THE WIFE OP THOMAS CARLYLE. 189 stopped she caused the driver to call her next neighbor first of all, that he might break the news to Carlyle. Slowly she recovered from the worst effects of this accident, and was able to move about, and resume in some measure her old place. But darker days were yet to come. The neuralgia increased to such a degree, that she was scarcely ever without pain ; and to this a still more distressing malady, the result of her fall, was after- wards added. When she was able to be moved she was taken for a time to St. Leonards-on-Sea ; later, to the country-house of a relative, and then to Holm Hill, where she could be under the care of old friends. Her letters to Carlyle were but a record of anguish, often a cry of despair. It is impossible to read them without a degree of sympathy that is painful in its intensity. "Oh," she wrote, "this relapse is a severe disappoint- ment to me, and God knows, not altogether a selfish disappointment ! I had looked forward to going back to you so much improved, as to be, if not of any use and comfort to you, at least no trouble to you, and no burden on your spirits ! And now God knows how it will be ! Sometimes I feel a deadly assurance that I am progress- ing towards just such another winter as the last ! only what little courage and hope supported me in the begin- ning, worn out now, and ground into dust, under long fiery suffering ! " But at last she grew a little better, and it was thought best that she should return to London. Her arrival was of course a joyful event, and her welcome most cordial. " Very excited people they were," she wrote, "Dr. C. had stupidly told his brother he might look for us about ten, and, as we did not arrive until half after eleven, Mr. C. had settled it in his own mind that I had been taken ill somewhere on the road, and was momentarily expecting a telegram to say that I was dead. So he rushed out in his
