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Prose

Notes Charles, who had never married because of his family commitments, fell in love with an actress,
Fanny Kelly, of Covent Garden, but she refused him and he remained until his death a bachelor.
His collected essays, under the title, Essays of Elia, were published in 1823 (“Elia” being the pen-
name Lamb used as a contributor to The London Magazine). A further collection was published
ten years later, shortly before Lamb’s death. He died of an infection, erysipelas, contracted from a
cut on his face. His sister, who was ten years his senior, survived him.
Lamb was honoured by The Latymer School, a grammar school in Edmonton, a suburb of London
where he lived for a time; it has six houses, one of which, “Lamb”, is named after Charles.

6.2 Youth and Schooling

Lamb was the son of Elizabeth Field and John Lamb. Lamb was the youngest child, with an
11 year older sister Mary, an even older brother John, and 4 other siblings who did not survive
their infancy. John Lamb (father), who was a lawyer’s clerk, spent most of his professional life as
the assistant and servant to a barrister by the name of Samuel Salt who lived in the Inner Temple
in London. It was there in the Inner Temple in Crown Office Row, that Charles Lamb was born
and spent his youth. Lamb created a portrait of his father in his “Elia on the Old Benchers” under
the name Lovel. Lamb’s older brother was too much his senior to be a youthful companion to the
boy but his sister Mary, being born eleven years before him, was probably his closest playmate.
Lamb was also cared for by his paternal aunt Hetty, who seems to have had a particular fondness
for him. A number of writings by both Charles and Mary suggest that the conflict between Aunt
Hetty and her sister-in-law created a certain degree of tension in the Lamb household. However,
Charles speaks fondly of her and her presence in the house seems to have brought a great deal of
comfort to him.
Some of Lamb’s fondest childhood memories were of time spent with Mrs. Field, his maternal
grandmother, who was for many years a servant to the Plummer family, who owned a large
country house called Blakesware, near Widford, Hertfordshire. After the death of Mrs. Plummer,
Lamb’s grandmother was in sole charge of the large home and, as Mr. Plummer was often absent,
Charles had free rein of the place during his visits. A picture of these visits can be glimpsed in the
Elia essay Blakesmoor in H—shire.
”Why, every plank and panel of that house for me had magic in it. The tapestried [sic] bed-rooms
– tapestry so much better than painting – not adorning merely, but peopling the wainscots – at
which childhood ever and anon would steal a look, shifting its coverlid (replaced as quickly) to
exercise its tender courage in a momentary eye-encounter with those stern bright visages, staring
reciprocally – all Ovid on the walls, in colours vivider than his descriptions.”
Little is known about Charles’s life before the age of seven. We know that Mary taught him to read
at a very early age and he read voraciously. It is believed that he suffered from smallpox during
his early years which forced him into a long period of convalescence. After this period of recovery
Lamb began to take lessons from Mrs. Reynolds, a woman who lived in the Temple and is believed
to have been the former wife of a lawyer. Mrs. Reynolds must have been a sympathetic
schoolmistress because Lamb maintained a relationship with her throughout his life and she is
known to have attended dinner parties held by Mary and Charles in the 1820s. E.V. Lucas suggests
that sometime in 1781 Charles left Mrs. Reynolds and began to study at the Academy of William
Bird.
His time with William Bird did not last long, however, because by October 1782 Lamb was enrolled
in Christ’s Hospital, a charity boarding school chartered by King Edward VI in 1552. Christ’s
Hospital was a traditional English boarding school; bleak and full of violence. The headmaster,
Mr. Boyer, has become famous for his teaching in Latin and Greek, but also for his brutality. A
thorough record of Christ’s Hospital in Several essays by Lamb as well as the Autobiography of
Leigh Hunt and the Biographia Literaria of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, with whom Charles developed

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