The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 | Page 9

or the fragrant cinnamon.
In lieu of our _half-pickled_ Sundays, or quite fresh boiled beef on
Thursdays (strong as _caro equina_), with detestable marigolds floating
in the pail to poison the broth--our scanty mutton crags on Fridays--and
rather more savoury, but grudging, portions of the same flesh,
rotten-roasted or rare, on the Tuesdays (the only dish which excited our
appetites, and disappointed our stomachs, in almost equal
proportion)--he had his hot plate of roast veal, or the more tempting
griskin (exotics unknown to our palates), cooked in the paternal kitchen
(a great thing), and brought him daily by his maid or aunt! I remember
the good old relative (in whom love forbade pride) squatting down
upon some odd stone in a by-nook of the cloisters, disclosing the
viands (of higher regale than those cates which the ravens ministered to
the Tishbite); and the contending passions of L. at the unfolding. There
was love for the bringer; shame for the thing brought, and the manner
of its bringing; sympathy for those who were too many to share in it;
and, at top of all, hunger (eldest, strongest of the passions!)
predominant, breaking down the stony fences of shame, and
awkwardness, and a troubling over-consciousness.
I was a poor friendless boy. My parents, and those who should care for
me, were far away. Those few acquaintances of theirs, which they
could reckon upon being kind to me in the great city, after a little
forced notice, which they had the grace to take of me on my first arrival
in town, soon grew tired of my holiday visits. They seemed to them to

recur too often, though I thought them few enough; and, one after
another, they all failed me, and I felt myself alone among six hundred
playmates.
O the cruelty of separating a poor lad from his early homestead! The
yearnings which I used to have towards it in those unfledged years!
How, in my dreams, would my native town (far in the west) come back,
with its church, and trees, and faces! How I would wake weeping, and
in the anguish of my heart exclaim upon sweet Calne in Wiltshire!
To this late hour of my life, I trace impressions left by the recollection
of those friendless holidays. The long warm days of summer never
return but they bring with them a gloom from the haunting memory of
those _whole-day-leaves_, when, by some strange arrangement, we
were turned out, for the live-long day, upon our own hands, whether we
had friends to go to, or none. I remember those bathing-excursions to
the New-River, which L. recalls with such relish, better, I think, than he
can--for he was a home-seeking lad, and did not much care for such
water-pastimes:--How merrily we would sally forth into the fields; and
strip under the first warmth of the sun; and wanton like young dace in
the streams; getting us appetites for noon, which those of us that were
pennyless (our scanty morning crust long since exhausted) had not the
means of allaying--while the cattle, and the birds, and the fishes, were
at feed about us, and we had nothing to satisfy our cravings--the very
beauty of the day, and the exercise of the pastime, and the sense of
liberty, setting a keener edge upon them!--How faint and languid,
finally, we would return, towards nightfall, to our desired morsel,
half-rejoicing, half-reluctant, that the hours of our uneasy liberty had
expired!
It was worse in the days of winter, to go prowling about the streets
objectless--shivering at cold windows of printshops, to extract a little
amusement; or haply, as a last resort, in the hope of a little novelty, to
pay a fifty-times repeated visit (where our individual faces should be as
well known to the warden as those of his own charges) to the Lions in
the Tower--to whose levée, by courtesy immemorial, we had a
prescriptive title to admission.
L.'s governor (so we called the patron who presented us to the
foundation) lived in a manner under his paternal roof. Any complaint
which he had to make was sure of being attended to. This was

understood at Christ's, and was an effectual screen to him against the
severity of masters, or worse tyranny of the monitors. The oppressions
of these young brutes are heart-sickening to call to recollection. I have
been called out of my bed, and waked for the purpose, in the coldest
winter nights--and this not once, but night after night--in my shirt, to
receive the discipline of a leathern thong, with eleven other sufferers,
because it pleased my callow overseer, when there has been any talking
heard after we were gone to bed, to make the six last beds in the
dormitory, where the youngest children of us slept, answerable for an