had an almost morbid love of offensive
tattle. Froude describes himself as a witness for six years, at Cheyne
Row, "of the enactment of a tragedy as stern and real as the story of
Oedipus." According to his own account:

I stood by, consenting to the slow martyrdom of a woman whom I have
described as bright and sparkling and tender, and I uttered no word of
remonstrance. I saw her involved in a perpetual blizzard, and did
nothing to shelter her.

But it is not upon his own observations that Froude relies for his most
sinister evidence against his friend. To him comes Miss Jewsbury with a
lengthy tale to tell. It is well to know what Mrs. Carlyle thought of
this lady. She wrote:

It is her besetting sin, and her trade of novelist has aggravated
it--the desire of feeling and producing violent emotions. ... Geraldine
has one besetting weakness; she is never happy unless she has a grande
passion on hand.

There were strange manifestations on the part of Miss Jewsbury toward
Mrs. Carlyle. At one time, when Mrs. Carlyle had shown some preference
for another woman, it led to a wild outburst of what Miss Jewsbury
herself called "tiger jealousy." There are many other instances of
violent emotions in her letters to Mrs. Carlyle. They are often highly
charged and erotic. It is unusual for a woman of thirty-two to write to
a woman friend, who is forty-three years of age, in these words, which
Miss Jewsbury used in writing to Mrs. Carlyle:

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, harmles