Charles Lamb: A Memoir | Page 7

nor
depressed by mean habits, such as an ordinary charity school is
supposed to generate. They floated onwards towards manhood in a
wholesome middle region, between a too rare ether and the dense and
abject atmosphere of pauperism. The Hospital boy (as Lamb says)
never felt himself to be a charity boy. The antiquity and regality of the
foundation to which he belonged, and the mode or style of his
education, sublimated him beyond the heights of the laboring classes.
From the "Christ's Hospital five and thirty years ago," it would appear
that the comforts enjoyed by Lamb himself exceeded those of his
schoolfellows, owing to his friends supplying him with extra delicacies.
There is no doubt that great tyranny was then exercised by the older
boys (the monitors) over the younger ones; that the scholars had
anything but choice and ample rations; and that hunger ("the eldest,
strongest of the passions") was not a tyrant unknown throughout this
large institution.
Lamb remained at Christ's Hospital for seven years; but on the half-
holidays (two in every week) he used to go to his parents' home, in the
Temple, and when there would muse on the terrace or by the lonely
fountain, or contemplate the dial, or pore over the books in Mr. Salt's
library, until those antiquely-colored thoughts rose up in his mind
which in after years he presented to the world.
Amongst the advantages which Charles derived from his stay at Christ's
Hospital, was one which, although accidental, was destined to have
great effect on his subsequent life. It happened that he reckoned
amongst his schoolfellows one who afterwards achieved a very
extensive reputation, namely, Samuel Taylor Coleridge. This youth was
his elder by two years; and his example influenced Lamb materially on
many occasions, and ultimately led him into literature. Coleridge's
projects, at the outset of life, were vacillating. In this respect Lamb was
no follower of his schoolfellow, his own career being steady and
unswerving from his entrance into the India House until the day of his

freedom from service--between thirty and forty years. His literary tastes,
indeed, took independently almost the same tone as those of his friend;
and their religious views (for Coleridge in his early years became a
Unitarian) were the same.
When Coleridge left Christ's Hospital he went to the University--to
Jesus College, Cambridge; but came back occasionally to London,
where the intimacy between him and Lamb was cemented. Their
meetings at the smoky little public house in the neighborhood of
Smithfield--the "Salutation and Cat"--consecrated by pipes and tobacco
(Orinoco), by egg-hot and Welsh rabbits, and metaphysics and poetry,
are exultingly referred to in Lamb's letters. Lamb entertained for
Coleridge's genius the greatest respect, until death dissolved their
friendship. In his earliest verses (so dear to a young poet) he used to
submit his thoughts to Coleridge's amendments or critical suggestions;
and on one occasion was obliged to cry out, "Spare my ewe lambs: they
are the reflected images of my own feelings."
It was at a very tender age that Charles Lamb entered the "work-a-day"
world. His elder brother, John, had at that time a clerkship in the South
Sea House, and Charles passed a short time there under his brother's
care or control, and must thus have gained some knowledge of figures.
The precise nature of his occupation in this deserted place, however
(where some forms of business were kept up, "though the soul be long
since fled," and where the directors met mainly "to declare a dead
dividend"), is not stated in the charming paper of "The South Sea
House." Charles remained in this office only until the 5th April, 1792,
when he obtained an appointment (through the influence, I believe, of
Mr. Salt) as clerk in the Accountant's Office of the East India Company.
He was then seventeen years of age.
About three years after Charles became a clerk in the India House, his
family appear to have moved from Crown Office Row into poor
lodgings at No. 7 Little Queen Street, Holborn. His father at that time
had a small pension from Mr. Salt, whose service he had left, being
almost fatuous; his mother was ill and bedridden; and his sister Mary
was tired but, by needle-work all day, and by taking care of her mother
throughout the night. "Of all the people in the world" (Charles says),
"she was most thoroughly devoid of all selfishness." There was also, as
a member of the family, an old aunt, who had a trifling annuity for her

life, which she poured into the common fund. John Lamb (Charles's
elder brother) lived elsewhere, having occasional intercourse only with
his kindred. He continued, however, to visit them, whilst he preserved
his "comfortable" clerkship in the South Sea House.
It was under this state