Note 147 — Chapter V

“Gentle Tom Hood,” as the wittiest of modern poets has been called, was a friend of old standing. Though little read to-day, some of his more serious poems are of rare beauty, and his Haunted House is a marvel of what Ruskin used to call “word-painting.” His letters to children were as delightful as those of the better-known “Lewis Carroll.” Hood was very deaf, and this infirmity inclined him, when among strangers or in uncongenial society, to taciturnity. Guests who had never met him, and who came expecting to hear a jovial fellow set the table in a roar, were surprised to see a quiet-mannered man in evidently poor health, striving, by help of an ear-trumpet, to catch other people's conversation. But, at any rate, it was not in our house that the hostess, piqued at the chilly silence pervading that end of her table which should have been most mirthful, sent her little daughter down the whole length of it to beg the bored wit to “wake up and be funny!” Hood had many cares and sorrows, including the constant struggle with small means and ill-health; and it is pleasant to remember that when the final breakdown came, Sir Robert Peel—concealing under a cloak of kindly tactfulness, so kindly that the over-sensitive beneficiary could not feel hurt—bestowed on the dying man some sorely-needed monetary assistance.