Books: Goody

JANE WELSH CARLYLE—Townsend Scudder—Macmillan ($3.50).

Even misogynists have not claimed that Thomas Carlyle got the worst of it when he married gypsy-eyed, brilliant Jane Welsh. A wifely heroine to her contemporaries, Jane Carlyle is even more of a heroine to Biographer Scudder. Such admiration is partly understandable, however, for no modern wife would tolerate so much in a husband.

Perfect housekeeper, cheerful companion, admiring reader, pretty Jane Carlyle tenderly nursed her husband's rockbound dyspepsia with tasty food, his dyspeptic humors with tasty compliments, sparkled wittily for his friends, never complained of poverty or the isolation of dismal winters on the godforsaken farm...

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