Charles Lamb: A Memoir

sell Street.-Personal

dices.-Alleged Excesses

His Sister.-Costume.-Re

e of Books.-Charity.-

.-Epitaph

I first became personal

a

world by surprise; scarcely any one at that time being aware that a fine genius and humorist existed, within the dull shades of London, whose quality very few of the cr

ain hours. You could not mistake him. He was somewhat stiff in his manner, and almost clerical in dress; which indicated much wear. He had a long, melancholy face, with keen, penetrating eyes; and he walked, with a short, resolute step, city-wards. He looked no one in the face for more than a moment, yet contrived to see everyth

rs; but I knew him slightly only, and did not see much of him until he and his sister went to occupy the lodgings in Russell Street, where he invited me to come and see him

of sadness in it. His mouth was well shaped; his lip tremulous with expression; his brown eyes were quick, restless, and glittering; and he had a grand head, full of thought. Leigh Hunt said that "he had a head worthy of Aristotle." Hazlitt calls it "a fine Titian head, full of dumb eloquence." I knew that, before he had attained the age of twenty years, he had to make his way in the world, and that his lines had not been cast in pleasant places. I had heard, indeed, that his family had at one time con

ns of their masters. To undergo the scrutiny of the first, as he said to me, when we were going to breakfast with Mr. Rogers one morning, was "terrible." His speech was brief and pithy; not too often humorous; never sententious nor didactic. Although he sometimes talked whilst walking up and down the room (at which time he seldo

s had a flavor in them beyond any that I have heard elsewhere. His conversation dwelt upon persons or things within his own

his emotions in a fine, simple, natural manner. Contrary to the usual habits of wits, no retort or reply by Lamb, however smart in character, ever gave pain. It is clear that ill nature is not wit, and that there

from Scotchmen (excepting, however, Burns); he disliked bankrupts; he hated close bargainers. For the Jewish nation he entertained a mysterious awe: the Jewesses he admired, with trembling: "Jael had those full, dark, inscrutable eyes," he says. Of Braham's triumphant singing he repeatedly spoke; there had been nothing like it in his recollection: he considered him equal to Mrs. Siddons. In his letters he

was very speedily affected. During all my intimacy with him, I never knew him drink immoderately; except once, when, having been prevailed upon to abstain altogether from wine and spirits, he resented the vow thus forced upon him by imbibing an extraordinary quantity of the "spurious" liquid. When he says, "The waters have gone over me," he speaks in m

pig especially, when given to him; but his poverty first, and afterwards his economical habits, prevented his indulging in such costly luxuries. He was himself a small and delicate eater at all times; and he entertained something like aversion tow

ged to attend at his office, in Leadenhall Street, every day, from ten until four o'clock- sometimes later. It was there that his familiar letters were written. On his return, after a humble meal, he strolled (if it was summer) into the suburbs, or traversed the streets where the old bookshops were to be found. He seldom or never gave dinners. You were admitted at all times to his plain supper, which was sufficiently g

cess, like desertion from a friend, caused some remorse and a great deal of regret. In writing to Coleridge about his house, which was "smoky," he inquires, "Have you cured it? It is hard to cure anything of smoking." Apart from the mere pleasure of smoking, the narcotic soothed his nerves and controlled those perpetual apprehensions which his sister's frequent illnesses excited. Of Mary Lamb, Hazlitt has said (somewhere) that sh

our grandfathers used), and a long, plain bookcase completely filled with old books. These were his "ragged veterans." In one of his letters he says, "My rooms are luxurious, one for prints, and one for books; a summer and winter parlor." They, however, were not otherwise decorated. I do not remember ever to have seen a flower or an image in them. He had not been educated into expensive tastes. His extravagances were confin

p, of the fashion of her youth; an old-fashioned dress. Her face was pale and somewhat square, but very placid, with gray, 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 affe

his words, always full of meaning, or charged with a jest; or referring (but this was rare) to some line or passage from one of the old Elizabethan writers, which was always ushered in with a smile of tender reverence. When he read aloud it was with a slight tone, which I used to think he had caught from Coleridge; Coleridge's recitation, however, rising to a chant. Lamb's reading was not generally in books of verse, but in the old lay writers, whose tendency was towards religious thoughts. He liked, however, religious verse. "I can read," he writes to Bernard Barton, "the homely old version of the Psalms in ou

s. His jests scald like tears; and he probes a question with a play upon words. There was no fuss or cant about him. He has furnished many a text for Coleridge to preach upon." (I. Plain Speaker.) Charles was frequently merry; but ever, at the back of his merriment, there reposed a grave depth, in which rich col

kindness of heart and geniality of humor made the way pleasant. His intellect was very quick, piercing into the recondite meaning of things in a moment. His own sentences were compressed and full of meaning; his opinions independent and decisive; no qualifying

not accord to Raffaelle. Raffaelle was too ostentatious of meaning; his merits were too obvious,-too much thrust upon the understanding; not retired nor involved, so as to need discovery or solution. He preferred even Titian (whose meaning is generally obvious enough) to Raffaelle; but Leonardo was above both. Without doubt, Lamb's taste on several matters was peculiar; for instance, there were a few obsolete words, such as arride, agnize, burgeon, &c., which he fancied, and chose to rescue from oblivion. Then he

ch the murmuring thousands floated unheeding. In particular he was fond of visiting, in his short vacations, the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge. Although (he writes) "Mine have been anything but studious hours," he professes to have received great solace from those "repositories of 'mouldering' l

The heartiness of country people went to his heart direct, and remained there forever. The Fields and the Gladmans, with their homely dwellings and hospitality, drew him to them like magnets. There was nothing too fine nor too

He had much to say on many subjects, and he was repeatedly pressed to say this, before he consented to do so. He was almost teased into writing the Elia Essays. These and all his other writings are brief and to the point. He did not exhale in words. It was said that Coleridge's talk was worth

re better places to live in, for good and all. I could not live in Skiddaw. I could spend there two or three years; but I must have a prospect of seeing Fleet Street at the end of that time, or I should mope and pine away." He loved even its smoke, and asserted that it suited his vision. A short time previously he had, in a touching letter to Wordsworth (1801), enumerated the objects that he liked so much in London. "These thing

books," such as "scientific treatises, and the histories of Hume, Smollett, and Gibbon," &c., he confesses that he becomes splenetic when he sees them perched up on shelves, "like false saints, who have usurped the true shrines" of the legitimate occupants. He loved old books and authors, indeed, beyond most other things. He used to say (with Shakespe

Fortune had slighted. In this list were included all who had suffered in purse or in repute. He was ready to defend man or beast, whenever unjustly attacked. I remember that, at one of the monthly magazine dinners, when John Wilkes was too roughly handled, Lamb qu

away greatly, when the amount of his means are taken into consideration; he gave away money-even annuities, I believe-to old impoverished friends whose wants were known to him. I remember that once, when we were sauntering together on Pentonville Hill, and he noticed great depression in me, which he at

re never truant; no one ever saw him peering out of window, examining the crowds flowing by; no one ever surprised him gazing on vacancy. "I lose myself," he says, "in other men's minds. When I am not walking I am reading; I cannot sit and thi

haracter. The floating straws, it is said, show from what quarter the wind is blowing. So the arching or knitting of the brow is sometimes sufficient to indicate wonder or pride, anger or contempt. On the stage, inde

d literati, were of his councils. They were for the most part persons of an uncertain fortune. His intimados were, to confess a truth, in the world's eye, a ragged regiment; he f

y evenings (his "At Home"), you generally found the card table spread out, Lamb himself one of the players. On the corner of the table was a snuff-box; and the game was enlivened by sundry brief ejaculations and pungent questions, which kept alive the wits of the party present. It was not "silent whist!" I do not remember whether, in common with Sarah Battle, Lamb had a weakness in favor of "Hearts." I suppose that it was at one of these meetings that he made that shrewd remark which has since escaped into notoriety: "Martin" (

e abstinence of the rest of the company. Lamb would, perhaps, call out and bid the hungry guest help himself without ceremony. We learn (from Hazlitt) that Martin Burney's eulogies on books were sometimes intermingled with ex

d Southey, corresponding with Rickman, when his "Joan of Arc" was being reprinted, says, "The best omen I have heard of its welldoing is, that Martin Burney likes it." Lamb was very much attached to Martin, who was a sincere and able man, although with a very unprepossessing physiognomy. His face was warped by paralysis, which affected one eye and one side of his mouth. He was plain and unaffected in manner, very diffident and retiring, yet pronouncing his opinions, when asked to do so, without apology or hesitation. He was a barrister, and travelled the western circuit at the same time as Sir Thomas Wild (afterwards Lord Truro), whose briefs he used to read before the other considered them, marking out the

cription of his friends and familiars, som

and Miss Kelly, and, I believe, Rickman. Politics were rarely discussed amongst them. Anecdotes, characteristic, showing the strong and weak points of human nature, were frequent enough. But politics (especially party politics) were seldom admitted. Lamb disliked them as a theme for even

owed to hector another, or to bring his own grievances too prominently forward, so as to disturb the harmony of the night. Every one had a right to speak, and to be heard; and no one was ever trodden or clamored down (as in some large assemblies) until he had proved that he was not entitled to a hearing, or until

turn, and has given place to a younger thinker, as the father is replaced by the son. Thus Jeremy Taylor and Sir Thomas Browne, and Webster, and the old Dramatists, have travelled out of sight, and their thoughts are reproduced by modern writers, the originators of those thoughts often remaining unknown. Perhaps One, out of many thousand a