'Shut Not Thy Purse-Strings'

Unlike his friends Coleridge, Hazlitt, Wordsworth and Hunt, who often made fools of themselves as a result, Charles Lamb had little interest in the momentous events of his day. About “Boney” – Napoleon Bonaparte – he wished only to know the dictator’s height, unlike Hazlitt, who published a four-volume biography of the diminutive Corsican. In a letter to his friend Thomas Manning on March 1, 1800, Lamb writes: “Public affairs – except as they touch upon me, and so turn into private – I cannot whip up my mind to feel any interest in.” This admirable sentiment would profit many of our contemporaries. It’s easily mistaken for self-centeredness, but nature’s busybodies, those preoccupied with politics and power, are the truly selfish. 

For Lamb, to be civic-minded was to care for one’s family, friends and strangers – to be a generous host. Though he was a lifelong bachelor, his instinct for family was fierce and he dedicated his life to caring for his matricidal sister, “Mad” Mary Lamb. He practiced charity and compassion as non-proselytizing virtues. In one of the Elia essays, “A Complaint of the Decay of Beggars in the Metropolis,” he writes:

 

“Shut not thy purse-strings always against painted distress. Act a charity sometimes. When a poor creature (outwardly and visibly such) comes before thee, do not stay to inquire whether the ‘seven small children,’ in whose name he implores thy assistance, have a veritable existence. Rake not into the bowels of unwelcome truth, to save a halfpenny. It is good to believe him. If he be not all that he pretendeth, give, and under a personate father of a family, think (if thou pleasest) that thou hast relieved an indigent bachelor. When they come with their counterfeit looks, and mumping tones, think them players. You pay your money to see a comedian feign these things, which, concerning these poor people, thou canst not certainly tell whether they are feigned or not.”

 

His compassion is instinctive, not ideological. Nor was it rooted in a sense of religious obligation, which in Lamb’s case was rudimentary. In a March 9, 1822, letter to his childhood friend Coleridge, Lamb displays a sophisticated appreciation of moral complexity when he writes:

 

“One of the bitterest pangs of remorse I ever felt was when a child – when my kind old aunt had strained her pocket-strings to bestow a sixpenny whole plum-cake upon me. In my way home through the Borough, I met a venerable old man, not mendicant, but thereabouts – a look-beggar, not a verbal petitionist; and in the coxcombry of taught-charity I gave away the cake to him. I walked on a little in all the pride of an Evangelical peacock, when of a sudden my old aunt’s kindness crossed me – the sum it was to her – the pleasure she had a right to expect that I – not the old impostor – should take in eating her cake – the cursed ingratitude by which, under the colour of Christian virtue, I had frustrated her cherished purpose. I sobbed, I wept, and took it to heart so grievously, that I think I never suffered the like – and I was right. It was a piece of unfeeling hypocrisy, and proved a lesson to me ever after. The cake has long been masticated, consigned to the dunghill with the ashes of that unseasonable pauper.”

 

Lamb recognizes that his younger self was “virtue-signaling,” performing a kindly act because it would make him look good. He was being what Joseph Epstein has called a “virtucrat.” He was among the wisest of foolish men.