Biographical Essays

T >> Thomas de Quincey >> Biographical Essays

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Since the rencontres with Lamb at Coleridge's, I had met him once
or twice at literary dinner parties. One of these occurred at the
house of Messrs. Taylor & Hessey, the publishers. I myself was
suffering too much from illness at the time to take any pleasure in
what passed, or to notice it with any vigilance of attention. Lamb,
I remember, as usual, was full of gayety; and as usual he rose too
rapidly to the zenith of his gayety; for he shot upwards like a
rocket, and, as usual, people said he was "tipsy." To me Lamb never
seemed intoxicated, but at most arborily elevated. He never talked
nonsense, which is a great point gained; nor polemically, which is
a greater; for it is a dreadful thing to find a drunken man bent
upon converting oneself; nor sentimentally, which is greatest of
all. You can stand a man's fraternizing with you; or if he swears
an eternal friendship, only once in an hour, you do not think of
calling the police; but once in every three minutes is too much
(period omitted here in original, but there is a double space
following for a new sentence) Lamb did none of these things; he was
always rational, quiet, and gentlemanly in his habits. Nothing
memorable, I am sure, passed upon this occasion, which was in
November of 1821; and yet the dinner was memorable by means of one
fact not discovered until many years later. Amongst the company,
all literary men, sate a murderer, and a murderer of a freezing
class; cool, calculating, wholesale in his operations, and moving
all along under the advantages of unsuspecting domestic confidence
and domestic opportunities. This was Mr. Wainwright, who was
subsequently brought to trial, but not for any of his murders, and
transported for life. The story has been told both by Sergeant
Talfourd, in the second volume of these "Final Memoirs," and
previously by Sir Edward B. Lytton. Both have been much blamed for
the use made of this extraordinary case; but we know not why. In
itself it is a most remarkable case for more reasons than one. It
is remarkable for the appalling revelation which it makes of power
spread through the hands of people not liable to suspicion, for
purposes the most dreadful. It is remarkable also by the contrast
which existed in this case between the murderer's appearance and
the terrific purposes with which he was always dallying. He was a
contributor to a journal in which I also had written several
papers. This formed a shadowy link between us; and, ill as I was, I
looked more attentively at _him_ than at anybody else. Yet
there were several men of wit and genius present, amongst whom Lamb
(as I have said) and Thomas Hood, Hamilton Reynolds, and Allan
Cunningham. But _them_ I already knew, whereas Mr. W. I now
saw for the first time and the last. What interested me about
_him_ was this, the papers which had been pointed out to me as
his, (signed _Janus Weathercock, Vinklooms_, &c.) were written
in a spirit of coxcombry that did not so much disgust as amuse. The
writer could not conceal the ostentatious pleasure which he took in
the luxurious fittings-up of his rooms, in the fancied splendor of
his _bijouterie_, &c. Yet it was easy for a man of any
experience to read two facts in all this idle _etalage_; one
being, that his finery was but of a second-rate order; the other,
that he was a parvenu, not at home even amongst his second-rate
splendor. So far there was nothing to distinguish Mr. W--'s papers
from the papers of other triflers. But in this point there was,
viz., that in his judgments upon the great Italian masters of
painting, Da Vinci, Titian, &c., there seemed a tone of sincerity
and of native sensibility, as in one who spoke from himself, and
was not merely a copier from books. This it was that interested me;
as also his reviews of the chief Italian engravers, Morghen,
Volpato, &c.; not for the manner, which overflowed with levities
and impertinence, but for the substance of his judgments in those
cases where I happened to have had an opportunity of judging for
myself. Here arose also a claim upon Lamb's attention; for Lamb and
his sister had a deep feeling for what was excellent in painting.
Accordingly Lamb paid him a great deal of attention, and continued
to speak of him for years with an interest that seemed
disproportioned to his pretensions. This might be owing in part to
an indirect compliment paid to Miss Lamb in one of W--'s papers;
else his appearance would rather have repelled Lamb; it was
commonplace, and better suited to express the dandyism which
overspread the surface of his manner, than the unaffected
sensibility which apparently lay in his nature. Dandy or not,
however, this man, on account of the schism in his papers, so much
amiable puppyism on one side, so much deep feeling on the other,
(feeling, applied to some of the grandest objects that earth has to
show,) did really move a trifle of interest in me, on a day when I
hated the face of man and woman. Yet again, if I had known this man
for the murderer that even then he was, what sudden loss of
interest, what sudden growth of another interest, would have
changed the face of that party! Trivial creature, that didst carry
thy dreadful eye kindling with perpetual treasons! Dreadful
creature, that didst carry thy trivial eye, mantling with eternal
levity, over the sleeping surfaces of confiding household life--oh,
what a revolution for man wouldst thou have accomplished had thy
deep wickedness prospered! What _was_ that wickedness? In a
few words I will say.

At this time (October, 1848) the whole British island is appalled
by a new chapter in the history of poisoning. Locusta in ancient
Rome, Madame Brinvilliers in Paris, were people of original genius:
not in any new artifice of toxicology, not in the mere management
of poisons, was the audacity of their genius displayed. No; but in
profiting by domestic openings for murder, unsuspected through
their very atrocity. Such an opening was made some years ago by
those who saw the possibility of founding purses for parents upon
the murder of their children. This was done upon a larger scale
than had been suspected, and upon a plausible pretence. To bury a
corpse is costly; but of a hundred children only a few, in the
ordinary course of mortality, will die within a given time. Five
shillings a-piece will produce 25L annually, and _that_ will
bury a considerable number. On this principle arose Infant Burial
Societies. For a few shillings annually, a parent could secure a
funeral for every child. If the child died, a few guineas fell due
to the parent, and the funeral was accomplished without cost of
_his_. But on this arose the suggestion--Why not execute an
insurance of this nature twenty times over? One single insurance
pays for the funeral--the other nineteen are so much clear gain, a
_lucro ponatur_, for the parents. Yes; but on the supposition
that the child died! twenty are no better than one, unless they are
gathered into the garner. Now, if the child died naturally, all was
right; but how, if the child did _not_ die? Why, clearly this,
--the child that _can_ die, and won't die, may be made to die.
There are many ways of doing that; and it is shocking to know,
that, according to recent discoveries, poison is comparatively a
very merciful mode of murder. Six years ago a dreadful
communication was made to the public by a medical man, viz., that
three thousand children were annually burned to death under
circumstances showing too clearly that they had been left by their
mothers with the means and the temptations to set themselves on
fire in her absence. But more shocking, because more lingering, are
the deaths by artificial appliances of wet, cold, hunger, bad diet,
and disturbed sleep, to the frail constitutions of children. By
that machinery it is, and not by poison, that the majority qualify
themselves for claiming the funeral allowances. Here, however,
there occur to any man, on reflection, two eventual restraints on
the extension of this domestic curse:--1st, as there is no pretext
for wanting more than one funeral on account of one child, any
insurances beyond one are in themselves a ground of suspicion. Now,
if any plan were devised for securing the _publication_ of
such insurances, the suspicions would travel as fast as the grounds
for them. 2dly, it occurs, that eventually the evil checks itself,
since a society established on the ordinary rates of mortality
would be ruined when a murderous stimulation was applied to that
rate too extensively. Still it is certain that, for a season, this
atrocity _has_ prospered in manufacturing districts for some
years, and more recently, as judicial investigations have shown, in
one agricultural district of Essex. Now, Mr. W--'s scheme of murder
was, in its outline, the very same, but not applied to the narrow
purpose of obtaining burials from a public fund He persuaded, for
instance, two beautiful young ladies, visitors in his family, to
insure their lives for a short period of two years. This insurance
was repeated in several different offices, until a sum of 18,000
pounds had been secured in the event of their deaths within the two
years. Mr. W--took care that they _should_ die, and very
suddenly, within that period; and then, having previously secured
from his victims an assignment to himself of this claim, he
endeavored to make this assignment available. But the offices,
which had vainly endeavored to extract from the young ladies any
satisfactory account of the reasons for this limited insurance, had
their suspicions at last strongly roused. One office had recently
experienced a case of the same nature, in which also the young lady
had been poisoned by the man in whose behalf she had effected the
insurance; all the offices declined to pay; actions at law arose;
in the course of the investigation which followed, Mr. W--'s
character was fully exposed. Finally, in the midst of the
embarrassments which ensued, he committed forgery, and was
transported.

From this Mr. W--, some few days afterwards, I received an
invitation to a dinner party, expressed in terms that were
obligingly earnest. He mentioned the names of his principal guests,
and amongst them rested most upon those of Lamb and Sir David
Wilkie. From an accident I was unable to attend, and greatly
regretted it. Sir David one might rarely happen to see, except at a
crowded party. But as regarded Lamb, I was sure to see him or to
hear of him again in some way or other within a short time. This
opportunity, in fact, offered itself within a month through the
kindness of the Lambs themselves. They had heard of my being in
solitary lodgings, and insisted on my coming to dine with them,
which more than once I did in the winter of 1821-22.

The mere reception by the Lambs was so full of goodness and
hospitable feeling, that it kindled animation in the most cheerless
or torpid of invalids. I cannot imagine that any _memorabilia_
occurred during the visit; but I will use the time that would else
be lost upon the settling of that point, in putting down any
triviality that occurs to my recollection. Both Lamb and myself had
a furious love for nonsense, headlong nonsense. Excepting Professor
Wilson, I have known nobody who had the same passion to the same
extent. And things of that nature better illustrate the
_realities_ of Lamb's social life than the gravities, which
weighing so sadly on his solitary hours he sought to banish from
his moments of relaxation.

There were no strangers; Charles Lamb, his sister, and myself made
up the party. Even this was done in kindness. They knew that I
should have been oppressed by an effort such as must be made in the
society of strangers; and they placed me by their own fireside,
where I could say as little or as much as I pleased.

We dined about five o'clock, and it was one of the hospitalities
inevitable to the Lambs, that any game which they might receive
from rural friends in the course of the week, was reserved for the
day of a friend's dining with them.

In regard to wine, Lamb and myself had the same habit--perhaps it
rose to the dignity of a principle--viz., to take a great deal
_during_ dinner--none _after_ it. Consequently, as Miss
Lamb (who drank only water) retired almost with the dinner itself,
nothing remained for men of our principles, the rigor of which we
had illustrated by taking rather too much of old port before the
cloth was drawn, except talking; amoebaean colloquy, or, in Dr.
Johnson's phrase, a dialogue of "brisk reciprocation." But this was
impossible; over Lamb, at this period of his life, there passed
regularly, after taking wine, a brief eclipse of sleep. It
descended upon him as softly as a shadow. In a gross person, laden
with superfluous flesh, and sleeping heavily, this would have been
disagreeable; but in Lamb, thin even to meagreness, spare and wiry
as an Arab of the desert, or as Thomas Aquinas, wasted by
scholastic vigils, the affection of sleep seemed rather a network
of aerial gossamer than of earthly cobweb--more like a golden haze
falling upon him gently from the heavens than a cloud exhaling
upwards from the flesh. Motionless in his chair as a bust,
breathing so gently as scarcely to seem certainly alive, he
presented the image of repose midway between life and death, like
the repose of sculpture; and to one who knew his history a repose
affectingly contrasting with the calamities and internal storms of
his life. I have heard more persons than I can now distinctly
recall, observe of Lamb when sleeping, that his countenance in that
state assumed an expression almost seraphic, from its intellectual
beauty of outline, its childlike simplicity, and its benignity. It
could not be called a transfiguration that sleep had worked in his
face; for the features wore essentially the same expression when
waking; but sleep spiritualized that expression, exalted it, and
also harmonized it. Much of the change lay in that last process.
The eyes it was that disturbed the unity of effect in Lamb's waking
face. They gave a restlessness to the character of his intellect,
shifting, like northern lights, through every mode of combination
with fantastic playfulness, and sometimes by fiery gleams
obliterating for the moment that pure light of benignity which was
the predominant reading on his features. Some people have supposed
that Lamb had Jewish blood in his veins, which seemed to account
for his gleaming eyes. It might be so; but this notion found little
countenance in Lamb's own way of treating the gloomy medieval
traditions propagated throughout Europe about the Jews, and their
secret enmity to Christian races. Lamb, indeed, might not be more
serious than Shakspeare is supposed to have been in his Shylock;
yet he spoke at times as from a station of wilful bigotry, and
seemed (whether laughingly or not) to sympathize with the barbarous
Christian superstitions upon the pretended bloody practices of the
Jews, and of the early Jewish physicians. Being himself a Lincoln
man, he treated Sir Hugh [Endnote: 4] of Lincoln, the young child
that suffered death by secret assassination in the Jewish quarter
rather than suppress his daily anthems to the Virgin, as a true
historical personage on the rolls of martyrdom; careless that this
fable, like that of the apprentice murdered out of jealousy by his
master, the architect, had destroyed its own authority by
ubiquitous diffusion. All over Europe the same legend of the
murdered apprentice and the martyred child reappears under
different names--so that in effect the verification of the tale is
none at all, because it is unanimous; is too narrow, because it is
too impossibly broad. Lamb, however, though it was often hard to
say whether he were not secretly laughing, swore to the truth of
all these old fables, and treated the liberalities of the present
generation on such points as mere fantastic and effeminate
affectations, which, no doubt, they often are as regards the
sincerity of those who profess them. The bigotry, which it pleased
his fancy to assume, he used like a sword against the Jew, as the
official weapon of the Christian, upon the same principle that a
Capulet would have drawn upon a Montague, without conceiving it any
duty of _his_ to rip up the grounds of so ancient a quarrel;
it was a feud handed down to him by his ancestors, and it was
_their_ business to see that originally it had been an honest
feud. I cannot yet believe that Lamb, if seriously aware of any
family interconnection with Jewish blood, would, even in jest, have
held that one-sided language. More probable it is, that the fiery
eye recorded not any alliance with Jewish blood, but that
disastrous alliance with insanity which tainted his own life, and
laid desolate his sister's.

On awakening from his brief slumber, Lamb sat for some time in
profound silence, and then, with the most startling rapidity, sang
out--"Diddle, diddle, dumpkins;" not looking at me, but as if
soliloquizing. For five minutes he relapsed into the same deep
silence; from which again he started up into the same abrupt
utterance of--"Diddle, diddle, dumpkins." I could not help laughing
aloud at the extreme energy of this sudden communication,
contrasted with the deep silence that went before and followed.
Lamb smilingly begged to know what I was laughing at, and with a
look of as much surprise as if it were I that had done something
unaccountable, and not himself. I told him (as was the truth) that
there had suddenly occurred to me the possibility of my being in
some future period or other called on to give an account of this
very evening before some literary committee. The committee might
say to me--(supposing the case that I outlived him)--"You dined
with Mr. Lamb in January, 1822; now, can you remember any remark or
memorable observation which that celebrated man made before or
after dinner?"

I as _respondent_. "Oh yes, I can."

_Com_. "What was it?"

_Resp_. "Diddle, diddle, dumpkins."

_Com_. "And was this his only observation? Did Mr. Lamb not
strengthen this remark by some other of the same nature?"

_Resp_. "Yes, he did."

_Com_. "And what was it?"

_Resp_. "Diddle, diddle, dumpkins."

_Com_. "What is your secret opinion of Dumpkins?"

_Com_. "Do you conceive Dumpkins to have been a thing or a
person?"

_Resp_. "I conceive Dumpkins to have been a person, having the
rights of a person."

_Com_. "Capable, for instance, of suing and being sued?"

_Resp_. "Yes, capable of both; though I have reason to think
there would have been very little use in suing Dumpkins."

_Com_. "How so? Are the committee to understand that you, the
respondent, in your own case, have found it a vain speculation,
countenanced only by visionary lawyers, to sue Dumpkins?"

_Resp_. "No; I never lost a shilling by Dumpkins, the reason
for which may be that Dumpkins never owed me a shilling; but from
his _pronomen_ of 'diddle,' I apprehend that he was too well
acquainted with joint-stock companies!"

_Com_. "And your opinion is, that he may have diddled Mr.
Lamb?"

_Resp_. "I conceive it to be not unlikely."

_Com_. "And, perhaps, from Mr. Lamb's pathetic reiteration of
his name, 'Diddle, diddle,' you would be disposed to infer that
Dumpkins had practised his diddling talents upon Mr. L. more than
once?"

_Resp_. "I think it probable."

Lamb laughed, and brightened up; tea was announced; Miss Lamb
returned. The cloud had passed away from Lamb's spirits, and again
he realized the pleasure of evening, which, in _his_
apprehension, was so essential to the pleasure of literature.

On the table lay a copy of Wordsworth, in two volumes; it was the
edition of Longman, printed about the time of Waterloo. Wordsworth
was held in little consideration, I believe, amongst the house of
Longman; at any rate, _their_ editions of his works were got
up in the most slovenly manner. In particular, the table of
contents was drawn up like a short-hand bill of parcels. By
accident the book lay open at a part of this table, where the
sonnet beginning--

"Alas! what boots the long laborious quest"--

had been entered with mercantile speed, as--

"Alas! what boots,"----

"Yes," said Lamb, reading this entry in a dolorous tone of voice, "he
may well say _that_. I paid Hoby three guineas for a pair that
tore like blotting paper, when I was leaping a ditch to escape a
farmer that pursued me with a pitch-fork for trespassing. But why
should W. wear boots in Westmoreland? Pray, advise him to patronize
shoes."

The mercurialities of Lamb were infinite, and always uttered in a
spirit of absolute recklessness for the quality or the prosperity
of the sally. It seemed to liberate his spirits from some burthen
of blackest melancholy which oppressed it, when he had thrown off a
jest: he would not stop one instant to improve it; nor did he care
the value of a straw whether it were good enough to be remembered,
or so mediocre as to extort high moral indignation from a collector
who refused to receive into his collection of jests and puns any
that were not felicitously good or revoltingly bad.

After tea, Lamb read to me a number of beautiful compositions,
which he had himself taken the trouble to copy out into a blank
paper folio from unsuccessful authors. Neglected people in every
class won the sympathy of Lamb. One of the poems, I remember, was a
very beautiful sonnet from a volume recently published by Lord
Thurlow--which, and Lamb's just remarks upon it, I could almost
repeat _verbatim_ at this moment, nearly twenty-seven years
later, if your limits would allow me. But these, you tell me, allow
of no such thing; at the utmost they allow only twelve lines more.
Now all the world knows that the sonnet itself would require
fourteen lines; but take fourteen from twelve, and there remains
very little, I fear; besides which, I am afraid two of my twelve
are already exhausted. This forces me to interrupt my account of
Lamb's reading, by reporting the very accident that _did_
interrupt it in fact; since that no less characteristically
expressed Lamb's peculiar spirit of kindness, (always quickening
itself towards the ill-used or the down-trodden,) than it had
previously expressed itself in his choice of obscure readings. Two
ladies came in, one of whom at least had sunk in the scale of
worldly consideration. They were ladies who would not have found
much recreation in literary discussions; elderly, and habitually
depressed. On _their_ account, Lamb proposed whist, and in
that kind effort to amuse them, which naturally drew forth some
momentary gayeties from himself, but not of a kind to impress
themselves on the recollection, the evening terminated.

We have left ourselves no room for a special examination of Lamb's
writings, some of which were failures, and some were so memorably
beautiful as to be unique in their class. The character of Lamb it
is, and the life-struggle of Lamb, that must fix the attention of
many, even amongst those wanting in sensibility to his intellectual
merits. This character and this struggle, as we have already
observed, impress many traces of themselves upon Lamb's writings.
Even in that view, therefore, they have a ministerial value; but
separately, for themselves, they have an independent value of the
highest order. Upon this point we gladly adopt the eloquent words
of Sergeant Talfourd:--

"The sweetness of Lamb's character, breathed through his writings,
was felt even by strangers; but its heroic aspect was unguessed
even by many of his friends. Let them now consider it, and ask if
the annals of self-sacrifice can show anything in human action and
endurance more lovely than its self-devotion exhibits? It was not
merely that he saw, through the ensanguined cloud of misfortune
which had fallen upon his family, the unstained excellence of his
sister, whose madness had caused it; that he was ready to take her
to his own home with reverential affection, and cherish her through
life; and he gave up, for _her_ sake, all meaner and more
selfish love, and all the hopes which youth blends with the passion
which disturbs and ennobles it; not even that he did all this
cheerfully, without pluming himself upon his brotherly nobleness as
a virtue, or seeking to repay himself (as some uneasy martyrs do)
by small instalments of long repining; but that he carried the
spirit of the hour in which he first knew and took his course to
his last. So far from thinking that his sacrifice of youth and love
to his sister gave him a license to follow his own caprice at the
expense of her feelings, even in the lightest matters, he always
wrote and spoke of her as his wiser self, his generous
benefactress, of whose protecting care he was scarcely worthy."

It must be remembered, also, which the Sergeant does not overlook,
that Lamb's efforts for the becoming support of his sister lasted
through a period of forty years. Twelve years before his death, the
munificence of the India House, by granting him a liberal retiring
allowance, had placed his own support under shelter from accidents
of any kind. But this died with himself; and he could not venture
to suppose that, in the event of his own death, the India House
would grant to his sister the same allowance as by custom is
granted to a wife. This they did; but not venturing to calculate
upon such nobility of patronage, Lamb had applied himself through
life to the saving of a provision for his sister under any accident
to himself. And this he did with a persevering prudence, so little
known in the literary class, amongst a continued tenor of
generosities, often so princely as to be scarcely known in any
class.

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