Page 1. THE SOUTH-SEA HOUSE. Although the "Bachelor's Complaint of the Behaviour of Married People," ," "Valentine's Day," and "On the Acting of Munden," were all written before this essay, it is none the less the first of the essays of Elia. I have remarked, in the notes to a small edition of Elia, that it is probably unique in literature for an author to find himself, as Lamb did, in his forty-fourth year, by recording impressions gathered in his seventeenth; but I think now that Lamb probably visited his brother at the South-Sea House from time to time in later years, and gathered other impressions then. I am led to this conclusion partly by the fact that Thomas Tame (see below) was not appointed Deputy-Accountant until four or five years after Lamb had left. We do not know exactly what Lamb's duties were at the South-Sea House or how long he was there: probably only for the twenty-three weeks-from September, 1791-mentioned in the receipt below, discovered by Mr. J. A. Rutter in a little exhibition of documents illustrative of the South Sea Bubble in the Albert Museum at Exeter : Reed 8th feby 1792 of the Honble South Sea Company by the hands of their Secretary Twelve pounds Is. 6d. for 23 weeks attendance in the Examiners Office. CHAS. LAMB; L12 1 6. which shows that Lamb's salary was half a guinea weekly, paid halfyearly. His brother John was already in the service of the company, where he remained till his death, rising to Accountant. It has been conjectured that it was through his influence that Charles was admitted, with the view of picking up book-keeping; but the real patron and introducer was Joseph Paice, one of the directors, whom we meet on pages 80 and 361. Whether Lamb had ideas of remaining, or whether he merely filled a temporary gap in the Examiners' Office, we cannot tell. He passed to the East India House in the spring of 1792. In the September number of the London Magazine, an interesting little eulogy of this essay was dropped into a review of Keats' Poems, probably from the pen of Scott the editor, with the purpose of instructing the poet in the difference between true sentiment and false. Thus :— That most beautiful Paper, (by a correspondent of course) in our last number, on the ledger-men" of the South Sea House, is an elegant reproof of such short-sighted views of character; such idle hostilities against the realities of life. How free from in tolerance of every sort must the spirit be, that conceived that paper,-or took off so fair and clear an impression from facts! It would not be prone to find suggestion of invective in the sound of Sabbath bells, as Mr. Keats has done in a former work. The author of Endymion and Hyperion must delight in that Paper;-and, to give another example of what we mean, he must surely feel the gentle poetical beauty which is infused into the starlight tale of Rosamund Gray, through its vein of "natural piety." What would that tale be without the Grandmother's Bible? How eclipsed would be the gleaming light of such a character as Rosamund's, in a re-modelled state of society, where it should be the fashion for wives to be considered as dainties at a pic-nic party, each man bringing his own with him-but ready to give and take with those about him! Creeds here are out of the question altogether;--we only speak with reference to the wants and instincts of the human soul. We mention these things, not because we desire to see Mr. Keats playing the hypocrite, or enlisted as a florid declaimer on the profitable side of things; but because, with our admiration of his powers, we are loath to see him irrecoverably committed to a flippant and false system of reasoning on human nature;-because to his picturesque imagination, we wish that he would add a more pliable, and, at the same time, a more magnanimous sensibility. VOL. II.-20 The South Sea Company was incorporated in 1710. The year of the Bubble was 1720. The South-Sea House, remodelled, is now a congeries of offices. Page 1, line 6. The Flower Pot. An inn in Bishopsgate Street where coaches and carriers started for the north of London. Lamb became an annuitant—of the East India Company-in 1825, when he retired on a pension. Page 1, line 13. Like Balclutha's. Lamb gives the quotation from Ossian (Couthon) in the footnote; but the true reading is, “I have seen the walls of Balclutha, and they were desolate." Page 1, last line. "Unsunned heap." From Milton's Comus, 398. Probably Lamb was thinking also of Mammon in the Faerie Queen, II., Canto VII., Stanzas 3, 4, 5 and 20. Page 2, line 3. Forty years ago. To be accurate, twenty-eight to thirty. Page 2, line 14. Inquisitive. In the London Magazine, "that wished." "Seeking," in line 16, was "sought." Page 2, line 20. Vaux. Guy Fawkes. Page 2, line 34. Accounts . . . puzzle me. Here Elia begins his "matter-of-lie" career. Lamb was at this time in the Accountants' Office of the India House, living among figures all day. Page 2, line 8 from foot. Columniations. The New English Dictionary gives Lamb's word in this connection as its sole reference. Page 3, line 2. Pounce-boxes. For drying ink, with powder, before blotting-paper was used. Page 3, line 22. Evans. William Evans. The Directories of those days printed lists of the chief officials in some of the public offices, and it is possible to trace the careers of the clerks whom Lamb names. All are genuine. Evans, whose name is given one year as Evan Evans, was appointed cashier (or deputy-cashier) in 1792. Page 3, line 24. Visage. Page 3, line 27. Visage. In the London Magazine "visnomy." in the seventeen-seventies. Page 3, line 28. Melancholy as a gib-cat. "1. Henry IV.," Act I., Scene 2, line 83. Falstaff's phrase in Page 3, line 31. Ready to imagine himself one. Lamb was fond of this conceit. See his little essay "The Last Peach" (Vol. I., page 283), and the mischievous letter to Bernard Barton, after Fauntleroy's trial, warning him against peculation. Page 3, line 34. Anderton's. Either the coffee-shop in Fleet Street, now Anderton's Hotel, or a city offshoot of it. The portrait, if it ever was in existence, is no longer known there. Page 3, last line but one. Pennant. Thomas Pennant (1726-1798), the Welsh antiquary, and the author of Of London, 1790. Page 4, line 1. Rosomond's pond, etc. Rosamond's Pond, filled up in 1770, was at the south-west corner of St. James's Park, across the end of the present Bird Cage Walk; the Mulberry Garden occupied the site of Buckingham Palace and Gardens. It was a pleasure resort in the seventeenth century. The mulberry trees were planted by James I., who wished to introduce them to England and rear silkworms. The Great Conduit in Cheapside stood in the middle of the street, near the Poultry; and the Little Conduit, in the middle of the street, facing Foster Lane. Water was brought thither underground from Paddington. In times of public rejoicing they ran wine. Page 4, line 4. Those grotesque figures. Referring to the Huguenot refugees from France after Louis XIV. revoked the Edict of Nantes in 1685. The scene of Hogarth's picture "Noon" is laid in Hog Lane (now a portion of Charing Cross Road), where a French church (now St. Mary's) used to stand. Page 4, line 15. Strained to the height. These words were in quotation marks in the London Magazine. From Paradise Lost, VIII., 454. Page 4, line 28. House of Derwentwater. James Radcliffe (16891716), third Earl of Derwentwater, was beheaded for his share in the Jacobite rising of 1715. Page 4, line 36. Decus et solamen. From Virgil (Eneid, X., 859)—"glory and consolation." Page 4, line 37. John Tipp. John Lamb succeeded Tipp as Accountant somewhen about 1806. Page 4, line 39. He "thought an accountant. . .' An adaptation of Parson Adams' remarks on schoolmasters in Fielding's Joseph Andrews, Chapter III.: Book III., Chapter V.: "Indeed if this good man had an enthusiasm, or what the vulgar call a blind side, it was this: he thought a schoolmaster the greatest character in the world, and himself the greatest of all schoolmasters: neither of which points he would have given up to Alexander the Great at the head of an army." Page 4, line 42. With other notes. In quotation marks in the London Magazine. From Paradise Lost, III., 17. Page 5, line 2. I know not, etc. This parenthesis was not in the London Magazine, but the following footnote was appended to the sentence : "I have since been informed, that the present tenant of them is a Mr. Lamb, a gentleman who is happy in the possession of some choice pictures, and among them a rare portrait of Milton, which I mean to do myself the pleasure of going to see, and at the same time to refresh my memory with the sight of old scenes. Mr. Lamb has the character of a right courteous and communicative collector." Mr. Lamb was, of course, John Lamb, or James Elia (see the essay My Relations," page 70), then (in 1820) Accountant of the SouthSea House. He left the Milton to his brother. It is now in America. Page 5, line 3. "Sweet breasts." Middleton in " More Dissemblers besides Women" has the phrase: "Well, go thy ways for as sweetbreasted a page as ever lay at his master's feet in a truckle-bed." Page 5, line 7. Like Lord Midas. The ears of Midas, the wealthy King of Phrygia, were changed to those of an ass for saying that Pan played better than Apollo. Page 5, fifth line from foot. With Fortinbras. See "Hamlet," Act IV., Scene 4, line 55. Page 6, line 5. Henry Man. This was Henry Man (17471799), deputy-secretary of the South Sea-House from 1776, and an author of light trifles in the papers, and of one or two books. The Miscellaneous Works in Verse and Prose of the late Henry Man was published in 1802, among the subscribers being three of the officials named in this essay-John Evans, R. Plumer, and Mr. Tipp, and also Thomas Maynard, who, though assigned to the Stock Exchange, is probably the "childlike, pastoral M-" of a later paragraph. Small politics are for the most part kept out of Man's volumes, which are high-spirited rather than witty, but this punning epigram (of which Lamb was an admirer) on Lord Spencer and Lord Sandwich may be quoted: Page 6, line 14. Two Lords whose names if I should quote, Some folks might call me sinner : The one invented half a coat, The other half a dinner. Such lords as these are useful men, Heaven sends them to console one; "New-born gauds." From "Troilus and Cres sida," Act III., Scene 3, line 176. Page 6, line 15. Public Ledgers and Chronicles. Man contributed a series of letters on education to Woodfall's Morning Chronicle. He also wrote for the London Gazette. the Page 6, line 15. Chatham, etc. The topics referred to are American War of Independence and John Wilkes' struggle with Parliament. Chatham, Shelburne, Rockingham and Richmond were statesmen, and Howe, Keppel, Burgoyne and Clinton soldiers, connected with the American War. Bull was Lord Mayor of London in 1773, Wilkes in 1774, and Sawbridge in 1775. Dunning defended Wilkes before Pratt. Page 6, line 21. Plumer. Richard Plumer (spelled Plomer in the directories), deputy-secretary after Man. Lamb was peculiarly interested in the Plumers from the fact that his grandmother, Mrs. Field, had been housekeeper of their mansion at Blakesware, near Ware (see notes to "Dream Children" and "Blakesmoor in H———shire,” pages 377 and 405). The fine old Whig was William Plumer, who had been her employer, and was now living at Gilston. He died in 1821. The following passage from the memoir of Edward Cave (1691-1754), which Dr. Johnson wrote for the Gentleman's Magazine (which Cave established) in 1754, shows that Lamb was mistaken about Plumer : He [Cave] was afterwards raised to the office of clerk of the franks, in which he acted with great spirit and firmness; and often stopped franks which were given by members of parliament to their friends; because he thought such extension of a peculiar right illegal. This raised many complaints, and having stopped, among others, a frank given to the old dutchess of Marlborough by Mr. Walter Plummer, he was cited before the house, as for breach of privilege, and accused, I suppose very unjustly, of opening letters to detect them. He was treated with great harshness and severity, but declining their questions by pleading his oath of secrecy, was at last dismissed. And it must be recorded to his honour, that when he was ejected from his office, he did not think himself discharged from his trust, but continued to refuse to his nearest friends any information about the management of the office. I borrow from Canon Ainger an interesting note on Walter Plumer, written in the eighteen-eighties, showing that Lamb was mistaken on other matters too : The present Mr. Plumer, of Allerton, Totness, a grandson of Richard Plumer of the South-Sea House, by no means acquiesces in the tradition here recorded as to his grandfather's origin. He believes that though the links are missing, Richard Plumer was descended in regular line from the Baronet, Sir Walter Plumer, who died at the end of the The " seventeenth century. Lamb's memory has failed him here in one respect. Bachelor Uncle," Walter Plumer, uncle of William Plumer of Blakesware, was most certainly not a bachelor (see the pedigree of the family in Cussans' Hertfordshire). Page 6, line 39. M. According to the Key to the initials and blanks in some of the essays, which Lamb filled in for a curious correspondent (see page 301), M- stood for one Maynard. Maynard, hang'd himself" is Lamb's entry. He was chief clerk in the Old Annuities and Three Per Cents, 1788-1793. Page 6, line 41. It," Act II., Scene 5. Page 7, lines 5, 7. Song sung by Amiens. See "As You Like Woollett Hepworth. I know nothing of these. Newton is of course Sir Isaac. Page 7, line 12. Solemn mockery. In Ireland's "Vortigern," the would-be Shakespeare drama, is the line : And when this solemn mockery is o'er. Kemble gave the line with peculiar emphasis on the first (and last) night, and the house taking the cue, the play was damned. Page 7, line 16. John Naps. In the Induction to "The Taming of the Shrew" one of the servants says to Christopher Sly: Why, sir, you know no house nor no such maid, And twenty more such names and men as these Induction, Scene 2, lines 93-98. Lamb may suddenly have felt the misgiving that he had told too much, and therefore invented this sudden cross-trail. Mr. Sidney Lee, by the way, says in his Life of Shakespeare that John Naps of Greece should be John Naps of Greet, a village near Winchmere, in Gloucestershire. London Magazine, October, 1820, where it is dated at the end, "August 5, 1820. From my rooms facing the Bodleian." My own impression is that Lamb wrote the essay at Cambridge, under the influence of Cambridge, where he spent a few weeks in the summer of 1820, and transferred the scene to Oxford by way of mystification. He knew Oxford, of course, but he had not been there for some years and it was at Cambridge that he met Dyer and that he saw the Milton MSS, |