And so, on Lady Day, March 25, 1801, he and Mary moved into the Temple, there to begin, near their childhood home, that life of “dual loneliness,” never again broken in upon: consoled by their mutual affection, cheered by their common tastes, brightened by the companionship of congenial beings. In the Temple they remained for seventeen years, living in two sets of chambers during that period. After eight years’ abode at No. 16 Mitre Court Buildings, they were compelled to quit, their landlord wanting the rooms for himself. Towards the end of March, 1809, in a letter to Manning, then in China, Lamb wrote as if he were in the next street: “While I think of it, let me tell you we are moved. Don’t come any more to Mitre Court Buildings. We are at 34 Southampton Buildings, Chancery Lane, and shall be here till about the end of May, when we remove to No. 4 Inner Temple Lane, where I mean to live and die.” Their home in Southampton Buildings during these few months while changing chambers still stands intact; a delightful old square, solid, brick house, just in front of the tiny garden of Staple Inn. But both blocks of buildings in which he lived during those seventeen years in the Temple have been torn down and replaced by modern structures. Although he disliked leaving the old chambers, he found the new set, on the third and fourth floors of No. 4 Inner Temple Lane, “far more commodious and roomy.... The rooms are delicious, and the best look back into Hare Court, where there is a pump always going. Just now it is dry. Hare Court trees come in at the window, so that it is like living in a garden!” This was written to Coleridge, in June, 1809; and to Manning, in letters during this period, Lamb spoke of the churchyard-like court having “three trees and a pump in it. Do you know it? I was born near it, and used to drink at that pump when I was a Rechabite of six years old ... the water of which is excellent cold, with brandy, and not very insipid without. Here I hope to set up my rest and not quit till Mr. Powell, the undertaker, gives me notice that I may have possession of my last lodging. He lets lodgings for single gentlemen.... I should be happy to see you any evening. Bring any of your friends, the Mandarins, with you.” He did, indeed, as he often complained, hate and dread unaccustomed places, but he was well content to discover that this new habitation had “more aptitudes for growing old than you shall often see.”