onged 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.

"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 wou