Rennie, long afterwards referred to by Carlyle as a "clever, decisive,
very ambitious, but quite unmelodious young fellow whom we knew here (in
Chelsea) as sculptor and M.P." She dismissed him in 1821 for some cause
of displeasure, "due to pride, reserve, and his soured temper about the
world"; but when he came to take leave, she confesses, "I scarcely heard
a word he said, my own heart beat so loud." Years after, in London, she
went by request of his wife to Rennie's death-bed.

Meanwhile she had fallen under the spell of her tutor, Edward Irving,
and, as she, after much _finesse_ and evasion, admitted, came to love him
in earnest. Irving saw her weak points, saying she was apt to turn
her powers to "arts of cruelty which satire and scorn are," and "to
contemplate the inferiority of others rather from the point of view
of ridicule and contempt than of commiseration and relief." Later she
retaliated, "There would have been no 'tongues' had Irving married me."
But he was fettered by a previous engagement, to which, after some
struggle for release, he held, leaving in charge of his pupil, as guide,
philosopher, and friend, his old ally and successor, Thomas Carlyle.
Between this exceptional pair there began in 1821 a relationship of
constant growth in intimacy, marked by frequent visits, conversations,
confidences, and a correspondence, long, full, and varied, starting with
interchange of literary sympathies, and sliding by degrees into the
dangerous friendship called Platonic. At the outset it was plain that
Carlyle was not the St. Preux or Wolmar whose ideas of elegance Jane
Welsh--a hasty student of Rousseau--had set in unhappy contrast to the
honest young swains of Haddington. Uncouth, ungainly in manner and
attire, he first excited her ridicule even more than he attracted her
esteem, and her written descriptions of him recall that of Johnson by
Lord Chesterfield. "He scrapes the fender, ... only his tongue should be
left at liberty, his other members are most fantastically awkward"; but