ed at once to Gilston, a few miles east of Blakesware, a mansion
which for a long time was confused with Blakesware by commentators on
Lamb. This William Plumer, who was M.P. for Lewes, for Hertfordshire,
and finally for Higham Ferrers, and a governor of Christ's Hospital,
kept up Blakesware after his mother's death in 1778 (when Lamb was
three) exactly as before, but it remained empty save for Mrs. Field
and the servants under her. Mrs. Field became thus practically
mistress of it, as Lamb says in "Dream-Children." Hence the increased
happiness of her grandchildren when they visited her. Mrs. Field died
in 1792, when Lamb was seventeen. William Plumer died in 1822, aged
eighty-six, having apparently arranged with his widow, who continued
at Gilston, that Blakesware should be pulled down--a work of
demolition which at once was begun. This lady, _nee_ Jane Hamilton,
afterwards married a Mr. Lewin, and then, in 1828, Robert Ward
(1765-1846), author of _Tremaine_ and other novels, who took the name
of Plumer-Ward, and may be read of, together with curious details of
Gilston House, in P.G. Patmore's _My Friends and Acquaintances_.

Nothing now remains but a few mounds, beneath which are bricks and
rubble. The present house is a quarter of a mile behind the old
one, high on the hill. In Lamb's day this hillside was known as the
Wilderness, and where now is turf were formal walks with clipped yew
hedges and here and there a statue. The stream of which he speaks is
the Ashe, running close by the walls of the old house. Standing there
now, among the trees which mark its site, it is easy to reconstruct
the past as described in the essay.

The Twelve Caesars, the tapestry and other more notable possessions of
Blakesware, although moved to Gilston on the demolition of Blakesware,
are there no longer, and their present destination is a mystery.
Gilston was pulled down in 1853, following upon a sale by auction,
when all its treasures were dispersed. Some, I have discovered,
were bought by the enterprising tenant of the old Rye House Inn
at Broxbourne, but absolute identification of anything now seems
impossible.

Blakesware is again described in _Mrs. Leicester's School_, in Mary
Lamb's story of "The Young Mahometan." There the Twelve Caesars are
spoken of as hanging on the wall, as if they were medallions; but Mr.
E.S. Bowlby tells me that he perfectly remembers the Twelve Caesars at
Gilston, about 1850, as busts, just as Lamb s