The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb Volume II Part 43

Page 172, line 7. _My late friend_. The opening sentences of this paragraph seem to have been deliberately modelled, as indeed is the whole essay, upon Sterne's character of Yorick in _Tristram Shandy_, Vol. I., Chapter XI.

Page 172, line 12 from foot. _It was. .h.i.t or miss with him_. Canon Ainger has pointed out that Lamb's description of himself in company is corroborated by Hazlitt in his essay "On Coffee-House Politicians":--

I will, however, admit that the said Elia is the worst company in the world in bad company, if it be granted me that in good company he is nearly the best that can be. He is one of those of whom it may be said, _Tell me your company, and I'll tell you your manners_. He is the creature of sympathy, and makes good whatever opinion you seem to entertain of him. He cannot outgo the apprehensions of the circle; and invariably acts up or down to the point of refinement or vulgarity at which they pitch him. He appears to take a pleasure in exaggerating the prejudices of strangers against him; a pride in confirming the prepossessions of friends. In whatever scale of intellect he is placed, he is as lively or as stupid as the rest can be for their lives. If you think him odd and ridiculous, he becomes more and more so every minute, _a la folie_, till he is a wonder gazed at by all--set him against a good wit and a ready apprehension, and he brightens more and more ...

P.G. Patmore's testimony is also corroborative:--

To those who did not know him, or, knowing, did not or could not appreciate him, Lamb often pa.s.sed for something between an imbecile, a brute, and a buffoon; and the first impression he made on ordinary people was always unfavourable--sometimes to a violent and repulsive degree.

Page 174, line 3. _Some of his writings_. In the _London Magazine_ the essay did not end here. It continued:--

"He left property behind him. Of course, the little that is left (chiefly in India bonds) devolves upon his cousin Bridget. A few critical dissertations were found in his escritoire, which have been handed over to the Editor of this Magazine, in which it is to be hoped they will shortly appear, retaining his accustomed signature.

"He has himself not obscurely hinted that his employment lay in a public office. The gentlemen in the Export department of the East India House will forgive me, if I acknowledge the readiness with which they a.s.sisted me in the retrieval of his few ma.n.u.scripts.

They pointed out in a most obliging manner the desk at which he had been planted for forty years; showed me ponderous tomes of figures, in his own remarkably neat hand, which, more properly than his few printed tracts, might be called his 'Works.' They seemed affectionate to his memory, and universally commended his expertness in book-keeping. It seems he was the inventor of some ledger, which should combine the precision and certainty of the Italian double entry (I think they called it) with the brevity and facility of some newer German system--but I am not able to appreciate the worth of the discovery. I have often heard him express a warm regard for his a.s.sociates in office, and how fortunate he considered himself in having his lot thrown in amongst them. There is more sense, more discourse, more shrewdness, and even talent, among these clerks (he would say) than in twice the number of authors by profession that I have conversed with. He would brighten up sometimes upon the 'old days of the India House,' when he consorted with Woodroffe, and Wissett, and Peter Corbet (a descendant and worthy representative, bating the point of sanct.i.ty, of old facetious Bishop Corbet), and Hoole who translated Ta.s.so, and Bartlemy Brown whose father (G.o.d a.s.soil him therefore) modernised Walton--and sly warm-hearted old Jack Cole (King Cole they called him in those days), and Campe, and Fombelle--and a world of choice spirits, more than I can remember to name, who a.s.sociated in those days with Jack Burrell (the _bon vivant_ of the South Sea House), and little Eyton (said to be a _facsimile_ of Pope--he was a miniature of a gentleman) that was cas.h.i.+er under him, and Dan Voight of the Custom House that left the famous library.

"Well, Elia is gone--for aught I know, to be reunited with them--and these poor traces of his pen are all we have to show for it. How little survives of the wordiest authors! Of all they said or did in their lifetime, a few glittering words only! His Essays found some favourers, as they appeared separately; they shuffled their way in the crowd well enough singly; how they will _read_, now they are brought together, is a question for the publishers, who have thus ventured to draw out into one piece his 'weaved-up follies.'

"PHIL-ELIA."

This pa.s.sage calls for some remark. Cousin Bridget was, of course, Mary Lamb.--Lamb repeated the joke about his _Works_ in his "Autobiography" (see Vol. I.) and in "The Superannuated Man."--Some record of certain of the old clerks mentioned by Lamb still remains; but I can find nothing of the others. Whether or not Peter Corbet really derived from the Bishop we do not know, but the facetious Bishop Corbet was Richard Corbet (1582-1635), Bishop of Oxford and Norwich, whose conviviality was famous and who wrote the "Fairies'

Farewell." John Hoole (1727-1803), who translated Ta.s.so and wrote the life of Scott of Amwell and a number of other works, was princ.i.p.al auditor at the end of his time at the India House. He retired about 1785, when Lamb was ten years old. Writing to Coleridge on January 5, 1797, Lamb speaks of Hoole as "the great boast and ornament of the India House," and says that he found Ta.s.so, in Hoole's translation, "more vapid than smallest small beer sun-vinegared." The moderniser of Walton would be Moses Browne (1704-1787), whose edition of _The Complete Angler_, 1750, was undertaken at the suggestion of Dr.

Johnson.

Page 174. BLAKESMOOR IN H----s.h.i.+RE

_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 Hertfords.h.i.+re, 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 Hertfords.h.i.+re, 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 Hertfords.h.i.+re, 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, _nee_ 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 Caesars, 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 Caesars 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 Caesars 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 pa.s.sed a few red-letter days with much pleasure. I would describe the county to you, as you have done by Devons.h.i.+re; 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 'Actaeon spying Diana naked' the other. I could tell of an old marble hall, with Hogarth's prints, and the Roman Caesars 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-fas.h.i.+oned 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 n.o.ble old Dwelling and its princely gardens. I feel like a gra.s.shopper 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.

Page 178, line 2. _My Alice_. See notes to "Dream-Children."

Page 178, line 2. _Mildred Elia, I take it_. Alter these words, in the _London Magazine_, came this pa.s.sage:--

"From her, and from my pa.s.sion 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 Lincolns.h.i.+re. 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.