MARY LAMB
BY
MRS. GILCHRIST
_Eminent Women Series_
EDITED BY JOHN H. INGRAM
LONDON:
W. H. ALLEN & CO., 13 WATERLOO PLACE. S.W.
1883.
PREFACE.
I am indebted to Mrs. Henry Watson, a granddaughter of Mr. Gillman,
for one or two interesting reminiscences, and for a hitherto
unpublished "notelet" by Lamb (p. 248), together with an omitted
paragraph from a published letter (p. 84), 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 _Needle-work_
(regarded from an industrial, not an "art" point of view), by Mary Lamb
(p. 186), unearthed from an obscure and long-deceased periodical--_The
British 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 (pp. 24-6). 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 evidence 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 1815--before they had made the
acquaintance of Judge Talfourd, Proctor, Patmore, De Quincey, 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 life, when the burthen of age
was added to that of her sad malady.
The burial-register of St. Andrew's, Holborn, in which church-yard
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, removing thither almost
immediately after the mother'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 enshrined in the poem beginning
"When Maidens such as Hester die."
ANNE GILCHRIST.
Keats Corner, Hampstead.
CONTENTS.
CHAPTER I. PAGE
Parentage and Childhood. 1
CHAPTER II.
Birth of Charles.--Coleridge.--Domestic Toils and Trials.--Their
Tragic Culmination.--Letters to and from Coleridge. 18
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. 36
CHAPTER IV.
Death of the Father.--Mary comes Home to live.--A Removal.--First
Verses.--A Literary Tea-Party.--Another Move.--Friends increase. 55
CHAPTER V.
Personal Appearance and Manners.--Health.--Influence of Mary's
Illnesses upon her Brother. 64
CHAPTER VI.
Visit to Coleridge at Greta Hall.--Wordsworth and his Sister in
London.--Letters to Miss Stoddart.--Coleridge goes to Malta.--Letter
to Dorothy Wordsworth on the Death of her Brother John. 81
CHAPTER VII.
Mary in the Asylum again.--Lamb's Letter with a Poem of hers.--Her
slow Recovery.--Letters to Sarah Stoddart.--The _Tales from
Shakespeare_ begun.--Hazlitt's Portrait of Lamb.--Sarah's
Lovers.--The Farce of _Mr. H._ 99
CHAPTER VIII.
The _Tales from Shakespeare_.--Letters to Sarah Stoddart. 118
CHAPTER IX.
Correspondence with Sarah Stoddart.--Hazlitt.--A Courtship and
Wedding at which Mary is Bridesmaid. 129
CHAPTER X.
_Mrs. Leicester's School_.--A Removal.--_Poetry for Children._ 158
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. 170
CHAPTER XII.
An Essay on Needle-work. 185
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. 195
CHAPTER XIV.
Hazlitt's Divorce.--Emma Isola.--Mrs. Cowden Clarke's _Recollections_
of Mary.--The Visit to France.--Removal to Colebrook Cottage.--A
Dialogue of Reminiscences. 217
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 Hazlitt.--Removal to Edmonton.--Marriage of
Emma Isola.--Mary's sudden Recovery.--Ill again.--Death of
Coleridge.--Death of Charles.--Mary's Last Days and Death. 235
CHAPTER I.
Parentage and Childhood.
1764-1775.--Æt. 1-10.
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 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 3rd
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 ribbon 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 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 himself 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 Yates_, contributed by Charles to _Mrs.
Leicester'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 family removed to Lincoln, with means so straitened 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 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 fortune" 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 affectionate 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
which makes the heart wise whatever the head may be. Mary, a shy,
sensitive, nervous, affectionate child, who early showed signs of a
liability 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
respectfully, 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 favourite 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 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 gentlewoman; 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 politeness 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 interest. A little
frankness and looking into each 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. When we grew up and
harmonised 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, parlours 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
practical 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, discoloured garden, in the passage
leading from Fetter Lane into Bartlett's Buildings; and there boys
were taught in the morning 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 into print and finally into Hone's _Every Day
Book_, 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 caste 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 strikingly ugly, thin,
and careworn. From her recollections of him, she thinks that 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.'
"They were big girls, it seems, too old to attend his instructions
with the silence necessary; and, however old age and a long state of
beggary seems to have reduced his writing faculties to a state of
imbecility, in those days his language occasionally rose to the bold
and figurative, 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, who was
the chief instructor 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 arduous
task of prompter assigned to him and his feeble voice was heard clear
and distinct repeating the text during the whole performance. She
describes her recollection of the caste of characters even now with a
relish:--Martia, by the handsome Edgar Hickman, who afterwards went to
Africa, and of whom she never afterwards 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, &c. 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 education was due to the fact
that her father's employer, Mr. Salt, had a good library "into which
she was tumbled early" and suffered to "browse there without much
selection or prohibition." A little selection, however, would have
made the pasturage all the wholesomer 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 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 was buried, just ten months before the
birth of Charles.
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. Specially was there a
great-aunt married to a substantial yeoman named Gladman living at
Mackery End within a gentle walk of Wheathampstead, the visits to whom
remained in Mary's memory as the most delightful recollections of her
childhood. In after life she embodied them, mingling fiction with
fact, in a story called _Louisa Manners or the Farm House_ 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 collecting 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.
This will recall to the reader Elia's _Mackery End_; 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 re-confirmed 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 known to strangers and out-of-date
kinsfolk. Love, 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
experiences in a tale which forms a sort of pendant to _Blakesmoor in
H----shire_ by Elia. Her story is called _Margaret Green, the Young
Mahometan_, 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 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 needle-work, 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 minutes 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
forbidden 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 permitted to walk in the garden
or wander about the house whenever I pleased, I used to leave the
parlour 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 Cæsars 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 perfectly familiar with their names and
features. Hogarth's prints were below the Cæsars. I was very fond of
looking at them and endeavouring to make out their meaning. An old
broken battledore and some shuttle-cocks 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 grey-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 portraits. 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 curious
old ornaments about the rooms; but the worked furniture and carpets of
which I 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 bedrooms 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
endeavoured 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 the lock as usual, it gave way, and I found myself
in this so long desired room.
"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 favourite
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 nothing 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 favourite 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 _Mahometanism Explained_.... A great many of the leaves were
torn out, but enough remained to make me imagine that Ishmael was the
true son of Abraham. I read here that the true descendants of Abraham
were known by a light which streamed from the middle 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 the
beginning to the end. The book said that those who believed all the
wonderful stories which were related of Mahomet were called Mahometans
and True Believers; I concluded that I must be a Mahometan, 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 we are to pass
over a narrow bridge which crosses a bottomless gulf. The bridge was
described to be no wider 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? 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.
"All my desire was now to tell them the discovery I had made; for, I
thought, when they knew of the existence of _Mahometanism Explained_
they would read it and become Mahometans to ensure themselves a safe
passage over the silken bridge. But it wanted more courage than I
possessed to break the matter to my intended converts; I must
acknowledge that I had been reading without leave; and the habit
of never speaking or being spoken to considerably increased the
difficulty.
"My anxiety on this subject threw me into a fever. I was so ill that
my mother thought it 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 Mahometan 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 prescribing 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 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 endeavouring to win the confidence of the
thoughtful 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. Grandmother 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 dishonourable
Or aught unseemly.
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 from a
cruel malady, cheerful patience and fortitude gave her dignity of
another and a 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.