Charles Lamb: A Memoir | Page 9

a mother's murder." In another place he says, "She bears her situation as one who has no right to complain." He himself visits her and upholds her, and rejoices in her continued reason. For her use he borrows books ("for reading was her daily bread"), and gives up his time and all his thoughts to her comfort.
Thus, in their quiet grief, making no show, yet suffering more than could be shown by clamorous sobs or frantic words, the two--brother and sister-- enter upon the bleak world together. "Her love," as Mr. Wordsworth states in the epitaph on Charles Lamb, "was as the love of mothers" towards her brother. It may be said that his love for her was the deep life-long love of the tenderest son. In one letter he writes, "It was not a family where I could take Mary with me; and I am afraid that there is something of dishonesty in any pleasures I take without her." Many years afterwards (in 1834, the very year in which he died) he writes to Miss Fryer, "It is no new thing for me to be left with my sister. When she is not violent, _her rambling chat is better to me than the sense and sanity of the world."_ Surely there is great depth of pathos in these unaffected words; in the love that has outlasted all the troubles of life, and is thus tenderly expressed, almost at his last hour.
John Lamb, the elder brother of Charles, held a clerkship, with some considerable salary, in the South Sea House. I do not retain an agreeable impression of him. If not rude, he was sometimes, indeed generally, abrupt and unprepossessing in manner. He was assuredly deficient in that courtesy which usually springs from a mind at friendship with the world. Nevertheless, without much reasoning power (apparently), he had much cleverness of character; except when he had to purchase paintings, at which times his judgment was often at fault. One of his sayings is mentioned in the (Elia) essay of "My Relations." He seems to have been, on one occasion, contemplating a group of Eton boys at play, when he observed, "What a pity it is to think that these fine ingenuous lads will some day be changed into frivolous members of Parliament?" Like some persons who, although case-hardened at home, overflow with sympathy towards distant objects, he cared less for the feelings of his neighbor close at hand than for the eel out of water or the oyster disturbed in its shell.
John Lamb was the favorite of his mother, as the deformed child is frequently the dearest. "She would always love my brother above Mary," Charles writes in 1796, "although he was not worth one tenth of the affection which Mary had a right to claim. Poor Mary! my mother never understood her right." In another place (after he had been unburdening his heart to Coleridge), he writes cautiously, "Since this has happened,"-- the death of his mother,--"he has been very kind and brotherly; but I fear for his mind. He has taken his ease in the world, and is not fit to struggle with difficulties. Thank God, I can unconnect myself with him, and shall manage my father's moneys myself, if I take charge of Daddy, which poor John has not hinted a wish at any future time to share with me." Mary herself, when she was recovering, said that "she knew she must go to Bethlehem for life; that one of her brothers would have it so; the other would not wish it, but would be obliged to go with the stream."
At this time, reckoning up their several means of living, Charles Lamb and his father had together an income of one hundred and seventy or one hundred and eighty pounds; out of which, he says, "we can spare fifty or sixty pounds at least for Mary whilst she stays in an asylum. If I and my father and an old maid-servant can't live, and live comfortably, on one hundred and thirty or one hundred and twenty pounds a year, we ought to burn by slow fires. I almost would, so that Mary might not go into a hospital." She was then recovering her health; had become serene and cheerful; and Charles was passionately desirous that, after a short residence in the lunatic establishment wherein she then was, she should return home: "But the surviving members of her family" (these are Sir Thomas Talfourd's words), "especially John, who enjoyed a fair income from the South Sea House, opposed her discharge." Charles, however, ultimately succeeded in his pious desire, upon entering into a solemn undertaking to take care of his sister thereafter.
He provided a lodging for her at Hackney, and spent all his Sundays and holidays with her. I