Carlyle
with incisiveness which she used like a sharp knife--Carlyle with too much
to do, and Mrs. Carlyle with less than nothing to do--each passionately
attached to the other as soon as they were separated, and both capable of
saying the sweetest and most affectionate things by letter, which they
could not for the life of them utter in talk. They did, as a matter of
fact, spend an immense amount of time apart; and when they were together,
Carlyle, having been trained as a peasant and one of a large family,
roughly neglected Mrs. Carlyle, while Mrs. Carlyle, with a middle-class
training, and moreover indulged as an only daughter, was too proud to
complain, but not proud enough not to resent the neglect deeply. What could
have been done for them? Were they impossible people to live with? Was it
true, as Tennyson bluntly said, that it was as well that they married,
because two people were unhappy instead of four?"
"They wanted a child as a go-between!" said Barthrop.
"Of course they did!" said Father Payne. "That would have pulled the whole
menage together. And don't tell me that it was a wise dispensation that
they were childless! Cleansing fires? The fires in which they lived, with
Carlyle raging about porridge and milk and crowing cocks, working alone,
walking alone, flying off to see Lady Ashburton, sleeping alone; and Mrs.
Carlyle, whom everyone else admired and adored, eating her heart out
because she could not get him to value her company;--there was not much
that was cleansing about all that! The cleansing came when she was dead,
and when he saw what he had done.
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