1S62-64 'GENERAL^ TOM THUMB 155 



Monday evening. I was then the guest of an 

 old Bartholomew's friend. On Tuesday I left 

 Birmingham to meet by appointment the Council 

 of the Philosophical Society there at the museum. 

 Inspected that, and the beautiful church ; then to 

 the Castle. Much interested in all I saw. To- 

 day I see Kenil worth, to-morrow home.' 



On December 1 Owen had two strange 

 visitors at the British Museum — ' General ' and 

 Mrs. Tom Thumb. They called upon him in 

 great state, and were shown up to the Professor's 

 room by the hall-porter. In going over the 

 Museum, Mrs. Tom Thumb, it seems, hung her 

 head, as if not liking to be looked at by the people 

 there, but the ' General ' was quite self-possessed, 

 and looked at the different things in an observant 

 way, beguiling the time with conversation about 

 his visit to the Prince of Wales. 



' I had a pleasant gossip,' says Owen to his 

 sister Eliza (December 6, 1864), ' with the Dean 

 of Westminster last evening, who sat next to me 

 at the " Literary Club," about the weddings at 

 Alderley, and the Holy Land, and the extra verse 

 in the Cambridge copy of the Greek MS. of the 

 N. T., and about the Davenport Yankee Brothers 

 and conjurors in general, and the geology of 

 Westminster. My other neighbour, the Under- 

 Secretary of State for India confessed to having 

 paid his guinea and been banged by the guitars, &c. 5 

 5 At one of the spiritualistic seances of the Davenport Brothers. 



