What a Essays of Old Benchers of the Inner I had almost said for in those young years what was this king of rivers to me but a stream that watered our pleasant places? these are of my oldest recollections. . . . What a transition for a countryman visiting London for the first time, the passing from the crowded Strand or Fleet Street, by unexpected avenues, into its magnificent Temple. ample squares, its classic green recesses! cheerful liberal look hath that part of it which, from three sides, overlooks the greater garden; that goodly pile of building strong, albeit of Paper height, confronting with mossy contrast the lighter, older, more fantastically shrouded one, named of Harcourt, with the cheerful Crown Office Row (place of my kindly engendure), right opposite the stately stream, which washes the garden-foot with her yet scarcely trade-polluted waters, and seems but just weaned from her Twickenham Naiades! A man would give something to have been born in such places. The eastern half of the block, comprising Nos. 1, 2, and 3 Crown Office Row, still stood in 1885 as when built in 1737. The western end, Nos. 4, 5, and 6, becoming uninhabitable, was torn down and rebuilt in 1859-1861. According to Fitzgerald's Memoir, Lamb went to a school overlookng a discolored, dingy garden in the passage leading into Fetter Lane from Bartlett's Buildings. This was close to Holborn.' It was afterward called Bartlett's Passage, but no trace of the school remains. In 1782 Charles Lamb son of John Lamb, Scrivener, and of Elizabeth, his wife,' entered the school of Christ-Hospital (see COLERIDGE, p. 57, and HUNT, p. 144), where he remained until he was fifteen. Talfourd, in his 'Life of Lamb' (chap. i.), says: Lamb was an amiable, gentle boy, very sensible and keenly observing, indulged by his schoolfellows and by his masters on account of his infirmity of speech. His countenance was mild, his complexion clear brown, with an expression which might lead you to think he was of Jewish descent. His eyes were not of the same color, one was hazel, the other had specks of gray in the iris, mingled as one sees red spots in the bloodstone. His step was plantigrade, which made his walk slow and peculiar, adding to the staid appearance of his figure. Essays of Christ Hospital I remember L- at school, and can well recollect that he had some peculiar advantages, which I and others of his schoolfellows had not. His friends lived in town, and were near at hand, and he had the privilege of going to see them almost as often as he wished. . . L- -'s governor (so we called the patron who presented him to the foundation) lived in a manner under his paternal roof. Any complaint he had to make was sure of being attended to. This was understood at Christ's, and was an effectual screen to him against the severity of masters, or, worse, the tyranny of the monitors. five-and twenty Years ago. Leigh Hunt, in his Autobiography' (vol. i. chap. iv.), gives his recollections of Lamb when he came back to visit the old familiar school scenes, as he was so fond of doing: I have spoken of the distinguished individuals bred at ChristHospital, including Coleridge and Lamb, who left the school not long before I entered it. Coleridge I never saw until he was old. Lamb I recollect coming to see the boys, with a pensive, brown, handsome, and kingly face, and a gait advancing with a motion from side to side, between involuntary consciousness and attempted ease. His brown complexion may have been owing to a visit in the country, his air of uneasiness to a great burden of He dressed with a Quaker-like plainness. sorrow. For a short time after quitting school (in November, 1789) Lamb was employed in the South Sea House with his brother John, who is described in 'My Relations' as James Elia, and who was some twelve years his senior. Essays of Reader, in thy passage from the Bank, where thou hast been receiving thy half-yearly dividends (supposing thou art a lean annuitant like myself), to the Flower Pot, to secure a place for Dalston or Shacklewell, or some other thy suburban retreat northerly, didst thou never observe a melancholy-looking handsome brick and stone edifice to the left, where Threadneedle Street abuts upon Bishopsgate? I dare say thou hast often admired its magnificent portals, ever gaping wide, and disclosing to view a grave court with cloisters and pillars, with few or no traces of goers-in or comers-out. . . . Such is the South Sea House; at least, such it was forty years ago, when I knew it, a magnificent relic. . . . Peace to the Manes of the Bubble. Silence and destitution are upon thy walls, proud house, for a memorial. Situated as thou art, in the very heart of striving and living commerce, amid the fret and fever of speculation, with the Bank, and the 'Change, and the India House about thee, in the heyday of present prosperity, with their important faces, as it were, insulting thee, their poor neighbor out of business, to the idle and merely contemplative—to such as me; old house! there is a charm in thy quiet a cessation a coolness from business, an indolence almost cloistral, which is delightful. The South Sea House was partly destroyed by fire in 1826. A modern South Sea House stands upon its site. It fronts on Threadneedle Street. Lamb entered the service of the East India Company, as an accountant, on the 5th of April, 1792. The situation of the East India House is thus described in Brayley's 'London and Middlesex,' vol. iii.: From Nos. 12 to 21 Leadenhall Street, the East India House at the corner of No. 7 Leadenhall Market.' This building was taken down in 1862. Lamb left the India House in 1825. On the 6th of April he wrote to Wordsworth :— Talfourd's 'Here I am then, after thirty-three years of slavery sitting in my own room at eleven o'clock this finest of April mornings, a freed man.' And to Barton he wrote later, 'Take in briefly, that for a few days I was painfully oppressed by Life of so mighty a change, but it is becoming daily more nat- Lamb, ural to me. . . I would not serve another seven years for seven hundred thousand pounds. I have got £441 net for life, sanctioned by act of Parliament, with a provision for Mary if she survives me.' chap. xv. Essays of Elia: The Superanuuated Man. It is now six-and-thirty years since I took my seat at the desk. Melancholy was the transition at fourteen from the abundant play-time, and the frequent intervening vacations of school days, to the eight, nine, and sometimes ten hours a day at a counting-house. But time partially reconciles us to anything. I gradually became content, - doggedly contented, as wild animals in cages. To dissipate this awkward feeling, I have been fain to go among them once or twice since; to visit my old desk-fellows, my co-brethren of the quill, that I had left below me in the state militant. Not all the kindness with which they received me could quite restore to me that pleasant familiarity which I had heretofore enjoyed among them. We cracked some of our old jokes, but methought they went off but faintly. My old desk, the peg where I hung my hat, were appropriated to another. I knew it must be, but I could not take it kindly. D-1 take me, if I did not feel some remorse beast, if I had not at quitting my old compeers, the faithful partners of my toil for six-and-thirty years, that smoothed for me, with their jokes and conundrums, the ruggedness of my professional road. - In 1795 and later, Lamb was lodging with his family at No. 7 Little Queen Street, Holborn; and here was enacted that awful tragedy, on the 22d of September, 1796, which clouded and saddened the life of Charles as well as Mary Lamb. On the 27th of September Lamb wrote to Coleridge: White, or some of my friends, or the public papers, by this time may have informed you of the terrible calamities that have fallen on our family. I will only give you the outlines: My poor, dear, dearest sister, in a fit of insanity, has been the death of our own mother. I was at hand only time enough to snatch the knife out of her grasp. She is at present in a madhouse, from whence I fear she must be moved to a hospital. God has preserved me to my senses, I eat and drink and sleep, and have my judgment, I believe, very sound. My poor father was slightly wounded, and I am left to take care of him and my aunt. |