Although the “Bachelor’s Complaint of the Behaviour of Married People,” “Valentine’s Day,” and “On the Acting of Munden,” were all written before this essay, it is none the less the first of the essays of Elia.  I have remarked, in the notes to a small edition of Elia, that it is probably unique in literature for an author to find himself, as Lamb did, in his forty-fourth year, by recording impressions gathered in his seventeenth; but I think now that Lamb probably visited his brother at the South-Sea House from time to time in later years, and gathered other impressions then.  I am led to this conclusion partly by the fact that Thomas Tame was not appointed Deputy-Accountant until four or five years after Lamb had left.

We do not know exactly what Lamb’s duties were at the South-Sea House or how long he was there:  probably only for the twenty-three weeks—­from September, 1791—­mentioned in the receipt below, discovered by Mr. J.A.  Rutter in a little exhibition of documents illustrative of the South Sea Bubble in the Albert Museum at Exeter:—­

    Rec’d 8th feby 1792 of the Honble South Sea Company by the hands
    of their Secretary Twelve pounds 1s. 6d. for 23 weeks attendance
    in the Examiners Office.

    L12 1 6.  CHAS. LAMB.

This shows that Lamb’s salary was half a guinea weekly, paid half-yearly.  His brother John was already in the service of the Company, where he remained till his death, rising to Accountant.  It has been conjectured that it was through his influence that Charles was admitted, with the view of picking up book-keeping; but the real patron and introducer was Joseph Pake, one of the directors, whom we meet on page 92.  Whether Lamb had ideas of remaining, or whether he merely filled a temporary gap in the Examiners’ Office, we cannot tell.  He passed to the East India House in the spring of 1792.

The South Sea Company was incorporated in 1710.  The year of the Bubble was 1720.  The South-Sea House, remodelled, is now a congeries of offices.

Page 2, line 11. Forty years ago.  To be accurate, twenty-eight to thirty.

Page 3, line 1. Accounts ... puzzle me.  Here Elia begins his “matter-of-lie” career.  Lamb was at this time in the Accountants’ Office of the India House, living among figures all day.

Page 3, line 7 from foot. Evans.  William Evans.  The Directories of those days printed lists of the chief officials in some of the public offices, and it is possible to trace the careers of the clerks whom Lamb names.  All are genuine.  Evans, whose name is given one year as Evan Evans, was appointed cashier (or deputy-cashier) in 1792.

Page 4, line 4. Ready to imagine himself one.  Lamb was fond of this conceit.  See his little essay “The Last Peach” (Vol.  I.), and the mischievous letter to Bernard Barton, after Fauntleroy’s trial, warning him against peculation.

Page 4, line 7. Anderton’s.  Either the coffee-shop in Fleet Street, now Anderton’s Hotel, or a city offshoot of it.  The portrait, if it ever was in existence, is no longer known there.