Fortunately, on reaching London he found that the poet Browning,
whose acquaintance he had made ten years before, was, with his wife, about
to start for the same destination, and he prevailed upon them, though
somewhat reluctant, to take charge of him.
[Footnote: Mrs. Sutherland Orr's _Life of Robert Browning_.]
The companionship was therefore not accidental, and it was of great
service. "Carlyle," according to Mrs. Browning's biographer, "would have
been miserable without Browning," who made all the arrangements for the
party, passed luggage through the customs, saw to passports, fought the
battles of all the stations, and afterwards acted as guide through the
streets of the great city. By a curious irony, two verse-makers and
admirers of George Sand made it possible for the would-be man of action to
find his way. The poetess, recalling the trip afterwards, wrote that she
liked the prophet more than she expected, finding his "bitterness only
melancholy, and his scorn sensibility." Browning himself continued through
life to regard Carlyle with "affectionate reverence." "He never ceased,"
says Mrs. Orr, "to defend him against the charge of unkindness to his
wife, or to believe that, in the matter of their domestic unhappiness, she
was the more responsible of the two.... He always thought her a hard
unlovable woman, and I believe little liking was lost between them .
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