London Magazine, March, 1822.
The germ of this essay will be found in a letter to Barron Field, to whom the essay is addressed, of August 31, 1817. Barron Field was a son of Henry Field, apothecary to Christ's Hospital. His brother, Francis John Field, through whom Lamb probably came to know Barron, was a clerk in the India House.
Barron Field was associated with Lamb on Leigh Hunt's Reflector in 1810-1812. He also was dramatic critic for The Times for a while. In 1816 he was appointed judge of the Supreme Court of New South Wales, where he remained until 1824. For other information see the note, in Vol. I., to his First-Fruits of Australian Poetry, reviewed by Lamb. In the same number of the London Magazine which included the present essay was Field's account of his outward voyage to New South Wales.
Page 119, line 24. Our mutual friend P. Not identifiable: probably no one in particular. The Bench would be the King's Bench Prison. A little later one of Lamb's friends, William Hone, was confined there for three years.
Page 121, line 8. The late Lord C. This was Thomas Pitt, second Baron Camelford (1775-1804), who after a quarrelsome life, first in the navy and afterwards as a man about town, was killed in a duel at Kensington, just where Melbury Road now is. The spot chosen by him for his grave was on the borders of the Lake of Lampierre, near three trees; but there is a doubt if his body ever rested there, for it lay for years in the crypt of St. Anne's, Soho. Its ultimate fate was the subject of a story by Charles Reade.
Page 123, line 11. Bleach. Illegitimacy, according to some old authors, wears out in the third generation, enabling a natural son's descendant to resume the ancient coat-of-arms. Lamb refers to this sanction.
Page 123, line 20. Hare-court. The Lambs lived at 4 Inner Temple Lane (now rebuilt as Johnson's Buildings) from 1809 to 1817. Writing to Coleridge in June, 1809, Lamb says:—"The rooms are delicious, and the best look backwards into Hare Court, where there is a pump always going. Hare Court trees come in at the window, so that it's like living in a garden."
Barron Field was entered on the books of the Inner Temple in 1809 and was called to the Bar in 1814.
Page 123, last paragraph. Sally W——r. Lamb's Key gives "Sally
Winter;" but as to who she was we have no knowledge.
Page 123, end. J.W. James White. See next essay.