"Bridget is so sparing of her speech on most occasions, that when she gets into a rhetorical vein, I am careful how I interrupt it. I could not help, however, smiling at the phantom of wealth which her dear imagination had conjured up out of a clear income of poor—hundred pounds a year. 'It is true we were happier when we were poorer, but we were also younger, my cousin. I am afraid we must put up with the excess, for if we were to shake the superflux into the sea, we should not much mend ourselves. That we had much to struggle with as we grew up together, we have reason to be most thankful. It strengthened and knit our compact closer. We could never have been what we have been to each other, if we had always had the sufficiency which you now complain of. The resisting power, those natural dilations of the youthful spirit, which circumstances cannot straiten—with us are long since passed away. Competence to age is supplementary youth, a sorry supplement indeed, but I fear the best that is to be had. We must ride where we formerly walked; live better and lie softer—and we shall be wise to do so—than we had means to do in those good old days you speak of. Yet could those days return—could you and I once more walk our thirty miles a day,—could Bannister and Mrs. Bland again be young, and you and I be young again to see them,—could the good old one-shilling gallery days return—they are dreams, my cousin, now—but could you and I at this moment, instead of this quiet argument, by our well-carpeted fireside, sitting on this luxurious sofa, be once more struggling up those inconvenient stair-cases, pushed about and squeezed and elbowed by the poorest rabble of poor gallery scramblers,—could I once more hear those anxious shrieks of yours, and the delicious 'Thank God we are safe,' which always followed when the topmost stair conquered let in the first light of the whole cheerful theatre down beneath us—I know not the fathom-line that ever touched a descent so deep as I would be willing to bury more wealth in than Crœsus had, or the great Jew R. is supposed to have, to purchase it."…
These fire-side confidences between brother and sister bring back, in all the warmth and fulness of life, that past mid which the biographer has been groping and listening to echoes.
CHAPTER XV.
Lamb's Ill-health.—Retirement from the India House, and subsequent Illness.—Letter from Mary to Lady Stoddart.—Colebrook Cottage left.—Mary's constant Attacks.—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.
1824-47.—Æt. 60-83.
The year 1824 was one of the best Mary ever enjoyed. Alas! it was not the precursor of others like it, but rather a farewell gleam before the clouds gathered up thicker and thicker till the light of reason was permanently obscured. In November Charles wrote to Miss Hutchinson: "We had promised our dear friends the Monkhouses" [relatives of Mrs. Wordsworth]—"promised ourselves, rather—a visit to them at Ramsgate; but I thought it best, and Mary seemed to have it at heart too, not to go far from home these last holidays. It is connected with a sense of unsettlement, and secretly I know she hoped that such abstinence would be friendly to her health. She certainly has escaped her sad yearly visitation, whether in consequence of it, or of faith in it, and we have to be thankful for a good 1824, To get such a notion in our heads may go a great way another year. Not that we quite confined ourselves; but, assuming Islington to be head-quarters, we made timid flights to Ware, Watford, &c., to try how trouts tasted, for a night out or so, not long enough to make the sense of change oppressive, but sufficient to scour the rust of home."
With Lamb it was quite otherwise. The letters of this year show that health and spirits were flagging sorely. He had, ever since 1820, been working at high pressure; producing in steady, rapid succession, his matchless Essays in the London Magazine, and this at the end of a long day's office work. His delicate, nervous organisation could not fail to suffer from the continued strain; not to mention the ever present and more terrible one of his sister's health.
At last his looks attracted the notice of one of his chiefs, and it was intimated that a resignation might be accepted; as it was after some anxious delays; and a provision for Mary, if she survived, was guaranteed in addition to his comfortable pension. The sense of freedom was almost overwhelming. "Mary wakes every morning with an obscure feeling that some good has happened to us," he writes. "Leigh Hunt and Montgomery, after their releasements, describe the shock of their emancipation much as I feel mine. But it hurt their frames; I eat, drink, and sleep as sound as ever."