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| Henry James, portrait by John Singer Sergeant |
Lamb House, in the charming old town of Rye, East Sussex has a fascinating history dating back over 300 years.
It was built for James Lamb in 1722; he was a local businessman who married the local brewer’s daughter. In 1726, George I was in a boat in the English Channel which ran aground in Camber Sands and was taken in for the night by the Lambs; he got the bedroom while Mrs Lamb, who was nine months pregnant, was shipped out to the relatives down the road where she gave birth. At least bed-blocking George became the baby’s godfather, giving him a christening present of a whopping 100 guineas. Needless to say, with royal connections and brewery money, Lamb was made and he became Mayor of Rye, as did his son (though not the one with a royal godfather).
The house has been the home to a number of famous authors, starting with Henry James (author of a number of great novels including The Europeans, Washington Square, and What Maisie Knew) who moved there in 1897, just before writing The Turn of the Screw, and later bought the place. Here, he played host to many other authors, including Joseph Conrad (Heart of Darkness, The Secret Agent etc)), Edith Wharton (The Age of Innocence etc), H G Wells (The War of the Worlds, The Invisible Man, The Time Machine, Tono-Bungay, The First Men in the Moon, Kipps, The History of Mr Polly, Love and Mr Lewisham etc) and Hugh Walpole.
Henry James was a hugely influential author. He wrote a huge number of novels, some of which are easily accessible, although the later ones are extremely dense and hard to get into. Wikipedia says that he is the transitional figure between realism and modernism and that his later novels (the hard ones) are increasingly experimental. As an American by birth, his early model was Nathaniel Hawthorne (who wrote the dreadful The Scarlet Letter) but a trip to Paris, where he met Zola and Mauspassant and Turgenev (author of Smoke, Fathers and Sons etc) and others, became a major influence. He moved to England where the literary scene was still dominated by Dickens. He tried hard to introduce realism a la Zola in to his work. But his main thrust was in his focus on character. Dickens and his contemporaries had written elaborate plots backed up by caricature one-dimensional characters. James wanted to explore character and make them multi-dimensional; to do this he explored ambiguity. The ambiguities at the heart of The Turn of the Screw, a novella he wrote more or less in the middle of his career, have kept readers arguing for the last century.
EF Benson, another prolific writer, also made Lamb House his home after having stayed there with Henry James; he also later became the 645th Mayor of Rye (it’s an old town; it used to be one of the mediaeval cinque ports). EF was born at Wellington College, where his dad (who later became Archbishop of Canterbury) was headmaster; he was educated at Wellington and Kings College, Cambridge. After moving to Rye, already an established novelist, he wrote the Mapp and Lucia novels, a comic series based on life in Rye. EF was definitely gay. Apart from his fiction he wrote a biography of Alcibiades, the famously bisexual Athenian.
His brother AC Benson, who wrote the words to ‘Land of Hope and Glory’ who was school at Eton and Kings, Cambridge and went on to teach at Eton and become Master at Magdalen, Cambridge. He wrote poems, literary criticism, and ghost stories. He might have been bi-polar. He didn’t marry either.
Later on, Lamb House was owned by the National Trust but rented out; one of the tenants was Rumer Godden who was born in Eastbourne and wrote lots of books including Black Narcissus.
Henry James was a hugely influential author. He wrote a huge number of novels, some of which are easily accessible, although the later ones are extremely dense and hard to get into. Wikipedia says that he is the transitional figure between realism and modernism and that his later novels (the hard ones) are increasingly experimental. As an American by birth, his early model was Nathaniel Hawthorne (who wrote the dreadful The Scarlet Letter) but a trip to Paris, where he met Zola and Mauspassant and Turgenev (author of Smoke, Fathers and Sons etc) and others, became a major influence. He moved to England where the literary scene was still dominated by Dickens. He tried hard to introduce realism a la Zola in to his work. But his main thrust was in his focus on character. Dickens and his contemporaries had written elaborate plots backed up by caricature one-dimensional characters. James wanted to explore character and make them multi-dimensional; to do this he explored ambiguity. The ambiguities at the heart of The Turn of the Screw, a novella he wrote more or less in the middle of his career, have kept readers arguing for the last century.
EF Benson, another prolific writer, also made Lamb House his home after having stayed there with Henry James; he also later became the 645th Mayor of Rye (it’s an old town; it used to be one of the mediaeval cinque ports). EF was born at Wellington College, where his dad (who later became Archbishop of Canterbury) was headmaster; he was educated at Wellington and Kings College, Cambridge. After moving to Rye, already an established novelist, he wrote the Mapp and Lucia novels, a comic series based on life in Rye. EF was definitely gay. Apart from his fiction he wrote a biography of Alcibiades, the famously bisexual Athenian.
His brother AC Benson, who wrote the words to ‘Land of Hope and Glory’ who was school at Eton and Kings, Cambridge and went on to teach at Eton and become Master at Magdalen, Cambridge. He wrote poems, literary criticism, and ghost stories. He might have been bi-polar. He didn’t marry either.
Later on, Lamb House was owned by the National Trust but rented out; one of the tenants was Rumer Godden who was born in Eastbourne and wrote lots of books including Black Narcissus.
There are many other interesting people who have also lived there. The house is well set out: breakfast is laid in the dining room, there is a delightful garden, and an interesting set of posters about EF Benson in a room accessible from the garden. Upstairs there is the bedroom in which George I took precedence of the heavily pregnant mistress of the house, and other rooms.
October 2023
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