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Mrs. Field died in 1792, when Lamb was seventeen. William Plumer died in 1822, aged eighty-six, having apparently arranged with his widow, who continued at Gilston, that Blakesware should be pulled down a work of demolition which at once was begun. This lady, née Jane Hamilton, afterwards married a Mr. Nothing now remains but a few mounds, beneath which are bricks and rubble.
The theory that Lamb's grandmother, Mrs. Field, was the original Mrs. Battle, does not, I think, commend itself, although that lady may have lent a trait or two. It has possibly arisen from the relation of the passage in the essay on Blakesware, where Mrs. Battle is said to have died in the haunted room, to that in "Dream-Children," where Lamb says that Mrs. Field occupied this room.
Standing there now, among the trees which mark its site, it is easy to reconstruct the past as described in the essay. The Twelve Cæsars, the tapestry and other more notable possessions of Blakesware, although moved to Gilston on the demolition of Blakesware, are there no longer, and their present destination is a mystery.
This ballad, written in gentle ridicule of Lamb's affection for the Blakesware portrait, and Mary Lamb's first known poem, was printed in the John Woodvil volume, 1802, and in the Works, 1818. London Magazine, May, 1823. A pound of sweet. After these words, in the London Magazine, came one more descriptive clause "the bore par excellence."
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