extraordinary realization of the idea of a being out of nature which
had ever been effected.
THOMAS NOON TALFOURD: ‘The Works of Charles Lamb, His Letters, and a
Sketch of his Life.’ New York: Harper & Bros., 1838.
* * * * *
[Sidenote: Intellectual resemblance to Shelley.]
We have spoken of Mrs. Shelley’s similarity in genius to her
husband’s--we by no means think her his equal. She has not his
subtlety, swiftness, wealth of imagination, and is never caught up
(like Ezekiel by his lock of hair) into the same rushing whirlwind
of inspiration. She has much, however, of his imaginative and of his
speculative qualities--her tendency, like his, is to the romantic, the
ethereal, and the terrible. The tie detaining her, as well as him to
the earth, is slender--her protest against society is his, copied out
in a female hand--her style is carefully and successfully modeled upon
his--she bears in brief, to him, the resemblance which Laone did to
Laon, which Astarte did to Manfred.... Perhaps, indeed, intercourse
with a being so peculiar ... has somewhat affected the originality,
and narrowed the extent of her own genius.
Mrs. Shelley’s genius, though true and powerful, is monotonous and
circumscribed--more so than even her father’s--and, in this point,
presents a strong contrast to her husband’s. She has no wit, nor
humor--little dramatic talent. Strong, clear description of the
gloomier scenes of nature, or the darker passions of the mind, or of
those supernatural objects which her fancy, except in her first work,
somewhat laboriously creates, is her forte. Hence her reputation still
rests upon ‘Frankenstein’; ... she unquestionably made him, but he has
had no progeny.
... She has succeeded in her delineation; she has painted this
shapeless being upon the imagination of the world forever; and beside
Caliban, and Hecate, and Death and Life, and all other weird and gloomy
creations, this nameless, unfortunate, involuntary, gigantic unit
stands.
... The work is wonderful as the work of a girl of eighteen. One
distinct addition to our original creations must be conceded her--and
it is no little praise.
GEORGE GILFILLAN: ‘A Second Gallery of Literary Portraits.’ Edinburgh:
James Hogg. London: R. Groombridge & Sons, 1850.
FOOTNOTES:
[5] Fanny Godwin, as she was always called, at the age of twenty-two
committed suicide by taking laudanum, doubtless impelled by the
singular melancholy inherited from her mother.
[6] See Shelley’s ‘Epipsychidon.’
[7] Shelley was at first supposed to be the author of ‘Frankenstein.’
MARY LAMB.
(1764-1847.)
MARY LAMB.
Seldom is the name of Mary Lamb seen without that of her brother. “The
Lambs” still walk hand-in-hand in our mention, as they were wont to
walk on pleasant holidays to Enfield, and Potter’s Bar, and Waltham;
when Mary “used to deposit in the little hand-basket the day’s fare of
savory cold meat and salad,” and Charles “to pry about at noon-tide
for some decent house where they might go in and produce their store,
only paying for the ale that he must call for.” Still they pass linked
together through our thoughts, as on that sadder day when Charles Lloyd
met them, crossing the fields to Hoxton--hand-in-hand, and weeping.
It is an act of severance against which the conscience somewhat
protests, to present Mary alone to the consideration of the reader. It
is like removing her from the protection of his presence who stood so
faithfully and long between her and the world.
Mary Lamb was born in Crown Office Row, Inner Temple, December 3d,
1764. She was the daughter of John Lamb, the “clerk, good servant,
dresser, friend, flapper, guide, stop-watch, auditor, treasurer,” as
his son describes him, of a barrister named Salt. Charles was eleven
years Mary’s junior. In 1795, (the elder Lamb, whose faculties were
failing, having been pensioned by Mr. Salt,) the family left the
Temple for lodgings in Little Queen Street. Here occurred, on the 21st
of September in that year, the tragedy which set its stamp upon the
after-life of Mary and Charles, and of which there is a sufficient
account among the following extracts.
Mary remained in the asylum at Islington until the spring of 1797,
when Charles, having satisfied the authorities by a solemn engagement
to care for her during life, took a room for her at Hackney, where he
spent his Sundays and holidays. In April, 1799, old John Lamb died, and
from that time until death separated them Mary shared her brother’s
home--or homes, for indeed they were legion. Procter chronicles the
Lambs as lodging, in 1800, in Southampton Buildings, Chancery Lane;
and removing during the same year to Mitre Court Buildings, Temple,
where they remained till 1809. No. 4, Inner Temple Lane was their
next residence, which they left, in 1817, for Russell Street, Covent
Garden. In 1823 they removed to Colebrook Row, Islington; and in 1826
to Enfield. In 1830 they returned to Southampton Buildings. In 1833,
Charles, having determined that his sister should remain with him
during her illness for the future, they went to live at Mrs. Walden’s,
in Church Street, Edmonton; where, on December 27th, 1834, Charles Lamb
died.
Mary survived her brother more than twelve years. Age, and the decay of
her mind, mitigated her grief for him. On the 28th of May, 1847, she
was laid in his grave.
The works of Mary Lamb are as follows:
_Tales from Shakespeare_, published in 1807; in this work, the six
great tragedies are by Charles.
_Mrs. Leicester’s School_, published in 1808, to which Charles
contributed three of the ten stories.
_Poetry for Children_, 1809; here Charles was again her co-laborer,
performing one-third of the work, but it is not positively certain
which of the poems are his.
* * * * *
[Sidenote: Mary’s Birthplace.]
On the south side of Fleet Street, near to where it adjoins Temple Bar,
lies the Inner Temple. It extends southward to the Thames, and contains
long ranges of melancholy buildings, in which lawyers and their
followers congregate. It is a district very memorable. About seven
hundred years ago it was the abiding-place of the Knights Templars, who
erected there a church, which still uplifts its round tower (its sole
relic) for the wonder of modern times. Fifty years since, I remember,
you entered the precinct through a lowering archway that opened into a
gloomy passage--Inner Temple Lane. On the east side rose the church;
and on the west was a dark line of chambers, since pulled down and
rebuilt, and now called Johnson’s Buildings. At some distance westward
was an open court, in which was a sun-dial, and, in the midst, a
solitary fountain, that sent its silvery voice into the air above, the
murmur of which, descending, seemed to render the place more lonely.
Midway, between the Inner Temple Lane and the Thames, was a range of
substantial chambers (overlooking the gardens and the busy river),
called Crown Office Row.
BRYAN W. PROCTER: ‘Charles Lamb, a Memoir.’ London: Edward Moxon & Co.,
1866.
* * * * *
[Sidenote: Education.]
Her education in youth was not much attended to; and she happily
missed all that train of female garniture, which passeth by the name
of accomplishments. She was tumbled early, by accident or design, into
a spacious closet of good old English reading [the library of Mr.
Salt, a barrister, to whom her father long acted as clerk] without
much selection or prohibition, and browsed at will upon that fair and
wholesome pasturage. Had I twenty girls, they should be brought up
exactly in this fashion. I know not whether their chance in wedlock
might not be diminished by it, but I can answer for it, that it makes
(if the worst comes to the worst) most incomparable old maids.
CHARLES LAMB: _Mackery End, in Hertfordshire_, ‘Essays of Elia.’
(‘Works, with a Sketch of his Life,’ by Thomas Noon Talfourd. New York:
Harper & Brothers, 1838.)
* * * * *
[Sidenote: Effect of this reading.]
A little selection would have made the pasturage all the wholesomer to
a child of Mary’s sensitive, brooding nature; for the witch stories and
the cruel tales of the sufferings of the martyrs on which she pored
all alone, as her brother did after her, wrought upon her tender brain
and lent their baleful aid to nourish those seeds of madness which she
inherited.
[Sidenote: Country pleasures.]
The London-born and bred child had occasional tastes of joyous,
healthful life in the country, for her mother had hospitable relatives
in her native county, pleasant Hertfordshire. In after life she
embodied them, mingling fiction with fact, in a story called ‘Louisa
Manners; or, the Farmhouse,’ where she tells in sweet and child-like
words of the ecstasy of a little four-year-old girl on finding
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 inexhaustible interest of the farm-yard, the thresher in the
barn with his terrifying flail and black beard, the collection of
eggs and searching 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 farm-house suppers.
[Sidenote: Lack of sympathy in her home.]
With the cruelty of ignorance Mary’s mother and grandmother [Mrs.
Field], suffered her young spirit to do battle, in silent 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 endeavoring
to win the confidence of the thoughtful, suffering child. It was simple
stupidity, lack of insight or sympathy in the elders; and 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.
[Sidenote: Charles.]
On the 10th of February, 1775, arrived a new member into the household
group--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 infancy brought with
it. As his young mind unfolded, he found in her intelligence and love
the same genial, fostering 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 tombstones in the burying-ground, and
wondered, finding only lists of the virtues, “where the naughty people
were buried?” Like Mary, his disposition was so different from that of
his gay, pleasure-loving parents that they but ill understood “and gave
themselves little trouble about him,” which also tended to draw brother
and sister closer together.
* * * * *
[Sidenote: Mary’s young womanhood.]
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,
helplessness, old age, with its attendant exigencies, but to add to the
now straitened means by taking in millinery work. For eleven years,
as she has told us [in an essay on needle-work, contributed to the
_British Lady’s Magazine_, April, 1815], she maintained herself by the
needle; from the age of twenty-one to thirty-two, that is.
* * * * *
[Sidenote: The great tragedy.]
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 lodgings in Little Queen
Street, Holborn (the site of which and of the adjoining houses is now
occupied by Trinity Church). Meanwhile, Lamb 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 to
give a fatal stimulus to the germs of brain-disease, which were part
of the family heritage, and for six weeks he was in a mad-house.... No
sooner was Charles restored to himself than the elder brother, John,
met with a serious accident; and though while in health he had carried
himself to more comfortable quarters, he did not now fail to return
and be nursed with anxious solicitude by his 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 needle-work,
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.... On the afternoon of the 21st,
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.
ANNE GILCHRIST: ‘Mary Lamb.’ (Famous Women Series.) Boston: Roberts
Bros., 1883.
* * * * *
[Sidenote: Mary on her recovery.]
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 impressive (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, forgetful serenity.
CHARLES LAMB: _Letter to Coleridge_, 1796, in ‘Final Memorials of
Charles Lamb,’ by Thomas Noon Talfourd. London: Edward Moxon, 1848.
* * * * *
Little could any one, observing Miss Lamb in the habitual serenity
of her demeanor, guess the calamity in which she had partaken or
the malady which frightfully checkered her life. From Mr. Lloyd ...
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 assurance that it was
a dispensation of Providence--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
necessity for the unconscious shedder of blood, else polluted though
guiltless, to pass through a religious purification, had in her case
been happily accomplished.
THOMAS NOON TALFOURD: ‘Final Memorials of Charles Lamb.’
* * * * *
[Sidenote: Relapses.]
Her relapses were not dependent on the seasons; they came in hot
summers and with the freezing winters. The only remedy seems to have
been extreme quiet when any slight symptom of uneasiness was apparent.
Charles (poor fellow) had to live, day and night, in the society of a
person who was--mad! If any exciting talk occurred, he had to dismiss
his friend with a whisper. If any stupor or extraordinary silence was
observed, then he had to rouse her instantly.
BRYAN W. PROCTER: ‘Charles Lamb; a Memoir.’
* * * * *
The constant impendency of this giant sorrow saddened to the Lambs even
their holidays; as the journey which they both regarded as the relief
and charm of the year was frequently followed by a seizure.
... Miss Lamb experienced, and full well understood, premonitory
symptoms of the attack, in restlessness, low fever, and the inability
to sleep; and, as gently as possible, prepared her brother for the
duty he must soon perform; and thus, unless he could stave off the
terrible separation till Sunday, obliged 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
footpath in Hoxton Fields, both weeping bitterly, and found, on joining
them, that they were taking their solemn way to the accustomed asylum.
Miss Lamb would have been remarkable for the sweetness of her
disposition, the clearness of her understanding, and the gentle wisdom
of all her acts and words, even if these qualities had not been
presented in marvellous contrast with the distractions under which
she suffered for weeks, latterly for months in every year. There was
no tinge of insanity discernible in her manner to the most observant
eye.... 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 general disparagement of her sex; for in all her
thoughts and feelings she was most womanly--keeping under, ever in due
subordination to her notion of a woman’s province, an intellect of
rare excellence which flashed out when the restraints 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. 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 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 disjointed, so that the hearer
could remember little of her discourse; but the fragments were like
the jewelled speeches of Congreve, only shaken from their settings.
There was sometimes even a vein of crazy logic running through them,
associating 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.
THOMAS NOON TALFOURD: ‘Final Memorials of Charles Lamb.’
* * * * *
[Sidenote: Home of the Lambs.]
It was always in a room of moderate size, comfortably but plainly
furnished, that he [Charles] lived. An old mahogany table was opened
out in the middle of the room, round which, and near the walls,
were old, high-backed chairs (such as our grandfathers used), and a
long, plain book-case completely filled with old books. These were
his “ragged veterans.” In one of his letters he says: “My rooms are
luxurious: one for prints, one for books; a summer and winter parlor.”
They, however, were not otherwise decorated. I do not remember ever to
have seen a flower or an image in them. He had not been educated into
expensive tastes. His extravagances were confined to books. These were
all chosen by himself, all old, and all in “admired disorder”; yet he
could lay his hand on any volume in a moment.... Here Charles Lamb
sat, when at home, always near the table. At the opposite side was his
sister, engaged in some domestic work, knitting or sewing, or poring
over a modern novel. She wore a neat cap, of the fashion of her youth;
an old-fashioned dress. Her face was pale and somewhat square, but very
placid, with gray, intelligent eyes. She was very mild in her manner to
strangers, and to her brother gentle and tender, always. She had often
an upward look of peculiar meaning, when directed toward him, as though
to give him assurance that all was then well with her. His affection
for her was somewhat less on the surface, but always present. There
was great gratitude intermingled with it. “In the days of weakling
infancy,” he writes: “I was her tender charge, as I have been her care
in foolish manhood since.” Then he adds, pathetically, “I wish I could
throw into a heap the remainder of our joint existences, that we might
share them in equal division.”
BRYAN W. PROCTER: ‘Charles Lamb; a Memoir.’
* * * * *
[Sidenote: Mary’s manner.]
Her manner was easy, almost homely, so quiet, unaffected, and perfectly
unpretending was it. Beneath the sparing talk and retired carriage,
few casual observers would have suspected the ample information and
large intelligence that lay comprised there. She was oftener a listener
than a speaker. In the modest-behaviored woman simply sitting there,
taking small share in general conversation, few who did not know her
would have imagined the accomplished classical scholar, the excellent
understanding, the altogether rarely-gifted being, morally and
mentally, that Mary Lamb was.
CHARLES AND MARY COWDEN CLARKE: ‘Recollections of Writers.’ New York:
Charles Scribner’s Sons.
* * * * *
[Sidenote: Appearance.]
His sister, whose literary reputation is closely associated with her
brother’s, and who, as the original of “Bridget Elia,” is a kind of
object for literary affection, came in after him. She is a small, bent
figure, evidently a victim to illness, and hears with difficulty. Her
face has been, I should think, a fine and handsome one, and her bright,
gray eye is still full of intelligence and fire.
N. P. WILLIS: ‘Pencillings by the Way.’ New York: Charles Scribner,
1853.
* * * * *
In stature Mary was under the middle-size, and her bodily frame was
strong. She could 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.”
ANNE GILCHRIST: ‘Mary Lamb.’
* * * * *
[Sidenote: Habits.]
Miss Lamb bore a strong personal resemblance to her brother; being
in stature under middle height, possessing well-cut features and a
countenance of singular sweetness, with intelligence. Her brown eyes
were soft, yet penetrating; her nose and mouth very shapely; while the
general expression was mildness itself. Her apparel was always of
the plainest kind, a black stuff or silk gown, made and worn in the
simplest fashion. She took snuff liberally--a habit that had evidently
grown out of her propensity to sympathize with and share all her
brother’s tastes, and it certainly had the effect of enhancing her
likeness to him. She had a small, white, and delicately-formed hand,
and as it hovered above the tortoise-shell box containing the powder
so strongly approved by them both, in search of the stimulating pinch,
the act seemed yet another link of association between the brother and
sister, when hanging together over their favorite books and studies.
CHARLES AND MARY COWDEN CLARKE: ‘Recollections of Writers.’
* * * * *
[Sidenote: Lamb’s sketch of his sister.]