KEEPING THE MEMORY OF CHARLES LAMB.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 18016, 29 November 1926, Page 14

KEEPING THE MEMORY OF CHARLES LAMB.

WHEN SWINBURNE ORGANISED A DINNER. It is frequently urged that we make too much fuss nowadays about the centenaries and other anniversaries of famous men, and there is certainly a great deal of platitudinous oratory at most of these festivals which we could well do without. Among the exceptional occasions when great men have been fitly honoured must be placed the Charles Lamb anniversary dinners held at Cambridge in each of the years 1909 to 1914. _ A memorial of these occasions when living men of letters, in whose company Elia would have delighted had he known them, forgathered to do him honour has been edited by Mr George Wherry—“ Cambridge and Charles Lamb.” Among the most diverting pages in this truly Elian volume are those in which Sir Edmund Gosse describes the first Charles Lamb dinner. . Writing to Swinburne at the beginning of 1875, Sir Edmund pointed out that the poet had allowed the centenary of Walter Savage Lander's birth to pass unnoticed. In reply Swinburne expressed vexation at having missed the occasion, but remarked that Lamb’s. centenary would occur within a fortnight, and he undertook to organise a dinner of celebration. “I think it was the only time in his whole life,” said Sir Edmund, “ that Swinburne ever ‘organised* anything; he was not gifted in a practical direction. . . . He would not allow me to help him at all. ‘Leave it to me!’ he said in his grandest maimer. It was a rough entertainment, and the guests were few, but it did come off.” The company, who gathered in a very old-fashioned hotel in Soho to eat a coarse, succulent dinner in the midVictorian style, consisted of Swinburne, at the head of the table; William Minto, of Aberdeen; a “ rather trying journalist, Purnell”; Theodore Watts (later Watts-Dunton), and Sir Edmund. “ The extreme dignity of Swinburne,” Sir Edmund relates, “ was the feature of the dinner which remains chiefly in my memor}% He sank so low in his arm-chair, and sat so bolt upright in it, his white face, with its great aureole of red hair, beaming over the table like the rising sun. It was magnificent to see Swinburne, when Purnell, who was a reckless speaker, * went too far,’ bringing back the conversation into the j paths of decorum. He was a perfect | Mrs Grundy. He was so severe, so un- ! wontedly and phenomenally severe, • that Purnell sulked, and, taking out a ! churchwarden, left uS* at table and smoked in the chimney corner. “ Our shock was the bill—portentous ! Swinburne in ‘ organising ’ had made no arrangement as to price, and when we trooped out into the frosty midnight there were five long faces of impecunious men of letters.”