July 26, 2025 • 17 mins
In this intriguing volume, Elbert Hubbard takes us on an intimate tour through the homes of remarkable women who left their mark on history. Exploring the residences of authors, poets, social reformers, and other esteemed figures, Hubbard delves into how their environments could have shaped their lives and work. This book is a unique blend of biography and insightful commentary on the subjects life and creative output. Featured women include Elizabeth B. Browning, Madame Guyon, Harriet Martineau, Charlotte Bronte, Christina Rossetti, Rosa Bonheur, Madame De Stael, Elizabeth Fry, Mary Lamb, Jane Austen, Empress Josephine and Mary W. Shelley. The volume also features a poignant introduction by Hubbards son, Elbert Hubbard II, penned shortly after his fathers passing. This is Volume 2 in a series of 14 enlightening books.
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Speaker 1 (00:02):
Section eighteen of Little Journeys to the Homes of Famous Women.
This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in
the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please
visit LibriVox dot org. Recording by Mary Ann Bodorf. Little
Journeys to the Homes of Famous Women by Elbert Hubbard
(00:25):
Mary Lamb, Part two. Coleridge in his youth was brilliant.
No one disputes that he dazzled Charles and Marylamb from
the very first, Even when a blue coat he could
turn a pretty quatraine. And when he went away to Cambridge,
and once in a long while wrote a letter down
to my own c l it was a feast for
(00:48):
the sister too. Mary was different from other girls. She
didn't have company. She was too honest and serious and
earnest for society, her ideals too high. Coleridge, handsome, witty, philosophic.
Coleridge was her ideal. She loved him from afar. How
(01:10):
vain it is to ponder in our minds what might
have been, Yet, how can we help wondering what would
have been the result had Coleridge witted Mary Lamb In
many ways? It seems it would have been an ideal
mating for Mary's Lamb's mental dowry made good Coleridge as
every deficiency and his mariage equalized all that she lacked.
(01:30):
He was sprightly, headstrong, erratic, emotional. She was equally keen witted,
but a conservative in her cast of mind. That she
was capable of a great and passionate love, there is
no doubt. And he might have been. Mary Lamb would
have been his anger to windward, but as it was,
he drifted straight on to the rocks. Her mental troubles
(01:53):
came from a lack of responsibility, a rusting, a way
of unused powers in a dull, monotonous round of commonplace.
Had her heart found its home, I cannot conceive of
her in any other light than as a splendid, earnest woman, sane,
well poised, and doing a work that only the strong
could do. Coleridge had left on record the statement that
(02:17):
she was the only woman he had ever met who
had a logical mind, that is to say, the only
woman who ever stood him when he talked his best.
Coleridge made progress at the Blue Coats School. He became
Deputy Grecian or head scholar. This secured him a scholarship
at Cambridge, and thither he went in search of honors.
(02:40):
But his revolutionary and unitarian principles did not serve him
in good stead, and he was placed under the band.
At the same time, a youth by the name of
Robert Southey was halving alike experience at Oxford. Other youths
had tried in days agone to shake Cambridge and Oxford
out of their conservatism, and the result was that the
(03:02):
embryo revolutionists speedily found themselves warned off the campus. So
through sympathy, Coleridge and Southea met. Coleridge also brought along
a young philosopher and poet who had also been a
blue Coat, by the name of Lovel. These three young
men talked philosophy and came to the conclusion that the
(03:22):
world was wrong. They said, society was founded on a
false hypothesis. They would better things, and so they planned
packing up and away to America to found an ideal
community on the banks of the Susquehanna. But hold, a
society without women is founded on a false hypothesis. That's so,
(03:43):
what to do now? In America? There are no women,
but Indian squaws, but resource did not fail them. Southey
thought of the Fricker family a mile out on the
Bristow Road. There were three fine, strong, intelligent girls. What
better than to marry him. The world should be peopled
(04:04):
from the best. The girls were consulted and found willing
to reorganize society on the communal basis, And so the
three poets married the three sisters more properly. Each one
of the poets married a sister. Thank God, said Lamb,
that there were not four of those Fricker girls, our eye,
too would have been bagged, and the world peopled from
(04:26):
the best. Southy got the only prize out of the hazard.
Lowell's wife was so so, and Coldridge drew a blank,
or thought he did, which was the same thing. For
as a man thinketh so is she. The thought of
a lifetime on the banks of the Susquehanna with a
woman who was simply pink and good, and who was
(04:49):
never aroused into animation even by his wildest poetic bursts,
took all ambition out of him. Funds were low, and
the emigration's scheme was temporary, barely pigeonholed. After a short time,
Coleridge decided his mind was getting mildewed and packed off
to London from mental oxygen and a little visit, leaving
(05:09):
his wife in Southey's charge. He was gone two years.
Lovell followed suit, and Southey had three sisters in his household,
all with babies. In the meantime, we find Southie installed
at Gretna, just outside of the interesting town of Keswick,
where the water comes down at Ladore. Southey was a general.
(05:32):
He knew that knowledge consists in having a clerk that
confined the thing. He laid out research work and literary
schemes enough for several lifetimes, and the three sisters were
hard at it. It was a little community of their own,
all working for Southea and glad of it. Wordsworth and
his sister Dorothy lived at Grassmere, thirteen miles away, and
(05:53):
they used to visit back and forth. When you go
to Keswick, you should tramp that thirteen miles. The man
who as a tramped from Keswick to Grassmere has dropped
something out of his life. In merry jest, tipped with acid.
Someone called them the lake poets, as if there were
poets and lake poets and Lamb was spoken of as
(06:14):
a Lake poet by Grace Literary London grinned, as we
do when someone speaks of the sweet Singer of Michigan
or the Chicago Muse. But the term of contempt stuck,
and like the words Methodist, Quaker, and philistine, soon ceased
to be a term of reproach and became something of
which to be proud. There is a lead pencil factory
(06:37):
at Keswick, established in the late eighteen hundreds. Pencils are
made there to day exactly as they were made then,
and when you see the factory you're willing to believe it.
All visitors at Keswick go to the pencil factory and
buy pencils such as South as EUSt and get their
names stamped on each pencil while they wait without extra charge.
(06:58):
On the wall is a silhou picture of Southey showing
a needlessly large nose, and the gentlemanly old proprietor tells
us that Mary Wordsworth made the picture, and then he
will show you a letter written by Charles Lamb, framed
under glass, wherein cel says that all pencils are faiish good,
but no pencils are as good as Keswick pencils for
(07:21):
a while when times were hard, Coleridge's wife worked here
making pencils, while her archangel husband, a little damaged, went
with Wordsworth to study metaphysics at Gottingen. When Coleridge came
back and heard what his wife had done, he reproved
her gently but firmly. Missus Ajax in a pencil factory,
(07:43):
wearing a check apron with a bib hah Southe had
concluded that if Coleridge and Lowell were good samples of socialism,
he would stick to individualism. So he joined the Church
of England, became a monochrist, sang the praises of royalty,
got a pension, became poet, laureate and rich, passing rich.
(08:06):
But when he secured for himself the services of three
good women, he made a wise move, said c. L
And all the time Coleridge and Lamb were in correspondence,
and when Coleridge was in London he kept close run
on the Lambs. The father and old aunt had passed out,
(08:27):
and Charles and Mary lived together in rooms they seemed
to have moved very often. Their record followed them. When
the other tenants heard that she's the one that killed
her mother. They ceased to let their children play in
the hallways, and the landlord apologized, coughed and raised the rent.
Poor Charles saw the point and did not argue with it.
(08:48):
He looked for their lodgings, and having found em, went
home and said to Mary, it's too noisy here, sister,
I can't stand it. We'll have to go. Charles was
a literary man, now a bookkeeper by day and a
literary man by night. He wrote to please his sister,
and all his jokes were for her. There is a
genuine vein of pathos in all true humor. But think
(09:12):
of the fear and the love and the tenderness that
are concealed in Charles Lamb's work that was designed only
to fight off dread calamity. And Mary copied and read
and revised for her brother. And he told it all
to her before he wrote it, and together they discussed
it in detail. Charles studied mathematics just to keep his
(09:32):
genius under he declared. Mary smiled and said it wasn't necessary.
Coleridge used to drop in, and the Stoddards haslets Godwin
and Lovell too. Then Southey was up in London and
he called, and so did Wordsworth and Dorothy, for Coldridge
had spread Lamb's fame. And Dorothy and Mary kissed each
(09:53):
other and held hands under the table. And when Dorothy
went back to Grassmere, she wrote many beautiful letters to
Mary and urged her to come and visit her. Yes,
come to Grassmere and live. The one point they held
in common was a love for Coleridge, and as he
belonged to neither, there was no room for jealousy. The
figure girls were all safely married, but Charles and Mary
(10:15):
could not think of going. They needs must hide in
a big city. I hate your damn throstles and larks
and bobblinks, said c l in feigned contempt. I sing
the praise of the salutation, and the cat a snug
fourth floor back. They could not leave London, for over
them ever, hung that black cloud of a mind diseased.
(10:37):
I can do nothing, think nothing. Mary has another of
her bad spells. We saw it coming, and I took
her away to a place of safety, writes Charles to Coleridge.
One writer tells of seeing Charles and Mary walking across
Hampstead Heath hand in hand, both crying. They were on
the way to the asylum. Fortunately, these illnesses gave warning,
(11:00):
and Charles would ask his employer for a leave of
holiday and stay at home, trying by gentle mirth and
work to divert the dread visitor of unreason. After each illness,
in a few weeks, the sister would be restored to
her own, very weak in her mind, a blank as
to what had gone before, and so she never remembered
(11:20):
that supreme calamity. She knew the deed had been done,
but Heaven had absolved her gentle spirit from all participation
in it. She often talked of her mother, wrote of her,
quoted her, and that they should some time be again
united was her firm faith. The Tales from Shakespeare was
written at the suggestion of Godwin, seconded by Charles. The
(11:44):
idea that she herself could write seemed never to have
occurred to Mary until Charles swore, with a needless oath
that all the ideas he had ever had she supplied Charles. Dear,
you've been drinking again, said Mary. But the tales soul
and sold well. Fame came that way, and more money
than the simple plain home keeping bodies needed, so they
(12:08):
started a pension roll for sundry old ladies, and to
themselves played high and mighty patron and figured and talked
and joked over the blue teacups as to what they
should do with their money five hundred pounds a year.
Goodness gracious, if the Bank of England gets in a pinch,
advise c l At thirty four Southampton Buildings, third floor,
(12:30):
second turning to the left, But one a Missus Reynolds
was one of the pensioners. But no one knew it
but Missus Reynolds's, and she never told. She was the
lady of the old School and used often to dine
with the Lambs and get her snuff box filled. Her
husband had been a sea captain or something, and when
the tea was strong, she would take snuff and tell
(12:52):
the visitors about him, and swear she had ever been
true to his memory. Though God knows all good looking
and clever widows or sorely tried in this scurvy world.
Missus Reynold's met Thomas Hood at a Saturday evening at
the Lambs, and he was so taken with her that
he has told us she looked like an elderly wax
doll in half mourning and when she spoke it was
(13:14):
as if by an artificial process. She always kept up
the gurgle and buzz until run down. Missus Reynold's soul
claimed a literary distinction was the fact that she had
known Goldsmith, and he had presented her with an inscribed
copy of the deserted village. But we all had a
tender place in our hearts for the elderly wax Doll,
(13:34):
because the lambs were so gentle and patient with her,
And once a year went to Highgate and put a
shilling vase of flowers over the grave of the captain
to whose memory she ever was true. These friendless old
souls used to meet and mix of the lambs with
those whose names are now deathless. You could not write
the history of English letters and leave the lambs out.
(13:57):
They were the loved and loving friends of Southey, Wordsworth, Coleridge,
de Quincey, Jeffrey and Godwin. They won the recognition of
all who prize the far reaching intellect, the subtle imagination,
the pathos and tenderness of their lives intertwine us with
tendrils that hold our hearts in thrall. They adopted a
(14:19):
little girl, a beautiful little girl by the name of
Emma Isola. And never was there a child that was
a greater joy to parents than was Emma Isla. To
Charles and Mary. The wonder is they did not spoil
her with admiration and by laughing at all her foolish
little pranks. Mary set herself the task of educating this
(14:40):
little girl and formed a class the better to do it.
A class of three Emma Isila, William Haslett's son, and
Mary Victoria Novella. I met Mary Victoria once. She's over
eighty years of age. Now her form is a little bent,
but her eye is bright, and her smile as the
smile of youth. Folks call her Mary Cowden Clark, and
(15:04):
I want you to remember, Dearie, that it was Mary
Lamb who introduced the other Mary to Shakespeare by reading
to her the manuscript of the Tales, and further that
it was the success of the Tales that fired Mary
cowd and Clark with an ambition also to do a
great Shakespearean work. There may be a question about the
propriety of calling the Tales a great work. Their simplicity
(15:27):
seems to forbid it. But the term is all right.
When applied to that splendid life achievement, the concordance of
which Mary Lamb was the grandmother. Emma La married Edward Moxon,
and the Moxon home was the home of Mary Lamb
whenever she wished to make it so to the day
of her death. The Moxons did good by stealth and
(15:49):
were glad they never awoke and found it fame. What
shall I do when Mary leaves us, never to return,
once said Charles to Manning. But Mary lived for full
twenty years after Charles had gone, and lived only in
loving memory of him, who had devoted his life to her.
She seemed to exist just to talk of him, and
to Garland the grave in the little old churchyard of Edmonton,
(16:11):
where he sleeps, Woodward said, a grave is a tranquilizing object.
Resignation in time springs up from it as naturally as
wild flowers bespread the turf. Her work was to look
after the pensioners and carry out the wishes of my
brother Charles. But the pensioners were laid to rest, one
(16:32):
after the other, and the gentle Mary, grown old and feeble,
became a pensioner too. But thanks to that divine humanity
that is found in English hearts, she never knew it.
To the last. She looked after the worthy poor, and
carried flowers once a year to the grave of the
gallant Captain Reynold's at Highgate, and never tired of singing
(16:52):
the praises of Charles and excusing the fobials of Coleridge.
She lived only in the past, and its loving memory
were more than a ballast against the olds of the present.
And so she went down into the valley and entered
the great shadow, telling in cheerful broken musings of a
brother's love. And then she was carried to the churchyard
(17:13):
at Edmonton. There she rests in the grave with her brother.
In life they were never separated, and in death they
were not divided. End of Section eighteen, Mary Lamb Part
two
Section eighteen of Little Journeys to the Homes of Famous Women.
This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in
the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please
visit LibriVox dot org. Recording by Mary Ann Bodorf. Little
Journeys to the Homes of Famous Women by Elbert Hubbard
(00:25):
Mary Lamb, Part two. Coleridge in his youth was brilliant.
No one disputes that he dazzled Charles and Marylamb from
the very first, Even when a blue coat he could
turn a pretty quatraine. And when he went away to Cambridge,
and once in a long while wrote a letter down
to my own c l it was a feast for
(00:48):
the sister too. Mary was different from other girls. She
didn't have company. She was too honest and serious and
earnest for society, her ideals too high. Coleridge, handsome, witty, philosophic.
Coleridge was her ideal. She loved him from afar. How
(01:10):
vain it is to ponder in our minds what might
have been, Yet, how can we help wondering what would
have been the result had Coleridge witted Mary Lamb In
many ways? It seems it would have been an ideal
mating for Mary's Lamb's mental dowry made good Coleridge as
every deficiency and his mariage equalized all that she lacked.
(01:30):
He was sprightly, headstrong, erratic, emotional. She was equally keen witted,
but a conservative in her cast of mind. That she
was capable of a great and passionate love, there is
no doubt. And he might have been. Mary Lamb would
have been his anger to windward, but as it was,
he drifted straight on to the rocks. Her mental troubles
(01:53):
came from a lack of responsibility, a rusting, a way
of unused powers in a dull, monotonous round of commonplace.
Had her heart found its home, I cannot conceive of
her in any other light than as a splendid, earnest woman, sane,
well poised, and doing a work that only the strong
could do. Coleridge had left on record the statement that
(02:17):
she was the only woman he had ever met who
had a logical mind, that is to say, the only
woman who ever stood him when he talked his best.
Coleridge made progress at the Blue Coats School. He became
Deputy Grecian or head scholar. This secured him a scholarship
at Cambridge, and thither he went in search of honors.
(02:40):
But his revolutionary and unitarian principles did not serve him
in good stead, and he was placed under the band.
At the same time, a youth by the name of
Robert Southey was halving alike experience at Oxford. Other youths
had tried in days agone to shake Cambridge and Oxford
out of their conservatism, and the result was that the
(03:02):
embryo revolutionists speedily found themselves warned off the campus. So
through sympathy, Coleridge and Southea met. Coleridge also brought along
a young philosopher and poet who had also been a
blue Coat, by the name of Lovel. These three young
men talked philosophy and came to the conclusion that the
(03:22):
world was wrong. They said, society was founded on a
false hypothesis. They would better things, and so they planned
packing up and away to America to found an ideal
community on the banks of the Susquehanna. But hold, a
society without women is founded on a false hypothesis. That's so,
(03:43):
what to do now? In America? There are no women,
but Indian squaws, but resource did not fail them. Southey
thought of the Fricker family a mile out on the
Bristow Road. There were three fine, strong, intelligent girls. What
better than to marry him. The world should be peopled
(04:04):
from the best. The girls were consulted and found willing
to reorganize society on the communal basis, And so the
three poets married the three sisters more properly. Each one
of the poets married a sister. Thank God, said Lamb,
that there were not four of those Fricker girls, our eye,
too would have been bagged, and the world peopled from
(04:26):
the best. Southy got the only prize out of the hazard.
Lowell's wife was so so, and Coldridge drew a blank,
or thought he did, which was the same thing. For
as a man thinketh so is she. The thought of
a lifetime on the banks of the Susquehanna with a
woman who was simply pink and good, and who was
(04:49):
never aroused into animation even by his wildest poetic bursts,
took all ambition out of him. Funds were low, and
the emigration's scheme was temporary, barely pigeonholed. After a short time,
Coleridge decided his mind was getting mildewed and packed off
to London from mental oxygen and a little visit, leaving
(05:09):
his wife in Southey's charge. He was gone two years.
Lovell followed suit, and Southey had three sisters in his household,
all with babies. In the meantime, we find Southie installed
at Gretna, just outside of the interesting town of Keswick,
where the water comes down at Ladore. Southey was a general.
(05:32):
He knew that knowledge consists in having a clerk that
confined the thing. He laid out research work and literary
schemes enough for several lifetimes, and the three sisters were
hard at it. It was a little community of their own,
all working for Southea and glad of it. Wordsworth and
his sister Dorothy lived at Grassmere, thirteen miles away, and
(05:53):
they used to visit back and forth. When you go
to Keswick, you should tramp that thirteen miles. The man
who as a tramped from Keswick to Grassmere has dropped
something out of his life. In merry jest, tipped with acid.
Someone called them the lake poets, as if there were
poets and lake poets and Lamb was spoken of as
(06:14):
a Lake poet by Grace Literary London grinned, as we
do when someone speaks of the sweet Singer of Michigan
or the Chicago Muse. But the term of contempt stuck,
and like the words Methodist, Quaker, and philistine, soon ceased
to be a term of reproach and became something of
which to be proud. There is a lead pencil factory
(06:37):
at Keswick, established in the late eighteen hundreds. Pencils are
made there to day exactly as they were made then,
and when you see the factory you're willing to believe it.
All visitors at Keswick go to the pencil factory and
buy pencils such as South as EUSt and get their
names stamped on each pencil while they wait without extra charge.
(06:58):
On the wall is a silhou picture of Southey showing
a needlessly large nose, and the gentlemanly old proprietor tells
us that Mary Wordsworth made the picture, and then he
will show you a letter written by Charles Lamb, framed
under glass, wherein cel says that all pencils are faiish good,
but no pencils are as good as Keswick pencils for
(07:21):
a while when times were hard, Coleridge's wife worked here
making pencils, while her archangel husband, a little damaged, went
with Wordsworth to study metaphysics at Gottingen. When Coleridge came
back and heard what his wife had done, he reproved
her gently but firmly. Missus Ajax in a pencil factory,
(07:43):
wearing a check apron with a bib hah Southe had
concluded that if Coleridge and Lowell were good samples of socialism,
he would stick to individualism. So he joined the Church
of England, became a monochrist, sang the praises of royalty,
got a pension, became poet, laureate and rich, passing rich.
(08:06):
But when he secured for himself the services of three
good women, he made a wise move, said c. L
And all the time Coleridge and Lamb were in correspondence,
and when Coleridge was in London he kept close run
on the Lambs. The father and old aunt had passed out,
(08:27):
and Charles and Mary lived together in rooms they seemed
to have moved very often. Their record followed them. When
the other tenants heard that she's the one that killed
her mother. They ceased to let their children play in
the hallways, and the landlord apologized, coughed and raised the rent.
Poor Charles saw the point and did not argue with it.
(08:48):
He looked for their lodgings, and having found em, went
home and said to Mary, it's too noisy here, sister,
I can't stand it. We'll have to go. Charles was
a literary man, now a bookkeeper by day and a
literary man by night. He wrote to please his sister,
and all his jokes were for her. There is a
genuine vein of pathos in all true humor. But think
(09:12):
of the fear and the love and the tenderness that
are concealed in Charles Lamb's work that was designed only
to fight off dread calamity. And Mary copied and read
and revised for her brother. And he told it all
to her before he wrote it, and together they discussed
it in detail. Charles studied mathematics just to keep his
(09:32):
genius under he declared. Mary smiled and said it wasn't necessary.
Coleridge used to drop in, and the Stoddards haslets Godwin
and Lovell too. Then Southey was up in London and
he called, and so did Wordsworth and Dorothy, for Coldridge
had spread Lamb's fame. And Dorothy and Mary kissed each
(09:53):
other and held hands under the table. And when Dorothy
went back to Grassmere, she wrote many beautiful letters to
Mary and urged her to come and visit her. Yes,
come to Grassmere and live. The one point they held
in common was a love for Coleridge, and as he
belonged to neither, there was no room for jealousy. The
figure girls were all safely married, but Charles and Mary
(10:15):
could not think of going. They needs must hide in
a big city. I hate your damn throstles and larks
and bobblinks, said c l in feigned contempt. I sing
the praise of the salutation, and the cat a snug
fourth floor back. They could not leave London, for over
them ever, hung that black cloud of a mind diseased.
(10:37):
I can do nothing, think nothing. Mary has another of
her bad spells. We saw it coming, and I took
her away to a place of safety, writes Charles to Coleridge.
One writer tells of seeing Charles and Mary walking across
Hampstead Heath hand in hand, both crying. They were on
the way to the asylum. Fortunately, these illnesses gave warning,
(11:00):
and Charles would ask his employer for a leave of
holiday and stay at home, trying by gentle mirth and
work to divert the dread visitor of unreason. After each illness,
in a few weeks, the sister would be restored to
her own, very weak in her mind, a blank as
to what had gone before, and so she never remembered
(11:20):
that supreme calamity. She knew the deed had been done,
but Heaven had absolved her gentle spirit from all participation
in it. She often talked of her mother, wrote of her,
quoted her, and that they should some time be again
united was her firm faith. The Tales from Shakespeare was
written at the suggestion of Godwin, seconded by Charles. The
(11:44):
idea that she herself could write seemed never to have
occurred to Mary until Charles swore, with a needless oath
that all the ideas he had ever had she supplied Charles. Dear,
you've been drinking again, said Mary. But the tales soul
and sold well. Fame came that way, and more money
than the simple plain home keeping bodies needed, so they
(12:08):
started a pension roll for sundry old ladies, and to
themselves played high and mighty patron and figured and talked
and joked over the blue teacups as to what they
should do with their money five hundred pounds a year.
Goodness gracious, if the Bank of England gets in a pinch,
advise c l At thirty four Southampton Buildings, third floor,
(12:30):
second turning to the left, But one a Missus Reynolds
was one of the pensioners. But no one knew it
but Missus Reynolds's, and she never told. She was the
lady of the old School and used often to dine
with the Lambs and get her snuff box filled. Her
husband had been a sea captain or something, and when
the tea was strong, she would take snuff and tell
(12:52):
the visitors about him, and swear she had ever been
true to his memory. Though God knows all good looking
and clever widows or sorely tried in this scurvy world.
Missus Reynold's met Thomas Hood at a Saturday evening at
the Lambs, and he was so taken with her that
he has told us she looked like an elderly wax
doll in half mourning and when she spoke it was
(13:14):
as if by an artificial process. She always kept up
the gurgle and buzz until run down. Missus Reynold's soul
claimed a literary distinction was the fact that she had
known Goldsmith, and he had presented her with an inscribed
copy of the deserted village. But we all had a
tender place in our hearts for the elderly wax Doll,
(13:34):
because the lambs were so gentle and patient with her,
And once a year went to Highgate and put a
shilling vase of flowers over the grave of the captain
to whose memory she ever was true. These friendless old
souls used to meet and mix of the lambs with
those whose names are now deathless. You could not write
the history of English letters and leave the lambs out.
(13:57):
They were the loved and loving friends of Southey, Wordsworth, Coleridge,
de Quincey, Jeffrey and Godwin. They won the recognition of
all who prize the far reaching intellect, the subtle imagination,
the pathos and tenderness of their lives intertwine us with
tendrils that hold our hearts in thrall. They adopted a
(14:19):
little girl, a beautiful little girl by the name of
Emma Isola. And never was there a child that was
a greater joy to parents than was Emma Isla. To
Charles and Mary. The wonder is they did not spoil
her with admiration and by laughing at all her foolish
little pranks. Mary set herself the task of educating this
(14:40):
little girl and formed a class the better to do it.
A class of three Emma Isila, William Haslett's son, and
Mary Victoria Novella. I met Mary Victoria once. She's over
eighty years of age. Now her form is a little bent,
but her eye is bright, and her smile as the
smile of youth. Folks call her Mary Cowden Clark, and
(15:04):
I want you to remember, Dearie, that it was Mary
Lamb who introduced the other Mary to Shakespeare by reading
to her the manuscript of the Tales, and further that
it was the success of the Tales that fired Mary
cowd and Clark with an ambition also to do a
great Shakespearean work. There may be a question about the
propriety of calling the Tales a great work. Their simplicity
(15:27):
seems to forbid it. But the term is all right.
When applied to that splendid life achievement, the concordance of
which Mary Lamb was the grandmother. Emma La married Edward Moxon,
and the Moxon home was the home of Mary Lamb
whenever she wished to make it so to the day
of her death. The Moxons did good by stealth and
(15:49):
were glad they never awoke and found it fame. What
shall I do when Mary leaves us, never to return,
once said Charles to Manning. But Mary lived for full
twenty years after Charles had gone, and lived only in
loving memory of him, who had devoted his life to her.
She seemed to exist just to talk of him, and
to Garland the grave in the little old churchyard of Edmonton,
(16:11):
where he sleeps, Woodward said, a grave is a tranquilizing object.
Resignation in time springs up from it as naturally as
wild flowers bespread the turf. Her work was to look
after the pensioners and carry out the wishes of my
brother Charles. But the pensioners were laid to rest, one
(16:32):
after the other, and the gentle Mary, grown old and feeble,
became a pensioner too. But thanks to that divine humanity
that is found in English hearts, she never knew it.
To the last. She looked after the worthy poor, and
carried flowers once a year to the grave of the
gallant Captain Reynold's at Highgate, and never tired of singing
(16:52):
the praises of Charles and excusing the fobials of Coleridge.
She lived only in the past, and its loving memory
were more than a ballast against the olds of the present.
And so she went down into the valley and entered
the great shadow, telling in cheerful broken musings of a
brother's love. And then she was carried to the churchyard
(17:13):
at Edmonton. There she rests in the grave with her brother.
In life they were never separated, and in death they
were not divided. End of Section eighteen, Mary Lamb Part
two
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