One of the purposes of my field study has been to not only study the words of London essayists but to see how they interacted with the city, and to see how the city remembers and memorializes them. I've more than enjoyed reading their essays (I've finished with two of Lamb's essay collections and am in the middle of Hazlitt's), and have tried to explore the city through an essayist's eye. I want to spend time looking for memorials to these authors, because I think it's interesting to see how London remembers these writers. I had read of a few sites in London associated with Lamb and Hazlitt, and I've gone to see a couple of them (there are some outside of London a bit, so I'll need to travel probably an hour or so one day to see them). Anyway, the picture below is a fountain dedicated to Charles Lamb, and is situated in the Inner Temple Gardens right off of Crown Row Lane, which is where Lamb was born. The fountain, flanked by the statue of a small boy, is––as you can see––very understated less than grandiose. There is no plaque dedicating the fountain to Lamb, but the boy is carrying a book with the quote, "Lawyers I suppose were children once," inscribed on it (one of Lamb's more well-known quotes). In the park there were a lot of people in business suits eating lunch and chatting, but they trickled out as the lunch hour came to a close. There were people sitting on benches around the fountain, but no one paid heed to the fountain or statue itself; I wondered, how many of these people know that this fountain is actually dedicated to Lamb? how many of these people know who Charles Lamb is? There are many more popular writers, like Charles Dickens, whose names are widely recognized and remembered with larger statues and museums and graves in Westminster. Lamb might not have achieved the fame and success during his lifetime as many of these great writers, but still it seemed sad to me that he is less remembered and memorialized.
But fame doesn't always mean genius, and while we celebrate writers like Wordsworth and Shelley–and rightly so–we miss out on so many writers that might not have been as published or recognized in their time, thus not standing the test of time. Still, we judge great literary works by how they stand the test of time, but how much we might miss! How many beautiful sentences sat on a desk, unpublished, in their time and were thrown away after the unknown writer died? We put so much trust in publishers to filter and sift through literature, but how much certainly must slip through the cracks, to stay sitting in the slush pile while other essays or poems or novels are published.
It's kind of a dizzying thought.
Maybe my point is that it doesn't really matter that Charles Lamb or William Hazlitt don't have grand statues or graves in Westminister because it doesn't really change how much I enjoye and learn from their writing. One thing my project is teaching me is that public memorials matter less than the writing itself, that the words of the essayists I'm studying are more important than how they are remembered (or forgotten) by others.
 |
| This is Lamb's memorial in the Inner Temple Gardens |
 |
| And this is the church, St. Andrews, where Hazlitt was married with Lamb acting as best man. St Andrews was a Christopher Wren church, but was unfortunately bombed and gutted in WWII, and all that remained were the outer walls and tower. The public, however, decided to restore it to its original state. It's in the middle of busy London, sandwiched in between new buildings and thousands of businessmen and women rushing to and from work. The inside was, despite its central location, quiet and nearly empty. |
No comments:
Post a Comment