Charles Lamb
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PEOPLE MENTIONED IN A WEEK PEOPLE MENTIONED IN A WEEK: CHARLES LAMB “NARRATIVE HISTORY” AMOUNTS TO FABULATION, THE REAL STUFF BEING MERE CHRONOLOGY The People of A Week: Charles Lamb “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project HDT WHAT? INDEX THE PEOPLE OF A WEEK: CHARLES LAMB PEOPLE MENTIONED IN A WEEK A WEEK: If one doubts whether Grecian valor and patriotism are PEOPLE OF not a fiction of the poets, he may go to Athens and see still upon A WEEK the walls of the temple of Minerva the circular marks made by the shields taken from the enemy in the Persian war, which were suspended there. We have not far to seek for living and unquestionable evidence. The very dust takes shape and confirms some story which we had read. As Fuller said, commenting on the zeal of Camden, “A broken urn is a whole evidence; or an old gate still surviving out of which the city is run out.” When Solon endeavored to prove that Salamis had formerly belonged to the Athenians, and not to the Megareans, he caused the tombs to be opened, and showed that the inhabitants of Salamis turned the faces of their dead to the same side with the Athenians, but the Megareans to the opposite side. There they were to be interrogated. THOMAS FULLER WILLIAM CAMDEN LAMB ON FULLER HDT WHAT? INDEX THE PEOPLE OF A WEEK: CHARLES LAMB PEOPLE MENTIONED IN A WEEK A WEEK: What is called common sense is excellent in its PEOPLE OF department, and as invaluable as the virtue of conformity in the A WEEK army and navy, — for there must be subordination, — but uncommon sense, that sense which is common only to the wisest, is as much more excellent as it is more rare. Some aspire to excellence in the subordinate department, and may God speed them. What Fuller says of masters of colleges is universally applicable, that “a little alloy of dulness in a master of a college makes him fitter to manage secular affairs.” “He that wants faith, and apprehends a grief Because he wants it, hath a true belief; And he that grieves because his grief’s so small, Has a true grief, and the best Faith of all.” Or be encouraged by this other poet’s strain, — “By them went Fido marshal of the field: Weak was his mother when she gave him day; And he at first a sick and weakly child, As e’er with tears welcomed the sunny ray; Yet when more years afford more growth and might, A champion stout he was, and puissant knight, As ever came in field, or shone in armor bright. “Mountains he flings in seas with mighty hand; Stops and turns back the sun’s impetuous course; Nature breaks Nature’s laws at his command; No force of Hell or Heaven withstands his force; Events to come yet many ages hence, He present makes, by wondrous prescience; Proving the senses blind by being blind to sense.” THOMAS FULLER LAMB ON FULLER HDT WHAT? INDEX THE PEOPLE OF A WEEK: CHARLES LAMB PEOPLE MENTIONED IN A WEEK 1775 February 10, Friday: Charles Lamb was born in London, the last child of Elizabeth Field Lamb and John Lamb, a lawyer’s clerk. The infant had an 11-year-older sister Mary Anne Lamb, an even older brother John Lamb, and 4 other siblings that did not survive their infancy. Mary would teach him to read and he would read voraciously at a very early age. NOBODY COULD GUESS WHAT WOULD HAPPEN NEXT The People of A Week: Charles Lamb “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project HDT WHAT? INDEX THE PEOPLE OF A WEEK: CHARLES LAMB PEOPLE MENTIONED IN A WEEK 1780 A small pox epidemic spread throughout the Great Plains region, killing of large numbers of Chippewa, Shoshoni, Sisika, Kainai, Peigan, Cree, Assiniboin, and Gros Ventre. In London, Charles Lamb, age 5, contracted the small pox. LIFE IS LIVED FORWARD BUT UNDERSTOOD BACKWARD? — NO, THAT’S GIVING TOO MUCH TO THE HISTORIAN’S STORIES. LIFE ISN’T TO BE UNDERSTOOD EITHER FORWARD OR BACKWARD. “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project Charles Lamb HDT WHAT? INDEX THE PEOPLE OF A WEEK: CHARLES LAMB PEOPLE MENTIONED IN A WEEK 1781 Charles Lamb, at about age 6, obtained a year’s schooling at a day-school in Fetter Lane of the Inner Temple, in London. THE FUTURE IS MOST READILY PREDICTED IN RETROSPECT “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project Charles Lamb HDT WHAT? INDEX THE PEOPLE OF A WEEK: CHARLES LAMB PEOPLE MENTIONED IN A WEEK 1782 July: Samuel Taylor Coleridge was entered into Christ’s Hospital, the famous “Blue Coat” charity boarding school that had in 1552 been chartered by King Edward VI, prior to his 10th birthday in October.1 While there he would meet Charles Lamb, and would be friendly with the Evans family. There presumably also, between the ages of 8 and 19, he would have had his 1st experience of opium, as it would have been the medication administered for his rheumatic fever, although he would not become seriously addicted until his late 20s. It was at approximately this point that the lad crawled to the back of the Pixies’ Parlor cave a mile south of St Mary Ottery and there carved “STC” prominently into the wall.2 October: By this point Charles Lamb was enrolled in Christ’s Hospital, the famous “Blue Coat” charity boarding school that had in 1552 been chartered by King Edward VI.3 The child suffered from a stutter and this “inconquerable impediment” in his speech would deprive him of Grecian status at this charity boarding school (high-scholarship boys being actively prepared for the University) and thus disqualify him for any academic or churchly trajectory — while Samuel Taylor Coleridge and other scholars there would be able to go on to Cambridge, he would need to leave at the age of 144 to forge for himself a more prosaic career: for a short period he would find employment at the office of the London merchant Joseph Paice and then, until February 8, 1792 (which, we note, was prior to the downfall of the financial institution in the collapse of a mammoth pyramid scheme), he would hold a small post at the Examiner’s Office of the South Sea House. 1. This London school still exists. 2. The initials “STC” were still there in 1986, when a Coleridge biographer crawled back into that cave, were “still” carved into that cave’s far wall, and from this hangs a cautionary tale for all biographers of persons who have “attained to celebrity status”: It took me a moment to realize that the sandstone walls are so porous and flaky that they could not possibly be Coleridge’s original graffiti, but some later act of piety. Such carvings and recarvings of his initials, ceremoniously repeated by generation after generation of unknown memorialists, suddenly seemed to me like a symbol of the essentially cumulative process of biography itself. 3. This London school still exists. 4. Wordsworth’s inference would be that since he had achieved a good record at the school as a Latin scholar, rising to the 2d-highest rank known as “Deputy Grecian,” Lamb might have been allowed to go on to college “but for the impediment in his speech.” HDT WHAT? INDEX THE PEOPLE OF A WEEK: CHARLES LAMB PEOPLE MENTIONED IN A WEEK 1792 In Hertfordshire while tending to his grandmother Mary Field, Charles Lamb, a young man of no great expectation –no fortune or noticeable prospects, and an irremovable stutter– became enamored of a young woman, Ann Simmons of Blenheims, near Blakesware in Hertfordshire. For years she would keep her challenged suitor on the back burner — until lucking out and getting proposed to by a dude with real prospects, a pawnbroker named Bartrum. He would make the heroine of an unpublished novella, “Rosamund Gray.” THE FUTURE CAN BE EASILY PREDICTED IN RETROSPECT April 5, Thursday: The death of his father’s employer having imperiled the Lamb family’s situation, Charles Lamb found a position in the Accountant-General’s Office of the British East India Company. He would be occupied there for 33 years and then be pensioned. For the first three years of his employment there, he would be on probation and would therefore receive no compensation (other than, one may presume, the usual room and board allowed to an apprentice). “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project Charles Lamb HDT WHAT? INDEX THE PEOPLE OF A WEEK: CHARLES LAMB PEOPLE MENTIONED IN A WEEK 1795 Charles Lamb, having served out the three years of his probation as an apprentice at the India House, began to receive pay (initially £40 per year). Both he and his sister Mary Anne Lamb would experience periods of mental incapacitation, and in the course of this 23d year of his life he would suffer a bout of melancholy and need to spend six weeks “in a madhouse at Hoxton.” He was, nevertheless, already making himself known as a poet. At the conclusion of his trial for confiscations of property and money from Indian rulers while he had been in HDT WHAT? INDEX THE PEOPLE OF A WEEK: CHARLES LAMB PEOPLE MENTIONED IN A WEEK office, Warren Hastings was exonerated. WHAT I’M WRITING IS TRUE BUT NEVER MIND YOU CAN ALWAYS LIE TO YOURSELF The People of A Week: Charles Lamb “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project HDT WHAT? INDEX THE PEOPLE OF A WEEK: CHARLES LAMB PEOPLE MENTIONED IN A WEEK 1796 April 16, Saturday: Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s POEMS ON VARIOUS SUBJECTS.