Lichfield

“ Anne pointed out.
"Of course it is. And that is why I am proud of Lichfield. And that is why you are to-day Jack's wife and always will be just Jack's wife—and why to-day I am Patricia's husband—and why Lichfield to-day is Lichfield. There is something braver in life than to be just reasonable, thank God! And so, we keep the faith, my dear, however obsolete we find fidelity to be. We keep to the old faith—we of Lichfield, who have given hostages to the past. ”

“ And wherein, pray, have I harmed Lichfield by imagining a dream city situated half way between Atlantis and Avalon and peopled with superhuman persons—and by having called this city Lichfield? The portrait did not only flatter Lichfield, it flattered human nature. So, naturally, it pleased everybody. Yes, that, I take it, is the true secret of romance—to induce the momentary delusion that humanity is a superhuman race, profuse in aspiration, and prodigal in the exercise of glorious virtues and stupendous vices. As a matter of fact, all human passions are depressingly chicken-hearted, I find. ”

“ Why can they not see, besides, that such a place as Lichfield is as necessary to a great empire, as a Sheffield? It bred a Johnson—and that was a better product for England than ever came out of a manufactory of cotton or hardware. Probably, just such a mind could have been reared only in just such a place. “You are an idle set of people,” said Boswell to his master, as they entered Lichfield together. “Sir,” replied the despot, “we are a city of philosophers: we work with our heads, and make the boobies of Birmingham work for us with their hands.” ”

“ For in the chivalrous Lichfield of 1805 adultery had its inescapable etiquette. Your exact relations with the woman were in the small town a matter of public knowledge familiar to everybody: but no person in Lichfield would ever formally grant that any such relations existed. Eyes might meet with perfect understanding: but from the well-bred lips of no Southern gentleman or gentlewoman would ever come more than a suave and placid “Evelyn and Gerald have always been such good friends.” ”

“ III.
10 LICHFIELD CATHEDRAL. The first authentic mention of Lichfield occurs in Bede’s Ecclesiastical History, where it is alluded to as the See of an Anglo-Saxon Bishop. The name is of Saxon origin, but its etymology has been much disputed. In the Saxon Chronicle the word is written Licetfeld; in Bede, Lyccetfelth and Licitfeld. Some etymologists derive its signification from leccian, to water (and it is well known to have abounded in numerous lakes and pools) ; others, from the verb licean or lician, to like, or to be agreeable, and therefore make it to signify Pleasant Field. ”

“ We did not enter Lichfield, nine miles from Walsall, without impressions of great respect for a city that gave birth to one of the first characters which this kingdom can boast. We regarded with reverence the house where Dr. Johnson had first drawn his breath, and the great willow-tree planted by the hand of a man who united every moral excellence with every intellectual endowment; the rarest gifts of the mind with the noblest virtues of the heart ”

“ During this time her husband, who was a chimney-sweeper, came back to England and settled at Lichfield, resumed his old trade, and did well in it. As soon as he was in good circumstances, he everywhere made inquiry for his wife, and at last found out where she was, and immediately fetched her from Ireland. There surely is something pleasing in this constancy of affection in a chimney-sweeper. She told us, with tears in her eyes, in what a style of grandeur he had conducted her into Lichfield; and how, in honour to her, he made a splendid feast on the occasion. ”

“ In our social ordering Felix Kennaston stayed worthy of consideration in Lichfield, both as a celebrity of sorts and as the owner of four bank-accounts; and colloquially, as likewise has been recorded, he was by ordinary dismissed from our 250patronizing discussion as having long been “queer,” and in all probability “a dope-fiend.” In Lichfield, as elsewhere, a man’s difference from his fellows cannot comfortably be conceded except by assuming the difference to be to his discredit. ”

“ People—I mean the people who count in Lichfield—are charitable enough to ignore almost any crime which is just a matter of common knowledge. In fact, they are mildly grateful. It gives them something to talk about. But when detraction is printed in the morning paper you can't overlook it without incurring the suspicion of being illiterate and virtueless. That's Lichfield. ”

“ But I was a Townsend, and Lichfield had been case-hardened to Townsendian vagaries since Colonial days; and, besides, I had written a book which had been talked about; and, as an afterthought, I was reputed not to be an absolute pauper, if only because my father had taken the precaution, customary with the Townsends, to marry a woman with enough money to gild the bonds of matrimony. For Lichfield, luckily, was not aware how near my pleasure-loving parents had come, between them, to spending the last cent of this once ample fortune. ”

“ Made him our pattern to live and to die.
There were several old houses in Lichfield of more than local interest, one of which, called the Priest's House, was the birthplace in 1617 of Elias Ashmole, Windsor Herald to King Charles II, and founder of the Ashmolean Museum at Oxford. When we got into the town, or city, we found that, although St. Chad was the patron saint of the cathedral, there was also a patron saint of Lichfield itself, for it was Johnson here, Johnson there, and Johnson everywhere, so we must needs go and see the house where the great Doctor was born in 1709. ”

“ I was making my way to Lichfield, thinking to escape from all these scenes of strife; but it is too late, I find, to go on."
"Ay, that it is," answered the bluff dame; and, at the same moment, the stranger whispered--
"A prouder tone, a prouder tone."
"Set me a seat by the fire, Harry Vane," said Iola, with a somewhat queenly manner; "and then call in the slave. He is wetter than we are."
The stranger hastened to obey; and the good woman of the house laid fresh wood upon the fire, aided to remove Iola's hood and cloak, and offered all attention. ”

“ The place to-day is one of the "points of interest" in Cedarwood. Tourists, passing through Lichfield, visit it as inevitably as they do the graves of the Presidents, the Southern generals and the many other famous people which the old cemetery contains; and the negro hackmen of Lichfield are already profuse in inaccurate information concerning its occupant. In a phrase, the post card which pictures "E 9436—Grave of John Charteris" is among the seven similar misinterpretations of localities most frequently demanded in Lichfieldian drugstores and news-stands. ”

“ Johnson's house at Lichfield was sold in 1785 for 235l. It was bought in 1887 for 800l. by Mr. G. H. Johnson of Southport (no relation) , who preserves it without alteration. A statue by T. C. Lucas was erected at Lichfield in 1838, and a monument at Uttoxeter (commemorative of his penance there) in 1878 (Notes and Queries, 7th ser. iv. 402) .
Johnson received the degree of LL.D. from Dublin in 1765, and from Oxford in 1775; but scarcely ever himself used the familiar title of ‘Dr. Johnson’ (Boswell, ii. 332) . His library was sold after his death by James Christie the elder [q. v.] ”

“ Roger Stapylton refurnished the house in the extreme degree of Lichfieldian elegance. Colonel Musgrave was his mentor throughout the process; and the oldest families of Lichfield very shortly sat at table with the former overseer, and not at all unwillingly, since his dinners were excellent and an infatuated Rudolph Musgrave—an axiom now in planning any list of guests,—was very shortly to marry the man's daughter. ”

“ And now what a different man we come upon, living just abreast of him in that rich English century and that beautiful English country! We go into Staffordshire and to the old town of Lichfield, to find the boy who afterward became the great lexicographer [20] and the great talker. The {89} house in which he was born is there upon a corner of the great broadened street, opposite St. Mary's Church. We get a pleasant glimpse of the house on a page of Our Old Home, by Hawthorne; and another glimpse of the colossal figure of Dr. Johnson, seated in his marble chair, upon that Lichfield market-place. ”

“ Prince Rupert was sent from Oxford, the headquarters of the Royalist party at the time, to retake Lichfield. Having taken Bromicham on the way, he arrived at Lichfield with a strong force, and history repeated itself. The town offered no opposition, and Rupert had to lay siege to the close, which now was better garrisoned. The Royalists erected batteries on the north side, and kept up a heavy fire; they also attempted to undermine the walls, and finally succeeded in blowing up one of the towers of the close, and a fierce encounter took place, in which many men were slaughtered on both sides. ”

“ With such infirmities of body and of mind this celebrated man was left, at two-and-twenty, to fight his way through the world. He remained during about five years in the Midland Counties. At Lichfield, his birthplace and his early home, he had inherited some friends and acquired others. ”

“ A letter from Miss Oldys to a friend in Lichfield, begun a day or two before, is the next source for this story. It is not devoid of [Pg 23] traces of the influence of that leader of female thought in her day, Miss Anna Seward, known to some as the Swan of Lichfield.
"My sweetest Emily will be rejoiced to hear that we are at length—my beloved uncle and myself—settled in the house that now calls us master—nay, master and mistress—as in past ages it has called so many others. Here we taste a mingling of modern elegance and hoary antiquity, such as has never ere now graced life for either of us. ”

“ Mr. Seward attained some literary fame, and was co-adjutor to an edition of the works of Beaumont and Fletcher. When Anna Seward was seven years old, the family p. 2removed to Lichfield, and when she was thirteen they moved into the Bishop’s Palace, “our pleasant home” as she called it, where she continued to live after her father’s death, and for the remainder of her days.
The derivation of the word “Lichfield” has excited a good deal of controversy. ”

“ After a few pacings Colonel Musgrave turned upon her. He spoke with a curious simplicity.
"There isn't any use in lying to you. You wouldn't believe. You would only go to some one else—some woman probably,—who would jump at the chance of telling you everything and a deal more. Yes, there are a great many 'they do say's' floating about. This was the only one that came near being—serious. The man was very clever.—Oh, he wasn't vulgarly lecherous. He was simply—Jack Charteris. He always irritated Lichfield, though, by not taking Lichfield very seriously. ”

“ Johnson, the lover of letters gives the second place, not to Miss Seward and her circle, but to David Garrick. Lichfield contains more than one memento of that great man. The actor’s art is a poor sort of thing as a rule. Johnson, in his tarter moments, expresses this attitude, as when he talked of Garrick as a man who exhibited himself for a shilling, when he called him ‘a futile fellow,’ and implied that it was very unworthy of Lord Campden to have made much of the actor and to have ignored so distinguished a writer as Goldsmith, when thrown into the company of both. ”

“ We all know how much time may be occupied in such searches; and at that period Lichfield was full of monasteries and convents, at each of which Chartley applied. At only one of them did he gain any indication of the course of the fair fugitive. It was a small community of hospitable nuns, where the withered portress informed him that three ladies had slept there the night before, and she did think that one of them had come up to the gates with an odd-looking brown man.
"We do not lodge men," she said, "and so he went somewhere else ”

“ His boyhood was passed at Lichfield, where he became more remarkable for his mania for acting than for application to school studies. At the age of eleven years, chief of a boyish company of players, he acted Kite, in the "Recruiting Officer," in which one of his sisters represented the Chambermaid, and to which Master Samuel Johnson refused to supply an introductory address. From Lichfield he made a trip to Lisbon, and therewith an attempt to fix himself in a vocation. His failure was no source of regret to himself. ”

“ It bewildered Patricia, at first, to find that as concerned Lichfield at large any over-indulgence in alcohol by a member of the Musgrave family was satisfactorily accounted for by the matter-of-course statement that the Musgraves usually "drank,"—just as the Allardyces notoriously perpetuated the taint of insanity, and the Townsends were proverbially unable "to let women alone," and the Vartreys were deplorably prone to dabble in literature. These things had been for a long while just as they were to-day; and therefore (Lichfield estimated) they must be reasonable. ”

“ The see of Lichfield having fallen vacant in 1238, and a double election having been made by the canons of Lichfield, who chose William of Manchester, and the monks of Coventry, who chose Nicholas of Farnham [q. v.] , and both the elect having declined the see, the king ordered a new election, and Hugh was chosen unanimously about Christmas 1239. He took a moving farewell of the barons of the exchequer, telling them that he left the exchequer because God had called him to the cure of souls; they all wept, and he kissed each of them (Paris, Chronica Majora, iv. 2) . ”