obligations to Bridget extending beyond the period of memory. We
house together, old bachelor and old maid, in a sort of double
singleness.... 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 sympathies 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
directions. While I am hanging over (for the thousandth time) some
passage in old Burton, or one of his strange contemporaries, she is
abstracted in some modern tale or adventure, whereof our common
reading-table is daily fed with assiduously fresh supplies. Narrative
teases me. I have little concern in the progress of events. She must
have a story--well, ill, or indifferently told--so there be life
stirring 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.”
It has been the lot of my cousin, oftener perhaps than I could have
wished, to have had for her associates and mine freethinkers--leaders
and disciples of novel philosophies and systems; but she neither
wrangles with, nor accepts their opinions. That which was good and
venerable to her when a child, retains its authority over her mind
still. She never juggles or plays tricks with her understanding.
We are both of us inclined to be a little too positive, and I have
observed the result of our disputes to be almost uniformly this: that
in matters of fact, dates, and circumstances, 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 the foibles of my kinswoman with a gentle hand, for
Bridget does not like to be told of her faults. She hath an awkward
trick (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
purport--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 matters which are
not stuff of the conscience, she hath been known sometimes to let slip
a word less seasonable.
In a season of distress she is the truest comforter; but in the
teasing accidents and minor perplexities which do not call out the
_will_ to meet them, 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.
CHARLES LAMB: _Mackery End, in Hertfordshire_, ‘Essays of Elia.’
* * * * *
[Sidenote: Mary’s first pun.]
When I first opened upon the just-mentioned poem [‘The Force of Prayer,
or the Founding of Bolton Priory,’] in a careless tone, I said to Mary,
as if putting a riddle, “What is good for a bootless bene?” To which,
with infinite presence of mind (as the jest-book has it), she answered,
“A shoeless pea.” It was the first she ever made.
CHARLES LAMB: _Letter to Wordsworth_, in ‘Final Memorials,’ by T. N.
Talfourd.
* * * * *
[Sidenote: Her manner of speaking.]
She had a speaking voice, gentle and persuasive; and her smile was
her brother’s own--winning in the extreme. There was a certain
catch, or emotional breathingness, in her utterance, which gave
an inexpressible charm to her reading of poetry, and which lent a
captivating earnestness to her mode of speech when addressing those
she liked. This slight check, with its yearning, eager effect in her
voice, had something softenedly akin to her brother Charles’ impediment
of articulation: in him it scarcely amounted to a stammer, in her it
merely imparted additional stress to the fine-sensed suggestions she
made to those whom she counselled or consoled. There was a certain
old-world fashion in Mary Lamb’s diction which gave it a most natural
and quaintly pleasant effect, and which heightened rather than
detracted from the more heart-felt or important things she uttered.
CHARLES AND MARY COWDEN CLARKE: ‘Recollections of Writers.’
* * * * *
[Sidenote: Writing together.]
You would like to see us as we often sit writing on one table (but not
on one cushion sitting), like _Hermia_ and _Helena_ in the ‘Midsummer
Night’s Dream’; 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 that he has made something of it.
MARY LAMB: _Letter to Sarah Stoddart_, June 2nd, 1806, in ‘Mary and
Charles Lamb: Poems, Letters and Remains,’ edited by W. Carew Hazlitt.
New York: Scribner, Welford & Armstrong, 1874.
* * * * *
Mary is just stuck fast in ‘All’s Well that Ends Well.’ She complains
of having to set forth so many female characters in boys’ clothes. She
begins to think Shakespeare must have wanted----Imagination. I, to
encourage her, for she often faints in the prosecution of her great
work, flatter her with telling her how well such a play and such a play
is done. But she is stuck fast.
CHARLES LAMB: _Letter to Wordsworth_, in ‘Final Memorials,’ by T. N.
Talfourd.
* * * * *
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: it is ‘All’s Well that Ends Well.’ You must not
mind the many wretchedly dull letters I have sent you: for, indeed, I
cannot help it, my mind is so _dry_ always 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 two o’clock, if you can pop in and eat a bit with us.
MARY LAMB: _Letter to Sarah Stoddart_, July, 1806, in ‘Mary and Charles
Lamb,’ by W. Carew Hazlitt.
* * * * *
[Sidenote: ‘Tales from Shakespeare.’]
It is not generally known, perhaps, that previously to their
circulation in a collective shape, Godwin, the publisher and proprietor
of the copyright, offered them to his juvenile patrons and patronesses
at No. 41 Skinner Street, in six-penny books, with the plates (by
Blake) “beautifully colored.”
W. CAREW HAZLITT: ‘Mary and Charles Lamb.’
* * * * *
[Sidenote: Praise from Landor.]
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 a debt in deferring
to thank you for many hours of exquisite delight. Never have I read any
thing 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 bedroom door.” How natural, in a little
girl, is this incongruity, this impossibility!... A fresh source of the
pathetic bursts out before us, and not a bitter one.... The story is
admirable throughout--incomparable, inimitable.
WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR: _Letter to H. C. Robinson_, April, 1831, in the
latter’s ‘Diary, Reminiscences and Correspondence.’ Boston: J. R.
Osgood & Co., 1871.
* * * * *
[Sidenote: ‘Mrs. Leicester’s School.’]
The first edition sold out immediately, 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 any thing like so many recent
reprints as of the ‘Tales from Shakespeare.’ It is one of those
children’s books, which to re-open, 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.
ANNE GILCHRIST: ‘Mary Lamb.’
* * * * *
[Sidenote: ‘Poetry for Children.’]
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.... Our
little poems are but humble, 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.
CHARLES LAMB: _Letter to Coleridge_, June, 1809, in ‘Final Memorials,’
by T. N. Talfourd.
* * * * *
‘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 school-master of the name of Mylius, in two books called ‘The First
Book of Poetry’ and ‘The Poetical Class Book,’ issued from the same
Juvenile Library [Godwin’s] in 1810. 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 every thing 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 and from Lamb’s own works were republished by Mr. W. Carew
Hazlitt, and also by Richard Herne Shepherd, when at last, in 1877,
there came to hand from Australia, a copy of the original 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 & Windus, 1878).
ANNE GILCHRIST: ‘Mary Lamb.’
* * * * *
[Sidenote: Writing painful to Mary.]
I called on Miss Lamb, and chatted with her. She had undergone great
fatigue from writing an article about needle-work, for the new _Ladies’
British Magazine_. She spoke of writing as a most painful occupation
which only necessity could make her attempt. She has been learning
Latin merely to assist her in acquiring a correct style. Yet, while
she speaks of inability to write, what grace and talent has she not
manifested in ‘Mrs. Leicester’s School,’ etc.
HENRY CRABB ROBINSON: ‘Diary,’ Dec., 1814.
* * * * *
[Sidenote: True hospitality.]
Once, when some visitors chanced to drop in unexpectedly upon her
and her brother, just as they were going to sit 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 saying 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.” With such a woman to carve for you and eat with you,
neck of mutton was better than venison, while bread and cheese more
than replaced various courses of richest or daintiest dishes.
CHARLES AND MARY COWDEN CLARKE: ‘Recollections of Writers.’
* * * * *
[Sidenote: The Lambs “at home.”]
Let it be any autumn or winter month, when the fire is blazing
steadily, and the clean-swept hearth and whist-tables speak of the
spirit of Mrs. Battle.... The furniture is old-fashioned and worn;
the ceiling low, and not wholly unstained by traces of “the great
plant”; but the Hogarths, in narrow black frames, abounding in infinite
thought, humor, and pathos, enrich the walls; and all things wear an
air of comfort and hearty English welcome. Lamb himself, yet unrelaxed
by the glass, is sitting with a sort of Quaker primness at the
whist-table, the gentleness of his melancholy smile half lost in his
intentness on the game; his partner, the author of ‘Political Justice,’
is regarding his hand with a philosophic but not a careless eye;
Captain Burney, only not venerable because so young in spirit, sits
between them; and H. C. R., who alone now and then breaks the proper
silence to welcome some in-coming guest, is his happy partner--true
winner in the game of life, whose leisure, achieved early, is devoted
to his friends!... In one corner of the room, you may see the pale,
earnest countenance of Charles Lloyd, who is discoursing “of fate,
free-will, fore-knowledge absolute,” with Leigh Hunt.... Soon the
room fills; in slouches Hazlitt from the theatre, where his stubborn
anger for Napoleon’s defeat at Waterloo has been softened by Miss
Stephens’ angelic notes.... Now and then an actor glances in on us
from “the rich Cathay” of the world behind the scenes.... Meanwhile,
Becky lays the cloth on the side-table, under the direction of the
most quiet, sensible, and kind of women--who soon compels the younger
and more hungry of the guests to partake largely of the cold roast
lamb, or boiled beef, the heaps of smoking roasted potatoes, and the
vast jug of porter. Perfect freedom prevails. As the hot water and its
accompaniments appear, and the severities of whist relax, the light of
conversation thickens: Hazlitt, catching the influence of the spirit
from which he has lately begun to abstain, utters some fine criticism
with struggling emphasis; Lamb stammers out puns suggestive of wisdom;
the various driblets of talk combine into a stream, while Miss Lamb
moves gently about to see that each modest stranger is duly served;
turning, now and then, an anxious loving eye on Charles, which is
softened into a half-humorous expression of resignation to inevitable
fate, as he mixes his second tumbler!
TALFOURD: ‘Final Recollections.’
* * * * *
[Sidenote: “I must die first.”]
She had a way of repeating her brother’s words assentingly when he
spoke to her. He once said (with his peculiar mode of tenderness,
beneath blunt, abrupt speech), “You must die first, Mary.” She nodded
with her little, quiet nod and sweet smile, “Yes, I must die first,
Charles.”
CHARLES AND MARY COWDEN CLARKE: ‘Recollections of Writers.’
* * * * *
[Sidenote: A melancholy visit.]
I resolved to-day to discharge a melancholy duty, and went down by the
Edmonton stage to call on poor Miss Lamb. It was a melancholy sight;
but more so to the reflection than to the sense. A stranger would
have seen little remarkable about her. She was neither violent nor
unhappy; nor was she entirely without sense. She was, however, out of
her mind, as the expression is; but she could combine ideas, although
imperfectly.... 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.” It would be useless to attempt
to remember all she said; but it is to be remarked that her mind
seemed turned to subjects connected with insanity as well as with her
brother’s death. She is nine years and nine months older than he, and
will soon be seventy. I have no doubt that if ever she be sensible of
her brother’s loss it will overset her again. She will live forever in
the memory of her friends as one of the most amiable and admirable of
women.
HENRY CRABB ROBINSON: ‘Diary,’ January, 1835.
* * * * *
I went down to Edmonton, and found dear Mary Lamb in very good health.
She has now been so long well that one may hope for a continuance. I
took a walk with her, and she led me to Charles Lamb’s grave.
HENRY CRABB ROBINSON: ‘Diary,’ 1837.
* * * * *
[Sidenote: Mary at Edmonton after the death of Charles.]
_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
the summer evenings to drink tea and went out with her afterwards for
a walk. At length, as her illness became more frequent, and her frame
much weaker, she was induced to take up her abode under genial care, at
a pleasant house in St. John’s Wood, where she was surrounded by the
old books and prints, and was frequently visited by her reduced number
of surviving friends.
THOMAS NOON TALFOURD: ‘Final Memorials of Charles Lamb.’
* * * * *
[Sidenote: Eccentricities of her last days.]
It is well known that Miss Lamb survived her brother many years.
I remember that when she visited my father’s house at Brompton,
about 1843, she was accompanied by three or four snuff-boxes, which
came empty and went away full; and by at least four large silk
pocket-handkerchiefs, one of which was devoted to the reception of some
article from the dinner-table, which happened to strike her fancy, and
which she conveyed back with much satisfaction to St. John’s Wood....
I met her also at Sir John Stoddart’s, in the immediate neighborhood
of our house at Brompton, and the same thing took place. It was the
poor old lady’s whim, and of course she was humored in it by every one.
Sir John had to send out to the nearest tobacconist’s, and get all the
boxes filled; and a leg of a fowl, or some other dainty morsel which
had been selected, was duly wrapped up in a bandana.
W. CAREW HAZLITT: ‘Mary and Charles Lamb.’
* * * * *
[Sidenote: Her death.]
Mary Lamb departed, eighty-two years old, on the 20th of May. She had
survived her mind in great measure, but much of the _heart_ remained.
Miss Lamb had a very fine feeling for literature, and was refined in
mind, though homely, almost coarse, in personal habits. Her departure
is an escape out of prison, to her sweet, good soul.
SARA COLERIDGE: _Letter to Miss Fenwick_, 1847, in the former’s ‘Memoir
and Letters,’ edited by her daughter. New York: Harper & Bros., 1874.
* * * * *
Repeated attacks of her malady weakened her mind, but she retained to
the last her sweetness of disposition unimpaired, and gently sank into
death on the 20th of May, 1847.
A few survivors of the old circle, now sadly thinned, attended her
remains to the spot in Edmonton churchyard, where they were laid above
those of her brother.... In accordance with Lamb’s own feeling, so far
as it could be gathered from his expressions on a subject to which he
did not often or willingly refer, he had been interred in a deep grave,
simply dug, and wattled round, but without any affectation of stone
or brickwork to keep the human dust from its kindred earth. So dry,
however, is the soil of the quiet churchyard that the excavated earth
left perfect walls of stiff clay, and permitted us just to catch a
glimpse of the still untarnished edges of the coffin in which all the
mortal part of one of the most delightful persons who ever lived was
contained, and on which the remains of her he had loved were henceforth
to rest. We felt, I believe, after a moment’s strange shuddering, that
the reunion was well accomplished; and although the true-hearted son
of Admiral Burney, who had known and loved the pair we quitted from
a child, refused to be comforted--even he will now join the scanty
remnant of their friends in the softened remembrance that “they were
lovely in their lives,” and own with them the consolation of adding, at
last, that “in death they are not divided.”
THOMAS NOON TALFOURD: ‘Final Memorials of Charles Lamb.’
MARIA EDGEWORTH.
1767-1849.
MARIA EDGEWORTH.
Maria Edgeworth--tiny and witty as Shakespeare’s Maria--was born on
the 1st of January, 1767, at the home of her mother’s parents, Black
Bourton, “between the towns of Farringdon, Berks, and Burford, Oxon.”
She was the daughter of Richard Lovell Edgeworth and Anna Maria Elers;
her father came of an English family which had settled in Ireland in
Queen Elizabeth’s time. Her mother died in 1773, when Maria was but
six years old; and in the same year Richard Edgeworth married Honora
Sneyd. Maria had passed her early years partly at Black Bourton and
partly at Hare Hatch, between Reading and Maidenhead, Berkshire, where
her parents lived. On Mr. Edgeworth’s second marriage she accompanied
him and his wife to Edgeworthstown, the Irish estate which had fallen
to him on the death of his father a few years before. In 1775 Maria
was sent to the boarding-school of a Mrs. Latiffiere, at Derby. In
1780 Mrs. Honora Edgeworth, the beautiful stepmother to whom the
affectionate child was much attached, died of consumption. About this
time Maria was taken from the Derby school and sent to finish her
education in London. Less than eight months after the death of his
second wife, the elastic-spirited Mr. Edgeworth married her sister
Elizabeth.
In 1781 Maria was threatened with the loss of her eyesight; this
misfortune was averted by care, after much suffering. In 1782 she left
school for Edgeworthstown, which was her home from this time until her
death. She occupied herself in study, writing, assisting her father in
the business of the estate, and teaching the younger children. (Her
father “had, in all, twenty-two children born to him; several died in
infancy.”)
In 1797 Mrs. Elizabeth Edgeworth died, and in the following year the
perennial Benedick was married to Frances Anne Beaufort. In 1802 Maria
went abroad with a family party, and while in Paris received an offer
of marriage from M. Edelcrantz, a Swede, which she refused.
In 1813 the Edgeworths visited London, where Maria made the
acquaintance of many of the well-known writers of the day. In 1817 Mr.
Edgeworth died. His loss was very deeply felt by his devoted eldest
daughter, and for a time she was unable to write without his wonted
encouragement.
Little remains to chronicle except Maria’s occasional visits to
England, and her stay at Abbotsford in 1823. In 1825 Sir Walter Scott
was her guest at Edgeworthstown. They travelled in company to the Lakes
of Killarney, and parted in Dublin.
Maria Edgeworth died, very suddenly and painlessly, on May 22, 1849.
She had driven out, in her usual health, a few hours before.
Miss Edgeworth’s devotion to her father was beautiful indeed, but
the complete subordination of her genius to his guidance is to be
regretted. We must, however, be too grateful for the brightness of this
genuine jewel to quarrel with its over-heavy setting.
The following are her works:
_Letters for Literary Ladies_, 1795.
_The Parents’ Assistant_, 1796.
_Practical Education_, 1798. This was the joint production of herself
and her father.
_Moral Tales._
_Castle Rackrent_, 1800.
_Belinda_, 1801.
_Essay on Irish Bulls_ (a joint work), 1802.
_Popular Tales_, 1803.
_The Modern Griselda_, 1804.
_Leonora_, 1806.
_Professional Education_ (a joint work), 1808.
_Tales of Fashionable Life_, 1809.
_The Absentee_, 1812.
_Patronage_, 1814.
_Comic Dramas_, 1817.
_Harrington_, about 1817.
_Ormond_, “”
_Thoughts on Bores_, about 1817.
_Memoir of R. L. Edgeworth_ (continuation of a Life begun by himself),
1820.
_Rosamond_, 1821. This was a sequel to her father’s ‘Early Lessons,’
and was followed by ‘Harry and Lucy.’
_Helen_, 1834.
* * * * *
[Sidenote: Birth and family.]
She was born on the 1st of January, 1767, “a God-given New-Year’s gift”
(as, in a letter to Mrs. Hall, she calls herself), to her almost
boy-father: for, although she was his second-born, he was barely
twenty-two years old when she was placed in his arms. Ultimately she
was one of twenty-two children born to Richard Lovell Edgeworth by four
wives.
S. C. HALL: ‘Retrospect of a Long Life.’ New York: D. Appleton & Co.,
1883.
* * * * *
[Sidenote: Mischievous childhood.]
Maria, being very young, remembered little of this visit [to Ireland
in 1773, after her mother’s death and her father’s marriage to Honora
Sneyd], “except that she was a mischievous child, amusing herself once
at her Aunt Fox’s, when the company were unmindful of her, cutting out
the squares in a checked sofa-cover, and one day trampling through a
number of hot-bed frames that had just been glazed, laid on the grass
before the door at Edgeworthstown. She recollected her delight at the
crashing of the glass, but, immorally, did not remember either cutting
her feet, or how she was punished for this performance.”
GRACE A. OLIVER: ‘A Study of Maria Edgeworth.’ Boston: A. Williams &
Co., 1882.
* * * * *
[Sidenote: Maria at school.]