in Hertfordshire, near
Harlow, only a few miles distant from Blakesware. Mrs. Field died
of cancer in the breast in August, 1792, and was buried in Widford
churchyard, hard by Blakesware.

According to Lamb's Key the name Alice W----n was "feigned." If by
Alice W----n Lamb, as has been suggested, means Ann Simmons, of
Blenheims, near Blakesware, he was romancing when he said that he had
courted her for seven long years, although the same statement is made
in the essay on "New Year's Eve." We know that in 1796 he abandoned
all ideas of marriage. Writing to Coleridge in November of that year,
in reference to his love sonnets, he says: "It is a passion of which I
retain nothing.... Thank God, the folly has left me for ever. Not even
a review of my love verses renews one wayward wish in me." This was
1796. Therefore, as he was born in 1775, he must have begun the wooing
of Alice W----n when he was fourteen in order to complete the seven
long years of courtship. My own feeling, as I have stated in the notes
to the love sonnets in Vol. IV., is that Lamb was never a very serious
wooer, and that Alice W----n was more an abstraction around which now
and then to group tender imaginings of what might have been than any
tangible figure.

A proof that Ann Simmons and Alice W----n are one has been found
in the circumstance that Miss Simmons did marry a Mr. Bartrum, or
Bartram, mentioned by Lamb in this essay as being the father of
Alice's real children. Bartrum was a pawnbroker in Princes Street,
Coventry Street. Mr. W.C. Hazlitt says that Hazlitt had seen Lamb
wandering up and down before the shop trying to get a glimpse of his
old friend.

* * * * *

Page 118. DISTANT CORRESPONDENTS.

_London Magazine_, March, 1822.

The germ of this essay will be found in a letter to Barron Field, to
whom the essay is addressed, of August 31, 1817. Barron Field was a
son of Henry Field, apothecary to Christ's Hospital. His brother,
Francis John Field, through whom Lamb probably came to know Barron,
was a clerk in the India House.

Barron Field was associated with Lamb on Leigh Hunt's _Reflector_ in
1810-1812. He also was dramatic critic for _The Times_ for a while. In
1816 he was appointed judge of the Supreme Court of New South Wales,
where he remained until 1824. For other information see the note, in
Vol. I., to his _First-Fruits of Australian Poetry_, reviewed by Lamb.
In the same number of the _London