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"14

Chatham Place, 31 January, 1862.

MY DEAR MRS. GILCHRIST: I am convinced you are quite right in purposing to return to the country for the present. Indeed I am sure all your friends would feel the greatest increase of anxiety on your account were you to remain at Chelsea. The associations there must indeed be quite overwhelming, when even to his friends elsewhere the reality of such a loss still seems bewildering.

"Mr. Ireland spent an evening with me and kindly brought the photograph, which is indeed as you say a record of him ten years ago, but not as I knew him— his face having gained latterly no less in no less in power, I should think, than in what are commonly called good looks...

"I was very glad to hear from Mr. Ireland of the continued improvement in your little invalid [Herbert Harlakenden], and trust that recovery is now quite

ensured."

Jane Carlyle endeavoured to persuade her neighbour to continue to live at number six; even suggesting that Anne Gilchrist and Geraldine Jewsbury should unite forces and live together. After a good deal of anxious consideration, Anne Gilchrist commenced house hunting in the country, and unassisted, one pouring wet night, lighted upon dear little Brookbank,' Shottermill: a wiser choice was hardly possible, as will be seen.

When the time drew near for leaving Chelsea, Jane Carlyle wrote: " Feb. 1862. . . . Since you are to go, I wish to Heaven you were out of all this! I know how dreadful these details must be! how little chance of calm

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"Don't write, but tell Maria how the little girl is ? and how your own head is?"

The day of departure soon came. "I remember," says Isabella Ireland, "watching from the windows (Mrs. Carlyle's drawing-room) the loading of the vans. When the third waggon, heavily laden with pretty old carved furniture, started for Haslemere, Mrs. Carlyle shrugged her shoulders and avouched a belief that Mrs. Gilchrist would skin, and bury herself alive for the benefit of her children.""

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