The Wife of Thomas Carlyle

THE WIFE OF THOMAS CARLYLE.

"DON'T marry a man of genius," Mrs. Carlyle used to say, in moments of depression, to her intimate friends. Who would like to be judged by the words that escape when the burthens of life press too heavily, or when morbid conditions distort the view ? Carlyle inherited from a line of laborious ancestors the frame and constitution of a bricklayer, with the peasant instinct of mastership over the female. A little Latin, Greek, and German do not radically change a man's nature. The old saying, that it takes three generations to make a gentleman, is not destitute of truth, and the process did not begin in Thomas Carlyle till he was already too old to take to it kindly. The true moral to be deduced from the mass of Carlylian material with which we have been recently favored, is: Destroy your letters, or else have them edited by a person who can discriminate between words that express an exceptional and transitory feeling, and those which reveal the state of mind which is habitual and characteristic.

Jeannie Welsh, at all periods of her life, was a cheery, fascinating creature. The very earliest incidents related of her exhibit to us a little person of will, opinion, and talent. She was quick at her lessons, a capital mimic, and possessed by a wide and intelligent curiosity which it was not always easy to satisfy. The usual girl's education was not enough for her: modern languages, music, and drawing were well in their way ; but she aspired to the dignity of Latin, undeterred by her father's good-natured indifference and her mother's opposition. It was not her custom either to tease or pout ; she simply took the matter into her own hands, sought out a school-boy whom she induced to teach her the mysteries of nouns of the first declension, and pursued her studies by herself. One night when she was supposed to be in bed, a small voice was heard issuing from beneath a table, murmuring diligently to itself, "penna, a pen; penna, of a pen." Amid the laughter of the family she crawled from her hiding place and running to her father, said :

"I want to learn Latin; please let me be a boy."

The school of Haddington, her native place (a large market town twenty miles east of Edinburgh), was but a short distance from her father's house, and thither she was soon afterward permitted to go, attired, as Carlyle tells us, in a light blue pelisse, black belt, dainty little cap, caught up with a feather, and her satchel carried in her hand.

"Fill that little figure with elastic intellect, love, and generous vivacity of all kinds," he adds, " and where in nature will you find a prettier ?"

The little lady's vivacity and generosity were both soon displayed to her school-fellows. The boys and girls usually said their lessons in separate rooms, but arithmetic and algebra they recited together. Most of the boys were devoted to her, but now and then difficulties arose, due, perhaps, to her so easily surpassing them all. Once, when the master had left the room, one of them said something disagreeable to her ; instantly her temper was aroused, and doubling up her little fist she struck him on the nose and made it bleed. At that moment the master returned and demanded to know who had been fighting. There was silence. Fighting was punished with flogging, and no one would tell tales of a girl. The teacher declared that he would flog the whole school if he was not told the culprit's name. It was well known that he would keep his word ; but still no one spoke until Jeannie, the smallest, most fairy-like of little girls, looked up and announced :
  

Vergil was to her, as he has been to so many others, an inspiring revelation. She read, studied, declaimed the poet with passionate delight. She tried to conform her own life to the Roman model. When she was tempted to commit an unworthy act, she said to herself with sternness, " A Roman would not have done it." When she gallantly caught by the neck and flung aside a hissing gander of which she had long stood in dread, she felt that she " deserved well of the Republic," and merited a civil crown. Furthermore, having become convinced that a doll was now beneath her dignity, she burned her ancient favorite, with all its dresses and its cherished four-post bed, upon a funeral pyre, constructed of " a fagot or two of cedar allumettes, a few sticks of cinnamon, and a nutmeg." Then, delivering with much emphasis and solemnity the dying words of Dido in their original tongue, the doll (with Jeannie's assistance), kindled the pyre, stabbed herself with a penknife, and a moment later, being stuffed with sawdust and highly combustible, was in a fine blaze,while her poor little mistress, repenting too late, stood helplessly by, shrieking till the household hastened to the spot.

While she was yet a child she began to write, and at fourteen she had composed a tragedy, rather inflated in style, but of great promise. She continued for many years to write poetry, and her two dearest friends, Irving and Carlyle, both expected her to shine in literature. That she possessed the talent for such a career her clear, graphic style, its witty allusions, and the appreciative humor of her letters sufficiently attest.

She was still a young girl when her father, Dr. Welsh, a highly accomplished physician, was prostrated by a fever caught while attending an old woman in the town of Haddington. His disease being contagious, he gave orders to exclude his daughter from the room. She forced her way to his side. He sent her out, and she passed the night lying before his door. His death, her first great sorrow, was well nigh insupportable to her, and perhaps permanently impaired her health.

"A father so loved and mourned," says Carlyle, " I have never seen. To the end of her life his title even to me was 'He' and 'Him: Not above twice or thrice, did she ever mention—and then in a quiet, slow tone—my father." His death left her an heiress ; all his property except a small annuity to his widow having been bequeathed to her. She was young, agreeable, brilliant, rich (for the time and place), and beautiful. She was fair, with black hair and black eyes " shining with soft mockery," as Froude describes them, and an irregular nose, in harmony with the satirical expression of her face. Her forehead was white and broad, her figure "slight, airy, and perfectly graceful."

We cannot wonder that this young lady was blessed with many suitors. She made herself agreeable to them, talked, laughed, and danced with them, and refused them very politely when they asked her hand. Many people considered her a flirt, and the gay manner in which she alludes to the charge shows that she did not resent it. But if she was merry, she was neither frivolous nor unfeeling. She had bestowed all the love she had to give upon a man who fully returned her affection, yet could not marry her. This was her old teacher, Edward Irving. He had become engaged to another lady before again meeting the beautiful Miss Welsh whom he had so long known only as little Jeannie. When at length ho saw her again, he fell in love with her. He would not break his engagement, nor would she permit him to do so. At length, he asked the young lady to release him: she would not, and he married her.

This affair, so quickly told, lasted long, and while the issue was yet uncertain, Irving introduced Miss Welsh to his friend, Thomas Carlyle, in the hope that he would guide and assist her in her studies. The friendship between them soon became warmly affectionate. Carlyle discussed his projects, prospects, and opinions with her, corrected her verses, and planned works which they were to write in concert. Not aware of Irving's love for her, he even adopted a complimentary, gallant tone in his letters ; but this she did not permit to continue. Gradually his affection and admiration increased, until he felt that she was the perfect woman. He was not hopeful of success in his suit, nor had he reason to be, for until Irving's marriage she persistently discouraged him. He was very much in love for so austere a man, and wrote verses which sound strangely to the ear familiar with his ordinary —or extraordinary—style. They are ardent, at least:

"Bright maid, thy destiny as I view, 
Enrolled among earth's chosen few, 
Lovely as morning, pure as dew, 
Thy image stands before me

"Oh, that on Fame's far shining peak, 
With great and mighty numbered, 
Unfading laurels I could seek;
This longing spirit then might speak 
The thoughts within that slumbered.

"Oh. in the battle's wildest swell,
By hero's deeds to win thee,
To meet the charge, the stormy yell.
The artillery's flash, its thundering knell, 
And thine the light within me.

"What man in Fate's dark day of power, 
While thoughts of thee upbore him, 
Would shrink at danger's blackest lour,
Or faint in Life's last ebbing hour, 
If tears of thine fell o'er him!

Irving once married, Miss Welsh viewed her devoted but impracticable suitor iii a different light. She recognized his genius, she believed in his affection, she was proud of his preference: why not marry him? She was not, as she frankly told him, in love with hint; yet she loved him, and at last accepted him. Their engagement was stormy. If he made impossible plaits for the future, she, with a stroke of satire, a positive No, or an elaborate explanation, upset them. Then he thought she was dismayed at the prospect of such a retired life as his profession necessitated, and offered to release her. Then she wrote refusing to be released, soothing and reassuring him, and proposing some other arrangement. Each cheered and encouraged the other to such sacrifices as the circumstances required, and indeed, as Mr. Froude remarks : " They comforted one another as if they were going to execution."

Married they were, however, after much difficulty and delay, owing to the impossibility of Carlyle's arranging the necessary details as anybody else would have done. Miss Welsh had to instruct him in regard to each detail of the ceremony. Her last letter before the wedding, relating to something about the banns which he did not understand, is headed :

"The last Speech and marrying Words of that unfortunate young woman, Jane Baillie Welsh."  An unfortunate young woman, her friends indeed considered her to be, knowing as they did her husband's irascible temper and fantastic whims. Nor, bravely as she faced the future, did she herself expect other happiness than was to be won by a life of self-sacrifice, nor ask other reward than the appreciation and confidence of the man of genius whom she had resolved to serve. Having these, she had been well content to bear his irritability and moroseness, to stand between him and poverty's daily worries, to accept menial duties to which she was unaccustomed, and to lose the friends whose society he would not tolerate.

The first eighteen months of their married life, Carlyle was accustomed to look back upon as the happiest period of his existence.

For my wife," he wrote to his mother shortly after taking possession of his new home, Comely Bank, " I may say in my heart that she is far better than any wife, and loves me with a devotedness which it is a mystery to me how I have ever deserved. She is gay and happy as a lark, and looks with such soft cheerfulness into my gloomy countenance, that new hope passed into me every time I met her eve."

She, too, was most happy. "My husband is so kind," she writes in a postscript to one of his letters home, " so in all respects after my own heart. I was sick one day, and he nursed me as well as my own mother could have done, and he never says a hard word to me unless I richly deserve it. We see great numbers of people, but are always most content alone. My husband reads then, and I read or work, or just sit and look at him, which I really find as profitable an employment as any other."

Already, however, she was beginning to encounter the social and household difficulties which her husband's temperament rendered inevitable. He was dyspeptic, and required the simplest food, cooked with unvarying perfection, storming at fate, or shrouding himself in deepest gloom if his oatmeal was scorched or his eggs not fresh. As no servant could satisfy him, Mrs. Carlyle went into the kitchen, and studied cookery. The slightest noises distracted him when he was at work ; Mrs. Carlyle was ever on the alert to prevent doors from banging, dishes from clattering, and shoes from creaking. Visitors had to be received ; his tender epithet for them was " nauseous intruders." Mrs. Carlyle managed with such adroitness that, without offence to any, they were so winnowed and sifted that only those whose society he could enjoy or endure, reached his presence. She was a charming hostess, and even succeeded in giving small tea-parties which her gifted spouse found not unpleasant.

Meanwhile, Carlyle's literary and financial ventures not proving successful, he was possessed by a growing restlessness and gloom, and before the first year was ended, made up his mind to leave Edinburgh and retire to Craigenputtock, a bleak, barren little moorland estate belonging to his wife, sixteen miles from the nearest town. Mrs. Carlyle, whose health was impaired, dreaded the change, and might even have refused her consent, but that her mother then lived at Nithsdale, fifteen miles from Craigenputtock. She did remonstrate, but Carlyle's mind was made up, and to Craigenputtock they went. They lived there seven years—years of alternating depression and good cheer to Carlyle, but marked by improvement in his literary power and growing reputation. To his wife they were years of desolation.

As only incapable Scottish servants could be obtained, Mrs. Carlyle was obliged to make good their deficiencies. She cooked, cleaned the rooms, scoured the floors, polished grates, milked cows, gathered eggs, looked after the gar-den, took charge of the dairy, and, in short, did the work herself, with occasional assistance from her blundering maid. If anything was unexpectedly required from the village, it was she who must mount and gallop away in quest of it.

Her hardest struggles were with the cookery. She had cooked, indeed, at Comely Bank, but only now and then the dainties ,not as she cooked at Craigenputtock. After thirty years, she wrote to a friend the comic-pathetic story of the baking of her first loaf of bread. The bread from Dumfries not agreeing with her husband, she says:

"It was plainly my duty as a Christian wife to bake at home. So I sent for Cobbett's 'Cottage Economy.' and fell to work at a loaf of bread. But knowing nothing of the process of fermentation or the heat of ovens, it came to pass that my loaf got put into the oven at the time that myself ought to have been put into bed ; and I remained the only person not asleep in a house in the middle of a desert. One o'clock struck, and then two, and then three; and still I was sitting there in an immense solitude, my whole body aching with weariness, my heart aching with a sense of forlornness and degradation. That I, who had been so petted at home, whose comfort had been studied by everybody in the house, who had never been required to do anything but cultivate my mind, should have to pass all those hours of the night in watching a loaf of bread—which mightn't turn out breadafter all ! Such thoughts maddened me, till I laid down my head on the table and sobbed aloud. It was then that somehow the idea of Benvenuto Cellini sitting up all night watching his Perseus in the furnace came into my head, and suddenly 1 asked myself, After all, in the sight of the Upper Powers, what is the mighty difference between a statue of Perseus and a loaf of bread, so that each be the thing one's hand has found to do ? The man's determined will, his energy, his patience, his resource, were the really admirable things, of which his statue of Perseus was the mere chance expression. if he bad been a woman living at Craigenputtock, with a dyspeptic husband, sixteen miles from a baker, and he a bad one. all these same qualities would have come out more fully in a good loaf of bread.'"

Of these labors she never complained till her health gave way, though the solitude of the place was terrible to her, and Carlyle, occupied with his work and blind to her misery, withdrew himself from her society, and rode, smoked, and mused by himself. II is nervous condition made it impossible for him to sleep unless he slept alone ; at least, it made him think he could not. Some-times for days she scarcely saw him, except at meals, and in the early morning when she stole into his room for the few moments while he was shaving. It is little wonder that she called the place "the Desert," or shuddered to remember that of the three previous residents one had taken to drink, and two had gone mad. A touching relic of this time is a little poem of hers, enclosed in a letter to her friend, Lord Jeffrey. It is called " To a Swallow Building Under Our Eaves" :

"Thou too hast traveled, little fluttering thing—
Hast seen the world, and now thy weary wing 
Thou too must rest.
But much my little bird, couldst thou but tell, 
I'd give to know why here thou lik'st so well 
To build thy nest.

"For thou bast passed fair places in thy flight; 
A world lay all beneath thee where to light; 
And. strange thy taste,
Of all the varied scenes that met thine eye — 
Of all the spots for building 'neath the sky—
To choose this waste.

"Did fortune try thee was thy little purse 
Perchance run low, and thou, afraid of worse, 
Felt here secure?
Ah no! thou need'st not gold, thou happy one! 
Thou know'st it not. 
Of all God's creatures, man 
Alone is poor!

"What was it, then? some mystic turn of thought, 
Caught under German eaves, and hither brought, 
Marring thine eye
For the world's loveliness, till thou art grown 
A sober thing that dost but mope and moan, 
Not knowing why?

"Nay, if thy mind be sound, I need not ask,
Since here I see thee working at thy task
With wing and beak.
A well-laid scheme doth that small head contain,
At which thou work'st, brave bird, with might and main, 
Nor more need'st seek.

"In truth. I rather take it thou hast got 
By instinct wise much sense about thy lot, 
And hast small care
Whether an Eden or a desert be
Thy home, so thou remain'st alive and free 
To skim the air.

"God speed thee, pretty bird; may thy small nest 
With little ones all in good time be blest. 
I love thee much;
For well thou managest that life of thine, 
While I! oh, ask not what I do with mine! 
Would I were such ! "

At length, in 1834, they moved to London, to the now famous No. 5 Cheyne Row, Chelsea, their home for the rest of their lives. They were both pleased with the change, and Carlyle even enjoyed the moving in and settling down, although noise and bustle usually drove him into his worst humor. A year after the removal Mrs. Carlyle writes merrily to her mother:

"I have just had a call from an old rejected lover, who has been in India these ten years: though he has come home with more thousands of pounds than we are ever likely to have hundreds, or even scores, the sight of him did not make me doubt the wisdom of my preference. Indeed, I continue quite content with my bargain; I could wish him a little less yellow, and a little more peaceable ; but this is all."

She did not add, " and a little more practical," but she might well have done so. Throughout his life Carlyle's dismay and helplessness, when confronted with the ordinary necessities of existence, was something which would have been merely ludicrous had it not cast upon his brave, too generous wife, a burden she was ill able to bear. He shrank from ordering his own coats and trowsers ; she went to the tailor's for him, much to the astonishment of that functionary. If the house needed repairing, he took to flight, and enjoyed a journey to Scotland, while she remained among the dismantled rooms, superintending the labors of plumbers, plasterers, and paper-hangers. When a howling dog, a talkative parrot, a too cheerful cock, distracted him at his writing and invoked a tempest, it was she who by appealing letters, personal persuasion, or threats of the law, induced the neighbors to abolish the nuisance, and so allayed the storm. She, too, it was who still faced and routed inquisitive visitors, who man-aged the household expenditure, who covered and remodeled ancient sofas, repainted old furniture, kept the books in order, attended to the taxes, and arranged the terms on which they leased their home. With regard to the lease, she writes to her husband at Llandough, during a period when he had escaped into the country, leaving her to reign alone in a house where " the stairs were all flowing with whitewash," and a young man was scraping the walls with pumice-stone to the tune of " Oh, rest thee my darling, Thy sire is a Knight."

"It will be a clean, pretty house for you to come home to, and should you find that I have exceeded by a few pounds your modest allowance for painting and papering, you will find that I have not been thoughtless nevertheless, when I show you a document from Mr. Morgan, promising to ' indemnify us for the same in the undisturbed possession of our house for five years!' A piece of paper equivalent to a lease of the house for five years, with the reciprocity all on one side,' binding him and leaving us free. . . . This was one of those remarkable instances of fascination which I exercise over gentlemen of a ' certain age ;' before I had spoken six words to him it was plain to the meanest capacity that he had fallen over head and ears in love with me; and if the put off time in writing me the promise I required, it was plainly only because he could not bear the idea of my going away again! No wonder! probably no such beatific vision as that of a real live woman, in a silk bonnet and muslin gown, ever irradiated that dingy, dusty law chamber of his, and sat there on a three-feet-high stool, since he had held a pen behind his car ; and certainly never before had either man or woman, in that place, addressed him as a human being, not as a lawyer, or he would not have looked at me so struck dumb with admiration when I did so. For respectability's sake, I said, in taking leave, that my husband was out of town, or he would have come himself.' ' Better as it is," said the old gentleman ; ' do you think I

would have written to your husband's dictation as I have done to yours ?' lie asked me if your name were John or William—plainly he had lodged an angel unawares."

Carlyle's sins, we must own, were more those of omission than commission, but he was liable to be seized at any time by some whimsical desire that had to be gratified at once, whatever the inconvenience to the house-hold. Thus his wife writes to her friend, Dr. Russell, apologizing for her delay in sending him a photograph and letter:

" On the New Year's morning itself, Mr. C. 'got up off his wrong side,' a by no means uncommon way of getting up for him in these overworked times! And he suddenly discovered that his salvation, here and hereafter, depended on having, ' immediately, without a moment's delay,' a beggarly pair of old cloth boots, that the street-sweeper would hardly have thanked him for, `lined with flannel, and new bound, and repaired generally!' and one of my women'—that is, my one woman and a half—was to be set upon the job!  Alas! a regular shoemaker would have taken a. whole day to it, and wouldn't have undertaken such a piece of work besides'. and Mr. C. scouted the idea of employing a shoemaker, as subversive of his authority as master of the house. So, neither my one woman, nor my half one, having any more capability of repairing `generally' these boots than of repairing the Great Eastern, there was no help for me but to sit down on the New Year's morning, with a. great ugly beast of a man's boot in my lap, and scheme, and stitch, and worry over it till night ; and next morning begin on the other ! There, you see, were my two days eaten up very completely, and unexpectedly ; and so it goes on, ' always a something' (as my dear mother used to say)."

Her difficulties with servants form a tragi-comedy by themselves, very funny in some of its details, but a very real and exhausting misery to the poor lady whose dyspeptic of genius had to be guarded from every breath of domestic disturbance. She had servants who stole, servants who drank, servants who brought upon the house the horror of bugs, servants who were incompetent, servants who were insolent. One, while her mistress was ill upstairs, entertained people of evil character in the kitchen and terrified her fellow-servant into keeping silence; another was found dead-drunk upon the kitchen floor with a whisky bottle by her side, surrounded (having overturned the table in her fall) by a quantity of broken crockery that filled a clothes-basket when gathered up. All this she had to bear and set right without help, and with much hindrance from her husband's irritable temper.

" I should not be at all afraid," she once wrote to her beloved friend, Mrs. Russell, " that after a few weeks my new maid would do well enough if it weren't for Mr. C.'s frightful impatience with any new servant untrained to his ways, which would drive a woman out of the house with her hair on end if allowed to act directly upon her! So that I have to stand between them, and imitate in a small, humble way the Roman soldier who gathered his arms full of the enemy's spears, and received them all into his own breast. It is this which makes a change of servants, even when for the better, a terror to me in prospect, and an agony in realization—for a time."
Carlyle, collecting and reading over his wife's letters after her death, added to this one—" Oh Heavens, the comparison ! It was too true."

Even when all was going well and the household in perfect running order, he could not spare her, and, much as her health demanded change of scene, rest, and the careful attendance of friends, she dared make no visits.

"Ah, my dear," she wrote to Mrs. Russell, "your kindness goes to my heart, and makes me like to cry, because I cannot do as you bid me. My servants are pretty well got into the routine of the house now, and if Mr. C. were like other men, he might be left to their care for two or three weeks, without fear of consequences. But he is much more like a spoiled baby than like other men. I tried him alone for a few days, when I was afraid of falling seriously ill, unless I had change of air. Three weeks ago I went with Geraldine Jewsbury to Ramsgate, one of the most accessible sea. side places, where I was within call, as it were, if anything went wrong at home. But the letter that came from him every morning was like the letter of a Babe in the Wood, who would be found buried with dead leaves by the robins if I didn't look to it."

Mrs. Carlyle's lot was indeed in many respects a miserable one. Another woman in her state of health would almost from the first have claimed the rights of an invalid. She was burdened far beyond her strength; Carlyle did not see it, did not appreciate her heroic toil, and gave her little of the comfort of his society. At one period he sought and frequently enjoyed the conversation of a brilliant and titled lady, who was his admiring friend, but. was scarcely civil to his wife. At this time the spirit, the confidence, the humor, the gayety, that had so long sustained her no longer sufficed, and her sorrow found vent iii a bitter journal ; kept, as she records on the first page, because she had taken a notion to, and " just as the Scotch professor drank whisky, because I like it, and because it's cheap." During this period, which fortunately did not last. long, her letters to Carlyle are short and cold ; but gradually the matter adjusted itself, her jealousy died a natural death, and she wrote to him once more in the old, lover-like tone, and the old, merry humor.

There was a bright side to the picture. Her husband was famous. She was proud of him, proud of being consulted concerning his works ; and he never failed to ask her criticism, as he really valued her judgment. She had, too, a large circle of friends, whom she attached to her-self by a bond of peculiar tenderness. She enjoyed the friendship of many distinguished men—among them Darwin, Dickens, and Tennyson—she entertained them at her house, and she was justly famed as a hostess. It used to be said that many who came to sit at her husband's feet, remained at hers. When he was present, however, she persistently kept herself in the background, devoting all her energies to drawing him out to the best advantage, by means of a judicious word here and there, by warding off interruption, and by an occasional well-timed cup of tea. When he was absent she revealed her-self as a brilliant talker, quiet, witty, eloquent, humorous, adding piquancy to the conversation by quaint quotations of Scotch proverbs, odd by-words, or sudden touches of mimicry.

In 1863, her health, long declining, became worse than ever, and she suffered greatly from neuralgia in her arm. One day, feeling rather better than usual, she went out to visit a cousin in the city. After making her call, she hailed an omnibus to ride home ; but, as the street was undergoing repairs, the omnibus could not approach the curbstone, and just as she left the sidewalk to cross to it, a cab dashed toward her at full speed. To avoid being run over she was obliged to throw herself suddenly to one side. She fell, and the desperate effort she made to keep from striking upon her helpless arm in falling, wrenched and lacerated the sinews of her thigh.. Nor did she succeed in saving her arm, which received the full force of the blow. She lay for a moment unable to rise or move ; then kind hands lifted her and placed her in a carriage, when she was driven home. Her suffering was terrible; but in the midst of it she could still think of her husband, and when at length the carriage stopped she caused the driver to call her next neighbor first of all, that he might break the news to Carlyle.

Slowly she recovered from the worst effects of this accident, and was able to move about, and resume in some measure her old place. But darker days were yet to come. The neuralgia increased to such a degree, that she was scarcely ever without pain ; and to this a still more distressing malady, the result of her fall, was after-wards added. When she was able to be moved she was taken for a time to St. Leonards-on-Sea; later, to the country-house of a relative, and then to Holm Hill, where she could be under the care of old friends. Her letters to Carlyle were but a record of anguish, often a cry of despair. It is impossible to read them without a degree of sympathy that is painful in its intensity.

"Oh," she wrote, "this relapse is a severe disappointment to me, and God knows, not altogether a selfish disappointment ! I had looked forward to going back to you so much improved, as to be, if not of any use and comfort to you, at least no trouble to you, and no burden on your spirits ! And now God knows how it will be'. Sometimes I feel a deadly assurance that I am progressing towards just such another winter as the last! only what little courage and hope supported me in the beginning, worn out now, and ground into dust, under long fiery suffering ! "

But at last she grew a little better, and it was thought best that she should return to London. Her arrival was of course a joyful event, and her welcome most cordial.
" Very excited people they were," she wrote, " Dr. C. had stupidly told his brother he might look for us about ten, and, as we did not arrive until half after eleven, Mr. C. had settled it in his own mind that I had been taken ill somewhere on the road, and was momentarily expecting a telegram to say that I was dead. So he rushed out in his dressing-gown, and kissed me, and wept over me as I was in the act of getting down out the cal) (much to the edification of the neighbors at their windows, I have no doubt) ; and then the maids appeared behind him, looking timidly, with flushed faces and tears in their eyes ; and the little one (the cook) threw her arms round my neck and fell to kissing me in the open street ; and the big one (the house-maid) I had to kiss, that she might not be made jealous the first thing."

Though still weak and often suffering, she was never again as ill as she had been. She resumed the management of the household, wrote gay letters again, entertained company, and drove out frequently in a neat little carriage given her by Carlyle, and selected with deep pride and pleasure by herself. Her husband, (luring these last days (which neither of them knew to be her last), was as kind to her as his unpliant nature permitted, while she turned constantly to him with clinging affection pitiful to see. It was at this time that he went to Edinburgh to address the University. Her anxiety as to his success, and her final delight in his triumph, were characteristic and beautiful.

"Mrs. Warren and Maggie were helping to dress me for Forster's birthday," she wrote, " when the telegraph boy gave his double knock. `There it is !' I said. ' I am afraid, cousin, it is only the postman,' said Maggie. Jessie rushed up with the telegram. I tore it open and read `From John Tyndall' (Oh, God bless John Tyndall in this world and the next !) ' to Mrs. Carlyle. A perfect triumph !' I read it to myself, and then read it aloud to the gaping chorus. And chorus all began to dance and clap their hands. ' Eh, Mrs. Carlyle ! Eh, hear to that!' cried Jessie. ' I told you, ma'am,' cried Mrs. Warren, ' I told you how it would be.' " I'm so glad, cousin ! you'll be all right now, cousin,' twittered Maggie, executing a sort of leap-frog round me. And they went on clapping their hands, till there arose among them a sudden cry for brandy ! ' Get her some brandy !' `Do, ma'am, swallow this spoonful of brandy ; just a spoonful !' For, you see, the sudden solution of the nervous tension with which I have been holding in my anxieties for days —nay, weeks past—threw me into as pretty a little fit of hysterics as you ever saw."

Next day she wrote again : " Now just look at that ! if here isn't, at half after eleven, when nobody looks for the Edinburgh post, your letter, two newspapers, and letters from my aunt Anne, Thomas Erskine, and David Aitken besides. 1 have only as yet read your letter. The rest will keep now. I had a nice letter from Henry Davidson yesterday, as good as a newspaper critic. What pleases me most in this business—I mean the business of your success—is the hearty personal affection towards you that comes out on all hands. These men at Forster's with their cheering--our own people—even old Silvester turning as white as a sheet, and his lips quivering when he tried to express his gladness over the telegraph : all that is positively delightful, and makes the success `a good joy to me. No appearance of envy or grudging in anybody ; but one general, loving, heartfelt throwing up of caps with young and old, male and female! If we could only sleep, dear, and what you call digest, wouldn't it be nice'"

Carlyle was still away when the end came. She had had gone out to drive as usual, taking with her a favorite dog. At a quiet place near the Victoria Gate, she stopped the carriage to let the creature get out for a run, and drove on slowly, the dog following. Presently a passing brougham struck the dog and threw it down, when she and the lady who was driving the brougham alighted to see if it was hurt. She stood talking a moment with this lady, then returned to her seat, lifting in the dog, and again went on. The coachman drove for some time, until receiving no further orders, and noticing that Mrs. Carlyle was sitting very still, he became alarmed, and approaching a park gate addressed a lady and asked her to look into the carriage. The lady complied ; then called a gentleman who was passing, who confirmed her fears. Mrs. Carlyle was dead. She was leaning back with eyes closed and hands lying folded in her lap, and a peaceful, happy expression upon her face.

Many hours after the telegram which announced her death, her husband received from her a merry, tender little letter, putting off all " long stories" until next week, when he would he at home, but promising another and better letter the next day, after the tea-party which was to take place that evening.

When her friends were making preparations for the burial, the housekeeper told them that one night when Mrs. Carlyle was very ill, she had asked that two candles which would be found upon a certain shelf, should be lighted and burned when she was dead. Once (as she had proceeded to explain), soon after coming to London, and while very poor, she had wished to give a party, and her mother, who was staying in the house, had gone out and bought candles and confectionery, with which she decorated the supper room, unknown to her daughter, whom she desired to surprise. But Mrs. Carlyle had been offended instead of pleased, explaining that people would think she was extravagant and meant to ruin her husband. She removed two of the candles, and some of the delicacies, at which her mother had been deeply hurt, and could not be comforted. Mrs. Carlyle, overcome with remorse, had then wrapped the two candles in paper and laid them aside where they could easily be found, with the resolve that they should serve at her death.

She lies buried by the side of her father in the choir of Haddington Church. Her husband's hand penned the words which the visitor may read upon the memorial stone above her grave :

"In her bright existence she had more sorrows than are common ; but also a soft invincibility, a clearness of discernment, and a noble loyalty of heart, which are rare. For forty years she was the true and ever-loving help-mate of her husband, and by act and word unweariedly forwarded him, as none else could, in all of worth that he did or attempted. She died at London, 21st April, 1866 ; suddenly snatched away from him, and the light of his life as if gone out."
    

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• Welsh Surname Genealogy Resources
• Carlyle Surname Genealogy Resources
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• Biographies Online

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