TALFOURD'S FINAL MEMORIALS OF CHARLES LAME. THE principal' topic of
these volumes is a family disease and a terrible event, that influenced the career of Charles and Mary Lamb ; but which, however necessary to be considered in forming an estimate of their cha- racters, could not be even touched upon during their lives. Insanity is sometimes spoken of by the patient in reference to his own case; but: the subject is felt to be awkward or painful when broached by him, and can never be introduced by others. How much more fearful was the death of a parent by the hands of a child, though guiltless, or indeed unconscious of the act ; and how impossible to exhibit to the public during the life of the actor: yet was a knowledge of both misfortunes necessary to feel the tie between Lamb and his sister, to understand much that seemed flighty in his character, to allow for several peculiarities of conduct, and to appreciate the nobleness of his gentleness and self-sacrifice. The story, suppressed during the life of the sufferers, is as follows.
"In the year 1795," writes Mr. Sergeant Talfourd, " Charles Lamb resided with his father, mother, and sister, [and a superannuated maiden aunt, who paid a trifle for her board,] in lodgings at No. 7 Little Queen Street, Holborn. The father was rapidly sinking into dotage ; the mother suffered under an infirmity which deprived her of the use of her limbs ; and the sister not only undertook the office of daily and nightly attendance on her mother, but sought to add by needlework to their slender resources." Charles Lamb at this time was twenty ; he was in correspondence with his old schoolfellow Coleridge ; he had begun writing verses, and displayed occasionally in his letters to his friend that soundness of critical acumen which afterwards distinguished him ; and he felt an attachment " to a young lady residing in the neighbourhood of Islington, who is commemorated in his early verses as 'the fair- haired maid." All thought of marriage, however, was terminated by the catastrophe that ensued in the following year, 1796. Insanity was in the family Charles Lamb at an earlier period had been placed under restraint ; so bad his sister ; and it is supposed that this hereditary disease, aggravated by the anxieties of her business du- ring the day and attendance upon her mother at night, produced a sudden paroxysm of fury, which caused that mother's death.
" It appeared from the evidence," says a report of the Coroner's inquest in the Times, which suppressed the name, " that, i
While the family were preparing for dinner, the young lady seized a case-knife lying on the table, and in a menacing manner pursued a little girl, her apprentice, round the room. On the calls of her 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 of the house [this seems a mistake; from Lamb's first letter to Coleridge, it would appear to have been himself]; hut too late. The dreadful scene presented to him the mother lifeless, pierced to the heart, on a chair, her daughter yet wildly standing over her with the fatal knife, ancLthe old man her father weeping by her side, himself bleeding at the forehead from the effects of a severe blow he received from one of the forks she had been madly hurling about the room. "For a few days prior to this, the family had observed some symptoms of in- sanity in her, which liad so much increased on the Wednesday evening, that her brother early the next morning went to Dr. Pitcairn; but that gentleman was not at home.
" It seems the young lady had been once before deranged. " The Jury, of course, brought in their verdict Lunacy.'" In this terrible affliction everything fell upon Charles; for his elder brother was confined by an accident. The sister was removed, and placed under restraint. The • first leisure impulse of Charles was to address Coleridge—"'Write," says he, alluding to an answer, "as religious a let- ter as pbssible, 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." After a short time Mary Lamb was restored to her senses, but was still confined to the Asylum ; and Lamb could write more fully to Coleridge upon the whole affair.
"My dearest Friend—Your letter was an inestimable treasure to me. It will be a comfort to you, I know, to know that our prospects are somewhat brighter. My poor dear, dearest sister the unhappy and unconscious instrument of the Almighty's judgments on our-house, is restored to her senses; to a dreadful sense and recollection of what has past, awful to her mind and impressive, (as it mast 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 a 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 tranquillity. God be praised, Coleridge, wonderful as it is to tell, I have never once been otherwise than collected and calm; even on the dreadful day, and in the midst of the terrible scene, I preserved a tranquillity which bystanders may have construed into indifference—a tranquillity not of despair. Is it folly or am-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 a wound he bad 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 com- prehension 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 now 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, re- morse struck me: this tongue poor Mary got for me, and I can partake of it. now, when she is far away. A thought occurred and relieved me: if I give into this way of feeling, there is not a chair, a room, an object in our rooms, that will not awaken the keenest griefs: I must rise above such weaknesses. I hope this was not want of true feeling. I did 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 were a matter of twenty people, I do think, supping in our room: they prevailed with ma 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—the very next room; a mother who through life wished nothing but her children's welfare. Indigna- tion, the rage of grief, something like remorse, rushed upon my mind: in an agony of emotion I found my way mechanically to the 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. Tranquillity returned; and it was the only violent emotion that mastered me, and I think it did me good.
" I mention these things because I hate concealment, and love to give a faithful journal of what passes within me. Our friends have been very good. Sam Le Grice, who was then in town, was with me the three or four first days, and was a brother to me; gave up every hour of his time, to the very hurting of' his health and spirits, in constant attendance and humouring my poor father; talked with him, read to him, played at cribbage with him,—for so short is the old man's re- collection, that be was playing at cards as though nothing had happened while he Coroner's inquest was sitting over the way."
The anxieties and active exertions of Lamb did not cease with his sis- ter's restoration to sanity ; they rather began. It was the medical opi- nion that she would be liable to frequent relapses (as turned out to be the ease) ; her elder brother, apparently a coarse, selfish, " good-tem- fellow," advocated the necessity of her confinement, in which view
was supported by the friends of the family ; the parish officers, though in a kindly manner, intimated doubts whether it would not become their duty to take such steps as would end in placing her in the hands of the Crown if she left the Asylum ; and it is said by Mr. Lloyd that the Se- cretary of State interfered in the matter. The brotherly affection of Charles, however, triumphed over the opposition of his little world. He satisfied all parties' by a "solemn engagement that he would take her under his care for life' ; and he fulfilled his pledge for seven-and-thirty years of unceasing anxiety and frequent sorrow, relieved, no doubt, by the consciousness of duty and the power of affection. How this sad- dened but hardly darkened portions of Lamb's existence—how, coupled with the taint in his blood, it explained his-seeming levities and excused his Weakness--and how unrepiningly he struggled through the clouded portions of life and cheerfully enjoyed the sunshine—Mr. Talfoard shows by Lamb's letters, as well as 'by his own narrative and comments. We cannot attempt to exhibit this in its details ; they must be sought in the volumes. But we can take a portion of the biographer's summary of the
life and character of the brother and sister, as at the same time a com- plete view of the subject and a rare example of delicate portraiture and just appreciation, in which the fondness of friendship never passes the exactest limit of truth.
"Except to the few who were acquainted with the tragical occurrences of Lamb's early life, some of his peculiarities seemed strange—to be forgiven, indeed, to the excellencies of his nature and the delicacy of his genius, but still in them- selves as much to be wondered at as deplored. The sweetness of his character, breathed through his writings, was felt even by strangers; but its heroic aspect was ungaessed, even by many of his friends. Let them now consider it, and ask if the annals of self-sacrifice can show anything in human action and endurance more lovely than its self-devotion exhibits ! It was not merely that he saw, (which his elder brother cannot be blamed for not immediately perceiving,) through the ensangnined cloud of misfortune which had fallen upon his family, the unstained excellence of his sister, whose madness had caused it; that he was ready to take her to his own home with reverential affection, and cherish her through life; that he gave up, for her sake, all meaner and more selfish love, and all the hopes which youth blends with the passion which disturbs and ennobles it; not even that he did all this cheerfully, and without pluming himself upon his brotherly, nobleness as a virtue, or seeking. to repay himself (as some uneasy martyrs do) by small instalments of long repining; but that he carried the spirit of the hour in which he first knew and took his course to his last. So far from thinking that his sacrifice of youth and love to his sister gave him a licence to fol- low his own caprice at the expense of her feelings, even in the lightest matters, he always wrote and spoke of her as his wiser self-his generous benefactress, of whose protecting care he was scarcely worthy. • • •
"Let it also be remembered that this devotion of the-entire nature was not ex- ercised merely in the consciousness of a past tragedy, but during the frequent recurrences of the calamity which caused it, and the constant apprehension of its terrors; and this for a large portion of life, in poor lodgings, where the brother and sister were, or fancied themselves, marked people'; where, from an income incapable of meeting the expense of the sorrow without sedulous privations, he contrived to hoard, not for holyday enjoyment or future solace, but to provide for expected distress.
The constant impendency of this giant sorrow saddened to 'the Lambs' even their holydays ; as the journey which they. both regarded as the relief and charm of the year was frequently followed by a setzure; and when they ventured to take it, a strait-waistcoat, carefully packed by Miss Lamb herself, was their constant companion. Sad experience at last induced the abandonment of the annual ex- cursion and Lamb was contented with walks in and near:London; during the in- terval of labour. Miss Lamb experienced, and full well understood, premonitory symptoms of the attack, in restlessness, low fever, and the inability to sleep; and, as gently as possible, prepared her brother for the duty he must soon perform- and thus, unless he could stave off the terrible separation till Sunday, obliged hitt; to ask leave of absence from the office as if for a day's pleasure—a bitter mockery. On one occasion Mr. Charles Lloyd met them, slowly pacing together a little foot- path in Hoxton fields, both weeping bitterly; and found on joining them, that they were taking their solemn way to the accustomed asylum!
" Will any one, acquainted with these secret passages of Lamb's history, won- der that, with a strong physical inclination. for the stimulus and support of strong drinks, which man is framed moderately,to rejoice in, he should snatch some wild pleasure between the acts' (as he called them) of his diatressfnl drama '; and that, still more, during the loneliness of the solitude created by his sister's absences, he should obtain the solace of -an hour's feverish dream? That not- withstanding that frailty, he performed the duties of his hard lot with exemplary steadiness and discretion, is indeed wonderful; especially when it is recollected that he had himself been 'visited, when in the dawn of manhood, with his sister's malady, the seeds of which were doubtless in his frame. While that natural pre- disposition may explain some occasional flightiness of expression on serious mat- ters, fruit of some wayward fancy, which flitted through his brain, without dia- turliing his constant reason or reaching his heart, and some little extravagances of fitful mirth, how does it heighten the moral courage by which the disease was controlled and the severest duties performed! "
Intermingled with this sadly pleasing story of well-sustained suffering, are a variety of miscellaneous letters ; the best of which rather interfere with the principal narrative, while some are too trivial in their sub- jects, or of too little merit in point of composition, to have been printed at all, (unless in an appendix,) since there is no lack of minute knowledge relating to Lamb. Mr. Talfonrd has added from himself various reminiscences of Lamb's friends, forming a series of portraits ; among whom may be mentioned Hazlitt, Haydon, and Godwin. He also institutes a comparison (rather far-fetched, it strikes us) between Lamb's Wednes- day evening whist-parties, concluding with cold meat, porter, and glasses of ".mixture," and the Saturday sessional dinners at Holland House : but the parallel gives rise to an agreeable description of each, with a nicely. drawn social character of the late Lady Holland. In the body of the narrative, too, he introduces some remembrances of the. London Maga- zine and its contributors ; including a sketch of thecareer of Wainwright, apparently one of the persons upon whose character and crimes Bulwer founded one part of his Lucretia. We should gladly draw upon all these sections if our space permitted : as it is, we must be content with recommending the reader to the volumes.
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