I - The Cambridge Charles Lamb Dinners

Summary

My pleasant neighbour, gone before

To that unknown and silent shore,

Shall we not meet as heretofore,

Some Summer morning.

In the founding and organising of the Cambridge Charles Lamb Dinners perhaps the largest part was played by Charles Sayle and it is in memory of him that this account of them has been compiled.

These dinners—six in all—were held in each of the years 1909 to 1914, when the War brought them to an end.

Sayle's life peculiarly fitted him for this agreeable task. Educated at Rugby School and New College, he returned after a brief period in London to his old home at Cambridge, and joined St John's College. He devoted himself to bibliographical work and became an Under-Librarian in the University Library. His knowledge of books enabled him to give valuable help to enquirers in every branch of learning and in the pursuit of references and quotations he spared no pains.

At the Library he came into contact with most of the literary men in the University and thus it was easy for him to collect those who would be likely to sympathise with the idea of a Lamb Dinner.

But it was his great gift of gaining touch with undergraduates which was of most help in drawing to the table the best of the younger men. For many years Sayle had succeeded in gathering undergraduates to his house in Trumpington Street, a bachelor abode, rather hidden back from the main street, small but commodious, with a room upstairs which held an old Broadwood grand piano.