JWC-JN, [24 Jan?]. Addr: 25 Church Row / Hampstead. PM: Chelsea, 24 Jan. 1853. MS: NLS 554.48. Pbd: Scudder 13–14, dated 1850. Either this letter was placed with the wrong envelope, or JWC was confused about the day of the week on which she was writing. 24 Jan. was Mon.

1. Brookfield wrote in his diary, 24 Jan.: “Overtook Carlyle, on his way to Diorama. He spoke of Alfred Tennyson and his domestic life. I said marriage was dipping into a pitcher of snakes for the chance of an eel, and that A. T. had found an eel. He went off on this, railing a good deal, and said eels had a faculty by very natural transformation for becoming snakes. I said what a tragi-comedy life is. A walking funeral was just before us. ‘Aye, there goes a bit of it,’ said he, ‘a small hole, and an insignificant look down into it by these people, and then an end of it. Another leaf from the great big forest has rustled down.’ We passed Tattersall's [horse auctioneer's]. He said he had once gone there when he first came to London, and saw iron-faced taciturn men in earnest. An ecumenical council could not have been more serious” (Brookfield, Circle 2: 384–85).