Representing the Poor: Charles Lamb and the Vagabondiana

JAMES HARRIMAN-SMITH Representing the Poor: Charles Lamb and the Vagabondiana R ecent criticism has often paired Charles lamb’s “a complaint of _ the Decay of Beggars in the Metropolis,” published in the character ofElia in the May 1822 issue of the London Magazine, with John Smith and Francis Douce’s Vagabondiana. Yet while Simon P. Hull and Gregory Dart only briefly evoke how Lamb’s essay “seems to owe something” to the ear­ lier work, a comparison between the two publications merits a more sus­ tained attention than hitherto available.1 Under close analysis, the sophisti­ cation of both works’ engagement with the pressing contemporary problem ofhow to represent—both politically and aesthetically—the urban poor, and beggars in particular, soon becomes apparent. While Vagabond­ iana mobilizes parliamentary rhetoric, the techniques of both antiquarian and catalogue literature, and the picturesque mode in an effort to reassure its readers, Lamb takes the same approaches and pushes them to their ex­ treme, revealing both their limits and, most disturbingly of all, those of his readership as well. Vagabondiana; or Anecdotes ofMendicant Wanderers through the Streets ofLon­ don; with Portraits of the most Remarkable, Drawnfrom the Life byJohn Thomas Smith, Keeper ofthe Prints in the British Museum was published in 1817. Its ti­ tle begins the work’s careful engagement with its subject matter. The offer of “Anecdotes ofMendicant Wanderers . . . with Portraits of the most Re­ markable” announces deliberate control over selected material, even as it scrupulously refrains from using the term “beggar.” The choice of “wan­ derer” over a word that makes a profession out of importunity, not to mention the emphasis on the book containing only selected material, helps Smith and his collaborator, the antiquarian Francis Douce, give a particu­ larly charming turn to a normally grim aspect of contemporary life in the capital. In 1817, two years after the end of the Napoleonic Wars and right in the center of a post-war economic depression, government expenditure I. Dart, Metropolitan Art and Literature, 1810—1840: Cockney Adventures (Cambridge: Cam­ bridge University Press, 2012), 157; Hull, Charles Lamb, Elia and the London Magazine: Metro­ politan Muse (London: Pickering and Chatto, 2010), 139. SiR, 54 (Winter 2015) 551 552 JAMES HARRIMAN-SMITH on poor reliefwas close to eight million pounds,2 while the streets ofLon­ don were filled with the destitute,3 with as much as twenty percent of all the outdoor poor in England to be found in the capital.4 The Vagabondiana responds to this context, and the attendant interest in the urban poor, yet this luxuriously presented book, as is clear from its full title, also aims to in­ sulate its readership from the harsher realities ofthe situation. It seems to be a forerunner of a phenomenon Celina Fox finds in late nineteenth-century fiction, in which “it was as if scenes of social distress could not be tackled without allowing the audience to feel a glow ofreassuring emotions: ofpa­ thos, sympathy or charity, which left them feeling munificent rather than guilty.”5 The text of the Vagabondiana concludes with a homily on charity, and its reassuring “glow” is all the stronger for the conceit with which the work opens, one that might seem surprising in the economic downturn of the early nineteenth century: an announcement ofthe imminent disappear­ ance of its mendicant subject matter: Concluding, therefore, from the reaction of the metropolitan beggars, that several curious characters would disappear by being either com­ pelled to industry, or to partake in the liberal parochial rates, provided for them in their respective work-houses, it occurred to the author of the present publication, that likenesses of the most remarkable of them, with a few particulars of their habits, would not be unamusing to those to whom they have been pests for several years.6 Amidst the reassuring talk of “liberal parochial rates” available in the workhouses , the crucial phrase here is the double negative, “not be unamusing,” which recognizes the potential for displeasure even as it negates it. This phrase also defines the reasoning behind the title’s insistence on only “the most Remarkable” subjects being included in the work. The imminent vanishing of the “metropolitan beggars,” repeated...