Part 9
As has been suggested, Miss Wordsworth might have earned for herself a place in literature had she not so entirely lived only for and in her brother. She was one of the most graceful and accomplished of letter writers; and the fragments from her journals, from time to time given to the world, written chiefly in the Alfoxden days and the early years at Grasmere, contain passages of rare beauty. To instance a few lines only. Alluding to a favourite birch tree, she says: "It was yielding to a gust of wind with all its tender twigs; the sun shone upon it, and it glanced in the wind like a flying sunshiny shower. It was a tree in shape, with stem and branches; but it was like a spirit of water." Recording one of her early visits with her brother to the Continent, she says: "Left London between five and six o'clock of the morning, outside the Dover coach. A beautiful morning. The city, St. Paul's, with the river--multitude of boats--made a beautiful sight as we crossed Westminster Bridge; the houses not overhung by their clouds of smoke, and were spread out endlessly, yet the sun shone so brightly, with such a pure light, that there was something like the purity of one of Nature's own grand spectacles.... Arrived at Calais at four in the morning. Delightful walks in the evening; seeing far off in the west the coast of England, like a cloud, crested with Dover Castle, the evening star and the glory of the sky; the reflections in the water were more beautiful than the sky itself; purple waves brighter than precious stones for ever melting away upon the sands." Deeply interesting as Miss Wordsworth's journals are, passages like these make us wish she had written more.
After between eight and nine years' residence in Grasmere, Miss Wordsworth accompanied her brother and his family on their removal to Rydal Mount. Here they lived for the remainder of their lives, and grew old together.
During many of their later years the life of the household was saddened and that of Miss Wordsworth darkened by the heavy affliction that came upon her. The exact date or occasion is somewhat doubtful, as well as to the extent to which Miss Wordsworth was afflicted. It was probably owing to her indefatigable exertions as a pedestrian in her intense love of Nature, and to want of sufficient care, that her splendid physical powers gave way. In 1832 she had an illness which resulted in brain fever, from the effects of which she never recovered. A few years later she became permanently invalided, and a long evening of life was passed more or less under a cloud. The present writer has the best of reasons for believing that the gravity of her mental condition during this period has been somewhat exaggerated. That the physical prostration became complete, and her keen mental powers sadly impaired, there is, unhappily, no doubt. But her affection of mind was chiefly shown by loss of memory; and her condition, even at the worst, was alleviated by many bright and lucid intervals. Her poem on "The Floating Island," written so late as 1842, is an abundant evidence of this.
In her suffering Miss Wordsworth was exemplary. To Wordsworth himself his sister's illness was a source of great sorrow. Remembering what she had been to him, we cannot wonder that, as Lady Richardson said of him: "There is always something touching in his way of speaking of his sister. The tones of his voice become very gentle and soothing."
Notwithstanding her long and sad affliction, Miss Wordsworth survived her brother five years. On account of her own condition, she was unable to be with him during his illness, and on being informed of his death, which took place on April 23, 1850, when she fully realised that "William" was no more, she exclaimed that life had nothing left worth living for. A friend who was present said, in reference to her: "She is drawn about as usual in her chair. She was heard to say, as she passed the door where the body lay, "O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory?""
Miss Wordsworth's last years were tenderly cared for by those who had so long loved both her and her more famous brother. She died on January 25, 1855, in her eighty-third year. She is buried by her brother's side in Grasmere Churchyard.
MARY LAMB.
In the annals of domestic history it would be difficult to meet with a story more deeply interesting and pathetic than that of Charles and Mary Lamb. If Dorothy Wordsworth bears the palm for sisterly devotion and help, thereby crowning her brother's life with blessing, Charles Lamb stands before us the most signal example as the sharer and sustainer of a sister's lot of suffering. Darkest lives may be illumined by hope and brightened by love; and among lives of noble self-denial, those of Charles Lamb and his sister must always take a prominent place. Although they came into being heavily weighted for the race, their struggle with an adverse fate was noble, and the secret of their strength was their mutual love.
Probably no greater calamity can affect a family than an hereditary taint of insanity, entailing, as it does, such constant and tender care and infinite patience.
The father of Charles and Mary Lamb had been for many years a clerk to a barrister of the Inner Temple, in whose chambers, in Crown Office Row, he resided when Mary was born on December 3, 1764. There were other children of the family, none of whom, however, seem to have survived infancy with the exception of Mary, John, two years older, and Charles, ten years younger.
It would, perhaps, be difficult to imagine a more uncongenial home for a child constituted as was Mary Lamb than the one into which it was her lot to enter. We seek in vain in the immediate parentage of the Lambs for the many excellencies of character and the genius developed in both Mary and Charles. But one thing they both inherited from or through their father--the peculiarity of brain formation which renders its possessor liable to fits of madness. Little Mary was too loving for her early surroundings. Her parents seem to have lived to themselves, and not to have shown much love for the sensitive little one who, above all things, needed a heart-warm atmosphere. Charles, writing of his mother, says that she "in feeling and sentiment and disposition bore so distant a resemblance to her daughter that she never understood her right--never could believe how much she loved her--but met her caresses, her protestations of filial affection, too frequently with coldness and repulse."
In her childhood Mary attended a day-school in Fetter Lane, where she received all the scholastic education she ever had. Her time was chiefly spent in the solitude of her own thoughts. A lonely childhood, however sad, is not infrequently beneficial in its results, in stimulating thought and bringing out the distinctive characteristics of a child. But to a child like Mary Lamb the very loneliness of her life would only tend to make more pronounced the liability to mental trouble. And although a taste for reading is one of the best that can be acquired, it would in the case of Mary Lamb have been all the better to have been carefully guarded and directed. It, however, afforded her no small delight to have the privilege of access to the library of her father's employer, "a spacious closet of good old English reading, where without much selection or prohibition she browsed at will upon that fair and wholesome pasturage."
A new element entered into the life of Mary when a little more than ten years of age. In the month of February, 1775, her brother Charles was born to feed the hunger of her loving heart. From the first he was her charge. She nursed the weakly child with tender care, fostered his loving disposition, and as she could, trained his infant mind. Their childhood thus passed hand in hand, in accord with their future lives.
When Charles was about seven years old he entered Christ's Hospital. It was here he first formed the friendship of Coleridge, which proved so fruitful in after years. As time passed over the household the circumstances of the Lambs, never affluent, became more straitened. The elder son, John, seems to have cared chiefly for himself, and not to have been very reliable for contribution to the family support. In his fifteenth year Charles left the Blue Coat School to bear his share (which proved to be a large one) of the burden of the family life. He obtained a clerkship in the South Sea House, which in two years was exchanged for a better one in the East India House, Mary at the same time also adding to the slender means by dressmaking.
A few years passed, not altogether without brightness, though much dimmed by the growing imbecility of the father, and the sickness and helplessness of the mother. In 1795 her father was pensioned by his kind old master, and the family removed into lodgings in Little Queen Street. The following year proved to the Lambs a disastrous one indeed. First Charles himself, from some immediate cause not very clear, became the victim of the fatal heritage. Mrs. Gilchrist suggests that it was the first and only love of which he was able to dream that "took deep hold of him, conspiring with the cares and trials of home life." Charles was, from whatever cause, for six weeks confined in an asylum. Writing to Coleridge, with whom he had kept up a constant intercourse, he says: "In your absence the tide of melancholy rushed in, and did its worst mischief by overwhelming my reason." It was during his confinement that, in one of his lucid intervals, he wrote the following sonnet to his sister:--
If from my lips some angry accents fell, Peevish complaint, or harsh reproof unkind, 'Twas the error of a sickly mind And troubled thoughts, clouding the purer well, And waters clear of reason; and for me Let this my verse the poor atonement be-- My verse, which thou to praise wert ere inclined Too highly, and with a partial eye to see No blemish. Thou to me didst ever show Kindest affection; and would ofttimes lend An ear to the desponding love-sick lay, Weeping my sorrows with me, and repay But ill the mighty debt of love I owe, Mary, to thee, my sister and my friend.
It was in the month of September in that year, a little while after the return of Charles to his home, that there occurred therein the saddest of domestic tragedies. The constant and increasing helplessness of the father and mother had necessitated no small amount of care and nursing on the part of Mary; following which had come the temporary madness of her brother, who had been to her a tower of strength and consolation. Finally selfish John, who generally lived from home at his ease, having met with an accident, had come home to be nursed, to be a further burden upon his much suffering sister--the last straw to the patient back. The unevenly balanced brain at last gave way, reason tottered, and in a fit of frenzy, Mary Lamb, the kind-hearted young woman, the loving daughter, the devoted sister, became the instrument of her mother's death. The _Weekly Register_ contains the following account of the event:--
"This afternoon, the coroner's jury sat on the body of a lady in the neighbourhood of Holborn, who died in consequence of a wound from her daughter, the preceding day. While the family were preparing dinner, the young lady, in a fit of insanity, seized a case-knife lying on the table, and in a menacing manner pursued a little girl, her apprentice, round the room. On the eager calls of her helpless, 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[6] of the house--but too late. The dreadful scene presented to him the mother lifeless on a chair; her daughter yet wildly standing over her with the fatal knife; and the venerable old man--her father--weeping by her side, himself bleeding at the forehead from the effects of a blow he received from one of the forks she had been madly hurling about the room. But a few days prior to this, the family had discovered some symptoms of lunacy in her, which had so much increased on the Wednesday evening that her brother early the next morning went in quest of Dr. Pitcairn; had that gentleman been providentially met with, the fatal catastrophe had, probably, been prevented. She had once before, in the earlier part of her life, been deranged from the harassing fatigues of too much business. As her carriage towards her mother had been ever affectionate in the extreme, it is believed that to her increased attentiveness to her is to be ascribed the loss of her reason at this time. The jury, without hesitation, brought in their verdict--Lunacy."
[6] This appears to be a mistake. It was Charles himself who performed the sad duty of overpowering his sister.
From the fatal hour when Mary lifted her hand against her mother, to the last of his life, Charles Lamb was heroic in his self-denying devotion to her. As a matter of course, she had to be, for the time being, placed under restraint. But Charles then and there, in his noble love and sense of duty, determined that, abandoning all other loves and hopes which might interfere with his one great, self-imposed purpose, his life should be devoted to the welfare and care of his sister. A few days after the occurrence, he wrote to his friend Coleridge:--
"My poor dear, dearest sister, in a fit of insanity has been the death of her own mother. I was at hand only in time enough to snatch the knife out of her grasp. She is at present in a madhouse, from whence I fear she must be moved to a hospital. God has preserved to me my senses; I eat and drink, and sleep, and have my judgment, I believe, very sound. My poor father was slightly wounded, and I am left to take care of him and my aunt. Mr. Norris, of the Blue Coat School, has been very kind to us, and we have no other friend; but, thank God, I am very calm and composed, and able to do the best that remains to do. Write as religious a letter as possible, 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. God Almighty have us all in His keeping! Mention nothing of poetry. I have destroyed every vestige of past vanities of that kind.... Your judgment will convince you not to take any notice of this yet to your dear wife. You look after your family; I have my reason and strength left to take care of mine. I charge you do not think of coming to see me. Write. I will not see you if you come. God Almighty love you and all of us!"
Coleridge's reply was full of comfort to his afflicted friend, and upon its receipt Charles writes again:--
"Your letter was an inestimable treasure to me. It will be a comfort to you, I know, to know that our prospects are somewhat better. My poor dear, dearest sister, the unhappy and unconscious instrument of the Almighty's judgment on our house is restored to her senses, to a dreadful sense and recollection of what has passed, awful to her mind, and impressive (as it must 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 the 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 tranquility. God be praised, Coleridge, wonderful as it is to tell, I have never been otherwise than collected and calm; even on the dreadful day and in the midst of the terrible scene, I preserved a tranquility which bystanders may have construed into indifference--a tranquility not of despair. Is it folly or sin 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 the wound he had 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 comprehension 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 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 remorse struck me; this tongue poor Mary got for me, and can I partake of it now when she is far away? A thought occurred and relieved me: if I give in to this way of feeling there is not a chair, a room, an object in our rooms, that will not awaken our keenest griefs. I must rise above such weaknesses. I hope this was not want of true feeling. I do 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 was a matter of twenty people, I do think, supping in our room; they prevailed on me 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--a mother who, through life, wished nothing but her children's welfare. Indignation, the rage of grief, something like remorse, rushed upon my mind. In any agony of emotion, I found my way mechanically into an 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. Tranquility returned, and it was the only violent emotion that mastered me. I think it did me good....
"She will [referring to Mary], I fancy, if she stays, make one of the family rather than of the patients; and the old and young ladies I like exceedingly, and she loves them dearly; and they, as the saying is, take to her very extraordinarily--if it is extraordinary that people who see my sister should love her. Of all the people I ever saw in the world, my poor sister was most and thoroughly devoid of the least tincture of selfishness ... and if I mistake not, in the most trying situation that a human being can be found in, she will be found (I speak not with sufficient humility, I fear) but humanly and foolishly speaking, she will be found, I trust, uniformly great and amiable...."
His next letter reveals something of the sister's state of feeling under the distressing circumstances.
"Mary continues serene and cheerful. I find by me a little letter she wrote to me; for though I see her almost every day, yet we delight to write to one another, for we can scarce see each other but in company with some of the people of the house. I have not the letter by me, but will quote from memory what she wrote in it: 'I have no bad, terrifying dreams. At midnight, when I happen to awake, the nurse sleeping by the side of me, with the noise of the poor mad people around me, I have no fear. The spirit of my mother seems to descend and smile upon me, and bid me live to enjoy the life and reason which the Almighty has given me. I shall see her again in heaven; she will then understand me better. My grandmother, too, will understand me better, and will then say no more, as she used to do, 'Polly, what are those poor, crazy, moythered brains of yours thinking of always?'"
In another letter he says: "I am wedded, Coleridge, to the fortunes of my sister and my poor old father.... What would I give to call her back to earth for one day? on my knees to ask her pardon for all those little asperities of temper, which from time to time have given her gentle spirit pain? and the day, my friend, I trust, will come. There will be time enough for kind offices of love, if heaven's eternal year be ours. Hereafter her meek spirit shall not reproach me."
Mary, on this first occasion, remained in the asylum at Islington for some months. Eventually, upon the solemn promise of her brother that for his life she should be under his especial care, he was permitted to take her under his own protection. He did not, however, remove her at once to his own home, but provided for her in lodgings at Hackney. Alluding to her at this time, he writes: "To get her out into the world again, with a prospect of her never being so ill again, this is to be ranked not upon the common blessings of Providence. May that merciful God make tender my heart and make me as thankful as, in my distress, I was earnest in my prayers!"
The fond hope of Lamb, that his sister would never be so ill again, was not destined to be fulfilled. By the end of the year she was again in the asylum, but always in her brother's thought. During her absence he thus gave utterance to his thoughts:--
I am a widowed thing now thou art gone! Now thou art gone, my own familiar friend, Companion, sister, helpmate, counsellor! Alas! that honoured mind, whose sweet reproof And meekest wisdom in times past have smoothed The unfilial harshness of my foolish speech, And made me loving to my parents old (Why is this so; ah, God! why is this so?) That honoured mind become a fearful blank, Her sense locked up, and herself kept out From human sight or converse, while so many Of the foolish sort are left to roam at large, Do all acts of folly and sin and shame! Thy paths are mystery! Yet I will not think Sweet friend, but we shall one day meet and live In quietness, and die so, fearing God; Or if not--and these false suggestions be A fit of the weak nature, loath to part With what it loved so long and held so dear,-- If thou art to be taken and I left (More sinning, yet unpunished save in thee), It is the will of God, and we are clay In the Potter's hand, and at the worst are made From absolute nothing, vessels of disgrace, Till His most righteous purpose wrought in us, Our purified spirits find their perfect rest.