2. TC wrote in his journal, 6 May: “Monday, 4th May, 4½ p.m., at Paris, died Lady Ashburton, a great and irreparable sorrow to me; yet with some beautiful consolations in it
too. A thing that fills all my mind, since yesterday afternoon that Milnes came to me with the sad news,—whh I had never once anticipated, tho' warned sometimes vaguely to do so. God ‘sanctify my sorrow,’ as the old pious phrase went! To her I believe it is a great gain, and the exit has in it much of noble beauty
as well as pure sadness,—worthy of such a woman. Adieu! Adieu! ‘My work has been delayed’ &c, I may say with old Johnson [Preface, A Dictionary of the English Language (1755)]. Her work, call it her grand and noble Endurance of want of work, is all done.” The obituary of Lady Ashburton in the Times praised her for her own and Lord Ashburton's hospitality: “in all respects honourable to English manners … open to all excellence
and liberal to all opinions; it has shown the luxury of wealth compatible with simplicity of life, and mental superiority
without taint of pride or affectation.” She was “a noble English lady, who, in a country where the authority of women is less
jealously watched and more willingly admitted, would have been a public personage, but who has been content to limit her genius
to uses that circumstances have allowed and custom has sanctioned” (7 May).
3. Ellen Twisleton wrote, 8 May, that she had not known how much she cared for Lady Ashburton until she heard of her death: “I am so deeply sorry for Carlyle—nobody
will ever take her place to him, & he must be sitting in such blackness of darkness, now” (Houghton 45M-98).
