The life and letters of Benjamin Jowett, M. A., master of Balliol college, Oxford.

1850-1854] Acquaintance with Tennyson

I97

was a humorous irregularity about his social observance of
hours. I shall never forget our frequent anxieties, in which
he never shared, whether he would really catch the ten o'clock
train to Oxford, on which he was bent, with his breakfast to
finish, and our servant packing his things. Then, as up to
the end of his life, he always carried with him papers which
he had in hand, and would work at them upstairs and down,
and at all spare times.'
The question of competitive examinations for India
led to an intimacy with Sir Charles Trevelyan and his
family, including the present Lady Knutsford and Mrs.
Dugdale. At their house he had opportunities of personal intercourse with Macaulay. Sir George Trevelyan
says, 'I remember a period of one or two years, when
the question of Civil Service reform was at its height,
during which Mr. Jowett constantly came to us at
Westbourne Terrace, and used to sit through the evening,
as my boyish recollection goes, quite silent.'
At Harrow he made the acquaintance of Mrs. Vaughan's
cousin Rosalind Stanley, now Lady Carlisle, then a child
of eleven, who rated him soundly-much to his delightfor not having read the Arabian Nights, and commanded
him to do so without delay'. And he had many a
friendly battle on theological subjects with Mrs. Vaughan
-Catherine Stanley-his fellow-traveller of 1845.
Meanwhile he kept up his correspondence with still
older friends. He writes to James Lonsdale, who had
lost his mother:
'No one who had known ever so little of her could help
seeing that she was just one of those persons who spread
light and peace over their homes. Stanley has several times
mentioned her to me as what he termed... one of his three
pattern ladies:... her grace and goodness were admired by
others as much as they were appreciated by her own children.'
1 Mrs. Vaughan is my authority for this.-L. C.