Mary Lamb

Book_ iLiiiLipS

Gop}iight>l^.

COPYRIGHT DEPOSFT.

jfamous ^oinen.

MARY LAMB.

The next volumes in the Famous Women Series

will be:

Margaret Fuller. By Julia Ward Howe.
Maria Edgeworth. By Miss Zimmern.

Already published :

George Eliot. By Miss Blind.
Emily Bronte. By Miss Robinson.
George Sand. By Miss Thomas.
Mary Lamb. By Mrs. Gilchrist.

, N .\.,

Mary Lamb.

3P

BY

ANNE GILCHRIST.

BOSTON:

ROBERTS BROTHERS.

1883.

Copyright, 1S83,
By Roberts Brothers.

University Press:
John Wilson and Son, Cambridge.

PREFACE.

I AM indebted to Mrs. Henry Watson, a grand-
daughter of Mr. Gillman, for one or two
interesting reminiscences, and for a hitherto
unpublished "notelet" by Lamb (page 327),
together with an omitted paragraph from a
published letter (page 1 10), which confirms what
other letters also show, — that the temporary
estrangement between Lamb and Coleridge
was mainly due to the influence of the morbid
condition of mind of their common friend,
Charles Lloyd.

My thanks are also due to Mr. Potts for some
bibliographic details respecting the various
editions of the Tales from Shakespeare.

Reprinted here, for the first time, is a little
essay on Needlework (regarded from an indus-
trial, not an "art" point of view), by Mary
Lamb (page 244), unearthed from an obscure
and long-deceased periodical — The British

vi PREFACE.

Lady s Magazine — for which I have to thank
Mr. Edward Solly, F. R. S.

The reader will find, also, the only letter that
has been preserved from Coleridge to Lamb,
who destroyed all the rest in a moment of
depression (pages 32-3). This letter is given,
without exact date or name of the person to
whom it was addressed, in Gillman's unfinished
Life of Coleridge, as having been written "to
a friend in great anguish of mind on the sudden
death of his mother," and has, I believe, never
before been identified. But the internal evi-
dence that it was to Lamb is decisive.

In taking Mary as the central figure in the
following narrative, woven mainly from her
own and her brother's letters and writings, it
is to that least explored time, from 1796 to
181 5 — before they had made the acquaintance
of Judge Talfourd, Proctor, Patmore, De Quin-
cey and other friends, who have left written
memorials of them — that we are brought
nearest ; the period, that is, of Charles' youth
and early manhood. For Mary was the elder
by ten years ; and there is but little to tell of
the last twenty of her eighty-three years of

PRE FA CE. vu

life, when the burthen of age was added to
that of her sad malady.

The burial register of St. Andrew's, Holborn,
in which churchyard Lamb's father, mother and
Aunt Hetty were buried, shows that the father
survived his wife's tragic death nearly three
years instead of only a few months, as Talfourd
and others following him have supposed. It is
"a date of some interest, because not till then
did brother and sister begin together their life
of " double singleness " and entire mutual
devotion. Also, in sifting the letters for facts
and dates, I find that Lamb lived in Chapel
street, Pentonville, not, as Talfourd and Proctor
thought, a few months, but three years, remov-
ing thither almost immediately after the moth-
er's death. It is a trifle, yet not without
interest to the lovers of Lamb, for these were
the years in which he met in his daily walks,
and loved but never accosted, the beautiful
Quakeress " Hester," whose memory is en-
shrined in the poem beginning " When maidens
such as Hester die."

Anne Gilchrist.'

Keats Corner, Hampstead.

CONTENTS.

CHAPTER I.

PAGB.

Parentage and Childhood . . • . . . i

CHAPTER n.

Birth of Charles. — Coleridge. — Domestic Toils and
Trials. — Their Tragic Culmination. — Letters
to and from Coleridge ..... 23

CHAPTER III.
Death of Aunt Hetty. — Mary removed from the
Asylum. — Charles Lloyd. — A Visit to Nether
Stowey, and Introduction to Wordsworth and
his Sister. — Anniversary of the Mother's
Death. — Mary ill again. — Estrangement
between Lamb and Coleridge. — Speedy Recon-
cilement 47

CHAPTER IV.

Death of the Father. — Mary comes Home to live. —
A Removal. — First Verses. — A Literary Tea-
party. — Another Move. — Friends increase . 72

CHAPTER V.

Personal Appearance and Manners. — Health. —

Influence of Mary's Illnesses upon her Brother 84

CHAPTER VI.

Visit to Coleridge at Greta Hall. — Wordsworth and
his Sister in London. — Letters to Miss Stod-
dart. — Coleridge goes to Malta. — Letter to
Dorothy Wordsworth on the Death of her
Brother John 106

CHAPTER VII.

Mary in the Asylum again. — Lamb's Letter, with a
Poem of hers. — Her slow Recovery. — Letters
to Sara Stoddart. — The Tales from Shakes-
peare begun. — Hazlitt's Portrait of Lamb. —
Sara's Lovers. — The Farce of Mr. H. . 129

X CONTENTS.

CHAPTER VIII.
The Tales from Shakespeare. — Letters to Sara

Stoddart I54

CHAPTER IX.

Correspondence with Sara Stoddart. — Hazlitt. — A
Courtship and Wedding, at which Mary is
Bridesmaid . i68

CHAPTER X.

Mrs. Leicester'' s School. — A Removal. — Poetry for

Children ....... 207

CHAPTER XI.

The Hazlitts again. — Letters to Mrs. Hazlitt. — Two
Visits to Winterslow. — Mr. Dawe, R. A. -^
Birth of Hazlitt's Son. — Death of Holcroft. 223

CHAPTER XII.

An Essay on Needlework ... . 243

CHAPTER XIII.

Letters to Miss Betham and her little Sister. — To
Wordsworth. — Manning's Return. — Coleridge
goes to Highgate. — Letter to Miss Hutchinson
on Mary's State. — Removal to Russell Street. —
Mary's Letter to Dorothy Wordsworth. — Lodg-
ings at Dalston. — ■ Death of John Lamb and
Captain Burney 256

CHAPTER XIV.

HazHtt's Divorce. — "Ejnma Isola. — Mrs, Cowden
Clarke's Recollections of Mary. — The Visit to
France. — Removal to Colebrook Cottage. — A
Dialogue of Reminiscences .... 285

CHAPTER XV.

Lamb's ill Health. — Retirement from the India House,
and subsequent Illness. — Letter from Mary to
Lady Stoddart. — Colebrook Cottage quitted. —
Mary's constant Attacks. — A Home given up. —
Board with the Westwoods. — ■ Death of Haz-
litt.— Removal to Edmonton. — Marriage of
Emma Isola. — -Mary's sudden Recovery. — 111
again. — Death of Coleridge. — Death of
Charles. — Mary's Last Days and Death . 309

LIST OF AUTHORITIES.

Life^ Letters arid Writings of Charles Lamb. Edited

by Percy Fitzgerald, M. A., F. S. A. 1876.
The Works of Charles Lamb. Edited by Charles Kent,

(in which, for the first time, the dates and original

mode of publication were affixed to the Essays,

etc.) 1878.
Poetry for Children, by Charles and Mary Lamb.

Edited by Richard Heme Shepherd. 1878.
Mrs. Leicester'' s School., by Charles and Mary Lamb.
Tales from. Shakespeare, by Charles and Mary Lamb.

1807.
Final Memorials of Charles Lamb, by Talf ourd. 1 848.
Charles Lamb : A Memoir, by Barry Cornwall. 1866.
Mary and Charles Lamb, by W. Carew Hazlitt. 1874.
My Friends and Acquaintance, by P. G. Patmore. 1854.
Letters, Conversations and Recollections of Coleridge^

by Thomas AUsop. Third edition. 1864.
Early Recollections of Coleridge, by J. Cottle. 1837.
Biographia Literaria, by Coleridge. Second edition.

1847.
Life of Coleridge, by Gillman. Vol. L 1838.
Memoirs and Letters of Sara Coleridge. Edited by her

Daughter. 1873.
Life of Wordsworth, by Rev. Dr. C. Wordsworth.

1851.

xii LIST OF AUTHORITIES.

A Chronological List of the Writings of Hazlitt and
Leigh Hunt, preceded by an Essay on La7nb, and
List of his Works, by Alex. Ireland; printed for
private circulation. (The copy used contains many
MS. additions by the author.) 1868.

Recollections of Writers, by Charles and Mary Cowden
Clarke. 1878.

Six Life Studies of Famous Wotnen, by M. Betham
Edwards. 1880.

Diary, Reminiscences and Correspondence of Henry
Crabb Robinson, Edited by Dr. Sadler. 1869.

Memoirs of William Hazlitt, by W. Carew Hazlitt.
1867.

spirit of the Age. | Hazlitt. 1825, 1826.
Table Talk. )

Autobiographical Sketches. I Og Quincey. 1863.
Lakes and Lake Poets. S

William Godwin, his Friends and Contemporaries, by
Kegan Paul. 1876.

MARY LAMB.

CHAPTER I.

Parentage and Childhood.
' ' 1 764-1 775. — JEt. i-io.

The story of Mary Lamb's life is mainly the
story of a brother and sister's love ; of how it
sustained them under the shock of a terrible
calamity, and made beautiful and even happy a
life which must else have sunk into desolation
and despair.

It is a record, too, of many friendships.
Round the biographer of Mary as of Charles,
the blended stream of whose lives cannot be
divided into two distinct currents, there gathers
a throng of faces — radiant, immortal faces
some, many homely, every-day faces, a few
almost grotesque — -whom he can no more shut
out of his pages, if he would give a faithful
picture of life and character, than Charles or
Mary could have shut their humanity-loving
hearts or hospitable doors against them. First

2 MARY LAMB.

comes Coleridge, earliest and best -beloved
friend of all, to whom Mary was " a most dear
heart's sister ; " Wordsworth and his sister
Dorothy ; Southey ; Hazlitt, who, quarrel with
whom he might, could not effectually quarrel
with the Lambs ; his wife, also, without whom
Mary would have been a comparatively silent
figure to us, a presence rather than a voice.
But all kinds were welcome so there were but
character ; the more variety the better. " I
am made up of queer points," wrote Lamb,
"and I want so many answering needles."
And of both brother and sister it may be said
that their likes wore as well as most people's
loves.

Mary Anne Lamb was born in Crown Office
Row, Inner Temple, on the 3d of December,
1764, — year of Hogarth's death. She was the
third, as Charles was the youngest, of seven
children, all of whom died in infancy, save
these two and an elder brother John, her senior
by two years. One little sister, Elizabeth, who
came when Mary was four years old, lived long
enough to imprint an image on the child's
memory which, helped by a few relics, remained
for life. " The little cap with white satin rib-
bon grown yellow with long keeping, and a lock
of light hair," wrote Mary when she was near
sixty, " always brought her pretty, fair face to

PARENTAGE. 3

my view, so that to this day I seem to have a
perfect recollection of her features."

The family of the Lambs came originally
from Stamford in Lincolnshire, as Charles him-
self once told a correspondent. Nothing else
is known of Mary's ancestry ; nor yet even the
birth-place or earliest circumstances of John
Lamb, the father. If, however, we may accept
on Mr. Cowden Clarke's authority, corroborated
by internal evidence, the little story of Susan
Vates, contributed by Charles to Mrs. Leices-
ter s School, as embodying some of his father's
earliest recollections, he was born of parents
''in no very affluent circumstances," in a lonely
part of the fen country, seven miles from the
nearest church, an occasional visit to which,
"just to see how goodness thrived,'^ was a feat
to be remembered, such bad and dangerous
walking was it in the fens in those days, "a
mile as good as four." What is quite certain is
that while John Lamb was still a child his fam-
ily removed to Lincoln, with means so strait-
ened that he was sent to service in London.
Whether his father were dead, or, sadder still,
in a lunatic asylum — since we are told with
emphasis that the hereditary seeds of madness
in the Lamb family came from the father's
side, — it is beyond doubt that misfortune of
some kind must have been the cause of the

4 MARY LAMB.

child's being sent thus prematurely to earn his
bread in service. His subsequently becoming
a barrister's clerk seems to indicate that his
early nurture and education had been of a
gentler kind than this rough thrusting out into
the world of a mere child would otherwise
imply : in confirmation of which it is to be
noted that afterwards, in the dark crisis of
family misfortune, "an old gentlewoman of for-
tune" appears on the scene as a relative.

In spite of early struggles John Lamb grew up

A merry, cheerful man. A merrier man,
A man more apt to frame matter for mirth,
Mad jokes and antics for a Christmas-eve,
Making life social and the laggard time
To move on nimbly, never yet did cheer
The little circle of domestic friends.

Inflexibly honest and upright, too, with a dash
of chivalry in his nature. Who is not familiar
with his portrait as '' Lovel " in The Benchers
of the Inner Temple? Elizabeth, his wife, a
native of Ware, whose maiden name was Field,
was many years younger than himself. She
was a handsome, dignified-looking woman ; like
her husband, fond of pleasure ; a good and affec-
tionate mother, also, in the main, yet lacking
insight into the characters of her children —
into Mary's, at any rate, towards whom she
never manifested that maternal tenderness

PARENTAGE. 5

which makes the heart wise whatever the head
may be. Mary, a shy, sensitive, nervous, affec-
tionate child, who early showed signs of a lia-
bility to brain disorder, above all things needed
tender and judicious care. '' Her mother loved
her," wrote Charles, in after years, "as she
loved us all, with a mother's love ; but in
opinion, in feeling and sentiment and disposition,
bore so distant a resemblance to her daughter
that she never understood her right — never
could believe how much she loved her, — but
met her caresses, her protestations of filial
affection, too frequently with coldness and
repulse. Still she was a good mother. God
forbid I should think of her but most respect-
fully, most affectionately. Yet she would always
love my brother above Mary, who was not
worthy of one-tenth of that affection which
Mary had a right to claim."

John, the eldest, a handsome, lively, active
boy, was just what his good looks and his being
the favorite were likely to make of a not very
happily endowed nature. ''Dear, little, selfish,
craving John " he was in childhood, -and dear,
big, selfish John he remained in manhood ;
treated with tender indulgence by his brother
and sister, who cheerfully exonerated him from
taking up any share of the burthen of sorrow
and privation which became the portion of his

6 MARY LAMB.

family by the time he was grown up and
prosperously afloat.

A maiden aunt, a worthy but uncanny old
soul, whose odd, silent ways and odder witch-
like mutterings and mumblings, coupled with a
wild look in her eyes as she peered out from
under her spectacles, made her an object of
dread rather than love to Mary, as afterwards
to Charles, in whom she garnered up her heart,
completed the family group, but did not add to
its harmony, for she and her sister-in-law ill
agreed. They were, in "their different ways,"
wrote Mary, looking back on childhood from
middle-life, " the best creatures in the world ;
but they set out wrong at first. They made
each other miserable for full twenty years of
their lives. My mother was a perfect gentle-
woman ; my aunty as unlike a gentlewoman as
you can possibly imagine a good old woman to
be ; so that my dear mother (who, though you
do not know it, is always in my poor head and
heart) used to distress and weary her with
incessant and unceasing attention and polite-
ness to gain her affection. The old woman
could not return this in kind and did not know
what to make of it — thought it all deceit, and
used to hate my mother with a bitter hatred,
which, of course, was soon returned with inter-
est. A little frankness and looking into each

CHILDHOOD. y

other's characters at first would have spared
all this, and they would have lived as they died,
fond of each other for the last ten years of their
lives. XVhen we grew up and harmonized them
a little they sincerely loved each other."

In these early days Mary's was a comfortable
though a very modest home ; a place of "snug
fire-sides, the low-built roof, parlors ten feet by
ten, frugal boards, and all the homeliness of
home ; " a wholesome soil to be planted in,
which permitted no helplessness in the practi-
cal details of domestic life ; above poverty in
the actual though not in the conventional sense
of the word. Such book-learning as fell to her
lot was obtained at a day-school in Fetter Lane,
Holborn, where, notwithstanding the inscription
over the door, *' Mr. William Bird, Teacher of
Mathematics and Languages," reading in the
mother-tongue, writing and " ciphering" were
all that was learned. The school-room looked
into a dingy, discolored garden, in the passage
leading from Fetter Lane into Bartlett's Build-
ings ; and there boys were taught in the morn-
ing and their sisters in the afternoon by "a
gentle usher" named Starkey, whose subsequent
misfortunes have rescued him and Mary's school-
days from oblivion. For, having in his old age
drifted into an almshouse at Newcastle, the tale
of his wanderings and his woes found its way

8 MARY LAMB.

into print and finally into Hone's Every Day
Booky where, meeting the eyes of Charles and
Mary Lamb, it awakened in both old memories
which took shape in the sketch called Captain
Starkey.

" Poor Starkey, when young, had that peculiar
stamp of old-fashionedness in his face which
makes it impossible for a beholder to predict
any particular age in the object : you can scarce
make a guess between seventeen and seven-
and-thirty. This antique cast always seems to
promise ill luck and penury. Yet it seems he
was not always the abject thing he came to.
My sister, who well remembers him, can hardly
forgive Mr. Thomas Ranson for making an
etching so unlike her idea of him when he was
at Mr. Bird's school. Old age and poverty, a
life-long poverty, she thinks, could at no time
have effaced the marks of native gentility which
were once so visible in a face otherwise strik-
ingly ugly, thin and careworn. From her rec-
ollections of him, she thinks he would have
wanted bread before he would have begged or
borrowed a halfpenny. ' If any of the girls,'
she says, * who were my school-fellows should
be reading through their aged spectacles tidings
from the dead of their youthful friend Starkey,
they will feel a pang as I do at having teased
his gentle spirit.'

SCHOOL-DAYS. 9

''They were big girls, it seems, too old to
attend his instructions with the silence neces-
sary ; and, however old age and a long state of
beggary seems to have reduced his writing fac-
ulties to a state of imbecility, in those days his
language occasionally rose to the bold and fig-
urative, for, when he was in despair to stop
their chattering, his ordinary phrase was,
' Ladies, if you will not hold your peace, not all
the powers in heaven can make you.' Once he
was missing for a day or two ; he had run away.
A little, old, unhappy-looking man brought him
back — it was his father, and he did no business
in the school that day, but sat moping in a corner
with his hands before his face ; the girls, his
tormentors, in pity for his case, for the rest of
the day forbore to annoy him.

'' ' I had been there but a few months,' adds
she, ' when Starkey, wiio was the chief instruct-
or of us girls, communicated to us a profound
secret, that the tragedy of Cato was shortly to
be acted by the elder boys, and that we were to
be invited to the representation.' That Starkey
lent a helping hand in fashioning the actors, she
remembers ; and, but for his unfortunate person,
he might have had some distinguished part in
the scene to enact. As it was, he had the ardu-
ous task of prompter assigned to him, and his
feeble voice was heard clear and distinct repeat-

10 MARY LAMB.

ing the text during the whole performance.
She describes her recollection of the cast of
characters even now with a relish : Martia, by
the handsome Edgar Hickman, who afterwards
went to Africa, and of whom she never after-
wards heard tidings ; Lucia, by Master Walker,
whose sister was her particular friend ; Cato, by
John Hunter, a masterly declaimer, but a plain
boy, and shorter by a head than his two sons in
the scene, etc. In conclusion, Starkey appears
to have been one of those mild spirits which,
not originally deficient in understanding, are
crushed by penury into dejection and feebleness.
He might have proved a useful adjunct, if not
an ornament to society, if fortune had taken
him into a very little fostering ; but wanting
that, he became a captain — a by-word - — and
lived and died a broken bulrush."

But the chief and best part of Mary's educa-
tion was due to the fact that her fathers
employer, Mr. Salt, had a good library, '^ into
which she was tumbled early" and suffered to
" browse there without much selection or prohi-
bition." A little selection, however, would have
made the pasturage all the wholsomer to a child
of Mary's sensitive, brooding nature ; for the
witch stories and cruel tales' of the sufferings of
the martyrs on which she pored all alone, as her
brother did after her, wrought upon her tender

VISITS TO THE COUNTRY. II

brain and lent their baleful aid to nourish those
seeds of madness which she inherited, as may
be inferred from a subsequent adventure.

When tripping to and from school or playing
in the Temple Gardens Mary must sometimes,
though we have no record of the fact, have set
eyes on Oliver Goldsmith : for the first ten
years of her life were the last of his, spent,
though with frequent sojourns elsewhere, in the
Temple. And in the Temple churchyard he
w^as buried, just ten months before the birth of
Charles.

The London born and bred child had occa-
sional tastes of joyous, healthful life in the
country, for her mother had hospitable relatives
in her native county, pleasant Hertfordshire.
Specially was there a great-aunt married to a
substantial yeoman named Gladman, living at
Mackery End within a gentle walk of Wheat-
hampstead, the visits to whom remained in
Mary's memory as the most delightful recol-
lections of her childhood. In after-life she
embodied them, mingling fiction with fact, in a
story called Louisa Mamters, or the Farm-housey
where she tells in sweet and child-like words of
the ecstasy of a little four-year-old girl on find-
ing herself for the first time in the midst of
fields quite full of bright, shining yellow flowers,
with sheep and young lambs feeding ; of the

12 MARY LAMB,

inexhaustible interest of the farm-yard, the
thresher in the barn with his terrifying flail and
black beard, the collection of eggs and search-
ing for scarce violets ("if we could find eggs
and violets too, what happy children we were") ;
of the hay-making and the sheep-shearing, the
great wood fires and the farrn-house suppers.

This will recall to the reader Elia's Mackery
E7id ; how, forty years afterwards, brother and
sister revisited the old farm-house one day in
the midst of June, and how Bridget (so he
always called Mary in print) " remembered her
old acquaintance again ; some altered features,
of course, a little grudged at. At first, indeed,
she was ready to disbelieve for joy; but the
scene soon reconfirmed itself in her affections,
and she traversed every out-post of the old
mansion, to the wood -house, the orchard,
the place where the pigeon-house had stood
(house and birds were alike flown), with a
breathless impatience of recognition which was
more pardonable, perhaps, than decorous at the
age of fifty-odd. But Bridget in some things is
behind her years."

*' . . . The only thing left was to get into
the house, and that was a difficulty which to
me singly would have been insurmountable, for
I am terribly shy in making myself kncwn to
strangers and out - of - date kinsfolk. Love,

VISITS TO THE COUNTRY. 1 3

stronger than scruple, winged my cousin in
without me ; but she soon returned with a
creature that might have sat to a sculptor for
the image of Welcome. . . . To have seen
Bridget and her, — it was like the meeting of
the two scriptural cousins ! There was a grace
and dignity, an amplitude of form and stature,
answering to her mind in this farmer's wife,
which would have shined in a palace. ..."

To return to the days of childhood, Mary also
paid visits to her maternal grandmother Field,
housekeeper to the Plumers at their stately but
forsaken mansion of Blakesware ; but here the
pleasure was mingled with a kind of weird
solemnity. Mary has left on record her experi-
ences in a tale which forms a sort of pendant to

Blakesmoor in H shire, by Elia. Her story

is called Margaret Green, the Young Mahoinetan,
also from Mrs. Leicester's School, and, apart
from a slight framework of invention ("Mrs.
Beresford," her grandmother, being represented
as the owner instead of housekeeper of the
mansion), is minutely autobiographical. "Every
morning when she (Mrs. Beresford) saw me, she
used to nod her head very kindly and say, ' How
do you do, little Margaret } ' But I do not
recollect that she ever spoke to me during the
remainder of the day, except, indeed, after I
had read the psalms and the chapters which

14 MARY LAMB.

was my daily task ; then she used constantly to
observe that I improved in my reading, and
frequently added, *I never heard a child read so
distinctly.' When my daily portion of reading
was over I had a taste of needlework, which
generally lasted half an hour. I was not
allowed to pass more time in reading or work,
because my eyes were very weak, for which
reason I was always set to read in the large-
print family Bible. I was very fond of reading,
and when I could, unobserved, steal a few min-
utes as they- were intent on their work, I used
to delight to read in the historical part of the
Bible ; but this, because of my eyes, was a for-
bidden pleasure, and the Bible being never
removed out of the room, it was only for a
short time together that I dared softly to lift
up the leaves and peep into it. As I was per-
mitted to walk in the garden or wander about
the house whenever I pleased, I used to leave
the parlor for hours together, and make out my
own solitary amusement as well as I could. My
first visit was always to a very large hall, which,
from being paved with marble, was called the
Marble Hall. The heads of the twelve Caesars
were hung round the hall. Every day I mounted
on the chairs to look at them and to read
the inscriptions underneath, till I became per-
fectly familiar with their names and features.

BLAKESWARE. 1 5

Hogarth's prints were below the Caesars. I
was very fond of looking at them and endeavor-
ing to make out their meaning. An old broken
battledore and some shuttlecocks with most of
the feathers missing were on a marble slab
in one corner of the hall, which' constantly-
reminded me that there had once been younger
inhabitants here than the old lady and her
gray-headed servants. In another corner stood
a marble figure of a satyr ; every day I laid my
hand on his shoulder to feel how cold he was.
This hall opened into a room full of family por-
traits. They were all in dresses of former
times ; some were old men and women, and
some were children. I used to long to have a
fairy's power to call the children down from
their frames to play with me. One little girl
in particular, who hung by the side of the glass
door which opened into the garden, I often
invited to walk there with me ; but she still
kept her station, one arm round a little lamb's
neck and in her hand a large bunch of roses.
From this room I usually proceeded to the
garden. When I was weary of the garden I
wandered over the rest of the house. The best
suite of rooms I never saw by any other light
than what glimmered through the tops of the
window-shutters, which, however, served to
show the carved chimney-pieces and the curi-

1 6 MARY LAMB.

ous old ornaments about the rooms ; but the
worked furniture and carpets of wKich I had
heard such constant praises I could have but
an imperfect sight of, peeping under the covers
which were kept over them by the dim light ;
for I constantly lifted up a corner of the envious
cloth that hid these highly-praised rareties from
my view.

" The bed-rooms were also regularly explored
by me, as well to admire the antique furniture
as for the sake of contemplating the tapestry
hangings, which were full of Bible history. The
subject of the one which chiefly attracted my
attention was Hagar and her son Ishmael.
Every day I admired the beauty of the youth,
and pitied the forlorn state of him and his
mother in the wilderness. At the end of the
gallery into which these tapestry rooms opened
was one door which, having often in vain
attempted to open, I concluded to be locked ;
and finding myself shut out, I was very desirous
of seeing what it contained, and though still
foiled in the attempt, I every day endeavored to
turn the lock, which, whether by constantly
trying I loosened, being probably a very old
one, or that the door was not locked, but
fastened tight by time, I know not. To my
great joy, as I was one day trying th'=^ lock as
usual, it gave way, and I found myself in this
so long-desired room.

BLAKESWARE. 1/

" It proved to be a very large library. This
was indeed a precious discovery. I looked
round on the books with the greatest delight : I
thought I would read them every one. I now
forsook all my favorite haunts and passed all
my time here. I took down first one book, then
another. If you never spent whole mornings
alone in a large library, you cannot conceive the
pleasure of taking down books in the constant
hope of finding an entertaining book among
them ; yet after many days, meeting with noth-
ing but disappointment, it became less pleasant.
All the books within my reach were folios of
the gravest cast. I could understand very little
that I read in them, and the old dark print and
the length of the lines made my eyes ache.

" When I had almost resolved to give up the
search as fruitless, I perceived a volume lying in
an obscure corner of the room. I opened it ; it
was a charming print ; the letters were almost
as large as the type of the family Bible. In the
first page I looked into I saw the name of my
favorite Ishmael, whose face I knew so well *
from the tapestry and whose history I had often
read in the Bible. I sat myself down to read
this book with the greatest eagerness. The
title of it was Makometanism Explained. ... A
great many of the leaves were torn out, but
enough remained to make me imagine that Ish-

1 8 MARY LAMB.

mael was the true son of Abraham. I read here
that the true descendants of Abraham were
known by a Hght which streamed from the mid-
dle of their foreheads. It said that Ishmael's
father and mother first saw this light streaming
from his forehead as he was lying asleep in the
cradle. I was very sorry so many of the leaves
were torn out, for it was as entertaining as a
fairy tale. I used to read the history of Ishmael
and then go and look at him in the tapestry, and
then read his history again. When I had
almost learned the history of Ishmael by heart
I read the rest of the book, and then I came to
the history of Mahomet, who was there said to
be the last descendant of Abraham,

"If Ishmael had engaged so much of my
thoughts, how much more so must Mahomet }
His history was full of nothing but wonders
from beginning to end. The book said that
those who believed all the wonderful stories
which w.ere related of Mahomet were called
Mahometans and True Believers ; I concluded
that I must be a Mahom.etan, for I believed
every word I read.

"At length I met with something which I
also believed, though I trembled as I read it.
This was, that after we are dead v/e are to pass
over a narrow bridge which crosses a bottomless
gulf. The bridge was described to be no wider

BLAKESWARE. 19

than a silken thread, and it is said that all who
were not Mahometans would slip on one side of
this bridge and drop into the tremendous gulf
that had no bottom. I considered myself as a
Mahometan, yet I was perfectly giddy whenever
I thought of passing over this bridge. One day,
seeing the old lady totter across the room, a
sudden terror seized me, for I thought how
would she ever be able to get over the bridge t
Then, too, it was that I first recollected that my
mother would also be in imminent danger ; for
I imagined she had never heard the name of
Mahomet, because I foolishly conjectured this
book had been locked up for ages in the library
and was utterly unknown to the rest of the
world.

*'A11 my desire was now to tell them the dis-
covery I had made; for, I thought, when they
knew of the existence of Mahometanism Ex-
plained they would read it and become Mahom-
etans to insure themselves a safe passage over
the silken bridge. But it wanted more courage
than I possessed to break the matter to my in-
tended converts ; I must acknowledge .that I
had been reading without leave ; and the habit
of never speaking or being spoken to considera-
bly increased the difficulty.

*'My anxiety on this subject threw me into a
fever. I was so ill that my mother thought it

20 MARY LAMB,

necessary to sleep in the same room with me.
In the middle of the night I could not resist the
strong desire I felt to tell her what preyed so
much on my mind.

" I awoke her out of a sound sleep and begged
she would be so kind as to be a Mahometan. She
was very much alarmed, for she thought I was
delirious, which I believe I was : for I tried to
explain the reason of my request, but it was in
such an incoherent manner that she could not
at all comprehend what I was talking about.
The next day a physician was sent for, and he
discovered, by several questions that he put to
me, that I had read myself into a fever. He
gave me medicines and ordered me to be kept
very quiet, and said he hoped in a few days I
should be very well ; but as it was a new case
to him, he never having attended a little Ma-
hometan before, if any lowness continued after
he had removed the fever he would, with my
mother's permission, take me home with him to
study this extraordinary case at his leisure ; and
added that he could then hold a consultation with
his wife, who was often very useful to him in pre-
scribing remedies for the maladies of his younger
patients."

In the sequel, this sensible and kindly doctor
takes his little patient home, and restores her
by giving her child-like, wholesome pleasures

GRANDMOTHER FIELD. 21

and rational sympathy. I fear that this only
shadowed forth the wise tenderness with which
Mary Lamb would have treated such a child
rather than what befell herself ; and that with
the cruelty of ignorance Mary's mother and
grandmother suffered her young spirit to do
battle still, in silence and inward solitariness,
with the phantoms imagination conjured up in
her too-sensitive brain. " Polly, what are those
poor, crazy, moythered brains of yours thinking
always } " was worthy Mrs. Field's way of en-
deavoring to win the confidence of the thought-
ful, suffering child. The words in the story "my
mother almost wholly discontinued talking to
me," *' I scarcely ever heard a word addressed to
me from morning to night," have a ring of truth,
of bitter experience in them, which makes the
heart ache. Yet it was no result of sullenness
on either side; least of all did it breed. any ill
feeling on Mary's. . It was simple stupidity,
lack of insight or sympathy in the elders ; and
on hers was repaid by the sweetest affection,
and, in after years, by a self-sacrificing devotion
which, carried at last far beyond her strength,
led to the great calamity of her life. Grand-
mother Field was a fine old character, however,
as the reader of Elia well knows. She had

A mounting spirit, one that entertained
Scorn of base action, deed dishonorable
Or aught unseemly.

22 MARY LAMB.

Like her daughter, Mrs. Lamb, she had been
a handsome, stately woman in her prime, and
when bent with age and pain (for she suffered
with a cruel malady), cheerful patience and for-
titude gave her dignity of another and higher
kind. But, like her daughter, she seems to
have been wanting in those finer elements of
tenderness and sympathy which were of vital
consequence in the rearing up of a child smitten
like Mary with a hereditary tendency to madness.

CHAPTER II.

Birth of Charles. — Coleridge. — Domestic Toils and

leir Tragic Culminatio

to and from Coleridge.

Trials. — Their Tragic Culmination. — Letters

*&*

X 1775 -1 796. — ^t. 11-32.
On the loth of February, 1775, arrived a new
member into the household group in Crown
Office Row — Charles, the child of his father's
old age, the ''weakly but very pretty babe" who
was to prove their strong ^support. And now
Mary was no longer a lonely girl. She was just
old enough to be trusted to nurse and tend the
baby, and she became a mother to it. In after-
life she spoke of the comfort, the wholesome,
curative influence upon her young troubled
mind, which this devotion to Charles in his in-
fancy brought with it. And as he grew older
rich was her reward ; for he repaid the debt
with a love half filial, half fraternal, than which
no human tie was ever stronger or more sub-
limely adequate to the strain of a terrible emer-
gency. As his young mind unfolded he found
in her intelligence and love the same genial, fos-

24 MAJ^V LAMB.

tering influences that had cherished his feeble
frame into health and strength. It was with
his little hand in hers that he first trod the
Temple gardens, and spelled out the inscriptions
on the sun-dials and on the tomb-stones in the
old burying-ground, and wondered, finding only
lists of the virtues, " where all the naughty
people were buried?" Like Mary, his dispo-
sition was so different from that of his gay,
pleasure-loving parents that they but ill under-
stood '' and gave themselves little trouble about
him," which also tended to draw brother and
sister closer together. There are no other rec-
ords of Mary's girlhood than such as may be
gathered from the story of her brother's early
life ; of how, when he was five and she was fif-
teen, she came near to losing him from small-
pox. Aunt Hetty grieving over him, *'the only
thing in the world she loved," as she was wont
to say, with a mother's tears. And how, three
years later (in 1782), she had to give up his
daily companionship and see him, now grown a
handsome#boy with " crisply curling black hair,
clear brown complexion, aquiline, slightly Jew-
ish cast of features, winning smile, and glitter-
ing, restless eyCvS," equipped as a Christ's Hos-
pital boy, and, with Aunt Hetty, to

... peruse him round and round,
And hardly know \y\vcx in his yellow coats,
Red leathern bel|: arid gown of rysset blue.

THE LITTLE BROTHER. 25

Coleridge was already a Blue Coat boy, but
older and too high above Charles in the school
for comradeship then. To Lamb, with home
close at hand, it was a happy time ; but Coler-
idge, homeless and friendless in the great city,
had no mitigations of the rough Spartan disci-
pline which prevailed ; and the weekly whole
holidays when, turned adrift in the streets from
morn till night, he had nothing but a crust of
bread in his pockets, and no resource but to be-
guile the pangs of hunger in summer with hours
of bathing in the New River, and in winter
with furtive hanging round book-stalls, wrought
permanent harm to his fine-strung organization.
Nor did the gentleness of his disposition or the
brilliancy of his powers save him from the
birch-loving brutalities of old Boyer, who was
wont to add an extra stripe *' because he was so
ugly."

In the Lamb household the domestic outlook
grew dark as soon as Mary was grown up, for
her father's faculties and her mother's health
failed early ; and when, in his fifteenth year
Charles left Christ's Hospital, it was already
needful for him to take up the burthens of a
man on his young shoulders ; and for Mary not
only to make head against sickness, helpless-
ness, old age, with its attendant exigencies, but
to add to the now straitened means by taking
in millinery work.

26 MARY LAMB.

For eleven years, as she has told us, she
maintained herself by the needle ; from the age
of twenty-one to thirty-two, that is. It was
not in poor old Aunt Hetty's nature to be help-
ful either. ** She was from morning till night
poring over good books and devotional exer-
cises. . . . The only secular employment I
remember to have seen her engaged in was the
splitting of French beans and dropping them
into a basin of fair water," says Elia. Happily
a clerkship in the South Sea House, where his
brother already was, enabled Charles to main-
tain his parents, and a better post in the India
House was obtained two years afterwards. Nor
were there wanting snatches of pleasant holi-
day, sometimes shared by Mary. 0£ one, a
visit to the sea, there is a beautiful reminis-
cence in The Old Margate Hoy, written more
than thirty years afterwards. "It was our first
sea-side experiment," he says, *' and many cir-
cumstances combined to make it the most agree-
able holiday of my life. We had neither of us
seen the sea" (he was fifteen and Mary. twenty-
six), " and we had never been from home so
long together in company." The disappoint-
ment they both felt at the first sight of the sea
he explains with one of his subtle and profound
suggestions. " Is it not," . . . says he,
"that we had expected to behold (absurdly I

TOILS AND TRIALS. 2/

grant, but by the law of imagination inevitably)
not a definite object compassable by the eye,
but all the sea at once^ the commensurate antag-
onist of the earth ? Whereas the eye can take
in a 'slip of salt water.'" The whole passage
is one of Elia's finest.

Then Coleridge, too, who had remained two
years longer at Christ's Hospital than Lamb,
and after he went up to Cambridge in 1791,
continued to pay frequent visits to London,
spent many a glorious evening, not only those
memorable ones with Charles in the parlor of
the " Salutation and Cat," but in his home ; and
was not slow to discover Mary's fine qualities
and to take her into his brotherly heart, as a
little poem, written so early as 1794, to cheer
his friend during a serious illness of hers, testi-
fies : —

Cheerily, dear Charles !
Thou thy best friend shalt cherish many a year,
Such warm presages feel I of high hope.
For not uninterested the dear maid
I've viewed — her soul affectionate yet wise,
Her polished wit as mild as lambent glories
That play around a sainted infant's head.

The year 1795 witnessed changes for all. The
father, now wholly in his dotage, was pensioned
off by Mr. Salt, and the family had to exchange
their old home in the Temple for straitened

28 MARY LAMB.

lodgings in Little Queen street, Holborn (the
site of which and of the adjoining housei is now
occupied by Trinity Church). Coleridge, too,
had left Cambridge and was at Bristol, drawn
thither by his newly-formed friendship with
Southey, lecturing, writing, dreaming of his
ideal Pantisocracy on the banks of the Susque-
hannah, and love-making. The love-making
ended in marriage the autumn of that same
year. Meanwhile Lamb, too, was first tasting

the joys and sorrows of love. Alice W

lingers but as a shadow in the records of his
life : the passion, however, was real enough and
took deep hold of him, conspiring with the cares
and trials of home-life, unrelieved now by the
solace of Coleridge's society, to give a fatal stim-
ulus to the germs of brain-disease, which were
part of the family heritage, and for six weeks he
was in a mad -house. "In your absence," he
tells his friend afterwards, "the tide of melan-
choly rushed in and did its worst mischief by
overwhelming my reason." Who can doubt the
memory of this attack strengthened the bond of
sympathy between Mary and himself, and gave
him a fellow-feeling for her no amount of affec-
tion alone could have realized } As in her case,
too, the disordered took the form of a great
heightening and intensifying of the imaginative
faculty. " I look back on it at times," wrote he

TRAGIC CULMINATION. 29

after his recovery, '' with a gloomy kind of
envy ; for while it lasted I had many, many
hours of pure happiness. Dream not, Coleridge, '
of having tasted all the grandeur and wildness
of fancy till you have gone mad. . . The
sonnet I send you has small merit as poetry, but
you will be curious to read it when I tell you it
was written in my prison-house in one of my
lucid intervals : —

TO MY SISTER.

If from my lips some angry accents fell,

Peevish complaint, or harsh reproof unkind,

'Twas but the error of a sickly mind

And troubled thoughts, clouding the purer well

And waters clear of Reason ; and for me

Let this my verse the poor atonement be —

My verse, which thou to praise wert e'er inclined

Too highly, and with a partial eye to see

No blemish. Thou to me didst ever show

Kindest affection; and would oft-times lend

An ear to the desponding love-sick lay.

Weeping my sorrows with me, who repay

But ill the mighty debt of love I owe,

Mary, to thee, my sister and my friend.

No sooner was Charles restored to himself
than the elder brother, John, met with a serious
accident ; and though whilst in health he had
carried himself and his earnings to more com-
fortable quarters, he did not now fail to return
and be nursed with anxious solicitude by his

30 MARY LAMB,

brother and sister. This was the last ounce.
Mary, worn out with years of nightly as well as
daily attendance upon her mother, who was now
wholly deprived of the use of her limbs, and
harassed by a close application to needlework to
help her, in which she had been obliged to take
a young apprentice, was at last strained beyond
the utmost pitch of physical endurance, ''worn
down to a state of extreme nervous misery."
About the middle of September, she being then
thirty -two years old, her family observed some
symptoms of insanity in her, which had so much
increased by the 2ist that her brother early in
the morning went to Dr. Pitcairn, who, unhap-
pily, was out. On the afternoon of that day,
seized with a sudden attack of frenzy, she
snatched a knife from the table and pursued the
young apprentice round the room, when her
mother, interposing, received a fatal stab and
died instantly. Mary was totally unconscious
of what she had done ; Aunt Hetty fainted with
terror ; the father was too feeble in mind for
any but a confused and transient impression. It
was Charles alone who confronted all the anguish
and horror of the scene. With the stern brevity
of deep emotion he wrote to Coleridge five days
afterwards : —

"My poor, dear, dearest sister, in a fit of
insanity, has been the death of her own mother.

TRAGIC CULMINATION. 3 1

I was at hand only time enough to snatch the
knife out of her grasp. She is at present in a
mad-house, from whence I fear she must be
moved to a hospital. God has preserved to me
my senses ; I eat, and drink, and sleep, and have
my judgment, I believe, very sound. My poor
father was slightly wounded, and I am left to
take care of him and my aunt. Mr. Norris of
the Blue Coat School has been very kind to us,
and we have no other friend ; but,^ thank God, I
am very calm and composed, and able to do the
best that remains to do. Write as religious a
letter as possible, but no mention of what is gone
and done with. With me * the former things
are passed away,' and I have something more to
do than toJeel. God Almighty have us all in
His keeping! Mention nothing of poetry. I
have destroyed every vestige of past vanities of
that kind. . . Your own judgment will con-
vince you not to take any notice of this yet to
your dear wife. You look after your family ; I
have my reason and strength left to take care of
mine. I charge you, don't think of coming to
see me. Write. I will not see you if you come.
God Almighty love you and all of us ! "

Coleridge responded to this appeal for sym-
pathy and comfort by the following — the only
letter of his to Lamb which has been pre-
served : —

32 MARY LAMB.

"Your letter, my friend, struck me with a
mighty horror. It rushed upon me and stupefied
my feeUngs. You bid me write you a reUgious
letter ; I am not a man who would attempt to
insult the greatness of your anguish by any
other consolation. Heaven knows that in the
easiest fortunes there is much dissatisfaction
and weariness of spirit ; much that calls for the
w exercise of patience and resignation ; but in
■ storms like these, that shake the dwelling and
make the heart tremble, there is no middle way
between despair and the yielding up of the
whole spirit to the guidance of faith. And
surely it is a matter of joy that your faith in
Jesus has been preserved ; the Comforter that
should relieve you is not far from you. But as
you are a Christian, in the name of that Saviour
who was filled with bitterness and made drunken
with wormwood, I conj ure you to have recourse
in frequent prayer to ' his God and your God,'
the God of mercies and Father of all comfort.
Your poor father is, I hope, almost senseless of
the calamity ; the unconscious instrument of
Divine Providence knows it not, and your
mother is in Heaven. It is sweet to be roused
from a frightful dream by the song of birds and
the gladsome rays of the morning. Ah, how
infinitely more sweet to be awakened from the
blackness and amazement of a sudden horror by

LETTER FROM COLERIDGE, 33

the glories of God manifest, and the hallelujahs
of angels !

"As to what regards yourself, I approve alto-
gether of your abandoning what you justly call
vanities. I look upon you as a man called by
sorrow and anguish and a strange desolation of
hopes into quietness, and a soul set apart and
y made peculiar to God ; we cannot arrive at any
portion of heavenly bliss without, in some
measure, imitating Christ. And they arrive at
the largest inheritance who imitate the most
difficult parts of his character, and, bowed down
and crushed under foot, cry, in fullness of faith,
* Father, Thy will be done.'

" I wish above measure to have you for a
little while here ; no visitants shall blow on the
nakedness of your feelings ; you shall be quiet,
that your spirit may be healed. I see no possi-
ble objection, unless your father's helplessness
prevent you and unless you are necessary to
him. If this be not the case, I charge you
write me that you will come.

" I charge you, my dearest friend, not to dare
to encourage gloom or despair ; you are a tem-
porary sharer in human miseries, that you may
be an eternal partaker of the divine nature. I
charge you, if by any means it be possible,
come to me."

How the storm was weathered, with what

34 MARY LAMB.

mingled fortitude and sweetness Lamb sustained
the wrecked household and rescued his sister,
when reason returned, from the living death of
perpetual confinement in a mad-house, must be
read in the answer to Coleridge : —

** Your letter was an inestimable treasure to
me. It will be a comfort to you, I know, to
know that our prospects are somewhat brighter.
My poor, dear, dearest sister, the unhappy and
unconscious instrument of the Almighty's
judgment on our house, is restored to her
senses ; to a dreadful sense and recollection of
what has passed, awful to her mind, and im-
pressive (as it must be to the end of life), but
tempered with religious resignation and the
reasonings of a sound judgment, which in this
early stage knows »how to distinguish between
a deed committed in a transient fit of frenzy
and the terrible guilt of a mother's murder. I
have seen her. I found her this morning, calm
and serene ; far, very far from an indecent, for-
getful serenity. She has a most affectionate
and tender concern for what has happened. In-
deed, from the beginning — frightful and hope-
less as her disorder seemed — I had confidence
enough in her strength of mind and religious
principle to look forward to a time when even
she might recover tranquillity. God be praised,
Coleridge ! wonderful as it is to tell, I have

WEATHERING THE STORM. 35

never once been otherwise than collected and
calm ; even on the dreadful day, and in the
midst of the terrible scene, I preserved a tran-
quillity which bystanders may have construed
into indifference ; a tranquillity not of despair.
Is it folly or sin in me to say that it was a re-
ligious principle that most supported me ? I
allow much to other favorable circumstances.
I felt that I had something else to do than to
regret. On that first evening my aunt was
lying insensible — to all appearance like one
dying ; my father, with his poor forehead plas •
tered over from a wound he had received from
a daughter dearly loved by him and who loved
him no less dearly ; my mother a dead and mur-
dered corpse in the next room ; yet I was won-
derfully supported. I closed not my eyes in
sleep that night, but lay without terrors and
without despair. I have lost no sleep since.
I had been long used not to rest in things of
sense ; had endeavored after a comprehension
of mind unsatisfied with the ' ignorant present
time,' and this kept me up. I had the whole
weight of the family thrown on me ; for my
brother, little disposed (I speak not without
tenderness for him) at any time to take care of
old age and infirmities, had now, with his bad
leg, an exemption from such duties, and I was
left alone.

36 MARY LAMB.-

"One little incident may serve to make you
understand my way of managing my mind.
Within a day or two after the fatal one we
dressed for dinner a tongue, which we had had
salted for some weeks in the house. As I
sat down a feeling like remorse struck me ; this
tongue poor Mary got for me, and can I partake
of it now when she is far away 1 A thought oc-
curred and relieved me ; if I give in to this way
of feeling, there is not a chair, a room, an ob-
ject in our rooms, that will not awaken the
keenest griefs. I must rise above such weak-
nesses. I hope this was not want of true feel-
ing. I did not let this carry me, though, too
far. On the very second day (I date from the
day of horrors), as is usual in such cases, there
were a matter of twenty people, I do think, sup-
ping in our room ; they prevailed on me to eat
with them (for to eat I never refused). They
were all making merry in the room ! Som.e had
come from friendship, some from busy curiosity
and some from interest. I was going to partake
with them, when my recollection came that my
poor dead mother was lying in the next room —
the very next room ; a mother who, through
life, wished nothing but her children's welfare.
Indignation, the rage of grief, something like
remorse, rushed upon my mind. In :.n agony
of emotion I found my way mechanically to the

WEATHERING THE STORM. 37

adjoining room and fell on my knees by the
side of her coffin, asking forgiveness of Heaven
and sometimes of her for forgetting her so
soon. Tranquillity returned and it was the only
violent emotion that mastered ine. I think it
did me good.

' '^ I mention these things because I hate con-
cealment and love to give a faithful journal of
what passes within me. Our friends have been
very good. Sam Le Grice [an old schoolfellow
well known to the readers of Lamb], who was
then in town, was with me the first three or
four days and was as a brother to me ; gave up
every hour of his time, to the very hurting of
his health and spirits, in constant attendance
and humoring my poor father ; talked with him,
read to him, played at cribbage with him, (for
so short is the old man's recollection that he
was playing at cards as though nothing had hap-
pened while the coroner's inquest was sitting over
the way ! ) Samuel wept tenderly when he went
away, for his mother wrote him a very severe
letter on his loitering so long in town, and he
was forced to go. Mr. Norris, of Christ's Hos-
pital, has been as a father to me ; Mrs. Norris as
a mother ; though we had few claims on them.
A gentleman, brother to my godmother, from
whom we never had right or reason to expect
any such assistance, sent my father twenty

38 MARY LAMB.

pounds ; and to crown all these God's blessings
to our family at such a time, an old lady, a
cousin of my father and aunt, a gentlewoman of
fortune, is to take my aunt and make her com-
fortable for the short remainder of her days.
My aunt is recovered and as well as ever, and
highly pleased at the thought of going, and has
generously given up the interest of her little
money (which was formerly paid my father for
her board) wholly and solely to my sister's use.
Reckoning this we have. Daddy and I, for our
two selves and an old maid-servant to look after
him when I am out, which will be necessary,
£170 (or ;£i8o rather) a year, out of which we
can spare ;^50 or £60 at least, for Mary while
she stays at Islington, where she must and
shall stay during her father's life, for his and
her comfort. I know John will make speeches
about it, but she shall not go into a hospital.
The good lady of the mad-house, and her
daughter, an elegant, sweet-behaved young
lady, love her and are taken with her amazing-
ly ; and I know from her own mouth she loves
them and longs to be with them as much. Poor
thing, they say she was but the other morning
saying she knew she must go to Bethlem for
life ; that one of her brothers would have it so,
but the other would wish it not, but be obliged
to go with the stream ; that she had often, as

WEATHERING THE STORM. 39

she passed Bethlem, thought it likely, * Here it
may be my fate to end my days/ conscious
of a certain tlightiness in her poor head often-
times, and mindful of more than one severe ill-
ness of that nature before. A legacy of ;^ioo
which my father will have at Christmas, and
this ;^20 I mentioned before, with what is in
the house, will much more than set us clear. If
my father, an old servant-maid and I can.'t live
and live comfortably on ;£ 130 or ;^ 120 a year, we
ought to burn by slow fires, and I almost would
that Mary might not go into a hospital. Let
me not leave one unfavorable impression on
your mind respecting my brother. Since this
has happened he has been very kind and
brotherly ; but I fear for his mind : he has
taken his ease in the world and is not fit to
struggle with difficulties, nor has he much ac-
customed himself to throw himself into their
way, and I know his language is already,
^ Charles, you must take care of yourself ; you
must not abridge yourself of a single pleasure
you have been used to,' etc., etc., and in that
style of talking. But you, a necessarian, can
respect a difference of mind and love what is
amiable in a character not perfect. He has
been very good, but I fear for his mind. Thank
God, I can unconnect myself with him, and shall
manage all my father's moneys in future myself

40 MARY LAMB.

if I take charge of Daddy, which poor John has
not even hinted a wish at any future time even
to share with me. The lady at this mad-house
assures me that I may dismiss immediately both
doctor and apothecary, retaining occasionally a
composing draught or so for a while ; and there
is a less expensive establishment in her house,
where she will not only have a room but a nurse
to herself for £^o or guineas a year — the out-
side would be £60. . You know by economy
how much more even I shall be able to spare
for her comforts. She will, I fancy, if she
stays, make one of the family rather than one
of the patients ; and the old and young ladies I
like exceedingly and she loves them dearly ; and
they, as the saying is, take to her very extraor-
dinarily, if it is extraordinary that people who
see my sister should love her. Of all the peo-
ple I ever saw in the world, my poor sister was
most and thoroughly devoid of the least tincture
of selfishness. I will enlarge upon her qualities,
poor, dear, dearest soul, in a future letter for my
own comfort, for I understand her thoroughly ;
and, if I mistake not, in the most trying situa-
tion that a human being can be found in, she
will be found (I speak not with sufficient humil-
ity, I fear) ; but humanly and foolishly speaking,
she will be found, I trust, uniformly g^eat and
amiable."

WEATHERING THE STORM. 4 1

The depth and tenderness of Mary's but half-
requited love for her mother, and the long
years of daily and nightly devotion to her which
had borne witness to it and been the immediate
cause of the catastrophe, took the sting out of
her grief and gave her an unfaltering sense of
innocence. They even shed round her a peace-
ful atmosphere which veiled from her mind's
eye the dread scene in all its naked horror, as
it would seem from Lamb's next letter : —

"Mary continues serene and cheerful. I
have not by me a little letter she wrote to me ;
for though I see her almost every day, yet we
delight to write to one another, for we can
see each other but in company with some of
the people of the house. I have not the letter
by me, but will quote from memory what she
wrote in it : 'I have no bad, terrifying dreams.
At midnight, when I happen to awake, the
nurse sleeping by the side of me, with the noise
of the poor mad people around me, I have no
fear. The spirit of my mother seems to descend
and smile upon me and bid me live to enjoy the
life and reason which the Almighty has given
me. I shall see her again in Heaven; she will
then understand me better. My grandmother,
too, will understand me better, and will then say
no more, as she used to do, 'Polly, what are

42 MARY LAMB.

those poor, crazy, moythered brains of yours
thinking of always ? '

And again, in another of her Uttle letters,
not itself preserved, but which Charles trans-
lated "almost literally," he tells us, into verse,
she said : —

Thou and I, dear friend,
With filial recognition sweet, shall know
One day the face of our dear mother in Heaven ;
And her remembered looks of love shall greet
With answering looks of love, her placid smiles
Meet with a^mile as placid, and her hand
With drops of fondness wet, nor fear repulse.

And after speaking, in words already quoted, of
how his mother "had never understood Mary
right," Lamb continues: —

" Every act of duty and of love she could pay,
every kindness (and I speak true when I say to
the hurting of her health, and most probably in
a great part to the derangement of her senses),
through a long course of infirmities and sick-
ness, she could show her, she ever did." " I
will some day, as I promised, enlarge to you
upon my sister's excellences ; 'twill seem like
exaggeration, but I will do it."

Although Mary's recovery had been rapid, to
be permitted to return home was, for the present,
out of the question ; so, cheered by constant

WEATHERING THE STORM. 43

intercourse with Charles, she set herself, with
characteristic sweetness, to make the best of
life in a private lunatic asylum. '' I have satis-
faction," Charles tells his unfailing sympathizer,
Coleridge, *' in being able to bid you rejoice
with me in my sister's continued reason and
composedness of mind. Let us both be thank-
ful for it. I continue to visit her very fre-
quently, and the people of the house are vastly
indulgent to her. She is likely to be as com-
fortably situated in all respects as those who
pay twice or thrice the sum. They love her,
and she loves them and makes herself very
useful to them. Benevolence sets out on her
journey with a good heart and puts a good face
on it, but is apt to limp and grow feeble unless
she calls in the aid of self-interest by way of
crutch. In Mary's case, as far as respects those
she is with, 'tis well that these principles are so
likely to cooperate. I am rather at a loss some-
times for books for her ; our reading is somewhat
confined and we have nearly exhausted our Lon-
don library. She has her hands too full of work to
read much, but a little she must read, for read-
ing was her daily bread."

So wore away the remaining months of this
dark year. Perhaps they were loneliest and
saddest for Charles. There was no one now to

44 MARY LAMB.

share with him the care of his old father ; and
second childhood draws unsparingly on the debt
of filial affection and gratitude. Cheeringly and
ungrudgingly did he pay it. His chief solace
was the correspondence with Coleridge ; and as
his spirits recovered their tone, the mutual dis-
cussion of the ^poema which the two friends
were about to publish, conjointly with some of
Charles Lloyd's, was resumed. The little vol-
ume was to be issued by Cottle, of Bristol, early
in the coming year, 1 797 ; and Lamb was desir-
ous to seize the occasion of giving his sister an
unlooked-for pleasure and of consecrating his
verses by a renouncement and a dedication.

"I have a dedication in my head," he writes,
"for my few things, which I want to know if
you approve of and can insert. I mean to in-
scribe them to my sister. It will be unexpected
and it will give her pleasure ; or do you think it
will look whimsical at all.-* As I have not
spoken to her about it I can easily reject the
idea. But there is a monotony in the affections
which people living together, or, as we do now,
very frequently seeing each other, are apt to get
into; a sort of indifference in the expression of
kindness for each other, which demands that we
should sometimes call to our aid the trickery of
surprise. The title-page to stand thus : —

A DEDICATION. 45

POEMS

BY

CHARLES LAMB, OF THE INDIA HOUSE.
Motto: —

This beauty, in the blossom of my youth,
When my first fire knew no adulterate incense,
Nor I no way to flatter biit my fondness,
In the best language my true tongue could tell me,
And all the broken sighs my sick heart lend me,
I sued and served. Long did I love this lady.

— Mas singer.

The Dedication : —

THE FEW FOLLOWING POEMS,

CREATURES OF THE FANCY AND THE FEELING,

IN life's MORE VACANT HOURS,

PRODUCED, FOR THE MOST PART, BY

LOVE IN IDLENESS,

ARE,

WITH ALL A brother's FONDNESS,

INSCRIBED TO t

MARY ANNE LAMB,

THE author's best FRIEND AND SISTER.

" This is the pomp and paraphernalia of part-
ing, v^ith which I take my leave of a passion
which has reigned so royally, so long, within
me. Thus, with its trappings of laureateship, I
fling it off, pleased and satisfied with myself
that the weakness troubles me no longer. I am
wedded, Coleridge, to the fortunes of my sister
and my poor old father. Oh, my friend ! I think

46 MARY LAMB.

sometimes, could I recall the days that are past,
which among them should I choose ? Not
those merrier days, not the pleasant days of
hope, not those wanderings with a fair-haired
maid which I have so often and so feelingly re-
gretted, but the days, Coleridge, of a mother s
fondness for her school-boy. What would I give
to call her back to earth for 07ie day ! — on my
knees to ask her pardon for all those little as-
perities of temper which, from time to time,
have given her gentle spirit pain ! and the day,
my friend, I trust will come. There will be

* time enough ' for kind offices of love, if
Heaven's ' eternal year ' be ours. Hereafter
her meek spirit shall not reproach me. Oh !
my friend, cultivate the filial feelings ! and let
no man think himself released from the kind

* charities' of relationship : these shall give him
peace at last ; these are the best foundation for
every species of benevolence. I rejoice to hear
by certain channels that you, my friend, are
reconciled with all your relations. 'Tis the
most kindly and natural species of love, and
we have all the associated train of early feelings
to secure its strength and perpetuity. "

CHAPTER III.

Death of- Aunt Hetty. — Mary removed from the
Asylum. — Charles Lloyd. — A Visit to Nether
Stowey, and Introduction to Wordsworth and his
Sister. — Anniversary of the Mother's Death. —
Mary ill again. — Estrangement between Lamb and
Coleridge. — Speedy Reconcilement.

i797-i8oi. — ^t. 33-37.

Aunt Hetty did not find her expectations of
a comfortable home realized under the roof of
the gentlewoman, who proved herself a typical
rich relation, and wrote to Charles at the begin-
ning of the new year that she found her aged
cousin indolent and mulish, "and that her at-
tachment to us " (he is telling Coleridge the
tale, to whom he could unburthen his heart on
all subjects, sure of sympathy) "is so strong
that she can never be happy apart. The lady
with delicate irony remarks that if I am not a
hypocrite I shall rejoice to receive her again;
and that it will be a means of making me more
fond of home to have so dear a friend to come
home to ! The fact is, she is jealous of my
aunt's bestowing any kind recollections on us

48 MARY LAMB.

while she enjoys the patronage of her roof.
She says she finds it inconsistent with her own
' ease and tranquillity ' to keep her any longer ;
and, in fine, summons me to fetch her home.
Now, much as I should rejoice to transplant the
poor old creature from the chilling air of such
patronage, yet I know how straitened we are
already, how unable already to answer any de-
mand which sickness or any extraordinary ex-
pense may make. I know this ; and all unused
as I am to struggle with jDerplexities, I am
somewhat nonplussed, to say no worse."

Hetty Lamb found a refuge and a welcome
in the old humble home again. But she
returned only to die ; and Mary was not there
to nurse her. She was still in the asylum at'
Islington, and was indeed herself at this time
recovering from an attack of scarlet fever, or
something akin to it.

Early in January, 1797, Lamb wrote to Col-
eridge : — " You and Sara are very good to think
so kindly and favorably of poor Mary. I would
to God all did so too. But I very much fear
she must not think of coming home in my
father's lifetime. It is very hard upon her, but
our circumstances are peculiar, and we must
submit to them. God be praised she is so well
as she is. She bears her situation as one who
has no right to complain. My poor old aunt,

DEATH OF AUNT HETTY. 49

whom you have seen, the kindest, goodest creat-
ure to me when I was at school, who used to
toddle there to bring me good things, when I,
school-boy like, only despised her for it, and
used to be ashamed to see her come and sit her-
self down on the old coal-hole steps as you went
into the old Grammar School, and open her
apron and bring out her basin with some nice
thing she had caused to be saved for me, — the
good old creature is now lying on her death-
bed. I cannot bear to think on her deplorable
state. To the shock she received on that our
evil day, from which she never completely
recovered, I impute her illness. She says, poor
thing, she is glad she is come home to die with
me ; I was always her favorite."

She lingered a month, and then went to
occupy

" . . . the same grave-bed
Where the dead mother lies.
Oh, my dear mother ! oh, thou dear dead saint !
Where's now that placid face, where oft hath sat
A mother's smile to think her son should thrive
In this bad world when she was dead and gone ?
And where a tear hath sat (take shame, O son !)
When that same child hath proved himself unkind.
One parent yet is left — a wretched thing,
A sad survivor of his buried wife,
A palsy-smitten, childish, old, old man,
A semblance most forlorn of what he was."

so MA/^V LAMB,

" I Qwn I am thankful that the good creature
has ended her days of suffering and infirmity,"
says Lamb to Coleridge. '' Good God ! who
could have foreseen all this but four months
back ! I had reckoned, in particular, on my
aunt's living many years ; she was a very hearty
old woman. . . . But she was a mere skele-
ton before she died ; looked more like a corpse
that had lain weeks in the grave than one fresh
dead."

" I thank you, from my heart I thank you,"
Charles again wrote to Coleridge, ^'for your
solicitude about my sister. She is quite well,
but must not, I fear, come to live with us yet a
good while. In the first place, because it would
hurt her and hurt my father for them to be to-
gether ; secondly, from a regard to the world's
good report, for I fear tongues will be busy when-
ever that event takes place. Some have hinted,
one man has pressed it on me, that she
should be in perpetual confinement. What she
hath done to deserve, or the necessity of such a
hardship, I see not ; do you } "

At length Lamb determined to grapple, on
Mary's behalf, with the difficulties and embar-
rassments of the situation. '' Painful doubts
were suggested," says Talfourd, " by the authori-
ties of the parish where the terrible occurrence
happened, whether they were not bound to

MARY LEAVES THE ASYLUM. 5 1

institute proceedings which must have placed
her for life at the disposition of the Crown,
especially as no medical assurance could be
given against the probable recurrence of dan-
gerous frenzy. But Charles came to her deliv-
erance ; he satisfied all the parties who had
power to oppose her release, by his solemn
engagement that he would take her under his
care for life ; and he kept his word. Whether
any communication with the Home Secretary
occurred before her release, I have been unable
to ascertain. It was the impression of Mr.
Lloyd, from whom my own knowledge of the
circumstances, which the letters did not con-
tain, was derived, that a communication took
place, on which a similar pledge was given. At
all events the result was that she left the asy-
lum and took up her abode," not with her
brother yet, but in lodgings near him and her
father.

He writes to Coleridge, April 7, 1797 : " Lloyd
may have told you about my sister. ... If not,
I have taken her out of her confinement, and
taken a room for her at Hackney, and spend my
Sundays, holidays, etc., with her. She boards
herself. In a little half-year's illness and in such
an illness, of such a nature and of such conse-
quences, to get her out into the world again,
with a prospect of her never being so ill again

52 MA/^V LAMB.

— this is to be ranked not among the common
blessings of Providence. May that merciful
God make tender my heart and make me as
thankful as, in my distress, I was earnest in my
prayers. Congratulate me on an ever-present
and never-alienable friend like her, and do, do
insert, if you have not lost, my dedication [to
Mary]. It will have lost half its value by com-
ing so late." And of another sonnet to her,
which he desires to have inserted, he says : " I
wish to accumulate perpetuating tokens of my
affection to poor Mary."

Two events which brightened this sad year
must not be passed over, though Mary, the
sharer of all her brother's joys and sorrows,
had but an indirect participation in them. Just
when he was most lonely and desolate at the
close of the fatal year he had written to Coler-
idge : '' I can only converse with you by letter
and with the dead in their books. My sister,
indeed, is all I can wish in a companion ; but
our spirits are alike poorly, our reading and
knowledge from the self -same sources, our com-
munication with the scenes of the world alike
narrow. Never having kept separate company
or any 'company' /^^^//2^r — never having read
separate books and few books together, what
knowledge have we to convey to each other .'' In
our little range of duties and connections how

CHARLES LLOYD. 53

few sentiments can take place without friends,
with few books, with a taste for rehgion rather
than a strong rehgious habit ! We need some
support, some leading-strings to cheer and direct
us. You talk very wisely, and be not sparing of
your advice ; continue to remember us and to
show us you do remember ; we will take as lively
an interest in what concerns you and yours. All
I can add to your happiness will be sympathy;
you can add to mine more ; you can teach me
wisdom,"

Quite suddenly, at the beginning of the new
year, there came to break this solitude Charles
Lloyd, whose poems were to company Lamb's
own and Coleridge's in the forthcoming volume :
a young man of Quaker family who was living
in close fellowship with that group of poets down
in Somersetshire, towards whom Lamb's eyes
and heart were wistfully turned, as afterwards
were to be those of all lovers of literature.
How deeply he was moved by this spontaneous
seeking for his friendship on Lloyd's part, let a
few lines from one of those early poems which,
in their earnest simplicity and sincerity, are
precious autobiographic fragments, tell : —

Alone, obscure, without a friend,

A cheerless, solitary thing,

Why seeks my Lloyd the stranger out ?

What offering can the stranger bring

54 MARY LAMB.

Of social scenes, home-bred delights,

That him in aught compensate may

For Stowey's pleasant winter nights,

For loves and friendships far away ?
* * * * * *

For this a gleam of random joy

Hath flush'd my unaccustom'd cheek.

And with an o'ercharged, bursting heart

I feel the thanks I cannot speak.

O sweet ate all the Muses' lays.

And sweet the charm of matin bird —

'Twas long since these estranged ears

The sweeter voice of friend had heard.

The next was a yet brighter gleam — a fort-
night with Coleridge at Nether Stowey and an
introduction to Wordsworth and his sister Dor-
othy, forerunner of a life-long friendship, in
which Mary was soon to share. The visit took
place in the July of this same year, 1797. The
prospect of it had dangled tantalizingly before
Charles' eyes for a year or more ; and nOw at
last his chiefs at the India House were propi-
tious, and he wrote : '* May I, can I, shall I come
so soon .-^ . . . I long, I yearn, with all
the longings of a child do I desire to see you,
to come among you, to see the young philoso-
pher [Hartley, the poet's first child], to thank
Sara for her last year's invitation in person, to
read your tragedy, to read over together our
little book, to breathe fresh air, to revive in me
vivid images of ' salutation scenery. ' There is

THE GROUP A T. NETHER STO WE Y. 55

a sort of sacrilege in my letting such ideas slip
out of my mind and memory. . . . Here
I will leave off, for I dislike to fill up this paper
(which involves a question so connected with
my heart and soul) with meaner matter, or sub-
jects to me less interesting. I can talk as I
can think — nothing else."

Seldom has fate been kind enough to bring
together, in those years of early manhood when
friendships strike their deepest roots, just the
very men who could give the best help, the
warmest encouragement to each other's genius,
whilst they were girding themselves for that
warfare with the ignorance and dullness of the
public which every original man has to wage
for a longer or shorter time. Wordsworth was
twenty - seven, Coleridge twenty -five. Lamb
twenty-two. For Wordsworth was to come the
longest, stiff est battle — fought, however, from
the vantage ground of pecuniary independence,
thanks to his simple, frugal habits and to a few
strokes of good fortune. His aspect in age is
familiar to the readers of this generation, but
less so the Wordsworth of the days when the
Lyrical Ballads were just taking final shape.
There was already a severe, worn pressure of
thought about the temples of his high yet some-
what narrow forehead, and ** his eyes were fires,
half smouldering, half burning, inspired, super-

56 MARY LAMB.

natural, with a fixed acrid gaze, "as if he saw
something in objects more than the outward
appearance. " His cheeks were furrowed by-
strong purpose and feeUng, and there was a
convulsive inclination to laughter about the
mouth, a good deal at variance with the solemn,
stately expression of the rest of his face."
Dressed in a brown fustian jacket and striped
pantaloons, adds Hazlitt, who first saw him a
few months later, he had something of a roll
and lounge in his gait not unlike his own Peter
Bell. He talked freely and naturally, with a
mixture of clear, gushing accents in his voice, a
deep, guttural intonation and a strong tincture
of the northern burr, and when he recited one
of his poems his voice lingered on the ear '' like
the roll of spent thunder. "

But who could dazzle and win like Coleridge }
Who could travel so far and wide through all
the realms of thought and imagination, and pour
out the riches he brought back in such free, full,
melodious speech, with that spontaneous '' utter-
ancy of heart and soul" which was his unique
gift, in a voice whose tones were so sweet, ear
and soul were alike ravished .<* For him the
fight was not so much with the public, which,
Orpheus that he was, he could so easily have
led captive, as with the flesh — weak health, a
nerveless languor, a feeble will that never could

THE GRO UP AT NE THER STO WE Y. S7

combine and" concentrate his forces for any sus-
tained or methodical effort. Dorothy Words-
worth has described him as he looked in these
days : *'At first I thought him very plain — that
is, for about three minutes. He is pale, thin,
has a v^ride mouth, thick lips, and not very good
teeth, longish, loose-growing, half -curling, rough,
black hair (in both these respects a contrast to
Wordsworth, who had in his youth beautiful
teeth and light brown hair) ; but if you hear
him speak for five minutes you think no more
of them. His eye is large and full and not very
dark, but gray ; such an eye as would receive
from a heavy soul the dullest expression ; but it
speaks every emotion of his animated mind; it
has more of the 'poet's eye in a fine frenzy roll-
ing' than I ever witnessed. He has fine dark
eyebrows and an overhanging forehead." This
was the very year that produced The Ancient
Mariner^ the first part of Christabel, and Kubla
Khan.

To Charles Lamb the change from his re-
stricted, overshadowed life in London — all day
at a clerk's desk and in the evening a return to
the Pentonville lodging, with no other inmate
than his poor old father, Sundays and holidays
only spent with his sister, — to such companion-
ship amid such scenes, almost dazed him, like
stepping from a darkened room into the bril-

58 MARY LAMB.

liant sunshine. Before he went he had written :
" I see nobody. I sit and read, or walk alone and
hear nothing. I am quite lost to conversation
from disuse ; and out of the sphere of my little
family (who, I am thankful, are dearer and dear-
er to me every day), I see no face that brightens
up at my approach. My friends are at a distance.
Worldly hopes are at a low ebb with me, and
unworldly thoughts are unfamiliar to me, though
I occasionally indulge in them. Still, I feel a
calm not unlike content. I fear it is sometimes
more akin to physical stupidity than to a heaven-
flowing serenity and peace. If I come to Stowey,
what conversation can I furnish to compensate
my friend for those stores of knowledge and of
fancy, those delightful treasures of wisdom,
which I know he will open to me "^ But it is
better to give than to receive ; and I was a very
patient hearer and docile scholar in our winter
evening meetings at Mr. May's, was I not, Col-
eridge.-* What I have owed to thee my heart
can ne'er forget."

Perhaps his friends, even Coleridge who knew
him so well, realized as little as himself what
was the true mental stature of the "gentle-
hearted" and "wild-eyed boy," as they called
him whose opportunities and experience, save
in the matter of strange calamity, had been so

DOROTHY WORDSWORTH. 59

narrow compared to their own. The keen edge
of his discernment as a critic, quick and pierc-
ing as those quick, piercing, restless eyes of his,
they knew and prized, yet could hardly, per-
haps, divine that there were qualities in him
which would freight his prose for a long voyage
down the stream of time. But already they
knew that within that small, spare frame, " thin
and wiry as an Arab of the desert," there beat
a heroic heart, fit to meet the stern and painful
exigencies of his lot ; and that his love for his
sister was of the same fibre as conscience — '^ a
supreme embracer of consequences."

Dorothy Wordsworth was just such a friend
and comrade to the poet as Mary was to
Charles, sharing his passionate devotion to
nature as Mary shared her brother's loves,
whether for men or books, or for the stir and
throng of life in the great city. Alike were
these two women in being, as De Quincey said
of Dorothy, "the truest, most inevitable, and,
at the same time, the quickest and readiest in
sympathy with either joy or sorrow, with laugh-
ter or with tears, with the realities of life, or
with the larger realities of the poets." But un-
like in temperament ; Dorothy ardent, fiery,
trembling with eager impetuosity that embar-
rassed her utterance ; Mary gentle, silent or

6o MARY LAMB.

deliberate in speech. In after-life there was
another sad similarity, for Dorothy's reason,
too, was in the end over-clouded. Coleridge
has described her as she then was : " She is a
woman indeed," said he, "in mind, I mean, and
in heart ; for her person is such that if you ex-
pected to see a pretty woman you would think
her ordinary ; if you expected to see an ordi-
nary woman you would think her pretty ; but her
manners are simple, ardent and impressive. In
every motion her innocent soul outbeams so
brightly that who saw her would say ' guilt was
a thing impossible with her ; ' her information
various, her eye watchful in minute observation
of nature, and her taste a perfect electrometer."
An accident had lamed Coleridge the very
morning after Lamb's arrival, so that he was
unable to share his friend's walks. He turned
his imprisonment to golden account by writing
a poem which mirrors for us, as in a still lake,
the beauty of the Quantock hills and vales
where they 'were roaming, the scenes amid
which these great and happy days of youth and
poetry and friendship were passed. It is the
very poem in the margin of which, eight and
thirty years afterwards, Coleridge on his death-
bed wrote down the sum of his love for Charles
and Mary Lamb : —

DOROTHY WORDSWORTH. 6 1

THIS LIME-TREE BOWER MY PRISON.

Well, they are gone, and here must I remain,

This lime-tree bower my prison ! I have lost

Beauties and feelings such as would have been

Most sweet to my remembrance even when age

Had dimmed mine eyes to blindness ! They, meanwhile,

Friends whom I never more may meet again

On springy heath, along the hill-top edge

Wander in gladness and wind down, perchance,

To that still roaring dell of which I told ;

The roaring dell, o'erwooded, narrow, deep,

And only speckled by the mid-day sun ;

Where its slim trunk the ash from rock to rock

Flings arching like a bridge ; — that branchless ash,

Unsunned and damp, whose few poor yellow leaves

Ne'er tremble in the gale, yet tremble still.

Fanned by the water-fall ! and there my friends

Behold the dark green file of long, lank weeds.

That all at once (a most fantastic sight !)

Still nod and drip before the dripping edge

Of the blue clay-stone.

Now my friends emerge
Beneath the wide, wide heaven — and view again
The many-steepled tract magnificent
Of hilly fields and meadows, and the sea,
With some fair bark, perhaps, whose sails light up
The slip of smooth clear blue betwixt two isles
Of purple shadow ! Yes ! they wander on
In gladness all ; but thou, methinks, most glad,
My gentle-hearted Charles ! for thou hast pined
And hungered after Nature many a year.
In the great city pent, winning thy way
With sad yet patient soul, through evil and pain
And strange calamity ! Ah ! slowly sink

62 MARY LAMB.

Behind the western ridge, thou glorious sun !
Shine in the slant beams of the sinking orb,
Ye purple heath-flowers ! richlier burn, ye clouds !
Live in the yellow light, ye distant groves !
And kindle, thou blue ocean ! So my friend,
Struck with deep joy, may stand, as I have stood,
Silent with swimming sense ; yea, gazing round
On the wide landscape, gaze till all doth seem
Less gross than bodily ; and of such hues
As veil the Almighty Spirit, when yet He makes
Spirits perceive His presence.

******

On Lamb's return he wrote in the same mod-
est vein as before : —

" I am scarcely yet so reconciled to the loss
of you or so subsided into my wonted uniformi-
ty of feeling as to sit calmly down to think of
you and write. . . . Is the patriot [Thelwall]
come .-* Are Wordsworth and his sister gone
yet } I was looking out for John Thelwall all
the way from Bridgewater, and had I niet him I
think it would have moved me almost to tears.
You will oblige me, too, by sending me my
great-coat, which I left behind in the oblivious
state the mind is thrown into at parting. Is it
not ridiculous that I sometimes envy that great-
coat lingering so cunningly behind ! At pres-
ent I have none ; so send it me by a Stowey
wagon if there be such a thing, directing it for
C. L., No. 45 Chapel street, Pentonville, near

RETl/RN HOME. 63

London. But above all, that inscription [of
Wordsworth's]. It will recall to me the tones
of all your voices, and with them many a re-
membered kindness to one who could and can
repay you all only by the silence of a grateful
heart. I could not talk much while I was with
you, but my silence was not sullenness nor, I
hope, from any bad motive ; but in truth, disuse
has made me awkward at it. I know I behaved
myself, particularly at Tom Poole's and at
Cruikshank's, most like a sulky child ; but com-
pany and converse are strange to me. It was
kind in you all to endure me as you did.

"Are you and your dear Sara — to me also
very dear because very kind — agreed yet about
the management of little Hartley 1 And how go
on the little rogue's teeth .<*"

The mention of his address in the foregoing
letter shows that Lamb and his father had al-
ready quitted Little Queen street. It is proba-
ble that they did so, indeed, immediately after
the great tragedy ; to escape not only from the
painful associations of the spot, but also from
the cruel curiosity which its terrible notoriety
must have drawn upon them. The season was
coming round which could not but renew his
and Mary's grief and anguish in the recollection
of that " day of horrors. " " Friday next, Coler-
idge, " he writes, '* is the day (September 22d)

64 ' MARY LAMB.

on which my mother died ; "and in the letter is
inclosed that beautiful and affecting poem be-
ginning : —

Alas ! how am I changed ? Where be the tears,
The sobs, and forced suspensions of the breath,
And all the dull desertions of the heart,
With which I hung o'er my dead mother's corse ?
Where be the blest subsidings of the storm
Within ? The sweet resignedness of hope
Drawn heavenward, and strength of filial love
In which I bowed me to my Father's will?

"Tf^ vfr 1^ "Tf: Tpr

Mary's was a silent grief. But those few
casual pathetic words written years afterwards
speak her life-long sorrow, — '' my dear mother,
who, though you do not know it, is always in
my poor head and heart. " She continued quiet
in her lodgings, free from relapse, till toward
the end of the year.

On the loth of December Charles wrote in
bad spirits: — "My teasing lot makes me too
confused for a clear judgment of things ; too
selfish for sympathy. . . . My sister is pretty
well, thank God. We think of you very often.
God bless you ! Continue to be my correspond-
ent, and I will strive to fancy that this world
is not 'all barrenness.' "

But by Christmas Day she was once, more in
the asylum. In sad solitude he gave utterance,
again in verse form, to his overflowing grief
and love : —

THE FIRST ANNIVERSARY, 65

1 am a widow'd thing now thou art gone !
Now thou art gone, my own famiHar friend,
Companion, sister, helpmate, counsellor!
Alas ! that honor'd mind whose sweet reproof
And meekest wisdom in times past have smooth'd
The unfilial harshness of my foolish speech,
And made me loving to my parents old.
(Why is this so, ah God ! why is this so ?)
That honor'd mind becomes a fearful blank.
Her senses lock'd up, and herself kept out
From human sight or converse, while so many
Of the foolish sort are left to roam at large.
Doing all acts of folly and sin and shame ?
Thy paths are mystery !

Yet I will not think,
Sweet friend, but we shall one day meet and live
In quietness and die so, fearing God.
Or if not^ and these false suggestions be
A fit of the weak nature, loth to part
With what it loved so long and held so dear;
If thou art to be taken and I left
(More sinning, yet unpunish'd save in thee),
It is the will of God, and we are clay
In the potter's hand ; and at the worst are made
From absolute nothing, vessels of disgrace,
Till His most righteous purpose wrought in us.
Our purified spirits find their perfect rest.

To add to these sorrows Coleridge had, for
some time, been growing negligent as a corre-
spondent. So early as April Lamb had written,
after affectionate inquiries for Hartley, " the
minute philosopher," and Hartley's mother :

66 MARY LAMB.

" Coleridge, I am not trifling, nor are these
matter-of-fact questions only. You are all very
dear and precious to me. Do what you will,
Coleridge ; you may hurt and vex me by your
silence, but you cannot estrange my heart from
you all. I cannot scatter friendships like chuck-
farthings, nor let them drop from mine hand
like hour-glass sand. I have but two or three
people in the world to whom I am more than
indifferent, and I can't afford to whistle them
off to the winds."

And again, three months after his return
from Stowey, he wrote sorrowfully, almost
plaintively, remonstrating for Lloyd's sake and
his own : —

**You use Lloyd very ill, never writing to
him. I tell you again that his is not a mind
with which you should play tricks. He de-
serves more tenderness from you. For myself,
I must spoil a little passage of Beaumont and
Fletcher's to adapt it to my feelings : —

I am prouder
That I was once your friend, tho' now forgot,
Than to have had another true to me.

If you don't write to me now, as I told Lloyd, I
shall get angry and call you hard names — ' Man-
chineel ' " (alluding to a passage in a poem of
Coleridge's, ^Y^^ere he compares a false friend to

THE FIRST ANNIVERSARY. 67

the treacherous manchineel tree, * which min-
gles its own venom with the rain and poisons
him who rests beneath its shade), ''and I don't
know what else. I wish you would send me
my great-coat. The snow and rain season is at
hand and I have but a wretched old coat, once
my father's, to keep 'em off, and that is transi-
tory.

When time drives flocks from field to fold,
When ways grow foul and blood gets cold,

I shall remember where I left my coat. Meet
emblem wilt thou be, old Winter, of a friend's
neglect — cold, cold, cold ! "

But this fresh stroke of adversity, sweeping
away the fond hope Charles had begun to cher-
ish that " Mary would never be so ill again,"
roused his friend's sometimes torpid but deep
and enduring affection for him into action.
" You have writ me many kind letters, and I
have answered none of them," says Lamb, on
the 28th of January, 1798. "I don't deserve
your attention. An unnatural indifference has
been creeping on me since my last misfortunes,
or I should have seized the first opening of a
correspondence with you. These last afflic-
tions, Coleridge, have failed to soften and bend

* Hippomane Nancinella^ one of the Euphorbiacecz, a
native of South America.

68 MARY LAMB.

my will. They found me unprepared. . . .
I have been very querulous, impatient under
the rod — full of little jealousies and heart-
burnings. I had well-nigh quarreled with
Charles Lloyd ; and for no other reason, I be-
lieve, than that the good creature did all he
could to 'make me happy. The truth is, I
thought he tried to force my mind from its nat-
ural and proper bent. He continually wished
me to be from home ; he was drawing mQfrom
the consideration of my poor dear Mary's situa-
tion rather than assisting me to gain a proper
view of it with religious consolations. I wanted
to be left to the tendency of my own mind, in a
solitary state which in times past, I knew, had
led to quietness and a patient bearing of the
yoke. He was hurt that I was not more con-
stantly with him ; but he was living with White
(Jem White, an old school-fellow, author of
Falstaff's Letters), a man to whom I had never
been accustomed to impart my dearest feelings,
though, from long habits of friendliness and
many a social and good quality, I loved him
very much. I met company there sometimes,
indiscriminate company. Any society almost,
when I am in affliction, is sorely painful to me.
I seem to breathe more freely, to think more
collectedly, to feel more properly and calmly
when alone. All these things the good creat-

A BRIEF ESTRANGEMENT. 69

ure did with the kindest intentions in the
world, but they produced in me nothing but
soreness and discontent. I became, as he com-
plained, * jaundiced' towards him, . . . but
he has forgiven me ; and his smile, I hope, will
draw all such humors from me. I am recover-
ing, God be praised for it, a healthiness of
mind, something like calmness ; but I want
more religion. . . . Mary is recovering ; but
I see no opening yet of a situation for her.
Your invitation went to my very heart ; but you
have a power of exciting interest, of leading all
hearts captive, too forcible to admit of Mary's
being with you. I consider her as perpetually
on the brink of madness. I think you would
almost make her dance within an inch of the
precipice : she must be with duller fancies and
cooler intellects. I know a young man of this
description, who has suited her these twenty
years, and may live to do so still, if we are one
day restored to each other. "

But the clouds gathered up again between the
friends, generated partly by a kind of intel-
lectual arrogance whereof Coleridge afterwards
accused himself (he was often but too self-de-
preciatory in after-life), which, in spite of Lamb's
generous and unbounded admiration for his
friend, did at last both irritate and hurt him ;
still more by the influence of Lloyd, who, him-

70 MARY LAMB.

self slighted, as he fancied, and full of a morbid
sensitiveness *' bordering on derangement,"
sometimes, indeed, overleaping that border,
worked upon Lamb's soreness of feeling till a
brief estrangement ensued. Lamb had not yet
learned to be on his guard with Lloyd. Years
afterwards he wrote of him to Coleridge : " He
is a sad tattler ; but this is under the rose.
Twenty years ago he estranged one friend from
me quite, whom I have been regretting, but
never could regain since. He almost alienated
you also from me or me from you, I don't know
which : but that breach is closed. The ' dreary
sea' is filled up. He has lately been at work
' telling again,' as they call it, a most gratuitous
piece of mischief, and has caused a coolness be-
twixt me and (not a friend but) an intimate ac-
quaintance. I suspect, also, he saps Manning's
faith in me, who am to Manning more than an
acquaintance."

The breach was closed, indeed, almost as soon
as opened. But Coleridge went away to Ger-
many for fourteen months and the correspond-
ence was meanwhile suspended. When it was
resumed Lamb was, in some respects, an altered
man ; he was passing from youth to maturity,
enlarging the circle of his acquaintance and
entering on more or less continuous literary
work ; whilst, on the other hand, the weaknesses

A BRIEF ESTRANGEMENT. 7 1

which accompanied the splendid endowments of
his friend were becoming but too plainly appar-
ent ; and though they never for a moment les-
sened Lamb's affection, nay, with his fine hu-
manity seemed to give rather an added tender-
ness to it, there was inevitably a less deferen-
tial, a more humorous and playful tone on his
side in their intercourse. " Bless you, old soph-
ist, who, next to human nature, taught me all
the corruption I was capable of knowing," says
he to the poet-philosopher by and by. And the
weak side of his friend's style, too, received an
occasional sly thrust ; as, for instance, when on
forwarding him some books he writes in 1800:
"I detained Statins wilfully, out of a reverent
regard to your style. Statins^ they tell me, is
turgid."

CHAPTER IV.

Death of the Father. — Mary comes Home to live. — A
Removal. — First Verses. — A Literary Tea-party. —
Another move. — Friends increase.

1 799-1 800. — JEt. 35-36.

The feeble flame of life in Lamb's father flick-
ered on for two years and a half after his wife's
death. He was laid to rest at last beside her
and his sister Hetty in the churchyard of St.
Andrew's, Holborn (now swept away in the
building of the Holborn Viaduct), on the 13th
of April, 1799, and Mary came home once more.
There is no mention of either fact in Lamb's
letters ; for Coleridge was away in Germany ;
and with Southey, who was almost the sole cor-
respondent of this year, the tie was purely in-
tellectual and never even in that kind a close
one. A significant allusion to Mary there is,
however, in a letter to him dated May 20: —
"Mary was never in better health or spirits
than now." But neither the happiness of shar-
ing Charles' home again nor anything else could
save her from the constant recurrence ot her
malady ; nor, in these early days, from the pain-

MARY COMES' HOME TO LIVE. 73

f ul notoriety of what had befallen her ; and they
were soon regarded as unwelcome inmates in the
Chapel street lodgings. Early in 1800 he tells
Coleridge : "■ Soon after I wrote to you last an
offer was made me by Gutch (you must remem-
ber him at Christ's) to come and lodge with him
at his house in Southampton Buildings, Chan-
cery Lane. This was a very comfortable offer
to me, the rooms being at a reasonable rent and
including the use of an old servant, besides
being infinitely preferable to ordinary lodgings
i7i our case, as you must perceive. As Gutch
knew all our story and the perpetual liability to
a recurrence in my sister's disorder, probably to
the end of her life, I certainly think the offer
very generous and very friendly. I have got"
three rooms (including servant) under ;£34 a
year. Here I soon found myself at home, and
here, in six weeks after, Mary was well enough
to join me. So we are once more settled. I
am afraid we are not placed out of the reach of
future interruptions ; but I am determined to
take what snatches of pleasure we can, between
the acts of our distressful drama. I have passed
two days at Oxford, on a visit, which I have
long put-off, to Gutch's family. The sight of
the Bodleian Library, and, above all, a fine bust
of Bishop Taylor at All Souls', were particularly
gratifying to me. Unluckily it was not a fam-

74 MARY LAMB.

ily where I could take Mary with me, and I
am afraid there is something of dishonesty in
any pleasure I take without her. She never
goes anywhere." And to Manning: "It is a
great object for me to live in town." [Penton-
ville then too much of a gossiping country sub-
urb !] " We can be nowhere private except in
the midst of London."

By the summer Mary was not only quite well,
but making a first essay in verse — the theme a
playful mockery of her brother's boyish love for
a pictured beauty at Blakesware described in
his essay, — "that beauty with the cool, blue,
pastoral drapery and a lamb, that hung next the
great bay window, with the bright yellow

H shire hair, and eye of watchet hue — so

like my Alice ! I am persuaded she was a true
Elia — Mildred Elia, I take it. From her and
from my passion for her — for I first learned
love from a picture — Bridget took the hint of
those pretty whimsical lines which thou mayest
see if haply thou hast never seen them, reader,
in the margin. But my Mildred grew not old
like the imaginary Helen."

With brotherly pride he sends them to Col-
eridge : " How do you like this little epigram ?
It is not my writing, nor had I any finger in it.
If you concur with me in thinking it very ele-
gant and very original, I shall be tempted to

MARY'S riRST VERSES. 75

name the author to you. I will just hint that it
is almost or quite a first attempt" : —

HELEN. .

High-born Helen, round your dwelling
These twenty years I've jDaced in vain ;

Haughty beauty, thy lover's duty
Hath been to glory in his pain.

High-born Helen, proudly telling

Stories of thy cold disdain ;
I starve, I die, now you comply.

And I no longer can complain.

These twenty years I've lived on tears,

Dwelling forever on a frown ;
On sighs I've fed, your scorn my bread;

I perish, now you kind are grown.

Can I who loved my beloved.

But for the scorn " was in her eye " —

Can I be moved for my beloved.

When she "returns me sigh for sigh.'"'

In stately pride, by my bed-side

High-born Helen's portrait 's hung;

Deaf to my praise, my mournful lays
Are nightly to the portrait sung.

So that I weep, nor ever sleep.
Complaining all night long to her.

Helen grown old, no longer cold,
Said, " You to all men I prefer."

76 MARY LAMB.

Lamb inserted this and another by Mary, a
serious and tender little poem, the Dialogue
between a Mother and Child, beginning : —

O lady, lay your costly robes aside ;

No longer may you glory in your pride, —

in the first collected edition of his works.

Mary now began also to go out with her
brother, and the last record of this year in the
Coleridge correspondence discloses them at a
literary tea-party, not in the character of lions,
but only as friends of a lion — Coleridge — who
had already become, in his frequent visits to
town, the prey of some third-rate admiring lit-
erary ladies, notably of a certain Miss Wesley
(niece of John Wesley) and of her friend, Miss
Benger, authoress of 2^ Life of Tobin, etc.

"You blame us for giving your direction to
Miss Wesley," says the letter; "the woman has
been ten times after us about it and we gave it
her at last, under the idea that no further harm
would ensue, but that she would once write to
you, and you would bite your lips and forget to
answer it, and so it would end. You read us a
dismal homily upon 'Realities.' We know quite
as well as you do what are shadows and what
are realities. You, for instance, when you are
over your fourth or fifth jorum, chirping about
old school occurrences, are the best of realities.

A LITERARY TEA-PARTY. 77

Shadows are cold, thin things that have no
warmth or grasp in them. Miss Wesley and
her friend, and a tribe of authoresses that come
after you here daily, and, in defect of you, hive
and cluster upon us, are the shadows. You en-
couraged that mopsey Miss Wesley to dance
after you in the hope of having her nonsense
put into a nonsensical anthology. We have
pretty well shaken her off by that simple expe-
dient of referring her to you, but there are
more burs in the wind. I came home t' other
day from business, hungry as a hunter, to din-
ner, with nothing, I am sure, of the author but
hunger about me; and whom found I closeted
with Mary but a friend of this Miss Wesley,
one Miss Benjay or Benje. . . . I just came in
time enough, I believe, luckily to prevent them
from exchanging vows of eternal friendship. It
seems she is one of your authoresses that you
first foster and then upbraid us with. But I
forgive you. 'The rogue has given me potions
to make me love him.' Well, go she would not
nor step a step over our threshold till we had
promised to come to drink tea with her next
night. I had never seen her before and could
not tell who the devil it was that was so famil-
iar. We went, however, not to be impolite.
Her lodgings are up two pair of stairs in East
street. Tea and coffee and macaroons — a kind

78 MARY LAMB.

«

of cake — much love. We sat down. Presently
Miss Benjay broke the silence by declaring her-
self quite of a different opinion from U Israeli^
who supposes the differences of human intellect
to be the mere effect of organization. She
begged • to know my opinion. I attempted
to carry it off with a pun upon organ, but
that went off very flat. She immediately con-
ceived a very low opinion of my metaphysics;
and turning round to Mary, put some question
to her in French, possibly having heard that
neither Mary nor I understood French. The
explanation that took place occasioned some
embarrassment and much wondering. She then
fell into an insulting conversation about the
comparative genius and merits of all modern
languages, and concluded with asserting that
the Saxon was esteemed the purest dialect in
Germany. From thence she passed into the
subject of poetry, where I, who had hitherto sat
mute and a hearer only, humbly hoped I might
now put in a word to some advantage, seeing
that it was my own trade in a manner. But I
was stopped by a round assertion that no good
poetry had appeared since Dr. Johnson's time.
It seems the doctor has suppressed many hope-
ful geniuses that way, by the severity of his
critical strictures in his Lives of the Poets, I
here ventured to question the fact and was be-

A LITERARY TEA-PARTY. 79

ginning to appeal to names^ but I was assured
*it was certainly the case.' Then we discussed
Miss More's [Hannah] book on education, which
I had never read. It seems Dr. Gregory, an-
other of Miss Benjay's friends, had found fault
with one of Miss More's metaphors. Miss More
has been at some pains to vindicate herself, in
the opinion of Miss Benjay not without success.
It seems the doctor is invariably against the
use of broken or mixed metaphor, which he
reprobates, against the authority of Shakes-
peare himself. We next discussed the question
whether Pope was a poet. I find Dr. Gregory is
of opinion he was not, though Miss Seward
does not at all concur with him in this. We
then sat upon the comparative merits of the
ten translations of Pizarro, and Miss Benjay or
Benje advised Mary to take two of them home
(she thought it might afford her some pleasure
to compare them verbatim), which we declined.
It being now nine o'clock, wine and macaroons
were again served round, and we parted with a
promise to go again next week and meet the
Miss Porters, who, it seems, have heard much
of Mr. Coleridge and wish to see tts because
we are his friends. I have been preparing for
the occasion. I crowd cotton in my ears. I
read all the reviews and magazines of the past
month against the dreadful meeting, and I hope

8o MARY LAMB.

by these means to cut a tolerable second-rate
figure.

" . . . . Take no thought about your
proof-sheets ; they shall be done as if Woodfall
himself did them. Pray send us word of Mrs.
Coleridge and little David Hartley, your little
reality. Farewell, dear Substance. Take no
umbrage at anything I have written.
" I am, and will be,

" Yours ever in sober sadness,

" Land of Shadows, C. Lamb. Umbra.
"Shadow month, i6th or 17th, 1800.

"Write your German as plain as sunshine,
for that must correct itself. You know I am
homo tmius lingucB : in English — illiterate, a
dunce, a ninny. "

Mr. Gutch seems to have soon repented him
of his friendly deed : —

"I am going to change my lodgings, having
received a hint that it would be agreeable at
Our Lady's next feast, " writes Lamb to Man-
ning. " I have partly fixed upon most delecta-
ble rooms which look out (when you stand a-tip-
toe) over the Thames and Surrey hills.
My bed faces the river, so as by perking up on
my haunches and supporting my carcass with
my elbows, without much wrying my neck, I
can see the white sails glide by the bottom of
the King's Bench Walk as I lie in my bed, . .

MITRE COURT. 8 1

casement windows with small panes to look
more like a cottage. . . . There I shall have
all the privacy of a house without the encum-
brance, and shall be able to lock my friends out
as often as I desire to hold free converse with
my immortal mind, for my present lodgings re-
semble a minister's levee, I have so increased
my acquaintance (as they call 'em) since I have
resided in town. Like the country mouse that
had tasted a little of urban manners, I long to
be nibbling my own cheese by my dear self,
without mouse-traps and time-traps. "

These rooms were at No. i6 Mitre Court
Buildings, and here Lamb and his sister lived
for nine years. But far from "nibbling his
own cheese " by himself, there for nine years
he and Mary gathered round their hearth and
homely, hospitable supper-table, with its bread
and cheese in these early days, and by and by
its round of beef or " winter hand of pork, " an
ever-lengthened succession of friends, cronies
and acquaintances. There came Manning, with
his " fine, skeptical, dogmatical face ; " and
George Dyer, with his head full of innutritions
learning and his heart of the milk of kindness.
And podwin, the man of strange contrasts, a
bold thinker, yet ignorant as a child of human
nature and weakly vain ; with such a " noisy
fame, " for a time, as if he were " Briareus Cen-

82 MARY LAMB,

timanus or a Tityus tall enough to pull Jupiter
from his heavens, " and then soon forgotten, or
remembered only to be denounced ; for a year
the loving husband of one of the sweetest and
noblest of women, and after her death led cap-
tive by the coarse flatteries and vulgar preten-
sions of one of the commonest. " Is it possible
that I behold the immortal Godwin ? " said,
from a neighboring balcony, she who in a few
months became his second wife, and in a few
more had alienated some of his oldest friends
and earned the cordial dislike of all, even of
Lamb. " I will be buried with this inscription
over me : * Here lies C. L., the woman-hater;'
I mean that hated one woman ; for the rest,
God bless 'em," was his whimsical way of vent-
ing his feelings towards her ; and Shelley expe-
rienced the like, though he expressed them less
pungently. Then there was Holcroft, who had
fought his way up from grimmest poverty, mis-
ery and ignorance to the position of an accom-
plished literary man ; and fine old Captain Bur-
ney, who had been taught his accidence by
Eugene Aram and had sailed round the world
with Captain Cook ; and his son, " noisy Mar-
tin" with the *' spotless soul," for forty years,
boy and man, Mary's favorite ; and Phillips, of
the Marines, who was with Captain Cook at his
death and shot the savage that killed him ; and

FRIENDS AND' ACQUAINTANCES. 83

Rickman, "the finest fellow to drop in a'
nights," Southey's great friend, though he
''never read his poetry," as Lamb tells ; staunch
Crabb Robinson ; Fanny Kelly, with her
"divine, plain face," who died but the other
day at the age of ninety-odd ; and Mr. Dawe,
R. A., a figure of nature's own purest comedy.
All these- and many more frequented the home
of Charles and Mary Lamb in these years, and
live in their letters.

CHAPTER V.

Personal Appearance and Manners. — Health. — Influence
of Mary's Illness upon her Brother.

No description of Mary Lamb's person in youth
is to be found ; but hers was a kind of face
which Time treats gently, adding with one hand
while he takes away with the other ; compen-
sating by deepened traces of thought and kind-
liness and loss of youthful freshness. Like her
brother, her features were well formed. " Her
face was pale and somewhat square, very placid,
with gray, intelligent eyes," says Proctor, who
first saw her when she was about fifty-three.
"Eyes brown, soft and penetrating," says an-
other friend. Miss Cowden Clarke, confirming
the observation that it is difficult to judge of
the color of expressive eyes. She, too, lays
stress upon the strong resemblance to Charles
and especially on a smile like his, "winning in
the extreme." De Quincey speaks of her as
"tliat Madonna-like lady."

The only original portrait of her in existence,
I believe, is that by the late Mr. Cary (son of
Lamb's old friend), now in the possession of

MARY'S PORTRAIT, 85

Mr. Edward Hughes, and engraved in the Me-
moir of Lamb, by Barry Cornwall ; also in
Scribners Magazine for March, 1881, where it
is accompanied by a letter from Mr. Gary, which
states that it was painted in 1834, when Mary
was seventy. She stands a little behind her
brother, resting one hand on him and one on
the back of his chair. There is a characteristic
sweetness in her attitude and the countenance
is full of goodness and intelligence ; whilst the
finer modeling of Charles' features and the in-
tellectual beauty of his head are rendered with
considerable success, — Crabb Robinson's strict-
ures notwithstanding, who, it appears, saw not
the original, but a poor copy of the figure of
Charles. It was from Cary's picture that Mr.
Armitage, R. A., executed the portraits of the
Lambs in the large fresco on the walls of Uni-
versity College Hall. Among its many groups
(of which Crabb Robinson, who commissioned
the fresco, is the central figure), that containing
the Lambs includes also Wordsworth, Coleridge,
Blake and Southey. By an unfortunate clause
in the deed of gift the fresco, which is painted
in monochrome, is forbidden to be cleaned,
even with bread-crumb ; it is therefore already
very dingy.

In stature Mary was under the middle size
and her bodily frame was strong. She could

86 MARY LAMB.

walk fifteen miles with ease ; her brother speaks
of their having walked thirty miles together,
and, even at sixty years of age, she was capable
of twelve miles "most days." Regardless of
weather, too, as Leigh Hunt pleasantly tells in
his Familiar Epistle in Verse to Lamb : —

You'll guess why I can't see the snow-covered streets,
Without thinking of you and your visiting feats,
When you call to remembrance how you and one more,
When I wanted it most, used to knock at my door;
For when the sad winds told us rain would come down,
Or when snow upon snow fairly clogg'd up the town.
And dun-yellow fogs brooded over its white,
So that scarcely a being was seen towards night.
Then — then said the lady yclept near and dear:
Now, mind what I tell you — the Lambs will be here.
So I poked up the flame, and she got out the tea,
And down we both sat as prepared as could be ;
And then, sure as fate came the knock of you two.
Then the lanthorn, the laugh, and the "Well, how
d'ye do?"

Mary's manners were easy, quiet, unpretend-
ing ; to her brother gentle and tender always,
says Mrs. Cowden Clarke. She had often an
upward look of peculiar meaning when directed
towards him, as though to give him an assur-
ance that all was well with her ; and a way of
repeating his words assentingly when he spoke
to her. " He once said, with his peculiar mode
of tenderness beneath blunt, abrupt speech,

MARY'S' PORTRAIT. 8/

*You must die first, Mary.' She nodded with
her little quiet nod and sweet smile, * Yes, I
must die first, Charles.' " When they were in
company together her eyes followed him every-
where ; and even when he was talking at the
other end of the room she would supply some
word he wanted. Her voice was soft and per-
suasive, with at times a certain catch, a kind of
emotional stress in breathing, which gave a
charm to her reading of poetry and a capti-
vating earnestness to her mode of speech when
addressing those she liked. It was a slight
check that had an eager, yearning effect in her
voice, creating a softened resemxblance to her
brother's stammer — that "pleasant little stam-
mer," as Barry Cornwall called it, ''just enough to
prevent his making speeches; just enough to
make you listen eagerly for his words. " Like him,
too, she took snuff. " She had a small, white,
delicately-formed hand ; and as it hovered above
the tortoise-shell snuff-box, the act seemed yet
another link of association between the brother
and sister as they sat together over their favor-
ite books."

Mary's dress was always plain and neat ; not
changing much with changing fashions ; yet
with no unf eminine affectation of complete indif-
ference. " I do dearly love worked muslin,"
says she in one of her letters, and the " Man-

SS MARY LAMB.

ning silks " were worn with no little satisfac-
tion. As she advanced in years she usually
wore black stuff or silk ; or on great occasions
a "dove-colored silk, with a kerchief of snow-
white muslin folded across her bosom," with a
cap of the kind in fashion in her youth, a deep-
frilled border and a bow on the top.

Mary's severe nurture, though undoubtedly it
bore with too heavy a strain on her physical
and mental constitution, fitted her morally and
practically for the task which she and her
brother fulfilled to admiration — that of making
an income,' which for two-thirds of their joint
lives could not have exceeded two or three hun-
dreds a year, suffice for the heavy expense of
her yearly illness, for an open-handed hospi-
tality and for the wherewithal to help a friend
in need, not to speak of their extensive acquaint-
ance among "the great race of borrowers."
He was, says De Quincey, '^princely — nothing
short of that in his beneficence. . . . Never
any one have I known in this world upon whom
for bounty, for indulgence and forgiveness, for
charitable construction of doubtful or mixed
actions, and for regal munificence, you might
have thrown yourself with so absolute a reli-
ance as upon this comparatively poor Charles
Lamb." There'was a certain old-world fajshion
in Mary's speech corresponding to her appear-

ELIA'S DESCRIPTION OF MARY. 89

ance, which was quaint and pleasant ; " yet she
was oftener a listener than a speaker, and be-
neath her sparing talk and retiring manner few
would have suspected the ample information
and large intelligence that lay concealed."

But for her portrait sweetly touched in with
subtle, tender strokes, such as he who knew and
loved her best could alone give, we must turn
to Elia's Mackery End: — *' . . . I have ob-
ligations to Bridget extending beyond the
period of memory. We house together, old
bachelor and maid, in a sort of double single-
ness, with such tolerable comfort, upon the
whole, that I, for one, find in myself no sort of
disposition to go out upon the mountains, with
the rash king's offspring, to bewail my celibacy.
We agree pretty well in our tastes and habits,
yet so as 'with a difference.' We are generally
in harmony, with occasional bickerings, as it
should be among near relations. Our sympa-
,thies are rather understood than expressed;
and once, upon my dissembling a tone in my
voice more kind than ordinary, my cousin burst
into tears and complained that I was altered.
We are both great readers, in different di-
rections. While I am hanging over, for the
thousandth time, some passage in old Burton,
or one of his strange contemporaries, she is ab-
stracted in some modern tale or adventure.

go MARY LAMB.

whereof our common reading-table is daily fed
with assiduously fresh supplies. Narrative
teases me. I have little concern in the pro-
gress of events. She must have a story — well,
ill or indifferently told — so there be life stir-
ring in it and plenty of good or evil accidents.
The fluctuations of fortune in fiction, and almost
in real life, have ceased to interest or operate
but dully upon me. Out-of-the-way humors and
opinions — heads with some diverting twist in
them — the oddities of authorship, please me
most. My cousin has a native disrelish of any-
thing that sounds odd or bizarre. Nothing goes
down with her that is quaint, irregular or out of
the road of common sympathy. She holds nature
more clever. . . . We are both of us inclined
to be a little too positive ; and I have observed
the result of our disputes to be almost uniform-
ly this : that in matters of fact, dates and circum-
stances, it turns out that I was in the right and
my cousin in the wrong. But where we have
differed upon moral points, upon something
proper to be done or let alone, whatever heat
of opposition or steadiness of conviction I set
out with, I am sure always, in the long run, to
be brought -over to her way of thinking. I
must touch upon foibles of my kinswoman with
a gentle hand, for Bridget does not like to be
told of her faults. She hath an awkward trick

ELIA'S DESCRIPTION OF MARY, QI

(to say no worse of it) of reading in company ;
at which times she will answer yes or no to a
question without fully understanding its pur-
port, which is provoking and derogatory in the
highest degree to the dignity of the putter of
the said question. Her presence of mind is
equal to the most pressing trials of life, but will
sometimes desert her upon trifling occasions.
When the purpose requires it, and is a thing of
moment, she can speak to it greatly ; but in
mattersv which are not stuff of the conscience
she hath been known sometimes to let slip a
word less seasonably.

" In seasons of distress she is the truest com-
forter, but in the teasing accidents and minor
perplexities which do not call out the will to
meet thern, she sometimes maketh matters
worse by an excess of participation. If she
does not always divide your trouble, upon the
pleasanter occasions of life she is sure always
to treble your satisfaction. She is excellent to
be at a play with, or upon a visit ; but best when
she goes a journey with you."

" Little could any one, observing Miss Lamb
in the habitual serenity of her demeanor,"
writes Talfourd, "guess the calamity in which
she had partaken or the malady which fright-
fully checkered her life. From Mr. Lloyd, who,
although saddened by impending delusion, was

92 MARY LAMB.

always found accurate in his recollection of long-
past events and conversations, I learned that
she had described herself, on her. recovery from
the fatal attack, as having experienced while it
was subsiding such a conviction that she was
absolved in Heaven from all taint of the deed
in which she had been the agent — such an as-
surance^that it was a dispensation of Providence
for good, though so terrible — such a sense that
her mother knew her entire innocence and shed
down blessings upon her, as though she had
seen the reconcilement in solemn vision — that
she was not sorely afflicted by the recollection.
It was as if the old Greek notion of the neces-
sity for the unconscious shedder of blood, else
polluted though guiltless, to pass through a re-
ligious purification, had in her case been hap-
pily accomplished; so that not only was she
without remorse, but without other sorrow than
attends on the death of an infirm parent in a
good old age. She never shrank from alluding
to her mother when any topic connected with
her own youth made such a reference, in ordi-
nary respects, natural; but spoke of her as*
though no fearful remembrance was associated*
with the image ; so that some of her most inti-
mate friends who knew of the disaster believed
that she had never become aware of her own
share in its horrors. It is still more singular

HER MALADY. 93

that in the wanderings of her insanity, amidst
all the vast throngs of imagery she presented
of her early days, this picture never recurred,
or, if it ever did, not associated with shapes of
terror."

Perhaps this was not so surprising as at first
sight it appears ; for the deed was done in a state
of frenzy, in which the brain could no more have
received a definite impression of the scene than
waves lashed by storm can reflect an image.
Her knowledge of the facts was never colored
by consciousness, but came to her from without,
"as a tale that is told." The statement, also, that
Mary could always speak calmly of her mother,
seems to require some qualification. Emma
Isola, Lamb's adopted daughter, afterwards Mrs.
Moxon, once asked her, ignorant of the facts,
why she never spoke of her mother, and was
answered only with a cry of distress ; probably
the question, coming abruptly and from a child,
confronted her in a new, sudden and peculiarly
painful way with the tragedy of her youth.

"Miss Lamb would have been remarkable
for the sweetness of her disposition, the clear-
ness of her understanding, and the gentle wis-
dom of all her acts and words," continues Tal-
fourd, "even if these qualities had not been pre-
sented in marvelous contrast with the distrac-
tions under which she suffered for weeks, latter-

94 MAJ^V LAMB.

ly for months in every year. There was no tinge
of insanity discernible in her manner to the
most observant eye : not even in those distress-
ful periods when the premonitory symptoms
had apprised her of its approach, and she was
making preparations for seclusion." This, too,
must be taken with some qualification. In a
letter from Coleridge to Matilda Betham he
mentions that Mary had been to call on the
Godwins, "and that her manner of conversation
had greatly alarmed them (dear, excellent creat-
ure ! such is the restraining power of her love
for Charles Lamb over her mind, that he is al-
ways the last person in whose presence any
alienation of her understanding betrays itself) ;
that she talked far more and with more agitation
concerning me than about G, Burnet [the too
abrupt mention of whose death had upset her ;
he was an old friend and one of the original
Pantisocratic group], and told Mrs. Godwin that
she herself had written to William Wordsworth,
exhorting him to come to town immediately,
for that my mind was seriously unhinged." To
resume. "Her character," wrote Talfourd, "in
all its essential sweetness,was like her brother's ;
while, by a temper more placid, a spirit of en-
joyment more serene, she was enabled to guide,
to counsel, to cheer him and to protect him on
the verge of the mysterious calamity from the

HER MALADY. 95

depths of which she rose so often unruffled to his
side. To a friend in any difficulty she was the
most comfortable of advisers, the wisest of con-
solers. Hazlitt used to say that he never met
with a woman who could reason and had met
with only one thoroughly reasonable — the sole
exception being Mary Lamb. She did not wish,
however, to be made an exception, to the gen-
eral disparagement of her sex;, for in all her
thoughts and feelings she was most womanly —
keeping under even undue subordination to her
notion of a woman's province, an intellect of
rare excellence which flashed out when the re-
straints of gentle habit and humble manner
were withdrawn by the terrible force of disease.
Though her conversation in sanity was never
marked by smartness or repartee, seldom rising
beyond that of a sensible, quiet gentlewoman,
appreciating and enjoying the talents of her
friends, it was otherwise in her madness. Lamb,
in his letter to Miss Fryer announcing his de-
termination to be entirely with her, speaks of
her pouring out memories of all the events and
persons of her younger days ; but he does not
mention, what I am able from repeated experi-
ences to add, that her ramblings often sparkled
with brilliant description and shattered beauty.
She would fancy herself in the days of Queen
Anne or George the First; and describe the

96 MAI^V LAMB.

brocaded dames and courtly manners as though
she had been bred among them, in the best style
of the old comedy. It was all broken and dis-
jointed, so that the hearer could remember little
of her discourse ; but the fragments were like
the jeweled speeches of Congreve, only shaken
from their settings. There was sometimes even
a vein of crazy logic running through them, as-
sociating things essentially most dissimilar, but
connecting them by a verbal association in
strange order. As a mere physical instance of
deranged intellect, her condition was, I believe,
extraordinary ; it was as if the finest elements
of the mind had been shaken into fantastic
combinations, like those of a kaleidoscope."

The immediate cause of her attacks would
generally seem to have been excitement or over-
fatigue, causing, in the first instance, loss of
sleep, a feverish restlessness, and ending in the
complete overthrow of reason. "Her relapses,"
says Proctor, " were not dependent on the
seasons; they came in hot weather and with
the freezing winters. The only remedy seems
to have been extreme quiet when any slight
sympton of uneasiness was apparent. If any
exciting talk occurred Charles had to dismiss
his friend with a whisper. If any stupor or
extraordinary silence was observed, then he had
to rouse her instantly. He has been seen to

HER MALADY. 9/

take the kettle from the fire and place it for a
moment on her head-dress, in order to startle
her into recollection." Once the sudden
announcement of the marriage of a young
friend, whose welfare she had at heart, restored
her in a moment, after a protracted illness, "as
if by an electric stroke, to the entire possession
of her senses." But if no precautions availed
to remove the premonitory symptom, then would
Mary "as gently as possible prepare her brother
for the duty he must perform ; and thus, unless
he could stave off the terrible separation till
Sunday, oblige him to ask leave of absence from
the office, as if for a day's pleasure — a bitter
mockery ! On one occasion Mr. Charles Lloyd
met them slowly pacing together a little foot-
path in Hoxton fields, both weeping bitterly,
and found, on joining them, that they were tak-
ing their solemn way to the accustomed asylum."
Holiday trips were almost always followed by a
seizure ; and never did Mary set out on one but
with her own hands she packed a straight waist-
coat.

The attacks were commonly followed by a
period of extreme depression, a sense of being
shattered, and by a painful loss of self-reliance.
These were but temporary states, however.
Mary's habitual frame of mind was, as Talfourd
says, serene and capable of placid enjoyment.

4

9^ . MAJ^V LAMB.

In her letters to Sara Stoddart there are some
affecting and probably unique disclosures of
how one who is suffering from madness feels ;
and what, taught by her own experience, Mary
regarded as the most important points in the
management of the insane. In reference to her
friend's mother, who was thus afflicted, she
writes : —

"Do not, I conjure you, let her unhappy mal-
ady afflict you, too deeply. I spQ3.'k/ro7n experi-
ence and from the opportunity I have had of
much observation in such cases, that insane
people, in the fancies they take into their heads,
do not feel as one in a sane state of mind does
under the real evil of poverty, the perception of
having done wrong, or of any such thing that
runs in their heads.

" Think as little as you can, and let your
whole care be to be certain that she is treated
with tenderness. I lay a stress upon this
because it is a thing of which people in her
state are uncommonly susceptible, and which
hardly any one is at all aware of ; a hired
nurse nevery even though in all other respects
they are good kind of people. I do not think
your own presence necessary, unless she takes
to yoiL very 'jmtchy except for the purpose of
seeing with your own eyes that she is very
kindly treated,

HER 'MALADY. 99

" I do long to see you ! God bless and
comfort you."

And again a few weeks later : —

"After a very feverish night I writ a letter
to you and I have been distressed about it ever
since. That which gives me most concern is
the way in which I talked about your mother's
illness, and which I have since feared you might
construe into my having a doubt of your show-
ing her proper attention without my impertinent
interference. God knows, nothing of this kind
was ever in my thoughts, but I have entered
very deeply into your affliction with regard to
your mother ; and while I was writing, the many
poor souls in the kind of desponding way she
is, whom I have seen, came fresh into my
mind, and all the mismanagement with which I
have seen them treated was strong in my mind,
and I wrote under a forcible impulse which I
could not at the time resist, but I have fretted
so much about it since, that I think it is the
last time I will ever let my pen run away with
me.

" Your kind heart will, I know, even if you
have been a little displeased, forgive me when I
assure you my spirits have been so much hurt
by my last illness, that at times I hardly know
what I do. I do not mean to alarm you about
mysejf or to plead an excuse ; but I am very

lOO MARY LAMB.

much otherwise than you have always known
me. I do not think any one perceives me al-
tered, but I have lost all self-confidence in my
own actions, and one cause of my low spirits is
that I never feel satisfied with anything I do —
a perception of not being in a sane state perpet-
ually haunts me. I am ashamed to confess this
weakness to you ; which, as I am so sensible of,
I ought to strive to conquer. But I tell you
that you may excuse any part of my letter that
has given offense ; for your not answering it,
when you are such a punctual correspondent,
has made me very uneasy.

" Write immediately, my dear Sara, but do
not notice this letter, nor do not mention any-
thing I said relative to your poor mother. Your
handwriting will convince me you are friends
with me ; and if Charles, who must see my let-
ter, was to know I had first written foolishly
and then fretted about the event of my folly, he
would both ways be angry with me.

*' I would desire you to direct to me at home,
but your hand is so well known to Charles that
that would not do. Therefore, take no notice
of my megrims till we meet, which I most ar-
dently long to do. An hour spent in your com-
pany would be a cordial to my drooping h§art.

" Write, I beg, by the return of post ; and as
I am very anxious to hear whether you are, as I

• EFFECT UPON HER BROTHER. lOI

fear, dissatisfied with me, you shall, if you
please, direct my letter to nurse. I do not
mean to continue a secret correspondence, but
you must oblige me with this one letter. In
future I will always show my letters before
they go, which will be a proper check upon my
wayward pen."

But it was upon her brother that the burthen
lay heaviest. It was on his brain that the cruel
image of the mother's death-scene was burnt in,
and that the grief and loneliness consequent on
Mary's ever-recurring attacks pressed sorest.

" His anxiety for her health, even in his most
convivial moments, was unceasing. If in com-
pany he perceived she looked languid, he would
repeatedly ask her, ' Mary, does your head ache .'*
Don't you feel unwell } ' and would be satisfied
with none of her gentle assurances that his
fears were groundless. He was always fearful
of her sensibilities being too deeply engaged,
and if in her presence any painful accident or
history was discussed, he would turn the con-
versation with some desperate joke." Miss
Betham related to Talfourd that once, when she
was speaking to Miss Lamb of her brother, and
in her earnestness Mary had laid her hand
kindly on the eulogist's shoulder, he came up
hastily and interrupted them, saying, ^' Come,
come, we must not talk sentimentally," and took
up the conversation in his gayest strain.

I02 MARY LAMB.

The constant anxiety, the forebodings, the
unremitting, watchful scrutiny of his sister's
state, produced a nervous tension and irritabil-
ity that pervaded his whole life and manifested
themselves in many different ways.

"When she discovers symptoms of approach-
ing illness," he once wrote to Dorothy Words-
worth, "it is not easy to say what is best to do.
Being by ourselves is bad and going out is bad.
I get so irritable and wretched with fear that I
constantly hasten on the disorder. You cannot
conceive the misery of such a foresight. I am
sure that for the week before she left me I was
little better than light-headed. I now am calm,
but sadly taken down and flat." Well might he
say, "My waking life has much of the confu-
sion, the trouble and obscure perplexity of an
ill dream." For he, too, had to wrestle in his
own person with the same foe, the same heredi-
tary tendency ; though, after one overthrow of
reason in his youth, he wrestled successfully.
But the frequent allusions in his letters, espe-
cially in later years, to attacks of nervous fever,
sleeplessness, and depression "black as a
smith's beard. Vulcanic, Stygian," show how
near to the brink he was sometimes dragged.
" You do not know how sore and weak a brain
I have, or you would allow for many things
which you set down to whim," he wrote to God-

EFFECT UPON HER BROTHER. 103

win. And again, when there had been some
coolness between them : ^' . . . did the black
Hypochondria never gripe tky heart till thou
hast taken a friend for an enemy ? The foul
fiend Flibbertigibbet leads me over four-inched
bridges to course my own shadow for a
traitor.

*'Yet nervous, tremulous as he seemed,"
writes Talfourd, '^so slight of frame that he
looked only fit for'the most placid fortune, when
the dismal emergencies which checkered his
life arose, he acted with as much promptitude
and vigor as if he were strung with herculean
sinews." *' Such fortitude in his manners, and
such a ravage of suffering in his countenance
did he display," said Coleridge, '*as went to the
hearts of his friends." It was rather by the
violence of the reaction that a keen observer
might have estimated the extent of these suffer-
ings ; by that "escape from the pressure of
agony, into a fantastic, sometimes almost
demoniac mirth, which made Lamb a problem
to strangers, while it endeared him thousand-
fold to those who really knew him."

The child of impulse ever to appear,

And yet through duty's path strictly to steer,

O Lamb, thou art a mystery to me !

Thou art so prudent, and so mad with wildness —

wrote Charles Lloyd.

I04 MARY LAMB,

Sweet and strong must have been the nature
upon which the crush of so severe a destiny
produced no soreness, no bitterness, no vio-
lence, but only the rebound of a wild, fantastic
gaiety. In his writings not only is there an en-
tire absence of the morbid, the querulous ; I can
find but one expression that breathes of what
his sombre experiences were. It is in that most
masterly of all his criticisms (unless it be the
one on Lear), the Genius mtd Character of Ho-
garth, where, in the sublime description of the
Bedlam scene in the Rakes Progress, he tells of
"the frightful, obstinate laugh of madness." In
one apparent way only did the calamity which
overshadowed his life exert an influence on his
genius. It turned him, as Talfourd finely sug-
gests, " to seek a kindred interest in the sterner
stuff of old tragedy — to catastrophes more
fearful even than his own — to the aspects of
pale passion, to shapes of heroic daring and
more heroic suffering, to the agonizing contests
of opposing affections and the victories of the
soul over calamity and death, which the old
English drama discloses, and in the contempla-
tion of which he saw his own suffering nature
at once mirrored and exalted." In short, no
m.an ever stood more nobly the test of life-long
affliction : " a deep distress had harmonized his
soul."

EFFECT UPON HER BROTHER, 105

Only on one point did the stress of his diffi-
cult lot find him vulnerable, one flaw bring to
light — a tendency to counteract his depression
and take the edge off his poignant anxieties by
a too free use of stimulants. The manners of
his day, the custom of producing wine and
strong drinks on every possible occasion, bore
hard on such a craving and fostered a man's
weakness. But Lamb maintained to the end a
good standing fight with the enemy, and, if not
wholly victorious, still less was he wholly de-
feated. So much on account of certain home
anxieties to which Mary's letters to Sara Stod-
dart make undisguised allusion.

CHAPTER VI.

Visit to Coleridge at Greta Hall. — Wordsworth and his
Sister in London. — Letters to Miss Stoddart. — Col-
eridge goes to Malta. — Letter to Dorothy Words-
worth on the Death of her Brother John.

1 802-1 805. — JEt. 38-41.

In the summer of 1802, when holiday -time
came round, Charles was siezed with " a strong
desire of visiting remote regions ; " and after
some whimsical deliberations his final resolve
was to go with Mary to see Coleridge at ■ the
lakes.

'' I set out with Mary to .Kesw^ick," he tells
Manning, " without giving any notice to Coler-
idge [who was now living at Greta Hall, soon
to become Southey's home for the rest of his
life], for my time, being precious, did not admit
of it. We got in in the evening, travelling in a
post-chaise from Penrith, in the midst of a gor-
geous sunset w^hich transmuted the mountains
into all colors, purple, etc. We thought we had
got into fairy-land ; but that went off (and it
never came again while we stayed, and we had

WITH COLERIDGE AT GRETA HALL. lO/

no more- fine sunsets), and we entered Coler-
idge's comfortable study just in the dusk, when
the mountains were all dark with clouds upon
their heads. Such an impression I never re-
ceived from objects of sight before nor do I
suppose I ever can again. Glorious creatures,
fine old fellows, Skiddaw, etc., I shall never
forget ye — how ye lay about that night like an
intrenchment ; gone to bed, as it seemed, for
the night, but promising that ye were to be
seen in the morning. Coleridge had got a blaz-
ing fire in his study, which is a large, antique,
ill-shaped room with an old-fashioned organ,
never played upon, big enough for a church ;
shelves of scattered folios, an ^oiian harp and
an old sofa half-bed, etc. And all looking out
upon the last. fading view of Skiddaw and his
broad-breasted brethren. What a night ! "

The poet had now a second son, or rather a
third (for the second had died in infancy), Der-
went, a fine, bright, fair, broad-chested little
fellow not quite two years old, with whom
Charles and Mary were delighted. A merry
sprite he was, in a yellow frock which obtained
for him the nickname of Stumpy Canary, who
loved to race from kitchen to parlor and from
parlor to kitchen, just putting in his head at
the door with a rougish smile to catch notice,
then off again, shaking his little sides with

I08 MARY LAMB.

laughter. He fairly won their hearts, and long
after figures in their letters as Pi-pos Pot-pos,
his own way of pronouncing striped opossum
and spotted opossum, which he would point out
triumphantly in his picture-book. Hartley, now
six, was a prematurely grave and thoughtful
child who had already, as a curious anecdote
told by Crabb Robinson shows, begun to take
surprising plunges into " the metaphysic well
without a bottom ; " for once, when asked some-
thing about himself and called by name, he
said, "Which Hartley.?" "Why, is there
more than one Hartley .? " " Yes, there's a
deal of Hartleys ; there's Picture Hartley [Haz-
litt had painted his portrait] and Shadow Hart-
ley, and there's Echo Hartley and there's Catch-
me-fast Hartley," seizing his own arm with the
other hand ; thereby showing, said his father,
that "he had begun to reflect on what Kant
calls the great and inexplicable m_ystery that
man should be both his own subject and object,
and that these should yet be one ! "

Three delightful weeks they stayed. "So
we hav^ seen," continues Lamb to Manning,
"Keswick, Grasmere, Ambleside, Ulswater
(where the Clarksons live), and a place at the
other end of Ulswater ; I forget the name [Pat-
terdale] to which we travelled on a very sultry
day, over the middle of Helvellyn. We have

WITH COLERIDGE' AT GRETA HALL. 109

clambered up to the top of Skiddaw and I have
waded up the bed of Lodore. Mary was excess-
ively tired when she got about half-way up
Skiddaw, but we came to a cold rill (than which
nothing can be imagined more cold, running
over cold stones), and, with the reinforcement
of a draught of cold water, she surmounted it
most manfully. Oh, its fine black head! and
the bleak air atop of it, with the prospect of
mountains all about and about making you gid-
dy ; and then Scotland afar off and the border
countries so famous in song and ballad ! It was
a day that will stand out like a mountain, I am
sure, in my life."

Wordsworth was away at Calais, but the
Lambs stayed a day or so in his cottage with
the Clarksons (he of slavery abolition fame and
she "one of the friendliest, comfortablest women
we know, who made the little stay one of the
pleasantest times we ever passed"); saw Lloyd
again, but remained distrustful of him on ac-
count of the seeds of bitterness he had once
sown between the friends, and finally got home
very pleasantly: Mary a good deal fatigued,
finding the difference between going to a place
and coming from it, but not otherwise the
worse." "Lloyd has written me a fine letter of
friendship," says Lamb soon after his return,
"all about himself and Sophia, and love and

no MARY LAMB.

cant, which I have not answered. I have not
given up the idea of writing to him, but it will
be done very plainly and • sincerely, without ac-
rimony."

They found the Wordsworths (the poet and his
sister, that is, for he was not yet married, though
just about to be) lodging near their own quar-
ters, saw much of them, pioneered them through
Bartlemy Fair; and now on Mary's part was
formed that intimacy with Dorothy which led to
her being their constant visitor and sometimes
their house-guest when she was in London.

As great a contrast in most respects to Dor-
othy Wordsworth, as the whole range of woman-
kind could have furnished, was Mary's other
friend and correspondent, Sara Stoddart, after-
wards Mrs. Hazlitt. Sara was the only daugh-
ter of a retired lieutenant in the navy, a Scotch-
man who had settled down on a little property
at Winterslow, near Salisbury, which she ulti-
mately inherited. She was a young lady with
a business-like determination to marry, and
with many suitors ; but, far from following the
old injunction to be off with the old love before
being on with the new, she always cautiously
kept the old love dangling till she was quite
sure the new was the more eligible. Mary's
letters to her have happily been preserved and
published by Miss Stoddart's grandson, Mr. W.

LETTER TO SARA STODDART. Ill

Carew Hazlitt, in his Mary and ChaT'les Lamb.
The first, dated September 21, 1803, was writ-
ten after Miss Stoddart had been staying with
the Lambs, and when a decision had been ar-
rived at that she should accompany her only
brother, Dr. Stoddart, to Malta, where he had
just been appointed King's Advocate. Mary's
spelling, and here and there even a little slip in
the matter of gramm^, have been retained as
seeming part of the individuality of the let-
ters : —

"■ I returned from my visit yesterday and was
very much pleased to find your letter ; for I
have been very anxious to hear how you are
going oh. I could hardly help expecting to see
you when I came in ; yet though I should have
rejoiced to have seen your merry face again, I
believe it was better as it was, upon the whole ;
and all things considered, it is certainly better
you should go to Malta. The terms you are
upon with your lover [a Mr. Turner, to whom
she was engaged] does (as you say it will) ap-
pear wondrous strange to me ; however, as I
cannot enter into your feelings I certainly can
have nothing to say to it, only that I sincerely
wish you happy in your own way, however odd
that way may appear to me to be. I would
begin now to advise you to drop all corre-
spondence with William [not William Hazlitt,

112 MARY LAMB.

but an earlier admirer] ; but, as I said before,
as I cannot enter into your feelings and views
of things, your ways not being my ways, why
should I tell you what I would do in your situa-
tion? So, child, take thy own ways and God
prosper thee in them !

"One thing my advising spirit must say : use
as little secresy as possible ; make a friend of
your sister-in-law ; you ^now I was not struck
with her at first sight, but, upon your account,
I have watched and marked her very attentively,
and while she was eating a bit of cold mutton
in our kitchen we had a serious conversation.
From the frankness of her manner I am con-
vinced she is a person I could make a friend of ;
why should not you ? We talked freely about
you: she seems to have a just notion of your
character and will be fond of you if you will let
her."

After instancing the misunderstanding be-
tween her own mother and aunt already quoted,
Mary continues : —

" My aunt and my mother were wholly unlike
you and your sister, yet in some degree theirs is
the secret history, I believe, of all sisters-in-law,
and you will smile when I tell you I think my-
self the only woman in the world who could live
with a brother's wife and make a real friend of
her, partly from early observation of the un-

OF FRANKNESS. II3

happy example I have j ust given you, and partly
from a knack I know I have of looking into
people's real characters and never expecting
them to act out of it — never expecting another
to do as I would in the same case. When you
leave your mother, and say if you never see her
again you shall feel no remorse, and when you
make a Jewish bargain with your lovevy all this
gives me no offense, because it is your nature
and your temper, and I do not expect or want
you to be otherwise than you are. I love you
for the good that is in you and look for no
change.

^' But certainly you ought to struggle with the
evil that does most easily beset you — a total
want of politeness in behavior — I would say
modesty of behavior, but that I should not con-
vey to you my idea of the word modesty ; for I
certainly do not mean that you want real modesty^
and what is usually called false or mock mod-
esty I certainly do not wish you to possess ; yet I
trust you know what I mean well enough.
Secresyy though you appear all frankness, is cer-
tainly a grand failing of yours ; it is likewise
your brother Sf and, therefore, a family failing.
By secresy I mean you both want the habit of
telling each other at the moment everything
that happens, where you go and what you do— ^
that free communication of letters and opinions

114 MARY LAMB.

just as they arrive, as Charies and I do, and
which is, after all, the only ground-work of
friendship. Your brother, I will answer for it,
will never tell his wife or his sister all that is in
his mind ; he will receive letters and not
[mention it]. This is a fault Mrs. Stoddart
can never [tell him of], but she can and will
feel it, though on the whole and in every other
respect she is happy with him. Begin, for
God's sake, at the first and tell her everything
that passes. At first she may hear you with in-
difference, but in time this will gain her af-
fection and confidence ; show her all your letters
(no matter if she does not show hers). It is a
pleasant thing for a friend to put into one's
hand a letter just fresh from the post. I would
even say, begin with showing her this, but
that is freely written and loosely, and some
apology ought to be made for it which I know
not how to make, for I must write freely or not
at all.

"If you do this well she will tell your broth-
er, you will say ; and what then, quotha } It
will beget a freer communication amongst you,
which is a thing devoutly to be wished.

"God bless you and grant you may preserve
your integrity and remain unmarried and pen-
niless, and make William a good and happy
wife."

COLERIDGE GOES TO MALTA. II5

No wonder Mary's friendships were so stable
and so various, with this knack of hers of look-
ing into another's real character and never ex-
pecting him or her to act out of it, or to do as
she would in the same case ; taking no offense,
looking for no change and asking for no other
explanation than that it was her friend's nature.
It is an epitome of social wisdom and of gener-
ous sentiment.

Coleridge had long been in bad health and
worse spirits ; and what he had first ignorantly
used as a remedy had now become his tyrant —
opium ; for a time the curse of his life and the
blight of his splendid powers. Sometimes

Adown Lethean streams his spirit drifted;

sometimes he was stranded "in a howling wil-
derness of ghastly dreams," waking and sleep-
ing, followed by deadly languors which opium
caused and cured and caused again, driving him
round in an accursed circle. He came up to
London at the beginning of 1804, was much
with the Lambs if not actually their guest,
and finally decided to try change and join his
friend Dr. Stoddart in Malta, where he landed
April 1 8th. Mary, full of earnest and affec-
tionate solicitude, sent a letter by him to Sara
Stoddart, who had already arrived, bespeaking
a warm and indulgent welcome for her suffer-
ing friend : —

Il6 MARY LAMB.

"I will just write a few hasty lines to say
Coleridge is setting off sooner than we expected,
and I every moment expect him to call in one
of his great hilrrys for, this. We rejoiced with
exceeding great j oy to hear of your safe arrival.
I hope your brother will return home in a few
years a very rich man. Seventy pounds in one
fortnight is a pretty beginning.

"I envy your brother the pleasure of seeing
Coleridge drop in unexpectedly upon him ; we
talk — but it is but wild and idle talk — of fol-
lowing him. He is to get my brother some snug
little place of a thousand a year, and we are to
leave all and come and live among ye. What
a pretty dream !

"Coleridge is very ill. I dread the thoughts
of his long voyage. Write as soon. as he arrives
whether he does or not, and tell me how he
is. . . .

" He has got letters of recommendation to
Governor Ball and God knows v/ho ; and he will
talk and talk and be universally admired. But
I wish to write for him a lette7' of recommenda-
tion to Mrs. Stoddart and to yourself to take
upon ye, on his first arrival, to be kind, affec-
tionate nurses ; and mind, now, that you per-
form this duty faithfully and write me a good
account of yourself. Behave to him as you
would to me or to Charles if we came sick and
unhappy to you.

COLERIDGE GOES TO MALTA. 11/

" I have no news to send you ; Coleridge will
tell you how we are going on. Charles has lost
the newspaper [an engagement on the Morning
Post, which Coleridge had procured for him],
but what we dreaded as an evil has proved a
great blessing, for we have both strangely re-
covered our health and spirits since this has
happened ; and I hope, when I write next, I
shall be able to tell you Charles has begun
something which will produce a little money,
for it is not well to be very poor, which we cer-
tainly are at this present writing.

" I sit writing here and thinking almost you
will see it to-morrow ; and what a long, long
time it will be ere you receive this ! When I
saw your letter I fancy'd you were even just
then in the first bustle of a new reception,
every moment seeing new faces and staring at
new objects, when, at that time, everything had
become familiar to you ; and the strangers, your
new dancing partners, had perhaps become gos-
siping fire-side friends. You tell me of your
gay, splendid doings ; tell me, likewise, what
manner of home-life you lead. Is a quiet even-
ing in a Maltese drawing-room as> pleasant as
those we have passed in Mitre Court and Bell
Yard ? Tell me all about it, everything pleas-
ant and everything unpleasant that befalls you.

*' I want you to say a great deal about yourself.

Il8 MARY LAMB.

Are you happy ? and do you not repent going out ?
I wish I could see you for one hour only.

" Remember me affectionately to your sister
and brother, and tell me when you write if Mrs.
Stoddart likes Malta and how the climate agrees
with her and with thee.

"We heard you were taken prisoners, and
for several days believed the tale.

" How did the pearls and the fine court finery
bear the fatigues of the voyage, and how often
have they been worn and admired .-*

" Rickman wants to know if you are going to
be married yet. Satisfy him in that little par-
ticular when you write.

" The Fenwicks send their love and Mrs.
Reynolds her love, and the little old lady her
best respects.

*' Mrs. Jeffries, who I see now and then, talks
of you with tears in her eyes, and when she
heard you was taken prisoner. Lord ! how
frightened she was. She has heard, she tells
me, that Mr. Stoddart is to have a pension of
two thousand "a year whenever he chooses to re-
turn to England.

" God bless you and send you all manner of
comforts and happinesses."

Mrs. Reynolds was another "little old lady,"
a familiar figure at the Lambs' table. She had
once been Charles' school-mistress; had made

LETTER TO' SARA S TODD ART. I19

an unfortunate marriage, and would have gone
under in the social stream but for his kindly-
hand. Out of their slender means he allowed
her ;£30 a year. She tickled Hood's fancy
when he too became a frequent guest there;
and he has described her as formal, fair and
fiaxen-wigged like an elderly wax doll, speaking
as if by an artificial apparatus, through some
defect in the palate, and with a slight limp and
a twist occasioned by running too precipitately
down Greenwich Hill in her youth ! She re-
membered Goldsmith, who had once lent her
his Deserted Village.

In those days of universal warfare and priva-
teering it was an anxious matter to have a friend
tossing in the Bay of Biscay, gales and storms
apart ; so that tidings from Sara had been ea-
gerly watched for : —

"Your letter," writes Mary, "which contained
the news of Coleridge's arrival, was a most wel-
come one ; for we had begun to entertain very
unpleasant apprehensions for his safety; and
your kind reception of the forlorn wanderer
gave me the greatest pleasure, and I thank you
for it in my own and my brother's name. I
shall depend upon you for hearing of his wel-
fare, for he does not write himself ; but as long
as we know he is safe and in such kind
friends' hands we do not mind. Your letters,

120 MARY LAMB.

my dear Sara, are to me very, very precious
ones. They are the kindest, best, most natural
ones I ever received. The one containing the
news of the arrival of Coleridge is, perhaps, the
best I ever saw ; and your old friend Charles is '
of my opinion. We sent it off to Mrs. Coler-
idge and the Wordsworths — as well because
we thought it our duty to give them the first
notice we had of our dear friend's safety, as that
we w^ere proud of showing our Sara's pretty let-
ter.

"The letters we received a few days after
from you and your brother were far less wel-
come ones. I rejoiced to hear your sister is
well, but I grieved for the loss of the dear baby,
and I am sorry to find your brother is not so suc-
cessful as he expected to be; and yet I am al-
most tempted to wish his ill fortune may send
him over to us again. He has a friend, I under-
stand, who is now at the head of the Admiral-
ty ; why may he not return and make a fortune
here ?

"I cannot condole with you very sincerely
upon your failure in the fortune-making way. If
you regret it, so do I. But I hope to see you a
comfortable English wife ; and the forsaken, for-
gotten William, of English-partridge memory, I
have still a hankering after. However, I thauK
you for your frank communication and I beg

LETTER TO SARA STODDART 121

you will continue it in future ; and if I do not
agree with a good grace to your having a Mal-
tese husband, I will wish you happy, provided
you make it a part of your marriage articles that
your husband shall allow you to come over sea
and make me one visit ; else may neglect and
overlookedness be your portion while you stay
there.

'* I would condole with you when the misfor-
tune has befallen your poor leg ; but such is the
blessed distance we are at from each other that
I hope, before you receive this, you have forgot
it ever happened.

" Our compliments to the high ton at the Mal-
tese court. Your brother is so profuse of them
to me that, being, as you know, so unused to
them, they perplex me sadly ; in future I beg
they may be discontinued. They always remind
me of the free and I believe very improper let-
ter I wrote to you while you were at the Isle of
Wight [that already given advising frankness].
The more kindly you and your brother and sis-
ter took the impertinent advice contained in it,
the more certain I feel that it was unnecessary,
and, therefore, highly improper. Do not let
your brother compliment me into the memory
of it again.

"My brother has had a letter from your
mother which has distressed him sadly — about

122 MAJ^y LAMB.

the postage of some letters being paid by my
brother. Your silly brother, it seems, has in-
formed your mother (I did not think your
brother could have been so silly) that Charles
had grumbled on paying the said postage. The
fact was, just at that time we were very poor,
having lost the Morning Post^ and we were
beginning to practice a strict economy. My
brother, who never makes up his mind whether
he will be a miser or a spendthrift, is at all
times a strange mixture of both [rigid in those
small economies which enabled him to be not
only just but generous on small means].'* **0f
this failing the even economy of your correct
brother's temper makes him an ill judge. The
miserly part of Charles, at that time smarting
under his recent loss, then happened to reign
triumphant ; and he would not write or let me
write so often as he wished because the postage
cost two and fourpence. Then came two or
three of your poor mother's letters nearly to-
gether ; and the two and f ourpences he wished
but grudged to pay for his own he was forced
to pay for hers. In this dismal distress he
applied to Fenwick to get his friend Motley to
send them free from Portsmouth. This Mr.
Fenwick could have done for half a word's
speaking ; but this he did not do ! Then
Charles foolishly and unthinkingly complained

LETTER TO SARA STODDART. 123

to your brother in a half -serious, half -joking
way ; and your brother has wickedly and with
malice aforethought told your mother. Oh,
fye upon him ! what will your mother think of
us ?

" I, too, feel my share of blame in this vex-
atious business, for I saw the unlucky paragraph
in my brother's letter ; and I had a kind of
foreboding that it would come to your mother's
ears, although I had a higher idea of your
brother's good sense than I find he deserved.
By entreaties and prayer I might have prevailed
on my brother to say nothing about it. But I
make a point of conscience never to interfere or
cross my brother in the humor he happens to be
in. It always appears to me to be a vexatious
kind of tyranny that women have no business
to exercise over men, which, merely because,
they having a better judgment^ they have power to
do. / Let men alone and at last we find they
come round to the right way which we, by a
kind of intuition, perceive at once./ But, better,
far better that we should let them often do
wrong than that they should have the torment
of a monitor always at their elbows.

'* Charles is sadly fretted now, I know, at
what to say to your mother. I have made this
long preamble about it to induce you, if possible,
to reinstate us in your mother's good graces.

124 MARY LAMB,

Say to her it was a jest misunderstood ; tell her
Charles Lamb is not the shabby fellow she and
her son took him for, but that he is, now and
then, a trifle whimsical or so. I do not ask
your brother to do this, for I am offended with
him for the mischief he has made.

"I feel that I have too lightly passed over
the interesting account you sent me of your
late disappointment. It was not because I did
not feel and completely enter into the affair
with you. You surprise and please me with
the frank and generous way in which you deal
with your lovers, taking a refusal from their so
prudential hearts with a better grace and more
good humor than other women accept a suitor's
service. Continue this open, artless conduct,
and I trust you will at last find some man who
has sense enough to know you are well worth
risking a peaceable life of poverty for. I shall
yet live to see you a poor but happy English
wife.

" Remember me most affectionately to Coler-
idge, and I thank you again and again for all
your kindness to him. To dear Mrs. Stoddart
and your brother I beg my best love ; and to
you all I wish health and happiness and a soon
return to old England.

" I have sent to Mr. Burrel's for your kind,
present, but unfortunately he is not in town. I

COLERIDGE'S WANDERINGS, 12$

am impatient to see my fine silk handkerchiefs,
and I thank you for them not as a present, for I
do not love presents, but as a remembrance of
your old friend. Farewell.
" I am, my best Sara,

'' Your most affectionate friend,

"Mary Lamb."

" Good wishes and all proper remembrances
from old nurse, Mrs. Jeffries, Mrs. Reynolds,
Mrs. Rickman, etc. Long live Queen Hoop-
oop-oop-oo and all the old merry phantoms."

Sara Stoddart returned to England before
the year was out. Coleridge remained in Mal-
ta, filling temporarily, at the request of Sir Al-
exander Ball, Governor of the island, the post
of Public Secretary till the end of September,
1805, when his friends lost track of him alto-
gether for nearly a year ; during which he vis-
ited Paris, wandered through Italy, Sicily, Cairo,
and saw Vesuvius in December, when " the air
was so consolidated with a massy cloud-curtain
that it appeared like a mountain in basso-relievo
in an interminable wall of some pantheon ; ".
and after narrowly escaping imprisonment at the
hands of Napoleon, suddenly reappeared amongst
his friends in the autumn of 1806.

To the Wordsworth s, brother and sister and
young wife — for the three were one in heart —

126 MARY LAMB.

this year of 1805 had been one of overwhelming
sorrow. Their brother John, the brave and able
ship's captain, who yet loved "all quiet things"
as dearly as William, '' although he loved more
silently," and was wont to carry that beloved
brother's poems to sea and con them to the
music of the winds and waves ; whose cherished
scheme, so near fulfilment, it was to realize
enough to settle in a cottage at Grasmere and
devote his earnings to the poet's use, so that he
might pursue his way unharassed by a thought
of money, — this brother was shipwrecked on
the Bill of Portland just as he was starting, and
whilst the ship was yet in the pilot's hands, on
what was to have been, in how different a sense,
his last voyage.

Six weeks beneath the moving sea

He lay in slumber quietly,

Unforced by wind or wave

To quit the ship for which he died

(All claims of duty satisfied) ;

And there they found him at her side,

And bore him to the grave.

After waiting a while in silence before a
grief of such magnitude, Mary wrote to Doro-
thy Wordsworth. She speaks as one acquainted
with a life-long sorrow, yet who has learned to
find its companionship not bitter : —

" I thank you, my kind friend, for your most

LETTER TO DOROTHY. 1 27

comfortable letter ; till I saw your own hand-
writing I could not persuade myself that I
should do well to write to you, though I have
often attempted it ; but I always left off dissat-
isfied with what I had written, and feeling that
I was doing an improper thing to intrude upon
your sorrow. I wished to tell you that you
would one day feel the kind of peaceful state of
mind and sweet memory of the dead which you
so happily describe as now almost begun ; but
I felt that it was improper and most grating to
the feeling of the afflicted to say to them that
the memory of their affliction would in time be-
come a constant part, not only of their dream,
but of their most wakeful sense of happiness.
That you would see every object with and
through your lost brother, and that that would
at last become a real and everlasting source of
comfort to you, I felt and well knew from my
own experience in sorrow ; but till you yourself
began to feel this I didn't dare tell you so ; but
I send you some poor lines which I wrote under
this conviction of mind and before I heard
Coleridge was returning home. I will tran-
scribe them now, before I finish my letter, lest
a false shame prevent me then, for I know they
are much worse than they ought to be, written
as they were with strong feeling and on such a
subject ; every line seems to me to be bor-

128 MARY LAMB,

rowed ; but I had no better way of expressing
my thoughts, and I never have the power of
altering or amending anything I have once laid
aside with dissatisfaction : —

Why is he wandering on the sea?

Coleridge should now with Wordsworth be.

By slow degrees he'd steal away

Their woe and gently bring a ray

(So happily he'd time relief)

Of comfort from their very grief.

He'd tell them that their brother dead,

When years have passed o'er their head,

Will be remembered with such holy,

True and perfect melancholy,

That ever this lost brother John

Will be their heart's companion.

His voice they'll always hear,

His face they'll always see ;

There's naught in life so sweet

As such a memory.

Thus for a moment are we permitted to see
that, next to love for her brother, the memory
of her dead mother and friendship for Coleridge
were the deep and sacred influences of Mary's
life.

CHAPTER VII.

Mary in the Asylum again. — Lamb's Letter witli a Poem
of hers. — Her slow Recovery. — Letters to Sara Stod-
dart. — The Tales from Shakespeare begun. — Haz-
litt's Portrait of Lamb. — Sara's Lovers. — The Farce
of Mr, H.

1805-6. — ^t. 41-2.

The letter to Miss Wordsworth called forth a
response ; but, alas ! Mary was in sad exile when
it arrived, and Charles, with a heart full of
grief, wrote for her : —

"14TH June, 1805.
" Your long, kind letter has not been thrown
away (for it has given me great pleasure to find
you are all resuming your old occupations and
are better) ; but poor Mary, to whom it is
addressed, cannot yet relish it. She has been
attacked by one of her severe illnesses and is at
present from home. Last Monday week was
the day she left me, and I hope I may calculate
upon having her again in a month or little more.
I am rather afraid late hours have, in this case,
contributed to her indisppsitio|i. ... I have

5

130 MARY LAMB.

every reason to suppose that this illness, like
all the former ones, will be but temporary ; but
I cannot always feel so. Meantime she is dead
to me, and I miss a prop. All my strength is
gone, and I am like a fool, Bereft of her cooper-
ation. I dare not think lest I should think
wrong, so used am I to look up to her in the
least as in the biggest perplexity. To say all
that I know of her would be more than I think
anybody could believe or even understand ; and
when I hope to have her well again with me it
would be sinning against her feelings to go
about to praise her, for I can conceal nothing
that I do from her. She is older and wiser and
better than I, and all my wretched imperfections
I cover to myself by resolutely thinking on her
goodness. She would share life and death,
Heaven and hell, with me. She lives but for
me ; and I know I have been wasting and teas-
ing her life for five years past incessantly with
my cursed drinking and ways of going on. But
even in this upbraiding of myself I am offend-
ing against her, for I know that she has clung
to me for better for worse ; and if the balance
has been against her hitherto it was a noble
trade. . . .

"I cannot resist transcribing three or four
lines which poor Mary made upon a picture (a
' Hply Family ') which we saw at an auction only

CHARLES TO DOROTHY. 131

one week before she left home. She was then
beginning to show signs of ill boding. They
are sweet lines, and upon a sweet picture ; but
I send them only as the last memorial of her : —

Virgin and Child, L. da Vinci.

Maternal lady, with thy virgin grace,
Heaven-born thy Jesus seemeth sure.

And thou a virgin pure.
Lady most perfect, when thy angel face
Men look upon, they wish to be
A Catholic, Madonna fair, to worship thee.

" You had her lines about the ' Lady Blanch.'
You have not had some which she wrote upon
a copy of a girl from Titian, which I had hung
up where that print of Blanch and the Abbess
(as she beautifully interpreted two female fig-
ures from L. da Vinci) had hung in our room.
'Tis light and pretty : —

Who art thou, fair one, who usurp'st the place

Of Blanch, the lady of the matchless grace 1

Come, fair and pretty, tell to me

Who in thy life-time thou might'st be ?

Thou pretty art and fair.

But with the Lady Blanch thou never must compare.

No need for Blanch her history to tell;

Whoever saw her face, they there did read it well;

But when I look on thee, I only know

There lived a pretty maid some hundred years ago.

" This is a little unfair, to tell so much about
ourselves and to advert so little to your letter,

132 MARY LAMB.

SO full of comfortable tidings of you all. But
my own cares press pretty close upon me and
you can make allowances. That you may go on
gathering strength and peace is my next wish
to Mary's recovery.

*' I had almost forgot your repeated invitation.
Supposing that Mary will be well and able,
there is another ability which you may guess at
which I cannot promise myself. In prudence
we ought not to come. This illness will make
it still more prudential to wait. It is not a bal-
ance of this way of spending our money against
another way, but an absolute question of
whether we shall stop now or go on wasting
away the little we have got beforehand, which
my wise conduct has already encroached upon
one-half."

Pity it is that the little poem on the " Lady
Blanch " should have perished, as I fear it has,
if it contained as " sweet lines " as the fore-
going.

Little more than a month after this (July 27)
Charles writes cheerfully to Manning : — -

*' My old housekeeper has shown signs of
convalescence and will shortly resume the
power of the keys, so I shan't be cheated of my
tea and liquors. Wind in the west, which pro-
motes tranquillity. Have leisure now to antici-

CHARLES TO DOROTHY. 1 33

pate seeing thee again. Have been taking
leave [it was a very short leave] of tobacco in a
rhyming address. Had thought that vein had
long since closed up. Find I can rhyme and
reason too. Think of studying mathematics to
restrain the fire of my genius, which George
Dyer recommends. Have frequent bleedings
at the nose, which shows plethoric. Maybe
shall try the sea myself, that great scene of
wonders. Got incredibly sober and regular ;
shave oftener and hum a tune to signify cheer-
fulness and gallantry.

" Suddenly disposed to sleep, having taken a
quart of peas with bacon and stout. Will not
refuse Nature, who has done such things for
me !

" Nurse ! don't call me unless Mr. Manning

comes. — What ! the gentleman in spectacles ?

— Yes.

^^ Dormit. C. L.

" Saturday, hot noon."

But although Mary was sufficiently recovered
to return home at the end of the summer, she
continued much shaken by the severity of this
attack, and so also did her brother all through
the autumn ; as the following letters to Sara
Stoddart, and still more one already quoted (pp.
99-100), show : —

134 MARY LAMB.

"September, 1805.

** Certainly you are the best letter- writer
(besides writing the best hand) in the world.
I have just been reading over again your two
long letters and I perceive they make me very
envious. I have taken a brand-new pen and put
'on my spectacles, and am peering with all my
might to see the lines in the paper, which the
sight of your even lines had well-nigh tempted
me to rule ; and I have moreover taken two
pinches of snuff extraordinary to clear my head,
which feels more cloudy than common this fine,
cheerful morning.

"All I can gather from your clear and, I have
no doubt, faithful history of Maltese politics is
that the good doctor, though a firm, friend, an
excellent fancier of brooches, a good husband,
an upright advocate, and, in short, all that they
say upon tombstones (for I do not recollect that
they celebrate any fraterAal virtues there), —
yet is he but a moody brother ; that your sister-
in-law is pretty much like what all sisters-in-
law have been since the first happy invention
of the marriage state ; that friend Coleridge has
undergone no alteration by crossing the Atlan-
tic [geography was evidently no part of Captain
Starkey's curriculum], for his friendliness to
you as well as the oddities you mention are just
what one ought to look for from him ; and that

LETTER TO SARA STODDART. 1 35

you, my dear Sara, have proved yourself just as
unfit to flourish in a Httle proud garrison town
as I did shrewdly suspect you were before you
went there.

" If I possibly can I will prevail upon Charles
to write to your brother by the conveyance you
mention ; but he is so unwell I almost fear the
fortnight will slip away before I can get him in
the right vein. Indeed, it has been sad and
heavy times with us lately. When I am pretty
welLhis low spirits throw me back again ; and
when he begins to get a little cheerful, then I
do the same kind office for him. I heartily
wish for the arrival of Coleridge ; a few such
evenings as we have sometimes passed with
him would wind us up and set us going again.

" Do not say anything when you write of our
low spirits ; it will vex Charles. You would
laugh or you would cry, perhaps both, to see us
sit together looking at each other with long and
rueful faces, and saying ' How do you do } ' and
' How do you do .'* ' then we fall a-crying and
say we will be better on the morrow. He says
we are like toothache, and his friend gum-boil,
which, though a kind of ease, is but an uneasy
kind of ease, a comfort of rather an uncomforta-
ble sort.

"I rejoice to hear of your mother's amend-
ment ; when you can leave her with any satis-

136 MARY LAMB.

faction to yourself — which, as her sister, I
think I understand by your letter, is with her,
I hope you may soon be able to do — let me
know upon what plan you mean to come to
town. Your brother proposed your being six
months in town and six with your mother; but
he did not then know of your poor mother's ill-
ness. By his desire I inquired for a respectable
family for you to board with, and from Captain
Burney I heard of one I thought would suit you
at that time. He particularly desires I would
not think of your being with us, not thinking, I
conj ecture, the house of a single man respectable
enough. Your brother gave me most unlimited
orders to domineer over you, to be the in-
spector of all your actions, and to direct and
govern you with a stern voice and a high hand ;
to be, in short, a very elder brother over you.
Does the hearing of this, my meek pupil, make
you long to come to London 1 I am making all
the proper inquiries, against the time, of the
newest and most approved modes (being myself
mainly ignorant in these points) of etiquette
and nicely-correct, maidenly manners.

"But to speak seriously. I mean, when we
meet, that we will lay our heads together and
consult and contrive the best way of making
the best girl in the world the fine lady her
brother wishes to see her ; and believe me, Sara,

LETTER TO SARA STODDART 13/

it is not so difficult a matter as one is apt to
imagine. I have observed many a demure lady
who passes muster admirably well, who, I think,
we could easily learn to imitate in a week or
two. We will talk of these things when we
meet. In the meantime I give you free leave
to be happy and merry at Salisbury in any way
you can. Has the partridge season opened any
communication between you and William t As
I allow you to be imprudent till I see you, I
shall expect to hear you have invited him to
taste his own birds. Have you scratched him
out of your will yet } Rickman is married, and
that is all the news I have to send you. I seem,
upon looking over my letter again, to have writ-
ten too lightly of your distresses at Malta ; but
however I may have written, believe me I enter
very feelingly into all your troubles. I love you
and I love your brother ; and between you, both
of whom, I think, have been to blame, I know
not what to say ; only this I say, try to think as
little as possible of past miscarriages ; it was
perhaps so ordered by Providence that you
might return home to be a comfort to your
mother."

No long holiday trip was to be ventured on
while Mary continued thus shaken and de-
pressed. "We have been to two tiny excur-
sions this summer, for three or four days each.

138 MARY LAMB.

to a place near Harrow and to Egham, where
Cooper's Hill is, and that is the total history of
our rustication this year," Charles tells Words-
worth. In October Mary gives a slightly better
account of herself : —

"I have made many attempts* at writing to
you, but it has always brought your troubles and
my own so strongly into my mind, that I have
been obliged to leave off and make Charles
write for me. I am resolved now, however few
lines I write, this shall go ; for I know, my kind
friend, you will like once more to see my own
handwriting.

" I have been for these few days past in
rather better spirits, so that I begin almost to
feel myself once more a living creature and to
hope for happier times ; and in that hope I
include the prospect of once more seeing my
dear Sara in peace and comfort in our old gar-
ret. How did I wish for your presence to cheer
my drooping heart when I returned home from
banishment !

"Is your being with or near your poor dear
mother necessary to her comfort } Does she
take any notice of you } And is there any pros-
pect of her recovery .? How I grieve for her, for
you ! . . .

"I went to the Admiralty, about your
mother's pension ; from thence I was directed

LETTER TO SARA STODDART 139

to an office in Lincoln's Inn. . . . They
informed me it could not be paid to any person
but Mr, Wray without a letter of attorney. . . .
Do not let us neglect this business, and make
use of me in any way you can.

"I have much to thank you and your kind
brother for. I kept the dark silk, as you may
suppose. You have made me very fine ; the
brooch is very beautiful. Mrs. Jeffries wept
for gratitude when she saw your present ; she
desires all manner of thanks and good wishes.
Your maid's sister has gone to live a few miles
from town. Charles, however, found her out
and gave her the handkerchief.

*' I want to know if you have seen William
and if there is any prospect in future there.
All you said in your letter from Portsmouth
that related to him was so burnt in the fumigat-
ing that we could only make out that it was
unfavorable, but not the particulars ; tell us
again how you go on or if you have seen him.
I conceit affairs will somehow be made up
between you at last.

" I want to know how your brother goes on.
Is he likely to make a very good fortune, and in
how long a time.-' And how is he in the way of
home comforts — I mean is he very happy with
Mrs. Stoddart t This was a question I could
not ask while you were there, and perhaps is

140 MARY LAMB.

not a fair one now; but I want to know how
you all went on, and, in short, twenty little
foolish questions, that one ought, perhaps,
rather to ask when we meet than to write
about. But do make me a little acquainted
with the inside of the good doctor's house and
what passes therein.

^' Was Coleridge often with you ? or did your
brother and Col. argue long arguments, till
between the two great arguers there grew a
little coolness } or perchance the mighty friend-
ship between Coleridge and your sovereign
Governor, Sir Alexander Ball, might create a
kind of jealousy ; for we fancy something of a
coolness did exist, from the little mention of C.
ever made in your brother's letters.

" Write us, my good girl, a long, gossiping
letter answering all these foolish questions —
and tell me any silly thing you can recollect ;
any, the least particular, will be interesting to
us, and we will never tell tales out of school ;
but we used to wonder and wonder how you all
went on ; and when you was coming home we
said, 'Now we shall hear all from Sara.'

" God bless you, my dear friend. . . If
you have sent Charles any commissions he has
not executed write me word — he says he has
lost or mislaid a letter desiring him to inquire
about a wig. Write two letters — one of busi-

HAZLITT'S PORTRAIT OF LAMB. 141

ness and pensions and one all about Sara Stod-
dart and Malta.

*' We have got a picture of Charles ; do you
think your brother would like to have it ? If
you do, can you put us in a way how to send
it ? "

Mary's interest in her friend and her friend's
affairs is so hearty one cannot choose but share
it, and would gladly see what " the best letter-
writer in the world " had to tell of Coleridge
and Stoddart and the long arguments and little
jealousies; and whether "William" had con-
tinued to dangle on, spite of distance and dis-
couragement ; and even to learn that the old
lady received her pension and her wig in safety.
But curiosity must remain unsatisfied, for none
of Miss Stoddart's letters have been preserved.

" The picture of Charles " was, we may feel
pretty sure, one which William Hazlitt painted
this year of Lamb " in the costume of a Vene-
tian senator." It is, on all accounts, a peculiarly
interesting portrait. Lamb was just thirty ; and
it gives, on the whole, a striking impression of
the nobility and beauty of form and feature
which characterized his head, and partly realizes
Proctor's description — ''a countenance so full
of sensibility that it came upon you like a new
thought which you could not help dwelling upon
afterwards ; " though the subtle lines which

142 MAJ^V LAMB.

gave that wondrous sweetness of expression to
the mouth are not fully rendered. Compared
with the drawing by Hancock, done when Lamb
was twenty-three, engraved in Cottle's Early
Recollections of Coleridge, each may be said to
corroborate the truth of the other, allowing for
difference of age and aspect, — Hancock's being
in profile, Hazlitt's (of which there is a good
lithograph in Barry Cornwall's Memoir) nearly
full-face. The print from it prefixed to Fitz-
gerald's Lamb is almost unrecognizable. It was
the last time Hazlitt took a brush in hand, his
grandson tells us ; and it comes as a pleasant
surprise — an indication that he was too modest
in estimating his own gifts as a painter ; and
that the freshness of feeling and insight he dis-
. played as an art critic were backed by some
capacity for good workmanship.

It was whilst this portrait was being painted
that the acquaintance between Lamb and Haz-
litt ripened into an intimacy which, with one
or two brief interruptions, was to be fruitful,
invigorating on both sides and life-long. Haz-
litt was at this time staying with his brother
John, a successful miniature painter and a
member of the Godwin circle, much frequented
by the Lambs.

" It is not well to be very poor, which we
certainly are at this present," Mary had lately

SA/^A'S MERITS AND DEMERITS, 1 43

written. This it was which spurred her on to
undertake her first Hterary venture, the Tales
from Shakespeare. The nature of the malady
from which she suffered made continuous men-
tal exertion distressing and probably injurious ;
so that without this spur she would never, we
may be sure, have dug and planted her little
plot in the field of literature, and made of it a
sweet and pleasant place for the young, where
they may play and be nourished, regardless of
time and change. The first hint of any such
scheme occurs in a letter to Sara Stoddart dated
April 22, 1806, written the very day she had
left the Lambs : —

"I have heard that Coleridge was lately
going through Sicily to Rome with a party ;
but that, being unwell, he returned back to
Naples. We think there is some mistake in
this account and that his intended journey to
Rome was in his former jaunt to Naples. If
you know that at that time he had any such
intention will you write instantly .-* for I do not
know whether I ought to write to Mrs. Coler-
idge or not.

" I am going to make a sort of promise to
myself and to you that I will write you kind of
journal-like letters of the daily what-we-do mat-
ters, as they occur. This day seems to me a
kind of new era in our time. It is not a birth-

144 MARY LAMB,

day, nor a new year's day, nor a leave-off -smok-
ing day ; but it-is about an hour after the time of
leaving you, our poor Phoenix, in the Salisbury
stage, and Charles has just left me to go to his
lodgings [a room to work in free from the dis-
traction of constant visitors, just hired experi-
mentally], and I am holding a solitary consulta-
tion with myself as to how I shall employ myself.

*' Writing plays, novels, poems and all manner
of such-like vaporing and vaporish schemes are
floating in my head, which, at the same time,
aches with the thought of parting from you,
and is perplext at the idea of I cannot tell what-
about notion that I have not made you half so
comfortable as I ought to have done, and a
melancholy sense of the dull prospect you have
before you on your return home. Then I think
I will make my new gown ; and now I consider
the white petticoat will be better candle-light
work ; and then I look at the fire and think
if the irons was but down I would iron m.y
gowns — you having put me out of conceit of
mangling.

So much for an account of my own confused
head ; and now for yours. Returning home
from the inn, we took that to pieces and can-
vassed you, as you know is our usual custom.
We agreed we should miss you sadly, and that
you had been what you yourself discovered, not

SARA'S MERITS AND DEMERITS. 145

at all in our way ; and although, if the postmas-
ter should happen to open this, it would appear
to him to be no great compliment ; yet you, who
enter so warmly into the interior of our affairs,
will understand and value it as well as what we
likewise asserted, that since you have been with
us you have done but one foolish thing : vide
Pinckhorn. (Excuse my bad Latin, if it should
chance to mean exactly contrary to what I in-
tend.) We praised you for the very friendly way
in which you regarded all our whimsies, and, to
use a phrase of Coleridge, understood us. We
had, in short, no drawback on our eulogy on
yotir merit except lamenting the want of respect
you have to yourself, the want of a certain dig-
nity of action (you know what I mean), which —
though it only broke out in the acceptance of
the old justice's book, and was, as it were,
smothered and almost extinct while you were
here — yet is it so native a feeling in your mind
that you will do whatever the present moment
prompts you to do, that I wish you would take
that one slight offense seriously to heart, and
make it a part of your daily consideration to
drive this unlucky prop^ensity, root and branch,
out of your character. Then, mercy on us, what
a perfect little gentlewoman you will be ! ! !

"You are not yet arrived at the first stage of
your journey; yet have I the sense of your

146 MARY LAMB.

absence so strong upon me that I was really
thinking what news I had to send you, and what
had happened since you had left us. Truly
nothing, except that Martin Burney met us in
Lincoln's Inn Fields and borrowed fourpence,
of the repayment of which sum I will send you
due notice.

" Friday. — Last night I told Charles of your
matrimonial overtures from Mr. White and of
the cause of that business being at a standstill.
Your generous conduct in acquainting Mr.
White with the vexatious affair at Malta highly
pleased him. He entirely approves of it. You
would be quite comforted to hear what he said
on the subject.

"He wishes you success ; and when Coleridge
comes will consult with him about what is best
to be done. But I charge you be most strictly
cautious how you proceed yourself. Do not
give Mr. W. any reason to think you indiscreet ;
let him return of his own accord and keep the
probability of his doing so full in your mind ; so,
I mean, as to regulate your whole conduct by
that expectation. Do not allow yourself to see
or in any way renew your acquaintance with
William, nor do any other silly thing of that
kind ; for you may depend upon it he will be a
kind of spy upon you, and if he observes noth-
ing that he disapproves of you will certainly
hear of him again in time.

THE FARCE. 147

"Charles is gone to finish the farce {Mr. H.'\
and I am to hear it read this night. I am so
uneasy between my hopes and fears of how I
shall like it that I do not know what I am doing.
I need not tell you so, for before I send this I
shall be able to tell you all about it. If I think
it will amuse you I will send you a copy. The
bed was very cold last night.

" I have received your letter and am happy
to hear that your mother has been so well in
your absence, which I wish had been prolonged
a little, for you have been wanted to copy out
the farce, in the writing of which I made many
an unlucky blunder.

" The said farce I carried (after many consult-
ations of who was the most proper person to
perform so important an office) to Wroughton,
the manager of Drury Lane. He was very
civil to me ; said it did not depend upon him-
self, but that he would put it into the propri-
etor's hands, and that we should certainly have
an answer from them.

" I have been unable to finish this sheet be-
fore, for Charles has taken a week's holhday
from his lodging to rest himself after his labor,
and we have talked of nothing but the farce
night and day; but yesterday I carried it to
Wroughton, and since it has been out of the
way our minds have been a little easier. I wish

148 MARY LAMB.

you had been with us to have given your opin-
ion. I have half a mind to scribble another
copy and send it you. I like it very much, and
cannot help having great hopes of its success.

" I would say I was very sorry for the death
of Mr. White's father, but not knowing the good
old gentleman, I cannot help being as well sat-
isfied that he is gone, for his son will feel rather
lonely, and so, perhaps, he may chance to visit
again Winterslow. You so well describe your
brother's grave lecturing letter that you make
me ashamed of part of mine. I would fain
rewrite it, leaving out my ^ sage advice;' but if
I begin another letter something, may fall out
to prevent me from finishing it, and, therefore,
skip over it as well as you can ; it shall be t«ke
last I ever send you.

" It is well enough when one is talking to a
friend to hedge in an odd word by way of coun-
sel now and then ; but there is something mighty
irksome in its staring upon one in a letter,
where one ought only to see kind words and
friendly remembrances.

" I have heard a vague report from the Dawes
(the pleasant-looking young lady we called upon
was Miss Dawe) that Coleridge returned back to
Naples ; they are to make further inquiries and
let me know the particulars. We have seen
little or nothing of Manning since you went.

THE FARCE. 1 49

Your friend George Burnet calls as usual for
Charles to point oiU something for ki^n. I miss
you sadly, and but for the fidget I have been in
about the farce, I should have missed you still
more. I am sorry you cannot get your money ;
continue to tell us all your perplexities, and do
not mind being called Widow Blackacre.

** Say all in your mind about your lover ; now
Charles knows of it, he will be as anxious to
hear as me. All the time we can spare from
talking of the characters and plot of the farce,
we talk of you. I have got a fresh bottle of
brandy to-day ; if you were here you should
have a glass, three parts brandy^ so you should.
I bought a pound of bacon to-day, not so good
as yours. I wish the little caps were finished.
I am glad the medicines and the cordials bore
the fatigue of their journey so well. I promise
you I will write often, and not mind the postage.
God bless you. Charles does not send his love
because he is not here. Write as often as ever
you can. Do not work too hard."

There is a little anecdote of Sara Stoddart,
told by her grandson, which helps to mitigate
our astonishment at Mary's too hospitable sug-
gestion in regard to the brandy. Lieutenant
Stoddart would sometimes, while sipping his
grog, say to his children : " John, will you have
some.'*" "No, thank you, father." "Sara,

150 MAJ^Y LAMB.

will you?" "Yes, please, father." "Not,"
adds Mr. Hazlitt, "that she ever indulged to
excess, but she was that sort of woman." Very
far, certainly, from "the perfect little gentle-
woman" Mary hoped one day to see her; but
friendly, not without brains, with a kindly heart,
and her worst qualities such, surely, as spread
themselves freely on the surface, but strike no
deep or poisonous roots. " Do not mind being
called Widow Blackacre," says Mary, alluding to
one of the characters in Wycherley's Plain
Dealer. It certainly was not gratifying to be
likened to that " perverse, bustling, masculine
pettifogging and litigious" lady, albeit Macaulay
speaks of her as Wycherley's happiest creation.

When Hazlitt returned to Wem, Lamb sent
him his first letter full of friendly gossip : —

" . . . We miss you, as we foretold we
should. One or two things have happened
which are beneath the dignity of epistolary
communication, but which, seated about our
fireside at night (the winter hands of pork have
begun), gesture and emphasis might have
talked into some importance. Something about
Rickman's wife, for instance ; how tall she is,
and that she visits pranked up like a Queen of
the May with green streamers ; a good-natured
woman though, which is as much as you can ex-
pect from a friend's wife, whom you got ac-

FIRST LETTER TO HAZLITT 151

quainted with a bachelor. Something, too,
about Monkey [Louisa Martin], which can't so
well be written ; how it set up for a fine lady,
and thought it had got lovers and was obliged
to be convinced o£ its age from the parish reg-
ister, where it was proved to be only twelve,
and an edict issued that it should not give itself
airs yet this four years ; and how it got leave to
be called Miss by grace. These and such like
hows were in my head to tell you, but who can
write } Also how Manning is come to town in
spectacles, and studies physic ; is melancholy,
and seems to have something in his head
which he don't impart. Then, how I am going
to leave off smoking. . . . You disappoint
me in passing over in absolute silence the Blen-
heim Leonardo. Didn't you see it t Excuse a
lover's curiosity. I have seen no pictures of
note since, except Mr. Dawe's gallery. It is
curious to see how differently two great men
treat the same subject, yet both excellent in
their way. For instance, Milton and Mr. Dawe.
Mr. D. has chosen to illustrate the story of
Samson exactly in the point of view in which
Milton has been most happy : the interview
between the Jewish hero, blind and captive,
and Delilah. Milton has imagined his locks
grown again, strong as horse-hair or porcu-
pine's bristles ; doubtless shaggy and black, as

152 MARY LAMB.

being hairs * of which a nation armed contained
the strength.' I don't remember he says black ;
but could Milton imagine them to be yellow ?
Do you ? Mr. Dawe, with striking originality
of conception, has crowned him with a thin
yellow wig ; in color precisely like Dyson's, in
curl and quantity resembling Mrs. Professor's
'(Godwin's wife) ; his limbs rather stout, about
such a man as my brother or Rickman, but no
Atlas nor Hercules, nor yet so long as Dubois,
the clown of Sadler's Wells. This was judi-
cious, taking the spirit of the story rather than
the fact ; for doubtless God could communicate
national salvation to the trust of flax and tow
as well as hemp and cordage, and could draw
down a temple with a golden tress as soon as
with all the cables of the British navy.

" Wasn't you sorry for Lord Nelson .-* I have
followed him in fancy ever since I saw him in
Pall Mall (I was prejudiced against him before),
looking just as a hero should look, and I have
been very much cut about it indeed. He was
the only pretense of a great man we had. No-
body is left of any name at all. His secretary
died by his side. I imagined him, a Mr. Scott,
to be the man you met at Hume's, but I learn
from Mrs. Hume it is not the sam.e. . . . What
other news is there, Mary } What puns have I
made in the last fortnight 1 You never remem-

FIRST LETTER TO HAZLITT. 1 53

ber them. You have no relish for the comic.
'Oh, tell Hazlitt not to forget to send the
American Farmer. I dare say it's not as good
as he fancies, but a book's a book.' "...

Mary was no exclusive lover of her brother's
•old folios, his " ragged veterans " and *' midnight
darlings," but a miscellaneous reader with a
decided leaning to modern tales and adventures
— to "a story, well, ill or indifferently told, so
there be life stirring in it," as Elia has told.

It may be worth noting here that the Mr.
Scott mentioned above, who was not the secre-
tary killed by Nelson's side, was his chaplain,
and, though not killed, he received a wound in
the skull of so curious a nature as to cause occa-
sionally a sudden suspension of memory. In
the midst of a sentence he would stop abruptly,
losing, apparently, all mental consciousness ;
and after a lapse of time would resume at the
very word with which he had left off, wholly
unaware of any breach of continuity ; as one
who knew him has often related to me.

CHAPTER VIII.

The Tales from Shakespeare. — Letters to Sara Stoddart.
1806. — ^t. 42.

Once begun, the Tales from Shakespeare were
worked at with spirit and rapidity. By May
loth Charles writes to Manning : —

" [Mary] says you saw her writings about the
other day, and she wishes you should know
what they are. She is doing for Godwin's book-
seller twenty of Shakespeare's plays, to be made
into children's tales. Six are already done by
her, to wit : The Tempest, A Winter s Tale,
Midsummer Nighf s Dream, Much Ado about
Nothing, The Two Gentlemen of Verona, and
Cymbeline. The Merchant of Venice is in for-
wardness. I have done Othello and Macbeth,
and mean to do all the tragedies. I think it
will be popular among the little people, besides
money. It is to bring in sixty guineas. Mary
has done them capitally, I think you'd think."

"Godwin's bookseller" was really Godwin
himself, who at his wife's urgent entreaty had

TALES FROM SHAKESPEARE. 155

just started a "magazine" of children's books in
Hanway street, hoping thus to add to his preca-
rious earnings as an author. His own name
was in such ill odor with the orthodox that he
used his foreman's — Thomas Hodgkins — over
the shop-door and on the title-pages, whilst the
juvenile books which he himself wrote were
published under the name of Baldwin. When
the business was removed to Skinner street it
was carried on in his wife's name.

"My tales are to be published in separate
story-books," Mary tells Sara Stoddart. "I
mean in single stories, like the childr'en's little
shilling books. I cannot send you them in
manuscript, because they are all in the God-
wins' hands; but one will be pubhshed very
soon, and then you shall have it all in print,
I go on very well, and have no doubt but I
shall always be able to hit upon some such kind
of job to keep going on. I think I shall get
fifty pounds a year at the lowest calculation;
but as I have not yet seen any money of my
own earning (for we do not expect to be paid
till Christmas), I do not feel the good fortune
that has so unexpectedly befallen me half so
much as I ought to do. But another year, no
doubt, I shall perceive it. . . Charles has
written Macbeth, Othello, . King Lear, and has
begun Hamlet; you would like to see us, as we

156 MARY LAMB.

often sit writing on one table (but not on one
cushion sitting), like Hermia and Helena in the
Midsummer Night's Dreain; or rather, like an
old literary Darby and Joan, I taking snuff and
he groaning all the while and saying he can
make nothing of it, which he always says till he
has finished, and then he finds out he has made
something of it.

" If I tell you that you Widow Blackacre-ize
you' must tell me I tale-izQ^ for my tales seem to
be all the subject-matter I write about ; and
when you see them you will think them poor
little baby-stories to make such a talk about."

And a month later she says : — *' The reason
I have not written so long is that I worked and
worked in hopes to get through my task before
the holidays began ; but at last I was not able,
for Charles was forced to get them nov/, or he
could not have any at all ; and having picked
out the best stories first, these latter ones take
more time, being more perplext and unmanage-
able. I have finished one to-day, which teazed
me more than all the rest put together. They
sometimes plague me as bad as your lovers do
you. How do you go on, and how many new
ones have you had lately .'* "

" Mary is just stuck fast in All 's Well that.
Ends Well,'' writes Charles. " She complains
of having to set forth so many female characters

TALES FROM SHAKESPEARE. 15/

in boys' clothes. She begins to think Shakes-
peare must have wanted imagination ! I, to
encourage her (for she often faints in the prose-
cution of her great work), flatter her with
telling how well such and such a play is done.
But she is stuck fast, and I have been obliged to
promise to assist her."

At last Mary, in a postscript to her letter to
Sara, adds: "I am in good spirits just at this
present time, for Charles has been reading over
the tale I told you plagued me so much, and he
thinks it one of the very best. You must not
mind the many wretchedly dull letters I have
sent you ; for, indeed, I cannot help it ; my
mind is always so wretchedly dry after poring
over my work all day. But it will soon be over.
I am cooking a shoulder of lamb (Hazlitt dines
with us) ; it will be ready at 2 o'clock if you can
pop in and eat a bit with us."

Mary took a very modest estimate of her own
achievement ; but time has tested it, and passed
it on to generation after generation of children,
and the last makes it as welcome as the first.
Hardly a year passes but a new edition is
absorbed ; and not by children only, but by the
young generally, for no better introduction to
the study of Shakespeare can be desired. Of
the twenty plays included in the two small vol-
umes which were issued in January, 1807, four-

158 MARY LAMB.

teen — The Tempest, A Midsummer Nighfs
Dream, A Winter s Tale, Much Ado about
Nothing, As You Like Lt, The Two Ge^itlemen
of Veroita, The Merchant of Venice, Cymbeline,
All 's Well that Ends Well, The Tami7ig of the
Shrew, The Comedy of Errors, Measure for
Measure, Twelfth Night, and Pericles, Prince of
Tyre — were by Mary ; and the remaining six,
the great tragedies, by Charles. Her share
was the more difficult and the less grateful, not
only on account of the more "perplext and
unmanageable " plots of the comedies, but also
of the sacrifices entailed in converting witty
dialogue into brief narrative. But she ^^ con-
stantly evinces a rare shrewdness and tact in
her incidental criticisms, which show her to
have been, in her way, as keen an observer of
human nature as her brother," says Mr. Ainger
in his preface to the Golden Treasury edition of
the tales. "She" had "not lived so much
among the wits and humorists of her day with-
out learning some truths which helped her to
interpret the two chief characters of Much Ado
about Nothijig ; for instance : The hint Bea-
trice gave Benedict that he was a coward, by
saying she would eat all he had killed, he did
not regard, knowing himself to be a brave man ;
but there is nothing that great wits so much
dread as the imputation of buffoonery, because

THE ILLUSTRATIONS. 159

the charge comes sometimes a little too near
the truth ; therefore Benedict perfectly hated
Beatrice when she called him the prince's
jester." Very profound, too, is the casual
remark upon the conduct of Claudio and his
friends when the character of Hero is suddenly
blasted — conduct which has often perplexed
older readers for its heartlessness and insane
credulity : " The prince and Claudio left the
church without staying to see if Hero would
recover, or at all regarding the distress into
w^hich they had thrown Leonato, so hard-hearted
had their anger made them''

If one must hunt for a flaw to show critical
discernment, it is a pity that in Pericles, other-
wise so successfully handled, with judicious
ignoring of what is manifestly not Shakes-
peare's, a beautiful passage is marred by the
omission of a word that is the very heart of the
simile : —

See how she 'gins to blow into life's flower again,

says Cerimon, as the seemingly dead Thaisa
revives. " See, she begins to blow into life
again," Mary has it.

The tales appeared first in eight sixpenny
numbers, but were soon collected in two small
volumes "embellished," or, as it turned out,
disfigured by twenty copper-plate illustrations,

l6o MARY LAMB.

of which, as of other attendant vexations, Lamb
complains in a letter to Wordsworth, dated Jan-
uary 29, 1 807 : —

"We have booked off from the 'Swan and
Two Necks,' Lad Lane, this day (per coach),
the Tales from Shakespeare. You will forgive
the plates, when I tell you they were left to the
direction of Godwin, who left the choice of sub-
jects to the bad baby [Mrs. Godwin], who from

mischief (I suppose) has chosen one from d d

beastly vulgarity (vide Merck. Venice), when no
atom of authority was in the tale to justify it;
to another, has given a name which exists not
in the tale, Nic Bottom, and which she thought
would be funny, though in this I suspect his
hand, for I guess her reading does not reach
far enough to know Bottom's Christian name ;
and one of Hamlet and grave-digging, a scene
which is not hinted at in the story, and you
might as well have put King Canute the Great,
reproving his courtiers. The rest are giants
and giantesses. Suffice it to save our taste and
damn our folly, that we left all to a friend, W.
G., who in the first place cheated me by putting
a name to them which I did not mean, but do
not repent, and- then wrote a puff about their
simplicity, etc., to go with the advertisement as
in my name ! Enough of this egregious dupery.
I will try to abstract the load of teasing circum-

THE ILLUSTRATIONS. l6r

stances from the stories, and tell you that I am
answerable for Lear^ Macbeth^ Timon^ Romeo^
Hamlet, Othello, for occasionally a tail-piece or
correction of grammar, for none of the cuts and
all of the spelling. The rest is my sister's.
We think Pericles of hers the best, and Othello
of mine ; but I hope all have some good. As
You Like It, we like least. So much, only beg-
ging you to tear out the cuts and give them to
Johnny as * Mrs. Godwin's fancy ' ! !

" I had almost forgot my part of the preface
begins in the middle of a sentence, in last but
one page, after a colon, thus —

: — which if they be happily so done, etc.

The former part hath a mere feminine turn, and
does hold me up something as an instructor to
young ladies, but upon my modesty's honor I
wrote it not.

''Godwin told my sister that the 'baby' chose
the subjects : a fact in taste."

Mary's preface sets forth her aim and her dif-
ficulties with characteristic good sense and sim-
plicity. I have marked with a bracket the
point at which, quite tired and out of breath, as
it were, at the end of her labors, she put the
pen into her brother's hand, that he might finish
with a few decisive touches what remained to
be said of their joint ui^dertaking : —
6

l62 MARY LAMB,

PREFACE.

The following tales are meant to be submitted
to the young reader as an introduction to the
study of Shakespeare, for which purpose his
words are used whenever it seemed possible to
bring them in ; and in whatever has been
added to give them the regular form of a con-
nected story, diligent care has been taken to
select such words as might least interrupt the
effect of the beautiful English tongue in which
he wrote ; therefore, words introduced into our
language since his time have been as far as
possible avoided.

In those tales which have been taken from
the tragedies, as my young readers will per-
ceive when they come to see the source from
which these stories are derived, Shakespeare's
own words, with little alteration, recur very
frequently in the narrative as well as in the
dialogue ; but in those made from the comedies
I found myself scarcely ever able to turn his
words into the narrative form ; therefore I fear
in them I have made use of dialogue too fre-
quently for young people not used to the dra-
matic form of writing. But this fault — if it be,
as I fear, a fault — has been caused by my
earnest wish to give as much of Shakespeare's
own words as possible ; and if the " He said''
and ^^ She saidy' the question and the reply,

MAJ^V'S PREFACE. 163

should sometimes seem tedious to their young
ears, they must pardon it, because it was the
only way I knew of in which I could give them
a few hints and little foretastes of the great
pleasure which awaits them in their elder years,
when they come to the rich treasures from
which these small and valueless coins are ex-
tracted, pretending to no other merit than as
faint and imperfect stamps of Shakespeare's
matchless image. Faint and imperfect images
they must be called, because the beauty of his
language is too frequently destroyed by the
necessity of changing many of his excellent
words into words far less expressive of his true
sense, to make it read something like prose ;
and even in some few places where his blank
verse is given unaltered, as hoping from its
simple plainness to cheat the young readers
into the belief that they are reading prose, yet
still, his language being transplanted from its
own natural soil and wild, poetic garden, it
must want much of its native beauty.

I have wished to make these tales easy read-
ing for very young children. To the utmost of
my ability I have constantly kept this in my
mind; but the subjects of most of them made
this a very difficult task. It was no easy mat-
ter to give the histories of men and women in
terms familiar to the apprehension of a very

l64 MARY LAMB.

young mind. For young ladies, too, it has been
my intention chiefly to write, because boys are
generally permitted the use of their fathers'
libraries at a much earlier age than girls are,
they frequently having the best scenes of
Shakespeare by heart before their sisters are
permitted to look into this manly book; and
therefore, instead of recommending these tales
to the perusal of young gentlemen who can
read them so much better in the originals, I
must rather beg their kind assistance in ex-
plaining to their sisters such parts as are hard-
est for them to understand ; and when they
have helped them to get over the difficulties,
then perhaps they will read to them — carefully
selecting what is proper for a young sister's
ear — some passage which has pleased them in
one of these stories, in the very words of the
scene from which it is taken. And I trust they
will find that the beautiful extracts, the select
passages, they may choose to give their sisters
in this way will be much better relished and
understood from their having some notion of
the general story from one of these imperfect
abridgments, which, if they be fortunately so
done as to prove delightful to any of you, my
young readers, I hope will have no worse effect
upon you than to make you wish yourself a little
older, that you may be allowed to read the plays

MULREADY. 1 65

at full length : such a wish will be neither peev-
ish nor irrational. When time and leave of
judicious friends shall put them into your
hands, you will discover in such of them as are
here abridged — not to mention almost as many
more which are left untouched — many surpris-
ing events and turns of fortune, which for their
infinite variety could not be contained in this
little book, besides a world of sprightly and
cheerful characters, both men and women, the
humor of which I was fearful of losing if I
attempted to reduce the length of them.

What these tales have been to you in child-
hood, that and much more it is my wish that
the true plays of Shakespeare may prove to you
in older years — enrichers of the fancy, strength-
eners of virtue, a withdrawing from all selfish
and mercenary thoughts, a lesson of all sweet
and honorable thoughts and actions, to teach
you courtesy, benignity, generosity, humanity ;
for of examples teaching these virtues his pages
are full.

If the ''bad baby" chose the subjects, a
stripling who was afterwards to make his mark
in art executed them : a young Irishman, son of
a. leather-breeches maker, Mulready by name,
whom Godwin and also Harris, Newberry's suc-
cessor, were at this time endeavoring to help in
his twofold struggle to earn a livelihood and

1 66 MAJ^V LAMB.

obtain some training in art (which he did chiefly
in the studio of Banks, the sculptor). Some of
his early illustrations to the rhymed satirical
fables just then in vogue, such as The Butter-
Jlys Ball and the Peacock at Home, show humor
as well as decisive artistic promise. But the
young designer seems to have collapsed alto-
gether under the weight of Shakespeare's crea-
tions ; and whoever looks at the goggle-eyed
ogre of the pantomime species called Othello,
as well as at the plates Lamb specifies, will not
wonder at his disgust. Curiously enough they
have been attributed to Blake — those in the
edition of 1822, that is, which are identical with
those of 1807 and 1816, — and as such figure in
booksellers' catalogues, with a correspondingly
high price attached to the volumes, notwith-
standing the testimony to the contrary of Mr.
Sheepshanks, given in Stephens' Masterpieces of
Mulready. Engraved by Blake they may have
been, and hence may have here and there
traces of Blakelike feeling and character ; for
though he was fifty at the time these were exe-
cuted, he still and always had to win his bread
more often by rendering with his graver the
immature or brainless conceptions of others,
than by realizing those of his own teeming and
powerful imagination.

The success of the tales was decisive and
immediate. New editions were called for in

MULREADY. ~ 167

1810, 1816 and 1822; but in concession, no
doubt, to Lamb's earnest remonstrances, only a
certain portion of each contained the obnoxious
plates ; the rest were issued with " merely a
beautiful head of our immortal dramatist, from
a much-admired painting by Zoust," as God-
win's advertisement put it. Subsequently an
edition, with designs by Harvey, remained long
in favor and was reprinted many times. In
1837, Robert, brother of the more famous
George Cruikshank, illustrated the book, and
there was prefixed a memoir of Lamb by J. W.
Dalby, a friend of Leigh Hunt and contributor
to the London Joitrnal. The Golden Treastiry
edition, already spoken of, has a dainty little
frontispiece by Du Maurier, with which Lamb
would certainly have found no fault.

No sooner were the Tales out of hand than
Mary began a fresh task, as Charles tells Man-
ning in a letter written at the end of the year
(1806), wherein also is a glimpse of our friend
Mr. Dawe, not to be here omitted : '' Mr. Dawe
is turned author; he has been in such a way
lately — Dawe the painter, I mean — he sits
and stands about at Holcroft's and says noth-
ing ; then sighs and leans his head on his hand.
I took him to be in love ; but it seems he was
only meditating a work, The Life of Morland.
The young man is not used to composition."

CHAPTER IX.

Correspondence with Sara Stoddart. — Hazlitt.— A Court-
ship and Wedding, at which Mary is Bridesmaid.

1806-8. — JEt. 42-4.

To return to domestic affairs, as faithfully
reported to Sara by Mary whilst the Tales were
in progress : —

"May 14, 1806.

" No intention of forfeiting my promise, but
want of time has prevented me from continuing
ray journal. You seem pleased with the long,
stupid one I sent, and, therefore, I shall con-
tinue to write at every opportunity. The rea-
son why I have not had any time to spare is
because Charles has given himself some holli-
days after the hard labor of finishing his farce ;
and, therefore, I have had none of the evening
leisure I promised myself. Next week he
promises to go to, work again. I wish he may
happen to hit upon some new plan to his mind
for another farce [Mr. If. was accepted, but not

GOSSIP. 169

yet brought out]. When once begun, I do not
fear his perseverance, but the hollidays he has
allowed himself I fear will unsettle him. I look
forward to next week with the same kind of
anxiety I did to the new lodging. We have
had, as you know, so many teazing anxieties of
late, that I have got a kind of habit of forebod-
ing that we shall never be comfortable, and that
he will never settle to work, which I know is
wrong, and which I will try with all my might
to overcome; for certainly if I could but see
things as they really are, our prospects are con-
siderably improved since the memorable day of
Mrs. Fenwick's last visit. I have heard noth-
ing of that good lady or of the Fells since you
left us.

"We have been visiting a little to Norris',
Godwin's, and last night we did not co'me home
from Captain Burney's till two o'clock ; the
Saturday night was changed to Friday, because
Rickman could not be there to-night. We had
the best tea things, and the litter all cleared
away, and everything as handsome as possible,
Mrs. Rickman being of the party. Mrs. Rick-
man is much increased in size since we saw
her last, and the alteration in her strait shape
wonderfully improves her. Phillips was there,
and Charles had a long batch of cribbage with
him, and upon the whole we had the most

I/O MA/^y LAMB.

chearful evening I have known there for a long
time. To-morrow we dine at Holcroft's. These
things rather fatigue me ; but I look for a quiet
week next week and hope for better times. We
have had Mrs. Brooks and all the Martins, and
we have likewise been there, so that I seem to
have been in a continual bustle lately. I do not
think Charles cares so much for the Martins as
he did, which is a fact you will be glad to hear,
though you must not name them when you
write ; always remember, when I tell you any-
thing about them, not to mention their names
in return.

*'We have had a letter from your brother by
the same mail as yours, I suppose ; he says he
does not mean to return till summer, and that
is all he says about himself ; his letter being
entirely filled with a long story about Lord
Nelson — but nothing more than what the
papers have been full of — such as his last
words, etc. Why does he tease you with so
much good advice f Is it merely to fill up his
letters, as he filled ours with Lord Nelson's
exploits 1 or has any new thing come out against
you t Has he discovered Mr. Curse-a-rat's cor-
respondence } I hope you will not write to that
news-sendmg gentleman any more. I promised
never more to give my advice, but one may be
allowed to hope a little ; and I also hope you

GOSSIP. 171

will have something to tell me soon about Mr.
White. Have you seen him yet } I am sorry
to hear your mother is not better, but I am in
a hoping humor just now, and I cannot help
hoping that we shall all see happier days. The
bells are just now ringing for the taking of the
Cape of Good Hope.

" I have written to Mrs. Coleridge to tell her
that her husband is at Naples. Your brother
slightly named his being there, but he did not
say that he had heard from him himself.
Charles is very busy at the office ; he will be
kept there to-day till seven or eight o'clock ;
and he came home very smoky artd d^dnky last
night, so that I am afraid a hard day's work
will not agree very well with him.

" O dear ! what shall I say next } Why, this
I will say next, that I wish you was with me ;
I have been eating a mutton chop all alone,
and I have just been looking in the pint porter-
pot, which I find quite empty, and yet I am
still very dry. If you was with me we would
have a glass of brandy and water ; but it is
quite impossible to drink brandy and water by
one's self ; therefore, I must wait with patience
till the kettle boils. I hate to drink tea alone ;
it is worse than dining alone. We have got a
fresh cargo of biscuits from Captain Burney's.
I have

1/2 MARY LAMB.

*'May 14. — Here I was interrupted, and a
long, tedious interval has intervened, during
which I have had neither time nor inclination
to write a word. The lodging, that pride of
your heart and mine, is given up, and he7^e he is
again — Charles, I mean — as unsettled and
undetermined as ever. When he went to the
poor lodging after the holidays I told you he
had taken, he cbuld not endure the solitariness
otthem, and I had no rest for the sole of my
foot till I promised to believe his solemn pro-
testations that he could and would write as well
at home as there. Do you believe this }

" I have no power over Charles ; he will do
what he will do. But I ought to have some
little influence over myself ; and, therefore, I
am most manfully resolving to turn over a new
leaf with my own mind. Your visit, though
not a very comfortable one to yourself, has
been of great use to me. I set you up in my
fancy as a kind of thing that takes an interest
in my concerns ; and I hear you talking to me,
and arguing the matter very learnedly, when I
give way to despondency. You shall hear a
good account of me and the progress I make in
altering my fretful temper to a calm and quiet
one. It is but once being thoroughly convinced
one is wrong, to make one resolve to do so no
more ; and I know my dismal faces have bsen

HOME CARES. 1/3

almost as great a drawback upon Charles' com-
fort, as his feverish, teazing ways have been
upon mine. Our love for each other has been
the torment of our lives hitherto. I am most
seriously intending to bend the whole force of
my mind to counteract this, and I think I see
some prospect of success.

'^ Of Charles ever bringing any work to pass
at home, I am very doubtful ; and of the farce
succeeding, I have little or no hope ; but if I
could once get into the way of being cheerful
myself, I should see an easy remedy in leaving
town and living cheaply, almost wholly alone ;
but till I do find we really are comfortable
alone, and by ourselves, it seems a dangerous
experiment. We shall certainly stay where we
are till after next Christmas ; and in the mean-
time, as I told you before, all my whole thoughts
shall be to chmtge myself into j ust such a cheer-
ful soul as you would be in a lone house, with
no companion but your brother, if you had
nothing to vex you, nor no means of wander-
ing after Curse-a-rats. Do wTite soon ; though
I write all about myself, I am thinking all the
while of you, and I am uneasy at the length of
time it seems since I heard from you. Your
mother and Mr. Whitens running continually
in my head ; and this second wmter makes me
think how cold, damp and forlorn your solitary

174 MARY LAMB.

house will feel to you. I would your feet were
perched up again on our fender." .

If ever a woman knew how to keep on the
right side of that line which, in the close com-
panionship of daily life, is so hard to find, the
line that separates an honest, faithful friend
from "a torment of a monitor," and could divine
when and how to lend a man a helping hand
against his own foibles, and when to forbear
and wait patiently, that woman was Mary
Lamb.

Times were changed indeed since Lamb
could speak of himself as " alone, obscure, with-
out a friend." Now friends and acquaintances
thronged round him, till rest and quiet were
almost banished from his fire-side ; and though
they were banished for the most part by social
pleasures he dearly loved — hearty, simple,
intellectual pleasures — the best of talk, with
no ceremony and the least of expense, yet they
had to be paid for by Mary and himself in
fevered nerves, in sleep curtailed and endless
interruptions to work. There were, besides,
" social harpies who preyed on him for his
liquors," whom he lacked firmness to shake off,
in spite of those " dismal faces " consequent in
Mary, of which she penitently accuses herself.

Apart from external distractions, the effort
to write, especially any sort of task-work, was

HOME CARES. 1/5

often so painful to his irritable nerves that, as
he said, it almost ''teazed him into a fever,"
whilst Mary's anxious love and close sympathy
made his distress her own. There is a letter
to Godwin deprecating any appearance of un-
friendliness in having failed to review his Life
of Chaucer, containing a passage on this subject,
which the lover of Lamb's writings and charac-
ter (and who is one must needs be the other)
will ponder with peculiar interest: — •

" You, by long habits of composition and a
greater command over your own powers, cannot
conceive of the desultory and uncertain way in
which I (an author by fits) sometimes cannot
put the thoughts of a common letter into sane
prose. Any work which I take upon myself as
an engagement will act upon me to torment ;
e. g. when I have undertaken, as three or four
times I have, a school-boy copy of verses for
merchant tailors' boys at a guinea a copy, I
have fretted over them in perfect inability to
do them, and have made my sister wretched
with my wretchedness for a week together.
As to reviewing, in particular, my head is so
whimsical a head that I cannot, after reading
another man's book, let it have been never so
pleasing, give any account of it in any method-
ical way. I cannot follow his train. Something
like this you must have perceived of me in con-

176 MARY LAMB.

versation. Ten thousand times I have con-
fessed to you, talking of my talents, my utter
inability to remember, in any comprehensive
way, what I read. I can vehemently applaud
or perversely stickle at parts^ but I cannot grasp
a whole. This infirmity may be seen in my
two little compositions, the tale and my play, in
both which no reader, however partial, can find
any story. ... If I bring you a crude,
wretched paper on Sunday, you must burn it
and forgive me ; if it proves anything better
than I predict, may it be a peace-offering of
sweet incense between us."

The two friends whose society was always
soothing were far away now. Coleridge, who
could always " wind them up and set them going
again," as Mary said, was still wandering they
knew not where on the Continent, and Manning
had at last carried out a long-cherished scheme
and gone to China for four years, which, how-
ever, stretched to twelve, as Lamb prophesied
it would.

"I didn't know what your going was till I
shook a last fist with you," says Lamb, "and
then 'twas just like having shaken hands with a
wretch on the fatal scaffold, for when you are
down the ladder you never can stretch out to
him again. Mary says you are dead, and
there's nothing to do but to leave it to time to

MANNING GOES TO CHINA, 1 7/

do for us in the end what it always does for
those who mourn for people in such a case ;
but she'll see by your letter you are not quite
dead. A little kicking and agony, and then —
Martin Burney took me out a-walking that even-
ing, and we talked of Manning, and then I came
home and smoked for you ; and at twelve o'clock
came home Mary and Monkey Louisa from the
play, and there was more talk and more smok-
ing, and they all seemed first-rate characters
because they knew a certain person. But
what's the use of talking about 'em } By the
time you'll have made your escape from the
Kalmucks, you'll have stayed so long I shall
never be able to bring to your mind who Mary
was, who will have died about a year before, nor
who the Holcrofts were. Me, perhaps, you will
mistake for Phillips, or confound me with Mr.
Dawe, because you saw us together. Mary,
whom you seem to remember yet, is not quite
easy that she had not a formal parting from you.
I wish it had so happened. But you must bring
her a token, a shawl or something, and remem-
ber a sprightly little mandarin for our mantel-
piece as a companion to the child I am going to
purchase at the museum. . . . O Manning,
I am serious to sinking, almost, when I think
that all those evenings which you have made so
pleasant are gone, perhaps forever. ... I

1/8 MARY LAMB.

will nurse the remembrance of your steadiness
and quiet which used to infuse something like
itself into our nervous minds. Mary used to
call you our ventilator."

Mary's next letters to Miss Stoddart continue
to fulfil her promise of writing a kind of jour-
nal : —

" June 2nd.

"You say truly that I have sent you too many
make-believe letters. I do not mean to serve
you so again if I can help, it. I have been very
ill for some days past with the toothache. Yes-
terday I had it drawn, and I feel myself greatly
relieved, but far from being easy, for my head
and my jaws still ache ; and being unable to do
any business, I would wish to write you a long
letter to atone for my former offenses; but I
feel so languid that I fear wishing is all I
can do.

"I am sorry you are so worried with bus-
iness, and I am still more sorry for your
sprained ancle. You ought not to walk upon
it. What is the matter between you and your
good-natured maid you used to boast of } and
what the devil is the matter with your aunt .?
You say she is discontented. You must bear
with them as well as you can, for doubtless it
is your poor mother's teazing that puts you all
out of sorts. I pity you from my heart.

HAZLITT. 179

"We cannot come to see you this summer,
nor do I think it advisable to come and incom-
mode you when you for the same expense could
come to us. Whenever you feel yourself dis-
posed to run away from your troubles, come
to us again. I wish it was not such a long,
expensive journey, and then you could run
backwards and forwards every month or two.
I am very sorry you still hear nothing from Mr.
White. I am afraid that is all at an end.
What do you intend to do about Mr. Turner ?
. . . . William Hazlitt, the brother of him
you know, is in town. I believe you have heard
us say we like him. He came in good time, for
the loss of Manning made Charles very dull,
and he likes Hazlitt better than anybody,
except Manning. My toothache has moped
Charles to death ; you know how he hates to
see people ill.

" When I write again you will hear tidings
of the farce, for Charles is to go in a few days
to the managers to inquire about it. But that
must now be a next year's business too, even
if it does succeed, so it's all looking forward
and no prospect of present gain. But that's
better than no hopes at all, either for present
or future times. . . . Charles smokes still,
and will smoke to the end of the chapter.
Martin [Burney] has just been here. My Tales

l8o MARY LAMB.

{again) and Charles' farce have made the boy
mad to turn author, and he has made the Win-
ters Tale into a story ; but what Charles says
of himself is really true of Martin, for he can
make nothing at all of it, and I have been talk-
ing very eloquently this morning to convince
him that nobody can write farces, etc., under
thirty years of age ; and so I suppose he will
go home and new-model his farce.

'* What is Mr. Turner, and what is likely to
come of him } And how do you like him ?
And what do you intend to do about it ? I
almost wish you to remain single till your
mother dies, and then come and live with us,
and we would either get you a husband or teach
you how to live comfortably without. I think
I should like to have you always., to the end of
our lives, living with us ; and I do not know
any reason why that should not be, except for
the great fancy you seem to have for marrying,
which after all is but a hazardous kind of affair ;
but, however, do as you like ; every man knows
best what pleases himself best.

"I have known many single men I should
have liked in my life i^f it had suited them) for
a husband ; but very few husbands have I ever
wished was mine, which is rather against the
state in general ; but one never is disposed
to envy wives their good husbands. So much

HOME 'HOLIDA YS. 1 8 1

for marrying — but, however, get married if
you can.

" I say we shall not come and see you, and I
feel sure we shall not ; but if some sudden freak
was to come into our wayward heads, could you
at all manage ? Your mother we should not
mind, but I think still it would be so vastly
inconvenient. I am certain we shall not come,
and yet you may tell me when you write if it
would be horribly inconvenient if we did ; and
do not tell me any lies, but say truly whether
you would rather we did or not.

" God bless you, my dearest Sara ! I wish
for your sake I could haye written a very amus-
ing letter ; but do not scold, for my head aches
sadly. Don't mind my headache, for before
you get this it will be well, being only from the
pains of my jaws and teeth. Farewell."

"July 2nd.

" Charles and Hazlitt are going to Sadler's
Wells, and I am amusing myself in their
absence with reading a manuscript of Hazlitt's,
but have laid it down to write a few lines to tell
you how we are going on. Charles has begged
a month's hollidays, of which this is the first
day, and they are all to be spent at home. We
thank you for your kind invitations, and were
half inclined to come down to you ; but after

1 82 mAjRv lamb.

mature deliberation and many wise consulta-
tions— such as you know we often hold — we
came to the resolution of staying quietly at
home, and during the hollidays we are both of
us to set stoutly to work and finish the tales.
We thought if we went anywhere and left them
undone they would lay upon our minds, and that
when we returned we should feel unsettled, and
our money all spent besides ; and next summer
we are to be very rich, and then we can afford
a long journey somewhere ; I will not say to
Salisbury, because I really think it is better for
you to come to us. But of that we will talk
another time.

*' The best news I have to send you is that
the farce is accepted ; that is to say, the man-
ager has written to say it shall be brought out
when an opportunity serves. I hope that it
may come out by next Christmas. You must
come and see it the first night ; for if it suc-
ceeds it will be a great pleasure to you, and if it
should not we shall want your consolation ; so
you must come.

" I shall soon have done my work, and know
not what to begin next. Now, will you set
your brains to work and invent a story, either
for a short child's story, or a long one that
would make a kind of novel, or a story that
would make a play } Charles wants me to write

HOME 'H OLID A YS. 1 83

a play, but I am not over-anxious to set about
it. But, seriously, will you draw me out a
sketch of a story, either from memory of any-
thing you have read, or from your own inven-
tion, and I will fit it up in some way or
other ? . . .

"I met Mrs. Fenwick at Mrs. Holcroft's the
other day. She looked placid and smiling, but
I was so disconcerted that I hardly knew how
to sit upon my chair. She invited us to come
and see her, but we did not invite her in return,
and nothing at all was said in an explanatory
sort, so that matter rests for the present.'*
[Perhaps the little imbroglio was the result of
some effort on Mary's part to diminish the fre-
quency of the undesirable Mr. Fenwick's visits.
He was a good-for-nothing ; but his wife's name
deserves to be remembered because she nursed
Mary Wollstonecraft tenderly and devotedly in
her last illness.] "I am sorry you are alto-
gether so uncomfortable; I shall be glad to
hear you are settled at Salisbury ; that must be
better than living in a lone house, companion-
less, as you are. I wish you could afford to
bring your mother up to London, but that is
quite impossible. Mrs. Wordsworth is brought
to bed, and I ought to write to Miss Words-
worth and thank her for the information, but I
suppose I shall defer it till another child is

184 MARY LAMB.

coming. I do so hate writing letters. I wish all
my friends would come and live in town. It is
not my dislike to writing letters that prevents
my writing to you, but sheer want of time, I
assure you ; because you care not how stupidly
I write so as you do but hear at the time what
we are about.

" Let me hear from you soon, and do let me
hear some good news, and don't let me hear of
your walking with sprained ancles again ; no
business is an excuse for making yourself
lame.

" I hope your poor mother is better, and
auntie and maid jog on pretty well; remem-
ber me to them all in due form and order.
Charles' love and our best wishes that all your
little busy affairs may come to a prosperous
conclusion."

"Friday Evening.

"They (Ha^litt and Charles) came home from
Sadler's Wells so dismal and dreary dull on
Friday evening that I gave them both a good
scolding, qtiite a setting to rights ; and I think
it has done some good, for Charles has been
very chearful ever since. I begin to hope the
home hollidays will go on very well. Write
directly, for I am uneasy about your Lovers ;
I wish something was settled. God bless
you." ...

SARA'S LOVERS. 1 85

Sara's lovers continued a source of lively if
" uneasy " interest to Mary. The enterprising
young lady had now another string to her bow ;
indeed, matters this time went so far that the
question of settlements was raised, and Mary
wrote a letter, in which her " advising spirit "
shows itself as wise as it was unobtrusive, as
candid as it was tolerant. Dr. Stoddart clearly
estimated her judgment and tact, after his
fashion, as highly as Coleridge and Wordsworth
did after theirs. Mary wrote : —

" October 22.

*' I thank you a thousand times for the beau-
tiful work you have sent me. I received the
parcel from a strange gentleman yesterday. I
like the patterns very much. You have quite
set me up in finery ; but you should have sent
the silk handkerchief too; will you make a par-
cel of that and send it by the Salisbury coach }
I should like to have it for a few days, because
we have not yet been to Mr. Babb's, and that
handkerchief would suit this time of year
nicely. I have received a long letter from your
brother on the subject of your intended mar-
riage. I have no doubt but you also have one
on this business ; therefore it is needless to
repeat what he says. I am well pleased to find
that, upon the whole, he does not seem to see

1 86 MARY LAMB,

it in an unfavorable light. He says that if Mr.
Dowling is a worthy man, he shall have no
objection to become the brother of a farmer;
and he makes an odd request to me, that I shall
set. out to Salisbury to look at and examine into
the merits of the said Mr. D., and speaks very
confidently, as if you would abide by my deter-
mination. A pretty sort of an office, truly !
Shall I come.-* The objections he starts are
only such as you and I have already talked
over — such as the difference in age, education,
habits of life, etc.

** You have gone too far in this affair for any
interference to be at all desirable ; and if you
had not, I really do not know what my wishes
would be. When you bring Mr. Dowling at
Christmas I suppose it vv^ill be quite time
enough for me to sit in judgment upon him ;
but my examination will not be a very severe
one. If you fancy a very young man and he
likes an elderly gentlewoman; if he likes a
learned and accomplished lady and you like a
not very learned youth who may need a little
polishing, which probably he will never ac-
quire,— it is all very well, and God bless you
both together, and may you be both very long
in the same mind !

" I am to assist you too, your brother says, in
drawing up the marriage settlements ; another

GOOD ADVICE. - 187

thankful office! I am not, it seems, to suffer
you to keep too much money in your own
power, and yet I am to take care of you in case
of bankruptcy ; and I am to recommend to you,
for the better management of this point, the
serious perusal oi Jeremy Taylor, his opinion on
the marriage state, especially his advice against
separate interests in that happy state ; and I am
also to tell you how desirable it is that the hus-
band should have the entire direction of all
money concerns, except, as your good brother
adds, in the case of his own family, when the
money, he observes, is very properly deposited
in Mrs. Stoddart's hands, she being better
suited to enjoy such a trust than any other
woman ; and therefore it is fit that the general
rule should not be extended to her.

*'We will talk over these things when you
come to town ; and as to settlements, which are
matters of which I — I never having had a
penny in my own disposal— never in my life
thought of ; and if I had been blessed with a
good fortune, and that marvelous blessing to
boot, a good husband, I verily believe I should
have crammed it all uncounted into his pocket.
But thou hast a cooler head of thine own, and I
dare say will do exactly what is expedient and
proper; but your brother's opinion seems some-
what like Mr. Barwis', and I dare say you will

1 88 MARY LAMB'.

take it into due consideration ; yet, perhaps, an
offer of your own money to take a farm may
make tmcle do less for his nephew, and in that
case Mr. D. might be a loser by your generos-
ity. Weigh all these things well, and if you
can so contrive it, let your brother settle the
settlements himself when he returns, which will
most probably be long before you want them.

"You are settled, it seems, in the very house
which your brother most dislikes. -If- you find
this house very inconvenient, get out of it as
fast as you can, for your brother says he sent
you the fifty pounds to make you comfortable ;
and by the general tone of his letter I am sure
he wishes to make you easy in money matters ;
therefore, why straiten yourself to pay the debt
you owe him, which I am well assured he never
means to take .-* Thank you for the letter, and
for the picture of pretty little chubby nephew
John. I have been busy making waiskoats and
plotting new work to succeed the Tales ; as yet
I have not hit upon anything to my mind.

"Charles took an emendated copy of his
farce to Mr. Wroughton, the manager, yester-
day. Mr, Wroughton was very friendly to him
and expressed high approbation of the farce;
but there are two, he tells him, to come out
before it ; yet he gave him hopes that it will
come out this season ; but I am afraid yo^: will

GOOD ADVICE. 189

not see it by Christmas. It will do for another
jaunt for you in the spring. We are pretty
well and in fresh spirits about this farce.
Charles has been very good lately in the matter
of Smoking.

" When you come bring the gown you wish
to sell; Mrs. Coleridge will be in town then,
and if she happens not to fancy it, perhaps some
other person may.

"Coleridge, I believe, is gone home; he left
us with that design, but we have not heard from
him this fortnight.

"My respects to Corydon, mother and aunty.
Farewell. My best wishes are with you.

" When I saw what a prodigious quantity of
work you had put into the finery, I was quite
ashamed of my unreasonable request. I will
never serve you so again, but I do dearly love
worked muslin."

So Coleridge was come back at last. " He is
going to turn lecturer, on Taste, at the Royal
Institution," Charles tells Manning. And the
farce came out and failed. "We are pretty
stout about it," he says to Wordsworth; "but,
after all, we had rather it had succeeded. You
will see the prologue in most of the morning
papers. It was received with such shouts as I
never witnessed to a prologue. It was attempt-
ed to be encored. How hard! — a thing I

I90 MARY LAMB.

merely did as a task, because it was wanted,
and set no great store by ; and Mr. H. ! ! The
number of friends we had in the house, my
brother and I being in public offices, was aston-
ishing, but they yielded at length to a few
hisses. A hundred hisses ! (D — n the word ! I
write it like kisses — how different!) a hundred
hisses outweigh a thousand claps. The former
come more directly from the heart. Well, 'tis
withdrawn, and there is an end. Better luck
to us."

Sara's visit came to pass and proved an event-
ful one to her. For at the Lambs' she now
saw frequently their new friend, quite another
William than he of '' English-partridge mem-
ory," William Hazlitt ; and the intercourse
between them soon drifted into a queer kind
of courtship, and finally the courtship into mar-
riage. Mary's next letters give piquant glimpses
of the wayward course of their love-making.
If her sympathies had been ready and unfailing
in the case of the unknown lovers, Messrs.
White, Dowling, Turner, and mysterious Curse-
a-rat, this was an affair of deep and heartfelt
interest : —

''Oct., 1807.

"I am two letters in your debt, but it has
not been so much from idleness, as a wish to
see how your comical love affair would turn, out.

SARA AND HAZLITT. 191

You know I made a pretense not to interfere,
but like all old maids I feel a mighty solicitude
about the event of love stories. I learn from
the lover that he has not been so remiss in his
duty as you supposed. His effusion and your
complaints of his inconstancy crossed each
other on the road. He tells me his was a very
strange letter, and that probably it has affronted
you. That it was a strange letter I can readily
believe ; but that you were affronted by a
strange letter is not so easy for me to conceive,
that not being your way of taking things. But,
however it may be, let some answer come either
to him or else to me, showing cause why you do
not answer him. And pray, by all means, pre-
serve the said letter, that I may one day have
the pleasure of seeing how Mr. Hazlitt treats
of love.

" I was at your brother's on Thursday. Mrs.
Stoddart tells me she has not written, because
she does not like to put you to the expense of
postage. They are very well. Little Missy
thrives amazingly. Mrs. Stoddart conjectures
she is in the family way again, and those kind
of conjectures generally prove too true. Your
other sister-in-law, Mrs. Hazlitt, was brought to
bed last week of a boy, so that you are likely
to have plenty of nephews and nieces. Yester-
day evening we were at Rickman's, and who

192 MARY LAMB.

should we find there but Hazlitt ; though if you
do not know it was his first invitation there, it
will not surprise you as much as it did us. We
were very much pleased, because we dearly love
our friends to be respected by our friends.
The most remarkable events of the evening
were that we had a very fine pine-apple, that
Mr. Phillips, Mr. Lamb and Mr. Hazlitt played
at cribbage in the most polite and gentlemanly
manner possible, and that I won two rubbers at
whist.

" I am glad aunty left you some business to
do. Our compliments to her and to your
mother. Is it as cold at Winterslow as it is
here } How do the Lions go on 1 I am better
and Charles is tolerably well. Godwin's new
tragedy [Antonio] will probably be damned the
latter end of next week [which it was]. Charles
has written the prologue. Prologues and epi-
logues will be his death. If you know the
extent of Mrs. Reynolds' poverty, you will be
glad to hear Mr. Norris has got ten pounds a
year for her from the Temple Society She
will be able to make out pretty well now.

*' Farewell. Determine as wisely as you can
in regard to Hazlitt, and if your determination
is to have him, Heaven send you many happy
years together. If I am not mistaken I have
concluded letters on the Corydon courtship with

PROS AND CONS. 193

this same wish. I hope it is not ominous of
change ; for if I were sure you would not be
quite starved to death nor beaten to a mummy,
I should like to see Hazlitt and you come
together, if (as Charles observes) it were only
for the joke's sake. Write instantly to me."

''Dec. 21.
" I have deferred answering your last letter
in hopes of being able to give you some intelli-
gence that might be useful to you ; for I every
day expected that Hazlitt or you would commu-
nicate the affair to your brother ; but as the
doctor is silent upon the subject, I conclude he
knows nothing of the matter. You desire my
advice, and therefore I tell you I think you
ought to tell your brother as soon as possible ;
for at present he is on very friendly visiting
terms with Hazlitt, and, if he is not offended
by too long concealment, will do everything in
his power to serve you. If you chuse that I
should tell him I will, but I think it would come
better from you. If you can persuade Hazlitt
to mention it, that would be still better; for I
know your brother would be unwilling to give
credit to you, because you deceived yourself in
regard to Corydon. Hazlitt, I know, is shy of
speaking first ; but I think it of such great
importance to you to have your brother friendly

?

194 MARY LAMB.

in the business that, if you can overcome his
reluctance, it would be a great point gained.
For you must begin the world with ready
money — at least an hundred pounds; for if
you once go into furnished lodgings, you will
never be able to lay by money to buy furniture.
If you obtain your brother's approbation he
might assist you, either by lending or other-
wise. I have a great opinion of his generosity
where he thinks it would be useful.

*'Hazlitt's brother is mightily pleased with
the match, but he says you must have furniture,
and be clear in the world at first setting out,
or you will be always behind-hand. He also
said he would give you what furniture he could
spare. I am afraid you can bring but few things
away from your own house. What a pity that
you have laid out so much money on your cot-
tage! that money would just have done. I most
heartily congratulate you on having so well got
over your first difficulties ; and now that it is
quite settled, let us have no more fears. I now
mean not only to hope and wish, but to per-
suade myself that you will be very happy
together. Endeavor to keep your mind as
easy as you can. You ought to begin the world
with a good stock of health and spirits ; it is
quite as necessary as ready money at first set-
ting out. Do not teize yourself about coming

A LOVE LETTER. 1 95

to town. When your brother learns how things
are going on, we shall consult him about meet-
ings and so forth ; but at present, any hasty
step of that kind would not answer, I know.
If Hazlitt were to go down to Salisbury, or you
were to come up here without consulting your
brother, you know it would never do. Charles
is just come into dinner : he desires his love
and best wishes."

Perhaps the reader will, like Mary, be curious
to see one of the lover's letters in this ''com-
ical love affair." Fortunately one, the very one,
it seems, which Sara's crossed, and was pre-
served at Mary's particular request, is given in
the Hazlitt Memoirs , and runs thus: —

"My dear Love:

"Above a week has passed and I have re-
ceived no letter — not one of those letters 'in
which I live or have no life at all.' What is
become of you } Are you married, hearing that
I was dead (for so it has been reported) t or are
you gone into a nunnery } or are you fallen in
love with some of the amorous heroes of Boccac-
cio .-* Which of them is it } Is it Chynon, who
was transformed from a clown into a lover, and
learned to spell by the force of beauty } or with
Lorenzo, the lover of Isabella, whom her three
brethren hated (as your brother does me), who

196 MARY LAMB.

was a merchant's clerk ? or with Federigo
Alberigi, an honest gentleman who ran through
his fortune, and won his mistress by cooking a
fair falcon for her dinner, though it was the
only means he had left of getting a dinner for
himself ? This last is the man ; and I am the
more persuaded of it because I think I won
your good liking myself by giving you an enter-
tainment— of sausages, when I had no money
to buy them with. Nay, now, never deny it !
Did not I ask your consent that very night
after, and did you not give it ? Well, I should
be confoundedly jealous of those fine gallants if
I did not know that a living dog is better than
a dead lion ; though, now I think of it, Boccac-
cio does not in general make much of his lov-
ers ; it is his women who are so delicious. I
almost wish I had lived in those times and had
been a little more amiable. Now, if a woman
had written the book it would not have had this
effect upon me : the men would have been
heroes and angels, and the women nothing at
all. Isn't there some truth in that } Talking
of departed loves, I met my old flame the other
day in the street. I did dream of her one night
since, and only one ; every other night I have
had the same dream I have had for these two
months past. Now, if you are at all reasonable
this will satisfy you. .

A LOVE LETTER. 197

^^ Thursday moming. — The book is come.
When I saw it I thought that you had sent it
back in a huff, tired out by my sauciness and
coldness and delays, and were going to keep an
account of dimities and sayes, or to salt pork
and chronicle small beer, as the dutiful wife of
some fresh-looking rural swain ; so that you
cannot think how surprised and pleased I was
to find them all done. I liked your note as well
or better than the extracts; it is just such a
note as such a nice rogue as you ought to write
after the provocation you had received. I would
not give a pin for a girl * whose cheeks never
tingle,' nor for myself if I could not make them
tingle sometimes. Now, though I am always
writing to you about * lips and noses ' and such
sort of stuff, yet as I sit by my fire-side (which
I generally do eight or ten hours a day) I oftener
think of you in a serious, sober light. For,
indeed, I never love you so well as when I think
of sitting down with you to dinner on a boiled
scrag of mutton and hot potatoes. You please
my fancy more then than when I think of you

in -; no, you would never forgive me if I

were to finish the sentence. Now I think of it,
what do you mean to be dressed in when we
are married } But it does not much matter ! I
wish you, would let your hair grow; though
perhaps nothing will be better than ' the same

198 MARY LAMB.

air and look with which at first my heart was
took.' But now to business. I mean soon to
call upon your brother inform, namely, as soon
as I get quite well, which I hope to do in about
another fortnight ; and then I hope you will
come up by the coach as fast as the horses can
carry you, for I long mightily to be in your
ladyship's presence to vindicate my character.
I think you had better sell the small house, I
mean that at £,^ los., and I will borrow ;£ioo,
so that we shall set off merrily, in spite of all
the prudence of Edinburgh.
*'Good bye, little dear!"

Poor Sara ! That '* want of a certain dignity
of action," nay, of a due " respect for herself,"
which Mary lamented in her, had been discov-
ered but too quickly by her lover and reflected
back, as it was sure to be, in his attitude toward
her.

Charles, also, as an interested and amused
spectator of the unique love affair, reports
progress to Manning in a letter of Feb. 26th,
1808: —

" Mary is very thankful for your remem.brance
of her; and with the least suspicion of merce-
nariness, as the silk, the symbolum materiale of
your friendship, has not yet appeared. I think

A LOVE LETTER. I99

Horace says somewhere, nox longa. I would
not impute negligence or unhandsome delays to
a person whom you have honored with your
confidence ; but I have not heard of the silk or
of Mr. Knox save by your letter. May be he
expects the first advances ! or it may be that he
has not succeeded in getting the article on
shore, for it is among the res prohibitce et non
nisi sinuggle-atio7tis via fruend(E, But so it is ;
in the friendships between wicked inen the very
expressions of their good will cannot but be
sinful. A treaty of marriage is on foot between
William Hazlitt and Miss Stoddart. Something
about settlements only retards it. She has
somewhere about £,%o a year, to be £,120 when
her mother dies. He has no settlement except
what he can claim from the parish. Paupeo est
tamen, sed amat. The thing is therefore in
abeyance. But there is love a-both sides."

In the same month Mary wrote Sara a letter
showing she was alive to the fact that a
courtship which appeared to on-lookers, if not
to the lover himself, much in the light of a good
joke, was not altogether a reassuring com-
mencement of so serious an affair as marriage.
She had her misgivings, and no wonder, as to
how far the easy-going, comfort-loving, matter-
of-fact Sara was fit for the difficult happiness of
life-long companionship with a man of ardent

200 MARY LAMB.

genius and morbid, splenetic temperament, to
whom ideas were meat, drink and clothing,
while the tangible entities bearing those names
were likely to be precariously supplied. Still
Mary liked both the lovers so well she could
not choose but that hope should preponderate
over fear. Meeting as they did by the Lambs'
fire-side, each saw the other to the best advan-
tage. For, in the glow of Mary's sympathy
and faith, and the fine, stimulating atmosphere
of Charles' genius, Hazlitt's shyness had first
melted away ; his thoughts had broken the spell
of self-distrust that kept them pent in uneasy
silence, and had learned to flow forth in a strong
and brilliant current, whilst the lowering frown
which so often clouded his handsome, eager
face was wont to clear off. There, too, Sara's
unaffected good sense and hearty, friendly
nature had free play, and perhaps Mary's friend-
ship even reflected on her a tinge of the ideal to
veil the coarser side of her character: —

"I have sent your letter and drawing," [of
Middleton Cottage, Winterslow, where Sara
was living,] Mary writes, " off to Wem, [Haz-
litt's father's in Shropshire,] where I conjecture
Hazlitt is. He left town on Saturday afternoon
without telling us where he was going. He
seemed very impatient at not hearing from you.
He was very ill, and I suppose is gone home to

MARY TO SARA. 201

his father's to be nursed. I find Hazlitt has
mentioned to you the intention which we had
of asking you up to town, which we were bent
on doing ; but, having named it since to your
brother, the doctor expressed a strong desire
that you should not come to town to be at any
other house but his own, for he said it would
have a very strange appearance. His wife's
father is coming to be with them till near the
end of April, after which time he shall have
full room for you. And if you are to be mar-
ried he wishes that you should be married with
all the proper decorums from his house. Now,
though we should be most willing to run any
hazards of disobliging him if there were no
other means of your and Hazlitt's meeting, yet
as he seems so friendly to the match it would
not be worth while to alienate him from you
and ourselves too, for the slight accommoda-
tion which the difference of a few weeks would
make ; provided always, and be it understood,
that if you and H. make up your minds to be
married before the time in which you can be at
your brother's, our house stands open and most
ready at a moment's notice to receive you.
Only we would not quarrel unnecessarily with
your brother. Let there be a clear necessity
shown and we will quarrel with anybody's
brother.

202 MARY LAMB.

" Now, though I have written to the above
effect, I hope you will not conceive but that
both my brother and I had looked forward to
your coming with unmixed pleasure, and are
really disappointed at your brother's declara-
tion ; for next to the pleasure of being married
is the pleasure of making or helping marriages
forward.

" We wish to hear from you that you do not
take our seeming change of purpose in ill part,
for it is but seeming on our part, for it was my
brother's suggestion, by him first mentioned to
Hazlitt and cordially approved by me ; but your
brother has set his face against it, and it is
better to take him along with us in our plans,
if he will good-naturedly go along with us, than
not.

"The reason I have not written lately has
been that I thought it better to leave you all to
the workings of your own minds in this moment-
ous affair, in which the inclinations of a by-
stander have a right to form a wish, but not to
give a vote.

" Being, with the help of wide lines, at the
end of my last page, I conclude with our kind
wishes and prayers for the best."

The wedding-day was fixed and Mary was to
be bridesmaid.

*' Do not be angry that I have not written to

PRELIMINARIES, 203

you," she says. *' I have promised your brother
to be at your wedding, and that favor you must
accept as an atonement for my offenses. You
have been in no want of correspondence lately,
and I wished to leave you both to your own
inventions.

" The border you are working for me I prize
at a very high rate, because I consider it as
the last work you can do for me, the time so
fast approaching that you must no longer work
for your friends. Yet my old fault of giving
away presents has not left me, and I am desir-
ous of even giving away this your last gift. I
had intended to have given it away without
your knowledge, but I have intrusted my secret
to Hazlitt and I suppose it will not remain a
secret long, so I condescend to consult you.

" It is to Miss Hazlitt to whose superior
claim I wish to give up my right to this pre-
cious worked border. Her brother William is
her great favorite and she would be pleased to
possess his bride's last work. Are you not to
give the fellow-border to one sister-in-law, and
therefore has she not a just claim to it.? I
never heard in the annals of weddings (since
the days of Nausicaa, and she only washed her
old gowns for that purpose) that the brides
ever furnished the apparel of their maids.
Besides, I can be completely clad in your work

204 MARY LAMB.

without it ; for the spotted muslin will serve
both for cap and hat {nota bene, my hat is the-
same as yours), and the gown you sprigged for
me has never been made up, therefore I can
wear that — or, if you like better, I will make
up a new silk which Manning has sent me from
China. Manning would like to hear I wore it
for the first time at your wedding. It is a very
pretty light color, but there is an objection
(besides not being your work, and that is a very
serious objection), and that is Mrs. Hazlitt tells
me that all Winterslow would be in an uproar
if the bridesmaid was to be dressed in anything
but white, and although it is a very light color,
I confess we cannot call it white, being a sort
of dead-whiteish bloom color. Then silk, per-
haps, in a morning is not so proper, though the
occasion, so joyful, might justify a full dress.
Determine for me in this perplexity between
the sprig and the China-Manning silk. But do
not contradict my whim about Miss Hazlitt
having the border, for I have set my heart
upon the matter. If you agree with me in this,
I shall think you have forgiven me for giving
away your pin — that was a mad trick ; but I
had many obligations and no money. I repent
me of the deed, wishing I had it now to send to
Miss H. with the border ; and I cannot, will not
give her the doctor's pin ; for having never hcd

THE WEDDING. 20$

any presents from gentlemen in my young days,
I highly prize all they now give me, thinking
my latter days are better than my former.

'* You must send this same border in your
own name to Miss Hazlitt, which will save me
the disgrace of giving away your gift, and make
it amount merely to a civil refusal.

" I shall have no present to give you on your
marriage, nor do I expect I shall be rich enough
to give anything to baby at the first christen-
ing ; but at the second or third child's I hope
to have a coral or so to spare out of my own
earnings. Do not ask me to be godmother, for
I have an objection to that; but there is, I
believe, no serious duties attaching to a brides-
maid, therefore I come with a willing mind,
bringing nothing with me but many wishes,
and not a few hopes, and a very little fear of
happy years to come,"

If, as may be hoped, the final decision was in
favor of the *'dead-whiteish bloom, China-Man-
ning" silk, the Winterslow folk were spared all
painful emotions on the subject, as the wedding
took place at St. Andrew's, Holborn (May-day
morning, 1808), Dr. and Mrs. Stoddart and
Charles and Mary Lamb the chief, perhaps the
only guests. The comedy of the courtship
merging into the solemnity of marriage was
the very occasion to put Lamb into one of his

2o6 MARY LAMB.

wildest moods. '*I had like to have been
turned out several times during the ceremony,"
he confessed to Southey afterwards. ''Any-
thing awful makes me laugh. I misbehaved
once at a funeral. Yet can I read about these
ceremonies with pious and proper feelings.
The realities of life only seem the mockeries."

CHAPTER X.

Mrs. Leicester's School. — A Removal. — /*^^/r^ for

Childrejt.

1807-9. — ^t. 43-45-

The Tales from Shakespeare ^sf^x^ no sooner
finished than Mary began, as her letters show,
to cast about for some new scheme which should
realize an equally felicitous and profitable
result. This time she drew upon her own
invention ; and in about a year a little volume
of tales for children was written, called Mrs.
Leicester s Schooly to which Charles also con-
tributed. The stories, ten in number, seven by
Mary and three by her brother, are strung on a
connecting thread by means of an introductory
'* Dedication to the Young Ladies at Amwell
School," who are supposed to beguile the drear-
iness of the first evening at a new school by
each telling the story of her own life, at the
suggestion of a friendly governess, who consti-
tutes herself their "historiographer."

There is little or no invention in these tales ;
but a "tenderness of feeling and a delicacy of
taste" — the praise is Coleridge's^ which lift

208 MARY LAMB.

them quite above the ordinary level of chil-
dren's stories. And in no way are these qual-
ities shown more than in the treatment of the
lights and shades, the failings and the virtues,
of the little folk, which appear in due and nat-
ural proportion ; but the faults are treated in a
kindly, indulgent spirit, not spitefully enhanced
as foils to shining virtue, after the manner of
some even of the best writers for children.
There are no unlovely impersonations of naugh-
tiness pure and simple, nor any equally unlove-
able patterns of priggish perfection. But the
sweetest touches are in the portrayal of the
attitude of a very young mind tov/ards death,
affecting from its very incapacity for grief, or
indeed from any kind of realization, as in this
story of Elizabeth Villiers, for instance : —

*'The first thing I can remember was my
father teaching me the alphabet from the letters
on a tombstone that stood at the head of my
mother's grave. I used to tap at my father's
study door : I think I now hear him say, * Who
is there .-* What do you want, little girl .^ Go
and see mamma. Go and learn pretty letters.'
Many times in the day would my father lay
aside his books and his papers to lead me to
this spot, and make me point to the letters, and
then set me to spell syllables and words ; in
this manner, the epitaph on my mother's tomb

ELIZABETH VILLIERS. 209

being my primer and my spelling-book, I learned
to read.

" I was one day sitting on a step placed
across the churchyard stile, when a gentleman
passing by heard me distinctly repeat the let-
ters which formed my mother's name, and then
say ' Elizabeth Villiers ' with a firm tone, as
if I had performed some great matter. This
gentleman was my Uncle James, my mother's
brother ; he was a lieutenant in the navy, and
had left England a few weeks after the marriage
of my father and mother, and now, returned
home from a long sea-voyage, he was coming to
visit my mother, no tidings of her decease hav-
ing reached him, though she had been dead
more than a twelvemonth.

*' When my uncle saw me sitting on the stile,
and heard me pronounce my mother's name, he
looked earnestly in my face and began to fancy
a resemblance to his sister, and to think I might
be her child. I was too intent on my employ-
ment to notice him, and went spelling on.
'Who has taught you to spell so prettily, my
little maid } ' said my uncle. ' Mamma,' I
replied ; for I had an idea that the words on the
tombstone were somehow a part of mamma,
and that she had taught me. 'And who is
mamma } ' asked my uncle. * Elizabeth Vil-
liers,' I replied ; and then my uncle called me

2IO MARY LAMB,

his dear little niece, and said he would go with
me to mamma ; he took hold of my hand,
intending to lead me home, delighted that he
had found out who I was, because he imagined
it would be such a pleasant surprise to his sis-
ter to see her little daughter bringing home her
long-lost sailor uncle.

"I agreed to take him to mamma, but we
had a dispute about the way thither. My uncle
was for going along the road which led directly
up to our house ; I pointed to the churchyard
and said that was the way to mamma. Though
impatient of any delay, he was not willing to
contest the point with his new relation ; there-
fore he lifted me over the stile, and was then
going to take me along the path to a gate he
knew was at the end of our garden ; but no, I
would not go that way neither. Letting go his
hand, I said, ' You do not know the way ; I will
show you ; ' and making what haste I could
among the long grass and thistles, and jumping
over the low graves, he said, as he followed
what he called my wayward steps : —

" ' What a positive little soul this niece of
mine is ! I knew the way to your m.other's
house before you were born, child.' At last I
stopped at my mother's grave, and pointing to
the tombstone said, * Here is mamma ! ' in a
voice of exultation, as if I had now convinced

ELIZABETH VILLIERS. 211

him I knew the way best. I looked up in his
face to see him acknowledge his mistake ; but
oh ! what a face of sorrow did I see ! I was so
frightened that I have but an imperfect recollec-
tion of what followed. I remember I pulled his
coat, and cried ' Sir ! sir ! ' and tried to move him.
I knew not what to do. My mind was in a strange
confusion ; I thought I had done something
wrong in bringing the gentleman to mamma to
make him cry so sadly, but what it was I could
not tell. This grave had always been a scene
of delight to me. In the house my father would
often be weary of my prattle and send me from
him ; but here he was all my own. I might say
anything and be as frolicsome as I pleased here ;
all was cheerfulness and good humor in our
visits to mamma, as we called it. My father
would tell me how quietly mamma slept there,
and that he and his little Betsy would one day
sleep beside mamma in that grave ; and when I
went to bed, as I laid my little head on the
pillow I used to wish I was sleeping in the
grave with my papa and mamma, and in jny
childish dreams I used to fancy myself there ;
and it was a place within the ground, all smooth
and soft and green. I never made out any
figure of mamma, but still it was the tombstone
and papa and the smooth, green grass, and my
head resting on the elbow of my father." . . .

212 MARY LAMB.

In the story called The Father s Wedding Day
the same strain of feeling is developed in a
somewhat different way, but with a like truth.
Landor praised it with such genial yet whimsi-
cal extravagance as almost defeats itself, in a
letter to Crabb Robinson, written in 1831 : *'It
is now several days since I read the book you
recommended to me, Mrs. Leicester's School,
and I feel as if I owed you a debt in deferring
to thank you for many hours of exquisite
delight. Never have I read anything in prose
so many times over within so short a space of
time as The Father s Wedding Day. Most
people, I understand, prefer the first tale — in
truth a very admirable one — but others could
have written it. Show me the man or woman,
modern or ancient, who could have written this
one sentence : ' When I was dressed in my new
frock I wished poor mamma was alive, to see
how fine I was on papa's wedding day ; and I
ran to my favorite station at her bed-room
door.' How natural in a little girl is this
incongruity — this impossibility! Richardson
would have given his Clarissa and Rousseau his
Heloi'se to have imagined it. A fresh source
of the pathetic bursts out before us, and not a
bitter one. If your Germans can show us any-
thing comparable to what I have transcribed, I
would almost undergo a year's gurgle of their

MRS. LEICESTER'S SCHOOL, 21 S

language for it. The story is admirable through-
out, incomparable, inimitable."

The second tale — Louisa Manners, or the
Farm-house — has already been spoken of (page
II ) ; for in Louisa's pretty prattle we have a
reminiscence of Mary's happiest childish days
among '' the Brutons and the Gladmans " in
Hertfordshire ; and in Margaret Green, or the
Young Mahometan (pages 13-14), of her more
sombre experiences with Grandmother Field at
Blakesware.

The tales contributed by Charles Lamb are
Maria Howe, or the Effect of Witch Stories,
which contains a weird and wonderful portrait
of Aunt Hetty ; Susan Yates, or First Going to
Church (see pages 3-4) ; and Arabella Hardy, or
the Sea Voyage.

It may be worth noting that Mary signs her
little prelude, the Dedication to the Young
Ladies, with the initials of her boy-favorite,
Martin Burney ; a pretty indication of affection
for him.

Many years after the appearance of Mrs.
Leicester s School Coleridge said to Allsop:
"It at once soothes and amuses me to think —
nay, to know— that the time will come when
this little volume of my dear and well-nigh
oldest friend, Mary Lamb, will be not only
enjoyed but acknowledged as a rich jewel in

214 MARY LAMB. ■

the treasury of our permanent English litera-
ture; and I cannot help running over in my
mind the long list of celebrated writers, aston-
ishing geniuses, novels, romances, poems, his-
tories, and dense political economy quartos,
which, compared with J/rj. Leicester s School,
will be remembered as often and prized as
highly as Wilkie's and Glover's Epics, and
Lord Bolingbroke's Philosophies compared with
Robinson Crusoe.^^

But a not unimportant question is, What have
the little folk thought ? The answer is incon-
trovertible. The first edition sold out imme-
diately, and four more were called for in the
course of five years. It has continued in
fair demand ever since, though there have
not been anything like so many recent reprints
as of the Tales from Shakespeare. It is one of
those children's books which to reopen in after-
life is like revisiting some sunny old garden,
some favorite haunt of childhood, where every
nook and cranny seems familiar and calls up a
thousand pleasant memories.

Mrs. Leicester's School was published at
Godwin's Juvenile Library, Skinner street,
Christmas, 1808; and, stimulated by its imme-
diate success and by Godwin's encouragement,
Mary once more set to work, this time to try
her hand in verse.

MRS. LEICESTER'S SCHOOL. 21$

But meanwhile came the domestic upset of
a removal; nay, of two. The landlord of the
rooms in Mitre Court Buildings wanted them
for himself, and so the Lambs had to quit.
March 2%, 1809, Charles writes to Manning:
"While I think on it let me tell you we are
moved. Don't come any more to Mitre Court
Buildings. We are at 34 Southampton Build-
ings, Chancery Lane, and shall be here till
about the end of May ; then we remove to No.
4 Inner Temple Lane, where I mean to live
and die, for I have such a horror of moving
that I would not take a benefice from the king
if I was not indulged with non-residence.
What a dislocation of comfort is comprised in
that word * moving,' Such a heap of little
nasty things, after you think all is got into the
cart : old dredging-boxes, worn-out brushes,
gallipots, vials, things that it is impossible the
most necessitous person can ever want, but
which the women who preside on these occa-
sions will not leave behind if it was to save
your soul. They 'd keep the cart ten minutes
to stow in dirty pipes and broken matches, to
show their economy. Then you can find noth-
ing you want for many days after you get into
your new lodgings. You must comb your hair
with your fingers, wash your hands without
soap, go about in dirty gaiters. Were I

2l6 MARY LAMB.

Diogenes I would not move out of a kilderkin
into a hogshead, though the first had had
nothing but small beer in it, and the second
reeked claret."

The unwonted stress of continuous literary
work and turmoil and fatigue of a double
removal produced the effect that might have
been anticipated on Mary. In June (1809)
Lamb wrote to Coleridge of his change "to
more commodious quarters. I have two rooms
on the third floor," he continues, "and five
rooms above, with an inner staircase to myself,
new painted, and all for £^0 a year ! I came
into them on Saturday week, and on Monday
following Mary was taken ill with the fatigue
of moving ; and affected, I believe, by the
novelty of the house, she could not sleep, and
I am left alone with a maid quite a stranger to
me, and she has a month or two's sad distrac-
tion to go through. What sad, large pieces it
cuts out of life! — out of her life, who is get-
ting rather old; and we may not have many
years to live together. I am weaker, and bear
it worse than I ever did. But I hope we shall
be comfortable by and by. The rooms are
delicious, and the best look backwards into
Hare Court, where there is a pump always
going. Just now it is dry. Hare Court trees
come in at the window, so that 'tis like living

INNER TEMPLE LANE. 2\f

in a garden. I try to persuade myself it is
much pleasanter than Mitre Court ; but alas !
the household gods are slow to come in a new
mansion. They are in their infancy to me ;
I do not feel them yet ; no hearth has blazed
to them yet. How I hate and dread new
places ! . . . Let me hear from some of you, for
I am desolate. I shall have to send you, in
a week or two, two volumes of juvenile poetry
done by Mary and me within the last six
months, and that tale in prose which Words-
worth so much liked, which was published at
Christmas with nine others by us, and has
reached a second edition. There's for you!
We have almost worked ourselves out of child's
work, and I don't know what to do. . . . Our
little poems are but humble, but' they have no
name. You must read them, remembering
they were task-work; and perhaps you will
admire the number of subjects, all of children,
picked out by an old bachelor and an old maid.
Many parents would not have found so many."
Lamb left his friends to guess which were
his and which Mary's. Were it a question of
their prose the task were easy. The brother's
"witty delicacy" of style, the gentle irony
under which was hid his deep wisdom, the
frolicsome, fantastic humors that often veiled
his tenderness, are individual, unique. But in

2l8 MARY LAMB.

verse, and especially in a little volume of "task-
work," those fragments of Mary's which he
quotes in his letters show them to have been
more similar and equal. It is certain only that
The Three Friends, Qtieen Oria7td s Dream, and
the lines To a River in which a Child was
Drowjted, were his, and that his total share was
" one-third in quantity of the whole ; " also
that The Two Boys (reprinted by Lamb in his
Detached Thoughts on Books and Reading),
David in the Cave of Adullam, and The First
Tooth, are certainly Mary's. Through all there
breathes a sweet and wise spirit ; but some-
times, and no doubt on Mary's part, the desire
to enforce a moral is too obtrusive, and the
teaching too direct, though always it is of a
high and generous kind, never pragmatic and
Pharisaic, after the manner of Dr. Watts.
That difficult art of artlessness and perfect
simplicity, as in Blake's Songs of Innocence,
which a child's mind demands and a mature
mind loves, is rarely attained. Yet I think
The Beasts in the Tower, Cruinhs to the Birds,
Motes in the SiMtbeajn, The Coffee Slips, The
Broken Doll, The Books and the Sparrow, Blind-
ness, The Two Boys, and others not a few, must
have been favorites in many a nursery.

The Text — in which a self-satisfied little
gentleman who listens to and remembers a.11

MARY'S POEMS. 2ig

the sermon is contrasted, much to his disadvan-
tage, with his sister, who did not hear a word,
because her heart was full of affectionate long-
ing to make up a quarrel they had had outside
the church-door — is very pretty in a moral if
not in a musical point of view. This and the
three examples which I subjoin were certainly
Mary's. The lullaby calls up a picture of her
as a sad child nursing her little Charles, though
he was no orphan : —

NURSING.

O hush, my little baby brother ;
Sleep, my little baby brother ;

Sleep, my love, upon my knee.
What though, dear child, we've lost our mother?

That can never trouble thee.

You are but ten weeks old to-morrow ;

What ca.n jyou know of our loss ?
The house is full enough of sotrow.

Little baby, don't be cross.

Peace ! cry not so, my dearest love ;

Hush, my baby-bird, lie still ;
He's quiet now, he does not move ;

Fast asleep is little Will.

My only solace, only joy,

Since the sad day I lost my mother,

Is nursing her own Willy boy,
My little orphan brother.

220 MAI^V LAMB,

The gentle raillery of the next seems equally
characteristic of Mary : —

FEIGNED COURAGE.

Horatio, of ideal courage vain,

Was flourishing in air his father's cane;

And, as the fumes of valor swelled his pate,

Now thought himself this hero, and now that :

"And now," he cried, " I will Achilles be;

My sword I brandish ; see the Trojans flee !

Now I'll be Hector when his angry blade

A lane through heaps of slaughtered Grecians made;

And now, by deeds still braver, I'll evince

I am no less than Edward the Black Prince :

Give way, ye coward French ! " — As thus he spoke,

And aimed in fancy a sufficient stroke

To fix the fate of Cressy or Poictiers

(The Muse relates the hero's fate with tears).

He struck his milk-white hand against a nail,

Sees his own blood and feels his courage fail.

Ah ! where is now that boasted valor flown,

That in the tented field so late was shown ?

Achilles weeps, great Hector hangs the head,

And the Black Prince goes whimpering to bed !

The last is so pretty a little song it deserves
to be fitted with an appropriate melody: —

CRUMBS TO THE BIRDS.

A bird appears a thoughtless thing;
He's ever living on the wing,
And keeps up such a caroling.
That little else to do but sing
A man would guess had he.

MARY'S POEMS. 221

No doubt he has his little cares,
And very hard he often fares,
The which so patiently he bears,
That, listening to those cheerful airs.

Who knows but he may be
In want of his next meal of seeds ?
I think for thai his sweet song pleads.
If so, his pretty art succeeds ;
I'll scatter there among the weeds

All the small crumbs I see.

Poetry for Children, Entirely Original, by the
Author of Mrs. Leicester s School, as the title-
page runs, was published in the summer of
1809, and the whole of the first edition sold off
rapidly ; but instead of being reprinted entire,
selections from it only — twenty-six out of the
eighty-four pieces — were incorporated, by a
schoolmaster of the name of Mylius, in two
books, called The First Book of Poetry and The
Poetical Class Book, issued from the same Juve-
nile Library in 18 10. These went through
many editions, but ultimately dropped quite out
of sight, as the original work had already done.
Writing to Bernard Barton in 1827, Lamb says :
"■ One likes to have one copy of everything one
does. I neglected to keep one of Poetry for
Children, the joint production of Mary and me,
and it is not to be had for love or money."
Fifty years later such specimens of these poems
as could be gathered from the Mylius collections

222 MARY LAMB.

and from Lamb's own works were republished
by Mr. W. Carew Hazlitt, and also by Richard
Heme Shepherd, when at last, in 1877, there
came to hand from Australia a copy of the orig-
inal edition ; it had been purchased at a sale of
books and furniture at Plymouth, in 1866, and
thence carried to Adelaide. It was reprinted
entire by Mr. Shepherd (Chatto and Windus,
1878), with a preface from which the foregoing
details have been gathered. A New England
publisher early descried the worth of the Poetry
.for Childi^en, for it was reprinted in Boston —
eighty-one pieces, at least, out of the eighty-
four — in 18 12. A copy of this American edi-
tion also has recently come to light.

This was Mary's last literary undertaking in
book form ; but there is reason to think she
wrote occasional articles for periodicals for some
years longer. One such, at any rate, on Needle-
worky written in 18 14, is mentioned by Crabb
Robinson, of which more hereafter.

CHAPTER XL

The Hazlitts again. — Letters to Mrs. HazHtt, and two
Visits to Winterslow. — Birth of HazHtt's Son.

1808-13. — ^t. 44-49.

Hazlitt and his bride had, for the present,
settled down in Sara's cottage at Winterslow ;
so Mary continued to send them every now and
then a pretty budget of gossip : —

"Dec. 10, 1808.
" I hear of you from your brother, but you do
not write yourself, nor does Hazlitt. I beg that
one or both of you will amend this fault as
speedily as possible, for I am very anxious to
hear of your health. . . . You cannot think
how very much we miss you and H. of a
Wednesday evening. All the glory of the
night, I may say, is at an end. Phillips makes
his jokes, and there is none to applaud him;
Rickman argues, and there is no one to oppose
him. The worst miss of all to me is that, when
we are in the dismals, there is now no hope of
relief from any quarter whatsoever. Hazlitt
was most brilliant, most ornamental as a

224 MARY LAMB.

Wednesday man ; but he was a more useful
one on common days, when he dropt in after a
quarrel or a fit of the glooms. The Sheffington
is quite out now, my brother having got drunk
with claret and Tom Sheridan. This visit and
the occasion of it is a profound secret, and
therefore I tell it to nobody but you and Mrs. •
Reynolds. Through the medium of Wrough-
ton there came an invitation and proposal from
T. S. that C. L. should write some scenes in a
speaking pantomime, the other parts of which
Tom now, and his father formerly, have manu-
factured between them. So, in the Christmas
holidays, my brother and his two great associ-
ates, we expect, will be all three damned
together, — that is, I mean, if Charles' share,
which is done and sent in, is accepted.

*' I left this unfinished yesterday in the hope
that my brother would have done it for me ; his
reason for refusing me was no * exquisite rea-
son ; ' for it was because he must write a letter
to Manning in three or four weeks, and there-
fore he could not always be writing letters, he
said. I wanted him to tell your husband about
a great work which Godwin is going to publish
[an Essay on Sepulchres\ to enlighten the world
once more, and I shall not be able to make out
what it is. He (Godwin) took his usual walk
one evening, a fortnight since, to the end of

LETTER TO SARA. 225

Hatton Garden and back again. During that
walk a thought came into his mind which he
instantly set down and improved upon till he
brought it, in seven or eight days, into the com-
pass of a reasonable-sized pamphlet : to propose
a subscription to all well-disposed people to
raise a certain sum of money, to be expended in
the care of a cheap monument for the former
and the future great dead men — the monument
to be a white cross with a wooden slab at the
end, telling their names and qualifications ; this
wooden slab and white cross to be perpetuated
to the end of time. To survive the fall of
empires and the destruction of cities by means
of a map which was, in case of an insurrection
among the people, or any other cause by which
a city or country may be destroyed, to be care-
fully preserved, and then when things got again
into their usual order, the white-cross wooden-
slab makers were to go to work again and set
them in their former places. This, as nearly
as I can tell you, is the sum and substance of
it ; but it is written remarkably well, in his very
best manner, for the proposal (which seems to
me very like throwing salt on a sparrow's tail
to catch him) occupies but half a page, which is
followed by very fine writing on the benefits he
conjectures would follow if it were done. Very
excellent thoughts on death and on oyr feelings
8

226 MARY LAMB.

concerning dead friends, and the advantages an
old country has over a new one, even in the
slender memorials we have of great men who
once flourished.

" Charles is come home and wants his dinner,
and so the dead men must be no more thought
on. Tell us how you go on and how you like
Winterslow and winter evenings. Noales
[Knowles] has not got back again, but he is
in better spirits. John Hazlitt was here on
Wednesday, very sober. Our love to Hazlitt.

'* There came this morning a printed prospec-
tus from S. T. Coleridge, Grasmere, of a weekly
paper to be called The Friend ; a flamxing pros-
pectus — I have no time to give the heads of
it; to commence first Saturday in January.
There came also a notice of a turkey from Mr.
Clarkson, which I am more sanguine in expect-
ing the accomplishment of than I am of Coler-
idge's prophecy."

A few weeks after the date of this letter Sara
had a little son. He lived but six months ; just
enough for his father's restless, dissatisfied
heart to taste for once the sweetness of a tie
unalloyed with any bitterness, and the memory
of it never faded out. There is a pathetic allu-
sion in one of his latest essays to a visit to the
neglected spot where the baby was laid, and
wjiere still, '' as the nettles wave in a corner of

DEATH OF HOLCROFT, 22/

the churchyard over his little grave, the wel-
come breeze helps to refresh me and ease the
tightness at my breast."

In March of this year, too, died one of the
most conspicuous members of Lamb's circle,
Thomas Holcroft ; dear to Godwin, but not,
perhaps, a great favorite with the Lambs. He
was too dogmatic and disputatious — a man
who would pull you up at every turn for a
definition, which, as Coleridge said, was like
setting up perpetual turnpikes along the road
to truth. Hazlitt undertook to write his life.

The visit to Winterslow which had been so
often talked of before Sara's marriage was
again under discussion, and on June 2d, Mary,
full of thoughtful consideration for her hosts
that were to be, writes jointly with Martin
Burney : —

'* You may write to Hazlitt that J will certainly
go to Winterslow, as my father has agreed to
give me ^£5 to bear my expenses, and has given
leave that I may stop till that is spent, leaving
enough to defray my carriage on 14th July.

" So far Martin has written, and further than
that I can give you no intelligence, for I do
not yet know Phillips' intentions ; nor can I tell
the exact time when we can come ; nor can I
positively say we shall come at all, for we have
scruples of conscience about there being so

228 MARY LAMB.

many of us. Martin says if you can borrow a
blanket or two he can sleep on the floor without
either bed or mattress, which would save his
expenses at the Hut ; for if Phillips breakfasts
there he must do so too, which would swallow up
all his money ; and he and I have calculated that
if he has no inn expenses he may well spare
that money to give you for a part of his roast
beef. We can spare you also just five pounds.
You are not to say this to Hazlitt, lest his deli-
cacy should be alarmed ; but I tell you what
Martin and I have planned, that if you happen
to be empty-pursed at this time, you may think
it as well to make him up a bed in the best
kitchen. I think it very probable that Phillips
will come, and if you do not like such a crowd
of us, for they both talk of staying a whole
month, tell me so, and we will put off our visit
till next summer.

*' Thank you very much for the good work you
have done for me. Mrs. Stoddart also thanks
you for the gloves. How often must I tell you
never to do any needlework for anybody but
me .? . . .

'' I cannot write any more, for we have got a
noble life of Lord Nelson, lent us for a short
time by my poor relation the bookbinder, and I
want to read as much of it as I can."

The death of the baby and one of Mary's

WINTERSLOW, 229

severe attacks of illness combined to postpone
the visit till autumn ; but when it did come to
pass it completely restored her, and left lasting
remembrance of its pleasures both with hosts
and guests. Charles tells Coleridge (Oct. 30) :
''The journey has been of infinite service to
Mary. We have had nothing but sunshiny days,
and daily walks from eight to twenty miles a
day. Have seen Wilton, Salisbury, Stonehenge,
etc. Her illness lasted just six weeks; it left
her weak, but the country has made us whole."
And Mary herself wrote to Sara (Nov. 7) :
"The dear, quiet, lazy, delicious month we spent
with you is remembered by me with such regret
that I feel quite discontented and Winterslow-
sick. I assure you I never passed such a pleas-
ant time in the country in my life, both in the
house and out of it, — the card-playing quarrels,
and a few gaspings for breath after your swift
footsteps up the high hills, excepted; and those
drawbacks are not unpleasant in the recollection.
We have got some salt butter to make our toast
seem like yours, and we have tried to eat meat
suppers, but that would not do, for we left our
appetites behind us; and the dry loaf which
offended you now comes in at night unaccom-
panied; but, sorry I am to add, it is soon
followed by the pipe and the gin-bottle. We
smoked the very first night of our arrival.

230 MAJ^V LAMB.

"Great news ! I have just been interrupted
by Mr. Dawe, who comes to tell me he was yes-
terday elected an Academician. He said none
of his own friends voted for him ; he has got it
by strangers, who were pleased with his picture
of Mrs. White. Charles says he does not
believe Northcote ever voted for the admission
of any one. Though a very cold day, Dawe was
in a prodigious sweat for joy at his good
fortune.

" More great news ! My beautiful green cur-
tains were put up yesterday, and all the doors
listed with green baize, and four new boards
put to the coal-hole, and fastening hasps put to
the window, and my dyed Manning silk cut out.
" Yesterday was an eventful day, for yester-
day, too, Martin Burney was to be examined by
Lord Eldon, previous to his being admitted as
an attorney ; but he has not been here yet to
announce his success,

"I carried the baby-caps to Mrs. John Haz-
litt. She was much pleased and vastly thank-
ful. Mr. H. got fifty-four guineas at Rochester,
and has now several pictures in hand.

" I am going to tell you a secret, for

says she would be sorry to have it talked of.
One night came home from the ale-
house, bringing with him a great, rough, ill-
looking fellow, whom he introduced to

WINTERSLOW, 231

as Mr. Brown, a gentleman he. had hired as a
mad-keeper, to take care of him at forty pounds
a year, being ten pounds under the usual price
for keepers, which sum Mr. Brown had agreed
to remit out of pure friendship. It was with
great difficulty and by threatening to call in the

aid of a watchman and constables that

could prevail on Mr. Brown to leave the house.

"We had a good chearful meeting on Wednes-
day; much talk of Winterslow, its woods and
its nice sunflowers. I did not so much like
Phillips at Winterslow as I now like him for
having been with us at Winterslow. We roasted
the last of his 'beech of oily nut prolific' on
Friday at the Captain's. Nurse is now estab-
lished in Paradise, alias the incurable ward of
Westminster Hospital. I have seen her sitting
in most superb state, surrounded by her seven
incurable companions. They call each other
ladies. Nurse looks as if she would be consid-
ered as the first lady in the ward ; only one
seemed like to rival her in dignity.

*' A man in the India House has resigned, by
which Charles will get twenty pounds a year,
and White has prevailed upon him to write
some more lottery puffs. If that ends in smoke
the twenty pounds is a sure card, and has made
us very joyful. I continue very well, and
return you my sincere thanks for my good

232 MARY LAMB.

health and improved looks, which have almost
made Mrs. Godwin die with envy ; she longs to
come to Winterslow as much as the spiteful
elder sister did to go to the well for a gift to
spit diamonds.

"Jane and I have agreed to boil a round of
beef for your suppers when you come to town
again. She, Jane, broke two of the Hogarth
glasses while we were away, whereat I made a
great noise.

" Farewell. Love to William, and Charles'
love and good wishes for the speedy arrival of
the Life of Holcroft and the bearer thereof.
Charles told Mrs. Godwin Hazlitt had found a
well in his garden which, water being scarce in
your country, would bring him in two hundred
a year; and she came in great haste the next
morning to ask me if it were true."

Hazlitt, too, remembered to the end of his life
those golden autumn days : *' Lamb among the
villagers like the most capricious poet Ovid
among the Goths ; " the evening walks with
him and Mary to look at "the Claude Lorraine
skies melting from azure into purple and gold,
and to gather mushrooms that sprung up at
our feet, to throw into our hashed mutton at
supper."

When Lamb called to congratulate Mr. Dawe
on his good fortune his housekeeper seemed

MR. DA WE, R. A. 233

embarrassed, owned that her master was alone,
but ushered in the visitor with reluctance.
For why? ''At his easel stood D., with an
immense spread of canvas before him, and by
his side — a live goose. Under the rose he
informed me that he had undertaken to paint
a transparency for Vauxhall, against an expected
visit of the allied sovereigns. I smiled at an
engagement so derogatory to his new-born hon-
ors ; but a contempt of small gains was never
one of D.'s foibles. My eyes beheld crude
forms of warriors, kings rising under his brush
upon this interminable stretch of cloth. The
Volga, the Don, the Dnieper were there, or
their representative river gods, and Father
Thames clubbed urns with the Vistula. Glory,
with her dazzling eagle, was not absent, nor
Fame, nor Victory. The shade of Rubens
might have evoked the mighty allegories. But
what was the goose "^ He was evidently sitting
for a something. D. at last informed me that
he could not introduce the Royal Thames with-
out his swans ; that he had inquired the price
of a live swan, and it being more than he was
prepared to give for it, he had bargained with
the poulterer for the next thing to it, adding
significantly that it would do to roast after it
had served its turn to paint swans by." (Lamb's
Recollections of a Royal Academician?)

234 MARY LAMB.

The following year the visit to Winterslow
was repeated, but not with the same happy-
results. In a letter written during his stay to
Mr. Basil Montague, Charles says : ** My head
has received such a shock by an all-night jour-
ney on the top of the coach that I shall have
enough to do to nurse it into its natural pace
before I go home. I must devote myself to
imbecility ; I must be gloriously useless while I
stay here. The city of Salisbury is full of
weeping and wailing. The bank has stopped
payment, and everybody in the town kept
money at it, or has got some of its notes.
Some have lost all they had in the world. It is
the next thing to seeing a city with the plague
within its walls ; and I do suppose it to be the
unhappiest county in England — this, where I
am making holiday. We purpose setting out
for Oxford Tuesday fortnight, and coming
thereby home. But no more night-travelling ;
my head is sore (understand it of the inside)
with that deduction from my natural rest which
I suffered coming down. Neither Mary nor
I can spare a morsel of our rest ; it is incum-
bent on us to be misers of it."

The visit to Oxford was paid, Hazlitt accom-
panying them and much enhancing the enjoy-
ment of it, especially of a visit to the picture
gallery at Blenheim. "But our pleasant excur-

MARY ILL AGAIN. 235

sion has ended sadly for one of us," he tells
Hazlitt on his return. '' My sister got home
very well (I was very ill on the journey), and
continued so till Monday night, when her com-
plaint came on, and she is now absent from
home. I think I shall be mad if I take any
more journeys, with two experiences against it.
I have lost all wish for sights."

It was a long attack ; at the end of October
Mary was still ''very weak and low-spirited,"
and there were domestic misadventures not cal-
culated to improve matters.

"We are in a pickle," says Charles to Words-
worth. ''Mary, from her affectation of physi-
ognomy, has hired a stupid, big, country wench,
who looked honest, as she thought, and has
been doing her work some days, but without
eating ; and now it comes out that she was ill
when she came, with lifting her mother about
(who is now with God) when she was dying,
and with riding up from Norfolk four days and
nights in the wagon, and now she lies in her
bed, a dead weight upon our humanity, incapable
of getting up, refusing to go to a hospital, hav-
ing nobody in town but a poor asthmatic uncle,
and she seems to have made up her mind to
take her flight to Heaven from our bed. Oh,
for the little wheelbarrow which trundled the
hunchback from door to door to try the various

236 MARY LAMB.

charities of different professions of mankind !
Here's her uncle just crawled up; he is far
liker death than she. In this perplexity such
topics as Spanish papers and Monkhouses sink
into insignificance. What shall we do } "

The perplexity seems to have cleared itself
up somehow speedily, for in a week's time Mary
herself wrote to Mrs. Hazlitt, not very cheer-
fully, but with no allusion to this particular
disaster: —

"Nov. 30, 1 8 10.

" I have taken a large sheet of paper, as if I
were going to write a long letter ; but that is
by no means my intention, for I have only time
to write three lines, to notify what I ought to
have done the moment I received your welcome
letter; namely, that I shall be very much joyed
to see you. Every morning lately I have been
expecting to see you drop in, even before your
letter came ; and I have been setting my wits
to work to think how to make you as comfort-
able as the nature of our inhospitable habits
will admit. I must work while you are here,
and I have been slaving very hard to get
through with something before you come, that
I may be quite in the way of it, and not teize
you with complaints all day that I do not know
what to do.

" I am very sorry to hear of your mischance

J

GOSSIP. 237

Mrs. Rickman has just buried her youngest
child. I am glad I am an old maid, for you see
there is nothing but misfortunes in the marriage
state. Charles was drunk last night and drunk
the night before, which night before was at
Godwin's, where we went, at a short summons
from Mr. G., to play a solitary rubber, which
was interrupted by the entrance of Mr. and
little Mrs. Liston ; and after them came Henry
Robinson, who is now domesticated at Mr.
Godwin's fire-side, and likely to become a for-
midable rival to Tommy Turner. We finished
there at twelve o'clock, Charles and Liston
brim-full of gin-and-water and snuff, after which
Henry Robinson spent a long evening by our
fire-side at home, and there was much gin-and-
water drunk, albeit only one of the party par-
took of it, and H. R. professed himself highly
indebted to Charles for the useful information
he gave him on sundry matters of taste and
imagination, even after Charles could not speak
plain for tipsiness. But still he swallowed the
flattery and the spirits as savorily as Robinson
did his cold water.

" Last night was to be a night, but it was
not. There was a certain son of one of Mar-
tin's employers, one young Mr. Blake, to do
whom honor Mrs. Burney brought forth, first
rum, then a single bottle of champaine, long

238 MARV LAMB.

kept in her secret hoard ; then two bottles of
her best currant wine, which she keeps for Mrs.
Rickman, came out; and Charles partook liber-
ally of all these beverages, while Mr. Young
Blake and Mr. Ireton talked of high matters,
such as the merits of the Whip Club, and the
merits of red and white champaine. Do I spell
that last word right .-* Rickman was not there,
so Ireton had it all his own way.

"The alternating Wednesdays will chop off
one day in the week from your jolly days, and I
do not know how we shall make it up to you,
but I will contrive the best I can. Phillips
comes again pretty regularly, to the great joy
of Mrs, Reynolds. Once more she hears the
well-loved sounds of ' How do you do, Mrs.
Reynolds } ' and * How does Miss Chambers
do.?'

" I have spun out my three lines amazingly ;
now for family news. Your brother's little
twins are not dead, but Mrs. John Hazlitt and
her baby may be for anything I know to the
contrary, for I have not been there for a pro-
digious long time. Mrs. Holcroft still goes
about from Nicholson to Tuthill, and Tuthill to
Godwin, and from Godwin to Nicholson, to con-
sult on the publication or no publication of the
life of the good man, her husband. It is called
The Life Everlasting. How does that same life

J1

GOSSIP' 239

go on in your parts ? Good bye ; God bless you.
I shall be glad to see you when you come this
way.

" I am going in great haste to see Mrs. Clark-
son, for I must get back to dinner, which I have
hardly time to do. I wish that dear, good,
amiable woman would go out of town. I
thought she was clean gone, and yesterday
there was a consultation of physicians held at
her house, to see if they could keep her among
them here a few weeks longer."

The concluding volumes of this same Life
Everlasting remained unprinted somewhere in
a damp hamper, Mr. Carew Hazlitt tells us ;
for, in truth, the admirable fragment of autobi-
ography Holcroft dictated on his death-bed con-
tained the cream of the matter, and was all the
public cared to listen to.

Mary continuing "in a feeble and tottering
condition," Charles found it needful to make a
decisive stand on her behalf against the exhaus-
tion and excitement of incessant company, and
especially against the disturbed rest, which
resulted from sharing her room with a guest : —

"Nov. 28, 1 8 10.

" Mary has been very ill indeed since you saw
her," he wrote to Hazlitt ; " as ill as she can be
to remain at home. But she is a good deal

240 MARY LAMB.

better now, owing to a very careful regimen.
She drinks nothing but water, and never goes
out ; she does not even go to the Captain's.
Her indisposition has been ever since that night
you left town, the night Miss Wordsworth
came. Her coming, and that d — d Mrs. God-
win coming and staying so late that night, so
overset her that she lay broad awake all that
night, and it was by a miracle that she escaped
a very bad illness, which I thoroughly expected.
I have made up my mind that she shall never
have any one in the house again with her, and
that no one shall sleep with her, not even for a
night ; for it is a very serious thing to be always
living with a kind of fever upon her ; and there-
fore I am sure you will take it in good part if I
say that if Mrs. Hazlitt comes to town at any
time, however glad we shall be to see her in the
day-time, I cannot ask her to spend a night
under our roof. Some decision we must come
to ; for the harassing fever that we have both
been in, owing to Miss Wordsworth's coming,
is not to be borne, and I would rather be dead
than so alive. However, owing to a regimen
and medicines which Tuthill has given her, who
very kindly volunteered the care of her, she is
a great deal quieter, though too much harassed
by company, who cannot or will not see how
late hours and society teaze her.

CHARLES TO HAZLITT. 241

The next letter to Sara is a cheerful one, as
the occasion demanded. It is also the last to
her that has been preserved, probably the last
that was written ; for, a few months later, Haz-
litt fairly launched himself on a literary career
in London, and took up his abode next door
to Jeremy Bentham, at 19 York street, West-
minster, once Milton's house : —

"Oct. 2, 181 1.

" I have been a long time anxiously expect-
ing the happy news that I have just received.
I address you because, as the letter has been
lying some days at the India House, I hope you
are able to sit up and read my congratulations
on the little live boy you have been so many
years wishing for. As we old women say,
* May he live to be a great comfort to you ! '
I never knew an event of the kind that gave
me so much pleasure as the little long-looked-
for-come-at-last's arrival; and I rejoice to hear
his honor has begun to suck. The word was
not distinctly written, and I was a long time
making out the solemn fact. I hope to hear
from you soon, for I am anxious to know if
your nursing labors are attended with any diffi-
culties. I wish you a happy gettmg-up and a
merry christening !

" Charles sends his love ; perhaps, though,

242 MARY LAMB.

he will write a scrap to Hazlitt at the end. He
is now looking over me. He is always in my
way, for he has had a month's holiday at home.
But I am happy to say they end on Monday,
when mine begin, for I am going to pass a
week at Richmond with Mrs. Burney. She
has been dying, but she went to the Isle of
Wight and recovered once more, and she is
finishing her recovery at Richmond. When
there, I mean to read novels and play at piquet
all day long."

" My blessing and Heaven's be upon him,"
added Charles, *'and make him like his father,
with something a better temper and a smoother
head of hair, and then all the men and women
must love him." ...

CHAPTER XII.

An Essay on Needlework.
1 814. — JEt. 50.

Towards the end of 18 14 Crabb Robinson
called on Mary Lamb and found her suffering
from great fatigue after writing an article on
needlework for the British Ladys Magazine,
which was just about to start on a higher basis
than its predecessors. It undertook to provide
something better than the usual fashion-plates,
silly tales and sillier verses then generally
thought suitable for women; and, to judge by
the early numbers, the editor kept the promise
of his introductory address, and deserved a
longer lease of life for his magazine than it
obtained.

Mary's little essay appeared in the number
for April, 181 5, and is on many accounts inter-
esting. It contains several autobiographic
touches ; it is the only known instance in which
she has addressed herself to full-grown readers,
and it is sagacious and far-seeing. For Mary
does not treat of needlework as an art, but as a

244 MARY LAMB.

factor in social life. She pleads both for the
sake of the bodily welfare of the many thou-
sands of women who have to earn their bread
by it, and of the mental well-being of those
who have not so to do ; that it should be
regarded, like any other mechanical art, as a ^
thing to be done for hire; and that what a
woman does work at should be real work —
something, that is, which yields a return either
of mental or of pecuniary profit. She also
exposes the fallacy of the time-honored maxim,
"A penny saved is a penny earned," by the ruth-
less logic of experience. But the reader shall
judge for himself; the Magazme has become so
rare a book that I will here subjoin the little
essay in full : —

ON NEEDLEWORK.

"Mr. Editor:

"In early life I passed eleven years in the
exercise of my needle for a livelihood. Will
you allow me to address your readers, among
whom might perhaps be found some of the kind
patronesses of my former humble labors, on a
subject widely connected with female life — the
state of needlework in this country }

"To lighten the heavy burthen which many
ladies impose upon themselves is one object
which I have in view ; but I confess my strong-

AN ESSAY ON NEEDLEWORK. 245

est motive is to excite attention towards the
industrious sisterhood to which I once belonged.

"From books I have been informed of the
fact upon which The British Ladys Magazine
chiefly founds its pretensions; namely, that
women have of late been rapidly advancing in
intellectual improvement. Much may have been
gained in this way, indirectly, for that class of
females for whom I wish to plead. Needlework
and intellectual improvement are naturally in a
state of warfare. But I am afraid the root of
evil has not, as yet, been struck at. Work-
women of every description were never in so
much distress for want of employment.

"Among the present circle of my acquaint-
ance I am proud to rank many that may truly
be called respectable ; nor do the female part of
them in their mental attainments at all disprove
the prevailing opinion of that intellectual pro-
gression which you have taken as the basis of
your work ; yet I affirm that I know not a
single family where there is not some essential
drawback to its comfort, which may be traced
to needlework done at hoine^ as the phrase is,
for all needlework performed in a family by
some of its own members, and for which no
remuneration in money is received or expected.

" In money alone, did I say } I would appeal
to all the fair votaries of voluntary housewifery

246 MARY LAMB.

whether, in the matter of conscience, any one
of them ever thought she had done as much
needlework as she ought to have done. Even
fancy work, the fairest of the tribe ! How
dehghtful the arrangement of her materials !
The fixing upon her happiest pattern, how
pleasing an anxiety ! How cheerful the com-
mencement of the labor she enjoys! But that
lady must be a true lover of the art, and so
industrious a pursuer of a predetermined pur-
pose, that it were pity her energy should not
have been directed to some wiser end, who can
affirm she neither feels weariness during the
execution of a fancy piece, nor takes more time
than she had calculated for the performance.

'' Is it too bold an attempt to persuade your
readers that it would prove an incalculable
addition to general happiness and the domestic
comfort of both sexes, if needlework were never
practiced but for a remuneration in money ?
As nearly, however, as this desirable thing can
be effected, so much more nearly will woman
be upon an equality with men as far as respects
the mere enjoyment of life. As far as that
goes, I believe it is every woman's opinion that
the condition of men is far superior to her own.

" *They can do what they like,' we say. Do
not these words generally mean they have time
to seek out whatever amusements suit their

THE DUTIES OF WOMEN. 247

tastes ? We dare not tell them we have no
time to do this ; for if they should ask in what
manner we dispose of our time we should blush
to enter upon a detail of the minutiae which
compose the sum of a woman's daily employ-
ment. Nay, many a lady, who allows not her-
self one-quarter of an hour's positive leisure
during her waking hours, considers her own
husband as the most industrious of men if he
steadily pursue his occupation till the hour of
dinner, and will be perpetually lamenting her
own idleness.

" Real business and real leistire make up the
portions of men's time, — two sources of happi-
ness which we certainly partake of in a very
inferior degree. To the execution of employ-
ments in which the faculties of the body or
mind are called into busy action there must be
a consoling importance attached, which fem-
inine duties (that generic term for all our
business) cannot aspire to.

** In the most meritorious discharges of those
duties the highest praise we can aim at is to be
accounted the helpmates of mait; who, in return
for all he does for us, expects, and justly
expects, us to do all in our power to soften and
sweeten life.

" In how many ways is a good woman
employed in thought or action through the

248 MARY LAMB.

day, that htrgood man may be enabled to feel
his leisure hours real, substantial holiday, and
perfect respite from the cares of business !
Not the least part to be done to accomplish
this end is to fit herself to become a conversa-
tional companion ; that is to say^he has to
study and understand the subjects on which he
loves to talk. This part of our duty, if strictly
performed, will be found by far our hardest
part. The disadvantages we labor under from
an education differing from a manly one make
the hours in which we sit and do nothing in
men's company too often anything but a relax-
ation ; although as to pleasure and instruction,
time so passed may be esteemed more or less
delightful.

"To make a man's home so desirable a place
as to preclude his having a wish to pass his
leisure hours at any fire-side in preference to
his own, I should humbly take to be the sum
and substance of woman's domestic ambition.
I would appeal to our British ladies, who are
generally allowed to be the most jealous and
successful of all women in the pursuit of this
object ; I would appeal to them who have been
most successful in the performance of this laud-
able service, in behalf of father, son, husband
or brother, whether an anxious desire to per-
form this duty well is not attended with enough

THE DUTIES OF WOMEN. 249

of fneittdl exertion, at least, to incline them to
the opinion that women may be more properly-
ranked among the contributors to than the
partakers of the undisturbed relaxation of men.

"If a family be so well ordered that the
master is never called in to its direction, and
yet he perceives comfort and economy well
attended to, the mistress of that family (espe-
cially if children form a part of it) has, I
apprehend, as large a share of womanly employ-
ment as ought to satisfy her own sense of duty ;
even though the needle-book and thread-case
were quite laid aside, and she cheerfully con-
tributed her part to the slender gains of the
corset-maker, the milliner, the dressmaker, the
plain worker, the embroidress and all the
numerous classifications of females supporting
themselves by needlework, that great staple
commodity which is alone appropriated to the
self-supporting part of our sex.

** Much has been said and written on the sub-
ject of men engrossing to themselves every
occupation and calling. After many years of
observation and reflection I am obliged to
acquiesce in the notion that it cannot well be
ordered otherwise.

"If, at the birth of girls, it were possible to
foresee in what cases it would be their fortune
to pass a single life, we should soon find trades

250 MARY LAMB.

wrested from their present occupiers and trans-
ferred to the exclusive possession of our sex.
The whole mechanical business of copying writ-
ings in the law department, for instance, might
very soon be transferred with advantage to the
poorer sort of women, who, with very little
teaching, would soon beat their rivals of the
other sex in facility and neatness. The parents
of female children who were known to be des-
tined from their birth to maintain themselves
through the whole course of their lives, with
like certainty as their sons are, would feel it a
duty incumbent on themselves to strengthen
the minds and even the bodily constitutions of
their girls so circumstanced, by an education
which, without affronting the preconceived hab-
its of society, might enable them to follow some
occupation now considered above the capacity,
or too robust for the constitution, of our sex.
Plenty of resources would then lie open for
single women to obtain an independent liveli-
hood, when every parent would be upon the
alert to encroach upon some employment now
engrossed by men, for such of their daughters
as would then be exactly in the same predica-
ment as their sons now are. Who, for instance,
would lay by money to set up his sons in trade,
give premiums, and in part maintain them
through a long apprenticeship ; or, which men

^

WOMEN'S DIFFICULTIES. 25 1

of moderate incomes frequently do, strain every
nerve in order to bring them up to a learned
profession ; if it were in a very high degree
probable that, by the time they were twenty
years of age, they would be taken from this
trade or profession, and maintained during the
remainder of their lives by the person whom
they should jnarry ? Yet this is precisely the
situation in which every parent, whose income
does not very much exceed the moderate, is
placed with respect to his daughters.

''Even where boys have gone through a labori-
ous education, superinducing habits of steady
attention accompanied with the entire conviction
that the business which they learn is to be the
source of their future distinction, may it not be
affirmed that the persevering industry required
to accomplish this desirable end causes many a
hard struggle in the minds of young men, even
of the most hopeful disposition ? What, then,
must be the disadvantages under which a very
young woman is placed who is required to learn
a trade, from which she can never expect to reap
any profit, but at the expense of losing that
place in society to the possession of which she
may reasonably look forward, inasmuch as it is
by far the most common lot, namely, the condi-
tion of a happy English wife ?

"As I desire to offer nothing to the consider-

252 MARY LAMB.

ation of your readers but what, at least as far as
my own observation goes, I consider as truths
confirmed by experience, I will only say that
were I to follow the bent of my own speculative
opinion, I should be inclined to persuade every
female over whom I hope to have any influence
to contribute all the assistance in her power to
those of her own sex who may need it, in the
employments they at present occupy, rather than
to force them into situations now filled wholly
by men. With the mere exception of the profits
which they have a right to derive by their needle,
I would take nothing from the industry of man
which he already possesses.

"*A penny saved is a penny earned,' is a
maxim not true unless the penny be saved in the
same time in which it might have been earned.
I, who have known what it is to work for money
earhed, have since had much experience in work-
ing for ino7iey saved; and I consider, from the
closest calculation I can make, that 2^ penny saved
in that way bears about a true proportion to a
farthing earned. I am no advocate for women
who do not depend on themselves for subsistence,
proposing to themselves to earn mo7tey. My
reasons for thinking it not advisable are too
numerous to state — reasons deduced from au-
thentic facts and strict observations on domestic
life in its various shades of comfort. But if the

BUSY IDLENESS. 253

females of a family nominally supported by the
other sex find it necessary to add something to
the common stock, why not endeavor to do
something by which they may produce money
in its true shape f

" It would be an excellent plan, attended with
very little trouble, to calculate every evening
how much money has been saved by needlework
done i7t the family, and compare the result with
the daily portion of the yearly income. Nor
would it be amiss to make a memorandum of
the time passed in this way, adding also a guess
as to what share it has taken up in the thoughts
and conversation. This would be an easy mode
of forming a true notion and getting at the
exact worth of this species of home industry,
and perhaps might place it in a different light
from any in which it has hitherto been the fash-
ion to consider it.

" Needlework taken up as an amusement may
not be altogether unamusing. We are all pretty
good judges of what entertains ourselves, but
it is not so easy to pronounce upon what may
contribute to the entertainment of others. At
all events, let us not confuse the motives of
economy with those of simple pastime. If sav-
ing be no object, and long habits have rendered
needlework so delightful an avocation that we
cannot think of relinquishing it, there are the

254 MARY LAMB

good ol^ contrivances in which our grand-dames
were wont to beguile and lose their time —
knitting, knotting, netting, carpet-work, and the
like ingenious pursuits ^ — those so often praised
but tedious works, which are so long in the
operation that purchasing the labor has seldom
been thought good economy. Yet by a certain
fascination they have been found to chain down
the great to a self-imposed slavery, from which
they considerately or haughtily excused the
needy. These may be esteemed lawful and
lady-like amusements. But, if those works
more usually denominated useful yield greater
satisfaction, it might be a laudable scruple of
conscience, and no bad test to herself of her
own motive, if a lady who had no absolute need
were to^give the money so saved to poor needle-
women belonging to those branches of employ-
ment from which she has borrowed these shares
of pleasurable labor. ^

"Sempronia."

Had Mary lived now she would, perhaps, have
spoken a wiser word than has yet been uttered
on the urgent question of how best to develop,
strengthen, give free and fair scope to that large
part of a woman's nature and field of action
which are the same in kind as man's, without
detriment to the remaining qualities and duties

BUSY IDLENESS, 255

peculiar to her as woman. She told Crabb Rob-
inson that *' writing was a most painful occupa-
tion, which only necessity could make her
attempt ; and that she had been learning Latin
merely to assist her in acquiring a correct
style." But there is no trace of feebleness or
confusion in her manner of grasping a subj ect ;
no want of Latin nor of anything else to improve
her excellent style. She did enough to show
that had her brain not been devastated for
weeks and latterly for months in every yea'r by
an access of madness, she would have left,
besides her tales for children, some permanent
addition to literature, or given a recognizable
impetus to thought. As it was, Mary relin-
quished all attempt at literary work when an
increase in Charles' income released her from
the duty of earning ; and as her attacks became
longer and more frequent, her "fingers grew
nervously averse " even to letter- writing.

CHAPTER XIII.

Letters to Miss Betham and her little Sister. — To
Wordsworth. — Manning's Return. — Coleridge goes
to Highgate. — Letter to Miss Hutchinson on Mary's
State. — Removal to Russell Street. — Mary's Letter to
Dorothy Wordsworth. — Lodgings at Dalston. — Death
of John Lamb and Captain Burney.

1815-21. — ^t. 51-57.

In a letter to Southey, dated May i6th, 181 5,
Lamb says : "Have you seen Matilda Betham's
Lay of Marie ? I think it very delicately pretty
as to sentiment, etc."

Matilda, the daughter of a country clergyman
of ancient lineage (author of learned and labo-
rious Genealogical Tables ^ etc., etc.), was a lady
of many talents and ambitions, especially of the
laudable one, not so common in those days, to
lighten the burthen of a large family of brothers
and sisters by earning her own living. She
went up to London, taught herself miniature
painting, exhibited at ^Somerset House, gave
Shakespeare readings, wrote a Biographical
Dictionary of Celebrated Women^ contributed
verses to the magazines, and last, not least, by

MATILDA BETH AM. 257

her genuine love of knowledge and her warm
and kindly heart, won the cordial liking of many-
men of genius, notably of Coleridge, Southey
and the Lambs. When this same Lay of Marie
was on the stocks Mary took an earnest interest
in its success, as the following letter prettily
testifies: —

" My brother and myself return you a thou-
sand thanks for your kind communication. We
have read your poem many times over with
increased interest, and very much wish to see
you to tell you how highly we have been pleased
with it. May we beg one favor .<* I keep the
manuscript in the hope that you will grant it.
It is that either now, or when the whole poem
is completed, you will read it over with us.
When I say 'with us,' of course I mean Charles.
I know that you have many judicious friends,
but I have so often known my brother spy out
errors in a manuscript which has passed through
many judicious hands, that I shall not be easy
if you do not permit him to look yours carefully
through with you ; and also you must allow him
to correct the press for you. If I knew where
to find you I would call upon you. Should you
feel nervous at the idea of meeting Charles in
the capacity of a severe censor, give me a line
and I will come to you anywhere and convince
you in five minutes that he is even timid, stam-
9

258 MARY LAMB.

mers, and can scarcely speak for modesty and
fear of giving pain, when he finds himself placed
in that kind of office. Shall I appoint a time to
see you here when he is from home ? I will
send him out any time you will name ; indeed,
I am always naturally alone till four o'clock. If
you are nervous about coming, remember I am
equally so about the liberty I have taken, and
shall be till we meet and laugh off our mutual
fears."

"I return you by a careful hand the MSS.,"
wrote Charles. " Did I not ever love your
verses .? The domestic half will be a sweet
heirloom to have in the family. 'Tis fragrant
with cordiality. What friends you must have
had, or dreamed of having ! and what a widow's
cruse of heartiness you have doled among
them ! "

But as to the correction of the press, that
proved a rash suggestion on Mary's part ; for
the task came at an untoward time, and Charles
had to write a whimsical, repentant letter,
which must have gone far to atone for his
shortcoming : —

"All this while I have been tormenting
myself with the thought of having been un-
gracious to you, and you have been all the
while accusing yourself. Let us absolve one
another and be quiet. My. head is in such a

MATILDA BETH AM. 259

state from incapacity for business, that I cer-
tainly know it to be my duty not to undertake
the veriest trifle in addition. I hardly know-
how I can go on. I have tried to get some
redress by explaining my health, but with no
great success. No one can tell how ill I am,
because it does not come out to the exterior
of my face, but lies in my skull, deep and
invisible. I wish I was leprous, and black-
jaundiced skin-over, or that all was as well
within as my cursed looks. You must not
think me worse than I am. I am determined
not to be overset, but to give up business
rather, ' and get 'em to allow me a trifle for
services past. Oh, that I had been a shoe-
maker, or a baker, or a man of large, independ-
ent fortune. Oh, darling laziness ! Heaven of
Epicurus ! saint's everlasting rest ! that I could
drink vast potations of thee through unmeas-
ured eternity. Otitim cum vet sine dignitate.
Scandalous, dishonorable, any kind of repose,
I stand not upon the dignified sort. Accursed,
damned desks, trade, commerce, business. In-
ventions of that old original busy-body, brain-
working Satan — Sabbathless, restless Satan.
A curse relieves ; do you ever try it .? A
strange letter to write to a lady, but more
honeyed sentences will not distill. I dare not
ask who revises in my stead. I have drawn

26o MARY LAMB.

you into a scrape, and am ashamed, but I know
no remedy. My unwellness must be my
apology. God bless you (tho' He curse the
India House and fire it to the ground) ^ and may
no unkind error creep into Marie, May all its
readers like it as well as I do, and everybody
about you like its kind author no worse ! Why
the devil am I never to have a chance of
scribbling my own free thoughts in verse or
prose again } Why must I write of tea and
drugs, and price goods and bales of indigo }
Farewell." .

Miss Betham possessed the further merit of
having a charming little sister, for such she
must surely have been to be the cause and the
recipient of such a letter as the following from
Marv. Barbara Betham was then fourteen
years old : —

*•' November 2, 18 14.

" It is very long since I have met with such
an agreeable surprise as the sight of your
letter, my kind, kind young friend, afforded me.
Such a nice letter as it is, too ; and what a
pretty hand you write ! I congratulate you on
this attainment with great pleasure, because I
have so often felt the disadvantage of my own
wretched handwriting. You wish for London
news. I rely upon your sister Ann for gratify-
ing you in this respect, yet I have been en-

LETTER TO A CHILD. 26 1

deavoring to recollect whom you might have
seen he-re, and what may have happened to
them since, and this effort has only brought
the image of little Barbara Betham, uncon-
nected with any other person, so strongly
before my eyes, that I seem as if I had no
other subject to write upon. Now I think I
see you with your feet propped upon the fender,
your two hands spread out upon your knees —
an attitude you always chose when we were in
familiar, confidential conversation together —
telling me long stories of your own home,
where now you say you are ' moping on with
the same thing every day,' and which then
presented nothing but pleasant recollections to
your mind. How well I remember your quiet,
steady face bent over your book ! One day,
conscience-stricken at having wasted so much
of your precious time in reading, and feeling
yourself, as you prettily said, ^ quite useless to
me,' you went to my drawers and hunted out
some unhemmed pocket handkerchiefs, and by
no means could I prevail upon you to resume
your story-books till you had hemmed them all.
I remember, too, your teaching my little maid
to read, your sitting with her a whole evening
to console her for the death of her sister, and
that she in her turn endeavored to become a
comforter to you the next evening, when you

262 MARY LAMB.

wept at the sight of Mrs. Holcroft, from whose
school you had recently eloped because you
were not partial to sitting in the stocks. Those
tears, and a few you dropped when my brother
teased you about your supposed fondness for
an apple dumpling, were the only interruptions
to the calm contentedness of your unclouded
brow.

"We still remain the same as you left us,
neither taller nor wiser, or perceptibly older ;
but three years must have made a great altera-
tion in you. How very much, dear Barbara, I
should like to see you !

" We still live in Temple Lane, but I am now
sitting in a room you never saw. Soon after
you left us we were distressed by the cries of a
cat, which seemed to proceed from the garrets
adjoining to ours, and only separated from ours
by a locked door on the farther side of my
brother's bed-room, which you know was the
little room at the top of the kitchen stairs.
We had the lock forced, and let poor puss out
from behind a panel of the wainscot, and she
lived with us from that time, for we were in
gratitude bound to keep her, as she had intro-
duced us to four untenanted, unowned rooms,
and by degrees we have taken possession of
these unclaimed apartments, first putting up
lines to dry our clothes, then moving my broth-

LETTER TO A CHILD. 263

er's bed into one of these, more commodious
than his own rooms ; and last winter, my brother
being unable to pursue a work he had begun,
owing to the kind interruptions of friends who
were more at leisure than himself, I persuaded
him that he might write at ease in one of these
rooms, as he could not then hear the door-knock,
or hear himself denied to be at home, which
was sure to make him call out and convict the
poor maid in a fib/ Here, I said, he might be,
almost really not at home. So I put in an old
grate, and made him a fire in the largest of
these garrets, and carried in his own table and
one chair, and bid him write away and consider
himself as much alone as if he were in a lodging
in the midst of Salisbury Plain, or any other
wide, unfrequented place where he could expect
few visitors to break in upon his solitude. I
left him quite delighted with his new acquisi-
tion ; but in a few hours he came down again,
with a sadly dismal face. He could do nothing,
he said, with those bare, whitewashed walls
before his eyes. He could not write in that
dull, unfurnished prison !

"The next day, before he came home from
his office, I had gathered up various bits of old
carpeting to cover the floor ; and to a little
break the blank look of the bare walls I hung
up a few old prints that used to ornament the

264 MARY LAMB.

kitchen ; and after dinner, with great boast of
what improvement I had made, I took Charles
once more into his new study. A week of busy-
labors followed, in which I think you would not
have disliked to be our assistant. My brother
and I almost covered the walls with prints, for
which purpose he cut out every print from
every book in his old library, coming in every
now and then to ask my leave to strip a fresh
poor author, which he might not do, you know,
without my permission, as I am an elder sister.
There was such pasting, such consultation upon
these portraits, and where the series of pictures
from Ovid, Milton and Shakespeare would show
to most advantage, and in what obscure corners
authors of humble rank should be allowed to
tell their stories. All the books gave up their
stores but one, a translation from Ariosto, a
delicious set of four-and-twenty prints, and for
which I had marked out a conspicuous place;
when lo ! we found, at the moment the scissors
were going to work, that a part of the poem
was printed at the back of every picture.
What a cruel disappointment ! To conclude
this long story about nothing, the poor,
despised garret is now called the print-room,
and is become our most familiar sitting-room.
. . . The lions still live in Exeter Change.
Returning home through the Strand, I often

LETTER TO WORDSWORTH. 265

hear them roar about twelve o'clock at night.
I never hear them without thinking of you,
because you seemed so pleased with the sight
of them, and said your young companions would
stare when you told them you had seen a lion.

" And now, my dear Barbara, farewell, I
have not written such -a long letter a long time,
but I am very sorry I had nothing amusing to
write about. Wishing you may pass happily
through the rest of your school-days and every
future day of your life,
"I remain

" Your affectionate friend,

'' M. Lamb.

** My brother sends his love to you. You
say you are not so tall as Louisa — you must
be ; you cannot so degenerate from the rest of
your family." ["The measureless Bethams,"
Lamb called them.] "Now you have begun, I
shall hope to have the pleasure of hearing from
you again. I shall always receive a letter from
you with very great delight."

The next is a joint letter to Wordsworth,
in acknowledgment of an early copy of The
Excursion, in which Charles holds the pen and
is the chief spokesman ; but Mary puts in a
judicious touch of her own : —

266 MARY LAMB.

"August 14TH, 18 14.
"I cannot tell you how pleased I was at the
receipt of the great armful of poetry which you
have sent me ; and to get it before the rest of
the world, too ! I have gone quite through
with it, and was thinking to have accomplished
that pleasure a second time before I wrote to
thank you, but Mr. Burney came in the night
(while we were out) and made holy theft of it ;
but we expect restitution in a day or two. It
is the noblest conversational poem I ever
read — a day in Heaven. The part (or rather
main body) which has left the sweetest odor on
my memory (a bad term for the remains of an
impression so recent) is the Tales of the Church-
yard; the only girl among seven brethren born
out of due time, and not duly taken away again ;
the deaf man and the blind man ; the Jacobite
and the Hanoverian, whom antipathies recon-
cile ; the Scarron entry of the rusticating par-
son upon his solitude ; — these were all new to
me too. My having known the story of Mar-
garet (at the beginning), a very old acquaint-
ance, even as long back as when I first saw you
at Stowey, did not make her reappearance less
fresh. I don't know what to pick out of this
best of books upon the best subjects for partial
naming. That gorgeous sunset is famous ; I
think it must have been the identical one we

LETTER TO WORDSWORTH. 267

saw on Salisbury Plain five years ago, that drew
Phillips from the card-table, where he had sat
from the rise of that luminary to its unequalled
set ; but neither he nor I had gifted eyes to see
those symbols of common things glorified, such
as the prophet saw them in that sunset — the
wheel, the potter's clay, the wash-pot, the wine-
press, the almond-tree rod, the basket of figs,
the four-fold visaged head, the throne and Him
that sat thereon." [It was a mist glorified by
sunshine, not a sunset, which the poet had
described, as Lamb afterwards discovered.]
" One feeling I was particularly struck with, as
what I recognized so very lately at Harrow
Church on entering it after a hot and secular
day's pleasure, the instantaneous coolness, and
calming, almost transforming, properties of a
country church just entered; a certain fra-
grance which it has, either from its holiness or
being kept shut all the week, or the air that is
let in being pure country, exactly what you
have reduced into words ; but I am feeling that
which I cannot express. Reading your lines
about it fixed me for a time, a monument in
Harrow Church. Do you know it .'' With its
fine long spire, white as washed marble, to be
seen, by vantage of its high site, as far as Salis-
bury spire itself, almost.

*' I shall select a day or two very shortly, when

268 MARY LAMB.

I am coolest in brain, to have a steady second
reading, which I feel will lead to many more, for
it will be a stock-book with me while eyes or
spectacles shall be lent me. There is a great
deal of noble matter about mountain scenery,
yet not so much as to overpower and discounte-
nance a poor Londoner or south countryman
entirely, though Mary seems to have felt it
occasionally a little too powerfully ; for it was
her remark during reading it that by your
system it was doubtful if a liver in towns had a
soul to be saved. She almost trembled for that
invisible part of us in her.

" C. Lamb and Sister."

Manning, who had lately been " tarrying on
the skirts of creation " in far Thibet and Tar-
tary, beyond the reach even of letters, now at
last, in 1815, appeared once more on the horizon
at the " half-way house " of Canton, to which
place Lamb hazarded a letter — a most incom-
parable "lying letter," and another to confess
the cheat, to St. Helena: — ''Have you recov-
ered the breathless, stone-staring astonishment
into which you must have been thrown upon
learning at landing that an Emperor of France
was living in St. Helena } What an event in
the solitude of the seas ! like finding a fish's
bone at the top of Plinlimmon. . . . Mary

MANNING AND COLERIDGE. 269

reserves a portion of your silk, not to be buried
in (as the false Nuncio asserts), but to make
up spick and span into a brand-new gown to
wear when you come. I am the same as when
you knew me, almost to a surfeiting identity.
This very night I am going to leave off tobacco !
Surely there must be some other world in which
this unconquerable purpose shall be realized.
The soul hath not her generous aspirings im-
planted in her in vain."

Manning brought with him on his return
much material for compiling a Chinese diction-
ary ; which purpose, however, remained unful-
filled. He left no other memorial of himself
than his friendship with Lamb. " You see but
his husk or shrine. He discloses not, save to
select worshipers, and will leave the world
without any one hardly but me knowing how
stupendous a creature he is," said Lamb of him.
Henceforth their intercourse was chiefly per-
sonal.

Coleridge, also, who of late had been almost
as much lost to his friends as if he too were in
Tartary or Thibet, though now and then " like
a reappearing star" standing up before them
when least expected, was at the beginning of
April, 1 8 16, once more in London, endeavoring
to get his tragedy of Remorse accepted at
Covent Garden. ( " Nature, who conducts every

270 MARV LAMB.

creature by instinct to its best endj'ihas skil-
fully directed C. to take up his abode at a chem-
ist's laboratory in Norfolk street," writes Lamb
to Wordsworth. " She might as well have
sent a Helluo Liboruin for cure to the Vatican.
He has done pretty well as yet. Tell Miss
Hutchinson my sister is every day wishing to
be quietly sitting down to answer her very kind
letter, but while C. stays she can hardly find a
quiet time. God bless him ! "

But Coleridge was more in earnest than Lamb
supposed in his determination to break through
his thraldom to opium. Either way, he himself
believed that death was imminent : to go on
was deadly, and a physician of eminence had
told him that to abstain altogether would proba-
bly be equally fatal. He therefore found a
medical man willing to undertake the care of
him ; to exercise absolute surveillance for a
time and watch the results. It is an affecting
letter in which he commits himself into Mr.
Gillman's hands : " You will never hear any-
thing but truth from me. Prior habits render
it out of my power to tell an untruth, but unless
carefully observed I dare not promise that I
should not, with regard to this detested poison,
be capable of acting one. ... For the first
week I must not be permitted to leave your
house, unless with you. Delicately or indeli-

COLERIDGE. 2/1

cately, this must be done, and both the servants
and the assistant must receive absolute com-
mands from you. The stimulus of conversation
suspends the terror that haunts my mind ; but
when I am alone the horrors I have suffered
from laudanum, the degradation, the blighted
utility, almost overwhelm me. If (as I feel for
the first time a soothing confidence it will
prove) I should leave you restored to my moral
and bodily health, it is not myself only that will
love and honor you ; every friend I have (and,
thank God ! in spite of this wretched vice I
have many and warm ones, who were friends of
my youth and have never deserted me) will
thank you with reverence." That confidence
was justified, those thanks well earned. In the
middle of April, 1816, Coleridge took up his
abode with the Gillmans at No. 3, the Grove, at
Highgate, and found there a serene haven in
which he anchored for the rest of life ; freeing
himself by slow degrees from the opium bond-
age, though too shattered in frame ever to
recover sound health ; too far spent, morally
and mentally, by the long struggles and abase-
ments he had gone through to renew the splen-
dors of his youth. That "shaping spirit of
imagination " with which nature had endowed
him drooped languidly, save in fitful moments
of fervid talk; that "fertile, subtle, expansive

2/2 MARY LAMB.

understanding " could not fasten with the long-
sustained intensity needful to grapple victo-
riously with the great problems that filled his
mind. The look of ''timid earnestness" which
Carlyle noted in his eyes expressed a mental
attitude — a mixture of boldness and fear, a
desire to seek truth at all hazards, yet also to
drag authority with him, as a safe and comfort-
able prop to rest on. But his eloquence had
lost none of its richness and charm, his voice
none of its sweetness. '' His face, when he
repeats his verses, hath its ancient glory,- — an
archangel a little damaged," says Lamb to
Wordsworth. " He is absent but four miles,
and the neighborhood of such a man is as excit-
ing as the presence of fifty ordinary persons.
'Tis enough to be within the whiff and wind of
his genius for us not to possess our souls in
quiet."

Besides the renewed proximity of these two
oldest and dearest of friends, two new ones,
both very young, both future biographers of
Lamb, were in these years added to the number
of his intimates, — Talfourd in 1815, Proctor in
18 1 7. Leigh Hunt had become one probably
as early as 181 2; Crabb Robinson in 1806;
Thomas Hood, who stood in the front rank of
his younger friends, and Bernard Barton, the
Quaker poet. Lamb's chief correspondent dur-

COLERIDGE. 2/3

ing the last ten years of his life, not until
1822-3.

The years did not pass without each bringing
a recurrence of one, sometimes of two, severe
attacks of Mary's disorder. In the autumn of
18 1 5 Charles repeats again the sad story to
Miss Hutchinson : —

" I am forced to be the replier to your letter,
for Mary has been ill and gone from home these
five weeks yesterday. She has left me very
lonely and very miserable. I stroll about ; but
there is no rest but at one's own fire-side, and
there is no rest for me there now. I look for-
ward to the worse half being past, and keep up
as well as I can. She has begun to show some
favorable symptoms. The return of her disor-
der has been frightfully soon this time, with
scarce a six-months' interval. I am almost
afraid my worry of spirits about the E. I. House
was partly the cause of her illness ; but one
always imputes it to the cause next at hand ;
more probably it comes from some cause we^
have no control over or conjecture of. It cuts
sad, great slices out of the time, the little time
we shall have to live together. I don't know but
the recurrence of these illnesses might help me
to sustain her death better than if we had no
partial separations. But I won't talk of death.
I will imagine us immortal, or forget that we are

274 MARY LAMB.

Otherwise. By God's blessing, in a few weeks
we may be taking our meal together, or sitting
in the front row of the pit at Drury Lane, or
taking our evening walk past the theaters, to
look at the outside of them at least, if not to be
tempted in. Then we forget we are assailable ;
we are strong for the time as rocks — * the
wind is tempered to the shorn Lambs.' Poor
C. Lloyd " [he was suffering from the same
dread malady] ! ''poor Priscilla! I feel I hardly
feel enough for him ; my own calamities press
about me and involve me in a thick integument
not to be reached at by other folks' misfor-
tunes. But I feel all I can — all the kindness I
can towards you all."

More and more sought by an enlarging circle
of friends, chambers in the Temple offered
facilities for the dropping in of acquaintance
upon the Lambs at all hours of the day and
night, which, social as they were, was harassing,
wearing, and to Mary very injurious. This it
was, doubtless, which induced them to take the
step announced by her in the following letter
to Dorothy Wordsworth: —

•''November 21, 181 7.
"Your kind letter has given us very much
pleasure ; the sight of your handwriting was a
most welcome surprise to us. We have heard

LETTER TO DOROTHY. 275

good tidings of you by all our friends who were
so fortunate as to visit you this summer, and
rejoice to see it confirmed by yourself. You
have quite the advantage in volunteering a let-
ter; there is no merit in replying to so welcome
a stranger.

" We have left the Temple. I think you will
be sorry to hear this. I know I have never
been so well satisfied with thinking of you at
Rydal Mount as when I could connect the idea
of you with your own Grasmere Cottage. Our
rooms were dirty and out of repair, and tl^e
inconveniences of living in chambers became
every year more irksome, and so at last we
mustered up resolution enough to leave the
good old place that so long had sheltered us,
and here we are, living at a brazier's shop. No.
20, in Russell street, Covent Garden, a place all
alive with noise and bustle ; Drury Lane The-
ater in sight from our front and Covent Gar-
den from our back windows. The hubbub of
the carriages returning from the play does not
annoy me in the least ; strange that it does not,
for it is quite tremendous. I quite enjoy look-
ing out of the window and listening to the call-
ing up of the carriages and the squabbles of the
coachmen and link-boys. It is the oddest scene
to look down upon; I am sure you would be
amused with it. It is well I am in a cheerful

2/6 MARY LAMB.

place, or I should have many misgivings about
leaving the Temple. I look forward with great
pleasure to the prospect of seeing my good
friend, Miss Hutchinson. I wish Rydal Mount,
with all its inhabitants inclosed, were to be
transplanted with her, and to remain stationary
in the midst of Covent Garden. I passed
through the street lately where Mr. and Mrs.
Wordsworth lodged ; several fine new houses,
which were then just rising out of the ground,
are quite finished, and a noble entrance made
that way into Portland place. I am very sorry
for Mr. De Quincey. What a blunder the poor
man made when he took up his dwelling among
the mountains ! I long to see my friend Pypos.
Coleridge is still at Little Hampton with Mrs.
Gillman ; he has been so ill as to be confined to
his room almost the whole time he has been
there.

''Charles has had all his Hogarths bound in
a book ; they were sent home yesterday, and
now that I have them all together, and perceive
the advantage of peeping close at them through
my spectacles, I am reconciled to the loss of
their hanging round the room, which has been
a great mortification to me. In vain I tried to
console myself with looking at our new chairs
and carpets, for we have got new chairs
and carpets covering all over our two sitting-

SUBURBAN LODGINGS, 2//

rooms ; I missed my old friends and could not
be comforted. Then I would resolve to learn
to look out of the window, a habit I never could
attain in my life, and I have given it up as a
thing quite impracticable ; yet, when I was at
Brighton last summer, the first week I never
took my eyes off from the sea, not even to look
in a book : I had not seen the sea for sixteen
years. Mrs. Morgan, who was with us, kept
her liking, and continued her seat in the win-
dow till the very last, while Charles and I
played truants and wandered among the hills,
which we magnified into little mountains, and
almost as good as Westmoreland scenery. Cer-
tainly we made discoveries of many pleasant
walks, which few of the Brighton visitors have
ever dreamed of ; for, like as is the case in the
neighborhood of London, after the first two or
three miles we are sure to find ourselves in a
perfect solitude. I hope we shall meet before
the walking faculties of either of us fail. You
say you can walk fifteen miles with ease ; that
is exactly my stint, and more fatigues me ; four
or five miles every third or fourth day, keejDing
very quiet between, was all Mrs. Morgan could
accomplish. God bless you and yours. Love
to all and each one."

In the spring of 1820 the Lambs took lodg-
ings at Stoke Newington, without, however,

2"]% MARY LAMB.

giving up the Russell street home, — for the
sake of rest and quiet ; the change from the
Temple to Covent Garden not having proved
much of a success in that respect, and the
need grown serious. Even Lamb's mornings
at the office and his walk thence were besieged
by officious acquaintance : then, as he tells
Wordsworth, *^ Up I go, mutton on table, hun-
gry as a hunter, hope to forget my cares, and
bury them in the agreeable abstraction of
mastication. Knock at the door; in comes
Mr. Hazlitt, or Mr. Burney, or Morgan Demi-
Gorgon, or my brother, or somebody, to pre-
vent my eating alone — a process absolutely
necessary to my poor wretched digestion. Oh,
the pleasure of eating alone ! eating my dinner
alone ! let me think of it. But in they come,
and make it absolutely necessary that I should
open a bottle of orange ; for my meat turns
into a stone when any one dines with me if I
have not wine. Wine can mollify stones ; then
that wine turns into acidity, acerbity, misan-
thropy, a hatred of my interrupters (God bless
'em ! I love some of 'em dearly), and with
the hatred a still greater aversion to their going
away. Bad is the dead sea they bring upon
me, choking and deadening ; but worse is the
deader dry sand they leave me on if they go
before bed-time. Come never, I would say to

SUBURBAN LODGINGS. 2'79

these spoilers of my dinner ; but if you come,
never go ! . . . Evening company I should
like, had I any mornings, but I am saturated
with human faces {divine, forsooth !) and voices
all the golden morning ; and five evenings in a
week would be as much as I should covet to
be in company ; but I assure you that is a
wonderful week in which I can get two or one
to myself. I am never C. L., but always C. L.
& Co. He who thought it not good for man
to be alone preserve me from the more pro-
digious monstrosity of being never by myself !
I forget bed-time, but even there these sociable
frogs clamber up to annoy me." . . .

It was during the Russell street days that
the Lambs made the acquaintance of Vincent
Novello. He had a little daughter, Mary
Victoria, afterwards Mrs. Cowden Clarke, whose
heart Mary won, leaving many sweet and happy
impressions of herself graven there, which
eventually took shape in her Recollections of
Writers. Mrs. Novello had lost a baby in the
spring of 1820, and from the quiet of Stoke
Newington Mary wrote her a sweet letter of

condolence : —

"Spring, 1820.

" Since we heard of your sad sorrow, you
have been perpetually in our thoughts ; there-
fore you may well imagine how welcome your

28o AfARY LAMB.

kind remembrance of us must be. I know
not how to thank you for it. You bid me
write a long letter ; but my mind is so possessed
with the idea that you must be occupied with
one only thought, that all trivial matters seem
impertinent. I have just been reading again
Mr. Hunt's delicious essay [^Deaths of Little
Children\ which, I am sure, must have come
so home to your hearts. I shall always love
him for it. I feel that it is all that one can
think, but which no one but he could have done
so prettily. May he lose the memory of his
own babies in seeing them all grow old around
him. Together with the recollection of your
dear baby, the image of a little sister I once
had comes as fresh into my mind as if I had
seen her lately. ... I long to see you, and I
hope to do so on Tuesday or Wednesday in
next week. Percy street ! I love to write the
word. What comfortable ideas it brings with
it ! We have been pleasing ourselves, ever
since we heard this unexpected piece of good
news, with the anticipation of frequent drop-in
visits and all the social comfort of what seems
almost next-door neighborhood.

"Our solitary confinement has answered its
purpose even better than I expected. It is so
many years since I have been out of town in
the spring that I scarcely knew of the existence

LETTER TO MRS. NOVELLO. 28 1

of such a season. I see every day some new
flower peeping out of the ground, and watch its
growth ; so that I have a sort of intimate friend-
ship with each. I know the effect of every
change of weather upon them — have learned
all their names, the duration of their lives, and
the whole progress of their domestic economy.
My landlady, a nice, active old soul that wants
but one year of eighty, and her daughter, a
rather aged young gentlewoman, are the only
laborers in a pretty large garden ; for it is a
double house, and two long strips of ground are
laid into one, well stored with fruit-trees, which
will be in full blossom the week after I am
gone, and flowers, as many as can be crammed
in, of all sorts and kinds. But flowers are
flowers still ; and I must confess I would rather
live in Russell street all my life, and never set
my foot but on London pavement, than be
doomed always to enjoy the silent pleasures I
now do. We go to bed at ten o'clock. Late
hours are life-shortening things, but I would
rather run all risks, and sit every night — at
some places I could name — wishing in vain at
eleven o'clock for the entrance of the supper
tray, than be always up and alive at eight
o'clock breakfast, as I am here. We have a
scheme to reconcile these things. W^e have an
offer of a very low-rented lodging a mile nearer

282 ' MARY LAMB.

town than this. Our notion is to divide our
time in alternate weeks between quiet rest and
dear London weariness. We give an answer
to-morrow ; but what that will be at this pres-
ent writing I am unable to say. In the present
state of our undecided opinion, a very heavy
rain that is now falling may turn the scale. . . .
Dear rain, do go away, and let us have a fine,
chearful sunset to argue the matter fairly in.
My brother walked seventeen miles yesterday
before dinner. And, notwithstanding his long
walk to and from the office, we walk every even-
ing ; but I by no means perform in this way so
well as I used to do. A twelve-mile walk, one
hot Sunday morning, made my feet blister, and
they are hardly well now." .

"A fine, cheerful sunset" did smile, it seems,
upon the project of permanent country lodg-
ings ; for during the next three years the
Lambs continued to alternate between "dear
London weariness " in Russell street, and rest
and quiet work at Dalston. Years they were
which produced nearly all the most delightful of
the Essays of Elia.

The year 1821 closed gloomily: "I stepped
into the Lambs' cottage at Dalston," writes
Crabb Robinson in his diary, Nov. 18. '* Mary
pale and thin, just recovered from one of her
attacks. They have lost their brother John and

LOSS OF FRIENDS. 28-5

feel the loss." And the very same week died
fine old Captain Burney. He had been made
Admiral but a fortnight before his death.
These gaps among the old familiar faces struck
chill to their hearts. In a letter to Wordsworth,
of the following spring, Lamb says: ''We are
pretty well, save colds and rheumatics, and a
certain deadness to everything, which I think I
may date from poor John's loss, and another
accident or two at the same time that have
made me almost bury myself at Dalston, where
yet I see more faces than I could wish. Deaths
overset one and put one out long after the
recent grief. Two or three have died within
the last two twelvemonths, and so many parts
of me have been numbed. One sees a picture,
reads an anecdote, starts a casual fancy, and
thinks to tell of it to this person in preference
to every other; the person is gone whom it
w^ould have peculiarly suited. It won't do for
another. Every departure destroys a class of
sympathies. There's Captain Burney gone !
What fun has whist now.? What matters it
what you lead if you can no longer fancy him
looking over you 1 One never hears anything,
but the image of the particular person occurs
with whom alone, almost, you would care to
share the intelligence. Thus one distributes
one's self about, and now for so many parts of

284 MARY LAMB,

me I have lost the market." It was while
John's death was yet recent that Lamb wrote
some tender recollections of him (fact and
fiction blended according to ''Ella's" wont) in
Dream Children, a Reverie, telling how hand-
some and spirited he had been in his youth,
"and how, when he died, though he had not
been dead an hour, it seemed as if he had died
a great while ago, such a distance there is
betwixt life and death ; and how I bore his
death, as I thought, pretty well at first, but
afterwards it haunted and haunted me; and
though I did not cry or take it to heart as some
do, and as I think he would have done if I had
died, yet I missed him all day long, and knew
not till then how much I had loved him. I
missed his kindness and I missed his crossness,
and wished him to be alive again to 'be quarrel-
ing with him (for we quarreled sometimes),
rather than not have him again."

CHAPTER XIV.

Hazlitt's Divorce. — Emma Isola. — Mrs. Cowden Clarke's
Recollections oi Mary. — The Visit to France. — Removal
to Colebrook Cottage. — A Dialogue of Reminiscences.

1822-3. — MX. 58-59.

For some years matters had not gone smoothly
between Sara Hazlitt and her husband. He
was hard to live with, and she seems to have
given up the attempt to make the best of things,
and to have sunk into a kind of apathy in which
even the duties of a housewife were ill per-
formed ; but his chief complaint was that " she
despised him and his abilities." In this, Haz-
litt was, probably, unjust to Sara; for she was
neither stupid nor unamiable. From 18 19
onwards he had absented himself from home
continually, living either at the Huts, a small
inn on the edge of Salisbury Plain, or in Lon-
don lodgings. But in this year of 1822 his
unhappy passion for Sarah Walker brought
about a crisis ; and what had been only a neg-
ative kind of evil became unendurable. He
prevailed upon Sara to consent to a divorce.

286 MA/^V LAMB.

It was obtained, in Edinburgh, by Mrs. Hazlitt
taking what, in Scotch law, is called '' the oath
of calumny," which — the suit being unde-
fended— entitled her to a dissolution of the
marriage tie. They then returned singly to
Winterslow, he to the Huts and she to her cot-
tage. If they married with but little love, they
seem to have parted without any hate. One
tie remained — the strong affection each had
for their son, who was sometimes with one,
sometimes with the other. Hazlitt's wholly
unrequited passion for Sarah Walker soon
burned itself to ashes ; and in two years' time
he tried another experiment in marriage which
was even less successful than the first ; for his
bride, like Milton's, declined to return home
with him after the wedding tour, and he saw
her face no more. But, unlike Milton, he was
little discomposed at the circumstance. Sara,
grown a wiser if not a more dignified woman,
did not renew the scheming ways of her youth.
She continued to stand high in the esteem of
Hazlitt's mother and sister, and often stayed
with them. The Lambs abated none of their
old cordiality ; Mary wrote few letters now, but
Charles sent her a friendly one sometimes. It
was to her he gave the first account of absent-
minded George Dyer's feat of walking straight
into the New River, in broad daylight, on leav-

EMMA ISOLA. 287

ing their door in Colebrook Row. Towards
Hazlitt, also, their friendship seemed substan-
tially unchanged, let him be as splenetic and
wayward as he might. " We cannot afford to
cast off our friends because they are not all we
could wish," said Mary Lamb once when he had
written some criticisms on Wordsworth and
Coleridge, in which glowing admiration was
mixed with savage ridicule in such a way that,
as Lamb said, it was *' like saluting a man :
* Sir, you are the greatest man I ever saw,' and
then pulling him by the nose." But it needed
only for Hazlitt himself to be traduced and vil-
ified, as he so often was, by the political adver-
saries and critics of those days, for Lamb to
rally to his side and fearlessly pronounce him
to be, " in his natural and healthy state, one of
the wisest and finest spirits breathing."

As a set-off against the already mentioned
sorrows of this time, a new element of cheer-
fulness was introduced into the Lamb house-
hold ; for it was in the course of the summer
of 1823 that, during a visit to Cambridge, they
first saw Emma Isola, a little orphan child, of
whom they soon grew so fond that eventually
she became their adopted daughter, their solace
and comfort. To Mary especially was this a
happy incident. "For," says Mrs. Cowden
Clarke in the Recollections already alluded to,

288 MARV LAMB.

" she had a most tender sympathy with the
young," — as the readers of Mj^s. Leicester's
School will hardly need telling. " She was
encouraging and affectionate towards them,
and won them to regard her with a familiarity
and fondness rarely felt by them for grown
people who are not their relations. She threw
herself so entirely into their way of thinking
and contrived to take an estimate of things so
completely from their point of view, that she
made them rejoice to have her for their co-
mate in affairs that interested them. While
thus lending herself to their notions, she, with
a judiciousness peculiar to her, imbued her
words with the wisdom and experience that
belonged to her maturer years ; so that while
she seemed but the listening, concurring friend,
she was also the helping, guiding friend. Her
monitions never took the form of reproof, but
were always dropped in with the air of agreed
propositions, as if they grew out of the subject
in question, and presented themselves as mat-
ters of course to both her young companions
and herself." The following is a life-like
picture, from the same hand, of Mary among
the children she gathered round her in these
Russell street days — Hazlitt's little son Wil-
liam, Victoria Novello (Mrs. Clarke herself)
and Emma Isola. Victoria used "to come to

EMMA I SOLA. 289

her on certain mornings, when Miss Lamb
promised to hear her repeat her Latin grammar,
and hear her read poetry with the due music-
ally rhythmical intonation. Even now the
breathing murmur of the voice in which Mary
Lamb gave low but melodious utterance to
those opening lines of the Paradise Lost : —

Of man's first disobedience, and the fruit
Of that forbidden tree, whose mortal taste
Brought death into the world and all pur woe, —

sounding full and rounded and harmonious,
though so subdued in tone, rings clear and
distinct in the memory of her who heard the
reader. The echo of that gentle voice vibrates,
through the lapse of many a revolving year,
true and unbroken in the heart where the low-
breathed sound first awoke response, teaching
together with the fine appreciation of verse-
music the finer love of intellect conjoined with
goodness and kindness. . . . One morning,
just as Victoria was about to repeat her allotted
task, in rushed a young boy who, like herself,
enjoyed the privilege of Miss Lamb's instruc-
tion in the Latin language. His mode of
entrance, hasty and abrupt, sufficiently denoted
his eagerness to have his lesson heard at once
and done with, that he might be gone again ;
accordingly Miss Lamb, askir^g Victoria to give
10

290 MARY LAMB.

up her turn, desired the youth, Hazlitt's son,
to repeat his pages of grammar first. Off
he set; rattled through the first conjugation
post-haste ; darted through the second without
drawing breath ; and so on right through in no
time. The rapidity, the volubility, the tri-
umphant slap-dash of the feat perfectly dazzled
the imagination of poor Victoria, who stood
admiring by, an amazed witness of the boy's
proficiency. She herself, a quiet, plodding
little girl, had only by dint of diligent study
and patient, persevering poring, been able to
achieve a slow learning and as slow a repetition
of her lessons. This brilliant, off-hand method
of dispatching the Latin grammar was a glory
she had never dreamed of. Her ambition was
fired, and the next time she presented herself
book in hand before Miss Lamb, she had no
sooner delivered it into her hearer's than she
attempted to scour through her verb at the
same rattling pace which had so excited her
admiration. Scarce a moment and her stum-
bling scamper was checked. ' Stay, stay ! how's
this ? What are you about, little Vicky .? '
asked the laughing voice of Mary Lamb. ' Oh,
I see. Well, go on ; but gently, gently ; no
need of hurry.' She heard to an end, and then
said: ' I see what we have been doing — trying
to be. as quick and clever as William, fancying

MRS. CLARKE'S RECOLLECTIONS, 291

it vastly grand to get on at a great rate, as he
does. But there's this difference : it's natural
in him, while it's imitation in you./ Now, far
better go on in your old staid way — which is
your own way — than try to take up a way that
may become him, but can never become you,
even were you to succeed in acquiring it.
/We'll each of us keep to our own natural ways,
and then we shall be sure to do our best.'
And when Victoria and Emma Isola met there,
Mary entered into their girlish friendship ; let
them have their gossip out in her own room if
tired of the restraint of grown-up company;
and once, before Emma's return to school, took
them to Dulwich and gave them a charming
little dinner of roast fowl and custard pudding."
..." Pleasant above all," says the surviv-
ing guest and narrator, '' is the memory of the
cordial voice, which said, in a way to put the
little party at its fullest ease, ' Now, remember,
we all pick our bones. It isn't considered
vulgar here to pick bones.'

'' Once, when some visitors chanced to drop
in unexpectedly upon her and her brother,"
continues Mrs. Clarke, "just as they were sit-
ting down to their plain dinner of a bit of roast
mutton, with her usual frank hospitality she
pressed them to stay and partake, cutting up
the small joint into five equal portions, and say-

292 MARY LAMB.

ing in her simple, easy way, so truly her own :
* There's a chop apiece for us, and we can make
up with bread and cheese if we want more. ' "

The more serious demands upon her sympa-
thy and judgment made, after childhood was
left behind, by the young, whether man or
woman, she met with no less tenderness, tact
and wisdom. Once, for instance, when she
thought she perceived symptoms of an unex-
plained dejection in her young friend Victoria,
"how gentle was her sedate mode of reasoning
the matter, after delicately touching upon the
subject and endeavoring to draw forth its
avowal ! More as if mutually discussing and con-
sulting than as if questioning, she endeavored
to ascertain whether uncertainties or scruples
of faith had arisen in the young girl's mind and
had caused her preoccupied, abstracted manner.
If it were any such source of disturbance, how
wisely and feelingly she suggested reading,
reflecting, weighing ; if but a less deeply-seated
depression, how sensibly she advised adopting
some object to rouse energy and interest ! She
pointed out the efficacy of studying a language
(she herself at upwards of fifty years of age
began the acquirement of French and Italian)
as a remedial measure, and advised Victoria to
devote herself to a younger brother she had,
in the same way that she had attended to her

FRAGMENTS OF TALK. 293

own brother Charles in his infancy, as the
wholesomest and surest means of all for cure."

Allsop, Coleridge's friend, speaks in the same
strain of how when a young man, overwhelmed
with what then seemed the hopeless ruin of his
prospects, he found Charles and Mary Lamb
not wanting in the hour of need. **I have a
clear recollection," says he, *^of Miss Lamb's
addressing me in a tone which acted at once as
a solace and support, and after as a stimulus,
to which I owe more perhaps than to the more
extended arguments of all others."

On the whole Mary was a silent woman. It
was her forte rather to enable others to talk
their best by the charm of an earnest, speaking
countenance and a responsive manner ; and
there are but few instances in which any of her
words have been preserved. In that memora-
ble conversation at Lamb's table on '^ persons
one would like to have seen," reported by Haz-
litt, when it was a question of women : '' I
should like vastly to have seen Ninon de
L'Enclos," said Mary. When Queen Caroline's
trial was pending and her character and con-
duct the topic in every mouth, Mary said she
did not see that it made much difference whether
the Queen was what they called guilty or not —
meaning, probably, that the stream was so
plainly muddy at the fountain-head, it was idle

294 MARY LAMB.

to inquire what ill places it had passed through
in its course. Or else, perhaps, that, either
way, the King's conduct was equally odious.

The last observation of hers I can find
recorded is at first sight unlike herself: "How
stupid old people are ! " It was that unimagina-
tive incapacity to sympathize with the young,
so alien to her own nature, no doubt, which
provoked the remark. Of her readiness to help
all that came within her reach there is a side-
glimpse in some letters of Lamb's — the latest
to see the light, — which come, as other inter-
esting contributions to the knowledge of Lamb's
writings have done (notably those of the late
Mr. Babson), from over the Atlantic. In The
Century magazine for September, 1882, are
seven letters to John Howard Payne, an Ameri-
can playwright, whom Lamb was endeavoring
to help in his but partially successful struggle
to earn a livelihood by means of adaptations
for the stage in London and Paris. Mrs. Cow-
den Clarke speaks of this Mr. Payne as the
acquaintance whom Mary Lamb, " ever thought-
ful to procure a pleasure for young people," had
asked to call and see the little Victoria, then at
school at Boulogne, on his way to Paris. He
proved a good friend to Mary herself during
that trip to France which, with a courage
amounting to rashness, she and Charles under-
took in the summer of 1822.

JOHN HOWARD PAYNE. 295

** I went to call on the Lambs to take leave,
they setting out for France next morning,"
writes Crabb Robinson in his diary, June 17th.
" I gave Miss Lamb a letter for Miss Williams,
to whom I sent a copy of Mrs. Leicester s School.
The Lambs have a Frenchman as their compan-
ion, and Miss Lamb's nurse, in case she should
be ill. Lamb was in high spirits; his sister
rather nervous."

The privation of sleep entailed in such a jour-
ney, combined with the excitement, produced
its inevitable result, and Mary was taken with
one of her severest attacks in the diligence on
the way to Amiens. There, happily, they seem
to have found Mr. Payne, who assisted Charles
to make the necessary arrangements for her
remaining under proper care till the return of
reason, and then he went on to Paris, where he
stayed with the Kennys, who thought him dull
and out of sorts, as well he might be. Two
months afterwards we hear of Mary as being
in Paris. Charles, his holiday over, had been
obliged to return to England.

" Mary Lamb has begged me to give her a
day or two," says Crabb Robinson. "She
comes to Paris this evening and stays here a
week. Her only male friend is a Mr. Payne,
whom she praises exceedingly for his kindness
and attentions to Charles. He is the author of
Brutus y and has a good face."

296 MARY LAMB.

It was in the following year that most of the
letters to Mr. Payne, published in the Century^
were written. They disclose Mary and her
brother zealous to repay one good turn with
another by watching the success of his dramatic
efforts and endeavoring to negotiate favorably
for him with actors and managers : ^^ AH Pacha
will do. I sent my sister the first night, not
having been able to go myself, and her report
of its effect was most favorable. . . . My
love to my little wife at Versailles, and to her
dear mother. ... I have no mornings (my
day begins at 5 p. m.) to transact business in,
or talents for it, so I employ Mary, who has
seen Robertson, who says that the piece which
is to be operafied was sent to you six weeks
since, etc., etc. Mary says you must write more
showable letters about these matters, for with
all our trouble of crossing out this word, and
giving a cleaner turn to th' other, and folding
down at this part, and squeezing an obnoxious
epithet into a corner, she can hardly communi-
cate their contents without offense. What,
man, put less gall in your ink, or write me a
biting tragedy ! " . . .

The piece which was sent to Mr. Payne in
Paris to be *' operafied " was probably Clari, the
Maid of Milan. Bishop wrote or adapted the
music : it still keeps possession of the stage,

JOHN HOWARD PAYNE. 297

and contains "Home, Sweet Home," which
plaintive, well-worn ditty earned for itsw riter
among his friends the title of the " Homeless
Poet of Home." He ended his days as Ameri-
can Consul at Tunis.

This year's holiday (1823), spent at Hastings,
was one of unalloyed pleasure and refreshment.
"I have given up my soul to walking," Lamb
writes. "There are spots, inland bays, etc.,
which realize the notions of Juan Fernandez.
The best thing I lit upon, by accident, was a
small country church (by whom or when built
unknown), standing bare and single in the midst
of a grove, with no house or appearance of habi-
tation within a quarter of a mile, only passages
diverging from it through beautiful woods to so
many farm-houses. There it stands, like the
first idea of a church, before parishioners were
thought of, nothing but birds for its congrega-
tion ; or like a hermit's oratory (the hermit
dead), or a mausoleum ; its effect singularly
impressive, like a church found in a desert isle
to startle Crusoe with a home image. . . .
I am a long time reconciling to town after one
of these excursions. Home is become strange,
and will remain so yet awhile ; home is the
most unforgiving of friends, and always resents
absence ; I know its cordial looks will return,
but they are slow in clearing up."

298 MARY LAMB.

The " cordial looks," however, of the Russell
street home never did return. The plan of the
double lodgings, there and at Dalston, was a
device of double discomforts ; the more so as
"at my town lodgings," he afterwards confesses
to Bernard Barton, "the mistress was always
quarreling with our maid ; and at my place of
rustication the whole family v/ere always beating
one another, brothers beating sisters (one, a
most beautiful girl, lamed for life), father beat-
ing sons and daughters, and son again beating
his father, knocking him fairly down, — a scene
I never before witnessed, but was called out of
bed by the unnatural blows, the parricidal color
of which, though my morals could not but con-
demn, yet my reason did heartily approve ; and
in the issue the house was quieter for a day or
so than I had ever known." It was time,
indeed, for brother and sister to have a house
of their own over their heads, means now amply
sufficing.

A few weeks after their return Lamb took
Colebrook Cottage at Islington. It was
detached, faced the New River, had six good
rooms, and a spacious garden behind. "You
enter without passage," he writes, "into a
cheerful dining-room, all studded over and
rough with old books, and above is a lightsome
drawing-room, full of choice prints. I feel like

COLEBROOK COTTAGE, 299

a great lord, never having had a house before."
A new acquaintance, a man much after
Lamb's heart, at whose table he and Mary
were, in the closing years of his life, more fre-
quent guests than at any other — **Mr. Carey,
the Dante man," — was added to their list this
year. / " He is a model of a country parson, —
lean (as a curate ought to be), modest, sensible,
no obtruder of church dogmas, quite a different
man from Southey," says Lamb of him. "Quite
a different man from Southey " had a peculiar
sting in it at this moment, for Southey had just
struck a blow at "Elia" in the Quarterly, as
unjust in purport as it was odious in manner —
detraction in the guise of praise. Lamb
answered him this very autumn in the London
Magazine ; a noble answer it is, which seems
to have awakened something like compunction
in Southey's exemplary but pharisaic soul. At
all events he made overtures for a reconcilia-
tion, which so touched Lamb's generous heart,
he was instantly ready to take blame upon him-
self for having written the letter. " I shall be
ashamed to see you, and my sister, though inno-
cent, still more so," he says, "for the folly was
done without her knowledge, and has made her
uneasy ever since. My guardian angel was
absent at that time." By which token we
know that Mary did not escape the usual sad

300 MARY LAMB.

effects of change and fatigue in the removal to
Colebrook Cottage.

Means were easy, home comfortable now;
but many a wistful, backward glance did brother
and sister cast to the days of early struggle,
with their fuller life, keener pleasures and bet-
ter health. It was not long after they were
settled in Colebrook Cottage that they opened
their hearts on this theme in that beautiful
essay by "Elia" called Old China^ Words-
worth's favorite, in which Charles for once
made himself Mary's — or, as he calls her,
Cousin Bridget's — mouthpiece. Whilst sip-
ping tea out of "a set of extraordinary blue
china, a recent purchase," . . . writes "Elia,"
" I could not help remarking how favorable cir-
cumstances had been to us of late years, that
we could afford to please the eye sometimes
with trifles of this sort ; when a passing senti-
ment seemed to overshade the brow of my com-
panion. I am quick at detecting these summer
clouds in Bridget.

" ' I wish the good old times would come
again,' she said, 'when we were not quite so
rich. I do not mean that I want to be poor ;
but there was a middle state,' so she was pleased
to ramble on, 'in which I am sure we were a
great deal happier. A purchase is but a pur-
chase, now that you have money enough and to

BRIDGE TS RE TROSPECT. 30 1

spare. Formerly it used to be a triumph.
When we coveted a cheap luxury (and oh, how-
much ado I had to get you to consent in those
times !) we were used to have a debate two or
three days before, and to weigh the for and
against, and think what we might spare it out
of, and what saving we could hit upon that
should be an equivalent. A thing was worth
buying then, when we felt the money that we
paid for it.

"'Do you remember the brown suit which
you made to hang upon you till all your friends
cried *' Shame upon you ! " it grew so thread-
bare, and all because of that folio Beaumont and
Fletcher, which you dragged home late at night
from Barker's in Covent Garden } Do you
remember how we eyed it for weeks before we
could make up our minds to the purchase, and
had not come to a determination till it was near
ten o'clock of the Saturday night when you set
off from Islington, fearing you should be too
late, and when the old bookseller with some
grumbling opened his shop, and by the twink-
ling taper (for he was setting bedwards) lighted
out the relic from his dusty treasures, and when
you lugged it home, wishing it were twice as
cumbersome, and when you presented it to me,
and when we were exploring the perfectness of
it {collating, you called it), and while I was

302 MARY LAMB.

repairing some of the loose leaves with paste,
which your impatience would not suffer to be
left till daybreak, — was there no pleasure in
being a poor man ? Or can those neat black
clothes which you wear now, and are so careful
to keep brushed since we have become rich and
finical, give you half the honest vanity with
which you flaunted it about in that over-worn
suit, your old corbeau, for four or five weeks
longer than you should have done, to pacify
your conscience for the mighty sum of fifteen,
or sixteen shillings, was it? — a great affair we
thought it then — which you had lavished on
the old folio ? Now you can afford to buy any
book that pleases you ; but I do not see that
you ever bring me home any nice old purchases
now.

"'When you came home with twenty apolo-
gies for laying out a less number of shillings
upon that print after Lionardo which we chris-
tened the ''Lady Blanch," when you looked at
the purchase and thought of the money, and
thought of the money and looked again at the
picture, — was there no pleasure in being a poor
man ? Now you have nothing to do but to walk
into Colnaghi's and buy a wilderness of Lionar-
dos. Yet, do you ?

'"Then do you remember our pleasant walks
to Enfield and Potter's Bar and Waltham when

BRIDGET'S RETROSPECT. 303

we liad a holiday — holidays and all other fun
are gone now we are rich — and the little hand-
basket in which I used to deposit our day's fare
of savory cold lamb and salad, and how you
would pry about at noon-tide for some decent
house where we might go in and produce our
store, only paying for the ale that you must call
for, and speculated upon the looks of the land-
lady, and whether she was likely to allow us a
table-cloth, and wish for such another honest
hostess as Izaak Walton has described many a
one on the pleasant banks of the Lea when he
went a-fishing ? And sometimes they would
prove obliging enough, and sometimes they
would look grudgingly upon us ; but we had
cheerful looks still for one another, and would
eat our plain food savorily, scarcely grudging
Piscator his Trout Hall. Now when we go out
a day's pleasuring, which is seldom, moreover,
we ride part of the way, and go into a fine inn
and order the best of dinners, never debating
the expense, which after all never has half the
relish of those chance country snaps, when we
were at the mercy of uncertain usage and a
precarious welcome.

" ' You are too proud to see a play anywhere
now but in the pit. Do you remember where
it was we used to sit when we saw the " Battle
of Hexham," and the *' Surrender of Calais,"

304 MARY LAMB.

and Bannister and Mrs. Bland in the " Children
in the Wood," — when we squeezed out our
shillings apiece to sit three or four times in a
season in the one-shilling gallery, where you
felt all the time that you ought not to have
brought me, and more strongly I felt obliga-
tion to you for having brought me — and the
pleasure was the better for a little shame?
And when the curtain drew up what cared we
for our place in the house, or what mattered it
where we were sitting, when our thoughts were
with Rosalind in Arden or with Viola at the
Court of Illyria ? You used to say that the gal-
lery was the best place of all for enjoying a
play socially ; that the relish of such exhibitions
must be in proportion to the infrequency of
going ; that the company we met there, not
being in general readers of plays, were obliged
to attend the more, and did attend, to what was
going on on the stage, because a word lost
would have been a chasm which it was impossi-
ble for them to fill up. With such reflections
we consoled our pride then ; and I appeal to you
whether as a woman I met generally with less
attention and accommodation than I have done
since in more expensive situations in the house.
The getting in, indeed, and the crowding up
those inconvenient staircases, w^as bad enough,
but there was still a law of civility to woman,

BRIDGET'S RETROSPECT. 305..

recognized to quite as great an extent as we
ever found in the other passages. And how a
little difficulty overcome heightened the snug
seat and the play afterwards ! Now we can
only pay our money and walk in. You cannot
see, you say, in the galleries now. I am sure
we saw, and heard too, well enough then, but
sight and all, I think, is gone with our poverty.
" ' There was pleasure in eating strawberries
before they became quite common — in the first
dish of peas while they were yet dear ; to have
them for a nice supper, a treat. What treat can
we have now } If we were to treat ourselves
now — that is, to have dainties a little above our
means — it would be selfish and wicked. It is
the very little more that we allow ourselves
beyond what the actual poor can get at, that
makes what I call a treat — when two people,
living together as we have done, now and then
indulge themselves in a cheap luxury which
both like, while each apologizes and is willing to
take both halves of the blame to his single share.
I see no harm in people making much of them-
selves in that sense of the word. It may give
them a hint how to make much of others. But
now — what I mean by the word — we never do
make much of ourselves. None but the poor
can do it. I do not mean the veriest poor of all,
but persons, as we were, just above poverty.

306 MARY LAMB.

" ' I know what you were going to say — that
it is mighty pleasant at the end of the year to
make all meet, and much ado we used to have
every thirty-first night of December to account
for our exceedings ; many a long face did you
make over your puzzled accounts, and in con-
triving to make it out how we had spent so
much, or that we had not spent so much, or that
it was impossible we should spend so much next
year — and still we found our slender capital
decreasing; but then, betwixt ways and pro-
jects and compromises of one sort or another,
and talk of curtailing this charge and doing
without that for the future, and the hope that
youth brings and laughing spirits (in which you
were never poor till now), we pocketed up our
loss, and in conclusion, with "lusty brimmers"
(as you used to quote it out of hearty, cheerful
Mr. Cotton, as you called him), we used to "wel-
come in the coming guest." Now we have no
reckonings at all at the end of the old year-^-
ho flattering promises about the new year doing
'better for us.'

" Bridget is so sparing of her speech on most
occasions, that when she gets into a rhetorical
vein I am careful how I interrupt it. I could
not help, however, smiling at the phantom of
wealth which her dear imagination had con-
jured up out of a clear income of poor — hun-

ELIA'S REPLY. 307

dred pounds a year. It is true we were happier
when we were poorer, but we were also younger,
my cousin. I am afraid we must put up with
the excess, for if we were to shake the superflux
into the sea, we should not much mend ourselves.
That we had much to struggle with as we grew
up together, we have reason to be most thank-
ful. It strengthened and knit our compact
closer. We could never have been what we
have been to each other, if we had always had
the sufficiency which you now complain of.
The resisting power, those natural dilations of
the youthful spirit, which circumstances cannot
straighten, with us are long since passed away.
Competence to age is supplementary youth ; a
sorry supplement indeed, but I fear the best
that is to be had. We must ride where we for-
merly walked ; live better and lie softer — and
we shall be wise to do so — than we had means
to do in those good old days you speak of. Yet
could those days return, could you and I once
more walk our thirty miles a day, could Bannis-
ter and Mrs. Bland again be young, and you
and I be young again to see them, — could the
good old one-shilling gallery days return — they
are dreams, my cousin, now, — but could you
and I at this moment, instead of this quiet
argument, by our well-carpeted fire-side, sitting
on this luxurious sofa, be once more struggling

308 MARY LAMB.

up those inconvenient staircases, pushed about
and squeezed and elbowed by the poorest rabble
of poor gallery scramblers, — could I once more
hear those anxious shrieks of yours, and the
delicious * Thank God we are safe,' which always
followed when the topmost stair conquered let
in the first light of the whole cheerful theater
down beneath us, — I know not the fathom-line
that ever touched a descent so deep as I would
be willing to bury more wealth in than Croesus
had, or the great Jew R. is supposed to have,
to purchase it."

These fire-side confidences between brother
and sister bring back, in all the warmth and
fullness of life, that past mid which the biog-
rapher has been groping and listening to
echoes.

CHAPTER XV.

Lamb's ill Health.-— Retirement from the India House,
and subsequent Illness. — Letter from Mary to Lady
Stoddart. — Colebrook Cottage left. — Mary's con-
stant Attacks. — Home given up. — Board with the
Westwoods. — Death of Hazlitt. — Removal to Ed-
monton.— Marriage of Emma Isola. — Mary's sud-
den Recovery. — 111 again. — Death of Coleridge. —
Death of Charles. — Mary's last Days and Death.

1 824-47. — ^t. 60-83.

The year 1824 was one of the best Mary
ever enjoyed. Alas! it was not the precursor
of others like it, but rather a farewell gleam
before the clouds gathered up thicker and
thicker, till the light of reason was perma-
nently obscured. In November Charles wrote
to Miss Hutchinson: " We had promised our
dear friends the Monkhouses " [relatives of Mrs.
Wordsworth] — "promised ourselves, rather —
a visit to them at Ramsgate ; but I thought it
best, and Mary seemed to have it at heart too,
not to go far from home these last holidays. It
is connected with a sense of unsettlement, and
secretly I know she hoped that such abstinence

3IO MARY LAMB.

would be friendly to her health. She certainly
has escaped her sad yearly visitation, whether
in consequence of it, or of faith in it, and we
have to be thankful for a good 1824. To get
such a notion in our heads may go a great way
another year. Not that we quite confined our-
selves ; but, assuming Islington to be head-
quarters, we made timid flights to Ware,
Watford, etc., to try how trout s tasted, for a
night out or so, not long enough to make the
sense of change oppressive, but sufficient to
scour the rust of home."

With Lamb it was quite otherwise. The
letters of this year show that health and spirits
were flagging sorely. He had, ever since 1820,
been working at high pressure, producing, in
steady, rapid succession, his matchless essays
in the London Magazine, and this at the end
of a long day's office-work. His delicate,
nervous organization could not fail to suffer
from the continued strain, not to mention the
ever-present and more terrible one of his
sister's health.

At last his looks attracted the notice of one
of his chiefs, and it was intimated that a
resignation might be accepted, as it was after
some anxious delays ; and a provision for Mary,
if she survived, was guaranteed in addition to
his comfortable pension. The sense of free-

MARY TO LADY STODDART. 311

dom was almost overwhelming. " Mary wakes
every morning with an obscure feeling that some
good has happened to us," he writes. "■ Leigh
Hunt and Montgomery, after their release-
ments, describe the shock of their emancipation
much as I feel mine. But it hurt their frames.
I eat, drink, and sleep as sound as ever."

A reaction did come, however. Lamb con-
tinued pretty well through the spring, but in
the summer he was prostrated by a severe
attack of nervous fever. In July he wrote to
Bernard Barton: ''My nervous attack has so
unfitted me that I have not courasre to sit down
to a letter. My poor pittance in the London^
you will see, is drawn from my sickness." \The
Convalescent, which appeared July, 1825.]

One more glimpse of Mary in a letter from

her own hand. Again the whole summer was

being spent in lodgings at Enfield, whence Mary

wrote to congratulate her old friend Mrs. (now

Lady) Stoddart, her husband having become

Chief Justice of Malta, on the marriage of a

daughter: —

"August 9, 1827.

"My dear lady friend: — My brother
called at our empty cottage [Colebrook] yester-
day and found the cards of your son and his
friend, Mr. Hine, under the door, which has
brought to my mind that I am in danger of los-

312 MARY LAMB.

ing this post, as I did the last, being at that
time in a confused state of mind, — for at that
time we were talking of leaving, and persuading
ourselves that we were intending to leave town
and all our friends, and sit down forever, solitary
and forgotten here. . . . Here we are, and
we have locked up our house and left it to take
care of itself ; but at present we do not design
to extend our rural life beyond Michaelmas.
Your kind letter was most welcome to me,
though the good news contained in it was
already known to me. Accept my warmest
congratulations, though they come a little of
the latest. In my next I may probably have to
hail you grandmamma, or to felicitate you on
the nuptials of pretty Mary, who, whatever the
beaux of Malta may think of her, I can only
remember her round, shining face, and her *0
William ! dear William ! ' when we visited her
the other day at school. Present my love and
best wishes, a long and happy married life, to
dear Isabella — I love to call her Isabella; but
in truth, having left your other letter in town,
I recollect no other name she has. The same
love and the same wishes, in futitro, to my
friend Mary, Tell her that her 'dear William'
grows taller, and improves in manly looks and
man-like behaviour every time I see him.
What is Henry about } and what should one

MA/^V TO LADY S TODD ART, ^12>

wish for him ? If he be in search of a wife, I
will send him out Emma Isola.

" You remember Emma, that you were so
kind as to invite to your ball ? She is now with
us, and I am moving Heaven and earth, that is
to say, I am pressing the matter upon all the
very few friends I have that are likely to assist
me in such a case, to get her into a family as
governess; and Charles and I do little else
here than teach her something or other all day
long.

" We are striving to put enough Latin into
her to enable her to begin to teach it to young
learners. So much for Emma, for you are so
fearfully far away that I fear it is useless to
implore your patronage for her. . . .

" I expect a pacquet of manuscript from you.
You promised me the office of negotiating with
booksellers and so forth for your next work."
[Lady Stoddart published several tales under
the name of Blackford.] ''Is it in good for-
wardness "i Or do you grow rich and indolent
now.? It is not surprising that your Maltese
story should find its way into Malta ; but I was
highly pleased with the idea of your pleasant
surprise at the sight of it. I took a large sheet
of paper, in order to leave Charles room to add
something more worth reading than my poor
mite. May we all meet again once more."

314 MARY LAMB.

It was to escape the "dear weariness" of
incessant friendly visitors, which they were now
less than ever able to bear, that they had taken
refuge in the Enfield lodging.

'* We have been here near three months, and
shall stay two more if people will let us alone;
but they persecute us from village to village,"
Lamb writes to Bernard Barton in August.

At the end of that time they decided to
return to Colebrook Cottage no more, but to
take a house at Enfield. The actual process of
taking it was witnessed by a spectator, a per-
fect stranger at the time, on whose memory it
left a lively picture : '' Leaning idly out of a
window, I saw a group of three issuing from
the ' gambogy-looking ' cottage close at hand, ■ —
a slim, middle-aged man, in quaint, uncontem-
porary habiliments, a rather shapeless bundle
of an old lady, in a bonnet like a mob-cap, and
a young girl ; while before them bounded a
riotous dog (Hood's immortal 'Dash'), holding
a board with * This House to Let ' on it in his
jaws. Lamb was on his way back to the house-
agent, and that was his fashion of announcing
that he had taken the premises.

'^ I soon grew to be on intimate terms with
my neighbors," continues the writer of this
pleasant reminiscence — Mr. Westwood, in
Notes and Queries, volume. lo- — *'who let me

ENFIELD, 315

loose in his library. , . . My heart yearns
even now to those old books. Their faces
seem all familiar to me, even their patches and
blotches — the work of a wizened old cobbler
hard by ; for little wotted Lamb of Roger
Parkes and Charles Lewises. A cobbler was
his bookbinder, and the rougher the restora-
tion the better. . . . When any notable
visitors made their appearance at the cottage,
Mary Lamb's benevolent tap at my window-
pane seldom failed to summon me out, and I
was presently ensconced in a quiet corner of
their sitting-room, half hid in some great man's
shadow.

" Of the discourse of these dii majores I have
no recollection now ; but the faces of some of
them I can still partially recall. Hazlitt's face,
for instance, keen and aggressive, with eyes
that flashed out epigram ; Tom Hood's, a Meth-
odist parson's face, not a ripple breaking the
lines of it, though every word he dropped was
a pun, and every pun roused roars of laughter;
Leigh Hunt's, parcel genial, parcel democra'tic,
with as much rabid politics on his lips as honey
from Mount Hybla ; Miss Kelly [the little Bar-
bara S. of * Elia '], plain but engaging, the
most unprofessional of actresses and unspoiled
of women ; the bloom of the child on her cheek
undefaced by the rouge, to speak in metaphors.

3l6 . MARY LAMB.

She was one of the most dearly welcome of
Lamb's guests. Wordsworth's, farmerish and
respectable, but with something of the great
poet occasionally breaking out, and glorifying
forehead and eyes." ...

Mary did not escape her usual seizure.
*'You will understand my silence," writes
Lamb to his Quaker friend,' ''when I tell you
that my sister, on the very eve of entering into
a new house we have taken at Enfield, was
surprised with an attack of one of her sad, long
illnesses, which deprive me of her society,
though not of her domestication, for eight or
nine weeks together. I see her, but it does
her no good. But for this, we have the snug-
gest, most comfortable house, with everything
most compact and desirable. Colebrook is a
wilderness. The books, prints, etc., are come
here, and the New River came down with us.
The familiar prints, the busts, the Milton, seem
scarce to have changed their rooms. One of
her last observations was, ' How frightfully like
this is to our room at Islington,' — our up-stair
room she meant. We have tried quiet here for
four months, and I will answer for the comfort
of it enduring." And again, later: "I have
scarce spirits to write. Nine weeks are com-
pleted, and Mary does not get any better. It
is perfectly exhausting. Enfield and everything

LONELINESS. 317

is very gloomy. But for long experience, I
should fear her ever getting well."

She did get ''pretty well and comfortable
again " before the year was quite out, but it
did not last long. Times grew sadder and
sadder for the faithful brother. There are two
long, oft-quoted letters to Bernard Barton,
written in July, 1829, which who has ever read
without a pang }

*'My sister is again taken ill," he says, "and
I am obliged to remove her out of the house
for many weeks, I fear, before I can hope to have
her again. I have been very desolate indeed.
My loneliness is a little abated by our young
friend Emma having just come here for her
holidays, and a schoolfellow of hers that was
with her. Still, the house is not the same,
though she is the same. Mary had been
pleasing herself with the prospect of see-
ing her at this time ; and with all their
company, the house feels at times a fright-
ful solitude. . . . But town, with all my
native hankering after it, is not what it was.
I was frightfully convinced of this as
I passed houses and places — empty caskets
now. I have ceased to care almost about any-
body. The bodies I cared for are in graves or
dispersed. . . . Less than a month I hope
will bring home Mary. She is at Fulham,

3l8 MARY LAMB.

looking better in her health than ever, but
sadly rambling, and scarce showing any pleas-
ure in seeing me, or curiosity when I should
come again. But the old feelings will come
back again, and we shall drown old sorrows
over a game of piquet again. But 'tis a tedious*
cut out of a life of fifty-four to lose twelve or
thirteen weeks every year or two. And to
make me more alone, our ill-tempered maid is
gone [Becky], who, with all her airs, was yet a
home-piece of furniture, a record of better
days. The young thing that has succeeded her
is good and attentive, but she is nothing ; and
I have no one here to talk over old matters
with. Scolding and quarreling have something
of familiarity and a community of interest ;
they imply acquaintance ; they are of resent-
ment which is of the family of dearness.
Well, I shall write merrier anon. 'Tis the
present copy of my countenance I send, and to
complain is a little to alleviate. May you
enjoy yourself as far as the wicked world will
let you, and think that you are not quite alone,
as I am."

To the friends who came to see him he made
no complaints, nor showed a sad countenance ;
but it was hard that he might not relieve his
drear solitude by the sights and sounds of
beloved London. " O never let the lying poets

HOME GIVEN UP. 319

be believed," he writes to Wordsworth, "who
'tice men from the cheerful haunts of streets ;
or think they mean it not of a country village.
In the ruins of Palmyra I could gird myself up
to solitude, or muse to the snorings of the
Seven Sleepers ;' but to have a little teazing
image of a town about one ; eountry folks that
do not look like country folks ; shops two yards
square ; half a dozen apples and two penn'orth
of over-looked gingerbread for the lofty fruit-
erers of Oxford street ; and for the immortal
book and print stalls, a circulating library that
stands still, where the show-picture is a last
year's valentine. . . . The very blackguards
here are degenerate ; the topping gentry, stock-
brokers ; the passengers too many to insure
your quiet or let you go about whistling or
gaping, too few to be the fine, indifferent
pageants of Fleet street. ... A garden
was the primitive prison till man, with Prome-
thean felicity and boldness, luckily sinned
himself out of it. Thence followed Babylon,
Nineveh, Venice, London, haberdashers, gold-
smiths, taverns, satires, epigrams, puns, — these
all came in on the town part and the thither
side of innocence." . . . In the same letter
he announces that they have been obliged to
give up home altogether, and have ** taken a
farewell of the pompous, troublesome trifle

320

MARY LAMB.

called housekeeping, and settled down into
poor boarders and lodgers at next door with an
old couple, the Baucis and Baucida of dull
Enfield. Here we have nothing to do with our
■ victuals but to eat. them, with the garden but
to see it grow, with the tax-gatherer but to
hear him knock, with the maid but to hear her
scolded. Scot and lot, butcher, baker, are
things unknown to us save as spectators of the
pageant. We are fed, we know not how ;
quietists, confiding ravens. . . . Mary-
must squeeze out a line propria manu, but
indeed her fingers have been incorrigibly ner-
vous to letter-writing for a long interval.
'Twill please you all to hear that, though I fret
like a lion in a net, her present health and
spirits are better than they have been for some
time past. She is absolutely three years and
a half younger since we adopted this boarding
plan! . . . Under this roof I ought now
to take my rest, but that back-looking ambition,
more delightful, tells me I might yet be a
Londoner ! Well, if ever we do move, we have
encumbrances the less to impede us ; all our
furniture has faded under the auctioneer's
hammer, going for nothing, like the tarnished
frippery of the prodigal, and we have only a
spoon or two left to bless us. Clothed we came
into Enfield, and naked we must go out of it.
I would live in London shirtless, bookless."

DEATH OF HAZLITT. 32 1

Now that Mary was recovered they did ven-
ture to try once more the experiment of London
lodgings at 24 Southampton Buildings, Holborn,
where Hazlitt had often stayed. But the result
was worse even than could have been antici-
pated. May 12, 1830, Lamb writes: "I have
brought my sister to Enfield, being sure she
had no hope of recovery in London. Her state
of mind is deplorable beyond any example. I
almost fear whether she has strength, at her
tim.e of life, ever to get out of it. Here she
must be nursed and neither see nor hear of any-
thing in the world out of her sick chamber.
The mere hearing that Southey had called at
our lodgings totally upset her. Pray see him
or hear of him at Mr. Rickman's, and excuse
my not writing to him. I dare not write or
receive a letter in her presence."

Another old friend, the one whom, next to
Coleridge, Wordsworth and Manning, Lamb
valued most, died this year. Hazlitt's strength
had been for some time declining ; and during
the summer of 1830 he lay at his lodgings, 6
Frith street, Soho, languishing in what was to
prove his death-illness, though he was but fifty-
two; his mind clear and active 'as ever, looking
back, as he said, upon his past life, which
"seemed as if he had slept it out in a dream or
shadow on the side of the hill of knowledge,
II

322 MARY LAMB.

where he had fed on books, on thoughts, on
pictures, and only heard in half murmurs the
trampling of busy feet or the noises of the
throng below." " I have had a happy life " were
his last words. Unfortunate in love and mar-
riage, perhaps scarcely capable of friendship, he
found the warmth of life, the tie that bound
him to humanity, in the fervor of his admiration
for all that is great or beautiful or powerful in
literature, in art, in heroic achievement. His
ideas, as he said of himself, were " of so sinewy
a character that they were in the nature of real-
ities " to him. Lamb was by his death-bed
that 1 8th of September.

Godwin still lived, but there seems to have
been little intercourse between the old friends.
Manning was often away travelling on the Con-
tinent. Martin Burney maintained his place
"on the top scale of the Lambs' friendship lad-
der, on which an angel or two were still climb-
ing, and some, alas ! descending," and oftenest
enlivening the solitude of Enfield. He "is as
good and as odd as ever," writes Charles to
Mrs. Hazlitt. "We had a dispute about the
word 'heir,' which I contended was pronounced
like * air.' He said that might be in common
parlance, or that we might so use it speaking of
the ' Heir-at-Law,' a comedy, but that in the law.
courts it was necessary to give it a full aspira-

MARTIN BURNEY. 323

tionand to say hayer; he thought it might even
vitiate a cause if a counsel pronounced it other-
wise. In conclusion he ^ would consult Sergeant
Wilde' — who gave it against him. Sometimes
he falleth into the water ; sometimes into the
fire. He came down here and insisted on read-
ing Virgil's Eneid all through with me (which
he did), because a counsel must know Latin.
Another time he read out all the Gospel of St.
John, because Biblical quotations are very
emphatic in a court of justice. A third time
he would carve a fowl, which he did very ill-
favoredly, because * we did not know how indis-
pensable it was for a barrister to do all those
things well. Those little things were of more
consequence than we supposed.' So he goes
on, harassing about the way to prosperity, and
losing it ; with a long head, but somewhat a
wrong one — harum-scarum. Why does not his
guardian angel look to him .'' He deserves one;
may be he has tired him out."

A cheerful glimpse of the brother and sister
occurs now and then in the diary of their old
friend, Crabb Robinson, in these days when the
dark times were so long and the bright intervals
so short and far between. March, 1832, he
writes : " I walked to Enfield and found the
Lambs in excellent state — not in high health,
but, what is far better, quiet and cheerful. I

324 MARY LAMB,

had a very pleasant evening at whist. Lamb
was very chatty and altogether as I could wish."
And again in July : . . ^' reached Lamb at the
lucky moment before tea. After tea Lamb and
I took a pleasant walk together. He was in
excellent health and tolerable spirits, and was
to-night quite eloquent in praise of Miss Isola.
He says she is the most sensible girl and the
best female talker he knows ; ... he is
teaching her Italian without knowing the lan-
guage himself." Two months later the same
friend took Walter Savage Landor to pay them
a visit. " We had scarcely an hour to chat with
them, but it was enough to make Landor
express himself delighted with the person of
Mary Lamb and pleased with the conversation
of Charles Lamb, though I thought him by no
means at his ease, and Miss Lamb was quite
silent."

Scarcely ever did Charles leave home for
many hours together when Mary was there to
brighten it ; not even for the temptation of see-
ing the Wordsworths or Coleridge. " I want
to see the Wordsworths," he writes, " but I do
not much like to be all night away. It is dull
enough to be here together, but it is duller to
leave Mary ; in short, it is painful ; " and to
Coleridge, who had been hurt by the long inter-
val since he had seen them, Lamb writes :

LAMB TO WORDSWORTH. 325

" Not an unkind thought has passed in my brain
about you ; but I have been wof ully neglectful
of you. . . . old loves to and hope of kind
looks from the Gillmans when I come. If ever
you thought an offense, much more wrote it
against me, it must have been in the times of
Noah, ' and the great waters swept it away.
Mary's most kind love, and may be a wrong
prophet of your bodings ! Here she is crying
for mere love over your letter. I wring out
less but not sincerer showers,"

The spring of 1833 brought to Charles and
Mary only the return of dark days. Lamb
writes to Wordsworth : —

"Your letter, save in what respects your dear
sister's health, cheered me in my new solitude.
Mary is ill again. Her illnesses encroach
yearly. The last was three months, followed
by two of depression most dreadful. I look
back upon her earlier attacks with longing:
nice little durations of six weeks or so, followed
by complete restoration, shocking as they were
then to me. In short, half her life she is dead
to me, and the other half is made anxious v/ith
fears and lookings forward to the next shock.
With such prospects it seemed to me necessary
that she should no longer live with me and be
fluttered with continual removals ; so I am come
to live with her at a Mr. Walden's and his wife

326 MARY LAMB.

[at Edmonton], who take in patients, and have
arranged to lodge and board us only. They
have had the care of her before. I see little of
her ; alas ! I too often hear her. Stmt lachrymcB
rerum ! and you and I must bear it.

"To lay a little more load on it, a circum-
stance has happened {ciij us pars magna fui)^ and
which at another crisis I should have more
rejoiced in. I am about to lose my old and only
walk companion, whose mirthful spirits were
the ' youth of our house ' — Emma Isola. I
have her here now for a little while, but she is
too nervous properly to be under such a roof,
so she will make short visits — be no more an
inmate. With my perfect approval and more
than concurrence, she is to be wedded to Moxon
at the end of August. So 'perish the roses and
the flowers ! ' — how ^.s it }

"Now to the brighter side. I am emanci-
pated from the Westwoods, and I am with atten-
tive people and younger. I am three or four
miles nearer the great city ; coaches half price
less and going always, of which I will avail
myself. I have few friends left there — one or
two, though, most beloved. But London streets
and faces cheer me inexpressibly, though not
one known of the latter were remaining. . . .
I am feeble but cheerful in this my genial hot
weather. Walked sixteen miles yesterday. I
can't read much in summer-time."

LAST LETTERS, 12'J,

There was no sense of being '' pulled up by
the roots " now in these removals. Lamb had
and could have no home, since she who had been
its chief pride was in perpetual banishment
from him and from herself. The following
notelet which Talfourd, in his abundance, prob-
ably did not think worth publishing, at any rate
shows, with mournful significance, how bitter
were his recollections of Enfield, to which they
had gone full of hope. It was written to Mr.
Gillman's eldest son, a young clergyman, desir-
ous of the incumbency of Enfield : —

'^By a strange occurrence we have quitted
Enfield forever ! Oh ! the happy eternity !
Who is vicar or lecturer for that detestable
place concerns us not. But Asbury, surgeon
and a good fellow, has offered to get you a
mover and seconder, and you may use my name
freely to him. Except him and Dr. Creswell, I
have no respectable acquaintance in the dreary
village. At least my friends are all in the pub-
lic line, and it might not suit to have it moved
at a special vestry by John Gage at the Crown
and Horseshoe, licensed victualler, and seconded
by Joseph Horner of the Green Dragon, ditto,
that the Rev. J. G. is a fit person to be lect-
urer, etc.

" My dear James, I wish you all success, but
am too full of my own emancipation almost to
congratulate any one else."

328 'mARY lamb.

Miss Isola's wedding-day came, and still
Mary's mind was under eclipse; but the
announcement of the actual event restored her
as by magic ; and here is her own letter of con-
gratulation to the bride and bridegroom ^ — the
last from her hand : —

"My dear Emma and Edward Moxon: —

'* Accept my sincere congratulations, and
imagine more good wishes than my weak nerves
will let me put into good, set words. The
dreary blank of tmajiswered questions which I
ventured to ask in vain was cleared up on the
wedding-day by Mrs. W. taking a glass of wine,
and, with a total change of countenance, beg-
ging leave to drink Mr. and Mrs. Moxon's
health. It restored me from that moment, as
if by an electric shock, to the entire possession
of my senses. I never felt so calm and quiet
after a similar illness as I do now. I feel as if
all tears were wiped from my eyes and all care
from my heart."

To which beautiful last words Charles adds : —

"Dears again: — Your letter interrupted a
seventeenth game at piquet which we were hav-
ing after walking to Wright's and purchasing
shoes. We pass our time in cards, walks and
reading. We attack Tasso soon. Never was

LAST LETTERS. 329

such a calm or such a recovery. 'Tis her own
words undictated."

Not Tasso only was attacked, but even Dante.
" You will be amused to hear," he tells Carey,
''that my sister and I have, with the aid of
Emma, scrambled through the Inferno by the
blessed furtherance of your polar-star transla-
tion. I think we scarce left anything unmade-
out. But our partner has left us, and we have
not yet resumed. Mary's chief pride in it was
that she should some day brag of it to you."

-The year 1834, the last of Lamb's life, opened
gloomily. Early in February was written one
of the saddest and sweetest of all his utterances
concerning Mary. With the exception of a
brief, mournful allusion to her in his latest let-
ter to Wordsworth, these were his last written
words about her, and they breathe the same
tenderness and unswerving devotion at the close
of his life-long struggle and endurance for her
sake as those he wrote when it began. The
letter is to Miss Fryer, an old schoolfellow of
Emma Isola : ''Your letter found me just
returned from keeping my birthday (pretty
innocent !) at Dover street [the Moxons]. I see
them pretty often. In one word, be less uneasy
about me ; I bear my privations very well ; I
am not in the depths of desolation, as hereto-
fore. Your admonitions are not lost upon me.

330 MA7?V LAMB,

Vour kindness has sunk into my heart. Have

faith in me. It is no new thing for me to be

left to my sister. When she is not violent her

rambling chat is better to me than the sense

■and sanity of this world. Her heart is obscured,

not buried ; it breaks out occasionally, and one

can discern a strong mind struggling with the

billows that have gone over it. I could be

nowhere happier than under the same roof with

her. Her memory is unnaturally strong ; and

from ages past, if we may so call the earliest

records of our poor life, she fetches thousands

of names and things that never would have

dawned upon me again, and thousands from

the ten years she lived before me. What took

place from early girlhood to her coming of age

principally live again (every important thing

and every trifle) in her brain, with the vividness

of real presence. For twelve hours incessantly

she will pour out, without intermission, all her

past life, forgetting nothing, pouring out name

after name to the Waldens, as a dream, sense

and nonsense, truth and errors huddled together,

a medley between inspiration and possession.

What things we are ! I know you will bear

with me talking of things. It seems to ease

me, for I have nobody to tell these things to

now. ...

A week later was written that last little

LAST LETTERS. 33 1

letter to Wordsworth [the reader will recognize
Louisa Martin — Monkey- — so prettily described
in Lamb's first letter to Hazlitt] : "I write
from a house of mourning. The oldest and
best friends I have left are in trouble. A
branch of them (and they of the best stock of
God's creatures, I believe) is establishing a
school at Carlisle. Her name is Louisa Martin.
For thirty years she has been tried by me, and
on her behavior I would stake my soul. Oh!
if you could recommend her, how would I love
you — if I could love you better ! Pray recom-
mend her. She is as good a human creature — .
next to my sister, perhaps, the most exemplary
female I ever knew. Moxon tells me you would
like a letter from me ; you shall have one.
This I cannot mingle up with any nonsense
which you usually tolerate from C. Lamb.
Poor Mary is ill again, after a short, lucid inter-
val of four or five months. In short, I may call
her half dead to me. Good you are to me.
Yours, with fervor of friendship, forever."

The dearest friend of all, Coleridge, long in
declining health — the "hooded eagle, flagging
wearily" — was lying this spring and summer
in his last painful illness ; heart-disease chiefly,
but complicated with other sources of suffering,
borne with heroic patience. Thoughts of his
youth came to him, he said, "like breezes from

332 MARY LAMB.

the Spice Islands ; " and under the title of that
poem written in the glorious Nether Stowey
days when Charles was his guest — This Lime-
tree Bower my Prisoii — he wrote a little while
before he died : —

Charles and Mary Lamb,

Dear to my heart, yea, as it were my hearty

S. T. C. J?X. 63, 1834.

1797

1834

37 years !

He drew his last breath on the 25th of July.
At first Lamb seemed wholly unable to grasp
the fact that he was gone. '' Coleridge is
dead ! " he murmured continually, as if to con-
vince himself. He " grieved that he could not
grieve." "But since," he wrote in that beauti-
ful memorial of his friend, the last fragment
shaped by his hand — " but since, I feel how
great a part of me he was. His great and dear
spirit haunts me. . . . He was my fift)^-
year-old friend without a dissension. Nevel*
saw I his likeness, nor probably the world can
see it again. I seem to love the house he died
at more passionately than when he lived. I
love the faithful Gillmans more than while the)'
exercised their virtues towards him living.
What was his mansion is consecrated to me a
chapel."

. DEATH OF CHARLES. 333

A month after this was written Charles Lamb
followed his friend. A seemingly slight acci-
dent, a fall which wounded his face, brought on
erysipelas, and he sank rapidly, dying the 27th
December, 1834. For once, Mary's affliction
befriended her. Though her mind was not
wholly obscured at the time, for she was able to
show the spot in Edmonton churchyard where
her brother had wished to be buried, yet it was
so far deadened that she was unable to compre-
hend what had befallen her ; and thus she
remained for nearly a year.

None thought of Mary with tenderer sympa-
thy than Landor, or strove with more sincerity
to offer " consolation to the finest genius that
ever descended on the heart of woman," as he
fervently described her. " When I first heard
of the loss that all his friends, and many that
never were his friends, sustained in him," he
wrote to Crabb Robinson, "no thought took
possession of my mind except the anguish of his
sister. That very night, before I closed my
eyes, I composed this : —

TO THE SISTER OF CHARLES LAMB.

Comfort thee, O thou mourner ! yet awhile
Again shall Elia's smile

Refresh thy heart, whose heart can ache no more.
What is it we deplore 1

334 MARY LAMB.

He leaves behind him, freed from grief and years,

Far worthier things than tears,

The love of friends without a single foe ;

Unequalled lot below !

His gentle soul, his genius, these are thine;

Shalt thou for these repine ?

He may have left the lowly walks of men ;

Left them he has ; what then ?

Are not his footsteps followed by the eyes

Of all the good and wise ?

Though the warm day is over, yet they seek

Upon the lofty peak

Of his pure mind, the roseate light that glows

O'er death's perennial snows.

Behold him ! From the spirits of the blest

He speaks : he bids thee rest."

About a month after her brother's death,
their faithful old friend, Crabb Robinson, went
to see Mary. " She was neither violent nor
unhappy," he wrote in his diary, "nor was she
entirely without sense. She was, however, out
of her mind, as the expression is, but she could
combine ideas, though imperfectly. On my
going into the room where she was sitting Avith
Mr. Walden, she exclaimed, with great vivacity,
'Oh! here's Crabby.' She gave me her hand
with great cordiality, and said, *Now, this is
very kind — not merely good-natured, but very,
very kind to come and see me in my affliction.'
And then she ran on about the unhappy, insane
family of my old friend . Her mind seemed

DEATH OF MARY. 335

to turn to subjects connected with insanity as
well as to her brother's death. She spoke of
Charles, of his birth, and said that he was a
weakly but very pretty child."

In a year's time she was herself once more ;
calm, even cheerful ; able, now and then, to
meet old friends at the Moxons'. She refused
to leave Edmonton. " He was there asleep in
the old churchyard, beneath the turf near which
they had" stood together, and had selected for a
resting-place : to this spot she used, when well,
to stroll Out mournfully in the evening, and to
this spot she would contrive to lead any friend
who came in summer evenings to drink tea,
and went out with her afterwards for a walk."
Out of very love she was content to be the one
left alone ; and found a truth in Wordsworth's
beautiful saying, that "a grave is a tranquillizing
object; resignation, in course of time, springs
up from it as naturally as the wild flowers
besprinkle the turf."

Lucid intervals continued, for a few years
longer, to alternate with ever-lengthening
periods of darkness. That mysterious brain
was not even yet wholly wrecked by the eighty
years of storms that had broken over it. Even
when the mind seemed gone the heart kept
some of its fine instincts. She learned to bear
her solitude very patiently, and was gentle and

336 MARY LAMB.

kind always. Towards 1840 her friends per-
suaded her to remove to Alpha Road, St. John's
Wood, that she might be nearer to them.
Thirteen years she survived her brother, and
then was laid in the same grave with him at
Edmonton, May 28th, 1847; ^ scanty remnant
of the old friends gathering round — " Martin
Burney refusing to be comforted."

Coleridge looked upon Lamb "as one hover-
ing between heaven and earth, neither hoping
much nor fearing anything." Or, as he himself
once, with infinite sweetness, put it, "■ Poor Elia
does not pretend to so very clear revelations of
a future state of being. He stumbles about
dark mountains at best ; but he knows at least
how to be thankful for this life, and is too
thankful indeed for certain relationships lent
him here, not to tremble for a possible resump-
tion of the gift." Of Mary it may be said that
she hoped all things and feared nothing—
wisest, noblest attitude of the human soul
toward the Unknown.

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A collection of world-renowned works selected from the
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READY AND IN PREPARATION.
Sir Walter Scott's "Lay of the I,ast Minstrel,"
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