Tag: New York City

Having lived in New York City for many years, I learned to appreciate the cultural milieu I lived within. Now that I’m there only a handful of times a year, I always take advantage of the artistic offerings there.

It isn’t just the museums and galleries and theater that holds cultural richness in New York City, even the properties that have historical relevance are fun to explore. Case in point is The Chatwal, which olds The Lambs Club. As the name suggests, the eatery has a direct connection to the British writer Charles Lamb, which is why I chose to venture there one blustery March evening.

The inspiration for naming the restaurant after Lamb was a British actor’s nod to weekly salons that the author and his sister Mary hosted in their London home. During its heyday in the late 1700s and early 1800s, it drew some of the most avant-garde journalists and literary figures to 4 Inner Temple Lane. William Hazlitt, Leigh Hunt, Barry Cornwall (whose real name was Bryan Procter), William Godwin, Martin Burney, Henry Crabb Robinson, Charles Kemble and Fanny Kelly were regulars.

On “red-letter occasions,” Edward Gilpin Johnson explains in the introduction to The Best Letters of Charles Lamb, Coleridge and Wordsworth were in attendance. Johnson describes the setting surrounding the creatives, who met each Wednesday, as gathering around “a clear fire” and “a clean hearth.” One of the first things I noticed as I took my seat in The Lambs Club was a massive fireplace, its hearth clean and its interior ablaze. But that’s where the similarities ended between the Lambs’ salons and the tony eatery. I simply love it when I feel a plumb line leading back into history in this way, and New York City is one of those fabulous cities for achieving the feeling.