1. After waiting almost two weeks to answer Carlyle's letter of 8 Feb., Hunt had written: “It was not I that sent you the book, but it was sent at my request; & I notice this difference, merely to account in part for the delay in answering your communication, which did not come
to me first. The rest has been occasioned by a conspiracy of petty obstacles, which I sometimes erroneously suffer to hinder
me from doing what I wish, precisely because I wish it to be done in the best & most attentive manner,—and after all it shall
have nothing to shew for itself!— Your note gratified me very much, especially as I had long been desirous of personally knowing
you, and thanking you, among other things, for enabling me to become acquainted with Wilhelm Meister. I shall take my chance
of finding you at home some day this week, about noon; and venture to hope, that I may by & by see you at a new abode into
which I move tomorrow morning,—No 5. York Buildings, New Road.” (MS: Luther A. Brewer Collection, State University of Iowa; pbd: Sanders, CH, XLV, 440–41). The book Hunt refers to was his Christianism; or Belief and Unbelief Reconciled.
3. Hunt replied the next day: “The invitation which Mrs Carlyle and yourself have been good enough to send me, is just the one that suits & pleases me best, and I shall be with
you, at the hour you mention, tomorrow evening. In fact, you cannot conceive how much it has gratified me; for since the death
of some dear friends, I have lived almost entirely out of the pale of intellectual acquaintance,—a toiling solitary; and with
the spring, many unlooked-for comforts seem to await me, of which this is one.” (MS: NLS, 665.35; pbd: Sanders, CH, XLV, 442.) The evidence indicates that the first meeting of Hunt with the Carlyles took place at 4 Ampton Street on the evening
of Wednesday, 22 February. The meeting seems to have pleased everyone who was there, and soon the Carlyles met Marianne (Mrs. Hunt) and there was visiting
back and forth (see Hunt's letters to Carlyle of 1 March and 3 March in Sanders, CH, XLV, 442–43). Mrs. Hunt was much older than Jane Carlyle, and there was little else to make the two congenial; but in this
period they at least made an effort to become good friends. An entry in Carlyle's journal for this month provides an early
pen portrait of Hunt: “A pleasant, innocent, ingenious man; filled with Epicurean Philosophy, and steeped in it to the very heart. He has suffered more than most men; is even now bankrupt (in purse and repute), sick,
and enslaved to daily toil: yet will nothing persuade him that Man is born for another object here than to be happy. Honour to tenacity of conviction! Credo quia impossibile.— A man copious and cheerfully sparkling in conversation; of grave aspect, never laughs, hardly smiles; black hair shaded
to each side; hazel eyes, with a certain lifting up of the eyebrows that has no archness in it, rather sentient, well-satisfied
self-consciousness. He is a real lover of Nature, and even singer thereof; and, for the rest, belongs to London in the opening of the 19th century” (Two Note Books, pp. 256–57). Carlyle elsewhere noted of Hunt's visit that “his serious, dignified and even noble physiognomy and bearing
took us with surprise, and much pleased us. Poor Hunt! nowhere or never an ignoble man!” (See A. Carlyle, NLM, I, 35.)
