as Lamb says in “Dream-Children.”  Hence the increased happiness of her grandchildren when they visited her.  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, nee Jane Hamilton, afterwards married a Mr. Lewin, and then, in 1828, Robert Ward (1765-1846), author of Tremaine and other novels, who took the name of Plumer-Ward, and may be read of, together with curious details of Gilston House, in P.G.  Patmore’s My Friends and Acquaintances.

Nothing now remains but a few mounds, beneath which are bricks and rubble.  The present house is a quarter of a mile behind the old one, high on the hill.  In Lamb’s day this hillside was known as the Wilderness, and where now is turf were formal walks with clipped yew hedges and here and there a statue.  The stream of which he speaks is the Ashe, running close by the walls of the old house.  Standing there now, among the trees which mark its site, it is easy to reconstruct the past as described in the essay.

The Twelve Caesars, 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.  Gilston was pulled down in 1853, following upon a sale by auction, when all its treasures were dispersed.  Some, I have discovered, were bought by the enterprising tenant of the old Rye House Inn at Broxbourne, but absolute identification of anything now seems impossible.

Blakesware is again described in Mrs. Leicester’s School, in Mary Lamb’s story of “The Young Mahometan.”  There the Twelve Caesars are spoken of as hanging on the wall, as if they were medallions; but Mr. E.S.  Bowlby tells me that he perfectly remembers the Twelve Caesars at Gilston, about 1850, as busts, just as Lamb says.  In “Rosamund Gray” (see Vol.  I.) Lamb describes the Blakesware wilderness.  See also notes to “The Last Peach,” Vol.  I., to “Dream-Children” in this volume, and to “Going or Gone,” Vol.  IV.

Lamb has other references to Blakesware and the irrevocability of his happiness there as a child, in his letters.  Writing to Southey on October 31, 1799, he says:—­“Dear Southey,—­I have but just got your letter, being returned from Herts, where I have passed a few red-letter days with much pleasure.  I would describe the county to you, as you have done by Devonshire; but alas!  I am a poor pen at that same.  I could tell you of an old house with a tapestry bedroom, the ‘Judgment of Solomon’ composing one pannel, and ’Actaeon spying Diana naked’ the other.  I could tell of an old marble hall, with Hogarth’s prints, and the Roman Caesars in marble hung round.  I could tell of a wilderness, and of a village church, and where the bones of my honoured grandam lie; but there are feelings which refuse to be translated, sulky aborigines, which will not be naturalised in another soil.  Of this nature are old family faces, and scenes of infancy.”