Little Journeys to the Homes of Famous Women — Mary Lamb, Part 2

* * * * * Coleridge in his youth was brilliant--no one disputes that.

He dazzled Charles and Mary Lamb from the very first.

Even when a Blue-Coat he could turn a pretty quatrain, and when he went away to Cambridge and once in a long while wrote a letter down to "My Own C. L.

," it was a feast for the sister, too.

Mary was different from other girls: she didn't "have company," she was too honest and serious and earnest for society--her ideals too high.

Coleridge--handsome, witty, philosophic Coleridge--was her ideal.

She loved him from afar.

How vain it is to ponder in our minds the what-might-have-been!

Yet how can we help wondering what would have been the result had Coleridge wedded Mary Lamb!

In many ways it seems it would have been an ideal mating, for Mary Lamb's mental dowry made good Coleridge's every deficiency, and his merits equalized all that she lacked.

He was sprightly, headstrong, erratic, emotional; she was equally keen-witted, but a conservative in her cast of mind.

That she was capable of a great and passionate love there is no doubt, and he might have been.

Mary Lamb would have been his anchor to win'ard, but as it was he drifted straight on to the rocks.

Her mental troubles came from a lack of responsibility--a rusting away of unused powers in a dull, monotonous round of commonplace.

Had her heart found its home I can not conceive of her in any other light than as a splendid, earnest woman--sane, well-poised, and doing a work that only the strong can do.

Coleridge has left on record the statement that she was the only woman he ever met who had a "logical mind"--that is to say, the only woman who ever understood him when he talked his best.

Coleridge made progress at the Blue-Coat School: he became "Deputy Grecian," or head scholar.

This secured him a scholarship at Cambridge, and thither he went in search of honors.

But his revolutionary and Unitarian principles did not serve him in good stead, and he was placed under the ban.

At the same time a youth by the name of Robert Southey was having a like experience at Oxford.

Other youths had tried in days agone to shake Cambridge and Oxford out of their conservatism, and the result was that the embryo revolutionists speedily found themselves warned off the campus.

So through sympathy Coleridge and Southey met.

Coleridge also brought along a young philosopher and poet, who had also been a Blue-Coat, by the name of Lovell.

These three young men talked philosophy, and came to the conclusion that the world was wrong.

They said society was founded on a false hypothesis--they would better things.

And so they planned packing up and away to America to found an Ideal Community on the banks of the Susquehanna.

But hold!

a society without women is founded on a false hypothesis--that's so--what to do?

Now in America there are no women but Indian squaws.

But resource did not fail them--Southey thought of the Fricker family, a mile out on the Bristol road.

There were three fine, strong, intelligent girls--what better than to marry 'em?

The world should be peopled from the best.

The girls were consulted and found willing to reorganize society on the communal basis, and so the three poets married the three sisters--more properly, each of the three poets married a sister.

"Thank God," said Lamb, "that there were not four of those Fricker girls, or I, too, would have been bagged, and the world peopled from the best!"

Southey got the only prize out of the hazard; Lovell's wife was so-so, and Coleridge drew a blank, or thought he did, which was the same thing; for as a man thinketh so is she.

The thought of a lifetime on the banks of the Susquehanna with a woman who was simply pink and good, and who was never roused into animation even by his wildest poetic bursts, took all ambition out of him.

Funds were low and the emigration scheme was temporarily pigeonholed.

After a short time Coleridge declared his mind was getting mildewed and packed off to London for mental oxygen and a little visit, leaving his wife in Southey's charge.

He was gone two years.

Lovell soon followed suit, and Southey had three sisters in his household, all with babies.

In the meantime we find Southey installed at "Greta," just outside of the interesting town of Keswick, where the water comes down at Lodore.

Southey was a general: he knew that knowledge consists in having a clerk who can find the thing.

He laid out research work and literary schemes enough for several lifetimes, and the three sisters were hard at it.

It was a little community of their own--all working for Southey, and glad of it.

Wordsworth and his sister Dorothy lived at Grasmere, thirteen miles away, and they used to visit back and forth.

When you go to Keswick you should tramp that thirteen miles--the man who hasn't tramped from Keswick to Grasmere has dropped something out of his life.

In merry jest, tipped with acid, some one called them "The Lake Poets," as if there were poets and lake poets.

And Lamb was spoken of as "a Lake Poet by grace."

Literary London grinned, as we do when some one speaks of the Sweet Singer of Michigan or the Chicago Muse.

But the term of contempt stuck and, like the words Methodist, Quaker and Philistine, soon ceased to be a term of reproach and became something of which to be proud.

There is a lead-pencil factory at Keswick, established in the year Eighteen Hundred.

Pencils are made there today exactly as they were made then, and when you see the factory you are willing to believe it.

All visitors at Keswick go to the pencil-factory and buy pencils, such as Southey used, and get their names stamped on each pencil while they wait, without extra charge.

On the wall is a silhouette picture of Southey, showing a needlessly large nose, and the gentlemanly old proprietor will tell you that Dorothy Wordsworth made the picture; and then he will show you a letter written by Charles Lamb, framed under glass, wherein C. L.

says all pencils are fairish good, but no pencils are so good as Keswick pencils.

For a while, when times were hard, Coleridge's wife worked here making pencils, while her archangel husband (a little damaged) went with Wordsworth to study metaphysics at Gottingen.

When Coleridge came back and heard what his wife had done, he reproved her--gently but firmly.

Mrs. Ajax in a pencil-factory wearing a check apron with a bib!

--huh!!

Southey had concluded that if Coleridge and Lovell were good samples of socialism he would stick to individualism.

So he joined the Church of England, became a Monarchist, sang the praises of royalty, got a pension, became Poet Laureate, and rich--passing rich.

"Wh-wh-when he secured for himself the services of three good women he made a wise move," said C. L.

And all the time Coleridge and Lamb were in correspondence: and when Coleridge was in London he kept close run of the Lambs.

The father and old aunt had passed out, and Charles and Mary lived together in rooms.

They seemed to have moved very often--their record followed them.

When the other tenants heard that "she's the one that killed her mother," they ceased to let their children play in the hallways, and the landlord apologized, coughed, and raised the rent.

Poor Charles saw the point and did not argue it.

He looked for other lodgings and having found 'em went home and said to Mary, "It's too noisy here.

Sister--I can't stand it--we'll have to go!"

Charles was a literary man now: a bookkeeper by day and a literary man by night.

He wrote to please his sister, and all his jokes were for her.

There is a genuine vein of pathos in all true humor, but think of the fear and the love and the tenderness that are concealed in Charles Lamb's work that was designed only to fight off dread calamity!

And Mary copied and read and revised for her brother, and he told it all to her before he wrote it, and together they discussed it in detail.

Charles studied mathematics, just to keep his genius under, he declared.

Mary smiled and said it wasn't necessary.

Coleridge used to drop in, and the Stoddarts, Hazlitts, Godwin and Lovell, too.

Then Southey was up in London and he called, and so did Wordsworth and Dorothy, for Coleridge had spread Lamb's fame.

And Dorothy and Mary kissed each other and held hands under the table, and when Dorothy went back to Grasmere she wrote many beautiful letters to Mary and urged her to come and visit her--yes, come to Grasmere and live.

The one point they held in common was a love for Coleridge; and as he belonged to neither there was no room for jealousy.

The Fricker girls were all safely married, but Charles and Mary could not think of going--they needs must hide in a big city.

"I hate your damned throstles and larks and bobolinks," said C. L.

, in feigned contempt.

"I sing the praises of the 'Salutation and the Cat' and a snug fourth-floor back."

They could not leave London, for over them ever hung that black cloud of a mind diseased.

"I can do nothing--think nothing.

Mary has another of her bad spells--we saw it coming, and I took her away to a place of safety," writes Charles to Coleridge.

One writer tells of seeing Charles and Mary walking across Hampstead Heath, hand in hand, both crying.

They were on the way to the asylum.

Fortunately these "illnesses" gave warning and Charles would ask his employer leave for a "holiday," and stay at home trying by gentle mirth and work to divert the dread visitor of unreason.

After each illness, in a few weeks the sister would be restored to her own, very weak and her mind a blank as to what had gone before.

And so she never remembered that supreme calamity.

She knew the deed had been done, but Heaven had absolved her gentle spirit from all participation in it.

She often talked of her mother, wrote of her, quoted her, and that they should sometime be again united was her firm faith.

The "Tales from Shakespeare" was written at the suggestion of Godwin, seconded by Charles.

The idea that she herself could write seemed never to have occurred to Mary, until Charles swore with a needless oath that all the ideas he ever had she supplied.

"Charles, dear, you've been drinking again!"

said Mary.

But the "Tales" sold and sold well; fame came that way and more money than the simple, plain, homekeeping bodies needed.

So they started a pension-roll for sundry old ladies, and to themselves played high and mighty patron, and figured and talked and joked over the blue teacups as to what they should do with their money--five hundred pounds a year!

Goodness gracious, if the Bank of England gets in a pinch advise C. L.

, at Thirty-four Southampton Buildings, third floor, second turning to the left but one.

A Mrs. Reynolds was one of the pensioners, but no one knew it but Mrs. Reynolds, and she never told.

She was a Lady of the Old School, and used often to dine with the Lambs and get her snuffbox filled.

Her husband had been a ship-captain or something, and when the tea was strong she would take snuff and tell the visitors about him and swear she had ever been true to his memory, though God knows all good-looking and clever widows are sorely tried in this scurvy world!

Mrs. Reynolds met Thomas Hood at a "Saturday Evening" at the Lambs', and he was so taken with her that he has told us "she looked like an elderly wax doll in half-mourning, and when she spoke it was as if by an artificial process; she always kept up the gurgle and buzz until run down."

Mrs. Reynolds' sole claim to literary distinction was the fact that she had known Goldsmith and he had presented her with an inscribed copy of "The Deserted Village."

But we all have a tender place in our hearts for the elderly wax doll because the Lambs were so gentle and patient with her, and once a year went to Highgate and put a shilling vase of flowers over the grave of the Captain to whose memory she was ever true.

These friendless old souls used to meet and mix at the Lambs' with those whose names are now deathless.

You can not write the history of English Letters and leave the Lambs out.

They were the loved and loving friends of Southey, Wordsworth, Coleridge, De Quincey, Jeffrey and Godwin.

They won the recognition of all who prize the far-reaching intellect--the subtle imagination.

The pathos and tenderness of their lives entwine us with tendrils that hold our hearts in thrall.

They adopted a little girl, a beautiful little girl by the name of Emma Isola.

And never was there child that was a greater joy to parents than was Emma Isola to Charles and Mary.

The wonder is they did not spoil her with admiration, and by laughing at all her foolish little pranks.

Mary set herself the task of educating this little girl, and formed a class the better to do it--a class of three: Emma Isola, William Hazlitt's son and Mary Victoria Novello.

I met Mary Victoria once; she's over eighty years of age now.

Her form is a little bent, but her eye is bright and her smile is the smile of youth.

Folks call her Mary Cowden-Clarke.

And I want you to remember, dearie, that it was Mary Lamb who introduced the other Mary to Shakespeare, by reading to her the manuscript of the "Tales."

And further, that it was the success of the "Tales" that fired Mary Cowden-Clarke with an ambition also to do a great Shakespearian work.

There may be a question about the propriety of calling the "Tales" a great work--their simplicity seems to forbid it--but the term is all right when applied to that splendid life-achievement, the "Concordance," of which Mary Lamb was the grandmother.

Emma Isola married Edward Moxon, and the Moxon home was the home of Mary Lamb whenever she wished to make it so, to the day of her death.

The Moxons did good by stealth, and were glad they never awoke and found it fame.

"What shall I do when Mary leaves me, never to return?"

once said Charles to Manning.

But Mary lived for full twenty years after Charles had gone, and lived only in loving memory of him who had devoted his life to her.

She seemed to exist just to talk of him and to garland the grave in the little old churchyard at Edmonton, where he sleeps.

Wordsworth says, "A grave is a tranquillizing object: resignation in time springs up from it as naturally as wild flowers bespread the turf."

Her work was to look after the "pensioners" and carry out the wishes of "my brother Charles."

But the pensioners were laid away to rest, one after the other, and the gentle Mary, grown old and feeble, became a pensioner, too, but thanks to that divine humanity that is found in English hearts, she never knew it.

To the last, she looked after "the worthy poor," and carried flowers once a year to the grave of the gallant Captain Reynolds at Highgate, and never tired of sounding the praises of Charles and excusing the foibles of Coleridge.

She lived only in the past, and its loving memories were more than a ballast 'gainst the ills of the present.

And so she went down into the valley and entered the great shadow, telling in cheerful, broken musings of a brother's love.