In a Train With Lamb

I WAS riding in a train with Charles Lamb — who never rode in one in all his shadowed life. I doubt whether he would have cared for it. When he went to Coleridge’s or to Mackery End by coach there was a slowness of transit that did not forebode the putting of great distances between himself and his beloved London. But a train!—whizz and clang! and many miles away from Fleet Street in an incredibly short space of time! He would have fancied the impossibility of ever going back over such a distance. Of course, in reality, the going back would have been as swift; but Charles Lamb no more dwelt amid realities than did I reflect reality when I wrote of riding with him in a train. What I truly meant was that I had his essays with me; and as I was buried in “ Schoolmasters New and Old” the subconscious contrast was in my mind between the coach of which he told — the leisurely and I hope comfortable coach — and my clanking train which was making a blur of all the beauty near at hand and leaving for the eye’s delight only the more distant landscape.

It was in raising my eyes from the book for a second to look at the distant hills — misty, as I love hills best — that I brought about a longer interruption of my reading than I had intended. My own fault, of course, for deserting the page; one who wants to find the crock of gold should never allow his eyes to leave the guiding fairy. But Lamb so vividly described the bore with whom he was riding in the coach that I forewent for a moment the delight of his page to reflect with sardonic and not sufficiently guilty pleasure on the boredom of visiting relatives whom I had escaped by a far from truthful story that I must make a journey into the country. Yet, ’a feller has to fish ’ — and as I laid my hand affectionately on the rod which stood beside me I reflected that the imperative in the line quoted afforded at least some salve for conscience. And it was with this feeling of stifled scruples that I was turning back to the volume when the man who sat between me and the window spoke.

I had no further noted him in taking my seat than to observe that he was bulky and left me none too much room. Now, as he spoke and I perforce looked at him, I saw that his face was mate to his body in its bulkiness, and that there was little in it to indicate companionship for me.

He pointed to a building of galvanized iron which was going up at the farther edge of a marsh over which we were traveling.

‘Do you happen to know what that is intended for?’ he inquired.

With politeness that denoted a total lack of interest I replied that I did not.

‘ I heard that big woolen mills are to be put up in this neighborhood,’he said, ‘and I wondered if that could be the building.’

I did not know, I was sure. I lack the temperament which enables one to turn abruptly away from a bore —and although perhaps not encouraged, he was at least not sufficiently discouraged by my reticence to be prevented from saying, —

‘There would be a fine opening for a big woolen mill here.’

I tried to think of something pat to the occasion — I could not; I saw something opposite in the form of a flock of grazing sheep, but was afraid that mention of them would make him further discursive, and depended upon nods and half-muttered negatives and assents to silence him. But this was not easy. He was interested in woolen mills and craved conversation about them. Then the recollection that a chewing-gum factory was to be erected in the neighborhood furnished a cud for his audible reflections to several minutes’ extent. The wonder to me was that he could be so interested in these things, yet talk so stupidly of them. I am not one of the bookish sort who look upon books as the only worth-while topic of conversation; but one who cannot talk well upon the only things he knows, as was the case with this man, should talk only to himself.

I was becoming desperate when the delightful reflection came upon me that I was going through an episode such as had befallen Lamb on the stagecoach — that I had deserted an account of his distressing experience only to plunge into something similar. So absorbed did I become in dwelling upon the comparison that I ceased listening to what the man was saying till he leaned toward me and asked,—

‘May I inquire what you are reading?’

I wanted to shout with laughter. It was with real effort that I suppressed at least a chuckle. What an opportunity! He should see the book — his attention should be called to the passage wherein Lamb drew the schoolmaster who must have been one of my neighbor’s ancestors. With my finger ready to point to the passage as one especially worth reading, I extended the book to him.

‘Lamb,’ I said.

I had regarded him as a man who, should a waiter say, ‘ Lamb, sir ? ’ would look epicureanly reflective. What other application of the word could appeal to him?

But at my reply his heavy face grew all a-sparkle.

‘Lamb!’ he cried. ‘I hope for your sake that you love him as I do. To know him is enough to make one happy for life.’

By this time he had the volume in his hand, and my changed heart was beating in sympathy with his.

He flipped the pages rapidly, slowly, glancing here and there, reading here and there, sometimes to himself with great inner rumblings, sometimes to me — until I impatiently but politely took the book from him and had my share of glance and comment. He liked some passages better than I did—I liked others better than he did. For some our admiration was equally shared.

‘What a fellow!’ he said. ‘Remember his friend George! — what was his other name? Well, it does n’t matter. But you remember, don’t you, how he was leaving Lamb’s house one night, and fell into the river; and Lamb and others fished him out, all but drowned; and how the soppy eccentric stood there and said, happy over his own perception, “Huh, I knew all the time that I was in the river”?’

What joy to meet a man who knows and loves your favorite story of all stories!

With equal gusto I reviewed Lamb’s letter in which he wrote of his journey home from the doctor’s party astride a friend’s back — it having been a party of the sort that makes walking difficult for a true devotee of gin. So overjoyed was my new acquaintance at the reawakened memory of this letter that he thumped me heartily on the back to emphasize his delight. Now, I am sensitive about being thumped on the back, but on this occasion it seemed to be quite in keeping with the boisterousness of the doctor’s party.

It was with real regret that I prepared to leave him at my journey’s end — real regret until he said, ‘Sorry you’re going; we have n’t had time to go through my favorite essay, “Schoolmasters New and Old.”’ Then I was rather glad that we had to part.