The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb Volume I Part 66

Page 329. REFLECTIONS IN THE PILLORY.

_London Magazine_, March, 1825. Not reprinted by Lamb.

The editor's note is undoubtedly Lamb's, as is, of course, the whole imaginary story. It must have been about this time that Lamb was writing his "Ode to the Treadmill" which appeared in _The New Times_ in October, 1825.

The pillory, which has not been used in this country since 1837, was latterly kept princ.i.p.ally for seditious and libellous offenders. In May, 1812, for instance, Eaton, the publisher of Tom Paine's _Age of Reason_, stood in the pillory. The time was usually one hour, as in the case of Lamb's hero, the victim being a quarter turned at each fifteen minutes, in order that every member of the crowd might witness the disgrace. The offender's neck and wrists were fixed in holes cut for the purpose in a plank fastened crosswise to an upright pole. The London pillories were erected in different spots--at Charing Cross, in the Haymarket, in St.

Martin's Lane, opposite the Royal Exchange, and elsewhere.

Page 331, line 1. _My friends from over the water_. Referring to the prisoners in the King's Bench Prison at Southwark, who would be allowed out during the day--hence "ephemeral Romans," or freemen, and "flies of a day": being obliged to return at night. (Shakespeare uses flies in this sense. "The slaves of chance and flies of every wind that blows,"

he says in "The Winter's Tale.") Lamb's friend, William Hone, was imprisoned in the King's Bench for a while from 1826, editing in confinement the end of his _Every-Day Book_ and the whole of the _Table Book_.

Page 332, lines 16 and 17. _Bastwick ... Prynne ... Defoe ...

Shebbeare._ John Bastwick (1593-1654) was condemned to lose his ears in the pillory for writing the _Letanie of Dr. John Bastwicke_, an attack on the bishops.--William Prynne (1600-1669) was pilloried twice, the first time for his _Histrio-Mastix_ (referred to by Lamb in the biography of Liston on page 292), and the second time for his support of Bastwick against the bishops, particularly Laud. He also lost his ears.--John Shebbeare (1709-1788) was pilloried for satirising the House of Hanover. An Irishman held an umbrella over his head the while.--Concerning Defoe and the pillory see Lamb's "Ode to the Treadmill" and note in the volume devoted to his poems and plays.

Page 332, line 28. _Charles closed the Exchequer._ This was in 1671. In Green's _Short History of the English People_ we read: "So great was the national opposition to his schemes that Charles was driven to plunge hastily into hostilities. The attack on a Dutch convoy was at once followed by a declaration of war, and fresh supplies were obtained for the coming struggle by closing the Exchequer, and suspending under Clifford's advice the payment of either princ.i.p.al or interest on loans advanced to the public Treasury." The present Royal Exchange was begun in 1842.

Page 333. THE LAST PEACH.

_London Magazine_, April, 1825. Not reprinted by Lamb.

Lamb's letter to Bernard Barton of December 1, 1824, warning him against peculation, probably suggested this essay, which contains yet another glimpse of Blakesware house and Lamb's boyhood there.

Page 333, line 8. _That unfortunate man_. Henry Fauntleroy (1785-1824) was partner in the bank of Marsh, Sibbald & Co., of Berners Street. In 1815 he began a series of forgeries of trustees' signatures--as he affirmed, entirely in the interests of the credit of the house, and in no way for his own gratification--which culminated in the failure of the bank in 1824. His trial caused intense excitement in the country. On November 2, 1824, sentence of death was pa.s.sed, and on the 30th Fauntleroy was hanged. Many attempts were made to obtain a reprieve, and an Italian twice offered to suffer death in his place. The story was long current that Fauntleroy had secreted a silver tube in his windpipe, had thereby escaped strangulation, and was living abroad. This would appeal peculiarly to Lamb, since his essay on "The Inconveniences of Being Hanged" and his farce "The p.a.w.nbroker's Daughter," alike bear on that subject.

Page 335. "ODES AND ADDRESSES TO GREAT PEOPLE."

_The New Times_, April 12, 1825. Now reprinted for the first time.

We know this review to be by Lamb from the evidence of a letter to Coleridge on July 2, 1825, in reply to one in which Coleridge taxed Lamb with the authorship of the book. Coleridge wrote:--

But my dear Charles, it was certainly written by you, or under you, or _una c.u.m_ you. I know none of your frequent visitors capacious and a.s.similative enough of your converse to have reproduced you so honestly, supposing you had left yourself in pledge in his lockup house.... [Added later] No! Charles, it is _you_. I have read them over again, and I understand why you have an'on'd the book. The puns are nine in ten good, many excellent, the Newgatory transcendent!... Then moreover and besides, to speak with becoming modesty, excepting my own self, who is there but you who could write the musical lines and stanzas that are intermixed [with the personalities and puns]?

(The "Newgatory" pun was in the Friendly Epistle to Mrs. Elizabeth Fry:--

I like your carriage, and your silken grey, Your dove-like habits, and your silent teaching, But I don't like your Newgatory preaching.)

Lamb replied:--

"The Odes are four-fifths done by Hood, a silentish young man you met at Islington one day, an invalid. The rest are Reynolds's, whose sister H. has recently married. I have not had a broken finger in them. They are hearty, good-natured things, and I would put my name to 'em cheerfully, if I could as honestly. I complimented 'em in a newspaper, with an abatement for those puns you laud so. They are generally an excess. A Pun is a thing of too much consequence to be thrown in as a make-weight. You shall read one of the 'Addresses'

over and miss the puns, and it shall be quite as good, and better, than when you discover 'em. A Pun is a n.o.ble thing _per se_: O never lug it in as an accessory. A Pun is a sole object for Reflection (_vide my_ 'Aids' to that recessment from a savage state)--it is entire, it fills the mind; it is perfect as a sonnet, better. It limps ashamed in the train and retinue of Humour: it knows it should have an establishment of its own. The one, for instance, I made the other day,----I forget what it was.

"Hood will be gratified, as much as I am, by your mistake. I liked 'Grimaldi' the best; it is true painting of abstract clowning, and that precious concrete of a clown: and the rich succession of images, and words almost such, in the first half of the 'Magnum Ignotum.'"

Other evidence is supplied by the Forster collection at South Kensington, which contains a copy of the review with a message for Lamb scribbled on it.

Thomas Hood (1799-1845), whom Lamb first met in connection with the _London Magazine_, of which Hood acted as sub-editor, married Jane Reynolds in 1824. John Hamilton Reynolds (1796-1852), her brother, wrote for the _London Magazine_ over the signature "Edward Herbert." The _Odes and Addresses_ appeared anonymously in the spring of 1825. Coleridge's attribution of the work to Lamb was not very happy; its amazing agility was quite out of his power. But Coleridge occasionally nodded in these matters, or he would not have been equally positive a few years earlier that Lamb was the author of Reynolds' _Peter Bell_.

In at least two of the odes and addresses the authors followed in Lamb's own footsteps and adapted to their own use some of his thunder. In the address to the Dean and Chapter of Westminster the argument for free admission, as expressed in Lamb's "Letter to Southey" in 1823 (see pages 275-277), is extended, with additional levity; and again in the ode to Mr. Bodkin, the Hon. Secretary to the Society for the Suppression of Mendicity, Lamb's _Elia_ essay on "The Decay of Beggars" is emphasised.

According to a copy of the book marked by Hood, now in the possession of Mr. Buxton Forman, Reynolds wrote only the odes to M'Adam, Dymoke, Sylva.n.u.s Urban, Elliston and the Dean and Chapter.

Compare Lamb's other remarks on punning in "Popular Fallacies" and "Distant Correspondents."

Page 335, line 9. _Peter Pindar ... Colman_. Peter Pindar was the name a.s.sumed by Dr. John Wolcot (1738-1819) when he lashed and satirised his contemporaries in his very numerous odes. Colman was George Colman the younger (1762-1836), the dramatist, and author of _Broad Grins_, 1802, a collection of free and easy comic verse.

Page 335, foot. _The immortal Grimaldi_. Joseph Grimaldi (1779-1837), the clown. He did not actually leave the stage until 1828, but his appearances had been only occasional for several years.

Page 336, second stanza. "_Berkeley's Foote_." This was Maria Foote (1797?-1867), the actress, afterwards Countess of Harrington, who was abandoned by Colonel Berkeley after the birth of two children, and whose woes were made public through a breach-of-promise action brought by her against "Pea Green" Hayes a little later.

Page 337. THE RELIGION OF ACTORS.

_New Monthly Magazine_, April, 1826. Not reprinted by Lamb; but known to be his by a sentence in a letter to Bernard Barton. This paper is of course as nonsensical as that on Liston.

Page 337, line 4 of essay. _A celebrated tragic actor_. Referring to the action for criminal conversation brought by Alderman c.o.x against Edmund Kean, in 1824, in which Kean was cast in 800 damages, and which led during the following seasons to hostile demonstrations against him both in England and America. For many performances he played only to men.

Page 337, line 11 of essay. _Miss Pope_. See note on page 465.

Page 338, line 1. _The present licenser_. George Colman the younger, whose pedantic severity was out of all proportion to the freedom which in his earlier play-writing and verse-writing days he had allowed himself. In his evidence before a committee of the House of Commons, in an inquiry into the state of the drama in 1832, he admitted having refused to pa.s.s the term "angel," addressed by a lover to his lady, on the ground that "an angel was a heavenly body."

Page 338, line 3. _Fawcett._ This would be John Fawcett (1768-1837), famous in bluff parts. He was treasurer and trustee of the Covent Garden Theatrical Fund for many years.

Page 338, line 3. _The five points._ The Five Points of Doctrine, maintained by the Calvinists, were Original Sin, Predestination, Irresistible Grace, Particular Redemption and the Final Perseverance of the Saints.

Page 338, line 4. _d.i.c.ky Suett._ Richard Suett (1755-1805), the comedian of whom Lamb wrote so enthusiastically in "The Old Actors."

Page 338, line 7. _Br----'s "Religio Dramatici."_ I imagine that John Braham, the tenor (1774?-1856), _ne_ Abraham, had put forth a manifesto stating that he had embraced the Christian faith; but I can get no information on the subject. See Lamb's other references to Braham in the _Elia_ essay "Imperfect Sympathies."

Page 338, line 8 from foot. _Dr. Watts._ Dr. Isaac Watts' version of the Psalms, 1719, takes great liberties with the originals, evangelising them, omitting much, and even subst.i.tuting "Britain" for "Israel."

Page 338, foot. _St. Martin's ... St. Paul's, Covent Garden._ The two parishes in which the chief theatres were situated.

Page 339, line 3. _Two great bodies._ The Covent Garden Company and the Drury Lane Company.

Page 339, line 7. _Mr. Bengough ... Mr. Powell._ Two useful actors in their day.

Page 339, line 18. _Notorious education of the manager._ Charles Kemble (1775-1854), then manager of Covent Garden, had been educated at the English Jesuit College at Douay, where his brother, John Philip Kemble, had preceded him.

Page 339, line 20. _Mr. T----y._ This would probably be Daniel Terry (1780-1829), then manager, with Yates, of the Adelphi. The allusion to him as a member of the Kirk of Scotland probably refers to his well-known adoration and imitation of Sir Walter Scott, whom he closely resembled.

Page 339, line 25. _Mr. Fletcher._ The Rev. Alexander Fletcher, minister of the Albion Chapel in Moorfields, who was suspended by the Synod of the Presbyterian Church in 1824 for his share in a breach-of-promise case.

Page 339, lines 29 and 30. _Miss F----e and Madame V----s._ Miss F----e would probably be Miss Foote (see note on page 521). Madame Vestris (1797-1856), the comedienne and wife of Charles James Mathews. It might not be out of place to state that Sublapsarians consider the election of grace as a remedy for an existing evil, and Supralapsarians view it as a part of G.o.d's original purpose in regard to men.

Page 339, lines 32 and 33. _Mr. Pope_ ... _Mr. Sinclair_. Alexander Pope (1752-1835), the comedian. John Sinclair (1791-1857), the singer.