“I can do nothing—­think nothing.  Mary has another of her bad spells—­we saw it coming, and I took her away to a place of safety,” writes Charles to Coleridge.

One writer tells of seeing Charles and Mary walking across Hampstead Heath, hand in hand, both crying.  They were on the way to the asylum.

Fortunately these “illnesses” gave warning and Charles would ask his employer leave for a “holiday,” and stay at home trying by gentle mirth and work to divert the dread visitor of unreason.

After each illness, in a few weeks the sister would be restored to her own, very weak and her mind a blank as to what had gone before.  And so she never remembered that supreme calamity.  She knew the deed had been done, but Heaven had absolved her gentle spirit from all participation in it.  She often talked of her mother, wrote of her, quoted her, and that they should sometime be again united was her firm faith.

The “Tales from Shakespeare” was written at the suggestion of Godwin, seconded by Charles.  The idea that she herself could write seemed never to have occurred to Mary, until Charles swore with a needless oath that all the ideas he ever had she supplied.

“Charles, dear, you’ve been drinking again!” said Mary.  But the “Tales” sold and sold well; fame came that way and more money than the simple, plain, homekeeping bodies needed.  So they started a pension-roll for sundry old ladies, and to themselves played high and mighty patron, and figured and talked and joked over the blue teacups as to what they should do with their money—­five hundred pounds a year!  Goodness gracious, if the Bank of England gets in a pinch advise C.L., at Thirty-four Southampton Buildings, third floor, second turning to the left but one.

A Mrs. Reynolds was one of the pensioners, but no one knew it but Mrs. Reynolds, and she never told.  She was a Lady of the Old School, and used often to dine with the Lambs and get her snuffbox filled.  Her husband had been a ship-captain or something, and when the tea was strong she would take snuff and tell the visitors about him and swear she had ever been true to his memory, though God knows all good-looking and clever widows are sorely tried in this scurvy world!

Mrs. Reynolds met Thomas Hood at a “Saturday Evening” at the Lambs’, and he was so taken with her that he has told us “she looked like an elderly wax doll in half-mourning, and when she spoke it was as if by an artificial process; she always kept up the gurgle and buzz until run down.”

Mrs. Reynolds’ sole claim to literary distinction was the fact that she had known Goldsmith and he had presented her with an inscribed copy of “The Deserted Village.”

But we all have a tender place in our hearts for the elderly wax doll because the Lambs were so gentle and patient with her, and once a year went to Highgate and put a shilling vase of flowers over the grave of the Captain to whose memory she was ever true.