The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb Volume II Part 50

Page 266, line 9. "_Guzman de Alfarache_." The Picaresque romance by Mateo Aleman--_Vida y Lechos del picaro Guzman de Alfarache_, Part I., 1599; Part II., 1605. It was translated into English by James Mabbe in 1622 as _The Rogue; or, The Life of Guzman de Alfarache_. Lamb had a copy, which is now in my possession, with Mary Lamb's name in it.

Page 266. REJOICINGS UPON THE NEW YEAR'S COMING OF AGE.

_London Magazine_, January, 1823.

This paper, being printed in the same number as that which announced Elia's death, was signed "Elia's Ghost."

Lamb returned to this vein of fancy two years or so later when (in 1825) he contributed to his friend William Hone's _Every-Day Book_ the pet.i.tion of the Twenty-Ninth of February, a day of which Hone had taken no account, and of the Twelfth of August, which from being kept as the birthday of King George IV. during the time that he was Prince of Wales, was, on his accession to the throne, disregarded in favour of April 23, St. George's Day. For these letters see Vol. I. of this edition.

Page 271, line 15. "_On the bat's back ..._" From Ariel's song in "The Tempest." Lamb confesses, in at least two of his letters, to a precisely similar plight.

Page 271. THE WEDDING.

_London Magazine_, June, 1825.

The wedding was that of Sarah Burney, daughter of Lamb's old friends, Rear-Admiral James Burney and his wife Sarah Burney, to her cousin, John Payne, of Pall Mall, at St. Margaret's, Westminster, in April, 1821. The clergyman was the Rev. C.P. Burney, who was not, however, vicar of St. Mildred's in the Poultry, but of St. Paul's, Deptford, in Kent. Admiral Burney lived only six months longer, dying in November.

Canon Ainger pointed out that when Lamb was revising this essay for its appearance in the _Last Essays of Elia_, he was, like the admiral, about to lose by marriage Emma Isola, who was to him and his sister what Miss Burney had been to her parents. She married Edward Moxon in July, 1833.

Page 274, line 8. _An unseasonable disposition to levity_. Writing to P.G. Patmore in 1827 Lamb says: "I have been to a funeral, where I made a pun, to the consternation of the rest of the mourners." Again, writing to Southey: "I am going to stand G.o.dfather; I don't like the business; I cannot muster up decorum for these occasions; I shall certainly disgrace the font; I was at Hazlitt's marriage and was like to have been turned out several times during the ceremony. Anything awful makes me laugh. I misbehaved once at a funeral."

Page 274, line 24. _Miss T----s_. In the _London Magazine_ "Miss Turner's."

Page 274, line 27. _Black ... the costume of an author_. See note below.

Page 274, line 29. _Lighter colour_. Here the _London Magazine_ had: "a pea-green coat, for instance, like the bridegroom."

Page 274, line 34. _A lucky apologue_. I do not find this fable; but Lamb's father, in his volume of poems, described in a note on page 381, has something in the same manner in his ballad "The Sparrow's Wedding":--

The chatt'ring Magpye undertook Their wedding breakfast for to cook, He being properly bedight In a cook's cloathing, black and white.

Page 275, foot. _The Admiral's favourite game_. Admiral Burney wrote a treatise on whist (see notes to "Mrs. Battle's Opinions on Whist").

Page 276. THE CHILD ANGEL.

_London Magazine_, June, 1823.

Thomas Moore's _Loves of the Angels_ was published in 1823. Lamb used it twice for his own literary purposes: on the present occasion, with tenderness, and again, eight years later, with some ridicule, for his comic ballad, "Satan in Search of a Wife," 1831, was ironically dedicated to the admirers of Moore's poem (see Vol. IV.).

Page 279. A DEATH-BED.

Hone's _Table Book_, Vol. I., cols. 425-426, 1827. Signed "L.," and dated London, February 10, 1827. The essay is very slightly altered from a letter written by Lamb to Crabb Robinson, January 20, 1827, describing the death of Randal Morris. It was printed in the first edition only of the _Last Essays of Elia_; its place being taken afterwards by the "Confessions of a Drunkard," an odd exchange. The essay was omitted, in deference, it is believed, to the objection of Mrs. Norris to her reduced circ.u.mstances being made public. As the present edition adheres to the text of the first edition, "The Death-Bed" is included in its original place as decided by the author.

The "Confessions of a Drunkard" will be found in Vol. I.

Randal Norris was for many years sub-treasurer of the Inner Temple (see postscript to the essay on the "Old Benchers"). Writing to Wordsworth in 1830 Lamb spoke of him as "sixty years ours and our father's friend." An attempt has been made to identify him with the Mr. Norris of Christ's Hospital who was so kind to the Lambs after the tragedy of September, 1796. I cannot find any trace of Randal Norris having been connected with anything but the law and the Inner Temple; but possibly the Mr. Norris of the school was a relative.

Mrs. Randal Norris was connected with Widford, the village adjoining Blakesware, where she had known Mary Field, Lamb's grandmother. It was thither that she and her son retired after Randal Norris's death, to join her daughters, Miss Betsy and Miss Jane, who had a school for girls known as G.o.ddard House School. Lamb kept up his friendship with them to the end, and they corresponded with Mary Lamb after his death.

Mrs. Norris died in 1843, aged seventy-eight, and was buried at Widford. The grave of Richard Norris, the son, is also there. He died in 1836. One of the daughters, Elizabeth, married Charles Tween, of Widford, and lived until 1894. The other daughter, Jane, married Arthur Tween, his brother, and lived until 1891.

Mary Lamb was a bridesmaid at the Norris's wedding and after the ceremony accompanied the bride and bridegroom to Richmond for the day.

So one of their daughters told Canon Ainger.

Crabb Robinson seems to have exerted himself for the family, as Lamb wished. Mr. W.C. Hazlitt says that an annuity of 80 was settled upon Mrs. Norris.

Page 279, last line. _To the last he called me Jemmy_. In the letter to Crabb Robinson--"To the last he called me Charley. I have none to call me Charley now."

Page 280, line 2. _That bound me to B----_. In the letter to Crabb Robinson--"that bound me to the Temple."

Page 280, line 14. _Your Corporation Library_. In the letter--"The Temple Library."

Page 280, line 19. _He had one Song_. Garrick's "Hearts of Oak."

Page 281. OLD CHINA.

_London Magazine_, March, 1823.

This essay forms a pendant, or complement, to "Mackery End in Hertfordshire," completing the portrait of Mary Lamb begun there.

It was, with "The Wedding," Wordsworth's favourite among the _Last Essays_.

Page 282, line 23. _The brown suit_. P.G. Patmore, in his recollections of Lamb in the _Court Journal_, 1835, afterwards reprinted, with some alterations, in his _My Friends and Acquaintances_, stated that Lamb laid aside his snuff-coloured suit in favour of black, after twenty years of the India House; and he suggests that Wordsworth's stanzas in "A Poet's Epitaph" was the cause:--

But who is he, with modest looks, And clad in homely russet brown?

He murmurs near the running brooks A music sweeter than their own.

He is retired as noontide dew, Or fountain in a noon-day grove; And you must love him, ere to you He will seem worthy of your love.

Whatever Patmore's theory may be worth, it is certain that Lamb adhered to black after the change.

Page 282, line 25. _Beaumont and Fletcher_. See note to "Books and Reading."

Page 282, line 27. _Barker's_. Barker's old book-shop was at No. 20 Great Russell Street, over which the Lambs went to live in 1817. It had then, however, become Mr. Owen's, a brazier's (Wheatley's _London Past and Present_ gives Barker's as 19, but a contemporary directory says 20). Great Russell Street is now Russell Street.

Page 282, line 30. _From Islington_. This would be when Lamb and his sister lived at 36 Chapel Street, Pentonville, a stone's throw from the Islington boundary, in 1799-1800, after the death of their father.

Page 283, line 11. _The "Lady Blanch._" See Mary Lamb's poem on this picture, Vol. IV. and note.

Page 283, line 15. _Colnaghi's_. Colnaghi, the printseller, then in c.o.c.kspur Street, now Pall Mall East. After this word came in the _London Magazine_ "(as W---- calls it)." The reference, Mr. Rogers Rees tells me, is to Wainewright's article "C. van Vinkbooms, his Dogmas for Dilletanti," in the same magazine for December, 1821, where he wrote: "I advise Colnaghi and Molteno to import a few impressions immediately of those beautiful plates from Da Vinci. The ... and Miss Lamb's favourite, 'Lady Blanche and the Abbess,' commonly called 'Vanitas et Modestia' (Campanella, los. ed.), for I foresee that this Dogma will occasion a considerable call for them--let them, therefore, be ready."

Page 283, line 5 from foot. _To see a play_. "The Battle of Hexham"