You are never out of my thoughts one hour together. I think of you
much more than if you were my lover. I cannot express my feelings,
even to you--vague, undefined yearnings to be yours in some way.

Mrs. Carlyle was accustomed, in private, to speak of Miss Jewsbury
as "Miss Gooseberry," while Carlyle himself said that she was
simply "a flimsy tatter of a creature." But it is on the testimony
of this one woman, who was so morbid and excitable, that the most
serious accusations against Carlyle rest. She knew that Froude was
writing a volume about Mrs. Carlyle, and she rushed to him, eager
to furnish any narratives, however strange, improbable, or
salacious they might be.

Thus she is the sponsor of the Ashburton story, in which there is
nothing whatsoever. Some of the letters which Lady Ashburton wrote
Carlyle have been destroyed, but not before her husband had
perused them. Another set of letters had never been read by Lord
Ashburton at all, and they are still preserved--friendly,
harmless, usual letters. Lord Ashburton always invited Carlyle to
his house, and there is no reason to think that the Scottish
philosopher wronged him.

There is much more to be said about the charge that Mrs. Carlyle
suffered from personal abuse; yet when we examine the facts, the
evidence resolves itself into practically nothing. That, in his
self-absorption, he allowed her to Sending Completed Page, Please
Wait ... overflowed toward a man who must have been a manly,
loving lover. She calls him by the name by which he called her--a
homely Scottish name.