November Lambs to Covent Garden

We are in London, 21 November 1817, two years after Waterloo, and Charles and Mary Lamb have just moved from the relative quiet of the inns of court to ‘a place all alive with noise and bustle’, and she is loving it, as she tells Dorothy Wordsworth. The linkboys, who carried burning torches to guide the theatre-goers home, would soon be put out of business by gas lighting. Some gas lamps still illuminate parts of Covent Garden. A gas lamp, a linkboy and a candle in this illustration from the Pickwick Papers, and still people are in the dark!

At last we mustered up resolution enough to leave the good old place that so long had sheltered us—and here we are, living at a Brazier’s shop, No. 20, in Russell Street, Covent Garden, a place all alive with noise and bustle, Drury Lane Theatre in sight from our front and Covent Garden from our back windows. The hubbub of the carriages returning from the play does not annoy me in the least—strange that it does not, for it is quite tremendous.

I quite enjoy looking out of the window and listening to the calling up of the carriages and the squabbles of the coachmen and linkboys. It is the oddest scene to look down upon, I am sure you would be amused with it. It is well I am in a chearful place.

From The Letters of Charles and Mary Lamb, 1796-1820 , edited by E. V. Lucas.

Now, of course, it’s black cabs and Uber! Enjoy the Gas lights of an evening visit to Covent Garden.

30 June: Solitude by the sea.

On this day in 1826 Charles Lamb replies to John Dibdin who has written from Hastings, Sussex, where Charles and Mary Lamb had enjoyed many walks on their own holidays.

Let me hear that you have clamber’d up to Lover’s Seat; it is as fine in that neighbourhood as Juan Fernandez, as lonely too, when the Fishing boats are not out; I have sat for hours, staring upon a shipless sea. The salt sea is never so grand as when it is left to itself. One cock-boat spoils it. A sea-mew or two improves it.

By the way, there’s a capital farm house two thirds of the way to the Lover’s Seat, with incomparable plum cake, ginger beer, etc.

from “The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb — Volume 6 Letters 1821-1842

Four miles from Hastings, the Lovers’ Seat is on the Fairlight cliff, seen here from Pett Level on a day when clouds were forming at the cliff top. Although the beach often has families enjoying the sand that lies below the shingle seen here, a little way off are quiet spots where one can stop and stare. A rare solitude for Lamb, the convinced Londoner.

Where and when today can I find a few minutes of solitude with God and creation?

Juan Fernandez is a group of Islands in the Pacific Ocean belonging to Chile; it includes Robinson Crusoe Island, though that name was not in use in 1826.

Sea-mew: sea gull, especially the common gull.

9 May: Summer’s severity.

Here is an extract from a letter from the writer Charles Lamb to his friend Vincent Novello, the musician and publisher, May 9, 1826. May can occasionally feel as cold as March, as Lamb asserts, ready to put more coal on the fire.

Dear N.

You will not expect us to-morrow, I am sure, while these damn’d North Easters continue. We must wait the Zephyrs’ pleasures. By the bye, I was at Highgate on Wensday, the only one of the Party.  Yours truly C. LAMB.

Summer, as my friend Coleridge waggishly writes, has set in with its usual severity. Kind rememb’ces to Mrs. Novello &c.

from “The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb — Volume 6 Letters 1821-1842.

Beech trees in Maytime.

Twice a garden in London.

I continue to estimate my own-roof comforts highly. How could I remain all my life a lodger! My garden thrives (I am told) tho’ I have yet reaped nothing but some tiny sallad, and withered carrots. But a garden’s a garden anywhere, and twice a garden in London.

The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb — Vol 6 Letters 1821-1842.

Charles and Mary Lamb have moved out of their rented flat in Covent Garden to the outer suburb of Islington, where he has bought a house of his own. He is writing to Bernard Barton, the Quaker Poet on September 17, 1823. Lamb was then 48 years old, and took to gardening, as well as home-owning, with enthusiasm. This not-so-tiny salad was growing in a tiny patch of soil in Canterbury, and grew to edible size. Let’s look forward to growing and eating our own salads this coming summer!

22 July: a Memory awoken.

‘They are French apricots today, and very good and juicy, so much better than the Spanish,’ said the stallholder in Canterbury market. I bought a pound – half a kilo – and she wrapped them in a brown paper bag.

As I said, ‘Thank you,’ the confluence of the warm sunshine, the brightly coloured fruit, the French text printed on the cardboard trays, the brown paper bag and the swing with which the lady sealed it with a twist, all together transported me back half a century. Almost without thinking I went on: ‘I remember when I was young, walking and hitch-hiking across France to visit a friend. I bought a kilo of apricots and a bottle of water, they kept me going through the mountains.’

‘You would remember that!’ she smiled: I did indeed.

Clement was about to be ordained a missionary priest, I was travelling to share the joy of his ordination. I was coming to the Massif Central from Switzerland, going cross-country, a challenge then in France.

I hitched a lift to the border on a quiet road, and it was getting dark when I came upon a railway station that offered a slow train to the South Coast. En marche! as they say. I sat in a pull-down seat in the corridor, wrapped in a blanket, and slept fitfully as the kilometres went by. At Nîmes I slept on a bench until morning. The first bus in my direction was going as far as Alès, a market town, where I bought my kilo of apricots and walked on.

Lifts were few and far between but soon I was in the mountains under the blazing sun, eating my way through the apricots and replenishing the water bottle from wayside springs.

I met a cart drawn by two oxen, going the wrong way for me.

I kept on walking, accepting lifts of one or two kilometres until the bus from the morning overtook me, stopped and took me into Marvejols. The driver’s return journey began from there, but his drive from Alès was off timetable so I had a good ride for free. We shared the last apricots.

The driver showed me the famous statue of the Beast of Gevaudan, a man-eating monster from the time of Louis XV; he also showed me the road to my friend’s village where my arrival in a passing car was greeted with congratulations and a warm welcome. A day later, two friends of his offered a lift to Paris which I gladly accepted.

This month Clement is celebrating his 50 years as a missionary priest. Let’s give thanks for his faithful service in all that time.

Today, I’ve been picking apricots from our tree and Mrs T is preparing damaged fruit to make jam to share at Christmas time. The BEST apricot jam. EVER.

Remembering Mrs O

Our friend Mrs O kindly allowed me to care for her garden, from where I harvested the seed to grow these wine-red hollyhocks, still blooming years after her death. I always wanted dark red ones, thank you Mrs O! I’ve revisited and revised this post after writing ‘Pushing the Boundaries’.

That’s better, thank you!

Azaleas are part of the rhododendron family, which means that they like an acid soil, not the alluvial, chalky ground at the L’Arche garden in Canterbury. This one was unhappy, planted out of its comfort zone, till our colleague Maurice C. came along. He dug out a hole, lined it with polythene sheeting, filled it with ericaceous compost, and moved azalea in, just before lockdown.

later I applied a little judicious pruning, but he did all the hard work. It has paid off as you see.

Congratulations Maurice! And thank you. From now on, Spring will be that much brighter each year.

Sprung Rhythm

My friend wrote today from Ontario, saying that Spring was still struggling to flower. I recalled the time I was there in April, leaving on 23rd, St George’s Day. The fields were lifeless and brown, the lakeside trees ensheathed in ice, the joggers well-wrapped.

Arrival at Heathrow was to enter another world, green, flowery, bright. Cherry and apple blossom, tulips and late daffodils.

There was a bus all the way home, so I evaded the Underground, which would have been faster, and drowsed my way home, taking in England through half-open eyes.

Good Friday gifts

The solemnity of today will be overwhelmed by the joy of Easter, but there were tokens of the coming feast for those with eyes to see.

Before the sun was properly up I was looking into the back garden. What was that hunched figure inspecting the flowerpots? A hedgehog woken from hibernation and going about its business, ridding us of a few pests. That was enough to mark the day.

After the L’Arche Good Friday service some of us found our way to the Glebe garden, where a shrine had been built of willow wands. If this was intended to be a place of quiet reflection it became a meeting place for people who had barely seen each other during covid; another hint of the resurrection to come.

Flitting across the garden was a brimstone butterfly, a caterpillar died but transformed into a creature of beauty no less wondrous for being totally expected.

Then to my task of adorning the church porch. The Easter garden needed the finishing touches, Mary’s jar of ointment and the grave cloths hidden behind the door (a scallop shell to be rolled to one side). What concerned me was the Easter lilies. We had some in flower the last two years, but it had been touch and go this time. Since today was warm, the first flowers were unfurling to be bright and white on Easter Day.

In the evening down to the Cathedral to hear Faure’s Requiem, with its upbeat finish: May the Angels welcome you to Paradise, the martyrs meet you and lead you to the Holy City of Jerusalem.

Walking home from the Cathedral in the glowing dusk, under the Easter full moon, three blackbirds, singing their hearts out, serenading the new life hatched in their nests. They will be busy tomorrow, as no doubt will I, but by these tokens and by other sure evidence I know that my redeemer liveth.

Des Res for Wrens?

We were given a wren house for Christmas, I placed it in our riverside hedge at the Glebe garden where I work with disabled gardeners in non-pandemic times. Needless to say, the wrens nested under the opposite hedge, in the heap of scrap timber I was going to tidy away – I’m glad they were spotted in time!

The parent wrens were quite happy to fly very close to my workmate when he was sawing away, almost on their flight path.

On the other hand, we had at home a similar box for bluetits, hung on our house wall and surrounded by pyracantha, a thorny evergreen. Two years running, and again after a year’s break, the blackbirds built on top of it. After that we did have blue tits (like chickadees) two years running. I think they prefer old wood to the smell of new.

The wrens’ house is hidden in the hedge opposite.