xt7qjq0stw34_5845 https://exploreuk.uky.edu/dips/xt7qjq0stw34/data/mets.xml https://exploreuk.uky.edu/dips/xt7qjq0stw34/data/1997ms474.dao.xml unknown archival material 1997ms474 English University of Kentucky The physical rights to the materials in this collection are held by the University of Kentucky Special Collections Research Center.  Contact the Special Collections Research Center for information regarding rights and use of this collection. W. Hugh Peal manuscript collection W. Hugh Peal, In Search of Charles Lamb text 43.94 Cubic Feet 86 boxes, 4 oversize boxes, 22 items Poor-Good Peal accession no. 11453. W. Hugh Peal, In Search of Charles Lamb 2017 https://exploreuk.uky.edu/dips/xt7qjq0stw34/data/1997ms474/Box_84/Folder_12/Multipage45187.pdf 1954, undated 1954 1954, undated 
  Scope and Contents
  
Includes typescript essay [by Peal?],  and a 1954 Phi Beta Kappa pamphlet from the University of Kentucky announcing Peal's presentation of his essay.
 section false xt7qjq0stw34_5845 xt7qjq0stw34 CHAPTER ROLL

Adams, W. Lloyd
Albro, C. Hal

Allen, William R.
Anderson, C. Arnold
Baugh, Lucy Gaines
Billington, Mary Elizabeth
Boone, Mrs. Anna Bruce
Boyd, Paul P.
Boyarsky, Louis
Brady, George K.
Buckner, G. Davis
Caldwell, Lee
Carpenter, Cecil
Carr, Wilbert L.
Carter, Lucian
Clark, Thomas D.
Coleman, Lee

Cone, Carl B.
Cooke, Arthur L.
Cutler, John L.
Dantzler, L. L.
Diachun, Stephen
Didlake, Mary L.
Donovan, Herman L.

Dugan, Mrs. Frances L. S.

Dunn, Keller

Eaton, W. Clement
Faust, George
Hargreaves, H. W.
Hatch, Maurice

Hahn, Thomas M.
Haynes, William
Hegeman, Daniel V.
Hochstrasser, Donald L.
Hopkins, James F.
Humphreys, Margaret Bell

1953- 1954

Humphries, James C.
Jennings, W. W.
Jones, T. T.
Kammerer, Gladys
Kaplan, Sidney

King, Margaret 1.
Kirwan, Albert D.
Kraehe, Enno
McCloy, Shelby T.
Mooney, Robert N.
Oppenheim, Mrs. Adele S.
Pattie, Frank
Plummer, L. N.
Randall, Frank
Rannells, Edward XV.
Rea, John

Riley, Herbert P.
Ripy, Sara

Roberts, George
Robinson, Mrs. Lolo
Robinson, Mary
Sanders, Irwin T.
Sears, Paul

Server, Alberta W.
Smith, Paul

Snow, Charles E.
Spivey, Herman E.
Stahr, Elvis J., Jr.
Thompson, Lawrence S.
Thompson, Raymond H.
Weaver, Ralph H.
Webb, William S.
White, M. M.
Whiteside, Frederick
Yost, F. L.

Young, Edward E.

Phi Beta Kappa

Alpha of Kentucky

University of Kentucky

Lexington

 

 

 

 

 

 OFFICERS

CARL B. CONE . . . . . . . . . . President
FRANCES L. S. DUGAN . . . . . . Vice President
MARGARET BELL HUMPHREYS . . . . . Secretary
MAURICE HATCH . . . . . . . . . . Treasurer

INITIATES
1953-1954

Fall S em ester

Diogenes Allen Sally Weltha Hill

Floyd McKee Cammack Mary Ordell Ray

Patricia A. Hervey Nancy Allen Turmnn
Mary Conrard Voorhes

Spring Semester

Lewis Brinkley Barnett Mary Lewis Patterson
Mildred Scott Bell W. Hugh Peal

Carol Sue Caton Thomas Warren Ramage
Catherine C. Comer Donald Clayton Rose
Thomas P. Lewis George Sanderson
Elaine Moore Hymen Olin Spivcy
Judith Fauquier Napps Mary Carlyle Winkler

HONOR GUESTS

Lois Clark Dale Paul Ray Eggum
Victoria Shaver George Richardson Park
Marguerite Karol Martersleck
Nancy Ann Roberts, Book Award

Twenty-Ninth Annual Dinner
May 4, 1954

Student Union, Blue Grass Room

6 o’clock

6W9
é’ll‘s

Invocation

Introduction of New Members

MARGARET BELL HUMPHEEYS

Response . . . . . . . DIOGENES ALLEN

Introduction of Honor Guests . CARL B. CONE

Twenty-Ninth Annual Phi Beta Kappa Address

“111 Search of Charles Lamb”

W. HUGH PEAL

 

 IN SEARCH OF CHARLES LAMB

The search for Charles Lamb began in my case, as
so many searches do, as the result of a gift. The gift was
a copy of "Tales from Shakespeare" by Charles and Mary Lamb,
and the giver was an aunt who believed that little boys should
be introduced to good literature at the earliest and most im-
pressionable ages. The gift was not one which could be classi-
fied as a collector's item. It was a small oblong volume bound
in green cloth with cheap iridescent decoration. The paper was
cheap and the printing would not have been approved by Didot or
Baskerville. It was, however, the best copy obtainable from
Sears & Roebuck, the only book vendor available to the lady,
and she knew that ten year old boys can quickly find the kernel
in a nut in spite of the forbidding shell.

Whether children of these days can be interested in

the Tales from Shakespeare seems to me doubtful. A good many
of the stories were somewhat threadbare and worn renaissance
material even in Shakespeare's time, and the plays are read-
able now only because of the extraordinary beauty of the poetry
and the subtleties of the characterization. When reduced to
prose, even the artful and urbane prose of the Lambs, and sim-
plified for reading by children, the narratives show signs of
age and the characters are wooden and artificial. In my
Western Kentucky village, however, we were short of books and
amusements and, above all, we had that naivete which springs
from a lack of standards of comparison. Having known no great

merchants and money—lenders, we accepted the transaction between

 

 Antonio and Shylock as authentic and rejoiced in the ending

as a triumph of Justice. The deep and tragic role of the

Jewish money-lender in an alien and hostile world, so im-
portant in Shakespeare's play, is omitted in the paraphrase
and we missed it entirely. Similarly we enjoyed "Timon of
Athens" as a straightforward tale, credible to us because we
were not weighed down by critical standards or modern psycho—
logical theories.

The first Lamb item I found for myself was the fable
known as ”A Dissertation on Roast Pig". It was in a tattered
copy of one of McGuffey's school readers which, having been
discarded by my eldest brother, became a part of my private
library. I had no means then of knowing that I had stumbled
on a remarkable literary performance, but I recognized, as
generations of schoolboys had done before me, that I had found
a delightful story. I also recognized the need for more, and
Sears & Roebuck again obliged, this time with the full "Essays
of Elia”. This was the real beginning of a search which has
continued with growing interest and pleasure for more than
forty years. For the greater part of this period my acquisi—
tions were necessarily limited to printed material: the second
series of the Elia essays, the poems, the plays, the miscel—
laneous essays, the critical edition of extracts from the
dramatists, the letters in the Talfourd, Ainger, Harper and
Lucas editions, the biographies by Ainger, Lucas, Procter,
Hazlitt, Blunden and others and the great mass of secondary
material on Lamb, much of it written by his friends and con-

temporaries. To these of course were added muchématerial by

 

 or about Lamb's friends and associates, Coleridge, Wordsworth,
Southey, Lloyd, Hazlitt, Talfourd, Moxon, Cunningham, Kemble,
Hickman, Scott, Haydon, Knowles and others. At long last,
however, I discovered that divine providence, having removed
the great collectors‘of the past, Campbell, Anderson, Folger,
Huntington, Daly, Morgan, Newton, Scribner, North, et a1, had
made available to me some original manuscripts and letters by
and to Lamb and by and to his friends. With your permission I
propose to talk about a few of these acquisitions.

Each of the items to be discussed has been chosen as
illustrative of an important incident or situation in Lamb's
life or work. Perhaps they will serve to make clear to any of

you who are not collectors the excitement and pleasure to be

derived from handling and investigating these little relics of

the past which we call autographs. Sometimes autograph letters
seem at first sight to be unpromising material, and of course
many of them are of no value. On the other hand, even a short
note often gives to the diligent researcher an insight into the
actions and motives of the writer or his friends that cannot be
gained through finished literary work. Sometimes the key is in
the handwriting, as in the last of the Lamb letters which I
shall discuss this evening. Sometimes it is in a reference to
a third person that fixes an important date or contemporary
attitude, as in the case of the first letter I shall discuss.
In any event the patient investigator is often rewarded by
being transported back into an actual situation where he can
see great events or amusing situations as they develop and

before they have become shopworn from repetition or distorted

 

 by reflection. The whole process is not unlike that of the
modern detective story where the reader knows the denouement
but has to piece together the action and motivation from small
clues as he goes along.

My first item is a letter written by Lamb to Samuel

Taylor Coleridge in August 1797, when Lamb was twenty—two years

of age and Coleridge was twenty—five. It deals with an erratic

incident in the troubled career of young Chares Lloyd, then
aged twenty-two, the protege of Coleridge and friend of Lamb°
In itself Lloyd's problem was of small importance, but it pro-
duced an exciting moment in a rapidly moving course of events
that was to culminate in a year in the most important new work
in English literature since ”Paradise Lost" and was to result
many years later in the emergence of a great new prose writer.
I hope that you will bear with me while I attempt to sketch
the background of the letter. It involves five young friends
who were writing poetry.

In August 1797 Samuel Taylor Coleridge was living
with-his wife and infant son, Hartley, at Nether Stowey in
Somerset. The young family had a very humble home and little
money, but Coleridge always thereafter called the period the
springtime of his troubled life. For the first and last time
he was really happy. After many false starts and impracticable
and foolish plans he was settled - or thought he was. His
publications were already rather impressive, especially the
first and second editions of his poems. Charles Lamb had con—
tributed to both editions and Charles Lloyd had several items

in the second edition. Coleridge had also taken a hand in

 

 Robert Southey's ambitious epic, "Joan of Arc". Southey was

then twenty-three and at the beginning_of a career that was to

make him the poet laureate of England at the age of 39. He and
Coleridge had married sisters. By August 1797, however, the
Coleridge—Lamb—Lloyd partnership and the Coleridge-Southey col-
laboration, with Lamb as critic, were weakening. Coleridge
had drawn William Wordsworth and his gifted sister, Dorothy,
into his circle.
Wordsworth, the son of a Cumberland attorney, was

twenty—seven when he Joined Coleridge, near Nether Stowey.
He had published verses as early as 1787, had graduated from
Cambridge in 1791, had traveled extensively in Europe and had
sired an illegitimate daughter in France during the Revolution.
In 1797 he was an object of suspicion to the police for his
radical opinions, England then being the victim of a case of the
Jitters much like ours in 1954. Wordsworth was a man of great
industry and ability and brought a fixed purpose and strong will
into the nebulous Coleridge dream world. In return he gained
from Coleridge, as he tells us himself, the concept of Joy. This
is neatly illustrated, I think, by four lines from one of the
minor poems written Jointly by them at the time, the children's
classic, ”We are Seven":

"She had a rustic, woddland air,

and she was wildly clad:

Her eyes were fair, and very fair:

Her beauty made me glad."

One of the satisfying rewards of being a collector

rather than a scholar is that one can make wild suggestions and

leave others to do the work. Perhaps some of the scholars here

 

 assembled would like to dig into the voluminous Keats liter-
ature to see whether the tributes to beauty in "Endymion" and
the "Ode to a Grecian Urn" were not in fact suggested by a
childhood memory of these lines. Keats was three years old
when "Lyrical Ballads" was published. "A thing of beauty is
a Joy forever" sounds to me very much like a neo—Elizabethan's
expansion of Wordsworth's restrained "Her beauty made me glad".
Robert Southey was living at Burton in Hampshire when
Lamb's August 1797 letter was written. Our generation has de—
cided with great unanimity that Southey's books make handsome
bookcase furniture when well bound and regularly dusted. In

1797, however, and for a long life thereafter he was regarded

as an important poet. He was also a fine and generous person

with an open heart and purse for everyone in trouble, qualities
sometimes obscured by middle class prejudices and an irascible
temper. He was particularly the friend of young lovers and had
had a leading part in getting Coleridge married. For his pains
he had to support the entire Coleridge family for many years,
but he probably didn't realize that in 1797. As will be seen
when I eventually read my letter, Lamb and Lloyd laid their
problems on his doorstep.

Charles Lloyd was a son of a wealthy and distinguished
family. Originally of Welsh origin the Lloyds were among the
earliest Quakers. Charles' grandfather, Sampson Lloyd, gave his
name to Lloyd's Bank, now one of the great financial institu—
tions of the world. He was a friend of Dr. Samuel Johnson and
is mentioned several times by Boswell. Charles' father, Charles

Lloyd of Bingley, was in his youth a friend of Benjamin Franklin,

 

 and attempted unsuccessfully to work out a compromise with

the American Colonies to avert the struggle that became the
Revolutionary War. He also became a distinguished banker and
published creditable translations of Homer and Horace. One of
his daughters, Priscilla, abandoned the Quaker Faith, married
Christopher Wordsworth, brother of the poet, and became the
mother of two bishops and grandmother of a third. William Words-
worth was devoted to his brother and to the two sons. Their
influence was paramount, I think, in converting him from the
radical of 1797 to the tory who was castigated by Browning as
"The Lost Leader”, but that is a story for another day.

Lamb was the Cinderella of the poetical quintet. His
father had been a valet to a barrister and headwaiter at the
Inner Temple. The fortunate event of his early life was his
nomination to a good boy's school known as Christ's Hospital
where he spent seven years and made many friends, including
Coleridge. He left the school in 1789, when he was fourteen
years