Page 178, line 2. _Mildred Elia, I take it_. Alter these words, in the
_London Magazine_, came this passage:--
"From her, and from my passion for her--for I first learned love
from a picture--Bridget took the hint of those pretty whimsical
lines, which thou mayst see, if haply thou hast never seen them,
Reader, in the margin.[1] But my Mildred grew not old, like the
imaginery Helen."
This ballad, written in gentle ridicule of Lamb's affection for the
Blakesware portrait, and Mary Lamb's first known poem, was printed in
the _John Woodvil_ volume, 1802, and in the _Works_, 1818.
[Footnote 1:
"High-born Helen, round your dwelling,
These twenty years I've paced in vain:
Haughty beauty, thy lover's duty
Hath been to glory in his pain.
"High-born Helen, proudly telling
Stories of thy cold disdain;
I starve, I die, now you comply,
And I no longer can complain.
"These twenty years I've lived on tears,
Dwelling for ever on a frown;
On sighs I've fed, your scorn my bread;
I perish now you kind are grown.
"Can I, who loved ray beloved
But for the scorn 'was in her eye,'
Can I be moved for my beloved,
When she returns me sigh for sigh?
"In stately pride, by my bedside,
High-born Helen's portrait hung;
Deaf to my praise, my mournful lays
Are nightly to the portrait sung.
"To that I weep, nor ever sleep,
Complaining all night long to her.--
Helen, grown old, no longer cold,
Said--'you to all men I prefer.'"]
* * * * *
Page 178. POOR RELATIONS.
_London Magazine_, May, 1823.
Page 179, line 10. _A pound of sweet._ After these words, in the
_London Magazine_, came one more descriptive clause--"the bore _par
excellence_."
Page 181, line 4, _Richard Amlet, Esq._ In "The Confederacy" by Sir
John Vanbrugh--a favourite part of John Palmer's (see the essay "On
Some of the Old Actors").
Page 181, line 16. _Poor W----_. In the Key Lamb identifies W---- with
Favell, who "left Cambridge because he was asham'd of his father, who
was a house-painter there." Favell has already been mentioned in the
essay on "Christ's Hospital."
Page 183, line 22. _At Lincoln._ The Lambs, as we have seen, came from
Lincolnshire. The old feud between the Above and Below Boys seems now
to have abated, but a social gulf between the two divisions of the
city remains.
Page 184, line 11 from foot. _John Billet_. Probably not the real
name. Lamb gives the innkeeper at Widford, in "Rosamund Gray," the
name of Billet, when it was really Clemitson.
* * * * *
Page 185. STAGE ILLUSION.
_London Magazine_, August, 1825, where it was entitled "Imperfect
Dramatic Illusion."
This was, I think, Lamb's last contribution to the _London_, which had
been growing steadily heavier and less hospitable to gaiety. Some one,
however, contributed to it from time to time papers more or less in
the Elian manner. There had been one in July, 1825, on the Widow
Fairlop, a lady akin to "The Gentle Giantess." In September, 1825, was
an essay entitled "The Sorrows of ** ***" (an ass), which might,
both from style and sympathy, be almost Lamb's; but was, I think, by
another hand. And in January, 1826, there was an article on whist,
with quotations from Mrs. Battle, deliberately derived from her
creator. These and other essays are printed in Mr. Bertram Dobell's
_Sidelights on Charles Lamb_, 1903, with interesting comments.
The present essay to some extent continues the subject treated of in
"The Artificial Comedy," but it may be taken also as containing some
of the matter of the promised continuation of the essay "On the
Tragedies of Shakspeare," which was to deal with the comic characters
of that dramatist (see Vol. I.).
Page 185, line 15 from foot. _Jack Bannister_. See notes to the essay
on "The Old Actors." His greatest parts were not those of cowards; but
his Bob Acres was justly famous. Sir Anthony Absolute and Tony Lumpkin
were perhaps his chief triumphs. He left the stage in 1815.
Page 186, line 24. _Gatty_. Henry Gattie (1774-1844), famous for
old-man parts, notably Monsieur Morbleu in Moncrieffs "Monsieur
Tonson." He was also the best Dr. Caius, in "The Merry Wives of
Windsor," of his time. He left the stage in 1833, and settled down as
a tobacconist and raconteur at Oxford.
Page 186, line 30. _Mr. Emery._ John Emery (1777-1822), the best
impersonator of countrymen in his day. Zekiel Homespun in Colman's
"Heir at Law" was one of his great parts. Tyke was in Morton's "School
of Reform," produced in 1805, and no one has ever played it so well.
He also played Caliban with success.
Page 187, line 4 from foot. _A very judicious actor._ This actor
I have not identified. Benjamin Wrench (1778-1843) was a dashing
comedian, a Wyndham of his day. In "Free and Easy" he played Sir John
Freeman.
* * * * *
Page 188. To THE SHADE OF ELLISTON.
_Englishman's Magazine_, August, 1831, where it formed, with the
following essay, one article, under the title "Reminiscences of
Elliston."
Robert William Elliston (1774-1831), actor and manager, famous for his
stage lovers, both in comedy and tragedy. His Charles Surface was said
to be unequalled, and both in Hotspur and Hamlet he was great. His
last performance was in June, 1831, a very short time before his
death.
Page 189, line 7. _Thin ghosts._ In the _London Magazine_ the passage
ran:--
"Thin ghosts of Figurantes (never plump on earth) admire, while
with uplifted toe retributive you inflict vengeance incorporeal
upon the shadowy rear of obnoxious author, just arrived:--
"'what _seem'd_ his tail
The likeness of a kingly kick had on.
* * * * *
"'Yet soon he heals: for spirits, that live throughout
Vital in every part, not as frail man
In entrails, head, or heart, liver or veins,
Can in the liquid texture mortal wound
Receive no more, than can the liquid air,
All heart they live, all head, all eye.'"
Page 189, line 11 from foot. _À la Foppington_. In Vanbrugh's
"Relapse."
In the _Englishman's Magazine_ the article ended, after "Plaudito, et
Valeto," with: "Thy friend upon Earth, though thou did'st connive at
his d----n."
The article was signed Mr. H., the point being that Elliston had
played Mr. H. at Drury Lane in Lamb's unlucky farce of that name in
1806.
* * * * *
Page 190. ELLISTONIANA.
See note at the head of "To the Shade of Elliston," above.
Page 190, line 3 of essay. _My first introduction._ This paragraph was
a footnote in the _Englishman's Magazine_. Elliston, according to
the _Memoirs_ of him by George Raymond, which have Lamb's phrase,
"Joyousest of once embodied spirits," for motto, opened a circulating
library at Leamington in the name of his sons William and Henry, and
served there himself at times.
Possibly Lamb was visiting Charles Chambers at Leamington when he saw
Elliston. That he did see him there we know from Raymond's book, where
an amusing occurrence is described, illustrating Munden's frugality.
It seems that Lamb, Elliston and Munden drove together to Warwick
Castle. On returning Munden stopped the carriage just outside
Leamington, on the pretext that he had to make a call on an old
friend--a regular device, as Elliston explained, to avoid being
present at the inn when the hire of the carriage was paid.
Page 191, line 11. _Wrench_. See notes to "The Old Actors." Wrench
succeeded Elliston at Bath, and played in the same parts, and with
something of the same manner.
Page 191, line 11 from foot. _Appelles ... G.D._ Apelles, painter to
Alexander the Great, was said to let no day pass without experimenting
with his pencil. G.D. was George Dyer, whom we first met in "Oxford in
the Vacation."
Page 192, line 6. _Ranger_. In Hoadley's "Suspicious Husband," one of
Elliston's great parts.
Page 192, line 17 from foot. _Cibber_. Colley Cibber (1671-1757), the
actor, who was a very vain man, created the part of Foppington in
1697--his first great success.
Page 192, last line. _St. Dunstan's ... punctual giants._ Old St.
Dunstan Church, in Fleet Street, had huge figures which struck the
hours, and which disappeared with the church, pulled down to make room
for the present one some time before 1831. They are mentioned in Emily
Barton's story in _Mrs. Leicester's School_ (see Vol. III.). Moxon
records that Lamb shed tears when the figures were taken away.
Page 193, line 6. _Drury Lane_. Drury Lane opened, under Elliston's
management, on October 4, 1819, with "Wild Oats," in which he played
Rover. He left the theatre, a bankrupt, in 1826.
Page 193, line 19. _The ... Olympic._ Lamb is wrong in his dates.
Elliston's tenancy of the Olympic preceded his reign at Drury Lane.
It was to the Surrey that he retired after the Drury Lane period,
producing there Jerrold's "Black-Eyed Susan" in 1829.
Page 193, line 12 from foot. _Sir A---- C----_. Sir Anthony Carlisle
(see note to "A Quakers' Meeting").
Page 194, line 7. _A Vestris_. Madame Vestris (1797-1856), the great
comédienne, who was one of Elliston's stars at Drury Lane.
Page 195, line 6. _Latinity_. Elliston was buried in St. John's
Church, Waterloo Road, and a marble slab with a Latin inscription
by Nicholas Torre, his son-in-law, is on the wall. Elliston was the
nephew of Dr. Elliston, Master of Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge,
who sent him to St. Paul's School--not, however, that founded by
Colet--but to St. Paul's School, Covent Garden. He was intended for
the Church.
* * * * *
Page 195. DETACHED THOUGHTS ON BOOKS AND READING.
_London Magazine_, July, 1822, where, at the end, were the words, "To
be continued;" but Lamb did not return to the topic.
For some curious reason Lamb passed over this essay when collecting
_Elia_ for the press. It was not republished till 1833, in the _Last
Essays_.
Page 195, motto. _The Relapse_. The comedy by Sir John Vanbrugh.
Lamb liked this quotation. He uses it in his letter about William
Wordsworth, junior, to Dorothy Wordsworth, November 25, 1819; and
again in his "Reminiscence of Sir Jeffery Dunstan" (see Vol. I.).
Page 195, foot. _I can read any thing which I call a book_. Writing to
Wordsworth in August, 1815, Lamb says: "What any man can write, surely
I may read."
Page 195, last line. _Pocket Books_. In the _London Magazine_ Lamb
added in parenthesis "the literary excepted," the reference being to
the _Literary Pocket Book_ which Leigh Hunt brought out annually from
1819 to 1822.
Page 196, line 2. _Hume ... Jenyns_. Hume would be David Hume
(1711-1776), the philosopher and historian of England; Edward Gibbon
(1737-1794), historian of Rome; William Robertson, D.D. (1721-1793),
historian of America, Charles V., Scotland and India; James Beattie
(1735-1803), author of "The Minstrel" and a number of essays, who
had, however, one recommendation to Lamb, of which Lamb may have been
unaware--he loved Vincent Bourne's poems and was one of the first
to praise them; and Soame Jenyns (1704-1787), author of _The Art
of Dancing_, and the _Inquiry into Evil_ which Johnson reviewed so
mercilessly. It is stated in Moore's _Diary_, according to Procter,
that Lamb "excluded from his library Robertson, Gibbon and Hume,
and made instead a collection of the works of the heroes of _The
Dunciad_."
Page 196, line 14. _Population Essay_. That was the day of population
essays. Malthus's _Essay on Population_, 1798, had led to a number of
replies.
Page 196, line 22. _My ragged veterans_. Crabb Robinson recorded in
his diary that Lamb had the "finest collection of shabby books" he
ever saw; "such a number of first-rate works in very bad condition is,
I think, nowhere to be found." Leigh Hunt stated in his essay on "My
Books" in _The Literary Examiner_, July 5, 1823, that Lamb's library
had
an handsome contempt for appearance. It looks like what it is, a
selection made at precious intervals from the book-stalls;--now
a Chaucer at nine and twopence; now a Montaigne or a Sir Thomas
Browne at two shillings; now a Jeremy Taylor, a Spinoza; an old
English Dramatist, Prior, and Sir Philip Sidney; and the books are
"neat as imported." The very perusal of the backs is a "discipline
of humanity." There Mr. Southey takes his place again with an old
Radical friend: there Jeremy Collier is at peace with Dryden:
there the lion, Martin Luther, lies down with the Quaker lamb,
Sewel: there Guzman d'Alfarache thinks himself fit company for Sir
Charles Grandison, and has his claims admitted. Even the "high
fantastical" Duchess of Newcastle, with her laurel on her head,
is received with grave honours, and not the less for declining to
trouble herself with the constitutions of her maids.
It is in the same essay that Leigh Hunt mentions that he once saw
Lamb kiss an old folio--Chapman's Homer--the work he paraphrased for
children under the title _The Adventures of Ulysses_.
Page 197, line 15. _Life of the Duke of Newcastle_. Lamb's copy, a
folio containing also the "Philosophical Letters," is in America.
Page 197, line 20. _Sydney, Bishop Taylor, Milton_... I cannot say
where are Lamb's copies of Sidney and Fuller; but the British Museum
has his Milton, rich in MS. notes, a two-volume edition, 1751. The
Taylor, which Lamb acquired in 1798, is the 1678 folio _Sermons_. I
cannot say where it now is.
Page 197, line 26. _Shakspeare_. Lamb's Shakespeare was not sold at
the sale of his library; only a copy of the _Poems_, 12mo, 1714.
His annotated copy of the _Poems_, 1640, is in America. There is a
reference to one of Rowe's plates in the essay "My First Play." The
Shakespeare gallery engravings were the costly series of illustrations
to Shakespeare commissioned by John Boydell (1719-1804), Lord Mayor of
London in 1790. The pictures were exhibited in the Shakespeare Gallery
in Pall Mall, and the engravings were published in 1802.
After the word "Shakespeare," in the _London Magazine_, came the
sentence: "You cannot make a _pet_ book of an author whom everybody
reads."
In a letter to Wordsworth, February 1, 1806, Lamb says: "Shakespear is
one of the last books one should like to give up, perhaps the one just
before the Dying Service in a large Prayer book." In the same letter
he says of binding: "The Law Robe I have ever thought as comely and
gentlemanly a garb as a Book would wish to wear."
Page 197, line 7 from foot. _Beaumont and Fletcher._ See note to "The
Two Races of Men" for an account of Lamb's copy, now in the British
Museum.
Page 197, line 5 from foot. _No sympathy with them._ After these
words, in the _London Magazine_, came, "nor with Mr. Gifford's Ben
Jonson." This edition by Lamb's old enemy, William Gifford, editor of
the _Quarterly_, was published in 1816. Lamb's copy of Ben Jonson was
dated 1692, folio. It is now in America, I believe.
Page 197, foot. _The reprint of the Anatomy of Melancholy_. This
reprint was, I think, published in 1800, in two volumes, marked ninth
edition. Lamb's copy was dated 1621, quarto. I do not know where it
now is.
Page 198, line 4. _Malone_. This was Edmund Malone (1741-1812), the
critic and editor of Shakespeare, who in 1793 persuaded the Vicar of
Stratford-on-Avon to whitewash the coloured bust of the poet in the
chancel. A _Gentleman's Magazine_ epigrammatist, sharing Lamb's view,
wrote:--
Stranger, to whom this monument is shown,
Invoke the poet's curse upon Malone;
Whose meddling zeal his barbarous taste betrays,
And daubs his tombstone, as he mars his plays.
Lamb has been less than fair to Malone. To defend his action in the
matter of the bust of Shakespeare is impossible, except by saying that
he acted in good faith and according to the fashion of his time. But
he did great service to the fame of Shakespeare and thus to English
literature, and was fearless and shrewd in his denunciation of the
impostor Ireland.
Page 198, line 26. _The Fairy Queen_. Lamb's copy was a folio, 1617,
12, 17, 13. Against Canto XI., Stanza 32, he has written: "Dear Venom,
this is the stave I wot of. I will maintain it against any in the
book."
Page 199, line 14. _Nando's_. A coffee-house in Fleet Street, at the
east corner of Inner Temple Lane, and thus at one time close to Lamb's
rooms.
Page 199, line 16. "_The Chronicle is in hand, Sir._" In the _London
Magazine_ the following paragraph was here inserted:--
"As in these little Diurnals I generally skip the Foreign News,
the Debates--and the Politics--I find the Morning Herald by far
the most entertaining of them. It is an agreeable miscellany,
rather than a newspaper."
The _Morning Herald_, under Alexander Chalmers, had given more
attention to social gossip than to affairs of State; but under Thomas
Wright it suddenly, about the time of Lamb's essay, became politically
serious and left aristocratic matters to the _Morning Post_.
Page 199, line 20. _Town and Country Magazine_. This magazine
flourished between 1769 and 1792.
Page 199, line 26. _Poor Tobin_. Possibly John Tobin (1770-1804), the
playwright, though I think not. More probably the Tobin mentioned in
Lamb's letter to Wordsworth about "Mr. H." in June, 1806 (two years
after John Tobin's death), to whom Lamb read the manager's letter
concerning the farce. This would be James, John Tobin's brother.
Page 200, line 13. _The five points_. After these words came, in the
_London Magazine_, the following paragraph:--
"I was once amused--there is a pleasure in _affecting_
affectation--at the indignation of a crowd that was justling in
with me at the pit-door of Covent Garden theatre, to have a sight
of Master Betty--then at once in his dawn and his meridian--in
Hamlet. I had been invited quite unexpectedly to join a party,
whom I met near the door of the playhouse, and I happened to have
in my hand a large octavo of Johnson and Steevens's Shakspeare,
which, the time not admitting of my carrying it home, of course
went with me to the theatre. Just in the very heat and pressure
of the doors opening--the _rush_, as they term it--I deliberately
held the volume over my head, open at the scene in which the young
Roscius had been most cried up, and quietly read by the lamplight.
The clamour became universal. 'The affectation of the fellow,'
cried one. 'Look at that gentleman _reading_, papa,' squeaked a
young lady, who in her admiration of the novelty almost forgot her
fears. I read on. 'He ought to have his book knocked out of his
hand,' exclaimed a pursy cit, whose arms were too fast pinioned to
his side to suffer him to execute his kind intention. Still I read
on--and, till the time came to pay my money, kept as unmoved,
as Saint Antony at his Holy Offices, with the satyrs, apes, and
hobgoblins, mopping, and making mouths at him, in the picture,
while the good man sits undisturbed at the sight, as if he were
sole tenant of the desart.--The individual rabble (I recognised
more than one of their ugly faces) had damned a slight piece of
mine but a few nights before, and I was determined the culprits
should not a second time put me out of countenance."
Master Betty was William Henry West Betty (1791-1874), known as the
"Young Roscius," whose Hamlet and Douglas sent playgoers wild in
1804-5-6. Pitt, indeed, once adjourned the House in order that his
Hamlet might be witnessed. His most cried-up scenes in "Hamlet" were
the "To be or not to be" soliloquy, and the fencing scene before the
king and his mother. The piece of Lamb's own which had been hissed
was, of course, "Mr. H.," produced on December 10, 1806; but very
likely he added this reference as a symmetrical afterthought, for he
would probably have visited Master Betty much earlier in his career,
that phenomenon's first appearance at Covent Garden being two years
before the advent of the ill-fated Hogsflesh.
Page 200, line 22. _Martin B----_. Martin Charles Burney, son of
Admiral Burney, and a lifelong friend of the Lambs--to whom Lamb
dedicated the prose part of his _Works_ in 1818 (see Vol. IV.).
Page 200, line 28. _A quaint poetess_. Mary Lamb. The poem is in
_Poetry for Children_, 1809 (see Vol. III. of this edition). In line
17 the word "then" has been inserted by Lamb. The punctuation also
differs from that of the _Poetry for Children_.
* * * * *
Page 201. THE OLD _MARGATE HOY_.
_London Magazine_, July, 1823. This, like others of Lamb's essays, was
translated into French and published in the _Revue Britannique_ in
1833. It was prefaced by the remark: "L'auteur de cette délicieuse
esquisse est Charles Lamb, connu sous le nom d'Eliah."
Page 201, beginning. _I have said so before._ See "Oxford in the
Vacation."
Page 201, line 5 of essay. _My beloved Thames._ Lamb describes a
riparian holiday at and about Richmond in a letter to Robert Lloyd in
1804.
Page 201, line 8 of essay. _Worthing_... There is no record of the
Lambs' sojourn at Worthing or Eastbourne. They were at Brighton in
1817, and Mary Lamb at any rate enjoyed walking on the Downs there; in
a letter to Miss Wordsworth of November 21, 1817, she described them
as little mountains, _almost as good as_ Westmoreland scenery. They
were at Hastings--at 13 Standgate Street--in 1823 (see Lamb's letters
to Bernard Barton, July 10, 1823, to Hood, August 10, 1824, and to
Dibdin, June, 1826). The only evidence that we have of Lamb knowing
Worthing is his "Mr. H.". That play turns upon the name Hogsflesh,
afterwards changed to Bacon. The two chief innkeepers at Worthing at
the end of the eighteenth century and the beginning of its prosperity
were named Hogsflesh and Bacon, and there was a rhyme concerning them
which was well known (see notes to "Mr. H." in Vol. IV.).
Page 201, line 11 of essay. _Many years ago_. A little later Lamb says
he was then fifteen. This would make the year 1790. It was probably on
this visit to Margate that Lamb conceived the idea of his sonnet, "O,
I could laugh," which Coleridge admired so much (see Vol. IV.).
Page 201, line 17 of essay. _Thou old Margate Hoy_. This old
sailing-boat gave way to a steam-boat, the _Thames_, some time after
1815. The _Thames_, launched in 1815, was the first true steam-boat
the river had seen. The old hoy, or lighter, was probably sloop
rigged.
Page 202, foot. _Our enemies_. Lamb refers here to the attacks of
_Blackwood's Magazine_ on the Cockneys, among whom he himself had been
included. In the _London Magazine_ he had written "unfledged" for
"unseasoned."
Page 206, line 14. _Gebir_. _Gebir_, by Walter Savage Landor
(1775-1864), who was a fortnight older than Lamb, and who afterwards
came to know him personally, was published in 1798.
Page 206, line 16. _This detestable Cinque Port_. A letter from Mary
Lamb to Randal Norris, concerning this, or another, visit to Hastings,
says: "We eat turbot, and we drink smuggled Hollands, and we walk
up hill and down hill all day long." Lamb, in a letter to Barton,
admitted a benefit: "I abused Hastings, but learned its value."
Page 208, line 5. _Lothbury_. Probably in recollection of Wordsworth's
"Reverie of Poor Susan," which Lamb greatly liked.
* * * * *
Page 208. THE CONVALESCENT.
_London Magazine_, July, 1825.
We learn from the _Letters_ that Lamb had a severe nervous breakdown
in the early summer of 1825 after liberation from the India House.
Indeed, his health was never sound for long together after he became a
free man.
* * * * *
Page 212. SANITY OF TRUE GENIUS.
_New Monthly Magazine_, May, 1826, where it appeared as one of the
Popular Fallacies under the title, "That great Wit is allied to
Madness;" beginning: "So far from this being true, the greatest wits
will ever be found to be the sanest writers..." and so forth. Compare
the essay "On the Tragedies of Shakespeare," Vol. I. Lamb's thesis is
borrowed from Dryden's couplet (in _Absalom and Achitophel_, Part I.,
lines 163, 164):--
Great wits are sure to madness near allied,
And thin partitions do their bounds divide.
Page 213, line 14. _Kent ... Flavius_. Lamb was always greatly
impressed by the character of Kent (see his essay on "Hogarth," Vol.
I.; his "Table Talk," Vol. I.; and his versions, in the _Tales from
Shakespear_, of "King Lear" and "Timon," Vol. III.).
* * * * *
Page 215. CAPTAIN JACKSON.
_London Magazine_, November, 1824.
No one has yet been able to identify Captain Jackson. The suggestion
has been made that Randal Norris sat for the picture; but the
circumstance that Lamb, in the first edition of the _Last Essays_,
included "A Death-Bed," with a differing portrait of Randal Norris
therein, is, I think, good evidence against this theory. Perhaps the
captain was one of the imaginary characters which Lamb sent out every
now and then, as he told Bernard Barton (in the letter of March 20,
1826), "to exercise the ingenuity of his friends;" although his
reality seems overpowering.
Apart from his own interest, the captain is noteworthy in
constituting, with Ralph Bigod (see page 27), a sketch (possibly
unknown to Dickens) for Wilkins Micawber.
Page 217, line 22. _Glover ... Leonidas_. Richard Glover (1712-1785),
the poet, author of _Leonidas_, 1737. I cannot find that he ever lived
at Westbourne Green.
Page 218, foot. _The old ballad_. The old ballad "Waly, Waly." This
was among the poems copied by Lamb into Miss Isola's Extract Book.
Page 219, line 8. _Tibbs, and Bobadil_. Beau Tibbs in Goldsmith's
"Citizen of the World," and Bobadil in Ben Jonson's "Every Man in His
Humour."
* * * * *
Page 219. THE SUPERANNUATED MAN.
_London Magazine_, May, 1825.
Except that Lamb has disguised his real employment, this essay is
practically a record of fact. After thirty-three years of service at
the East India House he went home "for ever" on Tuesday, March 29,
1825, with a pension of £441, or two-thirds of his regular salary,
less a small annual deduction as a provision for his sister. At
a Court of Directors held on that day this minute was drawn up:
"Resolved that the resignation of Mr. Charles Lamb, of the Accountant
General's office, on account of certified ill health, be accepted, and
it appearing that he has served the Company faithfully for 33 years,
and is now in receipt of an income of £730 per annum, he be allowed
a pension of £450 ... to commence from this day." Lamb's letters to
Wordsworth, April 6, 1825, to Barton, the same date, and to Miss
Hutchinson, a little later, all tell the story. This is how Lamb put
it to Barton:--
"DEAR B.B.--My spirits are so tumultuary with the novelty of my
recent emancipation, that I have scarce steadiness of hand, much
more mind, to compose a letter.
"I am free, B.B.--free as air.
"The little bird that wings the sky
Knows no such Liberty!
"I was set free on Tuesday in last week at 4 o'clock.
"I came home for ever!...
"I went and sat among 'em all at my old 33 years desk yester
morning; and deuce take me if I had not yearnings at leaving all
my old pen-and-ink fellows, merry sociable lads, at leaving them
in the Lurch, fag, fag, fag.
"I would not serve another 7 years for seven hundred thousand
pound."
To Miss Hutchinson Lamb said; "I would not go back to my prison for
seven years longer for £10000 a year."
In the _London Magazine_ the essay was divided into two parts, with
the two quotations now at the head apportioned each to one part.
Part II. began at "A fortnight has passed," on page 224. The essay
was signed "J.D.," whose address was given as "Beaufort-terrace,
Regent-street; late of Ironmonger-court, Fenchurch-street."
Page 220, line 3. _Recreation_. At "recreation," in the _London
Magazine_, came the footnote:--
"Our ancestors, the noble old Puritans of Cromwell's day,
could distinguish between a day of religious rest and a day of
recreation; and while they exacted a rigorous abstinence from all
amusements (even to the walking out of nursery maids with their
little charges in the fields) upon the Sabbath; in the lieu of the
superstitious observance of the Saints days, which they abrogated,
they humanely gave to the apprentices, and poorer sort of people,
every alternate Thursday for a day of entire sport and recreation.
A strain of piety and policy to be commended above the profane
mockery of the Stuarts and their Book of Sports."
Lamb had said the same thing to Barton in a letter in the spring,
1824, referring there to "Southey's book" as his authority--this being
_The Book of the Church_, 1824.
Page 220, line 25. _Native ... Hertfordshire_. This was a slight
exaggeration. Lamb was London born and bred. But Hertfordshire was his
mother and grandmother's county, and all his love of the open air was
centred there (see the essay on "Mackery End").
Page 221, line 1. _My health_. Lamb had really been seriously unwell
for some time, as the _Letters_ tell us.
Page 221, line 6. _I was fifty_. Lamb was fifty on February 10, 1825.
Page 231, line 7. _I had grown to my desk_. In his first letter to
Barton (September 11, 1822) Lamb wrote: "I am like you a prisoner to
the desk. I have been chained to that galley thirty years, a long
shot. I have almost grown to the wood." Again, to Wordsworth: "I sit
like Philomel all day (but not singing) with my breast against this
thorn of a Desk."
Page 222, line 7. _Boldero, Merryweather ..._ Feigned names of course.
It was Boldero that Lamb once pretended was Leigh Hunt's true name.
And in his fictitious biography of Liston (Vol. I.) Liston's mother
was said to have been a Miss Merryweather. In Lamb's early city days
there was a banking firm in Cornhill, called Boldero, Adey, Lushington
& Boldero.
Page 222, line 12 from foot. _I could walk it away_. Writing to
Wordsworth in March, 1822, concerning the possibility of being
pensioned off, Lamb had said:--"I had thought in a green old age (O
green thought!) to have retired to Ponder's End--emblematic name--how
beautiful! in the Ware road, there to have made up my accounts with
heaven and the Company, toddling about between it and Cheshunt, anon
stretching on some fine Izaac Walton morning, to Hoddsdon or Amwell,
careless as a Beggar, but walking walking ever till I fairly walkd
myself off my legs, dying walking."
And again, writing to Southey after the emancipation, he says (August,
1825): "Mary walks her twelve miles a day some days, and I twenty on
others. 'Tis all holiday with me now, you know."
Page 224, line 9. _Ch----_. John Chambers, son of the Rev. Thomas
Chambers, Vicar of Radway-Edgehill, Warwickshire, and an old Christ's
Hospitaller, to whom Lamb wrote the famous letter on India House
society, printed in the _Letters_, Canon Ainger's edition, under
December, 1818. John Chambers lived until 1872, and had many stories
of Lamb.
Page 224, line 9. _Do----_. Probably Henry Dodwell, to whom Lamb wrote
the letters of July, 1816, from Calne, and that of October 7, 1827,
thanking him for a gift of a sucking pig. But there seems (see the
letter to Chambers above referred to) to have been also a clerk named
Dowley. It was Dodwell who annoyed Lamb by reading _The Times_ till
twelve o'clock every morning.
Page 224, line 10. _Pl----_. According to the late H.G. Bohn's notes
on Chambers' letter, this was W.D. Plumley.
Page 224, line 18. My "_works_." See note to the preface to the _Last
Essays of Elia_. The old India House ledgers of Lamb's day are no
longer in existence, but a copy of Booth's _Tables of Interest_ is
preserved, with some mock notices from the press on the fly-leaves in
Lamb's hand. Lamb's portrait by Meyer was bought for the India Office
in 1902.
Page 224, line 12 from foot. _My own master_. As a matter of fact Lamb
found the time rather heavy on his hands now and then; and he took to
searching for beauties in the Garrick plays in the British Museum as a
refuge. The Elgin marbles were moved there in 1816.
Page 225, line 16 from foot. _And what is it all for_? At these words,
in the _London Magazine_, came the passage:--
"I recite those verses of Cowley, which so mightily agree with my
constitution.
"Business! the frivolous pretence
Of human lusts to shake off innocence:
Business! the grave impertinence:
Business! the thing which I of all things hate:
Business! the contradiction of my fate.
"Or I repeat my own lines, written in my Clerk state:--
"Who first invented work--and bound the free
And holyday-rejoicing spirit down
To the ever-haunting importunity
Of business, in the green fields, and the town--
To plough, loom, anvil, spade--and oh! most sad,
To this dry drudgery of the desk's dead wood?
Who but the Being unblest, alien from good,
Sabbathless Satan! he who his unglad
Task ever plies 'mid rotatory burnings,
That round and round incalculably reel--
For wrath divine hath made him like a wheel--
In that red realm from whence are no returnings;
Where toiling, and turmoiling, ever and aye
He, and his thoughts, keep pensive worky-day!
"O this divine Leisure!--Reader, if thou art furnished with the
Old Series of the London, turn incontinently to the third volume
(page 367), and you will see my present condition there touched in
a 'Wish' by a daintier pen than I can pretend to. I subscribe to
that Sonnet _toto corde_."