To the Sister of Elia

Just here, a note on this lovely little poem by Walter Savage Landor. Charles Lamb, Elia, died unexpectedly before his sister, Mary, leaving her to live without him many more years than anyone might have predicted. After her brother's death, Mary's decline back into her former mental incapacity surprised no one who had know the pair. They had lived together all their lives. A mutual friend, Henry Crabbe Robinson, described a visit to Mary in his diary for January 12th, 1835, not long after she was left to go on alone.

"'Oh, here's Crabby,' she said. 'Now this is very kind -- not merely good-natured, but very, very kind -- to come and see me in my affliction.' She spoke of Charles repeatedly..."

Landor, likewise a friend to the Lambs, and to Robinson, sent the latter word of his own sadness on hearing of the death of the great essayist. In part, Landor wrote, "When I first heard of the loss that all his friends, and many that were not his friends, sustained in him, no thought took possession of my mind except the anguish of his sister."

I take this from Lamb's biographer, E. V. Lucas, who goes on to report, "That very night, Landor continues, before he closed his eyes, he wrote (with his noble and generous impetuosity) this poem..."

I can think of no better, kinder gesture in our literature, or one that shows a better light on the friendships that populate the best of it.