CHAPTER II. FAMILY STRUGGLES AND SORROWS. [1789-1796.] In two of Lamb's Essays of Elia, My Relations, and Mackery End in Hertfordshire, he has described various members of his own family, and among them his brother John and his sister Mary. These should be carefully read, in conjunction with the less studied utterances on the same theme. in his letters, by those who would understand the conditions of that home of which he now became an inmate. Of the family of seven children born in the Temple to John and Elizabeth Lamb, only three survived, the two just mentioned, and Charles. The elder brother, John, at the time of his brother's leaving school a young man of twenty-six, held an appointment in the South Sea House. There was a Plumer in the office, mentioned by Lamb in his essay on that institution, and it was with the Plumer family in Hertfordshire that Lamb's grandmother had been house-keeper. It was probably to such an introduction that John Lamb owed his original clerkship in the office, and it is evident that at the time he first comes under our notice, his position in the office was fairly lucrative, and that the young man, unmarried, and of pleasant artistic tastes, was living by himself, enjoying life, and not trou bling himself too much about his poor relations in the Temple. The genial selfishness of his character is described with curious frankness by Charles, who yet seemed to entertain a kind of admiration for the well-dressed dilettante who cast in this way a kind of reflected light of respectability upon his humble relatives. He even addresses a sonnet to his brother, and applauds him for keeping "the elder brother up in state." There is a touch of sarcasm here, perhaps; and there is a sadder vein of irony in the description in My Relations: "It does me good as I walk towards the street of my daily avocation on some fine May morning, to meet him marching in a quite opposite direction, with a jolly handsome presence, and shining sanguine face that indicates some purchase in his eye-a Claude or a Hobbima-for much of his enviable leisure is consumed at Christie's and Phillips', or where not, to pick up pictures and such gauds. On these occasions he mostly stoppeth me, to read a short lecture on the advantage a person like me possesses above himself, in having his time occupied with business which he must do; assureth me that he often feels it hang heavy on his hands; wishes he had fewer holidays; and goes off Westward Ho! chanting a tune to Pall Mall; perfectly convinced that he has convinced me, while I proceed in my opposite direction tuneless." We feel that this picture needs no additional touches. "Marching in a quite opposite direction" was what John Lamb continued to do, in all respects, as concerned the dutiful and home-keeping members of his family. It was not to him that father and mother, sister or brother, were to look for help in their great need. Wholly different was the other elder child, next to him in age, Mary Lamb, the Bridget Elia of the Essays. Ten years older than Charles, she filled a position to him in these boyish days rather of mother than of sister. It is clear that these two children from the earliest age depended much on one another for sympathy and support. The mother never understood or appreciated the daughter's worth, and the father, who seems to have married late in life, was already failing in health and powers when Charles left school. The brother and sister were therefore thrown upon one another for companionship and intellectual sympathy, when school friendships were for a while suspended. Mary Lamb shared from childhood her brother's taste for reading. "She was tumbled early, by accident or design, into a spacious closet of good old English reading, without much selection or prohibition, and browsed at will upon that fair and wholesome pasturage." The spacious closet was, it would seem, the library of Samuel Salt, to which both she and Charles early had access. It was a blessed resource for them in face of the monotony and other discomforts of their home and against more serious evils. There was, as we have seen, a taint of mania in the family, inherited from the father's side. It appeared in different shapes in all three children, if we are to trust a casual remark in one of Charles' letters touching his brother John. But in Mary Lamb there is reason to suppose that it had been a cause of anxiety to her parents from an early period of her life. In one of his earliest poems addressed to Charles Lamb, Coleridge speaks of him creeping round a "dear-loved sister's bed, with noiseless step," soothing each pang with fond solicitude. These claims upon his brotherly watchfulness fell to the lot of Charles while still a boy, and they were never relaxed during life. There was a pathetic truth in the prediction of Coleridge which followed: Thou thy best friend shalt cherish many a year." He continued to devote himself to this, his best friend, for more than forty years, and henceforth the lives of the brother and sister are such that the story of the one can hardly be told apart from the other. It has been said that Lamb's first years were passed between the Temple and Christ's Hospital - between "cloister and cloister"-but there were happy holiday seasons when he had glimpses of a very different life. These were spent with his grandmother, Mary Field, at the old mansion of the Plumer family, Blakesware, closely adjoining the pleasant village of Widford, in Hertfordshire. The Plumers had two residences in the county, one at Gilston, and the other just mentioned, a few miles distant. The latter was the house where the dowager Mrs. Plumer and younger children of the family resided. Sometimes there would be no members of the family to inhabit it, and at such times old Mrs. Field, who held the post of house-keeper for the last fifty or sixty years of her life, reigned supreme over the old place. Her three grandchildren were then often with her, and the old-fashioned mansion, with its decaying tapestries and carved chimneys, together with the tranquil, rural beauty of the gardens and the surrounding country, made an impression on the childish imagination of Lamb, which is not to be overlooked in considering the influences which moulded his thought and style. There were many ties of family affection binding him to Hertfordshire. His grandmother was a native of the county, and in the beautiful essay called Mackery End he has described a visit paid in later life to other relations, in the neighborhood of Wheathampstead. It is noticeable how Lamb, the "scorner of the fields," as Wordsworth termed him, yet showed the true poet's appreciation of English rural scenery, whenever at least his heart was touched by any association of it with human joy or sorrow. In 1792 Mrs. Field died at a good old age, and lies buried in the quiet church-yard of Widford. Lamb has preserved her memory in the tender tribute to her virtues, The Grandame, which appeared among his earliest published verses: "On the green hill top Hard by the house of prayer, a modest roof, The Grandame sleeps. A plain stone barely tells Time and weather have effaced even name and date, but the stone is still pointed out in Widford church-yard. The old lady had suffered long from an incurable disease, and the young Charles Lamb had clearly found some of his earliest religious impressions deepened by watching her courage and resignation: "For she had studied patience in the school Of Christ; much comfort she had thence derived With her death the tie with Blakesware was not broken. The family of the Lambs had pleasant relations with other of the Widford people. Their constant friend, Mr. Randal Norris, the sub-treasurer of the Inner Temple, had connexions with the place, and long after the death of Mrs. Field we find Lamb and his sister spending occasional holidays in the neighbourhood. At some date, unfixed, in the two years following his removal from Christ's Hospital, Charles obtained a post of some kind in the South Sea House, where his brother John |