Page 232, line 14. Mrs. Charles Kemble, née Maria Theresa De Camp, mother of Fanny Kemble.
Page 232, line 16. Macready. The only record of any conference between Macready and Lamb is Macready's remark in his Diary that he met Lamb at Talfourd's, and Lamb said that he wished to draw his last breath through a pipe, and exhale it in a pun. But this was long after the present essay was written.
Page 232, line 17. Picture Gallery … Mr. Matthews. See note below.
Page 232, line 26. Not Diamond's. Dimond was the proprietor of the old Bath Theatre.
Page 235, first line. Mrs. Crawford. Anne Crawford (1734-1801),
née Street, who was born at Bath, married successively a Mr. Dancer,
Spranger Barry the actor, and a Mr. Crawford. Her great part was Lady
Randolph in Home's "Douglas."
* * * * *
Page 235. THE TOMBS IN THE ABBEY.
London Magazine, October, 1823, where, with slight differences, it formed the concluding portion of the "Letter of Elia to Robert Southey, Esquire," which will be found in Vol. I. The notes in that volume should be consulted; but a little may be said here. This, the less personal portion of the "Letter to Southey," seems to have been all that Lamb cared to retain. He admitted afterwards, when his anger against Southey had cooled, that his "guardian angel" had been "absent" at the time he wrote it.
The Dean of Westminster at the time was Ireland, the friend of Gifford—dean from 1815 to 1842. Lamb's protest against the two-shilling fee was supported a year or so later than its first appearance by Reynolds, in Odes and Addresses, 1825, in a sarcastic appeal to the Dean and Chapter of Westminster to reduce that sum. The passage in Lamb's essay being reprinted in 1833, suggests that the reform still tarried. The evidence, however, of J.T. Smith, in his Book for a Rainy Day, is that it was possible in 1822 to enter Poets' Corner for sixpence. Dean Stanley, in his Historical Memorials of Westminster Abbey, writes: "Free admission was given to the larger part of the Abbey under Dean Ireland. Authorised guides were first appointed in 1826, and the nave and transepts opened, and the fees lowered in 1841…."
Lamb's reference to Southey and to André's monument is characteristically mischievous. He is reminding Southey of his early sympathy with rebels—his "Wat Tyler" and pantisocratic days. Major John André, Sir Henry Clinton's adjutant-general, was caught returning from an interview with an American traitor—a perfectly honourable proceeding in warfare—and was hanged by Washington as a spy in 1780. No blame attached either to judge or victim. André's remains were reburied in the Abbey in 1821. Lamb speaks of injury to André's figure in the monument, but the usual thing was for the figure of Washington to be attacked. Its head has had to be renewed more than once. Minor thefts have also been committed. According to Mrs. Gordon's Life of Dean Buckland, one piece of vandalism at any rate was the work of an American, who returned to the dean two heads which he had appropriated as relics.