a final leave of
Miss Welsh in 1822. Meanwhile he had brought Carlyle from Edinburgh and
introduced him to the Welshes. Carlyle was attracted by the brilliant
abilities of the young lady, procured books for her and wrote letters to
her as an intellectual guide. The two were to perform a new variation
upon the theme of Abelard and Heloise. [A good deal of uncertainty long
covered the precise character of their relations. Until 1909, when Mr.
Alexander Carlyle published his edition of the "love-letters," the full
material was not accessible; they had been read by Carlyle's biographer,
Froude, and also by Professor Charles Norton, and Norton (in his edition
of Carlyle's _Early Letters_, 1886) declared that Froude had distorted
the significance of this correspondence in a sense injurious to the
writers. The publication of the letters certainly seems to justify
Norton's view.] Miss Welsh's previous affair with Irving had far less
importance than Froude ascribes to it; and she soon came to regard her
past love as a childish fancy. She recognized Carlyle's vast
intellectual superiority, and the respect gradually deepened into
genuine love. The process, however, took some time. Her father had
bequeathed to her his whole property (L200 to L300 a year). In 1823 she
made it over to her mother, but left the whole to Carlyle in the event
of her own and her mother's death. She still declared that she did not
love him well enough to become his wife. In 1824 she gradually relented
so far as to say that she would marry if he could achieve independence.
She had been brought up in a station superior to that of the Carlyles,
and could not accept the life of hardship which would be necessary in
his present circumstances. Carlyle, accustomed to his father's
household, was less frightened by the prospect of poverty. He was
determined not to abandon his vocation as a man of genius by following
the lower though more profitable paths to literary success, and expected
that his wife should partake the necessary sacrifice of comfort. The
natural result of such discussions followed. The attraction became
stronger on both sides, in spite of occasional spasms of doubt. An odd
incident precipitated the result. A friend of Irving's, Mrs Basil
Montague, wrote to Miss Welsh, to exhort her to suppress her love for
Irving, who had married Miss Martin in 1823. Miss Welsh replied by
announcing her intention to marry Carlyle; and then told him the whole
story,