Chapter C: KEGAN PAUL: ‘William Godwin, His Friends and Contemporaries.’ (1)

* * * * *

[Sidenote: No moral conflict.]

The theories in which the daughter of the authors of ‘Political Justice’ and of the ‘Rights of Woman’ had been educated, spared her from any conflict between her duty and her affection. For she was the child of parents whose writings had had for their object to prove that marriage was one among the many institutions which a new era in the history of mankind was about to sweep away. By her father, whom she loved--by the writings of her mother, whom she had been taught to venerate--these doctrines had been rendered familiar to her mind. It was, therefore, natural that she should listen to the dictates of her own heart, and willingly unite her fate with one who was so worthy of her love.

LADY SHELLEY: ‘Shelley Memorials, from Authentic Sources.’ London: Henry S. King & Co., 1875.

* * * * *

[Sidenote: Mary at this period.]

It is remarkable that her youth was not the period of her greatest beauty, and certainly at that date [1816-17] she did not do justice to herself either in her aspect or in the tone of her conversation. She was singularly pale. With a figure that needed to be set off, she was careless in her dress; and the decision of purpose which ultimately gained her the title of ‘Wilful Woman,’ then appeared, at least in society, principally in the negative form--her temper being easily crossed, and her resentments taking a somewhat querulous and peevish tone.

THORNTON HUNT: ‘Shelley,’ in the _Atlantic Monthly_, February, 1863.

* * * * *

[Sidenote: Origin of ‘Frankenstein.’]

I passed the summer of 1816 in the environs of Geneva. The season was cold and rainy, and in the evenings we crowded around a blazing wood fire, and occasionally amused ourselves with some German stories of ghosts, which happened to fall into our hands. These tales excited in us a playful desire of imitation. Two other friends and myself agreed to write each a story, founded on some supernatural occurrence. The weather, however, suddenly became serene; and my two friends left me on a journey among the Alps, and lost, in the magnificent scenes which they present, all memory of their ghostly visions. [Frankenstein] is the only one which has been completed.

MARY SHELLEY: _First Preface_ to ‘Frankenstein.’ Boston: Sever, Francis & Co., 1869.

* * * * *

[Sidenote: Its conception.]

I busied myself _to think of a story_--a story to rival those which had excited us to this task.... I thought and pondered--vainly. I felt that blank incapability of invention which is the greatest misery of authorship, when dull nothing replies to our anxious invocations. _Have you thought of a story?_ I was asked each morning, and each morning I was forced to reply with a mortifying negative.

Many and long were the conversations between Lord Byron and Shelley, to which I was a devout but nearly silent listener. During one of these, various philosophical doctrines were discussed, and among others, the nature of the principle of life, and whether there was any probability of its ever being discovered and communicated.... Night waned upon this talk, and even the witching hour had gone by, before we retired to rest. When I had placed my head on my pillow, I did not sleep, nor could I be said to think. My imagination, unbidden, possessed and guided me, gifting the successive images that arose in my mind with a vividness far beyond the usual bound of reverie. I saw--with shut eyes, but acute mental vision--I saw the pale student of unhallowed arts kneeling beside the thing he had put together.... I opened my eyes in terror. The idea so possessed my mind, that a thrill of fear ran through me and I wished to exchange the ghastly image of my fancy for the realities around. I see them still; the very room, the dark _parquet_, the closed shutters, with the moonlight struggling through, and the sense I had that the glassy lake and the high white Alps were beyond. I could not so easily get rid of my hideous phantom; still it haunted me. I must try to think of something else. I recurred to my ghost story--my tiresome, unlucky ghost story. Swift as light, and as cheering, was the idea that broke in upon me. “I have found it!”

... On the morrow I announced that I had _thought of a story_. I began that day with the words, “_It was on a dreary night in November_,” making only a transcript of the grim terrors of my waking dream.

MARY SHELLEY: _Second Preface_ to ‘Frankenstein.’

* * * * *

[Sidenote: Mary in 1822.]

The most striking feature in her face was her calm, gray eyes; she was rather under the English standard of woman’s height, very fair and light-haired, witty, social, and animated in the society of friends, though mournful in solitude; like Shelley, though in a minor degree, she had the power of expressing her thoughts in varied and appropriate words, derived from familiarity with the works of our vigorous old writers.

E. J. TRELAWNY: ‘Recollections of the Last Days of Shelley and Byron.’ Boston: Ticknor & Fields, 1858.

* * * * *

It is clear that the society of Shelley was to her a great school, which she did not appreciate to the full until most calamitously it was taken away; and yet, of course, she could not fail to learn the greater part of what it had become to her. This again showed itself even in her appearance, after she had spent some years in Italy; for, while she had grown far more comely than she was in her mere youth, she had acquired a deeper insight into many subjects that interested Shelley, and some others; and she had learned to express the force of natural affection, which she was born to feel, but which had somehow been stunted and suppressed in her youth.

[Sidenote: Her peculiar powers.]

She was a woman of extraordinary power, of heart as well as head. Many circumstances conspired to conceal some of her natural faculties.... Her father--speaking with great diffidence, from a very slight and imperfect knowledge--appeared to me a harsh and ungenial man. She inherited from him her thin voice,[6] but not the steel-edged sharpness of his own; and she inherited, not from him, but from her mother, a largeness of heart that entered proportionately into the working of her mind. She had a masculine capacity for study; for, though I suspect her early schooling was irregular, she remained a student all her life, and by painstaking industry made herself acquainted with any subject that she had to handle.

THORNTON HUNT: ‘Shelley.’

* * * * *

[Sidenote: Constant reading.]

In looking over the journal in which, from day to day, Mrs. Shelley was in the habit of noting their occupations, as well as passing events, one is struck with wonder at the number of books which they read in the course of the year. At home or traveling--before breakfast, or waiting for the mid-day meal--by the side of a stream, or on the ascent of a mountain--a book was never absent from the hands of one or the other: and there were never two books; one read while the other listened.

LADY SHELLEY: ‘Shelley Memorials.’

* * * * *

[Sidenote: Loss of William Shelley.]

We suffered a severe affliction in Rome [in 1819] by the loss of our eldest child, who was of such beauty and promise as to cause him deservedly to be the idol of our hearts. We left the capital of the world, anxious for a time to escape a spot associated too intimately with his presence and loss.

[Sidenote: Italian life of the Shelleys.]

Some friends of ours were residing in the neighborhood of Leghorn, and we took a small house, Villa Valsovano, about half-way between the town and Monte Nero, where we remained during the summer. Our villa was situated in the midst of a podere; the peasants sang as they worked beneath our windows, during the heats of a very hot season, and in the evening the water-wheel creaked as the process of irrigation went on, and the fire-flies flashed from among the myrtle hedges:--nature was bright, sunshiny and cheerful, or diversified by storms of a majestic terror, such as we had never before witnessed. At the top of the house there was a sort of terrace ... very small, yet not only roofed but glazed; this Shelley made his study; it looked out on a wide prospect of fertile country, and commanded a view of the near sea.... In the spring [of 1820, having passed the winter in Florence and Pisa] we spent a week or two near Leghorn, borrowing the house of some friends, who were absent on a journey to England. It was on a beautiful summer evening while wandering among the lanes, whose myrtle hedges were the bowers of the fire-flies, that we heard the carolling of the skylark, which inspired one of the most beautiful of his poems.

[Sidenote: Shelley’s last home near Sant’ Arenzo, 1823.]

The bay of Spezia is of considerable extent, and divided by a rocky promontory into a larger and smaller one. The town of Lerici is situated on the eastern point, and in the depth of the smaller bay, which bears the name of this town, is the village of Sant’ Arenzo. Our house, Casa Magni, was close to this village; the sea came up to the door, a steep hill sheltered it behind. The proprietor ... had rooted up the olives on the hillside, and planted forest trees; ... some fine walnut and ilex trees intermingled their dark massy foliage, and formed groups which still haunt my memory, as then they satiated the eye with a sense of loveliness. The scene was indeed of unimaginable beauty; the blue extent of waters, the almost land-locked bay, the near castle of Lerici, shutting it in to the east, and distant Porto Venere to the west; the varied forms of the precipitous rocks that bound in the beach, over which there was only a winding rugged foot-path towards Lerici, and none on the other side; the tideless sea leaving no sands nor shingle--formed a picture such as one sees in Salvator Rosa’s landscapes only: sometimes the sunshine vanished when the sirocco raged--the ponente, the wind was called on that shore. The gales and squalls, that hailed our first arrival, surrounded the bay with foam; the howling wind swept round our exposed house, and the sea roared unremittingly, so that we almost fancied ourselves on board ship. At other times sunshine and calm invested sea and sky, and the rich tints of Italian heaven bathed the scene. The natives were wilder than the place.... If ever fate whispered of coming disaster, such inaudible, but not unfelt, prognostics hovered around us. The beauty of the place seemed unearthly in its excess: the distance we were at from all signs of civilization, the sea at our feet, its murmurs or its roarings forever in our ears--all these things led the mind to brood over strange thoughts, and, lifting it from every-day life, caused it to be familiar with the unreal. A sort of spell surrounded us, and each day, as the voyagers did not return, we grew restless and disquieted; and yet, strange to say, we were not fearful of the most apparent danger.

The spell snapped, it was all over; an interval of agonizing doubt was changed to the certainty of the death that eclipsed all happiness for the survivors forevermore.

MARY SHELLEY: _Notes_, in ‘Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley.’ Boston: Little, Brown, & Co., 1857.

* * * * *

She impressed me as a person with warm social feelings, dependent for happiness on loving encouragement, needing a guiding and sustaining hand.

[Sidenote: Mrs. Shelley in her widowhood.]

In person she was of middle height and graceful figure. Her face, though not regularly beautiful, was comely and spiritual, of winning expression, and with a look of inborn refinement; as well as culture. It had a touch of sadness when at rest.

ROBERT DALE OWEN: _Quoted in_ ‘Heroines of Free Thought,’ S. A. Underhill. New York: Charles P. Somerby, 139 Eighth Street, 1876.

* * * * *

[Sidenote: Development of character.]

I have heard her accused of an over-anxiety to be admired; and something of the sort was discernible in society: it was a weakness as venial as it was purely superficial. Away from society she was as truthful and simple a woman as I have ever met--was as faithful a friend as the world has produced--using that unreserved directness toward those whom she regarded with affection, which is the very crowning glory of friendly intercourse. I suspect that these qualities came out in their greatest force after her calamity; for many things which she said in her regret, and passages in Shelley’s own poetry, make me doubt whether little habits of temper, and possibly of a refined and exacting coquettishness, had not prevented him from acquiring so full a knowledge of her as she had of him.

THORNTON HUNT: ‘Shelley.’

* * * * *

[Sidenote: Appearance.]

Her well-shaped, golden-haired head, almost always a little bent and drooping; her marble-white shoulders and arms statuesquely visible in the perfectly plain black velvet dress, which the customs of that time allowed to be cut low, and which her own taste adopted (for she never wore the conventional “widow’s weeds” and “widow’s cap”); her thoughtful, earnest eyes; her short upper lip and intellectually curved mouth, with a certain close-compressed and decisive expression while she listened, and a relaxation into fuller redness and mobility while speaking; her exquisitely formed, white, dimpled, small hands, with rosy palms, and plumply commencing fingers, that tapered into tips as slender and delicate as those in a Vandyck portrait--all remain palpably present to memory. Another peculiarity in Mrs. Shelley’s hand was its singular flexibility, which permitted her bending the fingers back so as almost to approach the portion of her arm above her wrist. She once did this smilingly and repeatedly, to amuse the girl who was noting its whiteness and pliancy, and who now, as an old woman, records its remarkable beauty.

Very sweet and very encouraging was Mary Shelley to her young namesake, Mary Victoria, making her proud and happy by giving her a presentation copy of her wonderful book, ‘Frankenstein,’ and pleasing her girlish fancy by the gift of a string of cut-coral graduated beads from Italy....

Her mode of uttering the word “Lerici,” dwells upon our memory with peculiarly subdued and lingering intonation, associated as it was with all that was most mournful in connection with that picturesque spot where she learned she had lost her “beloved Shelley” forever from this fair earth.

[Sidenote: Love of Music.]

She was never tired of asking Francesco [Mr. Francis Novello] to sing Mozart’s “Qui Sdegno,” “Possenti Numi,” “Mentre ti Lascio,” “Tuba Mirum,” “La Vendetta,” “Non piu Andrai,” or “Madamina;” so fond was she of his singing her favorite composer.

MARY (VICTORIA NOVELLO) COWDEN CLARKE: ‘Recollections of Writers.’ New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons.

* * * * *

[Sidenote: A portrait.]

If the reader desires a portrait of Mary, he has one in the well-known antique bust sometimes called “Isis,” and sometimes “Clytie”; a woman’s head and shoulders rising from a lotus-flower. It is most probably the portrait of a Roman lady: is in some degree more elongated and “classic,” than Mary; but, on the other hand, it falls short of her, for it gives no idea of her tall and intellectual forehead, nor has it any trace of the bright, animated, and sweet expression that so often lighted up her face.

THORNTON HUNT: ‘Shelley.’

* * * * *

[Sidenote: A criticism.]

How changed is the taste of verse, prose, and painting, since _le bon vieux temps_, dear madam! Nothing attracts us but what terrifies, and is within--_if_ within--a hair’s breadth of positive disgust. Some of the strange things they write remind me of Squoire Richard’s visit to the Tower Menagerie, when he says: “Odd, they are _pure_ grim devils,”--particularly a wild and hideous tale called ‘Frankenstein.’

MRS. PIOZZI: _Letters to Mme. D’Arblay_, in the latter’s ‘Diary and Letters’; edited by Sarah Chauncey Woolsey. Boston: Roberts Bros., 1880.

* * * * *

[Sidenote: Scott’s remarks.]

The feeling with which we perused the unexpected and fearful, yet, allowing the possibility of the event, very natural conclusion of Frankenstein’s experiment, shook a little even our firm nerves.... It is no slight merit in our eyes that the tale, though wild in incident, is written in plain and forcible English, without exhibiting that mixture of hyperbolical Germanisms with which tales of wonder are usually told. The ideas of the author are always clearly as well as forcibly expressed; and his[7] descriptions of landscape have in them the choice requisites of truth, freshness, precision, and beauty. The self-education of the monster, considering the slender opportunities of acquiring knowledge that he possessed, we have already noticed as improbable and over-strained.

SIR WALTER SCOTT: ‘Remarks on Frankenstein,’ _Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine_, March, 1818. (‘Scott’s Miscellanies,’ _vol. i._ Philadelphia: Carey & Hart, 1841.)

* * * * *

[Sidenote: Lamb’s praise.]

Mrs. Shelley’s ‘Frankenstein’ ... he [Charles Lamb] thought the most extraordinary realization of the idea of a being out of nature which had ever been effected.

THOMAS NOON TALFOURD: ‘The Works of Charles Lamb, His Letters, and a Sketch of his Life.’ New York: Harper & Bros., 1838.

* * * * *

[Sidenote: Intellectual resemblance to Shelley.]

We have spoken of Mrs. Shelley’s similarity in genius to her husband’s--we by no means think her his equal. She has not his subtlety, swiftness, wealth of imagination, and is never caught up (like Ezekiel by his lock of hair) into the same rushing whirlwind of inspiration. She has much, however, of his imaginative and of his speculative qualities--her tendency, like his, is to the romantic, the ethereal, and the terrible. The tie detaining her, as well as him to the earth, is slender--her protest against society is his, copied out in a female hand--her style is carefully and successfully modeled upon his--she bears in brief, to him, the resemblance which Laone did to Laon, which Astarte did to Manfred.... Perhaps, indeed, intercourse with a being so peculiar ... has somewhat affected the originality, and narrowed the extent of her own genius.

Mrs. Shelley’s genius, though true and powerful, is monotonous and circumscribed--more so than even her father’s--and, in this point, presents a strong contrast to her husband’s. She has no wit, nor humor--little dramatic talent. Strong, clear description of the gloomier scenes of nature, or the darker passions of the mind, or of those supernatural objects which her fancy, except in her first work, somewhat laboriously creates, is her forte. Hence her reputation still rests upon ‘Frankenstein’; ... she unquestionably made him, but he has had no progeny.

... She has succeeded in her delineation; she has painted this shapeless being upon the imagination of the world forever; and beside Caliban, and Hecate, and Death and Life, and all other weird and gloomy creations, this nameless, unfortunate, involuntary, gigantic unit stands.

... The work is wonderful as the work of a girl of eighteen. One distinct addition to our original creations must be conceded her--and it is no little praise.

GEORGE GILFILLAN: ‘A Second Gallery of Literary Portraits.’ Edinburgh: James Hogg. London: R. Groombridge & Sons, 1850.

FOOTNOTES:

[5] Fanny Godwin, as she was always called, at the age of twenty-two committed suicide by taking laudanum, doubtless impelled by the singular melancholy inherited from her mother.

[6] See Shelley’s ‘Epipsychidon.’

[7] Shelley was at first supposed to be the author of ‘Frankenstein.’

MARY LAMB.

(1764-1847.)

MARY LAMB.

Seldom is the name of Mary Lamb seen without that of her brother. “The Lambs” still walk hand-in-hand in our mention, as they were wont to walk on pleasant holidays to Enfield, and Potter’s Bar, and Waltham; when Mary “used to deposit in the little hand-basket the day’s fare of savory cold meat and salad,” and Charles “to pry about at noon-tide for some decent house where they might go in and produce their store, only paying for the ale that he must call for.” Still they pass linked together through our thoughts, as on that sadder day when Charles Lloyd met them, crossing the fields to Hoxton--hand-in-hand, and weeping.

It is an act of severance against which the conscience somewhat protests, to present Mary alone to the consideration of the reader. It is like removing her from the protection of his presence who stood so faithfully and long between her and the world.

Mary Lamb was born in Crown Office Row, Inner Temple, December 3d, 1764. She was the daughter of John Lamb, the “clerk, good servant, dresser, friend, flapper, guide, stop-watch, auditor, treasurer,” as his son describes him, of a barrister named Salt. Charles was eleven years Mary’s junior. In 1795, (the elder Lamb, whose faculties were failing, having been pensioned by Mr. Salt,) the family left the Temple for lodgings in Little Queen Street. Here occurred, on the 21st of September in that year, the tragedy which set its stamp upon the after-life of Mary and Charles, and of which there is a sufficient account among the following extracts.

Mary remained in the asylum at Islington until the spring of 1797, when Charles, having satisfied the authorities by a solemn engagement to care for her during life, took a room for her at Hackney, where he spent his Sundays and holidays. In April, 1799, old John Lamb died, and from that time until death separated them Mary shared her brother’s home--or homes, for indeed they were legion. Procter chronicles the Lambs as lodging, in 1800, in Southampton Buildings, Chancery Lane; and removing during the same year to Mitre Court Buildings, Temple, where they remained till 1809. No. 4, Inner Temple Lane was their next residence, which they left, in 1817, for Russell Street, Covent Garden. In 1823 they removed to Colebrook Row, Islington; and in 1826 to Enfield. In 1830 they returned to Southampton Buildings. In 1833, Charles, having determined that his sister should remain with him during her illness for the future, they went to live at Mrs. Walden’s, in Church Street, Edmonton; where, on December 27th, 1834, Charles Lamb died.

Mary survived her brother more than twelve years. Age, and the decay of her mind, mitigated her grief for him. On the 28th of May, 1847, she was laid in his grave.

The works of Mary Lamb are as follows:

_Tales from Shakespeare_, published in 1807; in this work, the six great tragedies are by Charles.

_Mrs. Leicester’s School_, published in 1808, to which Charles contributed three of the ten stories.

_Poetry for Children_, 1809; here Charles was again her co-laborer, performing one-third of the work, but it is not positively certain which of the poems are his.

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[Sidenote: Mary’s Birthplace.]

On the south side of Fleet Street, near to where it adjoins Temple Bar, lies the Inner Temple. It extends southward to the Thames, and contains long ranges of melancholy buildings, in which lawyers and their followers congregate. It is a district very memorable. About seven hundred years ago it was the abiding-place of the Knights Templars, who erected there a church, which still uplifts its round tower (its sole relic) for the wonder of modern times. Fifty years since, I remember, you entered the precinct through a lowering archway that opened into a gloomy passage--Inner Temple Lane. On the east side rose the church; and on the west was a dark line of chambers, since pulled down and rebuilt, and now called Johnson’s Buildings. At some distance westward was an open court, in which was a sun-dial, and, in the midst, a solitary fountain, that sent its silvery voice into the air above, the murmur of which, descending, seemed to render the place more lonely. Midway, between the Inner Temple Lane and the Thames, was a range of substantial chambers (overlooking the gardens and the busy river), called Crown Office Row.

BRYAN W. PROCTER: ‘Charles Lamb, a Memoir.’ London: Edward Moxon & Co., 1866.

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[Sidenote: Education.]

Her education in youth was not much attended to; and she happily missed all that train of female garniture, which passeth by the name of accomplishments. She was tumbled early, by accident or design, into a spacious closet of good old English reading [the library of Mr. Salt, a barrister, to whom her father long acted as clerk] without much selection or prohibition, and browsed at will upon that fair and wholesome pasturage. Had I twenty girls, they should be brought up exactly in this fashion. I know not whether their chance in wedlock might not be diminished by it, but I can answer for it, that it makes (if the worst comes to the worst) most incomparable old maids.

CHARLES LAMB: _Mackery End, in Hertfordshire_, ‘Essays of Elia.’ (‘Works, with a Sketch of his Life,’ by Thomas Noon Talfourd. New York: Harper & Brothers, 1838.)

* * * * *

[Sidenote: Effect of this reading.]

A little selection would have made the pasturage all the wholesomer to a child of Mary’s sensitive, brooding nature; for the witch stories and the cruel tales of the sufferings of the martyrs on which she pored all alone, as her brother did after her, wrought upon her tender brain and lent their baleful aid to nourish those seeds of madness which she inherited.

[Sidenote: Country pleasures.]

The London-born and bred child had occasional tastes of joyous, healthful life in the country, for her mother had hospitable relatives in her native county, pleasant Hertfordshire. In after life she embodied them, mingling fiction with fact, in a story called ‘Louisa Manners; or, the Farmhouse,’ where she tells in sweet and child-like words of the ecstasy of a little four-year-old girl on finding herself for the first time in the midst of fields quite full of bright, shining yellow flowers, with sheep and young lambs feeding; of the inexhaustible interest of the farm-yard, the thresher in the barn with his terrifying flail and black beard, the collection of eggs and searching for scarce violets (“if we could find eggs and violets too, what happy children we were”); of the hay-making and the sheep-shearing, the great wood-fires and the farm-house suppers.

[Sidenote: Lack of sympathy in her home.]

With the cruelty of ignorance Mary’s mother and grandmother [Mrs. Field], suffered her young spirit to do battle, in silent and inward solitariness, with the phantoms imagination conjured up in her too sensitive brain. “Polly, what are those poor, crazy, moythered brains of yours thinking always?” was worthy Mrs. Field’s way of endeavoring to win the confidence of the thoughtful, suffering child. It was simple stupidity, lack of insight or sympathy in the elders; and was repaid by the sweetest affection, and, in after-years, by a self-sacrificing devotion which, carried at last far beyond her strength, led to the great calamity of her life.

[Sidenote: Charles.]

On the 10th of February, 1775, arrived a new member into the household group--Charles, the child of his father’s old age, the “weakly but very pretty babe” who was to prove their strong support. And now Mary was no longer a lonely girl. She was just old enough to be trusted to nurse and tend the baby, and she became a mother to it. In after-life she spoke of the comfort, the wholesome curative influence upon her young troubled mind, which this devotion to Charles in infancy brought with it. As his young mind unfolded, he found in her intelligence and love the same genial, fostering influences that had cherished his feeble frame into health and strength. It was with his little hand in hers that he first trod the Temple Gardens, and spelled out the inscriptions on the sun-dials and on the tombstones in the burying-ground, and wondered, finding only lists of the virtues, “where the naughty people were buried?” Like Mary, his disposition was so different from that of his gay, pleasure-loving parents that they but ill understood “and gave themselves little trouble about him,” which also tended to draw brother and sister closer together.

* * * * *

[Sidenote: Mary’s young womanhood.]

In the Lamb household the domestic outlook grew dark as soon as Mary was grown up, for her father’s faculties and her mother’s health failed early; and when, in his fifteenth year, Charles left Christ’s Hospital, it was already needful for him to take up the burthens of a man on his young shoulders; and for Mary not only to make head against sickness, helplessness, old age, with its attendant exigencies, but to add to the now straitened means by taking in millinery work. For eleven years, as she has told us [in an essay on needle-work, contributed to the _British Lady’s Magazine_, April, 1815], she maintained herself by the needle; from the age of twenty-one to thirty-two, that is.

* * * * *

[Sidenote: The great tragedy.]

The year 1795 witnessed changes for all. The father, now wholly in his dotage, was pensioned off by Mr. Salt, and the family had to exchange their old home in the Temple for straitened lodgings in Little Queen Street, Holborn (the site of which and of the adjoining houses is now occupied by Trinity Church). Meanwhile, Lamb was first tasting the joys and sorrows of love. Alice W---- lingers but as a shadow in the records of his life; the passion, however, was real enough and took deep hold of him, conspiring with the cares and trials of home-life to give a fatal stimulus to the germs of brain-disease, which were part of the family heritage, and for six weeks he was in a mad-house.... No sooner was Charles restored to himself than the elder brother, John, met with a serious accident; and though while in health he had carried himself to more comfortable quarters, he did not now fail to return and be nursed with anxious solicitude by his brother and sister. This was the last ounce. Mary, worn out with years of nightly as well as daily attendance upon her mother, who was now wholly deprived of the use of her limbs, and harassed by a close application to needle-work, to help her in which she had been obliged to take a young apprentice, was at last strained beyond the utmost pitch of physical endurance, “worn down to a state of extreme nervous misery.” About the middle of September, she being then thirty-two years old, her family observed some symptoms of insanity in her.... On the afternoon of the 21st, seized with a sudden attack of frenzy, she snatched a knife from the table and pursued the young apprentice round the room, when her mother, interposing, received a fatal stab and died instantly. Mary was totally unconscious of what she had done.

ANNE GILCHRIST: ‘Mary Lamb.’ (Famous Women Series.) Boston: Roberts Bros., 1883.

* * * * *

[Sidenote: Mary on her recovery.]

My poor, dear, dearest sister, the unhappy and unconscious instrument of the Almighty’s judgment on our house, is restored to her senses; to a dreadful sense and recollection of what has passed, awful to her mind, and impressive (as it must be to the end of life), but tempered with religious resignation and the reasonings of a sound judgment, which in this early stage knows how to distinguish between a deed committed in a transient fit of frenzy and the terrible guilt of a mother’s murder. I have seen her. I found her this morning, calm and serene; far, very far, from an indecent, forgetful serenity.

CHARLES LAMB: _Letter to Coleridge_, 1796, in ‘Final Memorials of Charles Lamb,’ by Thomas Noon Talfourd. London: Edward Moxon, 1848.

* * * * *

Little could any one, observing Miss Lamb in the habitual serenity of her demeanor, guess the calamity in which she had partaken or the malady which frightfully checkered her life. From Mr. Lloyd ... I learned that she had described herself, on her recovery from the fatal attack, as having experienced, while it was subsiding, such a conviction that she was absolved in Heaven from all taint of the deed in which she had been the agent--such an assurance that it was a dispensation of Providence--such a sense that her mother knew her entire innocence and shed down blessings upon her, as though she had seen the reconcilement in solemn vision--that she was not sorely afflicted by the recollection. It was as if the old Greek notion of the necessity for the unconscious shedder of blood, else polluted though guiltless, to pass through a religious purification, had in her case been happily accomplished.

THOMAS NOON TALFOURD: ‘Final Memorials of Charles Lamb.’

* * * * *

[Sidenote: Relapses.]

Her relapses were not dependent on the seasons; they came in hot summers and with the freezing winters. The only remedy seems to have been extreme quiet when any slight symptom of uneasiness was apparent. Charles (poor fellow) had to live, day and night, in the society of a person who was--mad! If any exciting talk occurred, he had to dismiss his friend with a whisper. If any stupor or extraordinary silence was observed, then he had to rouse her instantly.

BRYAN W. PROCTER: ‘Charles Lamb; a Memoir.’

* * * * *

The constant impendency of this giant sorrow saddened to the Lambs even their holidays; as the journey which they both regarded as the relief and charm of the year was frequently followed by a seizure.

... Miss Lamb experienced, and full well understood, premonitory symptoms of the attack, in restlessness, low fever, and the inability to sleep; and, as gently as possible, prepared her brother for the duty he must soon perform; and thus, unless he could stave off the terrible separation till Sunday, obliged him to ask leave of absence from the office as if for a day’s pleasure--a bitter mockery! On one occasion Mr. Charles Lloyd met them, slowly pacing together a little footpath in Hoxton Fields, both weeping bitterly, and found, on joining them, that they were taking their solemn way to the accustomed asylum.

Miss Lamb would have been remarkable for the sweetness of her disposition, the clearness of her understanding, and the gentle wisdom of all her acts and words, even if these qualities had not been presented in marvellous contrast with the distractions under which she suffered for weeks, latterly for months in every year. There was no tinge of insanity discernible in her manner to the most observant eye.... Hazlitt used to say that he never met with a woman who could reason and had met with only one thoroughly reasonable--the sole exception being Mary Lamb. She did not wish, however, to be made an exception, to the general disparagement of her sex; for in all her thoughts and feelings she was most womanly--keeping under, ever in due subordination to her notion of a woman’s province, an intellect of rare excellence which flashed out when the restraints of gentle habit and humble manner were withdrawn by the terrible force of disease. Though her conversation in sanity was never marked by smartness or repartee, seldom rising beyond that of a sensible, quiet gentlewoman, appreciating and enjoying the talents of her friends, it was otherwise in her madness. Her ramblings often sparkled with brilliant description and shattered beauty. She would fancy herself in the days of Queen Anne or George the First; and describe the brocaded dames and courtly manners as though she had been bred among them, in the best style of the old comedy. It was all broken and disjointed, so that the hearer could remember little of her discourse; but the fragments were like the jewelled speeches of Congreve, only shaken from their settings. There was sometimes even a vein of crazy logic running through them, associating things essentially most dissimilar, but connecting them by a verbal association in strange order. As a mere physical instance of deranged intellect, her condition was, I believe, extraordinary; it was as if the finest elements of the mind had been shaken into fantastic combinations, like those of a kaleidoscope.

THOMAS NOON TALFOURD: ‘Final Memorials of Charles Lamb.’

* * * * *

[Sidenote: Home of the Lambs.]

It was always in a room of moderate size, comfortably but plainly furnished, that he [Charles] lived. An old mahogany table was opened out in the middle of the room, round which, and near the walls, were old, high-backed chairs (such as our grandfathers used), and a long, plain book-case completely filled with old books. These were his “ragged veterans.” In one of his letters he says: “My rooms are luxurious: one for prints, one for books; a summer and winter parlor.” They, however, were not otherwise decorated. I do not remember ever to have seen a flower or an image in them. He had not been educated into expensive tastes. His extravagances were confined to books. These were all chosen by himself, all old, and all in “admired disorder”; yet he could lay his hand on any volume in a moment.... Here Charles Lamb sat, when at home, always near the table. At the opposite side was his sister, engaged in some domestic work, knitting or sewing, or poring over a modern novel. She wore a neat cap, of the fashion of her youth; an old-fashioned dress. Her face was pale and somewhat square, but very placid, with gray, intelligent eyes. She was very mild in her manner to strangers, and to her brother gentle and tender, always. She had often an upward look of peculiar meaning, when directed toward him, as though to give him assurance that all was then well with her. His affection for her was somewhat less on the surface, but always present. There was great gratitude intermingled with it. “In the days of weakling infancy,” he writes: “I was her tender charge, as I have been her care in foolish manhood since.” Then he adds, pathetically, “I wish I could throw into a heap the remainder of our joint existences, that we might share them in equal division.”

BRYAN W. PROCTER: ‘Charles Lamb; a Memoir.’

* * * * *

[Sidenote: Mary’s manner.]

Her manner was easy, almost homely, so quiet, unaffected, and perfectly unpretending was it. Beneath the sparing talk and retired carriage, few casual observers would have suspected the ample information and large intelligence that lay comprised there. She was oftener a listener than a speaker. In the modest-behaviored woman simply sitting there, taking small share in general conversation, few who did not know her would have imagined the accomplished classical scholar, the excellent understanding, the altogether rarely-gifted being, morally and mentally, that Mary Lamb was.

CHARLES AND MARY COWDEN CLARKE: ‘Recollections of Writers.’ New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons.

* * * * *

[Sidenote: Appearance.]

His sister, whose literary reputation is closely associated with her brother’s, and who, as the original of “Bridget Elia,” is a kind of object for literary affection, came in after him. She is a small, bent figure, evidently a victim to illness, and hears with difficulty. Her face has been, I should think, a fine and handsome one, and her bright, gray eye is still full of intelligence and fire.

N. P. WILLIS: ‘Pencillings by the Way.’ New York: Charles Scribner, 1853.

* * * * *

In stature Mary was under the middle-size, and her bodily frame was strong. She could walk fifteen miles with ease; her brother speaks of their having walked thirty miles together, and, even at sixty years of age, she was capable of twelve miles “most days.”

ANNE GILCHRIST: ‘Mary Lamb.’

* * * * *

[Sidenote: Habits.]

Miss Lamb bore a strong personal resemblance to her brother; being in stature under middle height, possessing well-cut features and a countenance of singular sweetness, with intelligence. Her brown eyes were soft, yet penetrating; her nose and mouth very shapely; while the general expression was mildness itself. Her apparel was always of the plainest kind, a black stuff or silk gown, made and worn in the simplest fashion. She took snuff liberally--a habit that had evidently grown out of her propensity to sympathize with and share all her brother’s tastes, and it certainly had the effect of enhancing her likeness to him. She had a small, white, and delicately-formed hand, and as it hovered above the tortoise-shell box containing the powder so strongly approved by them both, in search of the stimulating pinch, the act seemed yet another link of association between the brother and sister, when hanging together over their favorite books and studies.

CHARLES AND MARY COWDEN CLARKE: ‘Recollections of Writers.’

* * * * *

[Sidenote: Lamb’s sketch of his sister.]

Bridget Elia has been my housekeeper for many a long year. I have 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.”]