Charles Lamb in 1798. Portrait in chalk and ink by Robert Hancock. National Portrait Gallery, 449.

The history of Joseph from the Old Testament has often been retold for children, while the tragic story of Saul, the first king of Israel, and David seems to have been avoided.  The tragic chronicle has everything—war, sex, violence, betrayal, and black magic. In the story’s most terrifying episode, Saul panics when his prayers go unanswered about the outcome of the looming battle with the Philistines.  In contravention of his own law against consultations with practitioners of the dark arts, Saul goes in disguise to the woman of Endor and demands that she raise the prophet Samuel from the dead.  She does his bidding and the angry specter’s prediction that Saul will lose the battle and his life the next day comes to pass.

Between the ages of four and eight, the young Charles Lamb became “extremely inquisitive about witches and witch-stories” after he went into his father’s “book-closet” and wrestled the two folio volumes of Thomas Stackhouse’s New History of the Bible down from the upper shelf. The physical exertion was repaid by the pleasure of studying the splendid engravings, except for the one which provided the container of his night terrors, which he regretted having ever seen. The plate of the witch of Endor was a trigger: the actual source of the terrors were “archetypes” deep within the mind which “afford some probable insight into our ante-mundane condition, and a peep at least into the shadow-land of pre-existence.”  Samuel was depicted in Stackhouse as a terrible old man wrapped in a mantle, and every night this spectre sent a hag that perched on Charles’ pillow.  He was so frightened that he avoided going into his room even in broad daylight.

Lamb’s memories offer evidence that children did indeed examine large books like Stackhouse which were not specifically intended for children, but neither excluded them because of the wealth of illustrations on subjects they would have learned about elsewhere.  But they are also the earliest of which I am aware which describe accurately and vividly a book illustration that made an indelible impression on a child reader accompanied by a penetrating analysis of its meaning.   Lamb mentions other pictures remembered from childhood in the Elia essays and those references could be pulled together in the study of the evolving consciousness of book illustrations in autobiographical writings.

Plate of the Witch of Endor raising the prophet Samuel from Thomas Stackhouse’s New History of the Bible (1733)

It occurred to me that it was possible that Charles might have looked at a copy of Stackhouse in the extensive library of his father’s employer Samuel Salt.  The Lamb family lived one floor below Salt in the Inner Temple for some years and both Mary and Charles were given permission to read books there.   Could Elia have refashioned Charles’ memories for some purpose?  He did caution his readers at the end of “The Old Benchers:”  ”Let no one receive the narratives of Elia for true records!  They are, in truth, but shadows of facts—verisimilitudes, not verities.”  Salt did own a set of the two huge tomes:  a copy of the 1755 edition was sold at the 1793 Leigh & Sotheby sale of his library.

This edition, the last issued during Stackhouse’s lifetime, had 104 plates, significantly more than the first two editions.  However, Charles could only have  looked at a copy of the original edition of 1733 or the second of 1742-44: the 1755 edition replaced the plate of the Witch of Endor with another of Saul falling on his sword after his defeat on the fild of battle.  I can think of all kinds of fanciful solutions to this little mystery….  Salt had owned a copy of the 1733 edition, which he loaned to Lamb.  When Charles poked his fingers through the plate of Noah’s ark, he was forbidden to look at the book he had spoiled.  Eventually Salt replaced it with the 1755 edition. Or the auctioneers miscataloged Salt’s copy.  That does nothing to address the very interesting question, could Charles’ father John found the 3 guineas to purchase the large and expensive book  Had he been a subscriber and paid over time six pence per number?  For now, Charles’ assertion that he had access to his father’s copy must stand.  Stranger things have happened than the miraculous discovery of the John Lamb Stackhouse in some private or institutional collection.

Stackhouse’s New History in two folio volumes.