Chapter 2

Charles Lamb has more totality and individuality of character than any other man I know, or have ever known in all my life. In most men we distinguish between the different powers of their intellect as one being predominant over the other. The genius of Wordsworth is greater than his talent, though considerable. The talent of Southey is greater than his genius, though respectable; and so on. But in Charles Lamb it is altogether one; his genius is talent, and his talent is genius, and his heart is as whole and one as his head. The wild words that come from him sometimes on religious subjects would shock you from the mouth of any other man, but from him they seem mere flashes of fireworks. If an argument seem to his reason not fully true, he bursts out in that odd desecrating way; yet his will, the inward man, is, I well know, profoundly religious. Watch him, when alone, and you will find him with either a Bible or an old divine, or an old English poet; in such is his pleasure.

In 1798 was published "A Tale of Rosamund Gray and Poor Blind Margaret," a story of which Lamb wrote in the following year: "Rosamund sells well in London, malgré the non-reviewal of it," and in 1798 also, Lloyd and Lamb published a joint volume of "Blank Verse."

It was in the spring of 1801--a pleasant beginning of the new century for them--that the Lambs, after having had all too frequently to change their lodgings owing to the "rarity of Christian charity," which objected to housing a quiet couple because of their affliction, at length found pleasant residence in 16, Mitre Court Buildings. Writing to his friend, Thomas Manning--one of the correspondents with whom he was ever in the happiest vein--Lamb expatiated upon the moving very much in the style of his later essays:

I am going to change my lodgings, having received a hint that it would be agreeable, at our Lady's next feast. I have partly fixed upon most delectable rooms, which look out (when you stand a tip-toe) over the Thames and Surrey Hills, at the upper end of King's Bench walks in the Temple. There I shall have all the privacy of a house without the encumbrance, and shall be able to lock my friends out as often as I desire to hold free converse with my immortal mind; for my present lodgings resemble a minister's levee, I have so increased my acquaintance (as they call 'em), since I have resided in town. Like the country mouse, that had tasted a little of urban manners, I long to be nibbling my own cheese by my dear self without mouse-traps and time-traps. By my new plan, I shall be as airy, up four pair of stairs, as in the country; and in a garden, in the midst of enchanting, more than Mahometan paradise, London, whose dirtiest, drab-frequented alley, and her lowest-bowing tradesman, I would not exchange for Skiddaw, Helvellyn James, Walter, and the parson into the bargain. O! her lamps of a night! her rich goldsmiths, print-shops, toy-shops, mercers, hardwaremen, pastry-cooks! St. Paul's churchyard! the Strand! Exeter Change! Charing Cross, with the man _upon_ a black horse! These are thy gods, O London! Ain't you mightily moped on the banks of the Cam? Had you not better come and set up here? You can't think what a difference. All the streets and pavements are pure gold, I warrant you. At least I know an alchemy that turns her mud into that metal,--a mind that loves to be at home in crowds.

Here we have the voice of the best of London-lovers, and here we have also a hint of the way in which he was finding himself too much "accompanied"--to use a phrase from one of his unpublished letters. He frequently chafed against the number of visitors who ate up his day, and at times had even to resent the way in which an intimate friend would be over-zealous in entertaining him, when for his own part he would rather have been alone. One special evening in each week was set apart for cards and conversation, and those occasions are perhaps among the best remembered features of early nineteenth-century literary life. Representative evenings will be found described in various works.[3] The company was not limited to literary folk, though many notable men of letters were to be met there, along with humbler friends, for the Lambs were catholic in their friendships, and had nothing of the exclusiveness of more pretentious salons. "We play at whist, eat cold meat and hot potatoes, and any gentleman that chooses smokes." At these gatherings Mary Lamb moved about observantly looking after her diverse guests, while Lamb himself, it has been said, might be depended upon for at once the wisest and the wittiest utterance of the evening. Here it was that he made his whimsical reproach to a player with dirty hands: "I say, Martin, if dirt were trumps what a hand you'd have." And it was on some such occasion, too, that he retorted on Wordsworth, who had said that the writing of "Hamlet" was not so very wonderful: "Here's Wordsworth says he could have written 'Hamlet'--_if he had the mind_."

[Footnote 3: In Talfourd's "Memorials" of Lamb; in Hazlitt's essay "Of Persons One would wish to have Seen."]

In the opening years of the century Lamb contributed epigrams and paragraphs to "The Albion," "The Morning Chronicle," and "The Morning Post" (thanks to Coleridge's introduction). His latest contribution to the first-named journal helped to bring about its sudden demise. One of the latest which was pointed at Sir James Mackintosh (author of "Vindicæ Gallicæ") may serve as a specimen of the personal epigram in which Lamb considered himself happiest:

Though thou'rt like Judas an apostate black, In the resemblance one thing thou dost lack, When he had gotten his ill-purchased pelf, He went away and wisely hanged himself; This thou may'st do at last; yet much I doubt, If thou hast any bowels to gush out.

Lamb's position after ten years at the India House had no doubt considerably improved, but he was glad of the opportunity of making an additional couple of guineas a week as epigrammatist to "The Morning Post." He did not, however, continue long at the work; it was too severe a tax to be ever wondering how this, that, or the other person or event could be hit off in a few lines of copy, and the irksomeness he felt, combined with the editorial exactions, caused him to give it up. In 1802 came a memorable visit by the Lambs to Coleridge at Keswick, a visit which resulted in Charles Lamb's thinking kindlier of mountains than he had hitherto done, without in any way lessening his strong local attachment to the metropolis. Of the day in which he climbed Skiddaw he said: "It was a day that will stand out, like a mountain, I am sure, in my life"; a happy simile which would not have occurred to one who stood, so to speak, on a familiar footing with mountains.

The life in the Temple was roughly divided into two portions: the first, at Mitre Court Buildings, extended from the spring of 1801 to that of 1809; then there seems to have been a brief stay of a few weeks at 34, Southampton Buildings, Holborn, and at the end of the following May or beginning of June, the Lambs moved into 4, Inner Temple Lane, which "looks out upon a gloomy churchyard-like court, called Hare Court, with thin trees and a pump in it.... I was born near it, and used to drink at that pump when I was a Rechabite of six years old." Here Lamb and his sister lived until 1817, continuing in their pleasant weekly evenings to afford a memorable centre for the meeting of memorable men. At one of these meetings when it was being debated, whom it was the different members of the company would like best to meet from among the notable men of letters of the past, Lamb promptly fixed upon Sir Thomas Browne and Fulke Greville. How many of us in such a debate to-day would as promptly name Charles Lamb!

During the first half of these years in the Temple, Charles Lamb had written much that now endears him to us; but little, it is to be feared, that made the great body of contemporary readers aware of his existence. In 1806 he essayed dramatic authorship, had had his farce, "Mr. H.," performed at Drury Lane, had been present on the occasion of its solitary appearance when it was incontinently damned, and had himself taken part in the damnatory hissing. At the beginning of 1807 was published the "Tales from Shakspeare," for which he and his sister were jointly responsible, and for which they received a sum of sixty guineas; in 1808 came another book for children in "The Adventures of Ulysses," and in the same year the "Specimens of English Dramatic Poets Contemporary with Shakspeare."

During the second half of the stay in the Temple--the years at 4, Inner Temple Lane, which have been regarded as the happiest portion of his life--Lamb made but slight advance in literary reputation, but he was already firmly established in the favour of the few who had been privileged to know him, to hear his stammered wit, his spoken wisdom. Though this period from 1809 to 1817 is not marked by the production of notable books, it was during this time that he contributed to Leigh Hunt's "Reflector," wrote his "Recollections of Christ's Hospital" for the "Gentleman's Magazine," and his "Confessions of a Drunkard" for a friend's publication. Here were most Elia-like precursors of the famous "Essays."

In the autumn of 1817 the Lambs removed from the Temple in which they had passed the greater part of their lives, taking rooms over a brazier's shop at 20, Russell Street, Covent Garden, at the corner of Bow Street, where, as Mary Lamb put it, they had "Drury Lane Theatre in sight of our front, and Covent Garden from our back windows." Covent Garden, as Charles said, "dearer to me than any garden of Alcinous, where we are morally sure of the earliest peas and 'sparagus." One of the first letters from the new lodgings Lamb whimsically addressed as from "The Garden of England." The half dozen years during which he lived here forms from a literary point of view the most memorable period of Lamb's life. Here he arranged for the publication of the two precious little volumes of his "Works" which were issued in the summer of 1818--volumes which he found "admirably adapted for giving away," having no exaggerated idea of the sensation which the publication was likely to make. That publication was arranged, apparently, at the request of the publishers, the brothers Ollier, whom he now numbered among his friends. Writing to Southey of the venture he said: "I do not know whether I have done a silly thing or a wise one, but it is of no great consequence. I run no risk and care for no censure." Here in Russell Street Lamb continued his sociable weekly evenings--changed from Wednesdays to Thursdays--here, indeed, he had to chafe anew at the difficulty of having himself to himself; he was never C. L., he declared, but always C. L. and Co. He had, indeed, something of a genius for friendship; however much he might wish to be alone, he was, there can be little doubt, ever genial, ever his wise and whimsical self, even when suffering under the untimely advent of "Mr. Hazlitt, Mr. Martin Burney, or Morgan Demigorgon"; he had to suffer--or imagine that he suffered--from the effects of a personal charm of which he was wholly unaware; but if he had not been so friendlily accessible the world would probably have lacked record of many of the delightful hints which help towards our realization of one of the most attractive personalities in our literary history.

Lamb was already in middle age--in his forty-sixth year--when there came to him an opportunity of expressing himself in the way best suited to his genius. Early in 1820 there was started a new periodical under the simple title of "The London Magazine." Several of Lamb's friends were among the contributors, and he also was probably invited to write for it at an early date. His first contribution appeared in the number for August signed "Elia" (call it "Ellia," said he), the name having occurred to Lamb's memory as that of a whilom fellow-clerk of his thirty years earlier at the South Sea House; for several years he continued his contributions to this remarkable miscellany, finding in the personal informal essay the most congenial medium for expressing his mature wisdom, his whimsical humour, his radiant wit. By the close of 1822 there were essays enough to make a volume, and in 1823, such duly appeared. Even with this Lamb was not to touch popularity--it may be doubted whether he ever did that in his lifetime. He was known, admired, loved by a large circle of friends and acquaintances, but his work made little impression, we may believe, upon the wider reading public; it was, however, fully appreciated by those of his contemporaries best able to judge, and "Elia" came to be recognized as one of the literary mainstays of a magazine which counted among its contributors, De Quincey, Allan Cunningham, B. W. Procter, William Hazlitt, Hartley Coleridge, Horace Smith, and many more writers of note in their day.

Little more than six months after Lamb's first essay signed "Elia" had appeared in the "London," the editor of that magazine was wounded in a duel and died, and in the summer of 1821 the periodical changed hands, but retained its brilliant staff of contributors, and acquired the services of Thomas Hood, then a young man of two-and-twenty, as a "sort of sub-editor." The new proprietors gave monthly dinners to their writers, and here Lamb would meet some of his old friends and many new. Hood has recorded his first meeting with Elia in the offices of the magazine, and his account may be quoted, affording as it does something like a glimpse of Lamb in his habit as he lived at the time of the full maturity of his powers:

I was sitting one morning beside our Editor, busily correcting proofs, when a visitor was announced, whose name, grumbled by a low ventriloquial voice, like Tom Pipes calling from the hold through the hatchway, did not resound distinctly on my tympanum. However, the door opened, and in came a stranger,--a figure remarkable at a glance, with a fine head, on a small spare body, supported by two almost immaterial legs. He was clothed in sables, of a bygone fashion, but there was something wanting, or something present about him, that certified he was neither a divine, nor a physician, nor a school master: from a certain neatness and sobriety in his dress, coupled with his sedate bearing, he might have been taken, but that such a costume would be anomalous, for a _Quaker_ in black. He looked still more like (what he really was) a literary Modern Antique, a New-Old Author, a living anachronism, contemporary at once with Burton the Elder, and Colman the Younger. Meanwhile he advanced with rather a peculiar gait, his walk was plantigrade, and with a cheerful "How d'ye do," and one of the blandest, sweetest smiles that ever brightened a manly countenance, held out two fingers to the Editor. The two gentlemen in black soon fell into discourse; and whilst they conferred the Lavater principle within me set to work upon the interesting specimen thus presented to its speculations. It was a striking intellectual face, full of wiry lines, physiognomical quips and cranks, that gave it great character. There was much earnestness about the brows, and a deal of speculation in the eyes, which were brown and bright, and "quick in turning"; the nose, a decided one, though of no established order; and there was a handsome smartness about the mouth. Altogether it was no common face--none of those _willow-pattern_ ones, which Nature turns out by thousands at her potteries;--but more like a chance specimen of the Chinese ware, one to the set--unique, antique, quaint. No one who had once seen it, could pretend not to know it again. It was no face to lend its countenance to any confusion of persons in a Comedy of Errors. You might have sworn to it piecemeal,--a separate affidavit for every feature. In short his face was as original as his figure; his figure as his character; his character as his writings; his writings the most original of the age. After the literary business had been settled, the Editor invited his contributor to dinner, adding "we shall have a hare"--

"And--and--and--and many friends?"

The hesitation in the speech, and the readiness of the allusion were alike characteristic of the individual, who his familiars will perchance have recognized already as the delightful Essayist, the capital Critic, the pleasant Wit and Humorist, the delicate-minded and large-hearted Charles Lamb!

This gives us at once something of a glimpse of Lamb as he appeared to the eyes of his contemporaries, and an indication of the impression which his genius had made on another man of genius. With his Elia essays he may be said to have crowned his achievements in the eyes of those who knew him, and, in fact, his active work, or that part of it which counts, may be said to have ended with the production of these essays, which he wrote at first for the "London," and occasionally later for other periodicals.

In 1823 came another removal. During the summer, or when busy over some piece of writing, Lamb had stayed a while at Dalston or other semi-rural place away from the time-wasting friends and fascinations of town. Thus when it was decided to leave Russell Street the move was made to semi-suburban quietude and retirement.

When you come London-ward you will find me no longer in Covt Gard. I have a Cottage, in Colebrook row, Islington. A cottage, for it is detach'd; a white house, with 6 good rooms; the New River (rather elderly by this time) runs (if a moderate walking pace can be so termed) close to the foot of the house; and behind is a spacious garden, with vines (I assure you), pears, strawberries, parsnips, leeks, carrots, cabbages, to delight the heart of old Alcinous. You enter without passage into a cheerful dining-room, all studded over and rough with old Books, and above is a lightsome Drawing-room 3 windows, full of choice prints. I feel like a great Lord, never having had a house before....

I heard of you from Mr. Pulham this morning, and that gave a fillip to my Laziness, which has been intolerable. But I am so taken up with pruning and gardening, quite a new sort of occupation to me. I have gather'd my Jargonels, but my Windsor Pears are backward. The former were of exquisite raciness. I do now sit under my own vine, and contemplate the growth of vegetable nature. I can now understand in what sense they speak of FATHER ADAM. I recognize the paternity, while I watch my tulips.

Were Lamb a matter-of-fact correspondent it might be pointed out that tulips are not much to watch in September. During the winter of 1824-5 he suffered from ill health, and in April, 1825, he was allowed to retire from the East India House with a pension of two-thirds of his salary, less a small sum to assure an annuity for his sister in the event of his dying first. For thirty-three years had he continued in his office, and his salary had gradually grown from the modest £70 of the beginning to ten times that amount at his retirement, so that he became a superannuated man with an income ample for the modest requirements of himself and Mary. On the subject of his retirement he wrote some touching letters to friends such as Wordsworth and Bernard Barton, and also in his accustomed manner made the crucial event the subject of a delightful "Elia" essay. He had before expatiated on the excellent position of the authors who were not "authors for bread"--men who like himself were employed in business during the day and had to dally with literature in off hours. Certainly Lamb's "hack work," the work done for the booksellers during the early part of the century, was his least memorable achievement, and we cannot help feeling what a boon it was to Lamb himself and to Letters that he was chained so long to the desk's dead wood, instead of being dependent on the favour of the booksellers for his livelihood, and upon the popular taste of the moment for his themes.

In 1820, during a summer holiday at Cambridge, Lamb met an orphan girl, Emma Isola, then eleven years of age, whom he and Mary later adopted, and the letters have many references to the welcome companionship of Emma, who gave something of a new interest in life to the brother and sister.[4] In 1827 the household removed again, this time to the Chase, Enfield. Two years later they gave up the house of their own and boarded with a Mr. and Mrs. Westwood, their next-door neighbours. In 1833 Mary, who had had frequently to be "from home," as it has been euphemistically put, was under the charge of Mr. and Mrs. Walden at Bay Tree Cottage, Edmonton, when Charles decided to live under the same roof with her, even during her periods of mental derangement, and followed her thither, in

The not unpeaceful evening of a day Made black by morning storms.

[Footnote 4: Emma Isola married Edward Moxon, the publisher.]

How much Mary's companionship meant to him may be gathered from an open-hearted letter which he had written in 1805 to Dorothy Wordsworth--and it meant no less in the years that followed:

I have every reason to suppose that this illness, like all her former ones, will be but temporary; but I cannot always feel so. Meantime she is dead to me and I miss a prop. All my strength is gone, and I am like a fool, bereft of her co-operation. I dare not think, lest I should think wrong; so used am I to look up to her in the least and the biggest perplexity. To say all that I know of her would be more than I think anybody could believe, or even understand; and when I hope to have her well again with me, it would be sinning against her feelings to go about to praise her; for I can conceal nothing that I do from her. She is older and wiser and better than I, and all my wretched imperfections I cover to myself by resolutely thinking on her goodness. She would share life and death, heaven and hell, with me. She lives but for me.

On 25th July, 1834, Coleridge died, and the blow was a terrible one to Charles Lamb; "we die many deaths before we die," he had said of the departure of friends; and the passing of Coleridge may be said to have come as a fatal shock, for he survived him but five months, and during that time was heard to say again and again, as though the fact were too stupendous to believe, not to be realized, "Coleridge is dead!" Taking his usual morning walk in the fourth week of December, Lamb stumbled and fell, bruising his face; the bruise did not seem serious, but erysipelas supervened, and on 27th December, 1834, the beloved friend, the noble man, passed into the great silence. He was buried in Edmonton Churchyard, and there, nearly thirteen years later, was laid by him the dear sister who had so long watched over him, whom he had so long guarded.

* * * * *

"'Saint Charles,' said Thackeray to me, thirty years ago, putting one of Charles Lamb's letters to his forehead."[5]

[Footnote 5: Edward FitzGerald's "Letters."]

HIS PRINCIPAL WRITINGS