The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb Volume II Part 47

Temple's essays, under the t.i.tle of _Miscellanea_, were published in 1680 and 1692; his works, in several volumes, between 1700 and 1709.

The best-known essay is that on "Ancient and Modern Learning," but Lamb refers also to those "On Health and Long Life," "Of the Cure of the Gout," "Of Gardening." The quotation on page 228 does not exactly end Temple's garden essay, as Lamb says. Lamb has slightly altered Temple's punctuation.

Page 230. BARBARA S----.

_London Magazine_, April, 1825.

This little story exhibits, perhaps better than anything that Lamb wrote, his curious gift of blending fact and fancy, of building upon a foundation of reality a structure of whimsicality and invention.

In the late Charles Kent's edition of Lamb's works is printed a letter from Miss Kelly, the actress, and a friend of the Lambs, in which the true story is told; for it was she, as indeed Lamb admitted to Wordsworth in a letter in 1825, who told him the incident--"beautifully," he says elsewhere.

Miss Kelly wrote, in 1875:--

I perfectly remember relating an incident of my childhood to Charles Lamb and his dear sister, and I have not the least doubt that the intense interest he seemed to take in the recital, induced him to adopt it as the princ.i.p.al feature in his beautiful story of "Barbara S----." Much, however, as I venerate the wonderful powers of Charles Lamb as a writer--grateful as I ever must feel to have enjoyed for so many years the friendship of himself and his dear sister, and proudly honoured as I am by the two exquisite sonnets he has given to the world as tributary to my humble talent, I have never been able thoroughly to appreciate the extraordinary skill with which he has, in the construction of his story, desired and contrived so to mystify and characterize the events, as to keep me out of sight, and render it utterly impossible for any one to guess at me as the original heroine....

In the year 1799, Miss Jackson, one of my mother's daughters, by her first husband, was placed under the special care of dear old Tate Wilkinson, proprietor of the York Theatre, there to practice, as in due progression, what she had learned of Dramatic Art, while a Chorus Singer at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, coming back, as she did after a few years, as the wife of the late celebrated, inimitable Charles Mathews, to the Haymarket Theatre. In 1799, through the influence of my uncle, Michael Kelly, the celebrated singer and composer of that day, I was allowed to become a miniature chorister in her place....

One Sat.u.r.day, during the limited season of nine months in the year, Mr. Peake (dear, good old gentleman!) looking, as I remember he always did--anxiously perplexed--doubtless as to how he could best dole out the too frequently insufficient amount provided for the ill-paid company, silently looked me in the face, while he carefully folded a very _dirty, ragged_ bank note--put it into my hand, patted my cheek, and with a slight pressure on my shoulder, hinting there was no time for our usual gossip--as good as said, "go, my dear," and I hurried down the long gallery, lined down each side with performers of all degrees, more than one of whom whispered as I pa.s.sed--"Is it full pay, dear?" I nodded "Yes," and proceeded to my seat on the window of the landing-place.

It was a great comfort in those days, to have a bank-note to look at; but not always easy to open one. Mine had been cut and repaired with a line of gum paper, about twenty times as thick as the note itself, threatening the total destruction of the thin part.

Now observe in what small matters f.a.n.n.y and Barbara were in a marked degree different characters. Barbara, at 11 years of age, was some time before she felt the different size of a guinea to a half guinea, _held tight in her hand_. I, at nine years old, was not so untaught, or innocent. I was a woman of the world. I took _nothing_ for granted. I had a deep respect for Mr. Peake, but the join might have disfigured the note--destroyed its currency; and it was my business to see all safe. So, I carefully opened it. A two pound-note instead of one! The blood rushed into my face, the tears into my eyes, and for a moment, something like an ecstasy of joy pa.s.sed through my mind. "Oh! what a blessing to my dear mother!"--"To whom?"--in an instant said my violently beating heart,--"My mother?" Why she would spurn me for the wish. How shall I ever own to her my guilty thought? I trembled violently--I staggered back on my way to the Treasury, but no one would let me pa.s.s, until I said, "But Mr. Peake has given me too much." "Too much, has he?" said one, and was followed by a coa.r.s.e, cold, derisive, general laugh. Oh! how it went to my heart; but on I went.

"If you please, Mr. Peake, you have given me a two--"

"A what?"

"A two, Sir!"

"A two!--G.o.d bless my soul!--tut-tut-tut-tut--dear, dear, dear!--G.o.d bless my soul! There, dear," and without another word, he, in exchange, laid a one pound note on the desk; a new one, quite clean,--a bright, honest looking note,--mine, the one I had a right to,--my own,--within the limit of my poor deservings.

Thus, my dear sir, I give (as you say you wish to have the _facts_ as accurately stated as possible) the simple, absolute truth.

As a matter of fact Miss Kelly did afterwards play in Morton's "Children in the Wood," to Lamb's great satisfaction. The incident of the roast fowl is in that play.

In Vol. I. will be found more than one eulogy of Miss Kelly's acting.

Page 231, last line. _Real hot tears_. In Crabb Robinson's diary Miss Kelly relates that when, as Constance, in "King John," Mrs. Siddons (not Mrs. Porter) wept over her, her collar was wet with Mrs. Siddons'

tears. Miss Kelly, of course, was playing Arthur.

Page 232, line 7. _Impediment ... pulpit_. This is more true than the casual reader may suppose. Had Lamb not had an impediment in his speech, he would have become, at Christ's Hospital, a Grecian, and have gone to one of the universities; and the ordinary fate of a Grecian was to take orders.

Page 232, line 13. _Mr. Liston_. Mrs. Cowden Clarke says that Liston the comedian and his wife were among the visitors to the Lambs' rooms at Great Russell Street.

Page 232, line 14. _Mrs. Charles Kemble_, _nee_ Maria Theresa De Camp, mother of f.a.n.n.y Kemble.

Page 232, line 16. _Macready_. The only record of any conference between Macready and Lamb is Macready's remark in his _Diary_ that he met Lamb at Talfourd's, and Lamb said that he wished to draw his last breath through a pipe, and exhale it in a pun. But this was long after the present essay was written.

Page 232, line 17. _Picture Gallery ... Mr. Matthews_. See note below.

Page 232, line 26. _Not Diamond's_. Dimond was the proprietor of the old Bath Theatre.

Page 235, first line. _Mrs. Crawford_. Anne Crawford (1734-1801), _nee_ Street, who was born at Bath, married successively a Mr. Dancer, Spranger Barry the actor, and a Mr. Crawford. Her great part was Lady Randolph in Home's "Douglas."

Page 235. THE TOMBS IN THE ABBEY.

_London Magazine_, October, 1823, where, with slight differences, it formed the concluding portion of the "Letter of Elia to Robert Southey, Esquire," which will be found in Vol. I. The notes in that volume should be consulted; but a little may be said here. This, the less personal portion of the "Letter to Southey," seems to have been all that Lamb cared to retain. He admitted afterwards, when his anger against Southey had cooled, that his "guardian angel" had been "absent" at the time he wrote it.

The Dean of Westminster at the time was Ireland, the friend of Gifford--dean from 1815 to 1842. Lamb's protest against the two-shilling fee was supported a year or so later than its first appearance by Reynolds, in _Odes and Addresses_, 1825, in a sarcastic appeal to the Dean and Chapter of Westminster to reduce that sum. The pa.s.sage in Lamb's essay being reprinted in 1833, suggests that the reform still tarried. The evidence, however, of J.T. Smith, in his _Book for a Rainy Day_, is that it was possible in 1822 to enter Poets' Corner for sixpence. Dean Stanley, in his _Historical Memorials of Westminster Abbey_, writes: "Free admission was given to the larger part of the Abbey under Dean Ireland. Authorised guides were first appointed in 1826, and the nave and transepts opened, and the fees lowered in 1841...."

Lamb's reference to Southey and to Andre's monument is characteristically mischievous. He is reminding Southey of his early sympathy with rebels--his "Wat Tyler" and pantisocratic days. Major John Andre, Sir Henry Clinton's adjutant-general, was caught returning from an interview with an American traitor--a perfectly honourable proceeding in warfare--and was hanged by Washington as a spy in 1780.

No blame attached either to judge or victim. Andre's remains were reburied in the Abbey in 1821. Lamb speaks of injury to Andre's figure in the monument, but the usual thing was for the figure of Washington to be attacked. Its head has had to be renewed more than once. Minor thefts have also been committed. According to Mrs. Gordon's _Life of Dean Buckland_, one piece of vandalism at any rate was the work of an American, who returned to the dean two heads which he had appropriated as relics.

In _The Examiner_ for April 8, 1821, is quoted from _The Traveller_ the following epigram, which may not improbably be Lamb's, and which shows at any rate that his protest against entrance fees for churches was in the air.

ON A VISIT TO ST. PAUL'S

What can be hop'd from Priests who, 'gainst the Poor, For lack of two-pence, shut the church's door; Who, true successors of the ancient leaven, Erect a turnpike on the road to Heaven?

"Knock, and it shall be open'd," saith our LORD; "Knock, and pay two-pence," say the Chapter Board: The Showman of the booth the fee receives, And G.o.d's house is again a "den of thieves."

Page 237. AMICUS REDIVIVUS.

_London Magazine_, December, 1823.

A preliminary sketch of the first portion of this essay will be found in the letter from Lamb to Sarah Hazlitt, written probably in November, 1823. In Barry Cornwall's _Memoir_ of Lamb, Chapter VI., there is also an account of the accident to Dyer--Procter (Barry Cornwall) having chanced to visit the Lambs just after the event. For an account of George Dyer see notes to the essay on "Oxford in the Vacation". In 1823 he was sixty-eight; later he became quite blind.

We have another glimpse of G.D. on that fatal day, in the reminiscences of Mr. Ogilvie, an India House clerk with Lamb, as communicated to the Rev. Joseph H. Twich.e.l.l (see _Scribner's Magazine_, March, 1876):--

At the time George Dyer was fished out of New River in front of Lamb's house at Islington, after he was resuscitated, Mary brought him a suit of Charles's clothes to put on while his own were drying. Inasmuch as he was a giant of a man, and Lamb undersized; inasmuch, moreover, as Lamb's wardrobe afforded only knee breeches for the nether limbs (Dyer's were colossal), the spectacle he presented when the clothes were on--or as much on as they could be--was vastly ludicrous.

Allsop, in a letter to Mr. Percy Fitzgerald, remarked, of Dyer's immersion, that Lamb had said to him: "If he had been drowned it would have made me famous. Think of having a Crowner's quest, and all the questions and dark suspicions of murder. People would haunt the spot and say, 'Here died the poet of Grongar Hill.'" The poet of "Grongar Hill" was, of course, John Dyer--another of Lamb's instances of the ambiguities arising from proper names.

Page 238, line 19. _The rescue_. At these words, in the _London Magazine_, Lamb put this footnote:--

"The topography of my cottage, and its relation to the river, will explain this; as I have been at some cost to have the whole engraved (in time, I hope, for our next number), as well for the satisfaction of the reader, as to commemorate so signal a deliverance."

The cottage at Colebrooke Row, it should be said, stands to this day (1911); but the New River has been covered in. There is, however, no difficulty in reproducing the situation. One descends from the front door by a curved flight of steps, a little path from which, parallel with the New River, takes one out into Colebrooke Row (or rather Duncan Terrace, as this part of the Row is now called). Under the front door-steps is another door from which Dyer may possibly have emerged; if so it would be the simplest thing for him to walk straight ahead, and find himself in the river.

Page 240, line 22. _That Abyssinian traveller_. James Bruce (1730-1794), the explorer of the sources of the Nile, was famous many years before his _Travels_ appeared, in 1790, the year after which Lamb left school. The New River, made in 1609-1613, has its source in the Chadwell and Amwell springs. It was peculiarly Lamb's river: Amwell is close to Blakesware and Widford; Lamb explored it as a boy; at Islington he lived opposite it, and rescued George Dyer from its depths; and he retained its company both at Enfield and Edmonton.

In the essay on "Newspapers" is a pa.s.sage very similar to this.

Page 240, line 32. _Eternal novity_. Writing to Hood in 1824 Lamb speaks of the New River as "rather elderly by this time." Dyer, it should be remembered, was of Emmanuel College, and the historian of Cambridge University.

Page 241, last paragraph. George Dyer contributed "all that was original" to Valpy's edition of the cla.s.sics--141 volumes. He also wrote the _History of The University and Colleges of Cambridge, including notices relating to the Founders and Eminent Men_. Among the eminent men of Cambridge are Jeremiah Markland (1693-1776), of Christ's Hospital and St. Peter's, the cla.s.sical commentator; and Thomas Gray, the poet, the sweet lyrist of Peterhouse, who died in 1771, when Dyer was sixteen. Tyrwhitt would probably be Thomas Tyrwhitt (1730-1786), of Queen's College, Oxford, the editor of Chaucer; but Robert Tyrwhitt (1735-1817), his brother, the Unitarian, might be expected to take interest in Dyer also, for G.D. was, in Lamb's phrase, a "One-G.o.ddite" too. The mild Askew was Anthony Askew (1722-1772), doctor and cla.s.sical scholar, who, being physician to Christ's Hospital when Dyer was there, lent the boy books, and was very kind to him.