[Page 247,] line 19. O Clarencieux! O Norroy! The two provincial kings-at-arms, Clarencieux, after the Duke of Clarence, son of Edward III., whose office is south of the Trent, and Norroy (North-roy), whose office is north of the Trent.
[Page 248,] line 4. Barnet ... Red Rose. Referring to the battle of Barnet on April 14, 1471, when Edward IV. defeated and slew the Earl of Warwick, and practically destroyed the Lancastrian, or Red Rose, cause, finally doing so at the battle of Tewkesbury a little later.
[Page 248.] The Gentle Giantess.
London Magazine, December, 1822. Not reprinted by Lamb.
We find the germ of this essay in a letter from Lamb to Dorothy Wordsworth, in 1821, when she was staying with her uncle, Christopher Wordsworth, the Master of Trinity:—
"Ask any body you meet, who is the biggest woman in Cambridge, and I'll hold you a wager they'll say Mrs. Smith. She broke down two benches in Trinity Gardens, one on the confines of St. John's, which occasioned a litigation between the societies as to repairing it. In warm weather she retires into an ice-cellar (literally!), and dates the returns of the years from a hot Thursday some 20 years back. She sits in a room with opposite doors and windows, to let in a thorough draft, which gives her slenderer friends toothaches. She is to be seen in the market every morning, at 10 cheapening fowls, which I observe the Cambridge Poulterers are not sufficiently careful to stump."
It was characteristic of Lamb that finding the widow at Cambridge he should have set her in the essay at Oxford. He did the same thing in his Elia essay "On Oxford in the Vacation," which he conceived at the sister university.
[Page 248,] line 4 of essay. The maid's aunt of Brainford. The maid's aunt of Brentford; otherwise Sir John Falstaff in petticoats (see "The Merry Wives of Windsor," Act IV., Scene 2).