The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb Volume II Part 34

A sweet attractive kind of grace, A full a.s.surance given by looks.

A portion of the poem is quoted in the Elia essay on "Some Sonnets of Sir Philip Sidney."

Page 37. MRS. BATTLE'S OPINIONS ON WHIST.

_London Magazine_, February, 1821.

Mrs. Battle was probably, in real life, to a large extent Sarah Burney, the wife of Rear-Admiral James Burney, Lamb's friend, and the centre of the whist-playing set to which he belonged. The theory that Lamb's grandmother, Mrs. Field, was the original Mrs. Battle, does not, I think, commend itself, although that lady may have lent a trait or two. It has possibly arisen from the relation of the pa.s.sage in the essay on Blakesware, where Mrs. Battle is said to have died in the haunted room, to that in "Dream-Children," where Lamb says that Mrs.

Field occupied this room.

The fact that Mrs. Battle and Mrs. Burney were both Sarahs is a small piece of evidence towards their fusion, but there is something more conclusive in the correspondence. Writing in March, 1830, concerning the old whist days, to William Ayrton, one of the old whist-playing company, and the neighbour of the Burneys in Little James Street, Pimlico, Lamb makes use of an elision which, I think, may be taken as more than support of the theory that Mrs. Battle and Mrs. Burney were largely the same--practically proof. "Your letter, which was only not so pleasant as your appearance would have been, has revived some old images; Phillips (not the Colonel), with his few hairs bristling up at the charge of a revoke, which he declares impossible; the old Captain's significant nod over the right shoulder (was it not?); Mrs. B----'s determined questioning of the score, after the game was absolutely gone to the d----l." Lamb, I think, would have written out Mrs. Burney in full had he not wished to suggest Mrs. Battle too.

This conjecture is borne out by the testimony of the late Mrs.

Lefroy, in her youth a friend of the Burneys and the Lambs, who told Canon Ainger that though Mrs. Battle had many differing points she was undoubtedly Mrs. Burney. But of course there are the usual cross-trails--the reference to the pictures at Sandham; to Walter Plumer; to the legacy to Lamb; and so forth. Perhaps among the Blakesware portraits was one which Lamb chose as Mrs. Battle's presentment; perhaps Mrs. Field had told him of an ancient dame who had certain of Mrs. Battle's characteristics, and he superimposed Mrs.

Burney upon this foundation.

For further particulars concerning the Burney whist parties see the notes to the "Letter to Southey," Vol. I.

Admiral Burney (1750-1821), a son of Dr. Burney, the historian of music, and friend of Johnson and Reynolds, was the brother of f.a.n.n.y Burney, afterwards Madame d'Arblay. See also "The Wedding," page 275 of this volume, for another glimpse of Lamb's old friend. Admiral Burney wrote _An Essay on the Game of Whist_, which was published in 1821. As he lived until November, 1821, he probably read the present essay. Writing to Wordsworth, March 20, 1822, Lamb says: "There's Capt. Burney gone!--what fun has whist now; what matters it what you lead, if you can no longer fancy him looking over you?"

Page 37, line 1 of essay. "_A clean hearth_." To this, in the _London Magazine_, Lamb put the footnote:--

"This was before the introduction of rugs, reader. You must remember the intolerable crash of the unswept cinder, betwixt your foot and the marble."

Page 37, line 8 of essay. _Win one game, and lose another_. To this, in the _London Magazine_, Lamb put the note:--

"As if a sportsman should tell you he liked to kill a fox one day, and lose him the next."

Page 38, line 26. _Mr. Bowles_. The Rev. William Lisle Bowles (1762-1850), whose sonnets had so influenced Coleridge's early poetical career. His edition of Pope was published in 1806. I have tried in vain to discover if Mr. Bowles' MS. and notes for this edition are still in existence. If so, they might contain Lamb's contribution. But it is rather more likely, I fear, that Lamb invented the story. The game of ombre is in Canto III. of _The Rape of the Lock_.

The only writing on cards which we know Lamb to have done, apart from this essay, is the elementary rules of whist which he made out for Mrs. Badams quite late in his life as a kind of introduction to the reading of Admiral Burney's treatise. This letter is in America and has never been printed except privately; nor, if its owner can help it, will it.

Page 40, line 26. _Old Walter Plumer_. See the essay on "The South-Sea House."

Page 42, line 18 from foot. _Bad pa.s.sions_. Here came in the _London Magazine_, in parenthesis, "(dropping for a while the speaking mask of old Sarah Battle)."

Page 43, line 2. _Bridget Elia_. This is Lamb's first reference in the essays to Mary Lamb under this name. See "Mackery End" and "Old China."

A little essay on card playing in the _Every-Day Book_, the authorship of which is unknown, but which may be Hone's, ends with the following pleasant pa.s.sage:--

Cousin Bridget and the gentle Elia seem beings of that age wherein lived Pamela, whom, with "old Sarah Battle," we may imagine entering their room, and sitting down with them to a _square_ game. Yet Bridget and Elia live in our own times: she, full of kindness to all, and of soothings to Elia especially;--he, no less kind and consoling to Bridget, in all simplicity holding converse with the world, and, ever and anon, giving us scenes that Metzu and De Foe would admire, and portraits that Deuner and Hogarth would rise from their graves to paint.

Page 43. A CHAPTER ON EARS.

_London Magazine_, March, 1821.

Lamb was not so utterly without ear as he states. Crabb Robinson in his diary records more than once that Lamb hummed tunes, and Barron Field, in the memoir of Lamb contributed by him to the _Annual Biography and Obituary_ for 1836, mentions his love for certain beautiful airs, among them Kent's "O that I had wings like a dove"

(mentioned in this essay), and Handel's "From mighty kings." Lamb says that it was Braham who awakened a love of music in him. Compare Lamb's lines to Clara Novello, Vol. IV., page 101, and also Mary Lamb's postscript to his "Free Thoughts on Eminent Composers," same volume.

Page 43, foot. _I was never ... in the pillory_. This sentence led to an amusing article in the _London Magazine_ for the next month, April, 1821, ent.i.tled "The Confessions of H.F.V.H. Delamore, Esq.,"

unmistakably, I think, by Lamb, which will be found in Vol. I. of this edition, wherein Lamb confesses to a brief sojourn in the stocks at Barnet for brawling on Sunday, an incident for the broad truth of which we have the testimony of his friend Brook Pulham.

Page 44, lines 6 and 7. "_Water parted from the sea_," "_In Infancy_."

Songs by Arne in "Artaxerxes," Lamb's "First Play" (see page 113).

Page 44, line 11. _Mrs. S----_. The Key gives "Mrs. Spinkes." We meet a Will Weatherall in "Distant Correspondents," page 120; but I have not been able to discover more concerning either.

Page 44, line 17. _Alice W----n_. See note to "Dream Children."

Page 44, line 26. _My friend A._ Probably William Ayrton (1777-1818), the musical critic, one of the Burneys' whist-playing set, and a friend and correspondent of Lamb's. See the musical rhyming letter to him from Lamb, May 17, 1817.

Page 47, line 5. _My friend, Nov----_. Vincent Novello (1781-1861), the organist, the father of Mrs. Cowden Clarke, and a great friend of Lamb.

Page 47, footnote. Another friend of Vincent Novello's uses the same couplet (from Watt's _Divine Songs for Children_, Song XXVIII., "For the Lord's Day, Evening") in the description of glees by the old cricketers at the Bat and Ball on Broad Halfpenny Down, near Hambledon--I refer to John Nyren, author of _The Young Cricketer's Tutor_, 1833. There is no evidence that Lamb and Nyren ever met, but one feels that they ought to have done so, in Novello's hospitable rooms.

Page 48, line 3. _Lutheran beer_. Edmund Ollier, the son of Charles Ollier, the publisher of Lamb's _Works_, 1818, in his reminiscences of Lamb, prefixed to one edition of _Elia_, tells this story: "Once at a musical party at Leigh Hunt's, being oppressed with what to him was nothing but a prolonged noise ... he said--'If one only had a pot of porter, one might get through this.' It was procured for him and he weathered the Mozartian storm."

In the _London Magazine_ this essay had the following postscript:--

"P.S.--A writer, whose real name, it seems, is _Boldero_, but who has been entertaining the town for the last twelve months, with some very pleasant lucubrations, under the a.s.sumed signature of _Leigh Hunt_[1], in his Indicator, of the 31st January last, has thought fit to insinuate, that I _Elia_ do not write the little sketches which bear my signature, in this Magazine; but that the true author of them is a Mr. L----b. Observe the critical period at which he has chosen to impute the calumny!--on the very eve of the publication of our last number--affording no scope for explanation for a full month--during which time, I must needs lie writhing and tossing, under the cruel imputation of nonent.i.ty.--Good heavens! that a plain man must not be allowed _to be_--

"They call this an age of personality: but surely this spirit of anti-personality (if I may so express it) is something worse.

"Take away my moral reputation: I may live to discredit that calumny.

"Injure my literary fame,--I may write that up again--

"But when a gentleman is robbed of his ident.i.ty, where is he?

"Other murderers stab but at our existence, a frail and perishing trifle at the best. But here is an a.s.sa.s.sin who aims at our very essence; who not only forbids us _to be_ any longer, but _to have been_ at all. Let our ancestors look to it--

"Is the parish register nothing? Is the house in Princes-street, Cavendish-square, where we saw the light six-and-forty years ago, nothing? Were our progenitors from stately Genoa, where we flourished four centuries back, before the barbarous name of Boldero[2] was known to a European mouth, nothing? Was the goodly scion of our name, transplanted into England, in the reign of the seventh Henry, nothing? Are the archives of the steel yard, in succeeding reigns (if haply they survive the fury of our envious enemies) showing that we flourished in prime repute, as merchants, down to the period of the commonwealth, nothing?

"Why then the world, and all that's in't is nothing-- The covering sky is nothing, Bohemia is nothing.--

"I am ashamed that this trifling writer should have power to move me so."

Leigh Hunt, in _The Indicator_, January 31 and February 7, 1821, had reprinted from _The Examiner_ a review of Lamb's _Works_, with a few prefatory remarks in which it was stated: "We believe we are taking no greater liberty with him [Charles Lamb] than our motives will warrant, when we add that he sometimes writes in the _London Magazine_ under the signature of Elia."

In _The Indicator_ of March 7, 1821, Leigh Hunt replied to Elia. Leigh Hunt was no match for Lamb in this kind of raillery, and the first portion of the reply is rather c.u.mbersome. At the end, however, he says: "There _was_, by the bye, a family of the name of Elia who came from Italy,--Jews; which may account for this boast about Genoa. See also in his last article in the London Magazine [the essay on "Ears"]

some remarkable fancies of conscience in reference to the Papal religion. They further corroborate what we have heard; _viz._ that the family were obliged to fly from Genoa for saying that the Pope was the author of Rabelais; and that Elia is not an anagram, as some have thought it, but the Judaico-Christian name of the writer before us, whose surname, we find, is not Lamb, but Lomb;--Elia Lomb! What a name! He told a friend of ours so in company, and would have palmed himself upon him for a Scotchman, but that his countenance betrayed him."

It is amusing to note that Maginn, writing the text to accompany the Maclise portrait of Lamb in _Fraser's Magazine_ in 1835, gravely states that Lamb's name was really Lomb, and that he was of Jewish extraction.

The subject of Lamb's birth reopened a little while later. In the "Lion's Head," which was the t.i.tle of the pages given to correspondence in the _London Magazine_, in the number for November, 1821, was the following short article from Lamb's pen:--