CALCUTTA: PAST AND PRESENT
recalled his first sight of her, when he had just arrived on a visit to Edward Irving and his wife:—
"Dash of a brave carriage driving up, and entry of a strangely complexioned young lady, with soft brown eyes, and floods of bronze-red hair, rather a pretty-looking, smiling, and amiable, though most foreign bit of magnificence and kindly splendour, whom they welcomed by the name of 'dear Kitty.' Kitty Kirkpatrick, Charles Buller's cousin or half cousin, Mrs. Strachey's full cousin, with whom she lived: her birth, as I afterwards found, an Indian romance. Mother a sublime begum, father a ditto English official, mutually adoring, wedding, living withdrawn in their own private Paradise, romance famous in the East. A very singular 'dear Kitty' who seemed bashful withal, and soon went away, twitching off in the lobby, as I could notice, not without wonder, the loose label which was sticking to my trunk or bag, still there as she past, and carrying it off in her pretty hand."
Again Carlyle wrote:—
"Mrs. Strachey, Mrs. Buller's younger sister, took to me from the first nor ever swerved. It strikes me now more than it then did, she silently could have liked to see 'dear Kitty' and myself come together, and so continue near her, both of us, through life. The good, kind soul! And
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