She had the penetration to be certain that whatever Irving might possess at present, it would be nothing in comparison to what Carlyle would have in the coming future.  She understood the limitations of Irving, but to her keen mind the genius of Carlyle was unlimited; and she foresaw that, after he had toiled and striven, he would come into his great reward, which she would share.  Irving might be the leader of a petty sect, but Carlyle would be a man whose name must become known throughout the world.

And so, in 1826, she had made her choice, and had become the bride of the rough-spoken, domineering Scotsman who had to face the world with nothing but his creative brain and his stubborn independence.  She had put aside all immediate thought of London and its lures; she was going to cast in her lot with Carlyle’s, largely as a matter of calculation, and believing that she had made the better choice.

She was twenty-six and Carlyle was thirty-two when, after a brief residence in Edinburgh, they went down to Craigenputtock.  Froude has described this place as the dreariest spot in the British dominions: 

The nearest cottage is more than a mile from it; the elevation, seven hundred feet above the sea, stunts the trees and limits the garden produce; the house is gaunt and hungry-looking.  It stands, with the scanty fields attached, as an island in a sea of morass.  The landscape is unredeemed by grace or grandeur—­mere undulating hills of grass and heather, with peat bogs in the hollows between them.

Froude’s grim description has been questioned by some; yet the actual pictures that have been drawn of the place in later years make it look bare, desolate, and uninviting.  Mrs. Carlyle, who owned it as an inheritance from her father, saw the place for the first time in March, 1828.  She settled there in May; but May, in the Scottish hills, is almost as repellent as winter.  She herself shrank from the adventure which she had proposed.  It was her husband’s notion, and her own, that they should live there in practical solitude.  He was to think and write, and make for himself a beginning of real fame; while she was to hover over him and watch his minor comforts.

It seemed to many of their friends that the project was quixotic to a degree.  Mrs. Carlyle delicate health, her weak chest, and the beginning of a nervous disorder, made them think that she was unfit to dwell in so wild and bleak a solitude.  They felt, too, that Carlyle was too much absorbed with his own thought to be trusted with the charge of a high-spirited woman.

However, the decision had been made, and the newly married couple went to Craigenputtock, with wagons that carried their household goods and those of Carlyle’s brother, Alexander, who lived in a cottage near by.  These were the two redeeming features of their lonely home—­the presence of Alexander Carlyle, and the fact that, although they had no servants in the ordinary sense, there were several farmhands and a dairy-maid.