Although a poor boy, he was educated in the famous old Christ’s Hospital School in London, but when he was ready for college he found himself barred by his stammering, stuttering tongue. Giving up his hope of further schooling, he was glad to take a small clerkship in a government office, where he remained for thirty-three years, a long period with little or no advancement.
It was in 1792, when Charles was about seventeen years of age, that he was given his clerkship, and for nearly four years he lived happily, supporting his parents and his sister in their humble home. Mary was eleven years older than Charles, a quiet gentle creature whom everybody loved, though in some respects she was peculiar. There were things, too, that troubled the family and made them reserved and inclined to be oversensitive. Not only were they very poor, but there had been insanity on the mother’s side, and Charles, himself, had at one time been in brief confinement for irrational actions. Mary, too, had occasionally shown signs of madness, but no one anticipated the dreadful event which took place in 1796.
It came upon them like a stroke of lightning out of a clear sky. All were gathered together for their noon meal when Mary leaped to her feet and ran wildly about the room, shrieking in the terrifying tones of the insane. She caught the forks and spoons from the table, threw them about the room, and then, seizing a case knife, plunged it into the heart of her mother. Although one of the flying forks had struck her aged father in the head and wounded him severely, Mary sprang upon him and would certainly have killed the feeble old man then and there had not Charles caught her and in a terrible struggle overpowered her and wrested the knife from her grasp. Friends and neighbors came in, and the poor woman was taken to an asylum, where in a short time she recovered her reason and learned of the awful consequences of her madness. In those days hospitals for the insane were much more poorly managed than they are at present, and Charles could not be contented to think of his sister confined within their walls. Accordingly he went to the authorities, and after much persuasion they released her, under the condition that she should be constantly under care.
Then began the long career of brotherly devotion which can scarcely be matched, and which never fails to excite our sympathy and admiration. We may well think it a terrible penance, for Mary’s attacks recurred again and again, and more than once Charles had to take her back to the hospital for a brief time while her violence remained too great for him to control. There were long lucid intervals, however, and after a while both learned to recognize the symptoms which preceded an attack, and the two would wend their way to the asylum, where she could take refuge. They carried a straight-jacket with them for use in case she should suddenly become violent, for never could either escape from the nightmare of that first awful catastrophe.
For forty years this companionship, this sublime devotion continued, even to the time of Charles Lamb’s death in 1834. Both made many friends, and when the brother was laid away these friends came forward and took up the burden of Mary’s care until she, too, died, nearly thirteen years later. The last years of Lamb’s life were full of further trouble, that, combined with his crushing anxiety for Mary, broke his genial spirit and left him sad and melancholy.
One of the greatest blows he suffered in his later life was the death of his life-long friend, Samuel Taylor Coleridge. See how fondly he wrote of this friend:
“Since I feel how great a part he was of me his great and dear spirit haunts me. I cannot think a thought, I cannot make a criticism on men or books without an ineffectual turning and reference to him.... He was my fifty-years-old friend without a dissension. I seem to love the house he died at more passionately than when he lived.... What was his mansion is consecrated to me a chapel.”
It is said that when his sister was first stricken Lamb was engaged to be married to Ann Simmons, a sweet woman, whom he loved passionately. So awful was the blow and so heavy the responsibility he assumed that the match was broken off, and the gentle man resigned his hope of home and family. We shall see, however, that he never quite forgot his love.
Sad as their life certainly was, there were many pleasant days for both brother and sister. Between her spells of violence Mary was a charming companion, a helpful adviser and a writer of great ability, as loyal to her brother as he was to her. When Lamb was engaged to write the Tales from Shakespeare, she took up the pen with him and wrote the stories of the great poet’s comedies while Charles wrote the tragedies.