Birth and Parentage.—Christ's Hospital.—South Sea House and India
House.—Condition of Family.—Death of Mother.—Mary in Asylum.—John
Lamb.—Charles's Means of Living.—His Home.—Despondency.—Alice W.—
Brother and Sister.

On the south side of Fleet Street, near to where it adjoins Temple Bar, lies the Inner Temple. It extends southward to the Thames, and contains long ranges of melancholy buildings, in which lawyers (those reputed birds of prey) and their followers congregate. It is a district very memorable. About seven hundred years ago, it was the abiding-place of the Knights Templars, who erected there a church, which still uplifts its round tower (its sole relic) for the wonder of modern times. Fifty years since, I remember, you entered the precinct through a lowering archway that opened into a gloomy passage—Inner Temple Lane. On the east side rose the church; and on the west was a dark line of chambers, since pulled down and rebuilt, and now called Johnson's Buildings. At some distance westward was an open court, in which was a sun-dial, and, in the midst, a solitary fountain, that sent its silvery voice into the air above, the murmur of which, descending, seemed to render the place more lonely. Midway, between the Inner Temple Lane and the Thames, was, and I believe still is, a range of substantial chambers (overlooking the gardens and the busy river), called Crown Office Row. In one of these chambers, on the 18th day of February, 1775, Charles Lamb was born.

He was the son of John and Elizabeth Lamb; and he and his brother John and his sister Mary (both of whom were considerably older than himself) were the only children of their parents. John was twelve years, and Mary (properly Mary Anne) was ten years older than Charles. Their father held the post of clerk to Mr. Samuel Salt, a barrister, one of the benchers of the Inner Temple; a mild, amiable man, very indolent, very shy, and, as I imagine, not much known in what is called "the profession."

Lamb sprang, paternally, from a humble stock, which had its root in the county of Lincoln. At one time of his life his father appears to have dwelt at Stamford. In his imaginary ascent from plain Charles Lamb to Pope Innocent, one of the gradations is Lord Stamford. His mother's family came from Hertfordshire, where his grandmother was a housekeeper in the Plumer family, and where several of his cousins long resided. He did not attempt to trace his ancestry (of which he wisely made no secret) beyond two or three generations. In an agreeable sonnet, entitled "The Family Name," he speaks of his sire's sire, but no further: "We trace our stream no higher." Then he runs into some pleasant conjectures as to his possible progenitors, of whom he knew nothing.

"Perhaps some shepherd on Lincolnian plains,"

he says, first received the name; perhaps some martial lord, returned from "holy Salem;" and then he concludes with a resolve,—

"No deed of mine shall shame thee, gentle Name,"

which he kept religiously throughout his life.

When Charles was between seven and eight years of age, he became a scholar in Christ's Hospital, a presentation having been given to his father, for the son's benefit. He entered that celebrated school on the 9th of October, 1782, and remained there until the 23d November, 1789, being then between fourteen and fifteen years old. The records of his boyhood are very scanty. He was always a grave, inquisitive boy. Once, when walking with his sister through some churchyard, he inquired anxiously, "Where do the naughty people lie?" the unqualified panegyrics which he encountered on the tombstones doubtless suggesting the inquiry. Mr. Samuel Le Grice (his schoolfellow) states that he was an amiable, gentle youth, very sensible, and keenly observing; that "his complexion was clear brown, his countenance mild, his eyes differing in color, and that he had a slow and peculiar walk." He adds that he was never mentioned without the addition of his Christian name, Charles, implying a general feeling of kindness towards him. His delicate frame and difficulty of utterance, it is said, unfitted him for joining in any boisterous sports.

After he left Christ's Hospital, he returned home, where he had access to the large miscellaneous library of Mr. Salt. He and his sister were (to use his own words) "tumbled into a spacious closet of good old English reading, and browsed at will on that fair and wholesome pasturage." This, however, could not have lasted long, for it was the destiny of Charles Lamb to be compelled to labor almost from, his boyhood. He was able to read Greek, and had acquired great facility in Latin composition, when he left the Hospital; but an unconquerable impediment in his speech deprived him of an "exhibition" in the school, and, as a consequence, of the benefit of a college education.

The state of Christ's Hospital, at the time when Lamb was a scholar there, may be ascertained with tolerable correctness from his two essays, entitled "Recollections of Christ's Hospital" and "Christ's Hospital five and thirty years ago." These papers when read together show the different (favorable and unfavorable) points of this great establishment. They leave no doubt as to its extensive utility. Although, strictly speaking, it was a charitable home for the sustenance and education of boys, slenderly provided, or unprovided, with the means of learning, they were neither lifted up beyond their own family 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 of things that they all drifted down to the terrible year 1796. It was a year dark with horror. There was an hereditary taint of insanity in the family, which caused even Charles himself to be placed, for a short time, in Hoxton Lunatic Asylum. "The six weeks that finished last year and began this (1796), your very humble servant spent very agreeably in a madhouse, at Hoxton." These are his words when writing to Coleridge.

Mary Lamb had previously been repeatedly attacked by the same dreadful disorder; and this now broke out afresh in a sudden burst of acute madness. She had been moody and ill for some little time previously, and the illness came to a crisis on the 23d of September, 1796. On that day, just before dinner, Mary seized a "case-knife" which was lying on the table, pursued a little girl (her apprentice) round the room, hurled about the dinner forks, and finally, in a fit of uncontrollable frenzy, stabbed her mother to the heart.

Charles was at hand only in time to snatch the knife out of her grasp, before further hurt could be done. He found his father wounded in the forehead by one of the forks, and his aunt lying insensible, and apparently dying, on the floor of the room.

This happened on a Thursday; and on the following day an inquest was held on the mother's body, and a verdict of Mary's lunacy was immediately found by the jury. The Lambs had a few friends. Mr. Norris—the friend of Charles's father and of his own childhood—"was very kind to us;" and Sam. Le Grice "then in town" (Charles writes) "was as a brother to me, and gave up every hour of his time in constant attendance on my father."

After the fatal deed, Mary Lamb was deeply afflicted. Her act was in the first instance totally unknown to her. Afterwards, when her consciousness returned and she was informed of it, she suffered great grief. And subsequently, when she became "calm and serene," and saw the misfortune in a clearer light, this was "far, very far from an indecent or forgetful serenity," as her brother says. She had no defiant air, no affectation, nor too extravagant a display of sorrow. She saw her act, as she saw all other things, by the light of her own clear and gentle good sense. She was sad; but the deed was past recall, and at the time of its commission had been utterly beyond either her control or knowledge.

After the inquest, Mary Lamb was placed in a lunatic asylum, where, after a short time, she recovered her serenity. A rapid recovery after violent madness is not an unusual mark of the disease; it being in cases of quiet, inveterate insanity, that the return to sound mind (if it ever recur) is more gradual and slow. The recovery, however, was only temporary in her case. She was throughout her life subject to frequent recurrences of the same disease. At one time her brother Charles writes, "Poor Mary's disorder so frequently recurring has made us a sort of marked people." At another time he says, "I consider her as perpetually on the brink of madness." And so, indeed, she continued during the remainder of her life; and she lived to the age of eighty-two years.

Charles was now left alone in the world. His father was imbecile; his sister insane; and his brother afforded no substantial assistance or comfort. He was scarcely out of boyhood when he learned that the world has its dangerous places and barren deserts; and that he had to struggle for his living, without help. He found that he had to take upon himself all the cares of a parent or protector (to his sister) even before he had studied the duties of a man.

Sudden as death came down the necessary knowledge: how to live, and how to live well. The terrible event that had fallen upon him and his, instead of casting him down, and paralyzing his powers, braced and strung his sinews into preternatural firmness. It is the character of a feeble mind to lie prostrate before the first adversary. In his case it lifted him out of that momentary despair which always follows a great calamity. It was like extreme cold to the system, which often overthrows the weak and timid, but gives additional strength and power of endurance to the brave and the strong.

"My aunt was lying apparently dying" (writes Lamb), "my father with a wound on his poor forehead, and my mother a murdered corpse, in the next room. I felt that I had something else to do than to regret. I had the whole weight of the family upon me; for my brother—little disposed at any time to take care of old age and infirmity—has now, with his bad leg, exemption from such duties; and I am now left alone."

In about a month after his mother's death (3d October), Charles writes, "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 of what has passed; awful to her mind, but tempered with a religious resignation. She knows how to distinguish between a deed committed in a fit of frenzy and the terrible guilt of 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 never heard of John Lamb having contributed anything, in money or otherwise, cowards the support of his deranged sister, or to assist his young struggling brother.

Soon after this time Charles took his sister Mary to live with himself entirely. Whenever the approach of one of her fits of insanity was announced by some irritability or change of manner, he would take her, under his arm, to Hoxton Asylum. It was very afflicting to encounter the young brother and his sister walking together (weeping together) on this painful errand; Mary herself, although sad, very conscious of the necessity for temporary separation from her only friend. They used to carry a strait jacket with them.

In the latter days of his father's life, Charles must have had an uncomfortable home. "I go home at night overwearied, quite faint, and then to cards with my father, who will not let me enjoy a meal in peace. After repeated games at cribbage" (he is writing to Coleridge), "I have got my father's leave to write; with difficulty got it: for when I expostulated about playing any more, he replied, 'If you won't play with me, you might as well not come home at all.' The argument was unanswerable, and I set to afresh."

Soon after this, the father, who at last had become entirely imbecile, died; and the pension which he had received from Mr. Salt, the old bencher, ceased. The aunt, who had been taken for a short time to the house of a rich relation, but had been sent back, also died in the following month. "My poor old aunt" (Chailes writes), "who was the kindest creature to me when I was at school, and used to bring me good things; when I, schoolboy-like, used to be ashamed to see her come, and open her apron, and bring out her basin with some nice thing which she had saved for me; the good old creature is now lying on her death-bed. She says, poor thing, she is glad she has come home to die with me. I was always her favorite." Thus Charles was left to his own poor resources (scarcely, if at all, exceeding one hundred pounds a year); and these remained very small for some considerable time. His writings were not calculated to attract immediate popularity, and the increase of his salary at the India House was slow. Even in 1809 (November), almost fifteen years later, the addition of twenty pounds a year, which comes to him on the resignation of a clerk in the India House, is very important, and is the subject of a joyful remark by his sister Mary.

The impression made, in the first instance, on Charles Lamb, by the terrible death of his mother, cannot be explained in any condensed manner. His mind, short of insanity, seems to have been utterly upset. He had been fond of poetry to excess; almost all his leisure hours seemed to have been devoted to the books of poets and religious writers, to the composition of poetry, and to criticising various writers in verse. But afterwards, in his distress, he requests Coleridge to "mention nothing of poetry. I have destroyed every vestige of past vanities of that kind. Never send me a book, I charge you. I am wedded" (he adds) "to the fortunes of my sister and my poor old father." At another time he writes, "On the dreadful day I preserved a tranquillity, not of despair." Some persons coming into the "house of misery," and persuading him to take some food, he says, "In an agony of emotion, I found my way mechanically into the 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."

A few days later, he says to his friend, "You are the only correspondent, and, I might add, the only friend I have in the world. I go nowhere and see no acquaintance." At this time he gave away all Coleridge's letters, burned all his own poetry, all the numerous poetical extracts he had made, and the little journal of "My foolish passion, which I had a long time kept." Subsequently, when he becomes better, he writes again to his friend, "Correspondence with you has roused me a little from my lethargy, and made me conscious of my existence."

Charles was now entirely alone with his sister. She was the only object between him and God, and out of this misery and desolation sprang that wonderful love between brother and sister, which has no parallel in history. Neither would allow any stranger to partake of the close affection that seemed to be solely the other's right. Doubts have existed whether Charles Lamb ever gave up for the sake of Mary the one real attachment of his youth. It has been considered somewhat probable that Alice W. was an imaginary being—some Celia, or Campaspe, or Lindamira; that she was in effect one of those visions which float over us when we escape from childhood. But it may have been a real love, driven deeper into the heart, and torn out for another love, more holy and as pure: for he was capable of a grand sacrifice. No one will, perhaps, ever ascertain the truth precisely. It must remain undiscovered—magnified by the mist of uncertainty—like those Hesperian Gardens which inspired the veises of poets, but are still surrounded by fable.

For my own part, I am persuaded that the attachment was real. He says that his sister would often "lend an ear to his desponding, love-sick lay." After he himself had been in a lunatic asylum, he writes to Coleridge, that his "head ran upon him, in his madness, as much almost as on another person, who was the more immediate cause of my frenzy." Later in the year he burned the "little journal of his foolish passion;" and, when writing to his friend on the subject of his love sonnets, he says, "It is a passion of which I retain nothing." It is clear, I think, that it was love for a real person, however transient it may have been. But the fact, whether true or false, is inexpressibly unimportant. It could not add to his stature: it could not diminish it. His whole life is acted; and in it are numerous other things which substantially raise and honor him. The ashes (if ashes there were) are cold. His struggles and pains, and hopes and visions, are over. All lie, diffused, intermingled in that vast Space which has No Name; like the winds and light of yesterday, which came and gave pleasure for a moment, and now have changed and left us, forever.

In contrast with this apocryphal attachment stands out his deep and unalterable love for his sister Mary. "God love her," he says; "may we two never love each other less." They never did. Their affection continued throughout life, without interruption; without a cloud, except such as rose from the fluctuations of her health. It is said that a woman rises or falls with the arm on which she leans. In this case, Mary Lamb at all times had a safe support; an arm that never shook nor wavered, but kept its elevation, faithful and firm throughout life.

It is difficult to explain fully the great love of Charles for his sister, except in his own words. Whenever her name occurs in the correspondence, the tone is always the same; always tender; without abatement, without change. "I am a fool" (he writes) "bereft of her cooperation. I am used to look up to her in the least and biggest perplexities. To say all that I find her, would be more than I think anybody could possibly understand. She is older, wiser, and better than I am; and all my wretched imperfections I cover to myself, by resolutely thinking on her goodness. She would share life and death with me." This (to anticipate) was written in 1805, when she was suffering from one of her attacks of illness. After she became better, he became better also, and opened his heart to the pleasures and objects around him. It was open at all times to want, and sickness, and wretchedness, and generally to the friendly voices and homely realities that rose up and surrounded him in his daily walk through life.

During all his years he was encircled by groups of loving friends. There were no others habitually round him. It is reported of some person that he had not merit enough to create a foe. In Lamb's case, I suppose, he did not possess that peculiar merit; for he lived and died without an enemy.