The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb Part 69

Page 360. VI.--AN APPEARANCE OF THE SEASON.

_Every-Day Book_, Vol. II., January 28, 1826. Not reprinted by Lamb.

We know this to be Lamb's because the original copy was preserved at Rowfant, together with that of many other of Lamb's contributions to Hone's books.

The article in the _London Magazine_ for December, 1822, to which Lamb refers, is ent.i.tled "A Few Words about Christmas." It is one of the best of the imitations of Lamb, of which there are many in that periodical, and was possibly from Hood's pen. A full description of Hood's "Progress of Cant" follows Lamb's little paper in the _Every-Day Book_, probably written by Hone. See page 431.

The motto under the Beadle's picture is from "Lear," Act IV., Scene 6, line 162.

Page 360, line 6 of essay. _Within the bills._ Within the bills of mortality. Geographically speaking, the phrase "within the bills" was the seventeenth, eighteenth and early nineteenth century counterpart of our phrase "within the radius." But the a.s.sociations of the two terms are very different. The bills were the Bills of Mortality, or lists of deaths (also births) drawn up by the Parish Clerks of London and published by them on Thursdays. Devised as a means of publishing the increase or decrease of the ever-recurrent Plague, the bills were begun in 1592, were resumed during a visitation in 1603, and from that year, except for some interruption at the time of the Great Fire, they appeared week by week, until the middle of the nineteenth century.

Page 361. VII.--THE MONTHS.

Hone's _Every-Day Book_, Vol. II., April 16, 1826. Signed "C. L." Not reprinted by Lamb. I have collated the extracts with Lamb's edition of _The Queene-like Closet_.

Hone's prefixed note runs: "C. L., whose papers under these initials on 'Captain Starkey,' 'The a.s.s, No. 2,' and 'Squirrels,' besides other communications, are in the first volume, drops the following pleasant article 'in an hour of need.'"

Mrs. Hannah Woolley, afterwards Mrs. Challinor, was born about 1623. The first edition of _The Queene-like Closet_ was 1672; she wrote also, or is supposed to have written, _The Ladies' Directory, or Choice Experiments of Preserving and Candying_, 1661; _The Cook's Guide_, 1664; _The Ladies' Delight_, 1672; _The Gentlewoman's Companion_, 1675.

Page 365, line 3. _I remember Bacon ..._ This possibly is the pa.s.sage referred to:--

Neither let us be thought to sacrifice to our mother the earth, though we advise, that in digging or ploughing the earth for health, a quant.i.ty of claret wine be poured thereon (_History of Life and Death_, Operation 5, No. 33).

Page 365, last line of essay. _Surely Swift must have seen ..._ Swift's _Directions to Servants_ was published in 1745, after the author's death.

Page 366. VIII.--REMINISCENCE OF SIR JEFFERY DUNSTAN.

Hone's _Every-Day Book_, Vol. II., June 22, 1826. Signed "C. L." Not reprinted by Lamb.

The following account of the Garrat election was given in Sir Richard Phillips' _A Morning's Walk from London to Kew_, 1817, quoted by Hone:--

Southward of Wandsworth, a road extends nearly two miles to the village of Lower Tooting, and nearly midway are a few houses, or hamlet, by the side of a small common, called _Garrat_, from which the road itself is called _Garrat Lane_. Various encroachments on this common led to an a.s.sociation of the neighbours about three-score years since, when they chose a president, or _mayor_, to protect their rights; and the time of their first election being the period of a new parliament, it was agreed that the mayor should be re-chosen after every general election. Some facetious members of the club gave, in a few years, local notoriety to this election; and, when party spirit ran high in the days of _Wilkes and Liberty_, it was easy to create an appet.i.te for a burlesque election among the lower orders of the Metropolis. The publicans at Wandsworth, Tooting, Battersea, Clapham, and Vauxhall, made a purse to give it character; and Mr. Foote rendered its interest universal, by calling one of his inimitable farces "The Mayor of Garrat."

In 1826, the year of Hone's literary outburst on the subject, which should be referred to by any one curious in the matter, an attempt was made to revive the Garrat humours; but it was too late for success; the joke was dead.

Dunstan was a stunted, quick-witted and quick-tongued dealer in old wigs--a well-known street and tavern figure in his day. He contested Garrat in 1781 against "Sir" John Harper ("who made an oath against work in his youth and was never known to break it"). Sir John then won.

Dunstan's speech is quoted in full by Hone from an old broadside.

"Gentlemen," he said, "as I am not an orator or personable man, be a.s.sured I am an honest member." When Harper died in 1785 Sir Jeffery was returned, as many as 50,000 people attending the election. Dunstan used to recite his speeches in public-houses, where collections were made for him; but this means of livelihood was impaired by the loss of his teeth, which he sold one night for ten shillings and a sufficiency of liquor to some merry London Hospital students. He died in 1797 when Lamb was twenty-two.

Page 366, line 5 of essay. _About 1790 or 1791._ Lamb was at the South-Sea House.

Page 367, line 27. _Dr. Last._ In Samuel Foote's play, "The Devil on Two Sticks," 1778.

Page 367, foot. _My Lord Foppington._ Lord Foppington in "The Relapse,"

by Congreve. Foppington remarks: "To mind the inside of a book is to entertain one's self with the forced product of another man's brain. Now I think a man of quality and breeding may be much amused with the natural sprouts of his own." Lamb uses the same speech for the motto of his "Detached Thoughts on Books and Reading."

Page 368. IX.--MRS. GILPIN RIDING TO EDMONTON.

Hone's _Table Book_, Vol. II., columns 79-81, 1827. Not reprinted by Lamb.

We know Lamb to have written this, from the evidence of an unpublished letter and the original "copy" and picture, once preserved at Rowfant.

Lamb's letter to Hone, enclosing Hood's drawing, runs thus:--

[No date: early July, 1827.]

"DEAR H.,

"This is Hood's, done from the life, of Mary getting over a style here. Mary, out of a pleasant revenge, wants you to get it _engrav'd_ in Table Book to surprise H., who I know will be amus'd with you so doing.

"Append some observations about the awkwardness of country styles about Edmonton, and the difficulty of elderly Ladies getting over 'em.----

"That is to say, if you think the sketch good enough.

"I take on myself the warranty.

"Can you slip down here some day and go a Green-dragoning?

"C. L.

"Enfield (Mrs. Leishman's, Chase).

"If you do, send Hood the number, No. 2 Robert St., Adelphi, and keep the sketch for me."

Lamb subsequently appended the observations himself. The text of his little article, changing Mary Lamb into Mrs. Gilpin, followed in Mr.

Locker-Lampson's alb.u.m. The postmark is July 17, 1827.

Lamb was fond of jokes about styles. Writing to Dodwell, of the India House, from Calne, in the summer of 1816, he said, after dating his letter old style: "No new style here, all the styles are old, and some of the gates too for that matter."

Page 369. X.--THE DEFEAT OF TIME.

Hone's _Table Book_, Vol. II., columns 335-340, 1827. Not reprinted by Lamb.

In 1827 was published Thomas Hood's poem, _The Plea of the Midsummer Fairies_, with the following dedication to Lamb:--

TO CHARLES LAMB

MY DEAR FRIEND,

I thank my literary fortune that I am not reduced, like many better wits, to barter dedications, for the hope or promise of patronage, with some nominally great man; but that where true affection points, and honest respect, I am free to gratify my head and heart by a sincere inscription. An intimacy and dearness, worthy of a much earlier date than our acquaintance can refer to, direct me at once to your name: and with this acknowledgment of your ever kind feeling towards me, I desire to record a respect and admiration for you as a writer, which no one acquainted with our literature, save Elia himself, will think disproportionate or misplaced. If I had not these better reasons to govern me, I should be guided to the same selection by your intense yet critical relish for the works of our great Dramatist, and for that favourite play in particular which has furnished the subject of my verses.

It is my design, in the following Poem, to celebrate an allegory, that immortality which Shakespeare has conferred on the Fairy mythology by his Midsummer Night's Dream. But for him, those pretty children of our childhood would leave barely their names to our maturer years; they belong, as the mites upon the plum, to the bloom of fancy, a thing generally too frail and beautiful to withstand the rude handling of Time: but the Poet has made this most perishable part of the mind's creation equal to the most enduring; he has so intertwined the Elfins with human sympathies, and linked them by so many delightful a.s.sociations with the productions of nature, that they are as real to the mind's eye, as their green magical circles to the outer sense.

It would have been a pity for such a race to go extinct, even though they were but as the b.u.t.terflies that hover about the leaves and blossoms of the visible world.

I am, My dear Friend, Yours most truly, T. HOOD.