CHAPTER IX.


It was, to the best of my recollection, much about the same time as
that visit of Charles Dickens which I have chronicled in the last
chapter but one, which turned out to be eventually so fateful a one to
me, as the correspondence there given shows, that my mother received
another visit, which was destined to play an equally influential
part in the directing and fashioning of my life. Equally influential
perhaps I ought not to say, inasmuch as one-and-twenty years (with the
prospect I hope of more) are more important than seventeen. But both
the visits I am speaking of, as having occurred within a few days of
each other, were big with fate, to me, in the same department of human
affairs.

The visit of Dickens was destined eventually to bring me my second
wife, as the reader has seen. The visit of Mr. and Mrs. Garrow to the
Via dei Malcontenti, much about the same time, brought me my first.

The Arno and the Tiber both take their rise in the flanks of
Falterona. It was on the banks of the first that my first married
life was passed; on those of the more southern river that the largest
portion of my second wedded happiness was enjoyed.

Why Mr. and Mrs. Garrow called on my mother I do not remember.
Somebody had given them letters of introduction to us, but I forget
who it was. Mr. Garrow was the son of an Indian officer by a high
caste Brahmin woman, to whom he was married. I believe that unions