Bartholomew's Hospital.
John Lamb's appeal for his son Charles to be received into Christ's Hospital is dated March 30, 1781, and it states that the petitioner has "a Wife and three Children, and he finds it difficult to maintain and educate his Family without some Assistance." One of the children, John Lamb jr., then aged nearly eighteen, should, however, have been practically self-supporting. The presentation was made by Timothy Yeats, a friend of Samuel Salt, who himself signed the necessary bond for £100 and made himself responsible for the boy's discharge. Lamb was admitted July 17, 1782, and clothed October 9, 1782; he remained until November 23, 1789.
The notes that follow apply solely to the few points in the text that call for remark. More exhaustive comments on Lamb and Christ's Hospital will be found in the notes to the Elia essay on the same subject.
Page 163, line 23. The old Grey Friars. This monastery had been suppressed by Henry VIII. It was reinhabited by the Christ's Hospital boys; but was in great part destroyed in the Fire of London, the cloisters alone remaining. The other old part of Christ's Hospital, as this generation knows it, dates from after the Fire.
Page 165, line 9 from foot. Philip Quarll's Island. One of the imitations of Robinson Crusoe. The full title ran: The Hermit: or the unparalleled sufferings and surprising adventures of Mr. Philip Quarll, an Englishman, who was lately discovered by Mr. Dorrington, a Bristol Merchant, upon an uninhabited island in the South Seas; where he has lived above Fifty Years, without any human assistance, still continues to reside, and will not come away, 1727. Lamb refers again to these excursions in his Elia essay on "Newspapers."
Page 168, line 8 from foot. The Rev. James Boyer. Lamb writes more fully of his old schoolmaster in the Elia essay. Boyer was elected 1776, and retired in 1799, when the governors presented him with a staff. He died in 1814.
Page 170, line 4 from foot. Grecians. Lamb writes more fully of the Grecians in his Elia essay. He was himself never more than Deputy-Grecian.
Page 171, line 4 from foot. William Wales. William Wales was appointed 1776, and died 1798. The King's Boys are now called "Mathemats," i.e., Members of the Royal Mathematical Foundation for Sea Service. Leigh Hunt says of William Wales in his Autobiography: "He was a good man, of plain, simple manners, with a heavy large person and a benign countenance. When he was at Otaheite, the natives played him a trick while bathing, and stole his small-clothes; which we used to think a liberty scarcely credible."
Page 172, line 5 from foot. Processions … at Easter. The boys when in London visited the Lord Mayor on Easter Tuesday.
Page 173, line 4. St. Matthew's day. September 21. Speech Day is now at the end of the Summer Term.
Page 173, line 8. Barnes … Markland … Camden. Joshua Barnes (1654–1712), Greek scholar and antiquary; Jeremiah Markland (1693–1776), Greek scholar; and William Camden (1551–1623), the antiquary—all Christ's Hospital boys.
Page 173, line 18. The carol. I cannot give the words of this particular carol. Mr. E. H. Pearce, the latest historian of Christ's Hospital, tells me that it was probably not a school carol peculiar to Christ's Hospital, like the Easter anthems (which were composed annually), but an ordinary Christmas hymn. "An old Crug," i.e., Old Christ's Hospitaller, wrote to Notes and Queries, December 22, 1855, asking if any reader could supply the missing stanzas of a Christmas carol which the Blue Coat boys used to sing fifty years before. This was one stanza (from memory):—
The wise men of the Eastern globe did spy
A blazing star in the bright glittering sky;
And well they knew it fully did portend,
Christ came to the earth for some great end.
Page 174. Table-Talk in "The Examiner."
In 1813 Leigh Hunt added to his paper, The Examiner, a more or less regular collection of notes under the heading "Table-Talk." At first they were unsigned, but on May 30 he announced that each contributor would in future have his own mark. From unmistakable evidence—for example, the similarity between the "Playhouse Memoranda" on page 184, and the Elia essay "My First Play"—we may confidently consider Lamb to be the author of all those pieces signed, like that, ‡, seven of which are here included. The first contribution thus signed was the note on "Reynolds and Leonardo da Vinci," on page 174, usually printed in editions of Lamb's works as "The Reynolds Gallery."
Lamb had other signatures in The Examiner. The Dramatic Criticisms and Reviews of Books, pages 217 to 234, were signed with four stars; the notice of "Don Giovanni in London" (see page 215) was signed †, and "Valentine's Day" (in Elia) was signed * * *.
Page 174. I.—Reynolds and Leonardo da Vinci.
The Examiner, June 6, 1813.
Lamb had very little admiration for Sir Joshua Reynolds. See also his remarks in the essay on "Hogarth," page 88 for example.
Page 174, line 1 of essay. The Reynolds' Gallery. The exhibition of 142 of Sir Joshua Reynolds' works, held in 1813 at the Shakespeare Gallery in Pall Mall, afterwards the British Institution. The Marlborough Club now stands on its site. Reynolds had died in 1792.
Page 174, line 9 of essay. Mrs. Anne Clark. The notorious Mary Anne Clarke (1776–1852), the mistress of Frederick, Duke of York. After keeping London society in a state of ferment for some years, by reason of her disclosures and claims, she was, in 1813, condemned to nine months' imprisonment for libel. Lamb has a very humorous passage about this lady in a letter to Manning on March 28, 1809. Reynolds, it need hardly be said, did not paint her, since, when he died, she was but sixteen and a nobody.—Kitty Fisher was Catherine Maria Fisher, who died in 1767, and was painted by Sir Joshua several times. A very notorious person in her early days; afterwards she married an M.P.
Page 174, line 7 from foot. Mrs. Long. Mrs. Long was Amelia Long, wife of Charles Long, afterwards first Baron Farnborough.—Reynolds painted a number of Infant Jupiters and Bacchuses. His "Infant Samuel" is well known. Few pictures of that time have been more often reproduced.
Page 176. II.—[The New Acting.]
The Examiner, July 18, 1813.
This
