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."
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:—