ABSTRACT
Nothing that anybody could say or do, or imagine was of the least use in altering his resolve, so there was nothing for it but to fling my elaborately prepared toilets by armfuls into the large Box (new-bought for that visit)-and go home-to a house never dreaming of us! -not a fire in any room of it! -stair carpets up, and stairs giving damp evidence of having been newly washed!- Of course I caught a fine rheumatism in my head and back by the job, and never got a wink of sleep the night after this horrid homecoming. And (if course Mr C had 'a capital nights sleep-the best sleep he remembered to have had for weeks!' -a man always sleeps capitally when he has had his humour out! and the more provoking his humour the more capitally he sleeps!-
Walter Mantell had returned to New Zealand where, about 1834, Carlyle had once thought (~f emigrating with Jane to edit a newspaper. Both he andJane liked Mantell, when, asJane wrote, he was 'out (~fthe valley ~f the shadow (~f Geraldine', while Carlyle saw him 'as far too clever and substantial a man to be thrown away on a flimsy tatter (~f a creature like Geraldine' (NLS 606. 628).
