Note 48 — ELGAR

"Alice W——n," Lamb's first love. According to Hazlitt, she married a pawnbroker in Princes Street, Leicester Square. Did he bear the romantic name of Bartrum? ("the children of Alice call Bartrum father," says Elia in a passage in "Dream Children" tactfully omitted from Elgar's excerpt). Compare the passage immediately preceding that quoted by Sir Edward: "Then I told how for seven long years, in hope sometimes, sometimes in despair, yet persisting ever, I courted the fair Alice W——n; and, as much as children could understand, I explained to them what coyness, and difficulty, and denial meant in maidens—when suddenly, turning to Alice, the soul of the first Alice looked out at her eyes with such a reality of re-presentment, that I became in doubt which of them stood there before me, or whose that bright hair was...." And one recalls the sentence in "New Year's Eve": "Methinks it is better that I should have pined away seven of my goldenest years, when I was thrall to the fair hair and fairer eyes of Alice W——n, than that so passionate a love-adventure should be lost."