The Lambs of London

by Peter Ackroyd

  “Where do you lodge, sir?”

  Charles laughed at the question. “I lodge in eternity.”

  “That may be difficult to find.” Yet Charles walked along King Street and Little Queen Street, towards Laystall Street, instinctively turning towards home. “You quoted from Shakespeare just then. ‘You that way, we this way.’ Love’s Labour’s Lost.”

  “Did I? This way now.”

  A member of the local watch passed and shone a lantern in William’s face. “My friend is tired,” William said. “I am accompanying him home.” Calling Charles his friend allowed a degree of intimacy. He linked arms with him and steadied him as they turned into Laystall Street.

  William had heard and seen him before in the Salutation and Cat. Charles often sat there with his companions. They talked loudly about the latest plays and publications; they argued over philosophy, or the merits of certain actresses. Ireland himself was always alone and, sitting in his customary place by the door, listened eagerly. He could make out bursts or gusts of conversation, and had in particular been impressed by an oration given by Charles on the virtues of Dryden as opposed to Pope. William had discovered, too, that Charles wrote for the periodicals; he had overheard his discussion of a proposed essay on the topic of poor relations. “They are always smiling and they are always embarrassed,” he was saying to Tom Coates and Benjamin Milton. “And they are a puzzle to the servants, who are fearful of being either too obsequious or too uncivil.”

  “But you have no servants.”

  “Is Tizzy nothing? A toast to Tizzy! A toast to no one!”

  William had himself submitted an essay to the Pall Mall Review, on Renaissance bindings, but it had been rejected on the grounds that it was “too singular a subject for a general readership.” He had not been surprised by this response. His ambition was matched only by his self-distrust; he aspired to success but expected failure. So he listened to Charles with envy and admiration; he envied those around him, too, who seemed thoroughly at home in the world of literature and journalism. If he could become acquainted with Mr. Lamb, then he might enter this charmed fellowship.

  He hoped, too, that he might follow Charles Lamb’s own path. To write—to be published—these were his ambitions. His essay for the Pall Mall Review had been his only attempt at publication. But he had also written certain odes and sonnets. He thought highly of his “Ode on Liberty. On the Occasion of Napoleon’s Return to France from Egypt,” but he knew that, in the present circumstances, it could not be printed in the English journals. In other odes he had railed against England’s “muddy darkness” and “dreary bounds.” In his sonnets he had pursued a vein of more private sentiment, and in one sequence had charted the history of a “man of feeling” who was ignored or ridiculed by “the brute mass of humankind.” He had not shown these works to anyone but had kept them locked in his writing-case, from which he occasionally took them out and read them over. He considered them to be the centre of his true life, but there was no one on earth with whom he could share them. As he had once written:

  Still and inert my mental powers lie

  Without the quick’ning spark of Sympathy.

  He believed that he might obtain that from Charles Lamb and his friends. But he could never have crossed the room. There was a gulf too deep; it was the gulf of self-abnegation.

  WILLIAM GUIDED CHARLES down the narrow street, avoiding the pump and making sure that he did not fall against the damp and sooty brick wall of the bakery on the corner. It was called “Stride. Our Baker.” Every weekday morning—what he called a “school morning”—Charles would pick up a penny loaf and eat it on his way to Leadenhall Street. Now he passed it without recognition. Only by instinct did he climb the steps from the cobbled pavement to his own door. William stood behind him as he fumbled for his keys, but then the door was opened by a young woman. William walked quickly down Laystall Street, for some reason fearful of being seen by her.

  But Mary Lamb had not noticed him at all, intent only on helping her brother once more across the threshold of their little house.

  HOW DO YOU know it?”

  “How do I know your address, Mr. Lamb? I escorted you home the other evening. There is no reason why you should remember.” He managed to suggest that it was his own insignificance, rather than Charles’s drunkenness, that had caused this lapse of memory.

  “From the Salutation?”

  William nodded.

  Charles had grace enough to blush; but his voice was composed. He had a strange relationship with his drunken self; he considered him to be an unhappy and unfortunate acquaintance to whom he had become accustomed. He would neither defend him nor apologise for him. He would simply recognise his existence. “Well, I am obliged to you.

  Could you call this evening?”

  They shook hands. Charles stepped out of the bookshop, looking left and right before he walked out of the dark passage into High Holborn. He joined the throng of carriages and pedestrians, all moving eastward into the City. It was for him a motley parade, part funeral procession and part pantomime, evincing to him the fullness and variety of life in all its aspects—before the City swallowed it up. The sound of footsteps on the cobbles mingled with the rumble of the carriage wheels and the echo of horse hooves to make what Charles considered to be a uniquely city sound. It was the music of movement itself. There were caps and bonnets and hats bobbing in the distance; there were purple frock-coats and green jackets, striped topcoats and checked surtouts, umbrellas and great woollen parti-coloured shawls, all around him. Charles himself always dressed in black and, being surprisingly angular, he resembled a young and awkward clergyman. A flying pie man knew him by sight, and sold him a veal pastie.

  He was part of the crowd. There were times when this brought him comfort, when he considered himself to be part of the texture of life. There were occasions when it merely reinforced his sense of failure. More often than not, however, it spurred his ambition. He envisaged the days when, from his comfortable library or writing-room, he would be able to hear the crowd passing by.

  He knew the road so well that he scarcely noticed it. He was borne along past Snow Hill and Newgate, along Cheapside, and up Cornhill, until he found himself in Leadenhall Street. It was as if he had been fired from a cannon into the pillared portico of the East India House. It was an old mansion house, from the days of Queen Anne, built of brick and stone and powerfully reinforced by a great cupola that cast a shadow on an already dark and dusty Leadenhall Street. Charles squeezed the arm of the door-keeper as he passed him, and whispered, “Vermiculated rustication.” They had been debating, the previous Saturday, the name of the worm-like ornamentation on the base of the building where it met the street. The door-keeper put a hand to his forehead, and pretended to topple back in astonishment.

  Charles passed into the entrance hall, the quick patter of his shoes sending little flickers of noise among the marble pillars, and he mounted the great ornamental staircase two steps at a time.

  There were six clerks in the Dividend Office where Charles worked. Their desks were set up in the pattern of an inverted V—or, as Charles put it, “like a flight of geese”—with the head clerk at the front. There was a long low table running down the middle of this formation, supporting various leather-bound volumes of accounts and registers. Each clerk sat on a high-backed chair behind his desk, with pen and ink and blotter neatly arranged. Benjamin Milton sat in front of Charles, Tom Coates behind.

  Benjamin turned when he heard the familiar scrape of the chair. “Good morning to you, Charlie. It was never merry in England till you were born.”

  “I know. I am witty in myself, and the cause of wit in others.”

  Benjamin was a short, slim youth, dark-haired and handsome. Charles called him “the pocket-sized Garrick” after the late actor-manager. Like Garrick, Benjamin seemed to be perpetually cheerful.

  Tom Coates arrived, crooning the latest ballad melody. He was always in love, and always in debt. He would wee
p copiously at a romance in the penny-gaffs and then, at the next moment, begin to laugh at his own sentimentality. “I love my mother,” he said. “She has knitted me these gloves.” Charles did not turn round to admire them. The head clerk, Solomon Jarvis, had risen from his seat and was about to distribute the single-column and double-column ledgers. Jarvis was a grave man, an employee for forty years who still felt it an honour to be an East India clerk. Whatever ambition or aspiration he had once harboured, it had come to nothing. Yet he was not a disappointed man—serious, solemn, but not disappointed. He was one of the last clerks to wear his hair powdered and frizzed out in the old manner; it was not clear whether he preferred the fashion of the previous reign out of stubborn antiquarianism or out of some hallowed remembrance of his appearance as a “beau” or “macaroni.” In any case he was, as Benjamin used to say, “a living obelisk.” He was also addicted to snuff, and would take out vast quantities from the pockets of his ancient rust-coloured waistcoat. Charles claimed in fact that his hair was covered in snuff rather than powder, but the theory was never put to the test.

  “Gentlemen,” Jarvis was saying, “a dividend day will soon be upon us. Shall we calculate? Shall we work on the warrants?”

  They wrote out their numbers beneath a fresco by Sir James Thornhill, showing Industry and Prosperity being greeted on the shore of the Bay of Calcutta by three Indian princes who held in their hands the various fruits of that region. In exchange Industry offered a hoe while Prosperity showed them a pair of golden scales. Charles was more interested in the painted sea and landscape. He would put his hands behind his head and gaze at the ceiling, letting his eyes wander among the distant blues and greens. He imagined the thud of the ocean on foreign shores, and the whisper of a warm breeze among the flowing trees, until he was roused by the scratching of the pens all around him.

  He was writing down three round O’s, at the end of a calculation, when the bell sounded at the conclusion of that day’s labour. Tom Coates was already by his chair. “What sayest thou, Charlie? Just the one?” They were joined by Benjamin Milton, who put his hand to his lips and imitated the call of a bugle.

  “Well,” Charles replied. “Just the one.”

  The three young men clattered out of the building into Leadenhall Street. They walked quickly over the stones, their hands in their pockets, their black frock-coats fluttering out behind them; they turned into Billiter Street, patting the flanks of the horses as they dodged between them, and strode into the welcome warmth of the Billiter Inn, where the low murmur of voices and the sweet smell of porter surrounded them. They found a booth, and flung themselves into it. Benjamin skipped over to the counter. At times like this Charles felt himself to be a deeply historical personage. Every movement and gesture he made had already been endlessly repeated in this place. The low murmur and the sweet smell of drink were the past itself, covering him and laying claim to him. He could say nothing that had not been uttered before. “I weep at cradles and I smile at graves. Your good health, Ben.” He took the pewter mug from his colleague and swallowed a great draught of ale. “I drink this in the line of duty.”

  “Of course.” Tom Coates raised his mug. “Sheer necessity. No pleasure to be found in it.”

  “I salute my fate.” Benjamin joined his mug with theirs.

  “Ah yes. The Fates. The sisters. Hail, Atropos!” Charles finished the drink, and looked around for the waiter. He was always known as “Uncle,” a solemn old man who still wore knee-breeches and worsted stockings. “Your finest, Uncle, when you are free.”

  “Anon, sir. Anon.”

  “That will be put on his gravestone,” Charles murmured to the others. “Anon, sir. Anon. God will give up on him.”

  The three sat drinking for an hour or more. They would not have been able to remember what they said. It was the experience of talking together that enlivened and reassured them, the linking of voice with voice, the call and the response, the sympathy of feeling. Charles had forgotten that he was supposed to meet William Ireland that evening. Eventually he left them at the corner of Moorgate, where they walked north towards Islington; he turned towards Holborn and home.

  Then suddenly he was struck with a savage blow on the neck. “What have you got? Give it to me.” He heard the voice and turned, but he was struck again. He staggered against the wall, and felt someone rifling through his pockets. His watch was ripped from its chain and his purse lifted quickly, almost impatiently; then he heard the thief running away, his footsteps echoing down the tall sides of Ironmonger Lane. He leaned against the wall by the corner and, with a sigh, sat down upon the stones. He reached for his watch, and then remembered that it had been taken; he realised that he had suffered no serious injury, but suddenly he was very tired. He was exhausted. He had become one of the whole host who had been assaulted on the same spot—the corner of Ironmonger Lane and Cheapside—and who had decided to sit upon the ground. The echo of footsteps, running from the scene, could still be heard.

  chapter three

  WILLIAM IRELAND SAT WITH his father in the dining-room above the bookshop. Samuel Ireland’s companion, Rosa Ponting, sat with them. “That was a nice bit of perch,” she said. “Very soft with the butter.” She dipped her bread into the last remnants of the butter sauce. “I do believe it will rain. Sammy dear, will you pass me that potato? Did you know they came from Peru?”

  She had lived in this house for as long as William could remember; she was now in middle age, and had acquired an extra chin, but she had preserved her youthful manner. She had once been what was known as a “charmer,” and still exercised all her claims to that title. “You never will guess who stopped me in the street this morning. Why, it was Miss Morrison! I hadn’t seen her for an age, you know. And I swear it was the same bonnet. I really do.” Samuel Ireland was staring ahead of him, lost in some troubled thought. His son could barely conceal his impatience. “She invited me to tea on Tuesday week.” She sounded defiant. She had a right to speak, did she not? “Now, William, I see you wish to leave the table. Please do.”

  He looked at his father, who made no sign. “May I go now, Father?”

  “What? Yes. By all means.”

  “I have something to show you.”

  “What is it?”

  “A surprise.” William rose from the table. “On the shelves.” By this he meant the shop beneath them, although he had learned never to use that particular word in his father’s presence. “It is a gift. Something you have greatly desired.”

  “Desire is a beast, William. Never desire too much.”

  “But I presume this will be acceptable to you.”

  “Some volume?” Samuel Ireland glanced at Rosa Ponting, who was not interested in such matters, and muttered, “I leave you to your potato, Rosa.”

  He followed his son down the plain deal staircase separating the bookshop from the house.

  William took a parchment from one of the shelves and laid it upon the wooden counter. He was looking at it with evident delight. “What is it, do you think?”

  Samuel Ireland stroked the paper with the tip of his finger. “A deed. From the time of the first James, at a guess.”

  “Look more closely, Father.”

  “Look at what, in particular?”

  “The witnesses might interest you.”

  Samuel Ireland took a pair of reading spectacles from the pocket of his jacket. “No. It cannot be.”

  “It is.”

  “Where did you find this?”

  “In the curiosity shop off Grosvenor Square. It was tied with other deeds. I broke the string, and this fell upon the floor. As soon as I retrieved it, I noticed the signature.”

  “How much was it?” He asked the question very quickly.

  “A shilling.”

  “A shilling well spent.”

  “It is yours, Father. It is a gift.”

  “It is a thing I have dreamed of.” He took off his spectacles and wiped them with his handkerchief. “The name and hand
of William Shakespeare. It is the most remarkable document I have ever seen.”

  “There can be no doubt about it?”

  “No doubt at all. I have seen Shakespeare’s own will in the library of the Rolls Chapel. Do you see the sweeping stroke through the tail of the ‘p,’ with its added stroke to be read as ‘per’? Do you see the imperfect ‘k,’ and the ‘e’ with the reversed loop? It is the genuine article.”

  TAKE HIM ALL in all,” he had once told his son as they sat together after breakfast. “He is our true parent. Chaucer is the father of our poetry, but Shakespeare is the father of our stage. No one truly fell in love before Romeo and Juliet. No one understood jealousy before Othello. Hamlet, too, is a great original.” He got up from his chair and strode over to the chimney-piece in the dining-room, where there was a small bust of Shakespeare carved out of mulberry wood. He had bought it in Stratford-upon-Avon, six months before. “Yet the people of his uncultivated time never understood his genius. The plays were not fully published until after his death, and the texts themselves are so corrupted that many passages make no sense whatever. Some plays have simply disappeared.”

  “Disappeared? Where?”

  “Into the vast backward and abysm of time, as the bard would say. Cardenio. Vortigern. Love’s Labour’s Won. All gone.”

  In the evenings, after supper, Samuel Ireland would sometimes read Shakespeare to his son. William could still recall the sensation of fog, or rain falling, just beyond the bay window of the shop-front. His father would sit with the oil lamp on the table behind him, casting the shadow of his head upon the open book as he intoned the words. “‘How often when men are at the point of death they have been merry! Their keepers call it lightning before death.’ How do you find that, Will? Magnificent!”