CHARLES LAMB.
If there is a tender and touching story in all the annals of genius, it is surely the life-history of Charles Lamb. Search where we will, there is nothing to equal the pathos of this gentle and lovable life. Nowhere else can we find a record of such deep devotion, such heroic endurance, such uncomplaining suffering, such geniality and cheerfulness under almost unbearable burdens. The world admires many of its men of letters,—it loves Charles Lamb. Save Carlyle's, no voice among all his literary brethren has ever said a bitter or an unkind word of the gentle humorist. And when we compare the lives of the two men, how brightly glows the page whereon is written the record of Lamb's untiring and unselfish love, exacting nothing for himself, but giving all with lavish prodigality, compared with the pages given to the account of the selfish and exacting life which Carlyle lived with the woman who was his wife, and whom he really loved, but over whom he tyrannized in so petty a manner! Carlyle's characterization of Lamb is really the most damaging thing to himself of the many bitter and biting sarcasms which he has left in regard to the men and women of his day. That he did not know Lamb—had not the slightest appreciation of the man—is evident at a glance. And perhaps this is not to be so much wondered at, for there was very little in common between the two; but it does seem that some hint of the heroism of Lamb's apparently commonplace and perhaps vulgar life might have penetrated even to the heart of the crusty Scotchman, for he could not have been ignorant of the tragic life-story of gentle Elia.
They were very humble people, the Lambs,—poor and obscure, and unfortunate to a degree. No pretensions to gentility had ever been in the family, but an acceptance of their commonplace lot, with little striving for higher things. There was something more, too, than poverty and obscurity and vulgarity in their antecedents; a fearful curse was in the family, the heritage of almost every generation,—the curse of madness. What the contemplation of this frightful inheritance must have been to a youth like Charles Lamb, gifted with the fatal sensibility of genius, and endowed with that imagination which can conceive of a horror before it falls, we can form some sort of conception, but probably a very vague and inadequate one indeed.
The family were very poor, living in humble lodgings. The father was in his dotage, the mother was a paralytic, and Charles with his pen, and his sister Mary with her needle, worked to support the family. They both overworked themselves fearfully, and lived in apprehension of the doom which hung over them. They were very fondly attached to each other, and the only pleasure they had in their cheerless youth was their intercourse. They were both gifted, and of gentle and kind disposition, and their affection for each other was more sympathetic and filled with a deeper insight into each other's characters and feelings than is common between brothers and sisters. In little intervals between their varied labors they wrote and read to each other many things which would have a rare value in these days had they been preserved; and this, with wandering together through the streets in the evenings and looking at the outside of the theatres, seems to have constituted their only youthful pleasure. At the age of twenty-one Charles showed symptoms of the family curse, and his sister herself almost lost her reason in unavailing sorrow over his condition. So young, so gifted, and threatened with such dread disaster,—his loving Mary could not have it so. She even rebelled against Heaven in the extreme of her agony, and called upon God to relieve them both from such ill-fated life. But all her prayers and tears and rebellious risings up against destiny did not avail, and Charles was placed in a mad-house, where he passed a portion of the year 1796. In one of his lucid intervals he wrote a sonnet, "Mary, to thee, my sister, and my friend," which is a touching and tender tribute to her love. Long afterward he was able to write of the experience quite cheerfully:—
"I look back upon it at times with a gloomy kind of envy; for while it lasted I had many, many hours of pure happiness. Dream not, Coleridge, of having tasted all the grandeur and wildness of fancy till you have gone mad!"
But there is a painful commentary upon the bitterness of after-life to him in the thought that he could look back upon this dreadful season as a period when he had some happiness. The attack in his case was of brief duration, and it never recurred, which, considering all the sorrows and all the irregularities of his life, seems remarkable. He had not been long in a condition to be responsible when the tragedy took place which cast its blight upon his life. In September of the year 1796 Mary Lamb, "worn down to a state of extreme nervous misery by attention to needle-work all day and by watching with her mother at night, broke into uncontrollable insanity, and seizing a knife from the table spread for dinner, stabbed her mother to the heart. The coroner's jury brought in a verdict of lunacy." Charles writes to Coleridge:—
"With me the former things are passed away, and I have something more to do than to feel. God Almighty has us well in his keeping."
The horror of the event made so deep an impression upon his mind that he thought he never fully recovered from it. For many, many years it hung over him like a pall, casting a sort of despairing darkness over all that might have been bright in life. Think of that tender and sensitive soul in the awful solitude of the nights which followed the tragedy: the sister he loved removed from him to an asylum; the mother sleeping in her unhonored grave; the father, worse than dead, in almost drivelling idiocy, to be cared for at his hands; the awful doom of the family ever hanging over his own head,—what depths of passionate sorrow must he have waded through in those bitter hours, what unavailing tears he must have shed, what rebellious thoughts may there not have been in his heart!
But he kept a cheerful front, and went about his daily toil, as he needs must, with as little outward show of pain as possible.
Mary soon grew better, and he exerted himself to have her released from confinement. He succeeded in doing so by entering into a solemn agreement to make her his charge for life, and to watch over her that she should do no harm. When she was returned to him he was almost happy again, in spite of the shadow caused by the memory of what had happened, as well as by the uncertainty of the future. He had but one hundred pounds a year from his clerkship, and there was a maiden aunt as well as the father to be cared for. But he says cheerfully:—