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."
* * * * *
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.
* * * * *
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.