"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!