(sooner than usual) falling ill again, Charles was obliged to remove her
to an asylum; and was left in the house alone with Hetty's dead body. "My
heart is quite sick" (he cries), "and I don't know where to look for
relief. My head is very bad. I almost wish that Mary were dead." This was
the one solitary cry of anguish that he uttered during his long years of
anxiety and suffering. At all other times he bowed his head in silence,
uncomplaining.

Charles Lamb, with his sister, left Little Queen Street on or before 1800;
in which year he seems to have migrated, first to Chapel Street,
Pentonville; next to Southampton Buildings, Chancery Lane; and finally to
No. 16 Mitre Court Buildings, in the Temple, "a pistol shot off Baron
Masere's;" and here he resided for about nine years.

It was during his stay at Pentonville that he "fell in love" with a young
Quaker, called Hester Savory. As (he confesses) "I have never spoken to
her during my life," it may be safely concluded that the attachment was
essentially Platonic. This was the young girl who inspired those verses,
now so widely known and admired. I remember them as being the first lines
which I ever saw of Charles Lamb's writing. I remember and admire them
still, for their natural, unaffected style; no pretence, no straining for
images and fancies flying too high above the subject, but dealing with
thoughts that were near his affections, in a fit and natural manner. The
conclusion of the poem, composed and sent after her death (in February,
1803) to Manning, who was then in Paris, is very sad and tender:--

My sprightly neighbor, gone before
To that unknown and silent shore,
Shall we not meet, as heretofore,
Some summer morning?