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Updated: May 5, 2025
His lameness was caused by the fall of a stone in 1796, but I doubt if the leg were really amputated. The description in this essay of Blakesware, the seat of the Plumers, is supplemented by the essay entitled "Blakesmoor in H shire."
Plumer's death in 1778, but the eldest son, William Plumer, moved at once to Gilston, a few miles east of Blakesware, a mansion which for a long time was confused with Blakesware by commentators on Lamb. Field and the servants under her. Mrs. Field became thus practically mistress of it, as Lamb says in "Dream-Children." Hence the increased happiness of her grandchildren when they visited her.
You will know that one of the influences of his childhood was his grandmother Field, housekeeper of Blakesware House, in Hertfordshire, at which mansion he sometimes spent his holidays. You will know that he was a bachelor, living with his sister Mary, who was subject to homicidal mania. And you will see in this essay, primarily, a supreme expression of the increasing loneliness of his life.
Here we have a description of Blakesware, the home of the Plumers, which for many years was uninhabited by the family, and left from 1778 to 1792 in the sole charge of Mrs. Field, Charles and Mary's maternal grandmother. Charles, since he was born in 1775, would on his visits have known no power superior to his grandmother; but Mary, who was born in 1764, would have occasionally encountered Mrs.
By Blakesmoor Lamb meant Blakesware, the manor-house near Widford, in Hertfordshire, where his grandmother, Mary Field, had been housekeeper for many years. Compare the essay "Dream-Children." Blakesware, which was built by Sir Francis Leventhorpe about 1640, became the property of the Plumers in 1683, being then purchased by John Plumer, of New Windsor, who died in 1718.
Much of the description of the farm and country is probably from memory of the old days at Mackery End, where we know Mary Lamb to have gone with her little brother Charles some time about 1780, and perhaps herself earlier. It is, however, possible that Blakesware is meant, since Mary Lamb speaks of the grandmother: Mrs. Bruton of Mackery End was her great aunt. III. Ann Withers. "The Changeling."
Afterwards Coleridge altered "skirts" to "train." Seven.... years. See note to "Dream-Children." Alice W n is identified with Ann Simmons, who lived near Blakesware when Lamb was a youth, and of whom he wrote his love sonnets. According to the Key the name is "feigned." Old Dorrell. See the poem "Going or Gone," Vol. IV. There seems really to have been such an enemy of the Lamb fortunes.
William Plumer's newer and more fashionable mansion was at Gilston, which is not in the adjoining county, but also in Hertfordshire, near Harlow, only a few miles distant from Blakesware. Mrs. Field died of cancer in the breast in August, 1792, and was buried in Widford churchyard, hard by Blakesware. According to Lamb's Key the name Alice W n was "feigned."
There was a haunted room at Blakesware, but the suggestion that the famous Mrs. Battle died in it was probably due to a sudden whimsical impulse. Lamb states in "Dream-Children" that Mrs. Field occupied this room. The hills of Lincoln. See Lamb's sonnet "On the Family Name," Vol. IV. Lamb's father came from Lincoln. Those old W s. Lamb thus disguised the name of Plumer.
If by Alice W n Lamb, as has been suggested, means Ann Simmons, of Blenheims, near Blakesware, he was romancing when he said that he had courted her for seven long years, although the same statement is made in the essay on "New Year's Eve." We know that in 1796 he abandoned all ideas of marriage.
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