Blessed Lord, we yield thee hearty praise and thanksgiving for our
Founders and Benefactors, by whose Charitable Benevolence thou
hast refreshed our Bodies at this time. So season and refresh our
Souls with thy Heavenly Spirit, that we may live to thy Honour and
Glory. Protect thy Church, the King, and all the Royal Family. And
preserve us in peace and truth through Christ our Saviour. _Amen_.
* * * * *
Page 110. MY FIRST PLAY.
_London Magazine_, December, 1821.
Lamb had already sketched out this essay in the "Table Talk" in Leigh
Hunt's _Examiner_, December 9, 1813, under the title "Playhouse
Memoranda" (see Vol. I.). Leigh Hunt reprinted it in _The Indicator_,
December 13, 1820.
Page 111, line 1. _Garrick's Drury_. Garrick's Drury Lane was
condemned in 1791, and superseded in 1794 by the new theatre, the
burning of which in 1809 led to the _Rejected Addresses_. It has
recently come to light that Lamb was among the competitors who sent in
to the management the real addresses. The present Drury Lane Theatre
dates from 1812.
Page 111, line 11. _My godfather F._ Lamb's godfather was Francis
Fielde. _The British Directory_ for 1793 gives him as Francis
Field, oilman, 62 High Holborn. Whether or no he played the part in
Sheridan's matrimonial comedy that is attributed to him, I do not know
(Moore makes the friend a Mr. Ewart); but it does not sound like an
invented story. Richard Brinsley Sheridan carried Miss Linley, the
oratorio singer, from Bath and the persecutions of Major Mathews,
in March, 1772, and placed her in France. They were married near
Calais, and married again in England in April, 1773. Sheridan became
manager of Drury Lane, in succession to Garrick, in 1776, the first
performance under his control being on September 21. Lamb is supposed
to have had some personal acquaintance with Sheridan. Mary Lamb speaks
of him as helping the Sheridans, father and son, with a pantomime;
but of the work we know nothing definite. I do not consider the play
printed in part in the late Charles Kent's edition of Lamb, on the
authority of P.G. Patmore, either to be by Lamb or to correspond to
Mary Lamb's description.
Page 118, line 8. _His testamentary beneficence_. Lamb was not joking.
Writing to _The Athenæum_, January 5, 1901, Mr. Thomas Greg says:--
Three-quarters of a century after it passed out of Lamb's
possession I am happy to tell the world--or that small portion of
it to whom any fact about his life is precious--exactly where and
what this landed property is. By indentures of lease and release
dated March 23 and 24, 1779, George Merchant and Thomas Wyman, two
yeomen of Braughing in the county of Hertford, conveyed to Francis
Fielde, of the parish of St. Andrew's, Holborn, in the county
of Middlesex, oilman, for the consideration of £20., all that
messuage or tenement, with the orchard, gardens, yards, barns,
edifices, and buildings, and all and singular the appurtenances
therewithal used or occupied, situate, lying, and being at West
Mill Green in the parish of Buntingford West Mill in the said
county of Hertford, etc. On March 5, 1804, Francis Fielde, of New
Cavendish Street, Esq., made his will, and, with the exception of
two, annuities to female relatives, left all his residuary estate,
real and personal, to his wife Sarah Fielde.
This will was proved on November 5, 1809. By indentures of lease
and release dated August 20 and 21, 1812, Sarah Fielde conveyed
the said property to Charles Lamb, of Inner Temple Lane,
gentleman. By an indenture of feoffment dated February 15, 1815,
made between the said Charles Lamb of the first part, the said
Sarah Fielde of the second part, and Thomas Greg the younger,
of Broad Street Buildings, London, Esq., the said property was
conveyed to the said Thomas Greg the younger for £50.
The said Thomas Greg the younger died in 1839, and left the said
property to his nephew, Robert Philips Greg, now of Coles Park, West
Mill, in the same county; and the said Robert Philips Greg in 1884
conveyed it to his nephew, Thomas Tylston Greg, of 15 Clifford's
Inn, London, in whose possession it now is in substantially the same
condition as it was in 1815.
The evidence that the Charles Lamb who conveyed the property in 1815
is Elia himself is overwhelming.
1. The essay itself gives the locality correctly: it is about two and
a half miles from Puckeridge.
2. The plot of land contains as near as possible three-quarters of an
acre, with an old thatched cottage and small barn standing upon it.
The barn, specially mentioned in all the deeds, is a most unusual
adjunct of so small a cottage. The property, the deeds of which go
back to 1708, appears to have been isolated and held by small men, and
consists of a long narrow tongue of land jutting into the property now
of the Savile family (Earls of Mexborough), but formerly of the Earls
of Hardwicke.
3. The witness to Charles Lamb's signature on the deed of 1815 is
William Hazlitt, of 19, York Street, Westminster.
4. Lamb was living in Inner Temple Lane in 1815, and did not leave the
Temple till 1817.
5. The essay was printed in the _London Magazine_ for December, 1821,
six years after "the estate has passed into more prudent hands."
6. And lastly, the following letter in Charles Lamb's own handwriting,
found with the deeds which are in my possession, clinches the
matter:--
"MR. SARGUS,--This is to give you notice that I have parted with
the Cottage to Mr. Grig Junr. to whom you will pay rent from
Michaelmas last. The rent that was due at Michaelmas I do not
wish you to pay me. I forgive it you as you may have been at some
expences in repairs.
"Yours
"CH. LAMB.
"Inner Temple Lane, London,
"_23 Feb., 1815._"
It is certainly not the fact that Lamb acquired the property, as he
states, by the will of his godfather, for it was conveyed to him
some three years after the latter's death by Mrs. Fielde. But strict
accuracy of fact in Lamb's '_Essays_' we neither look for nor desire.
In all probability Mrs. Fielde conveyed him the property in accordance
with an expressed wish of her husband in his lifetime. Reading also
between the lines of the essay, it is interesting to notice that
Francis Fielde, the Holborn oilman of 1779, in 1809 has become Francis
Fielde, Esq., of New Cavendish Street. In the letter quoted above
Lamb speaks of his purchaser as "Mr. Grig Junr.," more, I am inclined
to think, from his desire to have his little joke than from mere
inaccuracy, for he must have known the correct name of his purchaser.
But Mr. Greg, Jun., was only just twenty-one when he bought the
property, and the expression "as merry as a grig" running in Lamb's
mind might have proved irresistible to him. Lastly, the property is
now called, and has been so far back as I can trace, "Button Snap." No
such name is found in any of the title-deeds, and it was impossible
before to understand whence it arose. Now it is not: Lamb must have so
christened his little property in jest, and the name has stuck.