Autograph signed note by Thomas Carlyle to Rev. Charles Kingsley dated 1855

CARLYLE, Thomas; KINGSLEY, Rev. Charles Autograph note signed to fellow author, Charles Kingsley. 
 
Cheyne Row, Chelsea, 24 September 1855.
 
Manuscript note on a cut slip of pale cream paper, 160 × 100 mm, written on both sides by author Thomas Carlyle, signed and dated in his hand. Addressed on the verso in Carlyle’s hand “Rev. C. Kingsley, Eversley”, with a further pencilled note, also by Carlyle, added later.
 
The recto reads in full:

“This Book has been lying here for perhaps six weeks, while I was absent in Scotland and Germany. Returning the night before last, I immediately send it over to the Rectory, with salutations when it should arrive.
5 Cheyne Row, Chelsea
24 Sept. 1855
T. Carlyle”
 
On the reverse, below the address, is a further note in pencil, in the same hand, the wording partially indistinct but evidently a later practical memorandum relating to the same exchange.
 
A note from Carlyle’s house at 5 Cheyne Row, Chelsea where he was such known "the sage of Chelsea" addressed to Charles Kingsley, then Rector of Eversley and already a prominent novelist, historian, and public intellectual, later famous as the author of Westward Ho! and The Water-Babies. Carlyle and Kingsley were in regular contact during the 1850s and shared a close literary and intellectual friendship.
 
The note records the return of a borrowed book after Carlyle’s absence in Scotland and Germany and its forwarding to Kingsley, at his rectory. Although brief and practical in tone, it  shows a direct personal exchange between these two well known victorian writers.