The daughter of respectable parents, was born in London about 1766. She was subject to attacks of insanity, and in one of them, in 1796, brought on by over-exertion, and anxiety about her mother, then quite an aged person, she stabbed her mother to the heart, killing her instantly. After recovering from this attack, she resided with her brother Charles, the well-known author of “Essays of Elia,” who devoted his whole life to her. They lived in or near London. In connexion with her brother, Miss Lamb wrote two volumes of juvenile poetry; “Stories for Children, or Mrs. Leicester’s School;” and “Tales from Shakspeare.” Miss Lamb was remarkable for the sweetness of her disposition, the clearness of her understanding, and the gentle wisdom of all her acts and words, notwithstanding the distraction under which she suffered for weeks, and latterly for months, in every year. She survived her brother eleven years, dying May 20th, 1847. She was buried with him in Edmonton churchyard.

Personal

  Bridget Elia has been my housekeeper for many a long year. I have obligations to Bridget, extending beyond the period of memory. We house together, old bachelor and old maid, in a sort of double singleness…. We agree pretty well in our tastes and habits—yet so, as “with a difference.” We are generally in harmony, with occasional bickerings,—as it should be among near relations. Our sympathies are rather understood, than expressed; and once, upon my dissembling a tone in my voice more kind than ordinary, my cousin burst into tears, and complained that I was altered. We are both great readers in different directions. While I am hanging over (for the thousandth time) some passage in old Burton, or one of his strange contemporaries, she is abstracted in some modern tale, or adventure, whereof our common reading-table is daily fed with assiduously fresh supplies…. We are both of us inclined to be a little too positive; and I have observed the result of our disputes to be almost uniformly this—that in matters of fact, dates, and circumstances, it turns out that I was in the right, and my cousin in the wrong. But where we have differed upon moral points, upon something proper to be done, or let alone; whatever heat of opposition, or steadiness of conviction I set out with, I am sure always in the long run, to be brought over to her way of thinking. I must touch upon the foibles of my kinswoman with a gentle hand, for Bridget does not like to be told of her faults. She hath an awkward trick (to say no worse of it) of reading in company; at which times she will answer yes or no to a question, without fully understanding its purport—which is provoking, and derogatory in the highest degree to the dignity of the putter of the said question. Her presence of mind is equal to the most pressing trials of life, but will sometimes desert her upon trifling occasions. When the purpose requires it, and is a thing of moment, she can speak to it greatly; but in the matters which are not stuff of the conscience, she hath been known sometimes to let slip a word less seasonably…. In a season of distress, she is the truest comforter; but in the teasing accidents, and minor perplexities, which do not call out the will to meet them, she sometimes maketh matters worse by an excess of participation. If she does not always divide your trouble, upon the pleasanter occasions of life, she is sure always to treble your satisfaction.

  His sister, whose literary reputation is closely associated with her brother’s, and who, as the original of “Bridget Elia,” is a kind of object for literary affection, came in after him. She is a small, bent figure, evidently a victim to illness, and hears with difficulty. Her face has been, I should think, a fine and handsome one, and her bright, gray eye is still full of intelligence and fire.

  Yesterday was a painfully interesting day. I attended the funeral of Mary Lamb. At nine a coach fetched me. We drove to her dwelling at St. John’s Wood, from whence two coaches accompanied the body to Edmonton across a pretty country, but the heat of the day rendered the drive oppressive. We took refreshment at the house where dear Charles Lamb died, and were then driven towards our homes…. There was no sadness assumed by the attendants, but we all talked together with warm affection of dear Mary Lamb, and that most delightful of creatures, her brother Charles; of all the men of genius I ever knew, the one the most intensely and universally to be loved.

  I see that Mary Lamb is dead. She departed, eighty-two years old, on the 20th of May. She had survived her mind in great measure, but much of the heart remained. Miss Lamb had a very fine feeling for literature, and was refined in mind, though homely, almost coarse, in personal habits. Her departure is an escape out of prison, to her sweet, good soul.

  The constant impendency of this giant sorrow saddened to “the Lambs” even their holidays; as the journey which they both regarded as the relief and charm of the year was frequently followed by a seizure…. Miss Lamb experienced, and full well understood, the premonitory symptoms of the attack, in restlessness, low fever, and the inability to sleep; and, as gently as possible, prepared her brother for the duty he must soon perform; and thus, unless he could stave off the terrible separation till Sunday, obliged him to ask leave of absence from the office as if for a day’s pleasure—a bitter mockery! On one occasion Mr. Charles Lloyd met them, slowly pacing together a little footpath in Hoxton Fields, both weeping bitterly, and found, on joining them, that they were taking their solemn way to the accustomed Asylum…. Miss Lamb would have been remarkable for the sweetness of her disposition, the clearness of her understanding, and the gentle wisdom of all her acts and words, even if these qualities had not been presented in marvellous contrast with the distractions under which she suffered for weeks, latterly for months in every year. There was no tinge of insanity discernible in her manner to the most observant eye…. Hazlitt used to say that he never met with a woman who could reason and had met with only one thoroughly reasonable—the sole exception being Mary Lamb. She did not wish, however, to be made an exception, to the general disparagement of her sex; for in all her thoughts and feelings she was most womanly—keeping under, ever in due subordination to her notion of a woman’s province, an intellect of rare excellence which flashed out when the restraints of gentle habit and humble manner were withdrawn by the terrible force of disease. Though her conversation in sanity was never marked by smartness or repartee; seldom rising beyond that of a sensible, quiet gentlewoman, appreciating and enjoying the talents of her friends, it was otherwise in her madness…. Her ramblings often sparkled with brilliant description and shattered beauty.

  Her relapses were not dependent on the seasons; they came in hot summers and with the freezing winters. The only remedy seems to have been extreme quiet, when any slight symptom of uneasiness was apparent. Charles (poor fellow) had to live, day and night, in the society of a person who was—mad! If any exciting talk occurred he had to dismiss his friend, with a whisper. If any stupor or extraordinary silence was observed, then he had to rouse her instantly.

  Mary Lamb was altogether worthy of her brother’s love. In addition to that bond of affection which bound them together through affliction, she was a woman of great mental attractions. She was a continual reader. When in the asylum, Charles took care to furnish her with plenty of books, for they were like her daily bread. She was a delightful writer. Hazlitt held her to be the only woman he had met who could reason. “Were I to give way to my feelings,” says Wordsworth, in the note to his poem on Charles Lamb, “I should dwell not only on her genius and intellectual powers, but upon the delicacy and refinement of manner which she maintained inviolable under most trying circumstances. She was loved and honoured by all her brother’s friends.”

  She had a speaking-voice, gentle and persuasive; and her smile was her brother’s own—winning in the extreme. There was a certain catch, or emotional breathingness, in her utterance, which gave an inexpressible charm to her reading of poetry, and which lent a captivating earnestness to her mode of speech when addressing those she liked. This slight check, with its yearning, eager effect in her voice, had something softenedly akin to her brother Charles’s impediment of articulation: in him it scarcely amounted to a stammer, in her it merely imparted additional stress to the fine-sensed suggestions she made to those whom she counselled or consoled…. There was a certain old-world fashion in Mary Lamb’s diction which gave it a most natural and quaintly pleasant effect, and which heightened rather than detracted from the more heartfelt or important things she uttered.

  Seldom is the name of Mary Lamb seen without that of her brother. “The Lambs” still walk hand-in-hand in our mention, as they were wont to walk on pleasant holidays to Enfield, and Potter’s Bar, and Waltham; when Mary “used to deposit in the little hand-basket the day’s fare of savory cold meat and salad,” and Charles “to pry about at noon-tide for some decent house where they might go in and produce their store, only paying for the ale that he must call for.” Still they pass linked together through our thoughts, as on that sadder day when Charles Lloyd met them, crossing the fields to Hoxton—hand-in-hand, and weeping. It is an act of severance against which the conscience somewhat protests, to present Mary alone to the consideration of the reader. It is like removing her from the protection of his presence who stood so faithfully and long between her and the world.

General

  Mary is just stuck fast in “All’s Well that Ends Well.” She complains of having to set forth so many female characters in boys’ clothes. She begins to think Shakespeare must have wanted—Imagination. I, to encourage her, for she often faints in the prosecution of her great work, flatter her with telling her how well such a play and such a play is done. But she is stuck fast.

  I am in good spirits just at this present time, for Charles has been reading over the tale I told you plagued me so much, and he thinks it one of the very best: it is “All’s Well that Ends Well.” You must not mind the many wretchedly dull letters I have sent you: for, indeed, I cannot help it, my mind is so dry always after poring over my work all day. But it will soon be over. I am cooking a shoulder of lamb (Hazlitt dines with us); it will be ready at two o’clock, if you can, pop in and eat a bit with us.

  It is now several days since I read the book you recommended to me, “Mrs. Leicester’s School;” and I feel as if I owed a debt in deferring to thank you for many hours of exquisite delight. Never have I read any thing in prose so many times over, within so short a space of time, as “The Father’s Wedding-day.” Most people, I understand, prefer the first tale—in truth a very admirable one—but others could have written it. Show me the man or woman, modern or ancient, who could have written this one sentence: “When I was dressed in my new frock, I wished poor mamma was alive to see how fine I was on papa’s wedding-day; and I ran to my favorite station at her bedroom door.” How natural, in a little girl, is this incongruity, this impossibility!… A fresh source of the pathetic bursts out before us, and not a bitter one…. The story is admirable throughout—incomparable, inimitable.

  It is not generally known, perhaps, that, previously to their circulation in a collective shape, Godwin, the publisher and proprietor of the copyright, offered them to his juvenile patrons and patronesses at No. 41 Skinner Street, in sixpenny books, with the plates (by Blake) “beautifully coloured.”

  The first edition [“Mrs. Leicester’s School”] sold out immediately, and four more were called for in the course of five years. It has continued in fair demand ever since, though there have not been any thing like so many recent reprints as of the “Tales from Shakespeare.” It is one of those children’s books, which, to reopen in after-life, is like revisiting some sunny old garden, some favorite haunt of childhood, where every nook and cranny seems familiar and calls up a thousand pleasant memories.

  How gently rounded and justly balanced the expressions of thought in these letters of hers are! One could imagine that she had got her brother to write them for her. In this year 1808 Mary brought out her charming stories for children, entitled “Mrs. Leicester’s School” (three of the narratives being her brother’s), and in this year also she undertook the writing of her “Tales from Shakespeare,” a book of which the charm is still fresh, and which no one has been able to better. Charles had to help her through with it, by undertaking to summarise the tragedies. Here, as in the case of the other two volumes which brother and sister wrote together, Charles is vehement in maintaining that all the credit of the fine writing is not his, but Mary’s. In the following year the still more lovely volume of “Poetry for Children” was produced.