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Show CHARLES LAMB. Some reminiscences of the genial essayist. I was a very small boy indeed when I knew Elia. He tried to make himself pleasant; but with the best intentions only half succeeded. I mean that he did not succeed at all. He was very shy; and children do not understand shyness, mistaking it for pride or conceit or fright. But I knew some of Elia's intimates; and could well understand from them, in later years, what sort of man he was, that grave shy person, in perpetual black. He would laughingly apologize, by the way, for the same sort of unvarying duskiness, "I'm like the raven-I've no other." And, poor fellow, he had not too much money to spend on clothes. A clerk at the old India House, with at first a father and sister, and afterward the sister to support, he had small pecuniary scope for extravagance. If you met Elia at those delightful supper parties of his, you would think him simply a jolly dog in low life, with an unaccountable amount of information and a wit which, according to Britannic ideas, seemed altogether out of harmony, with the very humble surroundings of the apartment. The feast usually consisted of cold beef and pickles, with porter superadded. By and by, some jugs of hot water and a black bottle would make their appearance; nor would a basin of sugar or a lemon be absent. Miss Lamb would give a comical expression of resigned despair as Charles proceeded to help himself to a second tumbler. Not that he was often drunk-though he was sometimes-but he would say silly things after the second glass of grog. A friend once advised him to try teetotalism, and he did, his sister helping him. Miss Lamb, as Charles said, took to water like a duck, in fact, set woman's usual example of self-denial. Charles followed ruefully. But it was too much for him. His sister dearly loved him, and she had good reason. All the world knows how he sacrificed his life to her, giving up all prospects of marriage and living in single straightness in order that his sister might always have a home. Possibly he felt too that the most sacred and innocent of relations was not for him-the awful taint being hereditary. When his sister felt that the access was approaching, she would tell her brother and the two would wend their way to the asylum together. An acquaintance once met them on this sad journey; both were weeping bitterly. But once Mary Lamb had to take Charles. Mary, by the way, was much loved at the asylum; and not for a moment confounded with ordinary lunatics. "She was so gentle," they said, this poor woman who had killed her mother with a carving knife. It is a melancholy fact, but the dreariest period of Charles' existence was while his father lived. He slaved all day at his desk, and, by way of recreation, had to play chess with his sire in the evening. The old gentleman, moreover, was extremely dull and short tempered. One day Charles had played six or eight games with his father, and proposed to leave off. "If you won't play," quoth this delightful person, "I don't see why you should stay in at all." At last Fate-that much abused, but very kindly divinity-removed Mr. Lamb, Sen., for which at least two persons must have felt thankful, though too pious to say so. [Missing] office; then he was free-and fifty. In ‘81 we deem a man young at that age; not so our grandfathers. Lamb, too, was prematurely old with worry and the inroads made by very "moderate excesses" upon a delicate organization. Then he had worked too hard; for journalism had all along walked hand in hand with office drudgery. "Somebody has said," he wrote, "that to swallow six cross buns daily consecutively for a fortnight would surfeit the stoutest digestion. But to have to furnish as many jokes daily, and that not for a fortnight, but for a long twelvemonth, as we were constrained to do, was a little harder execution. Our main occupation took us from eight until five every day in the city, and as our evening hours had generally to do with anything rather than business, it follows that the only time we could spare for this manufactory of jokes-our supplementary livelihood, that supplied us in every want beyond mere bread and cheese-was exactly that part of the day which (as we have heard of No Man's Land) may be fitly denominated No Man's Time. Oh, those headaches at dawn of day, when at five or half past five in summer, and not much later in the dark seasons, we were compelled to rise, having been perhaps not above four hours in bed-curtailed of half our fair sleep, fasting, with only a dim vista of refreshing bodies in the distance-to be necessitated to rouse ourselves at the detestable rap of an old hag of a domestic, who seemed to take a diabolical pleasure in her announcement that it was ‘time t' rise,' and whose chappy knuckles we have often yearned to amputate." To get up, moreover, as he says, to make jokes with malice prepended. "No Egyptian taskmaster ever devised a slavery like to that, our slavery." The most "human" side of Lamb's character-to make use of our cant modern epithets-was its affectionateness. His love for Coleridge was something touching to behold. Few men can have loved that brilliant, selfish genius so well-not his own kindred. "Lamb," writes and acquaintance, "never fairly recovered from the death of Coleridge. He thought of little else (his sister was but another portion of himself) until his own great spirit joined his friend. Some old friends of his saw him two or three weeks ago, and remarked the constant turning and reference of his mind. He interrupted himself and them almost every instant with some play of affected wonder, or astonishment, or humorous melancholy, on the words ‘Coleridge is dead.' Nothing could divert him from that, for the thought of it never left him." Lamb died within six months of Coleridge. He was the wittiest and merriest of men in mixed society; for few had the privilege of listening to the melancholy and nobler notes of his lyre. Among punsters he is facile princeps; and has analyzed that quaint art with such skill as to dignify it. His commentary on the famous question "Is that you own hare or a wig," is about the "most delicious piece of trifling to be met with in English literature. "And pray, Mr. Lamb, how do you like children?" asked a good, foolish body who had been singing the praises of babies. "??-boiled, ma'am," stuttered Lamb. The lady looked astonished and offended. This is decidedly one of his best, which is saying much. Nothing of him survives but is bright and sparkling, or quaint, or touching.-E. C. Grenville Murray, in ?? Times. |