Interpreting Charles Lamb's 'Neat-bound books'

Studia Anglica Posnaniensia 54 (2019): 157–177 doi: 10.2478/stap-2019-0008 INTERPRETING CHARLES LAMB’S ‘NEAT-BOUND BOOKS’ LAURA WRIGHT 1 AND CHRISTOPHER LANGMUIR 2 ABSTRACT In this paper we consider a much-quoted phrase published by the essayist Charles Lamb (1775– 1834) in the London Magazine in 1822 about a desirable quality in books: that they should be ‘strong-backed and neat-bound’. We identify meanings of modifier neat as evidenced by different communities of practice in early nineteenth-century newspapers, and in particular we present meanings of neat as used in certain Quaker writings known to have been read with approval by Lamb. By this method we assemble a series of nuanced meanings that the phrase neat-bound would have conveyed to contemporary readers – specifically, the readership of the London Magazine. Keywords: Collocates; communities of practice; social networks; leather-workers; accountants; Quakers. 1. Introduction In his 1822 London Magazine essay “Detached Thoughts on Books and Reading”, the London East India Company clerk, poet, novelist, playwright, critic, author of literature for children, essayist, and book-collector Charles Lamb (1775–1834) advanced the credo that “to be strong-backed and neat-bound is the desideratum of a volume”. In this article, we consider what ‘strong-backed and neat-bound’ might have meant to Lamb, because the phrase was taken up and repeated after his lifetime, to the extent that it figures in the Pan Dictionary of Famous Quotations (Hyman 1993 [1962]). Unusually, Lamb traversed the social classes in that he was born the son of a servant and his wife but received an education at Christ’s Hospital through the intervention of his father’s employer. At Christ’s Hospital he was a contemporary 1 University of Cambridge, 9 West Rd, Cambridge CB3 9DP, UK, [email protected] 2 University of Seville Universidad de Sevilla, Departamento de Filología Inglesa (Lengua Inglesa) C/ Palos de la Frontera s/n Sevilla 41004 Spain, [email protected]s L. Wright and Ch. Langmuir 158 of the poet Coleridge (a life-long friend), through whom he also became close friends with the poet Wordsworth. Lamb was a particularly sociable individual, pronounced by the essayist De Quincey to be “positively the most hospitable man I have known in this world”, and he also had a decided sense of right and wrong, coming from a Quaker background and sympathising with dissenting Unitarians. 3 Neat had multiple meanings, and Lamb was particularly alert to what he called ‘bivalent words’. 4 Knowledge of these biographical details has directed us towards religious and moral interpretations as well as more literal bookbinding and bookselling ones, and also to detect an economico-political undertone that would have been apparent to a contemporary readership. We use the concept of communities of practice as defined by Jucker and Kopaczyk (2013: 6) (that is, a group of people, embedded in complex social relations, who “interact and share ways of doing things”) to track shifting senses of the phrase neat-bound within early nineteenth-century leather-working industries, and we also identify a social network of dissenters (of which Lamb was a part) in whose writings we discern multiple meanings of modifier neat. The word neat collocated with positive terms in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, although this started to shift in the twentieth, collocating with words such as respectable, fastidious, prim, prissy (Lamb’s word for this state was finical), lending it (in context) a potentially slightly pejorative force. 5 This development postdates Lamb’s usage of 1822; in his day the word had positive connotations. Our method has been to search databases of eighteenth and early nineteenth century writings, as well as Lamb’s own oeuvre, and then to seek out letters written by people known to Lamb. Our purpose is not to cover the whole semantic field governed by neat as that task has already been completed by the Oxford English Dictionary; rather, we are concerned to discover interlocking uses of strong and neat in order to understand what might have motivated Lamb to conjoin them in his dictum. Accordingly we consider collocations of strong and neat in contexts that Lamb could have seen, and in particular, we draw attention to an accountancy textbook that he would almost certainly have studied carefully. 3 Lamb’s father had been a Quaker and in 1797 he too had considered joining (Burness 1986: 148–149) (Quakers refer to themselves as The Society of Friends). Biographical details are taken from Lamb, Charles, (1775–1834), Peter Swaab https://doi.org/10.1093/ ref:odnb/15912, unless specified otherwise. 4 The bandying of puns was both “a characteristic mode of expression” and “a common and collaborative pursuit among the London Magazine’s contributors” (Lodge 2007: 146, 151). His own surname is a case in point. Lambs are themselves ‘neat-bound’ (that is, they are bound neatly in an outer surface that can be turned into leather for book-binding), adding an extra dimension to the desideratum. 5 E.g., “She was a small, neat, rather prissy-looking girl with primly smooth brown hair and rimless glasses.” Raymond Chandler, The Little Sister (1949). Interpreting Charles Lamb’s ‘Neat-Bound Books’ 159 2. The London Magazine Lamb published his article on the binding of books in the London Magazine where he was briefly a staff writer. Magazines target specific readerships, and because the London Magazine’s habitual contributors were involved in a joint enterprise, and met to engage in shared practices – in particular, a repertoire of themes – they can be considered communities of practice. 6 The London Magazine ran from 1732–1785, and then again from 1820–1829, when it was revived in order to rival the elitist Tory Blackwood’s Magazine by having a middle-class (and as will be apparent below, a working-class) appeal. The London Magazine presented a miscellany of writings designed to convey the energy and diversity of metropolitan life, with contents ranging from literary pieces, essays and reviews, to travel writing, reports from foreign correspondents, as well as columns on agriculture and commerce, including reports on bankruptcies and the markets. The 1820–1829 issues published literature by Wordsworth, Keats, Clare, Hazlitt, Percy Bysshe and Mary Shelley, Carlyle, and de Quincey. In particular, the London Magazine championed “peasant poet” John Clare and “Cockney Keats” against the background of a vicious class-based culture war with its arch-rival Blackwood’s (de Montluzin 1998; see also Bauer 1953), in which Leigh Hunt, Hazlitt, and Keats were personally targeted. Who was the readership? According to Hull (2010: 14) the London Magazine was aimed at “an average figure: a reasonably well-read ... suburbanite with moderate political opinions and who enjoys, in moderation, the pleasures of the metropolis, a clerk, probably, with the usual aspirations but also the guilt of his class”. 3. Strong-backed and neat-bound We begin by presenting Lamb’s phrase ‘neat-bound’ in its fuller context, as there are interconnected metaphors, and readers of a specific social class are invoked. At this date, new books were usually bought unbound and with pages uncut, and the purchaser would take them to the binders and choose from an array of different bindings at different costs, half-bound being cheaper (leather at the spine or ‘back’ with board covers): I confess that it moves my spleen to see these things in books’ clothing perched upon shelves, like false saints, usurpers of true shrines, intruders into the sanctuary, thrusting out the legitimate occupants. To reach down a well-bound semblance of a volume, and hope it is some kind-hearted play-book, then, opening what “seem its leaves,” to come bolt upon a withering Population 6 See Wenger (1998) and Meyerhoff (2002) for a discussion of the criteria underlying communities of practice. On Lamb’s privileged position within the London Magazine circle, see Hull (2010: 2). L. Wright and Ch. Langmuir 160 Essay. To expect a Steele, or a Farquhar, and find – Adam Smith. To view a well-arranged assortment of blockheaded Encyclopaedias (Anglicanas or Metropolitanas) set out in an array of Russia, or Morocco, when a tythe of that good leather would comfortably re-clothe my shivering folios; would renovate Paracelsus himself, and enable old Raymund Lully – I have them both, reader – to look like himself again in the world. I never see these impostors, but I long to strip them, to warm my ragged veterans in their spoils. To be strong-backed and neat-bound is the desideratum of a volume. Magnificence comes after. This, when it can be afforded, is not to be lavished upon all kinds of books indiscriminately. I would not dress a set of Magazines, for instance, in full suit. The dishabille, or half-binding (with Russia backs ever) is our costume. A Shakespeare - you cannot make a pet book of an author whom everybody reads - or a Milton (unless the first editions), it were mere foppery to trick out in gay apparel. The possession of them confers no distinction. The exterior of them (the things themselves being so common), strange to say, raises no sweet emotions, no tickling sense of property in the owner. Thomson’s Seasons, again, looks best (I maintain it) a little torn, and dog’s-eared. How beautiful to a genuine lover of reading are the sullied leaves, and worn out appearance, nay, the very odour (beyond Russia), if we would not forget kind feelings in fastidiousness, of an old “Circulating Library” Tom Jones, or Vicar of Wakefield! How they speak of the thousand thumbs, that have turned over their pages with delight!–of the lone sempstress, whom they may have cheered (milliner, or harder-working mantua-maker) after her long day’s needle-toil, running far into midnight, when she has snatched an hour, ill spared from sleep, to steep her cares, as in some Lethean cup, in spelling out their enchanting contents! Who would have them a whit less soiled? What better condition could we desire to see them in? In some respects the better a book is, the less it demands from binding. Fielding, Smollet, Sterne, and all that class of perpetually self-reproductive volumes–Great Nature’s Stereotypes–we see them individually perish with less regret, because we know the copies of them to be “eterne.” But where a book is at once both good and rare–where the individual is almost the species, and when that perishes, We know not where is that Promethean torch That can its light relumine– such a book, for instance, as the Life of the Duke of Newcastle, by his Duchess–no casket is rich enough, no casing sufficiently durable, to honour and keep safe such a jewel. 7 (Charles Lamb. July 1822. London Magazine 6/31. 33–36) 7 Sir Richard Steele (a1672–1729), playwright and co-founder with Joseph Addison of The Tatler. George Farquhar (1677–1707), playwright. Thomas Robert Malthus, 1798, An Essay on the Principle of Population. Adam Smith (1723–1790), philosopher and economist. Encyclopaedia Anglicana, an allusion to the English Encyclopaedia, 1802, ed. George Kearsley. Encyclopaedia Metropolitana, 1817–1845, ed. Samuel Taylor Coleridge. Paracelsus (1493/4–1541), physician, alchemist and astrologer. Raymond Lully (Ramon Llull, c1232–c1315), philosopher and theologian. Interpreting Charles Lamb’s ‘Neat-Bound Books’ 161 Amongst other metaphor domains, we draw attention to religion (saints, shrine, sanctuary, tithe) and dress (clothing, array, strip, re-clothe, ragged, dress, suit, dishabille, costume, foppery, apparel), to the trope of right and wrong (false, true, usurpers, intruders, legitimate, semblance, impostors), and to the specification of one kind of reader: the seamstress. Lamb shows an intimate familiarity with the hours, days and nights of London milliners and mantua-makers who borrowed books from circulating libraries, and he knows the difference between them in terms of their working conditions. The model for the reader in question is likely to have been his sister, who spent eleven years of her life as a needle-worker. 8 Lamb himself spent thirty-three years working as an accounts clerk for the East India Company, scraping his money together to buy his books. A friend remarked that Lamb owned “the finest collection of shabby books I ever saw; such a number of first-rate works of genius, but filthy copies, which a delicate man would really hesitate touching” (cited in Lucas 1907 [1905]: 2, 121). To the reading public, “Elia” (Lamb’s pseudonym and dramatic persona) was a literary figure aligned with Coleridge, Wordsworth, Southey, Hazlitt, Keats, De Quincey and all the other literary authors with whom Lamb socialised. 9 But in private life, Lamb worked long hours at his day job (an “understrapper at a desk”), earnt little, and spent his leisure time caring for his sister Mary who suffered fragile mental health. 10 As well as a real-life reflection of how books were obtained and by whom they were read, there is a striking corporeality in Lamb’s evocation of the book. Lamb imagines a vindication of the vanquished after a battle of the books, a division of spoils that would allow him to re-clothe and warm his shivering and ragged veterans with a tenth of the expensive leather taken up by a row of encyclopaedias. The force of the passage is to invite a reading of ‘neat-bound’ as a desideratum that necessarily involves the ‘books’ clothing’, that is to say, the material rather than the manner of their binding. Such a reading is reinforced by the use of ‘dishabille’, James Thomson (1700–1748), poet, author of The Seasons, 1726–1730. Henry Fielding (1707–1754), author of novel The History of Tom Jones, A Foundling, 1749. Oliver Goldsmith (1728–1774), author of novel The Vicar of Wakefield, 1766. Tobias Smollett (1721–1771), novelist. Laurence Sterne (1713–1768), novelist. Margaret Cavendish, Duchess of Newcastle. 1675. The Life of the Thrice Noble, High and Puissant Prince, William Cavendishe, Duke, Marquess, and Earl of Newcastle, etc. London: A. Maxwell. 8 Mary Lamb. 1 April 1815. On needle-work. British Lady’s Magazine and Monthly Miscellany. 9 For an account of the literary coterie to which Lamb belonged and its influence on the history of English, see Pratt & Denison (2000). 10 Charles Lamb. 1811. The good clerk, a character; with some account of the complete English tradesman. The Reflector 2/4: 432–437. L. Wright and Ch. Langmuir 162 a state of half-dress, to describe half-binding with Russia leather, which had an odour that some found unpleasant (and was cheaper than Morocco). 3.1. Neat meaning ‘tidy’ The present-day meaning of neat is predominantly ‘tidy’ and that meaning is operative in Lamb’s phrase neat-bound, but further meanings are also implicit: About the middle of Shoemaker-row, near to Broadway, Blackfriars, there resided for many years a substantial hardware-man, named Ephraim Wagstaff. He was short in stature, tolerably well favoured in countenance, and singularly neat and clean in his attire. (Charles Lamb. 1827. Mr. Ephraim Wagstaff, his Wife, and Pipe. In Hone (ed). 1827: ii, col. 185) The earliest sense of neat, adj. from Anglo-Norman net ‘clean’, is ‘characterised by an elegance … agreeable … finely made … well-formed’ (OED neat, adj. (n.2 and int.) and adv. A. ‘Senses relating to elegance’ adj. (n.2 and int.) I. 1. a.), with the sense ‘clean and tidy’ attested from 1594 (A. adj. (n.2 and int.) I. 4. a.). This is the predominant meaning now, but neat meaning ‘skilful’ is attested slightly earlier: 3.2. Neat meaning ‘skilful’ Ketch, my good fellow, you have a neat hand. Prithee, adjust this new collar to my neck, gingerly. I am not used to these wooden cravats. There, softly, softly. That seems the exact point between ornament and strangulation. (Charles Lamb. 1825. Reflections in the pillory. London Magazine) OED neat, adj. (n.2 and int.) and adv. A. I. 3. a. ‘Exhibiting skill and precision in action or expression.’ Obs. First attestation 1571. 3.3. Neat meaning ‘unadorned, simple, plain’ Nor speak I of the hard-handed Artisan, who on this night receives the pittance which is to furnish the neat Sabbatical dinner (Charles Lamb. 1830. Saturday Night. The Gem, A Literary Annual.) OED neat, adj. (n.2 and int.) and adv. A. I. , also has senses of ‘freedom from unnecessary embellishments, simple’: “In early use the handsomeness of the thing appears to be the more prominent idea; later the notions of simple elegance or regularity of form predominate”. There was a proverbial use contrasting neat with over-decorated: A. adj. (n.2 and int.) I. 1. c. ‘neat (but) not gaudy’, first attested in 1700, with OED’s second attestation by Lamb in 1806: “A little thin flowery border Interpreting Charles Lamb’s ‘Neat-Bound Books’ 163 round, neat not gaudy” (in reference to a card he had designed). Here Lamb used neat in contradistinction to showiness – which fits with his sentiment about it being mere foppery to trick out easily-available books in gay apparel, and also with his nonconformist outlook. Unitarians in particular were rational, and although not a professed Unitarian, Lamb’s biographer Swaab speaks of his “enthusiasm for Unitarianism, especially that of Joseph Priestley”. Lamb’s opinion on bookbinding quoted above conveys a differentiating between rare books of valuable content on which he was willing to spend money and the ownership of which conferred distinction, as opposed to non-rare books of valuable content, the ownership of which conferred no distinction as they were popular and easily available and on which he felt there was no need to lavish resources. It is a rational, if unusual, distinction, born of a need to scrupulously apportion every penny. Making a virtue of necessity, only the rarest books merited non-simple bindings. OED has more illustrations from Lamb under further subdivisions, but for the present purposes they do not warrant separate categories: 3.4. Neat meaning ‘clear and to the point’ May day, with that sweetness which is peculiar to her, in a neat speech proposing the health of the founder, crowned her goblet (and by her example the rest of the company) with garlands. (Charles Lamb. January 1823. Rejoicings upon the New Year’s Coming of Age. London Magazine.) OED neat, adj. (n.2 and int.) and adv. A. I. 3. b. 3.5. Neat cookery meaning ‘choice’ Quoting Milton: ‘What neat repast shall feast us, light and choice’ (Charles Lamb. Letter to Mr Manning) OED neat, adj. (n.2 and int.) and adv. A. I. 3. d. We disagree that neat means ‘concise’ and ‘choice’ in these contexts – or rather, that this is all that it means, because Lamb’s alertness to polysemy precludes precision in the identification of sub-senses. We subsume the nuances of both the concise May day speech and the springtime repast under the meaning ‘simple, unadorned’, and the purpose of including them here is not taxonomy but to note Lamb’s ‘simple, unadorned’ use of adjectival neat. 11 Neat modifying the artisan’s 11 The Milton quotation is from Sonnet 20, referencing plenitude in the spring countryside. L. Wright and Ch. Langmuir 164 dinner, the springtime repast and May day’s speech shows Lamb equating simple, plain food with simple, plain language. 3.6. Neat-bound The adjective neat-bound is included as a lemma under OED neat, adj. (n.2 and int.) and adv. ‘Special uses’ S2. Adverbial. neat-bound adj., where the first atttestation is Lamb’s ‘neat-bound’ of 1822 but no separate definition is provided. The adverbial senses are supplied by OED headword neatly, adv. 2 “Adroitly, skilfully; cleverly, dexterously”, first attested a1547, and adv. 3. “So as to present a neat appearance or produce an elegant or tidy effect; in a nicely finished way”, first attested 1577 (the earliest usage meant ‘pithily’ and is therefore not relevant to an inanimate book cover). A book cover could be skilfully bound, and it certainly rendered the unclad book tidy, as unbound books are fragile and shed paper fragments. 3.7. Neat meaning ‘cattle’ Mr Herod says he kept two milch cows and ten head of neat stock this season, in his yard (The London Magazine 3. January-June 1821. 342.) The bringing-up of Urania had been among country hinds and lasses; to tend her flocks or superintend her neat dairy had been the extent of her breeding. (Charles Lamb. December 1858. Cupid’s Revenge. Harper’s Magazine.) 12 OED neat, n.1 ‘bovine animal’ had largely been replaced by ‘cow, ox, cattle’ in London by Lamb’s time, except in the semantic fields of food and leatherworking – and given that leather was used in bookbinding, it might be supposed that a neat-bound volume was therefore also a cowskin-bound one. Under OED neat, n.1 C1.a., neat leather is last attested in 1883 and so was still in use in Lamb’s lifetime. There is an attestation of neat-hide in 1977, and neat’s foot oil is still sold. Neat’s foot oil is used for softening leather for all sorts of uses, including bookbinding, and was also used medicinally for skin conditions and aching joints. It was easily available in London: James Siddall, Oil-Man and Coal-Merchant; at (No.10.) in Honey-Lane Market, London: Sells Wholesale and Retail, at the lowest Prices, viz. Oils, Fine Lucca, Florence, Olive, Chamber, Linseed, Neatsfoot, Turpentine, Rape, Seal (Tradecard. 18th century. London Metropolitan Archives) 12 Lamb’s predilection for ‘bivalent words’ prompts citation of this quotation, where the primary meaning of neat is ‘tidy, agreeable’. Interpreting Charles Lamb’s ‘Neat-Bound Books’ 165 Neat in the sense of ‘cow’ was also visible in shop-signs, including this one not far from the Unitarian chapel in Essex Street, off the Strand: John Lyde & Co., at the Three Neat’s Tongues, opposite Charles Street, in the Strand. (Tradecard. 1768–1823. London Metropolitan Archives) And as an epicure who at the same time needed to be careful with money, Lamb is likely to have known neat’s-tongues and neat’s feet. 13 I went to the pastry-cook’s, and got a giblet-pye and a neat’s-tongue, and we had our supper, and three or four pots of half-and-half, and four or five half pints of gin; then he would have another pot of twopenny hot OldBaileyOnline (OBO), t17661217–56, 1766 I lost a neat’s tongue, and caught the prisoner with it; it is here; it is the same tongue that was taken from him; he was about ten doors from my shop; the prisoner came in to me to ask for gun-powder; he went out; and going out he cut the strings of the tongues, and took this tongue with him; I did not see him cut it. OBO, t17900526–61, 1790 I keep a tripe shop in Barbican. On Tuesday the 23rd of May, the prisoner came to my shop to buy a neat’s foot OBO, t18150621–47, 1815 In literature, Lamb would have been acquainted with silence as commendable only in a ‘neat’s tongue dried’ (Shakespeare, The Merchant of Venice 1.1.111– 12) and also the Elizabethan catch-phrase ‘as/that ever trod upon neat’s leather’ (Shakespeare, Julius Caesar 1.1.25–6; The Tempest, 2. 2. 69, and see also Dent 1984: 495). The year before Lamb’s ‘strong-backed and neat-bound’ dictum was published, Walter Scott had also used ‘neat’s leather’ in Kenilworth, a novel Lamb professed to admire. 14 Interpreting neat-bound as ‘bound in calfskin’ would preserve lexical cohesion with Morocco, Russia and leather. Morocco was leather imported to Europe from Morocco, Russia leather was leather treated with oil distilled from birchbark. OED has attestations of Russia-bound from 1808, first attested in the Gentleman’s Magazine, to which Lamb was a contributor (Russia, n. I. 6. c.); and Morocco-bound (Morocco, adj. and n. C1. b., although postdating 1822). The 13 Recipes for the preparation of neat’s tongue feature in a number of contemporary cookbooks: e.g., Simpson (1806), Millington (1810), Mrs. Smith (1810), Kitchiner (1817). The Lambs’ strongly carnivorous eating habits are discussed by Balle (2009). 14 Scott (1821: Chapter 8): “for women, though they wear not swords, are occasion for many a blade’s exchanging a sheath of neat’s leather for one of flesh and blood”. L. Wright and Ch. Langmuir 172 (1775–1839), who included Lamb’s poem The Grandam in a book of his own verse in 1796, with further joint publications between them in 1797 and 1798. 21 Lloyd was the eldest son of the Quaker banking philanthropist also named Charles Lloyd (1748–1828). Lloyd fils preferred poetry to the banking concerns of Lloyd père and on meeting Coleridge, paid him to come and stay – in a relationship that might be characterised today as close mentoring. A friendship developed between the two with Coleridge and his wife lodging with Lloyd fils and introducing him to their friends (although later in life Coleridge and Lloyd were to quarrel). Lloyd was thus brought into Lamb’s social ambit, Lamb and Coleridge being old schoolfriends. Lloyd’s Aunt Rachel was married to the Quaker banker and brewer David Barclay (Courtney 1984 [1982]: 182; Gilbert 1951: 8). 22 Barclay was an abolitionist, in regular correspondence with Philadelphian Quaker abolitionists John Pemberton (1727–1795), President of the Pennsylvania Abolition Society, and Anthony Benezet (1713–1784), abolitionist, teacher of girls and black people, and author. 23 Benezet was an influential pamphleteer and some of his correspondence with Barclay and Pemberton was published during Lamb’s lifetime, from which we select: “some plain lectures on anatomy … a plain simple way of life … should be copied in a neat bound book” (quoted from Vaux’s edition of Benezet’s letters (1817: 17– 18)). We do not assume that Lamb read Benezet’s letters and directly lifted his neat bound collocation therefrom, neither do we infer that Lamb necessarily conversed with his friend’s uncle’s correspondent; rather, our purpose is to show how the polysemy implicit in neat bound appealed to dissenters prior to Lamb: tidy, skilful, adroit, but also pure, plain and simple. The neat bound book for copying anatomy lecture-notes is both business-like and also morally sound. Thus, for Quakers, adroit and simple were not antonyms; simple was a term of approbation. Comfort (1933: 13) explains Quaker usage of adjectives plain, solid, weighty: a plain Friend: “one who sticks fairly closely to the old traditions”; a solid Friend, a weighty Friend: “a Friend whose opinion is respected”; to feel the weight of the meeting: “to get the judgment of the solid or weighty Friends”. Neat does not figure in any discussion of Quaker speech that we can find, but this does not signify in that neat’s polysemy would have been apparent to nineteenth century readers, 21 Lloyd, Charles, (1775–1839), Richard Garnett, revised by Geoffrey Carnall, https://doi.org/ 10.1093/ref:odnb/16823. In his clothing, Lamb was invariably unostentatious. Leigh Hunt recalled that the young Lamb “dressed with a Quakerlike plainness” (1949 [1850]: 102). Lamb himself declared in Old China that “neat black clothes” replaced threadbare garments after he recovered from the poverty incurred by his book-buying (Talfourd (ed). 1855: 261, 267). 22 Barclay, David, (1729–1809), Jacob M. Price, revised by Leslie Hannah, https://doi.org/ 10.1093/ref:odnb/37150. 23 Benezet, Anthony [formerly Antoine], (1713–1784), Carla Gerona, https://doi.org/ 10.1093/ref:odnb/2091. Interpreting Charles Lamb’s ‘Neat-Bound Books’ 173 whereas the multiple meanings of modifiers such as weighty discussed in, e.g., Tibbals (1926) and Comfort (1933) were less transparent to non-Quakers. But it is not Quakers in general that we are interested in so much as specific Quakers known to Lamb in either a literary or personal capacity. Who, then, did Lamb read or talk to? Lloyd gave Lamb a copy of the journal of Quaker minister John Woolman: “Writing in the early nineteenth century Charles Lamb said that Woolman’s Journal was ‘the only American book’ he had ever read twice, and Samuel Taylor Coleridge despaired of the man ‘who could peruse the life of John Woolman without an amelioration of heart’” (ODNB: 2). 24 Anti-slavery campaigner, proto-animal rights advocate, protoenvironmentalist, accountant and tailor, John Woolman (1720–1772) was an influential American Quaker who travelled to London and elsewhere. Benezet quoted Woolman’s writings and sent copies of his essays to government officials in England (Moulton 1971: 6). Turning to Woolman’s Journal we find (apropos of Nantucket fishermen’s wives): I was concerned to Speak with the Women Friends, in their monthly meeting of business, many being present; and in the fresh spring of pure Love, to Open before them the Advantage, both inward and outward, of Attending Singly to the pure guidance of the Holy Spirit, and therein to Educate their Children in true Humility, and the disuse of all Superfluities. Reminding them of the Difficulties their Husbands and Sons were frequently Exposed to at Sea, and that the more plain and simple their way of living was, the less need of Runing great Hazards to Support them in it; Encouraging the young Women in their neat, decent way of attending themselves on the Affairs of the house. (Woolman 1760: VII, quoted from Gummere (ed.), 1922: 240) Modifiers here are fresh, pure, pure, true, plain, simple, great, young, neat, decent. In Quaker usage, pure, true, plain, simple, neat and decent overlapped semantically. In May 1826 Lamb wrote to his friend Bernard Barton: Dear B. B., - I have had no spirits lately to begin a letter to you, though I am under obligations to you (how many!) for your neat little poem. ‘Tis just what it professes to be, a simple tribute, in chaste verse, serious and sincere. I do not know how Friends will relish it, but we out-lyers, honorary friends, like it very well” (Talfourd 1849: 330) Lamb the accounts clerk used neat in the sense of ‘skilful’, ‘adroit’, ‘well-formed’ and Lamb the honorary Friend used it in all the approbatory Quaker senses too, metaphorically derived from business uses of ‘pure, unadulterated, free from dirt, free from reductions.’ 24 Woolman, John (1720–1772), David Sox, https://doi.org/10.1093/ref:odnb/29960. L. Wright and Ch. Langmuir 174 4. Conclusion Neat bound, despite the Old English sense ‘cattle’ and the continuing currency of this sense in London in 1822 via comestibles neat’s tongues, neat’s feet, and neat’s foot oil, meant not specifically ‘calfskin-bound’ in the context of bookbinding but ‘bound in leather’. In the context of bookselling, (very) neat (bound) signaled ‘in (very) good condition’, and the two are not always distinguishable. Strong and neat occurred as a collocation within the leather-working trades of bookbinding, shoes, and coaches, and the phrase was readily visible to the newspaper-reading public in Lamb’s lifetime. Plain, strong and neat occurred in a seminal accounting text which Lamb is likely to have studied at a young age. In historical pragmatic terms, there is an intersection here of the fields of [trade and industry, subsection leather-workers, subsection salesforce] and [commerce, subsection book-keeping, subsection penmanship]. The moral overtones detectable in Watts’ textbook for young men learning the accountancy business are also identifiable in specific Quaker writing which Lamb is known to have read and approved of. Freedom from adornment – the theme of Lamb’s bookbinding desideratum as well as Watts’ penmanship desideratum – was a particular preoccupation within the Quaker discourse community, adding another historical pragmatic intersection: [religion, subsection dissenters, subsection Quakers]. In sum, we have set out to achieve informational maximalism, “the utilization of all reasonable means to extend our knowledge of what might have been going on in the past, even though it is not directly observable”. 25 We suggest that the combination ‘strong-backed and neat-bound’ resonated with Lamb due to a triangulation of bookbinders’ and booksellers’ terminology frequently met with in newspaper advertisements and familiar to the public through booksellers’ catalogues, an accountancy textbook familiar to him, and his Quaker network use of modifier neat to reflect a set of virtues (as Quakers saw them) having to do with lack of adornment. There is a further resonance, which is that of the poorer classes who worked for their living as opposed to wealthy readers who could afford to have their books bound sumptuously in fine leather. Accountancy textbooks, bookbinding, stout shoes made for walking, second-hand coaches, and wine-importing all pertain to the domain of trade, commerce, and industry, evoked by Lamb’s Sabbath-dining, hard-handed artisan and his seamstress straining her eyes to read her worn-out library books by midnight candle. Although the Quakers known to Lamb and mentioned here were far from poor (Lloyd and Barclay were from families running banks that are still in business today), their sympathies were more aligned with the labouring than the ruling classes, with concommitant 25 Janda & Joseph (2003: 37), cited in Nevelainan (2015: 263). Interpreting Charles Lamb’s ‘Neat-Bound Books’ 175 repudiation of costly, and thus unaffordable, luxury. The original London Magazine readership is likely to have been more sensitive to this social nuance than those who have repeated the ‘strong-backed and neat-bound’ desideratum over the intervening two centuries. 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