ern jack3 it was poured from. Our Monday's milk porritch, blue and tasteless,
and the pease soup of Saturday, coarse and choking, were enriched for him
with a slice of 'extraordinary bread and butter,' from the hot loaf of the Tem
ple. The Wednesday's mess of millet, somewhat less repugnant?(we had three
banyan to four meat days4 in the week)?was endeared to his palate with a
lump of double-refined,5 and a smack of ginger (to make it go down the more
glibly) or the fragrant cinnamon. In lieu of our half-pickled Sundays, or quite
fresh boiled beef on Thursdays (strong as caro equina6), with detestable mar
igolds floating in the pail to poison the broth?our scanty mutton scrags on
1. Christ's Hospital, London (founded in 1 552 by Charles Lamb. The Inner Temple is one of the four Edward VI), was run as a free boarding school for Inns of Court, the center of the English legal pro-
the sons of middle-class parents in straitened fession.
financial circumstances. Its students were known 3. A leather vessel coated on the outside with
as 'Bluecoat Boys,' from their uniform of a long pitch. 'Crug': bread (slang). 'Small beer': beer
blue gown and yellow stockings. Lamb had in 1813 low in alcoholic content. 'Piggins': small wooden
published a magazine article, 'Recollections of pails.
Christ's Hospital,' that the present essay under-4. 'Banyan . . . days': nautical term for days when
takes to supplement by presenting the less formal no meat is served; it derives from banian, a member
side of school life. The 'I' or narrator of the essay of a Hindu caste to whom meat is forbidden. 'Mil
is Elia?a device that allows Lamb to combine his let': a cereal.
own experiences (L.'s) with those of Coleridge, his 5. Sugar.
older contemporary at the school. 6. Horsemeat (Latin).
2. Randal Norris, who had befriended young
.
CHRIST'S HOSPITAL FIVE-AND-THIRTY YEARS AGO / 497
Friday?and rather more savory, but grudging, portions of the same flesh,
rotten-roasted7 or rare, on the Tuesdays (the only dish which excited our appe
tites, and disappointed our stomachs, in almost equal proportion)?he had his
hot plate of roast veal, or the more tempting griskin8 (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 min
istered to the Tishbite);9 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 yearn
ings 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!1 To this late hour of my life, I trace impressions left by the recollections of
