 1888. The Montagus then lived at 25 Bedford Square.
Page 13, line 17. _Starts like a thing surprised._ Here we have an
interesting example of Lamb's gift of fused quotation. Wordsworth's
line in the "Ode on Intimations of Immortality,"
Tremble like a guilty thing surprised,
and Shakespeare's phrase in "Hamlet" (Act I., Scene 1, line 148),
Started like a guilty thing,
were probably both in his mind as he wrote.
Page 13, line 24. _Obtruded personal presence._ In the _London
Magazine_ the following passage came here:--
"D. commenced life, after a course of hard study in the 'House of
pure Emanuel,' as usher to a knavish fanatic schoolmaster at ***,
at a salary of eight pounds per annum, with board and lodging.
Of this poor stipend, he never received above half in all the
laborious years he served this man. He tells a pleasant anecdote,
that when poverty, staring out at his ragged knees, has sometimes
compelled him, against the modesty of his nature, to hint at
arrears, Dr. *** would take no immediate notice, but, after
supper, when the school was called together to even-song, he would
never fail to introduce some instructive homily against riches,
and the corruption of the heart occasioned through the desire
of them--ending with 'Lord, keep thy servants, above all things
from the heinous sin of avarice. Having food and raiment,
us therewithal be content. Give me Agar's wish,'--and the
like;--which to the little auditory, sounded like a doctrine
full of Christian prudence and simplicity,--but to poor D. was a
receipt in full for that quarter's demands at least.
"And D. has been under-working for himself ever since;--drudging
at low rates for unappreciating booksellers,--wasting his fine
erudition in silent corrections of the classics, and in those
unostentatious but solid services to learning, which commonly fall
to the lot of laborious scholars, who have not the art to sell
themselves to the best advantage. He has published poems, which
do not sell, because their character is inobtrusive like his
own,--and because he has been too much absorbed in ancient
literature, to know what the popular mark in poetry is, even if he
could have hit it. And, therefore, his verses are properly, what
he terms them, _crotchets;_ voluntaries; odes to Liberty, and
Spring; effusions; little tributes, and offerings, left behind
him, upon tables and window-seats, at parting from friends'
houses; and from all the inns of hospitality, where he has been
courteously (or but tolerably) received in his pilgrimage. If his
muse of kindness halt a little behind the strong lines, in fashion
in this excitement-craving age, his prose is the best of the
sort in the world, and exhibits a faithful transcript of his own
healthy natural mind, and cheerful innocent tone of conversation."
The foregoing passage called forth a protest from one W.K.
necessitating the following reply from Lamb, which was printed in the
_London Magazine_, under the "Lion's Head," for December, 1820:--
"Elia requests the Editor to inform W.K. that in his article on
Oxford, under the initials G.D., it is his ambition to make more
familiar to the public, a character, which, for integrity and
single-heartedness, he has long been accustomed to rank among the
best patterns of his species. That, if he has failed in the end
which he proposed, it was an error of judgment merely. That, if
in pursuance of his purpose, he has drawn forth some personal
peculiarities of his friend into notice, it was only from the
conviction that the public, in living subjects especially, do not
endure pure panegyric. That the anecdotes, which he produced,
were no more than he conceived necessary to awaken attention to
character, and were meant solely to illustrate it. That it is an
entire mistake to suppose, that he undertook the character to
set off his own wit or ingenuity. That, he conceives, a candid
interpreter might find something intended, beyond a heartless
jest. That G.D., however, having thought it necessary to disclaim
the anecdote respecting Dr. ----, it becomes him, who never for
a moment can doubt the veracity of his friend, to account for
it from an imperfect remembrance of some story he heard long
ago, and which, happening to tally with his argument, he set
too hastily to the account of G.D. That, from G.D.'s strong
affirmations and proofs to the contrary, he is bound to believe
it belongs to no part of G.D.'s biography. That the transaction,
supposing it true, must have taken place more than forty years
ago. That, in consequence, it is not likely to 'meet the eye of
many who might be justly offended.'
"Finally, that what he has said of the Booksellers, referred to a
period of many years, in which he has had the happiness of G.D.'s
acquaintance; and can have nothing to do with any present or
prospective engagements of G.D., with those gentlemen, to the
nature of which he professes himself an entire stranger."
The result of the protest was that Lamb omitted the passage objected
to when he collected _Elia_ in 1823. It might well be restored now;
but I have preferred to print everything in the body of this edition
as Lamb arranged it for press.
* * * * *
Page 14. CHRIST'S HOSPITAL FIVE AND THIRTY YEARS AGO.
_London Magazine_, November, 1820.
This essay, which is based upon the "Recollections of Christ's
Hospital" in Vol. I., is a curious blend of Lamb's own experiences at
school with those of Coleridge. Both boys entered at the same time--on
July 17, 1782: Coleridge was then nearly ten, Lamb was seven and a
half. Coleridge was "clothed" on July 18 and went to Hertford for
a while; Lamb was clothed on October 9. Lamb left the school in
November, 1789, Coleridge in September, 1791.
The school which Lamb knew is now no more. The boys are now all in new
buildings in the midst of green fields near Horsham, many miles from
Lamb's city and its roar.
Page 14, line 15. _The worthy sub-treasurer._ Randal Norris (see note
to "A Death-Bed"). I have not been able to discover the cause of his
influence.
Page 14, lines 18, 19. _Crug ... piggins._ Crug is still current
slang. In the school museum one of these piggins is preserved.
Page 14, line 25. _Three banyan days._ Three vegetarian days.
Coleridge complains (in a letter to Poole) that he was never
sufficiently fed except on Wednesdays. He gives the following table of
food:--
Our diet was very scanty. Every morning a bit of dry bread and
some bad small beer. Every evening a larger piece of bread, and
cheese or butter, whichever we liked. For dinner,--on Sunday,
boiled beef and broth; Monday, bread and butter, and milk and
water; Tuesday, roast mutton; Wednesday, bread and butter, and
rice milk; Thursday, boiled beef and broth; Friday, boiled mutton
and broth; Saturday, bread and butter, and pease-porridge. Our
food was portioned; and, excepting on Wednesdays, I never had a
bellyfull. Our appetites were damped, never satisfied; and we had
no vegetables.
Page 14, line 8 from foot. _Caro equina._ Horseflesh. Mr. Pearce's
chapter on food at the school in his excellent _Annals of Christ's
Hospital_ is very interesting, and records great changes.
Rotten-roasted or rare, _i.e._, over-roasted or under-done.
Page 15, line 3. _The good old relative._ Aunt Hetty, or more
properly, Sarah Lamb. Compare the "Lines written on the Day of my
Aunt's Funeral," Vol. IV.:--
I have not forgot
How thou didst love thy Charles, when he was yet
A prating schoolboy: I have not forgot
The busy joy on that important day,
When, childlike, the poor wanderer was content
To leave the bosom of parental love,
His childhood's play-place, and his early home,
For the rude fosterings of a stranger's hand,
Hard, uncouth tasks, and schoolboys' scanty fare.
How did thine eyes peruse him round and round
And hardly knew him in his yellow coats,
Red leathern belt, and gown of russet blue.
Page 15, line 13. _I was a poor friendless boy._ Here Lamb speaks as
Coleridge, who came all the way from Ottery St. Mary, in Devonshire
(not Calne, in Wiltshire), and had no London friends. In _John
Woodvil_ Lamb borrowed St. Mary Ottery again (see Vol. IV.). Coleridge
has recorded how unhappy he was in his early days at school.
Page 15, line 12 from foot. _Whole-day-leaves._ In this connection
the following passage from Trollope's _History of Christ's Hospital_,
1834, is interesting:--
Those days, on which _leave_ is given to be absent from the Hospital
during the whole day, are called _whole-day leaves_.... A _ticket_ is
a small oval medal attached to the button-hole, without which, except
on leaves, no boy is allowed to pass the gates. Subjoined is a list of
the holidays, which have been hitherto kept at Christ's Hospital; but
it is in contemplation to abridge them materially. Of the policy of
such a measure great doubts may fairly be entertained, inasmuch as the
vacations are so short as to give sufficient respite neither to master
nor scholar; and these occasional breaks, in the arduous duties of the
former more especially, enable him to repair the exhausted energies of
body and mind by necessary relaxation. If those days, which are marked
with an asterisk, fall on a Sunday, they are kept on the Monday
following; and likewise the state holidays.