When Lazarus Roberts drew up his will on 30 September 1869, he had already lost at least three sons: the two infants both named Felix and his youngest child, Edward. Another, Charles, may have predeceased him and received special mention.
The principal witness to the will and codicil was George Henry Lameroux, a seed merchant and near neighbour of Lazarus’s daughter and son-in-law, the Stephenses, of Hill Park Crescent, Plymouth. The second witness was Thomas John Prout, a piano tuner who lived a few doors down from Lazarus in St James Place.
The will was proved at London with a Codicil on 22 August 1873. Probably dictated by Lazarus, the spellings are as given in the original.
IN THE NAME OF ALMIGHTY GOD AMEN I Lazarus Roberts captain in the Royal Navy of St James' Place in the town and borough of Plymouth in the county of Devon being of sound mind do make this my last will and testament hereby revoking all and former wills and depositions made before by me and whereas I have little of any value to leave yet I hope my children will accept the trifles I have to give as marks of my love and affection being the last gift of one whose prayers have ever been offered up for their welfare and happiness To my son James Mackenzie Roberts I do give and bequeath my "History of England" "Maritime and Inland History" the "Lives of the English Navigators" and the "History of British India" To my son William Pollard Roberts I bequeath the Family Classical Library of 52 volumes To my son Henry Came Roberts I bequeath my "Chessmen" Gibbons History of Rome "Otways Works" "Congreves Works" "Popes Works" "Ovids Epistles" and "Venetian History" "Horace" My dear son Charles Dunridge Roberts not having been heard of for many years I fear he has left this world before me but should he ever return again to his family I beg that he may understand that I fear I behaved harshly towards him and I beg his forgiveness My sorrow on this account has been great and my heart has yearned towards him I bequeath my atlas to him and request that the same may be placed in my son Arthur's hands to be kept by him should my fears prove thus To my dear son Arthur Pilch Roberts I bequeath my writing desk with any books I may not have mentioned as given to others To my daughter Mrs Smyth I bequeath Evans' Sketches Shakespeares Works Johnsons Lives of the Poets Cottage Comforts and Orlando Furioso also to her husband Edward Crafer Smyth my spy glass my debenture for the naval School and the United Service Journal 13 vol and whereas my two unmarried daughters Ellen and Catherine Roberts I leave without support I give and bequeath to them in equal proportions the whole of my furniture plate and linen including the silver salver given me by the Naval Club also any half or retired pay to me up to the day of my death including my pension lately bestowed on me they liquidating all debts ... by me and paying my funeral expenses and I beg my funeral expenses (or my funeral) may be conducted in the most simple and inexpensive manner possible I also bequeath to them a portion of my books viz to Ellen my large "Bible" "Blairs Sermons" "Crabs Works" "Domestic Cookery" "Gay Cotton & Moore" and the "Jerusalem Delivered" Catherine my small "Bible" "Lord Byrons Works" "History of the Jews" "Thompsons Works" "Arabian Knights" and "Penny Magazine" and lastly I give and bequeath to my son Alfred George Roberts the following books viz "The History of Insects" "Gill Blas" "Burns Life & Poems" "Mutiny of the Bounty" "Life of Napoleon Buonaparte" and "Camp and Court of [ditto]" I also beg and appoint my dear sons Henry Came Roberts and Arthur Pilch Roberts together with my son in law Edward Crafer Smyth that they will kindly act as Executors to this my last will & testament In witness whereof I affix my seal & subscription this 30th day of September 1869 - L Roberts - signed and sealed in the presence of us this day of 30th day [sic] September 1869 - George Henry Lamoureux - Thos John Prout.
Codicil to the foregoing Will
Whereas since making my Will my youngest daughter Catherine Anne has been married and is therefore provided for I bequeath her the books already mentioned in my will leaving the whole of my property to my unmarried daughter Ellen Fanny - In witness where of I do affix my seal and subscription this 6th day of February 1872 - L Roberts - signed and sealed in the prescence of us this 6th day of February 1872 - George H. Lamoureux - Helen Lee Lamoureux
The two bibles could have been passed down to Lazarus by his parents or more likely his guardian, Pascho Pollard. The rest of the thirty-five titles comprising his library at the point of his death were probably acquired in the 1830s and 40s, judging from the likely publication dates (see below). This was when Lazarus was working and presumably had money: perhaps they were bought for reading on long, lonely Coastguard watches.
Covering classics, drama, poetry, history and household manuals – although no fiction – they provide a fascinating insight into his character and interests. His taste in reading was not untypical for a man of his age and position. A close contemporary, the poet John Clare (born 1793) is also known to have owned editions of Pope, Thomson and Crabbe – as well as works by Bunyon, Milton and Cowper, authors that might well have interested Lazarus too.
Where Lazarus acquired his books is unknown. There were a couple of booksellers at Harwich, where he lived during the first half of the 1830s – notably Job Saxby in Church Street, listed as a ‘bookseller, perfumer, stationer, circulating library and stamp distributor’, and John Rawlings in Market Street. There were none listed at Brightlingsea, where Lazarus was from about 1836 until 1845, although he could well have travelled into Colchester to find several stationers and booksellers, such as the fabulously-named Underwood Mattacks. If any were purchased during his time in Yarmouth (the ten years from 1845), there were a few here too, including two well-known booksellers and printers in the town, William Alexander and, until 1857, Charles Sloman.
The fate of the books is also unknown, after they passed into the hands of his children.
ARABIAN KNIGHTS [sic]. Arabian Nights Entertainments, or The Thousand and One Nights. Possibly Edward W. Lane’s bowdlerised version, first issued in monthly parts 1838–40 and then in three volumes in 1840
ATLAS. This could be any one of several projections or editions.
BIBLE. Two bibles were passed down, but all we have are the sizes, ‘Large’ and ‘Small’.
BLAIR’S SERMONS. Hugh Blair, Scottish divine. His sermons were first published in five volumes, 1777–1801. Subsequent editions followed in the 1810s/1820s.
BURN’S [sic] LIFE AND POEMS. Robert Burns, poet, 1759–96. This could be any one of numerous early-nineteenth-century collections, such as the eight volumes published by Cochrane & Macrone of London (1834), or that published by Joseph Smith (also London, 1834). The noted publisher and bookseller William Pickering (1796–1854) also published a life and work, in 1839.
BYRON’S WORKS. The complete works of Lord Byron were first published on the poet’s death in 1824 and then again in 1831 with some previously unpublished verse and reprinted in 1832–3 together with a life by Thomas Moore. Lazarus’s copy was perhaps one of the later editions.
CAMP AND COURT [of Napoleon Bonaparte]. The Camp and Court of Buonaparte, published John Murray, London, 1829. A compilation from other contemporary works put together by the publisher. A follow-up, in the Family Library series, to the Life of Buonaparte – see below.
CONGREVE’S WORKS. William Congreve, dramatist, 1670–1729.
COTTAGE COMFORTS. By Esther Hewlett, 1786–1851. This household management manual, addressed to the ‘labouring classes’, includes chapters on childbirth, treatment of illnesses, hygiene, animal husbandry, the care and education of children, renting and furnishing a cottage, brewing and cookery. First published in 1825, it had reached its twenty-fourth edition in 1864.
CRAB’S WORKS [sic]. George Crabbe, poet, 1754–1832. His collected works were published in 1834 by John Murray, London, in an attractive format but cheaply priced and designed to capture the middle-class market. The edition was uniform with Murray’s works of Byron, which may be the edition Lazarus owned.
DOMESTIC COOKERY. Probably Domestic Cookery by ‘A Lady’, aka Mrs Maria Eliza Rundell, first published by W. Wilson, London, 1806. It went through several editions and was essentially a precursor to Mrs Beaton’s more famous cookery book.
EVANS’S SKETCHES. Probably A Sketch of the Denominations of the Christian World, by John Evans LLD, a catch-all primer on the larger and many smaller branches of the Christian faith – from Shakers, Quakers and Dunkers to Atheists and Unitarians. Better known in its day as ‘Evans’s Sketches of all Religions’, the 15th edition was published in London in 1827.
FAMILY CLASSICAL LIBRARY, fifty-two volumes. ‘The Family Classical Library will contain the most correct and elegant translations of the immortal works of all the great authors of Greece and Rome’, announced the Liverpool Albion in 1834. The Bath Herald hoped that the series ‘will, no doubt, arrest the attention of all the admirers of elegant and polite literature’.
GAY COTTON AND MOORE. An anthology of the works of poets John Gay (1685–1732), Nathaniel Cotton (1705–88) and Edward Moore (1712–57). Dove’s one-volume English Classics edition more correctly entitled Gay’s Fables and Other Poems, Cotton’s Visions in Verse, and Moore’s Fables for the Female Sex, with Sketches of the Authors’ Lives, otherwise referred to as ‘Gay, Cotton, and Moore’, was published in 1826.
GIBBON’S HISTORY OF ROME. Edward Gibbon’s monumental History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, first published in six volumes, 1776–88.
GILL BLAS [sic]. Gil Blas, the picaresque narrative classic by the French novelist Alain-René Lesage, translated by Tobias Smollett in 1749.
HISTORY OF BRITISH INDIA. Probably The History of British India by James Mill, first published in six volumes, 1818, the third edition condensed to three volumes and published by Baldwin, Cradock & Joy, London, 1826.
HISTORY OF ENGLAND. Possibly Lord Macaulay’s History of England, first published in four volumes, 1849–55.
HISTORY OF INSECTS. Possibly The History of Insects, a layman’s text on every aspect of entomology by an unknown author, published in London by The Religious Tract Society in 1839.
HISTORY OF THE JEWS. Perhaps History of the Jews by John Evans, author of ‘Evans’s Sketches’ (also in Lazarus’s collection) and published in 1830.
HORACE. Several editions of his works were published in the 1830s and 40s.
JERUSALEM DELIVERED. The sixteenth-century Latin epic poem by Torquato Tasso. Perhaps this was the translation into English Spenserian verse by J.H. Wiffen, published in two volumes by Hurst, Robinson & Co. in 1824–6. This was widely reviewed and proved quite successful, being reprinted throughout the nineteenth century.
JOHNSON’S LIVES OF THE POETS. Samuel Johnson’s classic work, The Lives of the English Poets, was first published in 1779–81. Editions abounded after his death in 1784 – Lazarus’s copy may have been the one published by William Pickering in London in 1825.
LIFE OF NAPOLEON BUONAPARTE [sic]. Probably the first volume in John Murray’s Family Library series, published circa 1820. See above.
LIVES OF THE ENGLISH NAVIGATORS
MARITIME AND INLAND HISTORY. Perhaps The History of Maritime and Inland Discovery, by the geographer and historian William Desborough Cooley 1795–1883, first published in one volume in 1831.
MUTINY OF THE BOUNTY. William Bligh’s account of the mutiny on the Bounty was originally published in 1790, although Lazarus’s copy may have been that published by William Smith of London in 1838 under the title Narrative of the Mutiny of the Bounty on A Voyage to the South Seas.
ORLANDO FURIOSO. An Italian romantic epic by Ludovico Ariosto, first published 1532. Lazarus’s was possibly the edition by W.S. Rose, published in eight volumes by John Murray, 1823–31.
OTWAY’S WORKS. Thomas Otway, Restoration dramatist, 1652–85.
OVID’S EPISTLES. The Greek classic. Lazarus’s could have been either the 1818 translation by Edward D. Baynes, or perhaps the translation by Miss Emma Garland, published by Rivington, Liverpool in 1842, which received an amusing review in the Metropolitan magazine of March 1842: ‘We feel that in completing these translations for the public, a refined woman must have done some violence to herself.’
PENNY MAGAZINE. Produced every Saturday from 1832 by the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge, the Penny Magazine was aimed at the working class and was part of the Society’s programme for liberal reform. It was a source of information on subjects of general interest.
POPE’S WORKS. Alexander Pope, poet, 1688–1744. This was perhaps the three-volume edition issued in 1835 (with a new edition in 1851), by William Pickering of Chancery Lane, London.
SHAKESPEARE’S WORKS. Probably not the Cambridge Shakespeare, 1863–66, the most important nineteenth-century edition, which would have been too late for Lazarus, but more likely a condensed version of Edmond Malone’s edition, published in twenty-one volumes in 1821.
THOMPSON’S WORKS [sic]. Probably James Thomson, the Scottish playwright and poet, 1700–48, who wrote the lyrics to ‘Rule, Britannia!’. Thomson’s Poetical Works, with Life, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes was published in 1854 by James Nichol of Edinburgh in their Library Edition of the British Poets series.
UNITED SERVICE JOURNAL, 13 volumes. The United Service Journal and Naval and Military Magazine was intended for both a general audience and a more specialised readership of naval and military personnel. It later adopted the name The United Service Magazine.
VENETIAN HISTORY. Probably Sketches from Venetian History, by Edward Smedley (1788–1836), published anonymously in two volumes in John Murray’s Family Library in 1832.