For a while, when times were hard, Coleridge’s wife worked here making pencils, while her archangel husband (a little damaged) went with Wordsworth to study metaphysics at Gottingen.  When Coleridge came back and heard what his wife had done, he reproved her—­gently but firmly.  Mrs. Ajax in a pencil-factory wearing a check apron with a bib!—­huh!!

Southey had concluded that if Coleridge and Lovell were good samples of socialism he would stick to individualism.  So he joined the Church of England, became a Monarchist, sang the praises of royalty, got a pension, became Poet Laureate, and rich—­passing rich.

“Wh-wh-when he secured for himself the services of three good women he made a wise move,” said C.L.

And all the time Coleridge and Lamb were in correspondence:  and when Coleridge was in London he kept close run of the Lambs.  The father and old aunt had passed out, and Charles and Mary lived together in rooms.  They seemed to have moved very often—­their record followed them.  When the other tenants heard that “she’s the one that killed her mother,” they ceased to let their children play in the hallways, and the landlord apologized, coughed, and raised the rent.  Poor Charles saw the point and did not argue it.  He looked for other lodgings and having found ’em went home and said to Mary, “It’s too noisy here.  Sister—­I can’t stand it—­we’ll have to go!”

Charles was a literary man now:  a bookkeeper by day and a literary man by night.  He wrote to please his sister, and all his jokes were for her.  There is a genuine vein of pathos in all true humor, but think of the fear and the love and the tenderness that are concealed in Charles Lamb’s work that was designed only to fight off dread calamity!  And Mary copied and read and revised for her brother, and he told it all to her before he wrote it, and together they discussed it in detail.  Charles studied mathematics, just to keep his genius under, he declared.  Mary smiled and said it wasn’t necessary.

Coleridge used to drop in, and the Stoddarts, Hazlitts, Godwin and Lovell, too.  Then Southey was up in London and he called, and so did Wordsworth and Dorothy, for Coleridge had spread Lamb’s fame.  And Dorothy and Mary kissed each other and held hands under the table, and when Dorothy went back to Grasmere she wrote many beautiful letters to Mary and urged her to come and visit her—­yes, come to Grasmere and live.  The one point they held in common was a love for Coleridge; and as he belonged to neither there was no room for jealousy.  The Fricker girls were all safely married, but Charles and Mary could not think of going—­they needs must hide in a big city.  “I hate your damned throstles and larks and bobolinks,” said C.L., in feigned contempt.  “I sing the praises of the ’Salutation and the Cat’ and a snug fourth-floor back.”

They could not leave London, for over them ever hung that black cloud of a mind diseased.