Mrs. Cowden Clarke has also left some very interesting reminiscences of this period. She says:—
"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. 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 softendly akin to her brother Charles's 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. She had a mind at once nobly toned and practical, making her ever a chosen source of confidence among her friends, who turned to her for consultation, confirmation, and advice in matters of nicest moment—always secure of deriving from her both aid and solace. Her manner was easy, almost homely, so quiet, unaffected, and perfectly unpretending was it. Beneath the sparing talk and retiring 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-'havioured 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, moral and mental, that Mary Lamb was. Her apparel was always of the plainest kind—a black stuff or silk gown, made and worn in the simplest fashion conceivable. She took snuff liberally—a habit that had evidently grown out of her propensity to sympathise with and share 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 tortoiseshell box containing the powder so strongly approved by them both, in search of a stimulating pinch, the act seemed yet another link of association between the brother and sister when hanging together over their favourite books and studies."
During all the time of periodic distress both Charles and Mary Lamb were, from time to time, engaged in literary work. In the quiet home, the most liable among tens of thousands to be at any moment the scene of heartrending upheaval, we should not have looked for some of the best work of the age. But such was the case. In the most devoted brother of the century we have, at the same time, the quaintest humourist and one of the most subtle critics. And in Mary herself we have a striking instance of scholastic training being supplemented by home study and wide reading, until she became an accomplished scholar and a fit companion to her greater brother. Probably, her love for him was the great moving cause of Mary's culture. Her own contributions to literature were of no slight value and interest. Of the twenty ever-favourite "Tales from Shakespeare," fourteen were written by Mary, the six tragedies being the production of Charles. The tales are written with the felicity of style peculiar to the Lambs, and form a suitable introduction, especially for young people, to the works of the great dramatist. In a letter by Mary, referring to this joint production, she says: "Charles has written 'Macbeth,' 'Othello,' 'King Lear,' and has begun 'Hamlet.' 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 also wrote a series of entertaining stories for children under the title of "Mrs. Leicester's School." Nor did she confine herself to prose. She was the author of several of the pieces in "Poetry for Children," published in the names of her brother and herself. It is not certain which of the poems are hers. Apart from authentic information, of which there is none, opinion is speculative. Charles stated that his own was about one-third of the whole.
Mary was to her friends a generous correspondent. Her letters show the same ease and gracefulness of style as the "Tales," and are very pleasant reading. As a sample one may be given, written to Dorothy Wordsworth, shortly after the loss of her brother, Captain Wordsworth, in the Abergavenny. This gives us a glimpse of the writer's sympathetic heart and rare sensibility—
"I thank you, my kind friend, for your most comfortable letter; till I saw your own handwriting I could not persuade myself that I should do well to write to you, though I have often attempted it; but I always left off dissatisfied with what I had written, and feeling that I was doing an improper thing to intrude upon your sorrow. I wished to tell you that you would one day feel the kind of peaceful state of mind and sweet memory of the dead which you so happily describe as now almost beginning; but I felt that it was improper and most grating to the feelings of the afflicted to say to them that the memory of their affliction would in time become a constant part, not only of their dream, but of their most wakeful sense of happiness. That you would see every object with and through your lost brother, and that that would at last become a real and everlasting source of comfort to you, I felt and well knew, from my own experience in sorrow; but till you yourself began to feel this I did not dare tell you so; but I send you some poor lines which I wrote under this conviction of mind, and before I heard Coleridge was returning home. I will transcribe them now, before I finish my letter, lest a false shame prevent me then, for I know they are much worse than they ought to be, written as they were with strong feeling, and on such a subject; every line seems to me to be borrowed; but I had no better way of expressing my thoughts, and I never have the power of altering or amending anything I have once laid aside with dissatisfaction:—
"Why is he wandering on the sea?
Coleridge should now with Wordsworth be.
By slow degrees he'd steal away
Their woe, and gently bring a ray
(So happily he'd time relief)