ABSTRACT
This chapter investigates how Charles Lamb’s “Old China” (1823) and William Hazlitt’s “The Letter-Bell” (1831) bring personal thing-contemplations as a literary end in itself to its full potential by delving into the associative mode. The old china that they can now easily afford lets Bridget, the cousin of Lamb’s persona Elia, reminisce about past hardships in the acquisition of objects, which endowed these objects with a multi-layered thingness that more recent purchases are missing. The ringing of Hazlitt’s “Letter-Bell” unleashes a flow of memories from the speaker’s youth, which establishes a continuity to the speaker’s old age that Hazlitt translates to a lifelong, unfaltering loyalty to the ideals of the French Revolution.
