Lamb, Charles

Autograph manuscript poem ("On Emma's honest brow we read display'd / The constant virtues of the Nut Brown Maid..."), signed "C. Lamb", six lines in heroic couplets, one page, on a card with embossed decorative floral border (6 x 4½ in.; 152 x 114 mm); some very light spotting. [with:] an engraved portrait of Lamb by Joseph Brown after Henry Meyer. Blue morocco-backed folder.

Miss G. M. Haine (sale, Sotheby's London, 22 June 1976, lot 142). acquisition: James Cummins, 2002

Index of English Literary Manuscripts: Volume IV 1800-1900, Part 2, ed. Rosenbaum (1990), LmC 134

Written for three of the Novello sisters, Emma, Clara (see lot 990) and Cecilia, each of whom is described in gracious terms. Lamb apparently sent this manuscript of his short poem to Cecilia, the eldest of the three sisters here mentioned.

Vincent and Mary Novello had seven daughters in all, alongside four sons, causing Lamb to describe Mrs Novello in a letter of January 1825 as "the Bearer of many Children." Clara's particular talent as an operatic vocalist, which earned her wide recognition, is the subject of Lamb's couplet on her virtues: "Mellifluous sounds on Clara's tongue we hear, / Notes that once lured a seraph from his sphere..." Lamb, who for most of his life was engaged in the care of his mentally unstable sister, never married and remained childless.