The Collected Works of Charles Lamb and Mary Lamb. Charles Lamb
246. The Confessions of H. F. V. H. Delamore, Esq.
London Magazine, April, 1821. First reprinted in Mr. Dobell's Sidelights on Charles Lamb, 1903.
Lamb's "Chapter on Ears" had appeared in the March number, containing the sentence, "I was never, I thank my stars, in the pillory; nor, if I read them aright, is it within the compass of my destiny, that I ever should be." The main confession aroused by this statement, although it is hedged about by a host of inventions, seems to be perfectly true: Lamb did on one occasion sit in the stocks. Our evidence, which, fortified by this little article (a discovery of Mr. Bertram Dobell's), is very strong, is to be found on the fly-leaf of the annotated copy of Wither described above. On this fly-leaf Pulham has recorded that during a country walk on a certain Sunday Lamb was set in the stocks for brawling while service was in progress. According to Mr. Delamore, the indignity was suffered at Barnet, and it was probably, if what he says about the short duration of the punishment be true, nearly as much a joke on the part of the authorities as on the part of Lamb. I cannot find any record of the incident in the Barnet archives, but the stocks are still standing, on the outskirts of Barnet, on Hadley Green.
Additional proof that Lamb wrote these "Confessions" is to be found in the little note inserted in the following (May) number of the London Magazine, under the "Lion's Head":—
"Spes may be assured, that the fact related in the paper in our last Number, signed 'Delamore,' and dated 'Sackville Street,' is genuine, with the exception of the name and date. It is the writer's own story.
"——quæque ipse mìserrima vidi,
Et quorum pars magna fui.
"* * * *."
Four stars was, of course, one of Lamb's commonest non-Elia signatures (see note on page 464). The quotation is from Aeneid, II., 5. "The most unhappy scenes which I beheld, and in which I played a leading part."
Page 247, line 15. * * * * * * * * * * *. In the stocks.
Page 247, line 19. O Clarencieux! O Norroy! The two provincial kings-at-arms, Clarencieux, after the Duke of Clarence, son of Edward III., whose office is south of the Trent, and Norroy (North-roy), whose office is north of the Trent.
Page 248, line 4. Barnet … Red Rose. Referring to the battle of Barnet on April 14, 1471, when Edward IV. defeated and slew the Earl of Warwick, and practically destroyed the Lancastrian, or Red Rose, cause, finally doing so at the battle of Tewkesbury a little later.
Page 248. The Gentle Giantess.
London Magazine, December, 1822. Not reprinted by Lamb.
We find the germ of this essay in a letter from Lamb to Dorothy Wordsworth, in 1821, when she was staying with her uncle, Christopher Wordsworth, the Master of Trinity:—
"Ask any body you meet, who is the biggest woman in Cambridge, and I'll hold you a wager they'll say Mrs. Smith. She broke down two benches in Trinity Gardens, one on the confines of St. John's, which occasioned a litigation between the societies as to repairing it. In warm weather she retires into an ice-cellar (literally!), and dates the returns of the years from a hot Thursday some 20 years back. She sits in a room with opposite doors and windows, to let in a thorough draft, which gives her slenderer friends toothaches. She is to be seen in the market every morning, at 10 cheapening fowls, which I observe the Cambridge Poulterers are not sufficiently careful to stump."
It was characteristic of Lamb that finding the widow at Cambridge he should have set her in the essay at Oxford. He did the same thing in his Elia essay "On Oxford in the Vacation," which he conceived at the sister university.
Page 248, line 4 of essay. The maid's aunt of Brainford. The maid's aunt of Brentford; otherwise Sir John Falstaff in petticoats (see "The Merry Wives of Windsor," Act IV., Scene 2).
Page 251. Letter to an Old Gentleman whose Education has been Neglected.
London Magazine, January, 1825. Not reprinted by Lamb.
De Quincey's "Letters to a Young Man whose Education has been Neglected" began in the London Magazine in January, 1823. There were five altogether, ending in July of the same year. From the date at the end of Lamb's "Letter," and from a passage in a Letter to Barton of March 5, 1823, we may suppose him to have meant his parody to appear at the same time. "Your poem," he says, "found me engaged about a humorous Paper for the London, which I had called 'A Letter to an Old Gentleman whose Education had been Neglected'—and when it was done Taylor & Hessey would not print it, and it discouraged me from doing anything else."
The problem of De Quincey's "Young Man" was contained in this sentence in the first letter: "To your first question—whether to you, with your purposes and at your age of thirty-two, a residence at either of our English universities—or at any foreign university, can be of much service."—Writing to Miss Hutchinson in January, 1825, Lamb says: "De Quincey's Parody was submitted to him before printed, and had his Probatum."
I have not been able to discover whether or no any special significance attaches to the name of Grierson; or whether Lamb took the name at random.
Page 255, line 25. Mr. Hartlib. Milton's friend, Samuel Hartlib (died about 1670), to whom the Tractate on Education, which Lamb slyly plays upon in this paragraph, was addressed by Milton in 1644. Hartlib is said to have brought himself to poverty by his generosity to poor scholars.
Page 257. Ritson versus John Scott the Quaker.
London Magazine, April, 1823. Not reprinted by Lamb.
This was a hoax, as Lamb explained in a letter to Bernard Barton (March 5, 1823): "I took up Scott, where I had scribbled some petulant remarks, and for a make-shift father'd them on Ritson." Scott was John Scott, the Quaker, better known as Scott of Amwell (1730–1783), whose Critical Essays, 1785, do actually contain the passages quoted by Lamb, with slight errors of transcription. Joseph Ritson (1752–1803), antiquary and critic, might easily have commented as Lamb has done, but with more savagery. Ritson's library was sold in December, 1803.
Page 265. Letter of Elia to Robert Southey.
London Magazine, October, 1823. Not reprinted by Lamb, except in part. See below.
It was Lamb's fate to be misunderstood by the Quarterly Review; and in that misunderstanding lay the real origin of the "Letter to Southey." On at least four occasions Lamb was unfairly treated by this powerful organ: in December, 1811, when, in a review of Weber's edition of Ford's works, Lamb was called a poor maniac (see note on page 471); in October, 1814, when his review of Wordsworth's Excursion was hacked to pieces (see same note); in April, 1822, when a reviewer of Reid's Hypochondriasis (believed to be Dr. Robert Gooch, a friend of Southey) stated that he knew for a fact that Lamb's "Confessions of a Drunkard" were autobiographical (see note on page 458); and lastly, in January, 1823, when Southey, in an article on "Theo-philanthropism in France and the Spread of Infidelity," remarked, incidentally and quite needlessly, of Elia, then just published, that it wanted a sounder religious feeling, and went on to rebuke Lamb's friend, Leigh Hunt, for his lack of Christian faith. It was this accumulation of affront that stirred Lamb to his remonstrance, far more than anger with Southey—although anger he naturally had. Lamb's real opponent was Gifford; as in a private