In the annals of domestic history it would be difficult to meet with a
story more deeply interesting and pathetic than that of Charles and
Mary Lamb. If Dorothy Wordsworth bears the palm for sisterly devotion
and help, thereby crowning her brother's life with blessing, Charles
Lamb stands before us the most signal example as the sharer and
sustainer of a sister's lot of suffering. Darkest lives may be
illumined by hope and brightened by love; and among lives of noble
self-denial, those of Charles Lamb and his sister must always take a
prominent place. Although they came into being heavily weighted for
the race, their struggle with an adverse fate was noble, and the
secret of their strength was their mutual love.
Probably no greater calamity can affect a family than an hereditary
taint of insanity, entailing, as it does, such constant and tender
care and infinite patience.
The father of Charles and Mary Lamb had been for many years a clerk to
a barrister of the Inner Temple, in whose chambers, in Crown Office
Row, he resided when Mary was born on December 3, 1764. There were
other children of the family, none of whom, however, seem to have
survived infancy with the exception of Mary, John, two years older,
and Charles, ten years younger.
It would, perhaps, be difficult to imagine a more uncongenial home for
a child constituted as was Mary Lamb than the one into which it was
her lot to enter. We seek in vain in the immediate parentage of the
Lambs for the many excellencies of character and the genius developed
in both Mary and Charles. But one thing they both inherited from or
through their father--the peculiarity of brain formation which renders
its possessor liable to fits of madness. Little Mary was too loving
for her early surroundings. Her parents seem to have lived to
themselves, and not to have shown much love for the sensitive little
one who, above all things, needed a heart-warm atmosphere. Charles,
writing of his mother, says that she "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."
In her childhood Mary attended a day-school in Fetter Lane, where she
received all the scholastic education she ever had. Her time was
chiefly spent in the solitude of her own thoughts. A lonely childhood,
however sad, is not infrequently beneficial in its results, in
stimulating thought and bringing out the distinctive characteristics
of a child. But to a child like Mary Lamb the very loneliness of her
life would only tend to make more pronounced the liability to mental
trouble. And although a taste for reading is one of the best that can
be acquired, it would in the case of Mary Lamb have been all the
better to have been carefully guarded and directed. It, however,
afforded her no small delight to have the privilege of access to the
library of her father's employer, "a spacious closet of good old
English reading, where without much selection or prohibition she
browsed at will upon that fair and wholesome pasturage."
A new element entered into the life of Mary when a little more than
ten years of age. In the month of February, 1775, her brother Charles
was born to feed the hunger of her loving heart. From the first he was
her charge. She nursed the weakly child with tender care, fostered his
loving disposition, and as she could, trained his infant mind. Their
childhood thus passed hand in hand, in accord with their future lives.
When Charles was about seven years old he entered Christ's Hospital.
It was here he first formed the friendship of Coleridge, which proved
so fruitful in after years. As time passed over the household the
circumstances of the Lambs, never affluent, became more straitened.
The elder son, John, seems to have cared chiefly for himself, and not
to have been very reliable for contribution to the family support. In
his fifteenth year Charles left the Blue Coat School to bear his share
(which proved to be a large one) of the burden of the family life. He
obtained a clerkship in the South Sea House, which in two years was
exchanged for a better one in the East India House, Mary at the same
time also adding to the slender means by dressmaking.
A few years passed, not altogether without brightness, though much
dimmed by the growing imbecility of the father, and the sickness and
helplessness of the mother. In 1795 her father was pensioned by his
kind old master, and the family removed into lodgings in Little Queen
Street. The following year proved to the Lambs a disastrous one
indeed. First Charles himself, from some immediate cause not very
clear, became the victim of the fatal heritage. Mrs. Gilchrist
suggests that it was the first and only love of which he was able to
dream that "took deep hold of him, conspiring with the cares and
trials of home life." Charles was, from whatever cause, for six weeks
confined in an asylum. Writing to Coleridge, with whom he had kept up
a constant intercourse, he says: "In your absence the tide of
melancholy rushed in, and did its worst mischief by overwhelming my
reason." It was during his confinement that, in one of his lucid
intervals, he wrote the following sonnet to his sister:--
If from my lips some angry accents fell,
Peevish complaint, or harsh reproof unkind,
'Twas 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 ere inclined
Too highly, and with a partial eye to see
No blemish. Thou to me didst ever show
Kindest affection; and would ofttimes lend
An ear to the desponding love-sick lay,
Weeping my sorrows with me, and repay
But ill the mighty debt of love I owe,
Mary, to thee, my sister and my friend.
It was in the month of September in that year, a little while after
the return of Charles to his home, that there occurred therein the
saddest of domestic tragedies. The constant and increasing
helplessness of the father and mother had necessitated no small amount
of care and nursing on the part of Mary; following which had come the
temporary madness of her brother, who had been to her a tower of
strength and consolation. Finally selfish John, who generally lived
from home at his ease, having met with an accident, had come home to
be nursed, to be a further burden upon his much suffering sister--the
last straw to the patient back. The unevenly balanced brain at last
gave way, reason tottered, and in a fit of frenzy, Mary Lamb, the
kind-hearted young woman, the loving daughter, the devoted sister,
became the instrument of her mother's death. The _Weekly Register_
contains the following account of the event:--
"This afternoon, the coroner's jury sat on the body of a lady in
the neighbourhood of Holborn, who died in consequence of a wound
from her daughter, the preceding day. While the family were
preparing dinner, the young lady, in a fit of insanity, seized a
case-knife lying on the table, and in a menacing manner pursued a
little girl, her apprentice, round the room. On the eager calls of
her helpless, infirm mother to forbear, she renounced her first
object, and, with loud shrieks, approached her parent. The child,
by her cries, quickly brought up the landlord[6] of the house--but
too late. The dreadful scene presented to him the mother lifeless
on a chair; her daughter yet wildly standing over her with the
fatal knife; and the venerable old man--her father--weeping by her
side, himself bleeding at the forehead from the effects of a blow
he received from one of the forks she had been madly hurling about
the room. But a few days prior to this, the family had discovered
some symptoms of lunacy in her, which had so much increased on the
Wednesday evening that her brother early the next morning went in
quest of Dr. Pitcairn; had that gentleman been providentially met
with, the fatal catastrophe had, probably, been prevented. She had
once before, in the earlier part of her life, been deranged from
the harassing fatigues of too much business. As her carriage
towards her mother had been ever affectionate in the extreme, it
is believed that to her increased attentiveness to her is to be
ascribed the loss of her reason at this time. The jury, without
hesitation, brought in their verdict--Lunacy."
[6] This appears to be a mistake. It was Charles himself who
performed the sad duty of overpowering his sister.
From the fatal hour when Mary lifted her hand against her mother, to
the last of his life, Charles Lamb was heroic in his self-denying
devotion to her. As a matter of course, she had to be, for the time
being, placed under restraint. But Charles then and there, in his
noble love and sense of duty, determined that, abandoning all other
loves and hopes which might interfere with his one great, self-imposed
purpose, his life should be devoted to the welfare and care of his
sister. A few days after the occurrence, he wrote to his friend
Coleridge:--
"My poor dear, dearest sister, in a fit of insanity has been the
death of her own mother. I was at hand only in time enough to
snatch the knife out of her grasp. She is at present in a
madhouse, 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 to feel. God Almighty have us all in His
keeping! Mention nothing of poetry. I have destroyed every vestige
of past vanities of that kind.... Your judgment will convince 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 do not think of coming to see me. Write. I
will not see you if you come. God Almighty love you and all of us!"
Coleridge's reply was full of comfort to his afflicted friend, and
upon its receipt Charles writes again:--
"Your letter was an inestimable treasure to me. It will be a
comfort to you, I know, to know that our prospects are somewhat
better. 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 the 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. She has a most affectionate and
tender concern for what has happened. Indeed, from the beginning,
frightful and hopeless 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 tranquility. God be
praised, Coleridge, wonderful as it is to tell, I have never been
otherwise than collected and calm; even on the dreadful day and in
the midst of the terrible scene, I preserved a tranquility which
bystanders may have construed into indifference--a tranquility not
of despair. Is it folly or sin in me to say that it was a
religious principle that most supported me? I allow much to other
favourable 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 plastered over from the wound he had received from a
daughter, dearly loved by him, and who loved him no less dearly;
my mother a dead and murdered corpse in the next room; yet was I
wonderfully 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
endeavoured 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. 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? A thought occurred and relieved me: if I give in to
this way of feeling there is not a chair, a room, an object in our
rooms, that will not awaken our keenest griefs. I must rise above
such weaknesses. I hope this was not want of true feeling. I do
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 was
a matter of twenty people, I do think, supping 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! Some 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--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 any
agony of emotion, I found my way mechanically into an 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. Tranquility returned, and it was the only violent emotion
that mastered me. I think it did me good....
"She will [referring to Mary], I fancy, if she stays, make one of
the family rather than 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 extraordinarily--if it is
extraordinary that people who see my sister should love her. Of
all the people I ever saw in the world, my poor sister was most
and thoroughly devoid of the least tincture of selfishness ... and
if I mistake not, in the most trying situation that a human being
can be found in, she will be found (I speak not with sufficient
humility, I fear) but humanly and foolishly speaking, she will be
found, I trust, uniformly great and amiable...."
His next letter reveals something of the sister's state of feeling
under the distressing circumstances.
"Mary continues serene and cheerful. I find 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 scarce 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 those poor, crazy,
moythered brains of yours thinking of always?'"
In another letter he says: "I am wedded, Coleridge, to the fortunes of
my sister and my poor old father.... What would I give to call her
back to earth for one day? on my knees to ask her pardon for all those
little asperities 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."
Mary, on this first occasion, remained in the asylum at Islington for
some months. Eventually, upon the solemn promise of her brother that
for his life she should be under his especial care, he was permitted
to take her under his own protection. He did not, however, remove her
at once to his own home, but provided for her in lodgings at Hackney.
Alluding to her at this time, he writes: "To get her out into the
world again, with a prospect of her never being so ill again, this is
to be ranked not upon 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!"
The fond hope of Lamb, that his sister would never be so ill again,
was not destined to be fulfilled. By the end of the year she was again
in the asylum, but always in her brother's thought. During her absence
he thus gave utterance to his thoughts:--
I am a widowed thing now thou art gone!
Now thou art gone, my own familiar friend,
Companion, sister, helpmate, counsellor!
Alas! that honoured mind, whose sweet reproof
And meekest wisdom in times past have smoothed
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 honoured mind become a fearful blank,
Her sense locked up, and herself kept out
From human sight or converse, while so many
Of the foolish sort are left to roam at large,
Do 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, loath to part
With what it loved so long and held so dear,--
If thou art to be taken and I left
(More sinning, yet unpunished 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.
It was not until the death of his father, in the early part of 1799,
that Charles felt it desirable to take his sister to his own home. At
this time Mary was thirty-five and Charles twenty-five. From this time
forward they were, indeed, one. They lived and worked together,
thought together, and side by side grew old. They had several changes
of residence--always in London or the suburbs. Mary had also many
relapses. Both knew she was liable to them, and they lived always on
the brink of this great trouble. As for Lamb himself, he was never
again subject to the terrible malady. He had no time for brooding. The
constant thought required for his sister made him strong--forced him
to brace himself to face the stern duty whenever required. And Mary
herself fronted the sadness of her lot with fortitude. In preparation
for any short holiday together, which they occasionally made, she
would with her own hands pack as a necessary article of luggage the
strait jacket, which might at any moment be required for use upon
herself. There is no picture more pathetic than that presented of this
loving brother and sister, how that, after a premonition of the
on-coming affliction, they would set out, hand in hand, for her
temporary asylum, together weeping over the sadness of their lot. And
this continued throughout their lives.
And yet it would be wrong to suppose their path to have been
altogether sad. It was illumined by love, the heavy load was lightened
by mutual help. Their devotion to each other, and joint pursuit of
literature, was an immense compensation in their hard fate, bringing,
as it ever does, the ideal into the actual, and casting a glamour of
romance over the most heart-breaking realities of existence.
They had also many friends--friends after their own heart--who loved
the intellectual converse of their humble home, and who knew well the
circumstances of their saddened lives. These would include from time
to time many of the choicest spirits of the age, whom the genius and
gentleness of Lamb brought to his side. Barry Cornwall, in his memoir,
says:--
"Lamb and his sister had an open party once a week, every
Wednesday evening, where his friends generally went to visit him,
without any special invitation. He invited you suddenly, not
pressingly; but with such heartiness that you at once agreed to
come. There was usually a game at whist on these evenings, in
which the stakes were very moderate, indeed, almost nominal. When
my thoughts turn backward, as they sometimes do, to those past
days, I see my dear old friend again--'in my mind's eye,
Horatio'--with his outstretched hand, and his grave, sweet smile
of welcome. It was always in a room of moderate size, comfortably,
but plainly furnished, that he 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 bookcase completely filled with old books.
These were his 'ragged veterans.' 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. 'Bridget in some things is behind her years.' In
fact, although she was ten years older than her brother, she had
more sympathy with modern books and with youthful fancies than he
had. She wore a neat cap of the fashion of her youth, and an
old-fashioned dress. Her face was pale and somewhat square, but
very placid, with grey, 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
towards 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.'"
Mrs. Cowden Clarke has also left some very interesting reminiscences
of this period. She says:--
"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. 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 softendly akin to her
brother Charles's 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. She had a mind at once nobly toned and
practical, making her ever a chosen source of confidence among her
friends, who turned to her for consultation, confirmation, and
advice in matters of nicest moment--always secure of deriving from
her both aid and solace. Her manner was easy, almost homely, so
quiet, unaffected, and perfectly unpretending was it. Beneath the
sparing talk and retiring 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-'havioured 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, moral and
mental, that Mary Lamb was. Her apparel was always of the plainest
kind--a black stuff or silk gown, made and worn in the simplest
fashion conceivable. She took snuff liberally--a habit that had
evidently grown out of her propensity to sympathise with and share
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 tortoiseshell box containing the
powder so strongly approved by them both, in search of a
stimulating pinch, the act seemed yet another link of association
between the brother and sister when hanging together over their
favourite books and studies."
During all the time of periodic distress both Charles and Mary Lamb
were, from time to time, engaged in literary work. In the quiet home,
the most liable among tens of thousands to be at any moment the scene
of heartrending upheaval, we should not have looked for some of the
best work of the age. But such was the case. In the most devoted
brother of the century we have, at the same time, the quaintest
humourist and one of the most subtle critics. And in Mary herself we
have a striking instance of scholastic training being supplemented by
home study and wide reading, until she became an accomplished scholar
and a fit companion to her greater brother. Probably, her love for him
was the great moving cause of Mary's culture. Her own contributions to
literature were of no slight value and interest. Of the twenty
ever-favourite "Tales from Shakespeare," fourteen were written by
Mary, the six tragedies being the production of Charles. The tales are
written with the felicity of style peculiar to the Lambs, and form a
suitable introduction, especially for young people, to the works of
the great dramatist. In a letter by Mary, referring to this joint
production, she says: "Charles has written 'Macbeth,' 'Othello,' 'King
Lear,' and has begun 'Hamlet.' 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 also wrote a series of entertaining stories for children
under the title of "Mrs. Leicester's School." Nor did she confine
herself to prose. She was the author of several of the pieces in
"Poetry for Children," published in the names of her brother and
herself. It is not certain which of the poems are hers. Apart from
authentic information, of which there is none, opinion is speculative.
Charles stated that his own was about one-third of the whole.
Mary was to her friends a generous correspondent. Her letters show the
same ease and gracefulness of style as the "Tales," and are very
pleasant reading. As a sample one may be given, written to Dorothy
Wordsworth, shortly after the loss of her brother, Captain Wordsworth,
in the _Abergavenny_. This gives us a glimpse of the writer's
sympathetic heart and rare sensibility--
"I thank you, my kind friend, for your most comfortable letter;
till I saw your own handwriting 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 dissatisfied 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 beginning; but I felt that it
was improper and most grating to the feelings of the afflicted to
say to them that the memory of their affliction would in time
become 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 did not 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 transcribe 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 borrowed; 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 passèd 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."
When Miss Wordsworth's reply to this consoling letter arrived, it
devolved upon Charles to answer it for the sad reason stated. He
writes (June 14, 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 with 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 indisposition.... I have every reason to
suppose that this illness, like all the former ones, will be but
temporary; but I cannot always feel so. In the 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 co-operation. 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 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 of 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 teasing 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 offending 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...."
The death of Coleridge, in 1834, was a great bereavement to the Lambs.
Charles seems to have lived under a constant sense of personal loss.
In six months he followed his friend to the unseen world. The fond
desire of the brother and sister that she should die first was thus
unfulfilled; but she was becoming more and more cut off from the
realities of life, and probably hardly ever realised the bitterness of
the separation. Wordsworth wrote a poem to the memory of Lamb
containing feeling allusions to Mary. In reference to it he said:
"Were I to give way to my own feelings, I should dwell not only on her
genius and intellectual powers, but upon the delicacy and refinement
of manner which she maintained inviolable under most trying
circumstances. She was loved and honoured by all her brother's
friends; and others, some of them strange characters, whom his
philanthropic peculiarities induced him to countenance."
Thou wert a scorner of the fields, my friend,
But more in show than truth; and from the fields,
And from the mountains, to thy rural grave
Transported, my soothed spirit hovers o'er
Its green, untrodden turf, and blowing flowers;
And taking up a voice shall speak (though still
Awed by the theme's peculiar sanctity
Which words less free presumed not even to touch)
Of that fraternal love, whose heaven-lit lamp
From infancy, through manhood, to the last
Of threescore years, and to thy latest hour,
Burnt on with ever-strengthening light, enshrined
Within thy bosom.
"Wonderful" hath been
The love established between man and man,
"Passing the love of women;" and between
Man and his helpmate in fast wedlock joined
Through God, is raised a spirit and soul of love
Without whose blissful influence Paradise
Had been no Paradise; and earth were now
A waste where creatures bearing human form,
Direst of savage beasts would roam in fear,
Joyless and comfortless. Our days glide on;
And let him grieve who cannot choose but grieve
That he hath been an elm without his vine,
And her bright dower of clustering charities,
That, round his trunk and branches, might have clung
Enriching and adorning. Unto thee,
Not so enriched, not so adorned, to thee
Was given (say rather, thou of later birth,
Wert given to her) a sister--'tis a word
Timidly uttered, for she lives, the meek,
The self-restraining, and the ever kind;
In whom thy reason and intelligent heart
Found, for all interests, hopes, and tender cares,
All softening, humanising, hallowing powers,
Whether withheld, or for her sake unsought--
More than sufficient recompense!
Her love
(What weakness prompts the voice to tell it here?)
Was as the love of mothers; and when years,
Lifting the boy to man's estate, had called
The long-protected to assume the part
Of a protector, the first filial tie
Was undissolved; and, in or out of sight,
Remained imperishably interwoven
With life itself.
* * * * *
O gift divine of quiet sequestration!
The hermit exercised in prayer and praise,
And feeding daily on the hope of heaven,
Is happy in his vow, and fondly cleaves
To life-long singleness; but happier far
Was to your souls, and, to the thoughts of others,
A thousand times more beautiful appeared,
Your dual loneliness. The sacred tie
Is broken; yet, why grieve? for Time but holds
His moiety in trust, till Joy shall lead
To the blest world where parting is unknown.
Mary survived her brother for thirteen years, being lovingly cared for
in the twilight of her life by sympathising friends. She died in May,
1847; and they now rest in the same grave in Edmonton churchyard.