Page:Mary Lamb (Gilchrist 1883).djvu/81

Rh is a characteristic sweetness in her attitude and the countenance is full of goodness and intelligence; whilst the finer modelling of Charles' features and the intellectual beauty of his head are rendered with considerable success,—Crabb Robinson's strictures notwithstanding who, it appears, saw not the original, but a poor copy of the figure of Charles. It was from Gary's picture that Mr. Armitage, R.A. executed the portraits of the Lambs in the large fresco on the walls of University College Hall. Among its many groups (of which Crabb Robinson, who commissioned the fresco, is the central figure), that containing the Lambs includes also Wordsworth, Coleridge, Blake, and Southey. By an unfortunate clause in the deed of gift the fresco, which is painted in monochrome, is forbidden to be cleaned, even with bread-crumb; it is therefore already very dingy.

In stature, Mary was under the middle size and her bodily frame was strong. She could walk fifteen miles with ease; her brother speaks of their having walked thirty miles together and, even at sixty years of age, she was capable of twelve miles "most days." Regardless of weather, too, as Leigh Hunt pleasantly tells in his Familiar Epistle in Verse to Lamb:—

You'll guess why I can't see the snow-covered streets,

Without thinking of you and your visiting feats,

When you call to remembrance how you and one more,

When I wanted it most, used to knock at my door;

For when the sad winds told us rain would come down,

Or when snow upon snow fairly clogg'd up the town,

And dun-yellow fogs brooded over its white,

So that scarcely a being was seen towards night,

Then—then said the lady yclept near and dear:

Now, mind what I tell you—the Lambs will be here.

So I poked up the flame, and she got out the tea,

And down we both sat as prepared as could be;

And then, sure as fate came the knock of you two,

Then the lanthorn, the laugh, and the "Well, how d' ye do?"