Part 10

It was not until the death of his father, in the early part of 1799, that Charles felt it desirable to take his sister to his own home. At this time Mary was thirty-five and Charles twenty-five. From this time forward they were, indeed, one. They lived and worked together, thought together, and side by side grew old. They had several changes of residence--always in London or the suburbs. Mary had also many relapses. Both knew she was liable to them, and they lived always on the brink of this great trouble. As for Lamb himself, he was never again subject to the terrible malady. He had no time for brooding. The constant thought required for his sister made him strong--forced him to brace himself to face the stern duty whenever required. And Mary herself fronted the sadness of her lot with fortitude. In preparation for any short holiday together, which they occasionally made, she would with her own hands pack as a necessary article of luggage the strait jacket, which might at any moment be required for use upon herself. There is no picture more pathetic than that presented of this loving brother and sister, how that, after a premonition of the on-coming affliction, they would set out, hand in hand, for her temporary asylum, together weeping over the sadness of their lot. And this continued throughout their lives.

And yet it would be wrong to suppose their path to have been altogether sad. It was illumined by love, the heavy load was lightened by mutual help. Their devotion to each other, and joint pursuit of literature, was an immense compensation in their hard fate, bringing, as it ever does, the ideal into the actual, and casting a glamour of romance over the most heart-breaking realities of existence.

They had also many friends--friends after their own heart--who loved the intellectual converse of their humble home, and who knew well the circumstances of their saddened lives. These would include from time to time many of the choicest spirits of the age, whom the genius and gentleness of Lamb brought to his side. Barry Cornwall, in his memoir, says:--

"Lamb and his sister had an open party once a week, every Wednesday evening, where his friends generally went to visit him, without any special invitation. He invited you suddenly, not pressingly; but with such heartiness that you at once agreed to come. There was usually a game at whist on these evenings, in which the stakes were very moderate, indeed, almost nominal. When my thoughts turn backward, as they sometimes do, to those past days, I see my dear old friend again--'in my mind's eye, Horatio'--with his outstretched hand, and his grave, sweet smile of welcome. It was always in a room of moderate size, comfortably, but plainly furnished, that he lived. An old mahogany table was opened out in the middle of the room, round which, and near the walls, were old high-backed chairs (such as our grandfathers used), and a long plain bookcase completely filled with old books. These were his 'ragged veterans.' Here Charles Lamb sat, when at home, always near the table. At the opposite side was his sister, engaged in some domestic work, knitting or sewing, or poring over a modern novel. 'Bridget in some things is behind her years.' In fact, although she was ten years older than her brother, she had more sympathy with modern books and with youthful fancies than he had. She wore a neat cap of the fashion of her youth, and an old-fashioned dress. Her face was pale and somewhat square, but very placid, with grey, intelligent eyes. She was very mild in her manner to strangers, and to her brother gentle and tender always. She had often an upward look of peculiar meaning when directed towards him, as though to give him assurance that all was then well with her. His affection for her was somewhat less on the surface, but always present. There was great gratitude intermingled with it. 'In the days of weakling infancy,' he writes, 'I was her tender charge, as I have been her care in foolish manhood since.' Then he adds pathetically, 'I wish I could throw into a heap the remainder of our joint existences, that we might share them in equal division.'"

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) Of comfort from their very grief. He'd tell them that their brother, dead, When years have passèd o'er their head, Will be remembered with such holy, True, and perfect melancholy, That ever this lost brother John Will be their heart's companion. His voice they'll always hear, His face they'll always see, There's naught in life so sweet As such a memory."

When Miss Wordsworth's reply to this consoling letter arrived, it devolved upon Charles to answer it for the sad reason stated. He writes (June 14, 1805):--"Your long, kind letter has not been thrown away, for it has given me great pleasure to find you are all resuming your old occupations and are better; but poor Mary, to whom it is addressed, cannot yet relish it. She has been attacked with one of her severe illnesses and is at present from home. Last Monday week was the day she left me, and I hope I may calculate upon having her again in a month or little more. I am rather afraid late hours have, in this case, contributed to her indisposition.... I have every reason to suppose that this illness, like all the former ones, will be but temporary; but I cannot always feel so. In the 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 as in the biggest perplexity. To say all 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 of her goodness. She would share life and death, heaven and hell with me. She lives but for me, and I know I have been wasting and teasing her life for five years past incessantly with my cursed drinking and ways of going on. But even in this upbraiding of myself I am offending against her, for I know that she has clung to me for better for worse; and if the balance has been against her hitherto it was a noble trade...."

The death of Coleridge, in 1834, was a great bereavement to the Lambs. Charles seems to have lived under a constant sense of personal loss. In six months he followed his friend to the unseen world. The fond desire of the brother and sister that she should die first was thus unfulfilled; but she was becoming more and more cut off from the realities of life, and probably hardly ever realised the bitterness of the separation. Wordsworth wrote a poem to the memory of Lamb containing feeling allusions to Mary. In reference to it he said: "Were I to give way to my own feelings, I should dwell not only on her genius and intellectual powers, but upon the delicacy and refinement of manner which she maintained inviolable under most trying circumstances. She was loved and honoured by all her brother's friends; and others, some of them strange characters, whom his philanthropic peculiarities induced him to countenance."

Thou wert a scorner of the fields, my friend, But more in show than truth; and from the fields, And from the mountains, to thy rural grave Transported, my soothed spirit hovers o'er Its green, untrodden turf, and blowing flowers; And taking up a voice shall speak (though still Awed by the theme's peculiar sanctity Which words less free presumed not even to touch) Of that fraternal love, whose heaven-lit lamp From infancy, through manhood, to the last Of threescore years, and to thy latest hour, Burnt on with ever-strengthening light, enshrined Within thy bosom.

"Wonderful" hath been The love established between man and man, "Passing the love of women;" and between Man and his helpmate in fast wedlock joined Through God, is raised a spirit and soul of love Without whose blissful influence Paradise Had been no Paradise; and earth were now A waste where creatures bearing human form, Direst of savage beasts would roam in fear, Joyless and comfortless. Our days glide on; And let him grieve who cannot choose but grieve That he hath been an elm without his vine, And her bright dower of clustering charities, That, round his trunk and branches, might have clung Enriching and adorning. Unto thee, Not so enriched, not so adorned, to thee Was given (say rather, thou of later birth, Wert given to her) a sister--'tis a word Timidly uttered, for she lives, the meek, The self-restraining, and the ever kind; In whom thy reason and intelligent heart Found, for all interests, hopes, and tender cares, All softening, humanising, hallowing powers, Whether withheld, or for her sake unsought-- More than sufficient recompense!

Her love (What weakness prompts the voice to tell it here?) Was as the love of mothers; and when years, Lifting the boy to man's estate, had called The long-protected to assume the part Of a protector, the first filial tie Was undissolved; and, in or out of sight, Remained imperishably interwoven With life itself.

* * * * *

O gift divine of quiet sequestration! The hermit exercised in prayer and praise, And feeding daily on the hope of heaven, Is happy in his vow, and fondly cleaves To life-long singleness; but happier far Was to your souls, and, to the thoughts of others, A thousand times more beautiful appeared, Your dual loneliness. The sacred tie Is broken; yet, why grieve? for Time but holds His moiety in trust, till Joy shall lead To the blest world where parting is unknown.

Mary survived her brother for thirteen years, being lovingly cared for in the twilight of her life by sympathising friends. She died in May, 1847; and they now rest in the same grave in Edmonton churchyard.

ELIZABETH H. WHITTIER.

Readers of Whittier, the now venerable and famous American poet, will remember fond allusions to his favourite sister Elizabeth, who during her life was a bright and stimulating member of the poet's earlier and later home. The day has not yet come when we can learn much of her happy influence upon him. She was pre-eminently her brother's sister, and of her character as such we cannot now know much. She was also herself a poet, and several of her pieces have been published. A few particulars of her life cannot be uninteresting.

She was born on December 7, 1815, the younger sister of the poet, being the fourth and last child of their father, John Whittier. Elizabeth derived her second name from the family of her mother, whose maiden name was Abigail Hussey, and who was of English descent. The Whittiers had for some generations lived in a house built by one of the ancestors of the family at Haverill, and had been prominent members of the Society of Friends.

The young Whittiers were happy in their parenthood, as well as in their early surroundings. Their father was an honest, upright, sturdy yeoman, to whom a mean and cowardly action was unknown, while their mother was gifted with the natural refinement of thought and manner distinguishing the possession of a gentle heart.

Passages in Whittier's "Snowbound" are pleasantly descriptive of his early home and its members. Of his mother he writes:--

Our mother, while she turned her wheel, Or run the new-knit stocking heel, Told how the Indian hordes came down At midnight on Cochico town. Then haply, with a look more grave, And soberer tone, some tale she gave From painful Sewall's ancient tome, Beloved in every Quaker home, And faith fire-winged by martyrdom.

Of his sister Mary he says:--

There, too, our elder sister plied Her evening task the stand beside; A full, rich, nature, free to trust, Truthful and almost sternly just, Impulsive, earnest, prompt to act, And make her generous thought a fact, Keeping with many a light disguise, The secret of self-sacrifice.

And thus of Elizabeth:--

As one who held herself a part Of all she saw, and let her heart Against the household bosom lean, Upon the motley braided mat Our youngest and our dearest sat, Lifting her large, sweet, asking eyes.

When Elizabeth was born, John, the future poet, was just eight years old, and attending his first school. Years wore on, and the boy's occupation alternated between school, household duties, and work on his father's farm. Meanwhile his little sister was, from the exemplary household gathered under her father's roof, and the sweet influences of a happy home, receiving the impressions and learning the precious lessons which can only be gathered during the earliest years, and through which the little human child becomes the sweetest thing in life.

Whilst Elizabeth was still a child a leading incident in the boy's life took place. His old schoolmaster, on paying a visit to his father's house, brought a copy of the poems of Burns, from which he recited certain pieces, greatly to the delight of John, who borrowed the book. He adds:--"This was about the first poetry I had ever read (with the exception of that of the Bible, of which I had been a close student), and it had a lasting influence upon me. I began to make rhymes myself, and to imagine stories and adventures." So we find the boy of fourteen beginning to write his first poems, which, under the encouragement of his elder sister Mary, he continued to do for some years, when he began to send anonymous contributions from his pen to the local newspaper. He was only a country youth, working in his father's fields; but by thoughtful sympathy Nature had become glorified for him, and life was soon to be sanctified. Notice was taken of his poetical productions, he was stimulated to greater exertion, and through his own industry obtained the means of attending the Haverhill Academy for a short period when in his twentieth year. The next few years of the future poet's life were spent between his own schooling, teaching others, helping on the farm, and editing and contributing to country newspapers.

But if it were the elder sister who encouraged Whittier in his earliest poetic efforts, it was Elizabeth who became more and more, with her growing years, his "heart's companion," his imitator, his _alter ego_. We learn from one of his letters during a visit which he paid to his home in 1831, that Elizabeth, then a girl of fifteen summers, had herself begun to write verses. The following are the opening lines of a description by her of "Autumn Sunset":--

O, there is beauty in the sky--a widening of gold Upon each light and breezy cloud, and on each vapoury fold! The Autumn wind has died away, and the air has not a sound, Save the sighing of the withered leaves as they fall upon the ground.

During this visit to his home Whittier's father died. This circumstance probably influenced him in his decision to resign his position as editor of _The New England Weekly Review_, that he might return to his mother and sisters.

One pleasing glimpse we catch of Elizabeth in her twentieth year. Sharing her brother's anti-slavery sympathies, she was occasionally called to share the dangers which at that time beset those who had the courage to espouse the cause of the oppressed. In 1835, when Whittier was the corresponding secretary of the Anti-slavery Society of Haverhill, a lecture on slavery having been announced was interfered with by the mob, who terrified the audience by a disgraceful attack upon the building where the lecture was being delivered. The meeting was broken up in confusion, and it was in part owing to the bravery of Miss Whittier that the lecturer escaped in safety, she, along with another young lady, undertaking to escort the lecturer, pushing their way through the threatening mob. On another occasion, when attending a meeting of the Female Anti-slavery Society at Boston, Elizabeth was herself in considerable danger of rough usage at the hands of her infuriated opponents. She did not by any means lead a public life, but was, on the contrary, of a retiring and gentle nature, and it was only the cruel wrongs of the oppressed that roused her sympathies and led her to active endeavours on their behalf.