Tears and Smiles in Charles Lamb

Like sunshine and shadow, humour and pathos are an integral part of life. Many of the essays of Charles Lamb contain humour, but the reader is missing the point, if the undercurrent of pathos is ignored. The curious mixture of the opposites makes a fascinating study of some of the essays of Elia. Stopford A. Brooke writes, “It is said that humour and pathos are closely connected, that the humorist is capable of the most pathetic expression.” (“Naturalism in English Poetry.”)

Charles Lamb wasted the golden years of his life in the irksome confinement of an office. The prince of the essayists, Lamb, always felt that man should lead a life of contemplation. But poor man, he had to write of tea and drugs and the bales of indigo, instead of having a chance to scribble his own thoughts. He used to work like a slave in the office, and even at night he was deprived the gift of Nature, sound sleep. How humorous and at the same time pathetic the following sentence is: “Besides my daylight servitude, I served over again all night in my sleep and would awake with terrors of imaginary false entries, errors in my accounts, and the like.” This sentence clearly brings out the agony which the essayist had undergone on account of the wretched life of a clerk. Again Lamb writes that, if any one wants to go through his works, they can be found not at any bookseller’s, but at the south sea house itself. One can only imagine what Lamb would have written, had he completely left to the writer’s desk. Lamb’s true works or the curious bibliophilies are safeguarded in the ledger archives by the East India Company. Saxe Commins calls this “bantering humor.”

From such a miserable life of a clerk he led in the south sea house, Charles Lamb could create humorous characters of his colleagues. They included Tippi the accountant who “thought an accountant is the greatest character in the world, and himself the greatest accountant in it.” In this context, Lamb seems to be writing humorously of the advantages of writing under a pseudonym. Even if the readers find him conceited, they can do nothing to him. They cannot find who Elia is, as Lamb is protected under the phantom cloud of Elia.

Another essay “Oxford in the Vacation” is apparently about the author’s visit to the famous university. There is the character-sketch of the absentminded George Dyer, standing passive by the side of the old shelves in the library. Dyer is almost grown into a book and Lamb mischievously writes that he wishes to ‘new-coat’ Dyer in Russia and assign him his place in the library.

But the real purpose of Lamb in writing this essay is not as much to describe the oddities of Dyer, as it is self-pity. Lamb feels sorry that he himself could not have the benefit of university education, though that, in no way, could diminish his faculties as a writer. And a note of disappointment to the effect that he could not be a ‘M. A.’ is revealed in the following lines:

“To such a one as myself, who has been defrauded in his younger years of the sweet food of academic institution, nowhere is so pleasant, to while away a few idle weeks, at as one or other of the universities.”

To appreciate the essays like “Dream Children” it is worthwhile to bear in mind certain incidents, connected with the not happy life of the essayist. Charles Lamb fell in love with Alice w-n-, who did not reciprocate his love. Secondly, Lamb’s sister Mary suffered a mental collapse and in a fit stabbed her mother to death and in the melee the father too was wounded. Owing to the broken-love-affair and the insanity of his sister, Lamb and his sister, old bachelor and the maid lived in a sort of “double singleness” and such was the life the cruel fate destined Lamb to lead.

In “Dream Children”, Lamb the bachelor imagines that he is married and has children who came to him, to hear stories about their elders. There is poignancy of pathos in this essay towards the end of the essay. Lamb is unable to say whether it is the little Alice or Alice w-n- that stands before him, the supposed children disappear, saying they are dreams. It might be that Lamb should have brooded over the past, especially with regard to his love affair. The presence of many a happy pair, with their smiling children must have had its own impact on Lamb. It would not be doing injustice to imagine Elia shedding tears thinking of his Alice and that is why the children grow fainter to his view. On opening his eyes, Lamb finds himself in the “bachelor’s arm-chair.”

It brings to the notice of the readers the perpetual mental agony the celibate Lamb had felt time and again.

Similarly “A New Year’s Eve” is considered to be “beautiful and melancholy and profoundly human” (Hugh Walker: The English Essay and Essayists). Lamb is in a sort of introspection and contrasts the religious and hopeful child Elia, with the stupid changeling of five-and-forty. Such a thought may be “Owing to another cause; simply that being without wife or family and having no offspring of my own to dally with, I turn upon memory, and adopt my own early idea, as my heir and favourite.” Thus the recurring theme of Lamb’s bachelorhood is again noticed here. In the essay entitled “Wedding”, Lamb refers to his acceptance to be present at the wedding of a friend’s daughter because the occasion would help him to forget his bachelorhood at least for a while.

Lamb makes the readers laugh while narrating the way in which the art of cooking meat was invented, rather accidentally, for the first time in the world. The father and son become partners in burning the poor mansion and even his lordship’s town is observed to be on fire. But towards the conclusion, the author makes the reader feel pity for the tender innocent pig. He requests the cook, while preparing the sauce, to banish the whole onion tribe or the guilty garlic. The pig is “a weakling–a flower”. Here too, pathos is tinged with humour.

In spite of the various shocks he received in life Lamb neither curses those responsible for his disappointments, nor does he wish to paint the world black and ugly. He wants the events of his past life to be retained as they were.

Old Dorrell cheated Lamb’s family to the tune of two thousand pounds, but Lamb thinks but for this, he would not have understood the nature of that specious old rogue. Similar is the case with regard to Alice w-n-. Had it not been for this broken love-affair, “so passionate a love-adventure” should have been lost. Thus Lamb could swallow all the bitter experiences in life and write funnily about them. Though the world failed to give joy or solace to Lamb he does not take shelter in cynicism. Curiously enough he is in love with his life on earth. He is in love with the green earth, the face of the town and the country and delicious juices of the green earth, the face of the town and the country and the delicious juices of meats and fishes. The thought of death haunts Lamb. He shudders and asks if all these things so dearly loved by him go out with life. Lamb’s mental make-up seems to be akin to that of the Duke Senior who proclaimed “Sweet are the uses of adversity” (“As You Like It”) or it is due to the spirit of his mother which seems to descend and smile upon me, and bid me to live to enjoy the life and reason which the Almighty has given me.” (Letter of Charles Lamb, 17th October 1796) We can conclude with the critic who aptly remarked that Lamb laughed to save himself from weeping.