_London Magazine_, September, 1824.
With this essay Lamb made his reappearance in the magazine, after
eight months' absence.
By Blakesmoor Lamb meant Blakesware, the manor-house near Widford, in
Hertfordshire, where his grandmother, Mary Field, had been housekeeper
for many years. Compare the essay "Dream-Children."
Blakesware, which was built by Sir Francis Leventhorpe about 1640,
became the property of the Plumers in 1683, being then purchased by
John Plumer, of New Windsor, who died in 1718. It descended to William
Plumer, M.P. for Yarmouth, in the Isle of Wight, and afterwards for
Hertfordshire, who died in 1767, and was presumably Mrs. Field's first
employer. His widow and the younger children remained at Blakesware
until Mrs. Plumer's death in 1778, but the eldest son, William Plumer,
moved at once to Gilston, a few miles east of Blakesware, a mansion
which for a long time was confused with Blakesware by commentators on
Lamb. This William Plumer, who was M.P. for Lewes, for Hertfordshire,
and finally for Higham Ferrers, and a governor of Christ's Hospital,
kept up Blakesware after his mother's death in 1778 (when Lamb was
three) exactly as before, but it remained empty save for Mrs. Field
and the servants under her. Mrs. Field became thus practically
mistress of it, as Lamb says in "Dream-Children." Hence the increased
happiness of her grandchildren when they visited her. Mrs. Field died
in 1792, when Lamb was seventeen. William Plumer died in 1822, aged
eighty-six, having apparently arranged with his widow, who continued
at Gilston, that Blakesware should be pulled down--a work of
demolition which at once was begun. This lady, _née_ Jane Hamilton,
afterwards married a Mr. Lewin, and then, in 1828, Robert Ward
(1765-1846), author of _Tremaine_ and other novels, who took the name
of Plumer-Ward, and may be read of, together with curious details of
Gilston House, in P.G. Patmore's _My Friends and Acquaintances_.
Nothing now remains but a few mounds, beneath which are bricks and
rubble. The present house is a quarter of a mile behind the old
one, high on the hill. In Lamb's day this hillside was known as the
Wilderness, and where now is turf were formal walks with clipped yew
hedges and here and there a statue. The stream of which he speaks is
the Ashe, running close by the walls of the old house. Standing there
now, among the trees which mark its site, it is easy to reconstruct
the past as described in the essay.
The Twelve Cæsars, the tapestry and other more notable possessions of
Blakesware, although moved to Gilston on the demolition of Blakesware,
are there no longer, and their present destination is a mystery.
Gilston was pulled down in 1853, following upon a sale by auction,
when all its treasures were dispersed. Some, I have discovered,
were bought by the enterprising tenant of the old Rye House Inn
at Broxbourne, but absolute identification of anything now seems
impossible.
Blakesware is again described in _Mrs. Leicester's School_, in Mary
Lamb's story of "The Young Mahometan." There the Twelve Cæsars are
spoken of as hanging on the wall, as if they were medallions; but Mr.
E.S. Bowlby tells me that he perfectly remembers the Twelve Cæsars at
Gilston, about 1850, as busts, just as Lamb says. In "Rosamund Gray"
(see Vol. I.) Lamb describes the Blakesware wilderness. See also notes
to "The Last Peach," Vol. I., to "Dream-Children" in this volume, and
to "Going or Gone," Vol. IV.
Lamb has other references to Blakesware and the irrevocability of his
happiness there as a child, in his letters. Writing to Southey on
October 31, 1799, he says:--"Dear Southey,--I have but just got
your letter, being returned from Herts, where I have passed a few
red-letter days with much pleasure. I would describe the county to
you, as you have done by Devonshire; but alas! I am a poor pen at that
same. I could tell you of an old house with a tapestry bedroom, the
'Judgment of Solomon' composing one pannel, and 'Actæon spying Diana
naked' the other. I could tell of an old marble hall, with Hogarth's
prints, and the Roman Cæsars in marble hung round. I could tell of
a _wilderness_, and of a village church, and where the bones of my
honoured grandam lie; but there are feelings which refuse to be
translated, sulky aborigines, which will not be naturalised in another
soil. Of this nature are old family faces, and scenes of infancy."
And again, to Bernard Barton, in August, 1827:--"You have well
described your old-fashioned grand paternall Hall. Is it not odd that
every one's earliest recollections are of some such place. I had my
Blakesware (Blakesmoor in the 'London'). Nothing fills a child's mind
like a large old Mansion ... better if un- or partially-occupied;
peopled with the spirits of deceased members of the County and
Justices of the Quorum. Would I were buried in the peopled solitude of
one, with my feelings at 7 years old!
"Those marble busts of the Emperors, they seem'd as if they were to
stand for ever, as they had stood from the living days of Rome, in
that old Marble Hall, and I to partake of their permanency; Eternity
was, while I thought not of Time. But he thought of me, and they are
toppled down, and corn covers the spot of the noble old Dwelling and
its princely gardens. I feel like a grasshopper that chirping about
the grounds escaped his scythe only by my littleness. Ev'n now he is
whetting one of his smallest razors to clean wipe me out, perhaps.
Well!"
Writing to Barton in August, 1824, concerning the present essay, Lamb
describes it as a "futile effort ... 'wrung from me with slow pain'."
Page 175, line 15 from foot. _Mrs. Battle_. There was a haunted room
at Blakesware, but the suggestion that the famous Mrs. Battle died
in it was probably due to a sudden whimsical impulse. Lamb states in
"Dream-Children" that Mrs. Field occupied this room.
Page 177, line 22. _The hills of Lincoln_. See Lamb's sonnet "On the
Family Name," Vol. IV. Lamb's father came from Lincoln.
Page 177, line 11 from foot. _Those old W----s_. Lamb thus disguised
the name of Plumer. He could not have meant Wards, for Robert Ward did
not marry William Plumer's widow till four years after this essay was
printed.