"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 to me then."
This sister was a woman quite worthy of his devotion. Possessed of
genius somewhat akin to that of her brother, she also handled a delicate
pen, and but for her misfortune would have been well known in the world
of books. She was in complete sympathy with her brother, in heart as
well as in mind. And the record of their lives is one of the most
beautiful pictures of brotherly and sisterly affection in all
literature.
Let us turn from the dark picture, and see some of the brighter sides of
this life, sketched so far in Rembrandt-like color. Throughout all this
darkness and dread, he had joked and jested his way on, amusing his
friends in private, and entertaining the world of letters by his genial
humor. It welled up as from a hidden fountain, and that fountain never
failed but with life. So easily and spontaneously did it flow, that if
he wanted an order to see the play, for some friends, he would scribble
something like this to Ayrton:--
"I would go to the play
In a very economical sort of a way,
Rather to see
Than be seen;
Though I'm no ill sight
Neither--
By candle-light,
And in some kinds of weather,
You might pit me for height
Against Kean;
But in a grand tragic scene
I'm nothing.
It would create a kind of loathing
To see me act Hamlet;
There'd be many a damn let
Fly
At my presumption,
If I should try,--
Being a fellow of no gumption."
And so on through half a dozen verses of exquisite nonsense. And in
every little note to his many friends there was always some
characteristic touch to excite their ready smiles; as in the note to
Coleridge, who had carried off some of his books:--"There is a devilish
gap in my shelf where you have knocked out the two eye-teeth," and where
he goes on to beg him in a whimsical way to return them--because,
although he had himself borrowed them of somebody else, they had long
adorned his shelf. Truly, most people who own books at all can
sympathize with Lamb in this, though they may think he got off lightly
to have only the two eye-teeth knocked out. We have known of cases where
cuspids, bicuspids, and molars have all been extracted. These letters
are all exquisitely droll, the most of them containing a gentle oath or
two, as where he wrote "Some d----d people have come in, and I must
stop;" and then recollecting that he was writing to a "proper" person,
making a postscript which says, "when I wrote d----d I only meant
deuced." But one would as soon think of dropping out Shakspeare's
adjective, and saying (as a very prim lady we once knew did in reading
Lady Macbeth's soliloquy), "Out, spot!" as to drop out any of Lamb's
qualifying words. He was sometimes accused of being irreverent, as in
his article upon "Saying Graces," where he affirms that he is more
disposed to say grace upon twenty other occasions in the course of the
day than before his dinner, and inquires why not say them over books,
those spiritual repasts. But he was very far indeed from being
irreverent, and had much of genuine religious feeling.
His hospitality was unbounded, and the evenings at his home have become
as well known in literature as the grand evenings at Holland House.
His friends were the first literary men of the day,--Wordsworth, Leigh
Hunt, Barry Cornwall, Talfourd, Hazlitt, Southey, Coleridge,--all the
giants of that day and generation, and he was loved by them all. Not
that they did not know and deplore his faults,--or his one fault; for if
he could have conquered his fondness for wine he would have had none of
much moment left. But even this was overlooked by his friends at the
time, and has not been considered as entirely inexcusable by posterity.
That he smoked much and drank hard, even for that day, may be true; but
it can scarcely justify the bitter sneers of Carlyle, or the holding of
him up as an awful warning without putting in any plea in mitigation, as
is sometimes done by severe moralists in our own day. He abased himself
in awful shame over it many a time in life, and suffered in his own
person all the fearful retribution which such habits bring in their
train. Let this be sufficient for us, and let us but pity and pass on.
One of the most beautiful things in his later life was his fatherly
tenderness toward a friendless young girl whom he and Mary had
befriended and finally adopted,--Emma Isola, who was afterwards married
to Moxon, the publisher. He was extremely fond of her, and she
brightened his home much in the later years, although she married before
his death. It is sad to think that he should have died before his
sister. He had often prayed that this might not be. But he provided for
her tenderly, and gave her to the care of his friends.
Lamb is described as having a face of "quivering sweetness, nervous,
tremulous, and so slight of frame that he looked only fit for the most
placid fortune."
Fit or not, he had to contend with the hardest thing a man can have in
life,--he had to live a life-long witness of the sufferings of one he
dearly loved, and whom he was entirely powerless to help, the daily and
hourly pathos of whose sufferings he was fitted to appreciate keenly,
and for whom in all this wide weltering chaos of a world there was no
hope. He renounced everything else in life to try to mitigate this
dreadful lot. His kindness was unceasing, his pity was both fatherly and
motherly; it was more,--Godlike; and yet it was of small avail. He
toiled physically that she might live at ease. He exerted his mind
constantly when in her presence, that she might be cheerful. He watched
over her with the tenderness of both brother and lover; and this shall
be his justification, if he needs one: he loved much.
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