The Collected Works of Charles Lamb and Mary Lamb. Charles Lamb
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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 Ass, 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 passage 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 quantity 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 association 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 appetite 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 assured 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 album. 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