slowly this time, so I can take everything in. I did like what Mr. Lucas said about him—“he could make any homely and familiar thing into something fresh and beautiful.” Lamb’s writings make me feel more at home in his London than I do here and now in St. Peter Port.
But what I cannot imagine is Charles, coming home from work and finding his mother stabbed to death, his father bleeding, and his sister Mary standing over both with a bloody knife. How did he make himself go into the room and take the knife away from her? After the police had taken her off to the madhouse, how did he persuade the Judge in Court to release her to his care and his care alone? He was only twenty-one years old then—how did he talk them into it?
He promised to take care of Mary for the rest of her life—and, once he put his foot on that road, he never stepped off it. It is sad he had to quit writing poetry, which he loved, and instead write criticism and essays, which he did not honor much, to make money.
I think of all his life, working as a clerk at the East India Company, so he could save money for the day, and it always came, when Mary would grow mad again, and he would have to place her in a private home.
And even then he did seem to miss her—they were such friends. Picture them: he had to watch her like a hawk for the awful symptoms, and she herself could tell when the madness was coming on and could do nothing to stop its coming—that must have been worst of all. I imagine him sitting there, watching her on the sly, and her sitting there, watching him watching her. How they must have hated the way the other one was forced to live.
But doesn’t it seem to you that when Mary was sane there was no one saner—or better company? Charles certainly thought so, and so did all their friends: Wordsworth, Hazlitt, Leigh Hunt, and, above all, Coleridge. On the day Coleridge died they found a note he had scribbled in the book he was reading. It said, “Charles and Mary Lamb, dear to my heart, yes, as it were, my heart.”
Perhaps I’ve written over-long about him, but I wanted you and Mr. Hastings to know how much your books have given me to think about and the pleasure I find in them.
I like the story from your childhood—the bell and the hay. I can see it in my mind. Did you like living on a farm —do you ever miss it? You are never really away from the countryside in Guernsey, not even in St. Peter Port, so I cannot imagine the difference living in a big city like London would make.
Kit has taken against mongooses, now she knows they eat snakes. She is hoping to find a boa constrictor under a rock. Isola stopped by this evening and said to tell you hello—she will write to you as soon as she gets her crops in—rosemary, dill, thyme, and henbane.
Yours,
Dawsey Adams
From Juliet to Dawsey
18th April, 1946
Dear Dawsey,
I am so glad you want to talk about Charles Lamb on paper. I have always thought Mary’s sorrow made Charles into a great writer—even if he had to give up poetry and clerk for the East India Company because of it. He had a genius for sympathy that not one of his great friends could touch. When Wordsworth chided him for not caring enough about nature, Charles wrote, “I have no passion for groves and valleys. The rooms where I was born, the furniture which has been before my eyes all my life, a book case which has followed me about like a faithful dog wherever I have moved—old chairs, old streets, squares where I have sunned myself, my old school—have I not enough, without your Mountains? I do not envy you. I should pity you, did I not know, that the Mind will make friends of any thing.” A Mind that can make friends of any thing—I thought of that often during the war.
By chance, I came upon another story about him today. He often drank too much, far too much, but he was not a sullen drunk. Once, his host’s butler had to carry him home, slung over his shoulder in a fireman’s hold. The next day Charles wrote his host such a hilarious note of apology, the man bequeathed it to his son in his will. I hope Charles wrote the butler too.
Have you ever noticed that when your mind is awakened or drawn to someone new, that person’s name suddenly pops up everywhere you go? My friend Sophie calls it coincidence, and Mr. Simpless, my parson friend, calls it Grace. He thinks that if one cares deeply about someone or something new one throws a kind of energy out into the world, and “fruitfulness” is drawn in.
Yours ever,
Juliet
From Isola to Juliet
18th April, 1946
Dear Juliet,
Now that we are corresponding friends, I want to ask you some questions—they are highly personal. Dawsey said it would not be polite, but I say that’s a difference twixt men and women, not polite and rude. Dawsey’s never asked me a personal question in fifteen years. I’d take it kindly if he would, but Dawsey’s got quiet ways. I don’t expect to change him, nor myself either. I see it that you cared to know about us, so I guess you would like us to know about you—only you just didn’t happen to think of it first.
First of all, I saw a picture of you on the dust jacket of your book about Anne Bronte, so I know you are below forty years of age—how far below? Was the sun in your eyes, or does it happen that you have a squint? Is it permanent? It must have been a windy day because your curls are blowing all about. I couldn’t quite make out the color of your hair, though I can tell it isn’t blonde—for which I am glad. I don’t like blondes very much.
Do you live by the river? I hope so, because people who live near running water are much nicer than people who don’t. I’d be mean as a scorpion if I lived inland. Do you have a serious suitor? I do not.
Is your flat cozy or grand? Be fulsome, as I want to be able to picture it in my mind. Do you think you would like to visit us on Guernsey? Do you have a pet? What kind?
Your friend,
Isola
