SD794.1. Thomas Carlyle to John Sterling

Addendum to The Brownings’ Correspondence, vol. 3.

Cheyne Row

Tuesday [12 April 1836] [1]

… Great quantities of noisy heads, and blockheads; Anster-Faust (a huge heavy watery lump, in spectacles), Paracelsus Browning; [2] Craik, Craik! &c &c,—were all acting on me last night at Hunt’s: not favourably. By the bye, Jeffrey has taken Hunt’s Pension in hand: may he prosper in it! Mill I find has as yet made small way. …

Publication: Carlyle, 8, 332–333.

Manuscript: National Library of Scotland.

1. Dating provided by editors of Carlyle edition.

2. The first meeting of Carlyle and Browning. Carlyle told Allingham on 5 Nov. 1875: “Browning in his young days wore a turn-down shirt collar with a ribbon for neck-tie, and a green coat. I first met him one evening at Leigh Hunt’s, a modest youth, with a good strong face and a head of dark hair. He said little, but what he said was good.” A Diary, ed. H. Allingham and D. Radford (London, 1907), p. 240. Allingham also records that on 20 Mar. 1881, after Theodore Watts had said that he had never seen Carlyle, Browning observed: “Then you could not know him. His personality was most attaching. I shall never get over it. He first made my acquaintance, not I his. I first saw him at Leigh Hunt’s, and very properly sat silent for my part all the time.” Ibid., p. 310.

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