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. He began to take laudanum with greater frequency, at first on the basis of physical complaints.
The book featured four sonnets by “Mr. Charles Lamb of the India House,” Coleridge’s school chum (this was his initial appearance in print).
CHANGE IS ETERNITY, STASIS A FIGMENT
September 22, Thursday: Mary Anne Lamb, being it was said “worn down to a state of extreme nervous misery by attention to needlework by day and to her mother at night,” attacked an apprentice dressmaker with a table knife, then stabbed her father John Lamb, then killed her mother Elizabeth Field Lamb by stabbing her in the heart. There being as yet no legal standing for a term such as “Insane,” the verdict returned by the jury used the term “Lunacy.” Although what had happened was murder, in this case it was adjudged not to have been willful. Friends helped Charles Lamb obtain Mary’s release from prison on condition that he pay the costs of residency at Fisher House, a “private madhouse” in Islington.
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
1797
June: A treaty with the Bey of Tripoli that had been negotiated by the administration of President George Washington was finally signed and ratified by the federal senate at this point during the administration of President John Adams. Article 11 of the English-language version of this treaty, curiously, declares that “the United States is in no sense based on the Christian religion.” (This English version inclusive of the curious declaration would have been what was signed by our President and duly ratified by our Senate. There is a mystery about this, since no such article appears in the Arabic version! Refer to Bevans’s Treaties and Other International Agreements of the United States of America, 1776-1989, Volume 11, and to David Humphreys’s Miscellaneous Works of 1804.) The agreement cost us $56,000, a sum which was not to be considered to be “tribute.” Our vessels would henceforth be granted most-favored-nation status, the same as if they were English or French. In London, Charles Lamb was becoming an intimate in a group of young writers who believed in political reform, such as Percy Bysshe Shelley, William Hazlitt, and (eventually) Leigh Hunt. He and his friend Samuel Taylor Coleridge went for a short summer holiday at Nether Stowey, where they had an opportunity to get to know William and Dorothy Wordsworth. Lamb contributed additional blank verse for a 2d edition of POEMS ON VARIOUS SUBJECTS. Within the next year Coleridge would be authoring “Kubla Khan,” Part I of “Christabel,” “Frost at Midnight,” and “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner.”
July: The Wordsworths and Charles Lamb visited Samuel Taylor Coleridge and found him writing away at “This Lime-Tree Bower My Prison.” Publication of POEMS, SECOND EDITION by Coleridge, Lamb, and Charles Lloyd.5
5. After a temporary fall-out with Coleridge, Lamb’s poems were to be excluded in a 3d edition — but this edition never materialized. HDT WHAT? INDEX
THE PEOPLE OF A WEEK: CHARLES LAMB PEOPLE MENTIONED IN A WEEK
1798
Charles Lamb and Charles Lloyd, a mentally unstable son of the founder of Lloyd’s Bank, prepared BLANK VERSE. This included Lamb’s well known “The Old Familiar Faces.”
DO I HAVE YOUR ATTENTION? GOOD.
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
1799
The Royal Military College was established at Sandhurst, England.
John Lamb, Charles and Mary Anne Lamb’s father, had for a number of years been incapacitated by stroke. Upon his death Mary was able to leave Fisher House, the “private madhouse” in Islington in which she had been being held subsequent to her murder of her mother Elizabeth Field Lamb with a table knife, and come to reside again with her brother in Pentonville.
William Godwin’s ST. LEON, A TALE OF THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY (4 volumes, London: G.G. & J. Robinson).
When Charles Lloyd accused Mary Hays of improprieties, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Charles Lamb, Robert Southey, and William Godwin became involved in the furor. WILLIAM GODWIN’S LIFE HDT WHAT? INDEX
THE PEOPLE OF A WEEK: CHARLES LAMB PEOPLE MENTIONED IN A WEEK
1800
In London, the Royal College of Surgeons was founded. Charles and Mary Anne Lamb set up housekeeping at Mitre Court Buildings in the Temple district (they would remain together there until 1809). In spite of Charles’s bouts of melancholia and alcohol abuse, their home would become a sort of weekly hangout place for theatrical and literary personages of the times.
William Hayley lost his natural son, Thomas Alphonso Hayley, and grieved. The boy had been a pupil of John Flaxman’s, to whom Hayley’s ESSAY ON SCULPTURE is addressed. Flaxman introduced William Blake to Hayley, and after the latter had moved in this year to his marine hermitage at Felpham in Sussex, Blake would settle near him for three years to engrave the illustrations for LIFE OF COWPER. This, Hayley’s best known work, would appear in 1803/1804.
Blake was commissioned by Hayley to decorate his library with eighteen heads of poets. While at Felpham Blake would begin work on his epic poems MILTON and JERUSALEM. HDT WHAT? INDEX
THE PEOPLE OF A WEEK: CHARLES LAMB PEOPLE MENTIONED IN A WEEK
1802
Charles Lamb’s tragedy JOHN WOODVIL. The author would continue as a clerk for the East India Company. HDT WHAT? INDEX
THE PEOPLE OF A WEEK: CHARLES LAMB PEOPLE MENTIONED IN A WEEK
1804
Thomas De Quincey first took opium, while at Worcester College, Oxford, to cope with the pain of facial neuralgia.
In this year he met Charles Lamb.
The Reverend John Josias Conybeare, being an enthusiast for chemistry and geology, set up his own laboratory in Oxford. HDT WHAT? INDEX
THE PEOPLE OF A WEEK: CHARLES LAMB PEOPLE MENTIONED IN A WEEK
1807
Charles and Mary Lamb’s TALES FROM SHAKESPEARE, in which he had dealt with the tragedies and she with the comedies (this become a bestseller in William Godwin’s “Children’s Library”).
WILLIAM GODWIN’S LIFE
At Drury Lane, Charles Lamb’s farce MR H met with a chorus of boos. HDT WHAT? INDEX
THE PEOPLE OF A WEEK: CHARLES LAMB PEOPLE MENTIONED IN A WEEK
1808
Charles Lamb’s THE ADVENTURES OF ULYSSES and SPECIMENS OF ENGLISH DRAMATIC POETS WHO LIVED ABOUT THE TIME OF SHAKESPEARE. LAMB’S SPECIMENS HDT WHAT? INDEX
THE PEOPLE OF A WEEK: CHARLES LAMB PEOPLE MENTIONED IN A WEEK
1811
Charles Lamb’s ON THE TRAGEDIES OF SHAKESPEARE. HDT WHAT? INDEX
THE PEOPLE OF A WEEK: CHARLES LAMB PEOPLE MENTIONED IN A WEEK
1818
Charles Lamb’s POEMS and COLLECTED WORKS, issued in this year, were dedicated to Samuel Taylor Coleridge. The opening verse of the original version of “The Old Familiar Faces” had had to do with Charles and Mary Lamb’s mother Elizabeth Field Lamb who had been stabbed in the heart by Mary and, for public consumption of the poem, the poet had removed this reference. HDT WHAT? INDEX
THE PEOPLE OF A WEEK: CHARLES LAMB PEOPLE MENTIONED IN A WEEK
1819
At the age of 44 Charles Lamb posted a letter proposing marriage, to the immensely popular Irish actress Fanny H. Kelly whose performance he had seen at Covent Garden.
He would not again attempt to depart from his bachelor condition. HDT WHAT? INDEX
THE PEOPLE OF A WEEK: CHARLES LAMB PEOPLE MENTIONED IN A WEEK
1820
Charles Lamb’s ESSAYS OF ELIA would be published in London Magazine, 1820-1822.
LONDON HDT WHAT? INDEX
THE PEOPLE OF A WEEK: CHARLES LAMB PEOPLE MENTIONED IN A WEEK
1821
Charles Lamb’s WITCHES AND OTHER NIGHT FEARS. HDT WHAT? INDEX
THE PEOPLE OF A WEEK: CHARLES LAMB PEOPLE MENTIONED IN A WEEK
1823
Charles Lamb’s articles signed “Elia” in the London Magazine, when recycled in this year into a book titled ELIA. ESSAYS WHICH HAVE APPEARED UNDER THAT SIGNATURE IN THE LONDON MAGAZINE (printed for Taylor and Hessey, Fleet-street), provoked Friend Bernard Barton to reprove the manner in which they had been dealing with Quakerism (this remonstrance was handled well and would create an abiding friendship).
ELIA (FIRST SERIES, 1823) Here enters a child, Emma Isola. She was the motherless daughter of an acquaintance of Charles and Mary Anne Lamb’s –a shy don at Cambridge University– and this father had just died. They adopted Emma and relocated from the city to Bay Cottage on Church Street in Edmonton.6 HDT WHAT? INDEX
THE PEOPLE OF A WEEK: CHARLES LAMB PEOPLE MENTIONED IN A WEEK
Henry Thoreau would refer, in a letter on August 5, 1836, to an article “Distant Correspondents” included in this year’s initial volume of ELIA articles.
6. Edmonton has by now been absorbed into the Borough of Enfield in the northern portion of London. HDT WHAT? INDEX
THE PEOPLE OF A WEEK: CHARLES LAMB PEOPLE MENTIONED IN A WEEK
1825
Charles Lamb in the course of his career at the East India House had risen from unpaid apprentice on probation to a salary of £40 per annum to a salary of £730, and in this year was allowed to retire on pension. I came home forever on Tuesday in last week. The incomprehensibleness of my condition overwhelm’d me. It was like passing from life into Eternity. Every year to be as long as three, i.e., to have three times as much time that is my own, in it! ... Freedom and life co-existent. HDT WHAT? INDEX
THE PEOPLE OF A WEEK: CHARLES LAMB PEOPLE MENTIONED IN A WEEK
1827
Charles Lamb’s “On an Infant Dying as Soon as Born” commemorated the death of Thomas Hood’s infant. HDT WHAT? INDEX
THE PEOPLE OF A WEEK: CHARLES LAMB PEOPLE MENTIONED IN A WEEK
1828
Charles Lamb’s essays signed “Elia” in the London Magazine were again recycled, into a book titled ELIA. ESSAYS WHICH HAVE APPEARED UNDER THAT SIGNATURE IN THE LONDON MAGAZINE. SECOND SERIES (Philadelphia: Carey, Lea and Carey — Chesnut Street. J.R.A. Skerbett, printer). ELIA (2D SERIES, 1828) HDT WHAT? INDEX
THE PEOPLE OF A WEEK: CHARLES LAMB PEOPLE MENTIONED IN A WEEK
1832
Joseph Ablett persuaded Walter Savage Landor to visit England, where he met many old friends. He saw the widow Sophia Jane Swift (his “Ianthe”) at Brighton, and met Lord Wenlock. He also visited his family of origin in Staffordshire — his brother Charles Landor was rector of Colton, and his cousin Walter Landor of Rugeley was trying to deal with the complex business of Llanthony. He visited Charles Lamb at Enfield, Samuel Taylor Coleridge at Highgate, and Julius Charles Hare at Cambridge. He and Ablett visited the Lake District and saw Robert Southey and Samuel Taylor Coleridge. On returning to Fiesole Landor found his children out of hand and obtained a German governess for them. In Italy he met Richard Monckton Milnes, 1st Baron Houghton, who would later wrote about him. He worked on the conversations which would lead in 1834 to the volumes upon PERICLES AND ASPASIA, the PENTAMERON, and CITATION AND EXAMINATION OF WILLIAM SHAKSPEARE EUSEBY TREEN JOSEPH CARNABY AND SILAS GOUGH CLERK BEFORE THE WORSHIPFUL SIR THOMAS LUCY KNIGHT TOUCHING DEER-STEALING ON THE 19TH DAY OF SEPTEMBER IN THE YEAR OF GRACE 1582 NOW FIRST PUBLISHED FROM ORIGINAL PAPERS. TO WHICH IS ADDED A CONFERENCE OF MASTER EDMUND SPENSER A GENTLEMAN OF NOTE WITH THE EARL OF ESSEX TOUCHING THE STATE OF IRELAND A.D. 1595 (Lady Blessington persuaded Saunders and Otley of Conduit Street in London to publish HDT WHAT? INDEX
THE PEOPLE OF A WEEK: CHARLES LAMB PEOPLE MENTIONED IN A WEEK
this). HDT WHAT? INDEX
THE PEOPLE OF A WEEK: CHARLES LAMB PEOPLE MENTIONED IN A WEEK
Between this year and 1841 Charles-Lucien Jules Laurent Bonaparte would be publishing his work on the animal life forms of Italy, ICONOGRAFIA DELLA FAUNA ITALICA. HDT WHAT? INDEX
THE PEOPLE OF A WEEK: CHARLES LAMB PEOPLE MENTIONED IN A WEEK HDT WHAT? INDEX
THE PEOPLE OF A WEEK: CHARLES LAMB PEOPLE MENTIONED IN A WEEK
1834
July 25, Friday: At 6:30AM one of the opium addicts under the care of Dr. James Gillman in his supervised extended residence in the Highgate district of London, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, died. On his deathbed the poet arranged to have a mourning ring sent to Charles and Mary Lamb. He instructed that his body be subject to autopsy so that it would become clear to posterity that he actually had been ill rather than just another hypochondriac. DOPERS
A Central Criminal Court was established in London, with authority to hear and determine all treasons, murders, felonies, and misdemeanors committed in London or Middlesex, and some parts of the adjacent counties, and all offences committed within the jurisdiction of the Admiralty of England (the new court was to meet at least twelve times in the course of the year). HDT WHAT? INDEX
THE PEOPLE OF A WEEK: CHARLES LAMB PEOPLE MENTIONED IN A WEEK
December 27, Saturday: Charles Lamb died at the age of 59 of a streptococcal infection to the face, erysipelas, that had been contracted when he slipped and fell in the street in Edmonton. A new collection of his poems had just appeared on bookstore shelves. The body would be interred at All Saints’ Churchyard in Edmonton. Mary Lamb would continue for more than a dozen years, before her body would be placed beside that of her brother. HDT WHAT? INDEX
THE PEOPLE OF A WEEK: CHARLES LAMB PEOPLE MENTIONED IN A WEEK
1836
August 5, Friday: A memorial address was delivered by Judge John Pitman in Providence, Rhode Island on the occasion of that municipality’s 200th birthday: JUDGE JOHN PITMAN
D.H. Thoreau wrote from Concord to Charles Wyatt Rice in Brookfield: Concord, Aug. 5th, 1836. Friend Rice, You say you are in the hay-field: how I envy you! Methinks I see thee stretched at thy ease by the side of a fragrant rick, with a mighty flagon [in] one hand, a cold [cold] slice in the other, and a most ravenous appetite to boot. So much for haying. Now as I can- not hay nor scratch dirt, I manage to keep soul and body together another way. I have been manufac- turing a kind of vessel in miniature, not a [Greek text,] as Homer has it, but a kind of oblong bread- trough. In days of yore, tis said, the swimming alder [(]of its smooth coat, Fashioned rude, with branches lopt, and stripped ^ Where here fallen tree was none, and rippling streams vast breadth
Page 2 [did bear Forbade adventurous leap, the brawny swain ^ Secure to farthest shore. [the lay The book has passed away, and with the book ^ Which in my youthful days I loved to ponder. Of curious things it told, how wise men 3 of Gotham. In a bowl did venture out to sea, And darkly hints their awful fate[.] If men have dared the main to tempt in such frail barks[.] HDT WHAT? INDEX
THE PEOPLE OF A WEEK: CHARLES LAMB PEOPLE MENTIONED IN A WEEK
Why may not wash tub round, or bread- troughs square oblong Suffice to cross the purling wave and gain the destin’d port[!] What, think you, do these capitals mean? When I begin to feel bluey I just step into my hog-trough, leave care behind, and drift along our sluggish stream at the mercy of the winds and waves. The following is an extract from the log-book of the Red Jacket, Captain Thoreau.
Page 3 Set sail from the Island — the Island! how expressive! — reached Thayer’s after a tedious voyage, having encountered a head wind during the whole passage — waves running mountain-high, with breakers to the leeward — however, arrived safe, and after a thorough refit, being provided with extra cables birch [&] a [firstrate] main-mast, weighed anchor ^ at 3 o’clock P.M Aug. 1st, 1836, N.S. wind blowing N.N.E. The breeze having in- creased to a gale, tack’d ship[=]station- ed myself at the helm and prepared for emergencies. Just as the ship was rounding point Dennis a squall struck her, under a cloud of canvas, which swept the deck. The aforesaid mast went by the board, carrying with it our only mainsail. The vessel being left at the mercy of the waves, was cast ashore on Nawshawtuck beach. — Natives a harmless
Page 4 inoffensive race, principally devoted to agricultural pursuits — appeared somewhat astonished that a stranger should land so unceremoniously on their coast. Got her off at 20 minutes HDT WHAT? INDEX
THE PEOPLE OF A WEEK: CHARLES LAMB PEOPLE MENTIONED IN A WEEK
of 4, and after a short and pleasant passage of 10 minutes arrived safely in port with a valueable cargo. — “Epistolary matter”, says Lamb, “usually comprises 3 topics, news, sentiment and puns.” Now as to news I dont know the coin — the newspapers take care of that. Puns I abhor and more espec- ially deliberate ones. Sentiment alone is immortal, the rest are short-lived — evanescent. Now this is neither matter[-] of-fact, nor pungent, nor yet sentimental — it is neither one thing nor the other, but a kind of hodge- podge, put together in much the same style that mince pies are fabled to [have] been made, [i.e.,] by opening the oven ^
Page 5 door, and from the further end of the room, casting in the various ingredients — a little lard here, a little flour there — now a round of beef and then a cargo of spices — helter skelter. I should like to crawl into those holes you describe — what a crowd of associations ’twould give rise to! “One to once, [G]entlemen.” As to Indian remains the season for grubbing is past with me, the Doctor having expressly forbidden both digging and chopping. My health is so much improved that I shall return to C. next term if they will receive me. French I have certainly neglected, Dan Homer is all the rage at present. This from your friend and classmate, D.H. Thoreau.
Page 6 P.S. It would afford me much HDT WHAT? INDEX
THE PEOPLE OF A WEEK: CHARLES LAMB PEOPLE MENTIONED IN A WEEK
pleasure if you would visit our good old town this vacation, in other words myself. Dont fail to answer this forthwith; tis a good thing to persevere in well doing. How true it is that the postscript contains the most important matter invariably. HDT WHAT? INDEX
THE PEOPLE OF A WEEK: CHARLES LAMB PEOPLE MENTIONED IN A WEEK
1838
In Blackwood’s Magazine, Thomas De Quincey’s tales of terror “The Household Wreck” (January) and “The Avenger” (August). In Tait’s Edinburgh Magazine, two articles on his “Recollections of Charles Lamb.”
THE PROSE WORKS OF CHARLES LAMB. IN THREE VOLUMES (London: Edward Moxon). Henry Thoreau would quote from “Specimens from the Writings of Fuller, the Church Historian” in this set of volumes in his journal for Fall 1846 and at two places in A WEEK. LAMB’S PROSE WORKS, I LAMB’S PROSE WORKS, II LAMB’S PROSE WORKS, III
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
1845
At New-York, the publishing firm of Wiley and Putnam reissued Charles Lamb’s SPECIMENS OF ENGLISH DRAMATIC POETS, WHO LIVED ABOUT THE TIME OF SHAKESPEARE. WITH NOTES. This is the edition that is said by scholars to have been in Emerson’s library and Thoreau could therefore have copied from it into his Literary Notebook, and therefore the scholars suspect it may have been the source for Thoreau’s snippet from Thomas Decker’s The Honest Whore which occurs in “Life without Principle”: The man who thrusts his manners upon me does as if he were to insist on introducing me to his cabinet of curiosities, when I wished to see himself. It was not in this sense that the poet Decker called Christ “the first true gentleman that ever breathed.” LAMB’S SPECIMENS, 1845
(As you will see, I have my doubts about this. It seems to me to be more likely that Thoreau obtained this from another edition, such as perhaps from page 70 in Volume I of the London edition of 1835.) LAMB’S SPECIMENS, 1835 HDT WHAT? INDEX
THE PEOPLE OF A WEEK: CHARLES LAMB PEOPLE MENTIONED IN A WEEK
1846
Fall: A reference to Sir Thomas Browne’s RELIGIO MEDICI appeared in Henry Thoreau’s journal:
Sir Thomas Browne says nobly for a Christian that “they only had the advantage of a bold and noble faith, who lived before his coming, and upon obscure prophecies and mystical types, could raise a belief.”
Thoreau included in his journal a snippet of Thomas Heywood that he had copied into his Literary Notebook from his reading of a 1637 comedy by Heywood entitled “The Fair Maid of the Exchange.” This has been alleged by the scholars to have been copied from an 1845 New-York edition in Emerson’s library, Charles Lamb’s SPECIMENS OF ENGLISH DRAMATIC POETS, WHO LIVED ABOUT THE TIME OF SHAKESPEARE (New- York: Wiley and Putnam, 161 Broadway, 1845): Nor speak I this, that any here exprest Should think themselves less worthy than the rest Whose names have their full syllables and sound; Or that Frank, Kit, or Jack, are the least wound Unto their fame and merit. I for my part (Think others what they please) accept that heart, Which courts my love in most familiar phrase; And that it takes not from my pains or praise, If any one to me so bluntly come: I hold he loves me best that calls me Tom. Thomas Heywood.
LAMB’S SPECIMENS, 1845
However, as you can see, that 1637 comedy is simply not present in this 1845 New-York edition. If it were that edition that Emerson had in his library, then Thoreau could only have obtained his access to this 1637 comedy elsewhere, such as for instance from pages 186-90 in this 1835 London edition: LAMB’S SPECIMENS, 1835
Thoreau included in his journal a snippet from “Specimens from the Writings of Fuller” in THE PROSE WORKS OF CHARLES LAMB (London: Edward Moxon, 1838):
If history is a lifeless record and dust accumulates in libraries as well as on the ruins of cities –and books may easily deceive or be mistaken– The traveller has not far to seek for more unquestionable and living testimony–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.” LAMB’S PROSE WORKS, I HDT WHAT? INDEX
THE PEOPLE OF A WEEK: CHARLES LAMB PEOPLE MENTIONED IN A WEEK
1847
May 20, Thursday: Mary Lamb died. Her body would be placed beside that of her brother.
“MAGISTERIAL HISTORY” IS FABULATION: HISTORY IS 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
COPYRIGHT NOTICE: In addition to the property of others, such as extensive quotations and reproductions of images, this “read-only” computer file contains a great deal of special work product of Austin Meredith, copyright 2014. Access to these interim materials will eventually be offered for a fee in order to recoup some of the costs of preparation. My hypercontext button invention which, instead of creating a hypertext leap through hyperspace —resulting in navigation problems— allows for an utter alteration of the context within which one is experiencing a specific content already being viewed, is claimed as proprietary to Austin Meredith — and therefore freely available for use by all. Limited permission to copy such files, or any material from such files, must be obtained in advance in writing from the “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project, 833 Berkeley St., Durham NC 27705. Please contact the project at
“It’s all now you see. Yesterday won’t be over until tomorrow and tomorrow began ten thousand years ago.” – Remark by character “Garin Stevens” in William Faulkner’s INTRUDER IN THE DUST
Prepared: November 13, 2014 HDT WHAT? INDEX
THE PEOPLE OF A WEEK: CHARLES LAMB PEOPLE MENTIONED IN A WEEK
ARRGH AUTOMATED RESEARCH REPORT
GENERATION HOTLINE
This stuff presumably looks to you as if it were generated by a human. Such is not the case. Instead, someone has requested that we pull it out of the hat of a pirate who has grown out of the shoulder of our pet parrot “Laura” (as above). What these chronological lists are: they are research reports compiled by ARRGH algorithms out of a database of modules which we term the Kouroo Contexture (this is data mining). To respond to such a request for information we merely push a button. HDT WHAT? INDEX
THE PEOPLE OF A WEEK: CHARLES LAMB PEOPLE MENTIONED IN A WEEK
Commonly, the first output of the algorithm has obvious deficiencies and we need to go back into the modules stored in the contexture and do a minor amount of tweaking, and then we need to punch that button again and recompile the chronology — but there is nothing here that remotely resembles the ordinary “writerly” process you know and love. As the contents of this originating contexture improve, and as the programming improves, and as funding becomes available (to date no funding whatever has been needed in the creation of this facility, the entire operation being run out of pocket change) we expect a diminished need to do such tweaking and recompiling, and we fully expect to achieve a simulation of a generous and untiring robotic research librarian. Onward and upward in this brave new world.
First come first serve. There is no charge. Place requests with
THE PEOPLE OF A WEEK: CHARLES LAMB PEOPLE MENTIONED IN A WEEK HDT WHAT? INDEX
THE PEOPLE OF A WEEK: CHARLES LAMB PEOPLE MENTIONED IN A WEEK