On the other hand, Carlyle was too exacting, and when domestic differences arose he abstained from paying those little attentions which a delicate and sensitive woman might naturally expect from a husband who was so lavish of terms of endearment in the letters he wrote to her when away from her side. 'Even with that mother whom he so dearly loved,' observes Mrs Ireland, 'the intercourse was mainly composed of a silent sitting by the fireside of an evening in the old "houseplace," with a tranquillising pipe of tobacco, or of his returning from his long rambles to a simple meal, partaken of in comparative silence; and now and then, at meeting or parting, some pious and earnest words from the good soul to her son.'[37] And it never occurred to Carlyle to act differently with his wife, who was pining for his society. In addition to all that, we have Froude's brief but accurate diagnosis of Carlyle's character. 'If,' he wrote, 'matters went well with himself, it never occurred to him that they could be going ill with any one else; and, on the other hand, if he was uncomfortable, he required everybody to be uncomfortable along with him.' There was a strong element of selfishness in that phase of Carlyle's nature; and throughout his letters and journal he appears wholly wrapt up in himself and in his literary projects, without even a passing allusion to the courageous woman who had shared his lot. Now and again we alight upon a passage where special mention is made of her efforts, but these have all a direct or indirect bearing upon _his_ work, _his_ plans, _his_ comforts.[38] Carlyle never fully realised what his wife had been to him until she was suddenly snatched from his side. And this was his testimony: 'I say deliberately, her part in the stern battle, and except myself none knows how stern, was brighter and braver than my own.' In one of those terrible moments of self-upbraiding the grief-stricken husband exclaims: 'Blind and deaf that we are; oh, think, if thou yet love anybody living, wait not till death sweep down the paltry little dust-clouds and idle dissonances of the moment, and all be at last so mournfully clear and beautiful, _when it is too late_!' In a pamphlet quoted by Mrs Ireland we have a pathetic picture of Carlyle in his lonely old age. A Mr Swinton, an American gentleman on a visit to this country, went to see the grave of Mrs Carlyle.