Godfather

On August 9, 1815, Charles Lamb wrote to Robert Southey on his pending godfathership:

‘I am going to stand godfather; I don’t like the business; I cannot muster up decorum for these occasions; I shall certainly disgrace the font.  I was at Hazlitt’s marriage, and had like to have been turned out several times during the ceremony.  Anything awful makes me laugh.  I misbehaved once at a funeral.  Yet I can read about these ceremonies with pious and proper feelings.  The realities of life only seem the mockeries.’

That letter was included in the Folio Book of Days.  Sir Walter Scott was probably godfather to more than one child, and he writes of one instance with more apparent zeal than did Lamb.  The text below comes from a letter to John Morritt, dated January 14, 1818, now published in “Familiar Letters of Walter Scott”.

‘…But my immediate labour has been in behalf of my friend Terry, the comedian, in whom, on account of his sense, information, and modesty I take a great interest. He has named a child after me, and I am preparing a godfather's gift in the shape of a drama.1 But godfathers, as in the time of conjurors and fames, may append what conditions they please to their gifts, and mine is that as I take no concern in the merit or in the emoluments of the piece in case of success, so I shall only be damn'd by proxy if damn'd I am. In a word, Terry takes his chance, and I believe there will be no medium, for if it does not succeed very decidedly, it will be damn'd most infernally. I have tried to coax the public to relax some of the rules of criticism, and to be amused with that medley of tragic and comic which life presents us, not only in the same course of action but in the same character. To deprecate all rigidity of judgment, I introduce the marvellous, the absurd, and something like the heroic, all to make the gruel slab…’

The Caledonian Canal

'The military road connecting the chains of forts, as it is called, and running in the general line of the present Caledonian Canal, has now completely opened the great glen, or chasm, extending almost across the whole island, once doubtless filled by the sea, and still affording basins for that long line of lakes, by means of which modern art has united the German and Atlantic Oceans. The paths or tracks by which the natives traversed this extensive valley, were, in 1645-6, in the same situation as when they awaked the strain of an Irish engineer officer, who had been employed in converting them into practicable military roads, and whose eulogium begins, and, for aught I know, ends, as follows:


Had you seen but these roads before they were made,
You would have held up your hands and bless'd General Wade.'

The Caledonian Canal, built by Thomas Telford, makes an appearance in Walter Scott's "A Legend of Montrose".  The canal itself covers about 60 miles, from Inverness on the eastmost end to Corpach on the west.  The canal makes use of four lochs along the way, including Loch Ness.

Work officially began in 1803, and in part, this project represented a jobs program for the Highlands after the Clearances had depleted the area of so many inhabitants.  Scott's text above describes previous usage along the line the canal system took.

The engineer Thomas Telford was born on August 9, 1757.