 Harriet was widowed in 1849, and she married John Mill in 1851. The Mills spent most of their married life in their Blackheath Park home, with just Haji and Helen Taylor for company. They had already largely withdrawn from society, perhaps due to the gossip that their relationship generated. Real or perceived slights toward Taylor Mill by Mill’s mother and some of his siblings after their wedding resulted in his estrangement from much of his family (on this see Packe 1954, 349–57; Jacobs 2002, 117). The Mills did sometimes interrupt their reclusion to travel, separately or together, to the south of England or to the Continent in pursuit of a more healthful climate. In late 1858, after Mill’s retirement from the East India Company, they set out for Montpellier, but Taylor Mill’s fragile health gave out in Avignon. Mill bought a small house there, next to the cemetery in which she was buried, where he spent a considerable portion of the remainder of his life. (He died and was buried in Avignon in 1873.)