The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb Part 53

_Gentleman's Magazine_, November, 1811. Not reprinted by Lamb.

Robert Lloyd (1778-1811) was a younger brother of Charles Lloyd, for a while Coleridge's pupil and Lamb's friend of the later nineties, with whom he collaborated in _Blank Verse,_ 1798. They were sons of Charles Lloyd, of Birmingham (1748-1828), the Quaker banker, philanthropist, and, in a quiet private way, a writer of verse (see _Charles Lamb and the Lloyds_).

Robert Lloyd first met Lamb in 1797; he was then nineteen years old, an apprentice at Saffron Walden. He was inclined to morbidness, though not to the same extent as his brother Charles, and Lamb did what he could to get more health and contentment into him. In 1799 Robert Lloyd seems to have left his father's roof in a state of revolt, and to have settled with Lamb for a while. He returned home, however, and met Manning (who was then teaching Charles Lloyd mathematics at Cambridge), and, after drawing from Lamb several fine letters--notably upon Jeremy Taylor, and that upon Cooke from which I have quoted in the notes above--he pa.s.sed out of his life until 1809, when, paying a short visit to London, he saw the Lambs again several times.

The autumn of 1811 was a sad one for the Lloyd family. Thomas Lloyd died on September 12, Caroline on October 15, and Robert on October 26. The _Gentleman's Magazine_ obituary just mentions Thomas and Caroline, and pa.s.ses on to Robert. We know the article to be Lamb's from a letter from Charles Lloyd to Robert's widow, enclosing the memoir (which Lamb had sent to him), and adding, "If I loved him for nothing else, I should now love [Charles Lamb] for the affecting interest that he has taken in the memory of my dearest Brother and Friend."

Page 154. CONFESSIONS OF A DRUNKARD.

_The Philanthropist_, No. IX., 1813. _Some Enquiries into the Effects of Fermented Liquors_, 1814; second edition, 1818. _London Magazine_, August, 1822. _Last Essays of Elia_, second edition, 1835.

The first appearance of this paper was in a quarterly magazine ent.i.tled _The Philanthropist_; or, _Repository for Hints and Suggestions calculated to promote the Comfort and Happiness of Man_. Vol. III., No.

IX., 1813. It was there unsigned and addressed "To the Editor of _The Philanthropist_." The editor of this magazine was William Allen (1770-1843), the Quaker, and his chief a.s.sociate was James Mill, the Father of John Stuart Mill. Lamb's friend, Basil Montagu (1770-1851), was among the contributors; and another prominent name was that of Benjamin Meggot Forster (1764-1829), who, like Montagu, opposed capital punishment, and was zealous in the cause of chimney-sweepers.

In its original _Philanthropist_ form the essay differs from its later appearances. Concerning the differences I should like to quote from an interesting article by Mr. Thomas Hutchinson in _The Athenaeum_ of August 16, 1902:--

The text of the "Confessions," as it stands in _The Philanthropist_, bears evident traces of Mill's editorial hand; the verbal changes smack of those precise and literal modes of thought and expression which Lamb found so uncongenial in the Scotsman.

"They seemed to have something n.o.ble _about_ them," writes Lamb of the friends of 1801. "But moral qualities are not external to us, they are resident _in_ us," objects Mill; and so "about" is struck out and "in" subst.i.tuted. "Avoid the bottle as you would fly your greatest destruction," says Lamb. "But," interposes the precisian, "the idea of _destruction_ does not admit of _more_ or _less_; besides, 'to fly' is properly a verb intransitive"--and thus the sentence is rewritten: "... fly _from certain_ destruction." "The pain of the self-denial is _all one_"--"is _equal_," subst.i.tutes the Scot. "I scarce knew what it was to _ail anything_"--"to have an ailment," corrects the lover of plain words; and so on. Of the sixth paragraph of the essay only the opening sentence ("Why should I hesitate," etc.) is suffered to stand. The rest is cancelled--doubtless as at variance with Utilitarian views. Again the close of the fourteenth paragraph ("But he is too hard for us,"

etc., onwards) is struck out--either by Mill, as too broadly implying the existence of the "muckle deil," or by Allen, as too flippant an allusion to that fearsome personage. Lastly, the second paragraph is wanting and the third reduced by half, the conclusion (from "Trample not," etc., on), in which the miracle of the raising of Lazarus is referred to, being omitted.

I cannot, however, quite accept Mr. Hutchinson's theory that Lamb wrote the "Confessions" as a joke at the expense of the seriousness of the Quaker editor and his Benthamite a.s.sistant. Mr. Hutchinson writes: "We can fancy with what glee the sly humorist, who found the world as it was so lovable and good to live in, prepared to hoax the fussy John Amend-All of Plough Court and his fiery lieutenant, James Mill," and he adds later, "An amusing feature of the 'Confessions' is the introduction, twice over, of the sacred Benthamite catchword, 'Springs of Action,' and, once, of its equivalent, the 'Springs of the Will,' a plausible device to bribe the judgment of the editors." But Lamb's jokes were always jokes, and it is difficult, sitting down to these "Confessions" with what antic.i.p.ation we will of humour or whimsicality, to rise from them in anything but sadness. They are too real for a "flam." Of this, however, more below.

The "Confessions" made their second appearance in Basil Montagu's collection of arguments in favour of teetotalism--_Some Enquiries into the Effects of Fermented Liquors_. By a Water Drinker. 1814; and second edition, 1818. This volume was divided into sections, Lamb's contribution being ranged under the question, "Do Fermented Liquors Contribute to Moral Excellence?" Montagu's book was reprinted in 1841, when Lamb's contribution was acknowledged as from the _Essays of Elia_ by Charles Lamb (more properly the _Last Essays_). Lamb's "Confessions"

were also reprinted separately in a series of tracts called "Beacon Lights," in 1854, as being a true statement of their unhappy author's case, under the t.i.tle, "Charles Lamb's Confessions." This misrepresentation led to some correspondence in the press, and the tract was withdrawn, a new edition being subst.i.tuted in 1856 with the harrowing story of poor Hartley Coleridge in the place of Lamb's essay.

The "Confessions" were reprinted in the _London Magazine_, August, 1822, under the following circ.u.mstances. In the summer of 1822 Lamb and his sister visited the Kenneys at Versailles--an absence which interrupted the regular course of the _Elia_ essays. The Editor therefore reprinted one or two of Lamb's old papers, the first being these "Confessions,"

advising his readers of his action in a note in which Lamb's own hand is plainly apparent. This is the note:--

"_Reprints of_ ELIA.--Many are the sayings of _Elia_, painful and frequent his lucubrations, set forth for the most part (such his modesty!) without a name, scattered about in obscure periodicals and forgotten miscellanies. From the dust of some of these, it is our intention, occasionally, to revive a Tract or two, that shall seem worthy of a better fate; especially, at a time like the present, when the pen of our industrious Contributor, engaged in a laborious digest of his recent Continental Tour, may haply want the leisure to expatiate in more miscellaneous speculations. We have been induced, in the first instance, to re-print a Thing, which he put forth in a friend's volume some years since, ent.i.tled the Confessions of a Drunkard, seeing that Messieurs the Quarterly Reviewers have chosen to embellish their last dry pages with fruitful quotations therefrom; adding, from their peculiar brains, the gratuitous affirmation, that they have reason to believe that the describer (in his delineations of a drunkard forsooth!) partly sate for his own picture. The truth is, that our friend had been reading among the Essays of a contemporary, who has perversely been confounded with him, a paper in which _Edax_ (or the _Great Eater_) humorously complaineth of an inordinate appet.i.te; and it struck him, that a better paper--of deeper interest, and wider usefulness--might be made out of the imagined experiences of a _Great Drinker_. Accordingly he set to work, and with that mock fervor, and counterfeit earnestness, with which he is too apt to over-realise his descriptions, has given us--a frightful picture indeed--but no more resembling the man _Elia_, than the fict.i.tious _Edax_ may be supposed to identify itself with Mr. L., its author.

It is indeed a compound extracted out of his long observations of the effects of drinking upon all the world about him; and this acc.u.mulated ma.s.s of misery he hath centered (as the custom is with judicious essayists) in a single figure. We deny not that a portion of his own experiences may have pa.s.sed into the picture, (as who, that is not a washy fellow, but must at some times have felt the after-operation of a too generous cup?)--but then how heightened!

how exaggerated!--how little within the sense of the Review, where a part, in their slanderous usage, must be understood to stand for the whole!--but it is useless to expostulate with this Quarterly slime, brood of Nilus, watery heads with hearts of jelly, sp.a.w.ned under the sign of Aquarius, incapable of Bacchus, and therefore cold, washy, spiteful, bloodless.----Elia shall string them up one day, and show their colours--or rather how colourless and vapid the whole fry--when he putteth forth his long promised, but unaccountably hitherto delayed, Confessions of a Water-drinker."

The remarks in the _Quarterly Review_, to which Lamb very naturally objected, and which are believed to have been written by Dr. Robert Gooch (1784-1830), a friend of Southey, had occurred in an article, in the number for April, 1822, on Reid's _Essays on Hypochondriasis and other Nervous Affections_. There, in a pa.s.sage introducing quotations from Lamb's "Confessions of a Drunkard," the reviewer says:--

In a collection of tracts "On the Effects of Spirituous Liquors,"

by an eminent living barrister, there is a paper ent.i.tled the "Confessions of a Drunkard," which affords a fearful picture of the consequences of intemperance, and which we have reason to know is a true tale.

It was, we may suppose, as a kind of challenge to this statement that Lamb authorised the republication of his "Confessions." It cannot be denied, however, that the circ.u.mstantiality of the story gave a handle to the _Quarterly's_ theory. For example, twelve years before 1813 (when the essay was probably first written), Lamb had completed his twenty-sixth year. He was known to have an impediment in his speech. He was known also to have been in bondage to tobacco. The two sets of friends (see pp. 156 and 157) correspond to Fenwick, Fell & Co., and the Burney whist players.

If a portion of the "Confessions" was true, it was more likely to be true in 1812-1813 than at any time in Lamb's life. He was then between thirty-seven and thirty-nine, a critical age. He had apparently abandoned most of his literary ambition and was beginning the least productive period of his life; if a man is at all given to seeking alcoholic stimulant he resorts to it more when his ambition sleeps than when it is lively. In 1812-1813 Lamb was hard worked at the East India House; and with the failure of _The Reflector_, to which he was an important contributor, immediately behind him, the failure of _John Woodvil_ (in which he had believed) more remotely behind him, his children's book vein dry, and little but office routine and disappointment to look forward to, he may conceivably have indulged now and then, after a festive night with his friends, in some such gloomy thoughts as are expressed in this essay. Crabb Robinson, indeed, who saw much of Lamb at this season, records in his unpublished Diary that the "Confessions" seemed to him sadly true. Robinson, however, was disposed to be rather a severe judge of any weakness, and we may perhaps discount such an impression; but the fact remains that among Lamb's friends there was one who, wis.h.i.+ng him all happiness, looked on the "Confessions" in this way.

Yet whatever proportion of truth may have been in the "Confessions" when they were written (possibly when Mary Lamb was ill and hope was with Lamb at its lowest) Lamb soon recovered. We may feel confident of that.

He remained to the end conscious of the stimulating effect of wine and spirits and too easily influenced by them, as are so many persons of sensitive habit and quick imagination: that is all. As Talfourd wrote:--

Drinking with him [Lamb], except so far as it cooled a feverish thirst, was not a sensual but an intellectual pleasure; it lighted up his fading fancy, enriched his humour, and impelled the struggling thought or beautiful image into day.

One of the best proofs of the untruth of the "Confessions" is urged by Charles Robert Leslie, the painter, and it becomes particularly cogent when we remember the case of Tommy Bye, described by Lamb in two of his letters, who was reduced to a paltry income at the East India House as a punishment for insobriety. Leslie wrote in his _Autobiographical Recollections_, 1860:--

I have noticed that Lamb sometimes did himself injustice by his odd sayings and actions, and he now and then did the same by his writings. His "Confessions of a Drunkard" greatly exaggerate any habits of excess he may ever have indulged. The regularity of his attendance at the India House, and the liberal manner in which he was rewarded for that attendance, proved that he never could have been a drunkard. Well, indeed, would it be for the world if such extraordinary virtues as he possessed were often found in company with so very few faults.

In all modern editions of Lamb the "Confessions of a Drunkard" are included with the _Last Essays of Elia_. But Lamb did not himself originally place them there. Apparently his intention was not to reprint them after their appearance in the _London Magazine_ in 1822. When, however, the _Last Essays of Elia_ was published, in 1833, the paper called "A Death-Bed" was objected to by Mrs. Randal Norris, as bearing too publicly upon her poverty. When, therefore, the next edition was preparing, "A Death-Bed" was taken out, and the "Confessions" put in its place, but whether Lamb made the subst.i.tution, or whether it was decided upon after his death, I do not know.

Page 160. _Footnote. Poor M----._ Probably George Morland, who died a drunkard in 1804. In _The Life of George Morland_, by George Dawe (Lamb's "Royal Academician"), we read: "When he [Morland] arose in the morning his hand trembled so as to render him incapable of guiding the pencil, until he had recruited his spirits with his fatal remedy."

Page 162. RECOLLECTIONS OF CHRIST'S HOSPITAL.

This article was first printed in the _Gentleman's Magazine_ for June, 1813, and in the supplement for that year, under the t.i.tle "On Christ's Hospital and the Character of the Christ's Hospital Boys." In that place it had the following opening, which, having lost its timeliness, was discarded when in 1818 the essay was printed in the _Works_:--

"A great deal has been said about the Governors of this Hospital abusing their right of presentation, by presenting the children of opulent parents to the Inst.i.tution. This may have been the case in an instance or two; and what wonder, in an establishment consisting, in town and country, of upwards of a thousand boys! But I believe there is no great danger of an abuse of this sort ever becoming very general. There is an old quality in human nature, which will perpetually present an adequate preventive to this evil.

While the coa.r.s.e blue coat and the yellow hose shall continue to be the costume of the school, (and never may modern refinement innovate upon the venerable fas.h.i.+on!) the sons of the Aristocracy of this country, cleric or laic, will not often be obtruded upon this seminary.

"I own, I wish there was more room for such complaints. I cannot but think that a sprinkling of the sons of respectable parents among them has an admirable tendency to liberalize the whole ma.s.s; and that to the great proportion of Clergymen's children in particular which are to be found among them it is owing, that the foundation has not long since degenerated into a mere Charity-school, as it must do, upon the plan so hotly recommended by some reformists, of recruiting its ranks from the offspring of none but the very lowest of the people.

"I am not learned enough in the history of the Hospital to say by what steps it may have departed from the letter of its original charter; but believing it, as it is at present const.i.tuted, to be a great practical benefit, I am not anxious to revert to first principles, to overturn a positive good, under pretence of restoring something which existed in the days of Edward the Sixth, when the face of every thing around us was as different as can be from the present. Since that time the opportunities of instruction to the very lowest cla.s.ses (of as much instruction as may be beneficial and not pernicious to them) have multiplied beyond what the prophetic spirit of the first suggester of this charity[64]

could have predicted, or the wishes of that holy man have even aspired to. There are parochial schools, and Bell's and Lancaster's, with their arms open to receive every son of ignorance, and disperse the last fog of uninstructed darkness which dwells upon the land. What harm, then, if in the heart of this n.o.ble City there should be left one receptacle, where parents of rather more liberal views, but whose time-straitened circ.u.mstances do not admit of affording their children that better sort of education which they themselves, not without cost to their parents, have received, may without cost send their sons? For such Christ's Hospital unfolds her bounty.

"To comfort, &c."

[64] "Bishop Ridley, in a Sermon preached before King Edward the Sixth."

Concerning this original opening a few words are necessary. Lamb had found the impetus to write his article in the public charges of favouritism and the undue distribution of influence, that were made by Robert Waithman (1764-1833), the reformer, against the governors of Christ's Hospital, in an open letter to those gentlemen in 1808. The newspapers naturally had much to say on the question, which was for some time a prominent one. _The Examiner_, for example, edited by Leigh Hunt--himself an old Christ's Hospitaller--spoke thus strongly (December 25, 1808): "That hundreds of unfortunate objects have applied in vain for admission is sufficiently notorious; and that many persons with abundant means of educating and providing for their children and relatives have obtained their admission into the School is also equally well known." The son of the Vicar of Edmonton, Mr. Dawson Warren, and a boy named Carysfoot Proby, whose father had two livings as well as his own and his wife's fortune, were the chief scapegoats.

Coleridge also wrote an article on the subject, which appeared in _The Courier_--a vigorous denial of Waithman's contention that the Hospital was intended for the poorest children, and the expression of a wish that the governors would permit no influence to change its aforetime policy.

At the same time Coleridge expressed disapproval of the admission of boys whose fathers were in easy circ.u.mstances.

The _Gentleman's Magazine_ version of Lamb's essay had one other difference from that of 1818. The second paragraph of the essay as it now stands did not then end at the words "would do well to go a little out of their way to see" (page 163). At the word "see" was a colon, and then came this pa.s.sage:--

"let those judge, I say, who have compared this scene with the abject countenances, the squalid mirth, the broken-down spirit, and crouching, or else fierce and brutal deportment to strangers, of the very different sets of little beings who range round the precincts of common orphan schools and places of charity."

Lamb's essay was also printed in a quaint little book ent.i.tled _A Brief History of Christ's Hospital from its Foundation by King Edward the Sixth to the Present Time_, by J. I. W[ilson], published in 1820. It is there credited to Mr. Charles Lambe. In 1835, it was reissued as a pamphlet by some of Lamb's schoolfellows and friends "in testimony of their respect for the author, and of their regard for the Inst.i.tution."

Christ's Hospital was founded in 1552 by Edward VI. in response to a sermon on charity by Ridley; his charge to Ridley being:--

To take out of the streets all the fatherless children and other poor men's children that were not able to keep them, and to bring them to the late dissolved house of the Greyfriars, which they devised to be a Hospital for them, where they should have meat, drink, and clothes, lodging and learning, and officers to attend upon them.

Later, this intention was somewhat modified, with the purpose of benefiting rather the reduced or embarra.s.sed parents than the very poor.

The London history of the school is now ended. The boys have gone to Suss.e.x, where, near Horsham, the new buildings have been erected, and the old Newgate Street structure has been demolished to make room for offices, warehouses, and an extension of St. Bartholomew's Hospital.

John Lamb's appeal for his son Charles to be received into Christ's Hospital is dated March 30, 1781, and it states that the pet.i.tioner has "a Wife and three Children, and he finds it difficult to maintain and educate his Family without some a.s.sistance." One of the children, John Lamb jr., then aged nearly eighteen, should, however, have been practically self-supporting. The presentation was made by Timothy Yeats, a friend of Samuel Salt, who himself signed the necessary bond for 100 and made himself responsible for the boy's discharge. Lamb was admitted July 17, 1782, and clothed October 9, 1782; he remained until November 23, 1789.

The notes that follow apply solely to the few points in the text that call for remark. More exhaustive comments on Lamb and Christ's Hospital will be found in the notes to the _Elia_ essay on the same subject.

Page 163, line 23. _The old Grey Friars._ This monastery had been suppressed by Henry VIII. It was reinhabited by the Christ's Hospital boys; but was in great part destroyed in the Fire of London, the cloisters alone remaining. The other old part of Christ's Hospital, as this generation knows it, dates from after the Fire.