Download File

CARLYLE'S LOVES AND LETTERS 83
ten more pages are filled out with a discussion
of that wholly unimportant question " Who
was Blumine ? "
The reasonable conjecture
is, of course, that Carlyle's method resembled
that of other writers ;
his heroine, no doubt,
was the child of his own imagination, and
when a model was needed he drew indiscriminately
from the ladies with whom he
was acquainted.
Should any one chance to be interested in
Margaret Gordon, her ancestors, her kindred,
or her husband, he may glean a certain amount
of information from this book. Born at
Charlottetown (Prince Edward Island) in 1798,
she was left fatherless at the age of four, and
brought up in Scotland by her aunt. Between
1818 and 1820 she may have had a love-affair
or flirtation with Carlyle ; and in 1824 she
married Mr. Bannerman, a commonplace, goodhumoured
business-man from Aberdeen, who
became a Member of Parliament. Mr. Bannerman
speculated, lost his fortune, and was
consoled with a colonial governorship and a
knighthood. Lady Bannerman was drawn
into the Evangelical movement, devoted the
last years of her life to works of piety, and
died (1878) in a little house at Greenwich
and the odour of
sanctity. As to what
manner of woman she may have been we are
left in ignorance ; into her mode of thinking,