The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb Volume II Part 39

Page 111, line 1. _Garrick's Drury_. Garrick's Drury Lane was condemned in 1791, and superseded in 1794 by the new theatre, the burning of which in 1809 led to the _Rejected Addresses_. It has recently come to light that Lamb was among the compet.i.tors who sent in to the management the real addresses. The present Drury Lane Theatre dates from 1812.

Page 111, line 11. _My G.o.dfather F._ Lamb's G.o.dfather was Francis Fielde. _The British Directory_ for 1793 gives him as Francis Field, oilman, 62 High Holborn. Whether or no he played the part in Sheridan's matrimonial comedy that is attributed to him, I do not know (Moore makes the friend a Mr. Ewart); but it does not sound like an invented story. Richard Brinsley Sheridan carried Miss Linley, the oratorio singer, from Bath and the persecutions of Major Mathews, in March, 1772, and placed her in France. They were married near Calais, and married again in England in April, 1773. Sheridan became manager of Drury Lane, in succession to Garrick, in 1776, the first performance under his control being on September 21. Lamb is supposed to have had some personal acquaintance with Sheridan. Mary Lamb speaks of him as helping the Sheridans, father and son, with a pantomime; but of the work we know nothing definite. I do not consider the play printed in part in the late Charles Kent's edition of Lamb, on the authority of P.G. Patmore, either to be by Lamb or to correspond to Mary Lamb's description.

Page 118, line 8. _His testamentary beneficence_. Lamb was not joking.

Writing to _The Athenaeum_, January 5, 1901, Mr. Thomas Greg says:--

Three-quarters of a century after it pa.s.sed out of Lamb's possession I am happy to tell the world--or that small portion of it to whom any fact about his life is precious--exactly where and what this landed property is. By indentures of lease and release dated March 23 and 24, 1779, George Merchant and Thomas Wyman, two yeomen of Braughing in the county of Hertford, conveyed to Francis Fielde, of the parish of St. Andrew's, Holborn, in the county of Middles.e.x, oilman, for the consideration of 20., all that messuage or tenement, with the orchard, gardens, yards, barns, edifices, and buildings, and all and singular the appurtenances therewithal used or occupied, situate, lying, and being at West Mill Green in the parish of Buntingford West Mill in the said county of Hertford, etc. On March 5, 1804, Francis Fielde, of New Cavendish Street, Esq., made his will, and, with the exception of two, annuities to female relatives, left all his residuary estate, real and personal, to his wife Sarah Fielde.

This will was proved on November 5, 1809. By indentures of lease and release dated August 20 and 21, 1812, Sarah Fielde conveyed the said property to Charles Lamb, of Inner Temple Lane, gentleman. By an indenture of feoffment dated February 15, 1815, made between the said Charles Lamb of the first part, the said Sarah Fielde of the second part, and Thomas Greg the younger, of Broad Street Buildings, London, Esq., the said property was conveyed to the said Thomas Greg the younger for 50.

The said Thomas Greg the younger died in 1839, and left the said property to his nephew, Robert Philips Greg, now of Coles Park, West Mill, in the same county; and the said Robert Philips Greg in 1884 conveyed it to his nephew, Thomas Tylston Greg, of 15 Clifford's Inn, London, in whose possession it now is in substantially the same condition as it was in 1815.

The evidence that the Charles Lamb who conveyed the property in 1815 is Elia himself is overwhelming.

1. The essay itself gives the locality correctly: it is about two and a half miles from Puckeridge.

2. The plot of land contains as near as possible three-quarters of an acre, with an old thatched cottage and small barn standing upon it.

The barn, specially mentioned in all the deeds, is a most unusual adjunct of so small a cottage. The property, the deeds of which go back to 1708, appears to have been isolated and held by small men, and consists of a long narrow tongue of land jutting into the property now of the Savile family (Earls of Mexborough), but formerly of the Earls of Hardwicke.

3. The witness to Charles Lamb's signature on the deed of 1815 is William Hazlitt, of 19, York Street, Westminster.

4. Lamb was living in Inner Temple Lane in 1815, and did not leave the Temple till 1817.

5. The essay was printed in the _London Magazine_ for December, 1821, six years after "the estate has pa.s.sed into more prudent hands."

6. And lastly, the following letter in Charles Lamb's own handwriting, found with the deeds which are in my possession, clinches the matter:--

"MR. SARGUS,--This is to give you notice that I have parted with the Cottage to Mr. Grig Junr. to whom you will pay rent from Michaelmas last. The rent that was due at Michaelmas I do not wish you to pay me. I forgive it you as you may have been at some expences in repairs.

"Yours

"CH. LAMB.

"Inner Temple Lane, London,

"_23 Feb., 1815._"

It is certainly not the fact that Lamb acquired the property, as he states, by the will of his G.o.dfather, for it was conveyed to him some three years after the latter's death by Mrs. Fielde. But strict accuracy of fact in Lamb's '_Essays_' we neither look for nor desire.

In all probability Mrs. Fielde conveyed him the property in accordance with an expressed wish of her husband in his lifetime. Reading also between the lines of the essay, it is interesting to notice that Francis Fielde, the Holborn oilman of 1779, in 1809 has become Francis Fielde, Esq., of New Cavendish Street. In the letter quoted above Lamb speaks of his purchaser as "Mr. Grig Junr.," more, I am inclined to think, from his desire to have his little joke than from mere inaccuracy, for he must have known the correct name of his purchaser.

But Mr. Greg, Jun., was only just twenty-one when he bought the property, and the expression "as merry as a grig" running in Lamb's mind might have proved irresistible to him. Lastly, the property is now called, and has been so far back as I can trace, "b.u.t.ton Snap." No such name is found in any of the t.i.tle-deeds, and it was impossible before to understand whence it arose. Now it is not: Lamb must have so christened his little property in jest, and the name has stuck.

THOMAS GREG.

Page 113, line 1. _The maternal lap_. With the exception of a brief mention on page 33--"the gentle posture of maternal tenderness"--this is Lamb's only reference to his mother in all the essays--probably from the wish not to wound his sister, who would naturally read all he wrote; although we are told by Talfourd that she spoke of her mother with composure. But it is possible to be more sensitive for others than they are for themselves.

Page 113, line 3. _The play was Artaxerxes_. The opera, by Thomas Augustine Arne (1710-1778), produced in 1762, founded on Metastasio's "Artaserse." The date of the performance was in all probability December 1, 1780, although Lamb suggests that it was later; for that was the only occasion in 1780-81-82 on which "Artaxerxes" was followed by "Harlequin's Invasion," a pantomime dating from 1759, the work of Garrick. It shows Harlequin invading the territory of Shakespeare; Harlequin is defeated and Shakespeare restored.

Page 113, line 20. _The Lady of the Manor_. Here Lamb's memory, I fancy, betrayed him. This play (a comic opera by William Kenrick) was not performed at Drury Lane or Covent Garden in the period mentioned.

Lamb's pen probably meant to write "The Lord of the Manor," General Burgoyne's opera, with music by William Jackson, of Exeter, which was produced in 1780. It was frequently followed in the bill by "Robinson Crusoe," but never by "Lun's Ghost," whereas Wycherley's "Way of the World" was followed by "Lun's Ghost" at Drury Lane on January 9, 1782.

We may therefore a.s.sume that Lamb's second visit to the theatre was to see "The Lord of the Manor," followed by "Robinson Crusoe," some time in 1781, and his third to see "The Way of the World," followed by "Lun's Ghost" on January 9, 1782. "Lun's Ghost" was produced on January 3, 1782. Lun was the name under which John Rich (1682?-1761), the pantomimist and theatrical manager, had played in pantomime.

Page 113, last line. _Round Church ... of the Templars_. This allusion to the Temple Church and its Gothic heads was used before by Lamb in his story "First Going to Church" in _Mrs. Leicester's School_ (see Vol. III.). In that volume Mary Lamb had told the story of what we may take to be her first play (see "Visit to the Cousins"), the piece being Congreve's "Mourning Bride."

Page 114, line 1. _The season 1781-2_. Lamb was six on February 10, 1781. He says, in his "Play-house Memoranda," of the same occasion, "Oh when shall I forget first seeing a play, at the age of five or six?"

Page 114, line 3. _At school_. Lamb was at Christ's Hospital from 1782 to 1789.

Page 114, end. _Mrs. Siddons in "Isabella."_ Mrs. Siddons first played this part at Drury Lane on October 10, 1782. The play was "Isabella,"

a version by Garrick of Southerne's "Fatal Marriage." Mrs. Siddons also appeared frequently as Isabella in "Measure for Measure;" but Lamb clearly says "in" Isabella, meaning the play. Lamb's sonnet, in which he collaborated with Coleridge, on Mrs. Siddons, which was printed in the _Morning Chronicle_ in December, 1794 (see Vol. IV.), was written when he was nineteen. It runs (text of 1797):--

As when a child on some long winter's night Affrighted clinging to its Grandam's knees With eager wond'ring and perturb'd delight Listens strange tales of fearful dark decrees Mutter'd to wretch by necromantic spell; Or of those hags, who at the witching time Of murky midnight ride the air sublime, And mingle foul embrace with fiends of h.e.l.l: Cold Horror drinks its blood! Anon the tear More gentle starts, to hear the Beldame tell Of pretty babes, that lov'd each other dear, Murder'd by cruel Uncle's mandate fell: Ev'n such the shiv'ring joys thy tones impart, Ev'n so thou, SIDDONS! meltest my sad heart!

Page 115. DREAM-CHILDREN.

_London Magazine_, January, 1822.

John Lamb died on October 26, 1821, leaving all his property to his brother. Charles was greatly upset by his loss. Writing to Wordsworth in March, 1822, he said: "We are pretty well save colds and rheumatics, and a certain deadness to every thing, which I think I may date from poor John's Loss.... Deaths over-set one, and put one out long after the recent grief." (His friend Captain Burney died in the same month.) Lamb probably began "Dream-Children,"--in some ways, I think, his most perfect prose work--almost immediately upon his brother's death. The essay "My Relations" may be taken in connection with this as completing the picture of John Lamb. His lameness was caused by the fall of a stone in 1796, but I doubt if the leg were really amputated.

The description in this essay of Blakesware, the seat of the Plumers, is supplemented by the essay ent.i.tled "Blakesmoor in H----shire."

Except that Lamb subst.i.tutes Norfolk for the nearer county, the description is accurate; it is even true that there is a legend in the Plumer family concerning the mysterious death of two children and the loss of the baronetcy thereby--Sir Walter Plumer, who died in the seventeenth century, being the last to hold the t.i.tle. In his poem "The Grandame" (see Vol. IV.), Lamb refers to Mrs. Field's garrulous tongue and her joy in recounting the oft-told tale; and it may be to his early a.s.sociations with the old story that his great affection for Morton's play, "The Children in the Wood," which he so often commended--particularly with Miss Kelly in the caste--was due. The actual legend of the children in the wood belongs, however, to Norfolk.

William Plumer's newer and more fashionable mansion was at Gilston, which is not in the adjoining county, but also in Hertfordshire, near Harlow, only a few miles distant from Blakesware. Mrs. Field died of cancer in the breast in August, 1792, and was buried in Widford churchyard, hard by Blakesware.

According to Lamb's Key the name Alice W----n was "feigned." If by Alice W----n Lamb, as has been suggested, means Ann Simmons, of Blenheims, near Blakesware, he was romancing when he said that he had courted her for seven long years, although the same statement is made in the essay on "New Year's Eve." We know that in 1796 he abandoned all ideas of marriage. Writing to Coleridge in November of that year, in reference to his love sonnets, he says: "It is a pa.s.sion of which I retain nothing.... Thank G.o.d, the folly has left me for ever. Not even a review of my love verses renews one wayward wish in me." This was 1796. Therefore, as he was born in 1775, he must have begun the wooing of Alice W----n when he was fourteen in order to complete the seven long years of courtship. My own feeling, as I have stated in the notes to the love sonnets in Vol. IV., is that Lamb was never a very serious wooer, and that Alice W----n was more an abstraction around which now and then to group tender imaginings of what might have been than any tangible figure.

A proof that Ann Simmons and Alice W----n are one has been found in the circ.u.mstance that Miss Simmons did marry a Mr. Bartrum, or Bartram, mentioned by Lamb in this essay as being the father of Alice's real children. Bartrum was a p.a.w.nbroker in Princes Street, Coventry Street. Mr. W.C. Hazlitt says that Hazlitt had seen Lamb wandering up and down before the shop trying to get a glimpse of his old friend.

Page 118. DISTANT CORRESPONDENTS.

_London Magazine_, March, 1822.

The germ of this essay will be found in a letter to Barron Field, to whom the essay is addressed, of August 31, 1817. Barron Field was a son of Henry Field, apothecary to Christ's Hospital. His brother, Francis John Field, through whom Lamb probably came to know Barron, was a clerk in the India House.

Barron Field was a.s.sociated with Lamb on Leigh Hunt's _Reflector_ in 1810-1812. He also was dramatic critic for _The Times_ for a while. In 1816 he was appointed judge of the Supreme Court of New South Wales, where he remained until 1824. For other information see the note, in Vol. I., to his _First-Fruits of Australian Poetry_, reviewed by Lamb.

In the same number of the _London Magazine_ which included the present essay was Field's account of his outward voyage to New South Wales.

Page 119, line 24. _Our mutual friend P._ Not identifiable: probably no one in particular. The Bench would be the King's Bench Prison. A little later one of Lamb's friends, William Hone, was confined there for three years.

Page 121, line 8. _The late Lord C._ This was Thomas Pitt, second Baron Camelford (1775-1804), who after a quarrelsome life, first in the navy and afterwards as a man about town, was killed in a duel at Kensington, just where Melbury Road now is. The spot chosen by him for his grave was on the borders of the Lake of Lampierre, near three trees; but there is a doubt if his body ever rested there, for it lay for years in the crypt of St. Anne's, Soho. Its ultimate fate was the subject of a story by Charles Reade.

Page 123, line 11. _Bleach_. Illegitimacy, according to some old authors, wears out in the third generation, enabling a natural son's descendant to resume the ancient coat-of-arms. Lamb refers to this sanction.

Page 123, line 20. _Hare-court_. The Lambs lived at 4 Inner Temple Lane (now rebuilt as Johnson's Buildings) from 1809 to 1817. Writing to Coleridge in June, 1809, Lamb says:--"The rooms are delicious, and the best look backwards into Hare Court, where there is a pump always going. Hare Court trees come in at the window, so that it's like living in a garden."

Barron Field was entered on the books of the Inner Temple in 1809 and was called to the Bar in 1814.