Octr. 1811.
Underneath the initials S.T.C. are the initials W.W. which suggest
that Wordsworth was present.
The Museum also has Lamb's Milton, with annotations by himself and
Coleridge.
In the _Descriptive Catalogue of the Library of Charles Lamb_,
privately issued by the New York Dibdin Club in 1897, is a list
of five of Lamb's books now in America containing valuable and
unpublished marginalia by Coleridge: _The Life of John Buncle_,
Donne's _Poems_ ("I shall die soon, my dear Charles Lamb, and then you
will not be vexed that I have scribbled your book. S.T.C., 2d May,
1811"), Reynolds' _God's Revenge against ... Murder_, 1651 ("O what
a beautiful _concordia discordantium_ is an unthinking good man's
soul!"), _The History of Philip de Commines_ in English, and Petwin's
_Letters Concerning the Mind_.
* * * * *
Page 31. NEW YEAR'S EVE.
_London Magazine_, January, 1821.
The melancholy pessimism of this essay led to some remonstrance from
robuster readers of the _London Magazine_. In addition to the letter
from "A Father" referred to below, the essay produced, seven months
later, in the August number of the _London Magazine_, a long poetical
"Epistle to Elia," signed "Olen," in which very simply and touchingly
Lamb was reminded that the grave is not the end, was asked to consider
the promises of the Christian faith, and finally was offered a glimpse
of some of the friends he would meet in heaven--among them Ulysses,
Shakespeare and Alice W----n. Taylor, the publisher and editor of the
magazine, sent Lamb a copy. He replied, acknowledging the kindness of
the author, and adding:--"Poor Elia ... does not pretend to so very
clear revelations of a future state of being as 'Olen' seems gifted
with. He stumbles about dark mountains at best; but he knows at least
how to be thankful for this life, and is too thankful, indeed, for
certain relationships lent him here, not to tremble for a possible
resumption of the gift. He is too apt to express himself lightly, and
cannot be sorry for the present occasion, as it has called forth a
reproof so Christian-like."
Lamb thought the poet to be James Montgomery, but it was in reality
Charles Abraham Elton. The poem was reprinted in a volume entitled
_Boyhood and other Poems_, in 1835.
It is conceivable that Lamb was reasoned with privately upon the
sentiments expressed in this essay; and perhaps we may take the
following sonnet which he contributed over his own name to, the
_London Magazine_ for April, 1821, as a kind of defiant postscript
thereto, a further challenge to those who reproached him for his
remarks concerning death, and who suggested that he did not really
mean them:--
They talk of time, and of time's galling yoke,
That like a millstone on man's mind doth press,
Which only works and business can redress:
Of divine Leisure such foul lies are spoke,
Wounding her fair gifts with calumnious stroke.
But might I, fed with silent meditation,
Assoiled live from that fiend Occupation--
_Improbus labor_, which my spirits hath broke--
I'd drink of time's rich cup, and never surfeit--
Fling in more days than went to make the gem
That crowned the white top of Methusalem--
Yea on my weak neck take, and never forfeit,
Like Atlas bearing up the dainty sky,
The heaven-sweet burthen of eternity.
It was also probably the present essay which led to Lamb's difference
with Southey and the famous letter of remonstrance. Southey accused
_Elia_ of wanting "a sounder religious feeling," and Lamb suggests in
his reply that "New Year's Eve" was the chief offender. See Vol. I.
for Lamb's amplification of one of its passages.
It may be interesting here to quote Coleridge's description of Lamb
as "one hovering between heaven and earth, neither hoping much nor
fearing anything."
Page 31, line 10 from foot. _Bells_. The music of bells seems always
to have exerted fascination over Lamb. See the reference in the story
of the "First Going to Church," in _Mrs. Leicester's School_, Vol.
III.; in his poem "Sabbath Bells," Vol. IV.; and his "John Woodvil,"
Vol. IV.
Page 31, foot. "_I saw the skirts of the departing Year_." From
Coleridge's "Ode to the Departing Year," as printed in 1796 and
1797. Lamb was greatly taken by this line. He wrote to Coleridge on
January 2, 1797, in a letter of which only a small portion has been
printed:--"The opening [of the Ode] is in the spirit of the sublimest
allegory. The idea of the 'skirts of the departing year, seen far
onwards, waving in the wind,' is one of those noble Hints at which
the Reader's imagination is apt to kindle into grand conceptions."
Afterwards Coleridge altered "skirts" to "train."
Page 32, line 21. _Seven.... years_. See note to "Dream-Children."
Alice W--n is identified with Ann Simmons, who lived near Blakesware
when Lamb was a youth, and of whom he wrote his love sonnets.
According to the Key the name is "feigned."
Page 32, line 25. _Old Dorrell_. See the poem "Going or Gone,"
Vol. IV. There seems really to have been such an enemy of the Lamb
fortunes. He was one of the witnesses to the will of John Lamb, the
father--William Dorrell.
Page 33, line 5. _Small-pox at five_. There is no other evidence than
this casual mention that Lamb ever suffered from this complaint.
Possibly he did not. He went to Christ's Hospital at the age of seven.
Page 33, line 13. _From what have I not fallen_. Lamb had had this
idea many years before. In 1796 he wrote this sonnet (text of 1818):--
We were two pretty babes, the youngest she,
The youngest, and the loveliest far, I ween,
And Innocence her name. The time has been
We two did love each other's company;
Time was, we two had wept to have been apart:
But when by show of seeming good beguil'd,
I left the garb and manners of a child,
And my first love for man's society,
Defiling with the world my virgin heart--
My loved companion dropp'd a tear, and fled,
And hid in deepest shades her awful head.
Beloved, who shall tell me where thou art--
In what delicious Eden to be found--
That I may seek thee the wide world around?
Page 33, line 27. _Phantom cloud of Elia_. The speculations in the
paragraph that ends with these words were fantastical at any rate to
one reader, who, under the signature "A Father," contributed to the
March number of the _London Magazine_ a eulogy of paternity, in which
Elia was reasoned with and rebuked. "Ah! Elia! hadst thou possessed
'offspring of thine own to dally with,' thou wouldst never have made
the melancholy avowal that thou hast 'almost ceased to hope!'" Lamb
did not reply.
Page 33, line 7 from foot. _Not childhood alone ..._ The passage
between these words and "freezing days of December" was taken by
Charles Lloyd, Lamb's early friend, as the motto of a poem, in his
_Poems_, 1823, entitled "Stanzas on the Difficulty with which, in
Youth, we Bring Home to our Habitual Consciousness the Idea of Death."
Page 34, line 15 from foot. _Midnight darlings_. Leigh Hunt
records, in his essay "My Books," that he once saw Lamb kiss an old
folio--Chapman's _Homer_.
Page 34, line 8 from foot. "_Sweet assurance of a look_." A favourite
quotation of Lamb's (here adapted) from Matthew Roydon's elegy on Sir
Philip Sidney:--
A sweet attractive kind of grace,
A full assurance given by looks.
A portion of the poem is quoted in the Elia essay on "Some Sonnets of
Sir Philip Sidney."
* * * * *
Page 37. MRS. BATTLE'S OPINIONS ON WHIST.
_London Magazine_, February, 1821.
Mrs. Battle was probably, in real life, to a large extent Sarah
Burney, the wife of Rear-Admiral James Burney, Lamb's friend, and the
centre of the whist-playing set to which he belonged. The theory that
Lamb's grandmother, Mrs. Field, was the original Mrs. Battle, does
not, I think, commend itself, although that lady may have lent a trait
or two. It has possibly arisen from the relation of the passage in the
essay on Blakesware, where Mrs. Battle is said to have died in the
haunted room, to that in "Dream-Children," where Lamb says that Mrs.
Field occupied this room.
The fact that Mrs. Battle and Mrs. Burney were both Sarahs is a small
piece of evidence towards their fusion, but there is something more
conclusive in the correspondence. Writing in March, 1830, concerning
the old whist days, to William Ayrton, one of the old whist-playing
company, and the neighbour of the Burneys in Little James Street,
Pimlico, Lamb makes use of an elision which, I think, may be taken as
more than support of the theory that Mrs. Battle and Mrs. Burney were
largely the same--practically proof. "Your letter, which was only
not so pleasant as your appearance would have been, has revived some
old images; Phillips (not the Colonel), with his few hairs bristling
up at the charge of a revoke, which he declares impossible; the old
Captain's significant nod over the right shoulder (was it not?);
Mrs. B----'s determined questioning of the score, after the game was
absolutely gone to the d----l." Lamb, I think, would have written out
Mrs. Burney in full had he not wished to suggest Mrs. Battle too.
This conjecture is borne out by the testimony of the late Mrs.
Lefroy, in her youth a friend of the Burneys and the Lambs, who
told Canon Ainger that though Mrs. Battle had many differing points
she was undoubtedly Mrs. Burney. But of course there are the usual
cross-trails--the reference to the pictures at Sandham; to Walter
Plumer; to the legacy to Lamb; and so forth. Perhaps among the
Blakesware portraits was one which Lamb chose as Mrs. Battle's
presentment; perhaps Mrs. Field had told him of an ancient dame who
had certain of Mrs. Battle's characteristics, and he superimposed Mrs.
Burney upon this foundation.
For further particulars concerning the Burney whist parties see the
notes to the "Letter to Southey," Vol. I.
Admiral Burney (1750-1821), a son of Dr. Burney, the historian of
music, and friend of Johnson and Reynolds, was the brother of Fanny
Burney, afterwards Madame d'Arblay. See also "The Wedding," page 275
of this volume, for another glimpse of Lamb's old friend. Admiral
Burney wrote _An Essay on the Game of Whist_, which was published in
1821. As he lived until November, 1821, he probably read the present
essay. Writing to Wordsworth, March 20, 1822, Lamb says: "There's
Capt. Burney gone!--what fun has whist now; what matters it what you
lead, if you can no longer fancy him looking over you?"
Page 37, line 1 of essay. "_A clean hearth_." To this, in the _London
Magazine_, Lamb put the footnote:--
"This was before the introduction of rugs, reader. You must remember
the intolerable crash of the unswept cinder, betwixt your foot and the
marble."
Page 37, line 8 of essay. _Win one game, and lose another_. To this,
in the _London Magazine_, Lamb put the note:--
"As if a sportsman should tell you he liked to kill a fox one day,
and lose him the next."
Page 38, line 26. _Mr. Bowles_. The Rev. William Lisle Bowles
(1762-1850), whose sonnets had so influenced Coleridge's early
poetical career. His edition of Pope was published in 1806. I have
tried in vain to discover if Mr. Bowles' MS. and notes for this
edition are still in existence. If so, they might contain Lamb's
contribution. But it is rather more likely, I fear, that Lamb invented
the story. The game of ombre is in Canto III. of _The Rape of the
Lock_.
The only writing on cards which we know Lamb to have done, apart from
this essay, is the elementary rules of whist which he made out for
Mrs. Badams quite late in his life as a kind of introduction to the
reading of Admiral Burney's treatise. This letter is in America and
has never been printed except privately; nor, if its owner can help
it, will it.
Page 40, line 26. _Old Walter Plumer_. See the essay on "The South-Sea
House."
Page 42, line 18 from foot. _Bad passions_. Here came in the _London
Magazine_, in parenthesis, "(dropping for a while the speaking mask of
old Sarah Battle)."
Page 43, line 2. _Bridget Elia_. This is Lamb's first reference in
the essays to Mary Lamb under this name. See "Mackery End" and "Old
China."
A little essay on card playing in the _Every-Day Book_, the authorship
of which is unknown, but which may be Hone's, ends with the following
pleasant passage:--
Cousin Bridget and the gentle Elia seem beings of that age wherein
lived Pamela, whom, with "old Sarah Battle," we may imagine
entering their room, and sitting down with them to a _square_
game. Yet Bridget and Elia live in our own times: she, full of
kindness to all, and of soothings to Elia especially;--he, no less
kind and consoling to Bridget, in all simplicity holding converse
with the world, and, ever and anon, giving us scenes that Metzu
and De Foe would admire, and portraits that Deuner and Hogarth
would rise from their graves to paint.
* * * * *
Page 43. A CHAPTER ON EARS.
_London Magazine_, March, 1821.
Lamb was not so utterly without ear as he states. Crabb Robinson in
his diary records more than once that Lamb hummed tunes, and Barron
Field, in the memoir of Lamb contributed by him to the _Annual
Biography and Obituary_ for 1836, mentions his love for certain
beautiful airs, among them Kent's "O that I had wings like a dove"
(mentioned in this essay), and Handel's "From mighty kings." Lamb says
that it was Braham who awakened a love of music in him. Compare Lamb's
lines to Clara Novello, Vol. IV., page 101, and also Mary Lamb's
postscript to his "Free Thoughts on Eminent Composers," same volume.
Page 43, foot. _I was never ... in the pillory_. This sentence led
to an amusing article in the _London Magazine_ for the next month,
April, 1821, entitled "The Confessions of H.F.V.H. Delamore, Esq.,"
unmistakably, I think, by Lamb, which will be found in Vol. I. of this
edition, wherein Lamb confesses to a brief sojourn in the stocks at
Barnet for brawling on Sunday, an incident for the broad truth of
which we have the testimony of his friend Brook Pulham.
Page 44, lines 6 and 7. "_Water parted from the sea_," "_In Infancy_."
Songs by Arne in "Artaxerxes," Lamb's "First Play" (see page 113).
Page 44, line 11. _Mrs. S----_. The Key gives "Mrs. Spinkes." We meet
a Will Weatherall in "Distant Correspondents," page 120; but I have
not been able to discover more concerning either.