harlesLambisthesweetestandthemostcharmingpersonality in English literature. He wrote under the pen name Elia. His Essays of Elia are very popular. Though hard to read and understand, they are full of the milk of human kindness.
THE BOY AT THE BOOKSTALL
~ MARY LAMB ~
I saw a boy with eager eye
Open a book upon a stall
And read as he’d devour it all;
Which when the stall-man did espy,
Soon to the boy I heard him call
“You, Sir, you never buy a book,
Therefore, in one you shall not look”.
The boy passed slowly on, and with a sigh,
He wished he never had been taught to read,
Then of the old churl’s books he
should have had no need.
Of suffering the poor many,
Which never can the poor annoy I soon perceived another boy,
Who looked as if he had not any Food for that day at least, enjoy
The sight of cold meat in a tavern larder.
The boy’s case then thought I, as surely harder Thus hungry, longing thus without a penny Beholding choice of dainty-dressed meat; No wonder if he wished he
never had learnt to eat.
Almost throughout his life Charles Lamb suffereddifficultiesand sorrows. He was born of a poor family and never grew rich. He worked as a clerk in the East India company office, which he refers to in his essays as South Sea House.Hewasattached very affectionately to his sister Mary Lamb. The brother and sister abridgedandsimplified Shakespeare’s plays and narrated them as stories. Lambs’ Tales from Shakespeare is a popular book. It serves as a good introduction to beginners for the study of the complex plays of Shakespeare.
Mary Lamb suffered from serious mental disorder. In a fit of madness she killed one of her parents and wounded the other seriously. She continued to suffer from bouts of madness throughout her life. In order to take care of her, Charles Lamb remained a confirmed bachelor. He did take care of his sister, who figures in his essays as Cousin Bridget.
Very often, it so happens that a writer feels superior to his readers and adopts a ‘wiser if not holier than thou’ posture, as he has got something to convey, which the readers obviously do not know. Charles Lamb is a glaring exception to this general rule. He is never above or distant from his readers. As we read his essays, we feel as though someone close to us is talking to us intimately, taking us into confidence. He is never a ‘Guru’ preaching to his inferior disciples from an elevated pulpit.
Charles Lamb’s essays are autobiographical in the sense that the ideas he expresses emanate from his life, experiences and his own responses to the various situations he confronts in his life. His writings acquire an added charm as they are written as first hand experiences.
That his writings are autobiographical does not mean that he gives authentic and truthful accounts of the events of his life. No doubt, he talks about himself but camouflages and even distorts facts. The narrations are, by no means, factual descriptions. He deliberately tries to mislead the readers by telling lies about himself, but the charm of his personality lies in the fact that the truth is obviously lurking behind the lie. His writings are an extremely curious admixture of fact and fiction. Under the pile of illusions that Lamb tries to create about himself, his sweet and noble personality is as transparent as a ‘beehive under glass.’
One who wants to hide things and always tries his best to say things which are not at all true (but all the same, explains himself most evidently and truthfully) can never be plain, brief and straight forward. He cannot adopt an easy simplistic style. He has always to follow a zigzag and long winding path, playing hide and seek with his readers. He has to try to bamboozle his readers’ minds, harping on seemingly irrelevant and trivial things. He has to use obsolete and difficult wordsthat the readersfindit hard to comprehend. They shouldfinditdifficulttoguesswhatheisgoingtotalkabout.Hestarts saying something first, and before he has completed it, he shifts to another totally disconnected idea that seems to be more pertinent – in the meanwhile he tries desperately to connect the latter idea with the former and ends up without saying anything conclusively about either. Such a type of writing leads to an extremely complicated style difficult to understand. These descriptions suit best, Charles Lamb’s writings. A coconut has a highly enjoyable kernel and quite an amount of extremely delicious and vitalizing water. How much has one to struggle to get to them? So, is the case of Charles Lamb’s Essays of Elia.
Is Charles Lamb a hypocritical and boastful person? A person of such mean and low character tries to hide his weaknesses and magnify his admirable qualities and concocts those virtues which he does not possess.Lambisfarfromsuchcunning.Curiouslyenough,healways tries to portray himself as a man of great imperfections of character. In fact, he is kind and giving but he describes himself as unfeeling and demanding. But the truth is more evident than his falsehood. We are filled with sympathy and admiration for him.
Numerous are the essays written by Lamb that are worth reading. Perhaps the most touching and lovable among them is Dream Children. In it, Lamb describes a reverie wherein he courted a beautiful lady who, after long mighty efforts condescended to marry him: they had a happy married life and had lovely children. His wife passed away; he loved narrating stories of courting his lady love to his children who, in turn, heard him with rapt attention and sympathy. He used to move them to streams of tears …….. As he goes on with his excited narration,hefindshisdaughterlookingathiminthesamewayashis wife used to and ………. The children vanish. Poor Elia finds himself sitting beside his cousin Bridget.
One of the most striking aspects of Charles Lamb’s style is that he puts in a lot of unforeseeable twists and unexpected turns in his writing. He seems to be talking about an apparently commonplace subject but gradually turns his discussion to something highly pertinent and relevant to life. In the essay Old China, Lamb indulges in lofty praise of the antique things of China in a somewhat lengthy discourse. As we read through straining our intellectual abilities to comprehend fully what he is sharing with us, he points out that one has to be affluent to afford such artistic and beautiful things. It is then that he goes on contrasting his own earlier days of poverty with the present phase of riches and luxury. (In fact, Charles Lamb, as we know was never rich - it is only his fertile imagination). In the days of poverty, it was extremely difficult to have even the simple things he and his sister needed or aspired to have. Be it possessing a book which they wanted to read or watching a play they admired madly, theyhadtopassthroughexcruciatingdifficulty,cutdownheavilyon their other needs and requirements and then only they were able to satisfy such humble desires. At last, when they happened to acquire them, they derived the fullest enjoyment out of them. But now when they can get things for the asking, they awfully miss the enjoyment. Thus, Lamb brings out the truth of Shakespeare’s maxim ‘Sweet are the uses of adversity’.
A child is fed with milk and praise.A man toiling for his livelihood is not a free man. He is restricted and controlled by the rules and regulations of the organization he works for. As he has always to stick to the routine and schedule of his office, he cannot avail himself of leisure or pleasure as and when he pleases. He has to keep his ego suppressed if he has to keep his bosses in good humour. But a man who has retired from service is an absolutely free man. He can spend any amount of time to his heart – felt satisfaction and visit any place of his choice. For him, there is no assigned work to do. If he wants to read a book, he can do so at his sweet will and pace. No one and nothing can stop him from doing what he likes. But a superannuated man is devoid of his income in terms of salary. He may have to live on his meagre pension. Now that he has retired, he is treated as an old and out - dated person. He grows old and his talents decline. He sadly lags behind, as the world around him moves fast, too fast far him to catch up. Charles Lamb’s essay The superannuated Man gives a touching expression to the pleasures and travails of a retired person.
Describing how a poor relation in a household is a terrible nuisance, Charles Lamb in his pathetic essay “Poor Relation” conveys to us the age-old Indian tradition of treating guests as God.
Many are such essays - one has only to strive hard to study and enjoy the sheer joy of human goodness that lies hidden in Lamb’s Essays of Elia.
Children are curious and are risk takers. They have lots of courage. They venture out into a world that is immense and dangerous. A child initially trusts life and the processes of life. ~ John Bradshaw ~