Footnotes 1. Forster had been appointed sec. of the Lunacy Commission (late 1855) at £800 a year and resigned as ed. of the Examiner.
2. Macbeth 4.1. John Tyndall (1802–93; DNB) was to be one of those who came and went; Lord Ashburton, one of the managers of the Royal Institution, where Tyndall was
prof. of natural philosophy from 1853, had invited him. On his arrival, 11 Jan., he found Lord Ashburton in a wheelchair because of gout; he listened to fellow guests talking about TC and heard Lady Ashburton
read aloud from Browning, “Carlyle at intervals grunting out assent. Once he said ‘that's just it, faith is the conviction
in something not the discerning of its truth’ or some words to that effect.” He talked briefly with TC and then discussed
education with Lord Ashburton. This was followed by homemade entertainments, with Carlyle roaring with laughter: “One feature
strikes you every where, and that is the thorough freedom of every body, each seems to do just as he likes; wanders where
he pleases through the magnificent rooms; reads, talks, or admires the pictures.” At breakfast, TC was not what Tyndall expected.
They discussed homeopathy, which drew in almost everyone at the table: “What I have seen of Carlyle makes me revere the old
brute more than ever. Nobody seems to agree with him, but he pushes his way through it all, dealing out doom and praise.”
TC spoke about the Crimean War, that fools seemed to think it could be won by writing in the Times. Tyndall described the “absence of all formality and restraint.” At lunch TC was “cordial and human.” JWC thought it “too
bad of Carlyle to have hit me so hard on the question of homeopathy.” After dinner, he tried to “stir” TC by discussing scientific
theories about “the nature of life … ascribing it to molecular force,” but TC was immovable on its “incomprehensibility.”
TC “spoke solemnly, earnestly and lovingly of his great brother [Emerson]. … I loved the tones of Carlyle's voice” as he spoke
of Emerson. TC thought Lewes's life of Goethe admirable but not a true image. Goethe “ought to have been King of Germany.”
Tyndall sat by JWC at dinner and enjoyed talking to her. She spoke about TC's attitude to criticism, his contempt for anonymous
letters (possibly thinking about the anonymous letters to the Times about the Lowe subscription; see 30:108), about Charles Kingsley being “rank and noisy,” and young women's admiration of TC. They discussed the difference between
him and Macaulay, who took “pleasure in pulling men down.” At breakfast, they discussed Goethe again, and TC said he thought
little of Faust in comparison with his other work: “Beau Brummel was a reality equal to Mephistopheles. A friend came to him one morning
and asked him how he did. ‘Suffering from cold,’ said he in in his own imperturbable way, ‘I have been sleeping with a damp
woman all night!’ The tone of Carlyle's voice in repeating the anecdote was extremely rich: indeed … it could be put beside
the best of Mephistopheles.” At lunch, TC talked about the Chinese novel Two Fair Cousins (see 27:279) and then about libraries: “Sometimes during this conversation Carlyle's words rose to eloquence. Branching off from his
description … his eyes would gleam, his voice become more deep and solemn while his fingers would squeeze and crush his napkin.
… His fingers were the accompaniment of his thoughts, and he crushed his napkin repeatedly before the conversation ended.”
As Tyndall left, TC gave him a “cordial squeeze of the hand” (Tyndall to Hirst, dated 12 Jan., with a note “sent 19 Jan.”; typed copy, Tyndall Papers, Royal Institution).
3. Tennyson had corresponded with Lady Ashburton since the 1840s and had had several invitations to the Grange and the other Ashburton homes, all of which he had refused; this was his first
visit (see Richard Moore, “New Letters from Tennyson to the Ashburtons,” Tennyson Research Bulletin 7 [Nov. 1998]: 75–82). He wrote to a friend, about 23 Dec., “I must myself depart on a visit to Lady Ashburton, who has asked me at Christmas almost every year since I married. This
time not to seem ungracious I must accept.” He enjoyed the visit more than expected and wrote to his wife, Emily, 1 Jan., that Lord Ashburton “was very tender mannered and amiable and Lady Ashburton exceedingly agreeable—altogether it seems a
house not uneasy to live in—only I regret my little fumatory at Farringford. Here they smoke among the oranges, lemons and
camellias. That sounds pleasant but isn't” (Cecil Y. Lang and Edgar F. Shannon, eds., The Letters of Alfred Lord Tennyson [Oxford, 1987] 2:139–40).
4. Zoe Thomson (see JWC to MW, [10 Jan.]) described Tennyson as “brigand-like” and was “struck by his white face and black hair” (E. C. Rickards, Zoe Thomson of Bishopthorpe [1916] 63).
5. Ann Elizabeth Lowe, Johnson's goddaughter, and Frances Lowe; for the start of the campaign to raise money for them, see 29:299–303; for its continuation, see vol. 30.
6. William Bridges; see 30:136. The subscription was closed in April. The final list of subscribers and the sum collected was pbd. in the Times,12 May; see TCCDJF to T, 23 April.
7. A letter from Cromwell to Maj. gen. Thomas Harrison (1606–60); pbd.: Nation (29 Dec. 1855) 282; see Works 9:264–65.
8. TC had asked for a prepublication copy of Forster's “The Civil Wars and Cromwell,” Edinburgh Review 103 (Jan. 1856) 1–54; see 30:123.
