Lamb took special delight in watching the setting sun from the top of old Canonbury Tower, until the cold night air warned him to retire. He was intimate with Goodman Symes, the then tenant-keeper of the Tower, and bailiff of the Manor, and a brother antiquary in a small way; who took pleasure in entertaining him in the antique panelled chamber where Goldsmith wrote his Traveller, and supped frugally on buttermilk; and in pointing to a small portrait of Shakespeare, in a curiously carved gilt frame, which Lamb would look at longingly. He was never weary of toiling up and down the winding and narrow stairs of this suburban pile, and peeping into its quaint corners and cupboards, as if he expected to discover there some hitherto hidden clue to its mysterious origin.
| “What village can boast like fair Islington town Such time-honour’d worthies, such ancient renown? Here jolly Queen Bess, after flirting with Leicester, ‘Undumpish’d,’ herself, with Dick Tarlton her Jester. “Here gallant gay Essex, and burly Lord Burleigh Sat late at their revels, and came to them early; Here honest Sir John took his ease at his inn— Bardolph’s proboscis, and Jack’s double chin. |
From Islington, Charles Lamb moved to Enfield Chase Side, there he lived from 1827 to 1833, shut out almost entirely from the world, and his favourite London in particular.
Charles Lamb’s House, Enfield.
Lamb, in a merry mood, writing to Novello, in 1827, says:—
“We expect you four (as many as the table will hold without squeezing) at Mrs. Westwood’s Table d’Hôte on Thursday. You will find the White House shut up, and us moved under the wing of the Phœnix, which gives us friendly refuge. Beds for guests, marry we have none, but cleanly accommodings [sic.] at the Crown and Horse-shoes.
“Yours harmonically,
“C. L.
“Vincentio (what, ho!) Novello, a Squire.
66, Great Queen Street, Lincoln’s-Inn Fields.”