The school which Lamb knew is now no more. The boys are now all in new buildings in the midst of green fields near Horsham, many miles from Lamb's city and its roar.
Page 14, line 15. The worthy sub-treasurer. Randal Norris (see note to "A Death-Bed"). I have not been able to discover the cause of his influence.
Page 14, lines 18, 19. Crug … piggins. Crug is still current slang. In the school museum one of these piggins is preserved.
Page 14, line 25. Three banyan days. Three vegetarian days. Coleridge complains (in a letter to Poole) that he was never sufficiently fed except on Wednesdays. He gives the following table of food:—
Our diet was very scanty. Every morning a bit of dry bread and some bad small beer. Every evening a larger piece of bread, and cheese or butter, whichever we liked. For dinner,—on Sunday, boiled beef and broth; Monday, bread and butter, and milk and water; Tuesday, roast mutton; Wednesday, bread and butter, and rice milk; Thursday, boiled beef and broth; Friday, boiled mutton and broth; Saturday, bread and butter, and pease-porridge. Our food was portioned; and, excepting on Wednesdays, I never had a bellyfull. Our appetites were damped, never satisfied; and we had no vegetables.
Page 14, line 8 from foot. Caro equina. Horseflesh. Mr. Pearce's
chapter on food at the school in his excellent Annals of Christ's
Hospital is very interesting, and records great changes.
Rotten-roasted or rare, i.e., over-roasted or under-done.
Page 15, line 3. The good old relative. Aunt Hetty, or more properly, Sarah Lamb. Compare the "Lines written on the Day of my Aunt's Funeral," Vol. IV.:—
I have not forgot
How thou didst love thy Charles, when he was yet
A prating schoolboy: I have not forgot
The busy joy on that important day,
When, childlike, the poor wanderer was content
To leave the bosom of parental love,
His childhood's play-place, and his early home,
For the rude fosterings of a stranger's hand,
Hard, uncouth tasks, and schoolboys' scanty fare.
How did thine eyes peruse him round and round
And hardly knew him in his yellow coats,
Red leathern belt, and gown of russet blue.
Page 15, line 13. I was a poor friendless boy. Here Lamb speaks as Coleridge, who came all the way from Ottery St. Mary, in Devonshire (not Calne, in Wiltshire), and had no London friends. In John Woodvil Lamb borrowed St. Mary Ottery again (see Vol. IV.). Coleridge has recorded how unhappy he was in his early days at school.
Page 15, line 12 from foot. Whole-day-leaves. In this connection the following passage from Trollope's History of Christ's Hospital, 1834, is interesting:—