London, and took up their home in Cheyne Row, Chelsea, a far from
fashionable retreat, but one in which the comforts of life could be more
readily secured. It was there that Thomas Carlyle wrote what must
seem to us the most vivid of all his books, the History of the French
Revolution. For this he had read and thought for many years; parts of
it he had written in essays, and parts of it he had jotted down in
journals. But now it came forth, as some one has said, "a truth clad in
hell-fire," swirling amid clouds and flames and mist, a most wonderful
picture of the accumulated social and political falsehoods which
preceded the revolution, and which were swept away by a nemesis that was
the righteous judgment of God.
Carlyle never wrote so great a book as this. He had reached his middle
style, having passed the clarity of his early writings, and not having
yet reached the thunderous, strange-mouthed German expletives which
marred his later work. In the French Revolution he bursts forth, here
and there, into furious Gallic oaths and Gargantuan epithets; yet this
apocalypse of France seems more true than his hero-worshiping of old
Frederick of Prussia, or even of English Cromwell.
All these days Thomas Carlyle lived a life which was partly one
of seclusion and partly one of pleasure. At all times he and his
dark-haired wife had their own sets, and mingled with their own friends.
Jane had no means of discovering just whether she would have been
happier with Irving; for Irving died while she was still digging
potatoes and complaining of her lot at Craigenputtock.
However this may be, the Carlyles, man and wife, lived an existence that
was full of unhappiness and rancor. Jane Carlyle became an invalid, and
sought to allay her nervous sufferings with strong tea and tobacco and
morphin. When a nervous woman takes to morphin, it almost always means
that she becomes intensely jealous; and so it was with Jane Carlyle.
A shivering, palpitating, fiercely loyal bit of humanity, she took it
into her head that her husband was infatuated with Lady Ashburton, or
that Lady Ashburton was infatuated with him. She took to spying on them,
and at times, when her nerves were all a jangle, she would lie back
in her armchair and yell with paroxysms of anger. On the other hand,
Carlyle, eager to enjoy the world, sought relief from his household
cares, and sometimes stole away after a fashion that was hardly
guileless. He would leave false addresses at his house, and would dine
at other places than he had announced.
In 1866 Jane Carlyle suddenly died; and somehow, then, the conscience
of Thomas Carlyle became convinced that he had wronged the woman whom he
had really loved. His last fifteen years were spent in wretchedness and
despair. He felt that he had committed the unpardonable sin. He recalled
with anguish every moment of their early life at Craigenputtock--how she
had toiled for him, and waited upon him, and made herself a slave;
and how, later, she had given herself up entirely to him, while he had
thoughtlessly received the sacrifice, and trampled on it as on a bed of
flowers.
Of course, in all this he was intensely morbid, and the diary which he
wrote was no more sane and wholesome than the screamings with which his
wife had horrified her friends. But when he had grown to be a very old
man, he came to feel that this was all a sort of penance, and that the
selfishness of his past must be expiated in the future. Therefore, he
gave his diary to his friend, the historian, Froude, and urged him to
publish the letters and memorials of Jane Welsh Carlyle. Mr. Froude,
with an eye to the reading world, readily did so, furnishing them with
abundant footnotes, which made Carlyle appear to the world as more or
less of a monster.
First, there was set forth the almost continual unhappiness of the pair.
In the second place, by hint, by innuendo, and sometimes by explicit
statement, there were given reasons to show why Carlyle made his wife
unhappy. Of course, his gnawing dyspepsia, which she strove with all her
might to drive away, was one of the first and greatest causes. But again
another cause of discontent was stated in the implication that Carlyle,
in his bursts of temper, actually abused his wife. In one passage there
is a hint that certain blue marks upon her arm were bruises, the result
of blows.
Most remarkable of all these accusations is that which has to do with
the relations of Carlyle and Lady Ashburton. There is no doubt that Jane
Carlyle disliked this brilliant woman, and came to have dark suspicions
concerning her. At first, it was only a sort of social jealousy. Lady
Ashburton was quite as clever a talker as Mrs. Carlyle, and she had a
prestige which brought her more admiration.
Then, by degrees, as Jane Carlyle's mind began to wane, she transferred
her jealousy to her husband himself. She hated to be out-shone, and
now, in some misguided fashion, it came into her head that Carlyle had
surrendered to Lady Ashburton his own attention to his wife, and had
fallen in love with her brilliant rival.
On one occasion, she declared that Lady Ashburton had thrown herself at
Carlyle's feet, but that Carlyle had acted like a man of honor, while
Lord Ashburton, knowing all the facts, had passed them over, and had
retained his friendship with Carlyle.
Now, when Froude came to write My Relations with Carlyle, there were
those who were very eager to furnish him with every sort of gossip.
The greatest source of scandal upon which he drew was a woman named
Geraldine Jewsbury, a curious neurotic creature, who had seen much of
the late Mrs. Carlyle, but who had an almost morbid love of offensive
tattle. Froude describes himself as a witness for six years, at Cheyne
Row, "of the enactment of a tragedy as stern and real as the story of
Oedipus." According to his own account:
I stood by, consenting to the slow martyrdom of a woman whom I have
described as bright and sparkling and tender, and I uttered no word
of remonstrance. I saw her involved in a perpetual blizzard, and did
nothing to shelter her.
But it is not upon his own observations that Froude relies for his most
sinister evidence against his friend. To him comes Miss Jewsbury with
a lengthy tale to tell. It is well to know what Mrs. Carlyle thought of
this lady. She wrote:
It is her besetting sin, and her trade of novelist has aggravated
it--the desire of feeling and producing violent emotions.... Geraldine
has one besetting weakness; she is never happy unless she has a grande
passion on hand.
There were strange manifestations on the part of Miss Jewsbury toward
Mrs. Carlyle. At one time, when Mrs. Carlyle had shown some preference
for another woman, it led to a wild outburst of what Miss Jewsbury
herself called "tiger jealousy." There are many other instances of
violent emotions in her letters to Mrs. Carlyle. They are often highly
charged and erotic. It is unusual for a woman of thirty-two to write to
a woman friend, who is forty-three years of age, in these words, which
Miss Jewsbury used in writing to Mrs. Carlyle:
You are never out of my thoughts one hour together. I think of you much
more than if you were my lover. I cannot express my feelings, even to
you--vague, undefined yearnings to be yours in some way.
Mrs. Carlyle was accustomed, in private, to speak of Miss Jewsbury as
"Miss Gooseberry," while Carlyle himself said that she was simply "a
flimsy tatter of a creature." But it is on the testimony of this
one woman, who was so morbid and excitable, that the most serious
accusations against Carlyle rest. She knew that Froude was writing a
volume about Mrs. Carlyle, and she rushed to him, eager to furnish any
narratives, however strange, improbable, or salacious they might be.
Thus she is the sponsor of the Ashburton story, in which there is
nothing whatsoever. Some of the letters which Lady Ashburton wrote
Carlyle have been destroyed, but not before her husband had perused
them. Another set of letters had never been read by Lord Ashburton at
all, and they are still preserved--friendly, harmless, usual letters.
Lord Ashburton always invited Carlyle to his house, and there is no
reason to think that the Scottish philosopher wronged him.
There is much more to be said about the charge that Mrs. Carlyle
suffered from personal abuse; yet when we examine the facts, the
evidence resolves itself into practically nothing. That, in his
self-absorption, he allowed her to Sending Completed Page, Please
Wait... overflowed toward a man who must have been a manly, loving
lover. She calls him by the name by which he called her--a homely
Scottish name.
GOODY, GOODY, DEAR GOODY:
You said you would weary, and I do hope in my heart you are wearying. It
will be so sweet to make it all up to you in kisses when I return. You
will take me and hear all my bits of experiences, and your heart will
beat when you find how I have longed to return to you. Darling, dearest,
loveliest, the Lord bless you! I think of you every hour, every moment.
I love you and admire you, like--like anything. Oh, if I was there,
I could put my arms so close about your neck, and hush you into the
softest sleep you have had since I went away. Good night. Dream of me. I
am ever YOUR OWN GOODY.
It seems most fitting to remember Thomas Carlyle as a man of strength,
of honor, and of intellect; and his wife as one who was sorely tried,
but who came out of her suffering into the arms of death, purified and
calm and worthy to be remembered by her husband's side.
THE STORY OF THE HUGOS
Victor Hugo, after all criticisms have been made, stands as a literary
colossus. He had imaginative power which makes his finest passages
fairly crash upon the reader's brain like blasting thunderbolts. His
novels, even when translated, are read and reread by people of every
degree of education. There is something vast, something almost Titanic,
about the grandeur and gorgeousness of his fancy. His prose resembles
the sonorous blare of an immense military band. Readers of English care
less for his poetry; yet in his verse one can find another phase of his
intellect. He could write charmingly, in exquisite cadences, poems
for lovers and for little children. His gifts were varied, and he knew
thoroughly the life and thought of his own countrymen; and, therefore,
in his later days he was almost deified by them.
At the same time, there were defects in his intellect and character
which are perceptible in what he wrote, as well as in what he did. He
had the Gallic wit in great measure, but he was absolutely devoid of any
sense of humor. This is why, in both his prose and his poetry, his most
tremendous pages often come perilously near to bombast; and this is why,
again, as a man, his vanity was almost as great as his genius. He had
good reason to be vain, and yet, if he had possessed a gleam of humor,
he would never have allowed his egoism to make him arrogant. As it was,
he felt himself exalted above other mortals. Whatever he did or said or
wrote was right because he did it or said it or wrote it.
This often showed itself in rather whimsical ways. Thus, after he had
published the first edition of his novel, The Man Who Laughs, an English
gentleman called upon him, and, after some courteous compliments,
suggested that in subsequent editions the name of an English peer who
figures in the book should be changed from Tom Jim-Jack.
"For," said the Englishman, "Tom Jim-Jack is a name that could not
possibly belong to an English noble, or, indeed, to any Englishman. The
presence of it in your powerful story makes it seem to English readers a
little grotesque."
Victor Hugo drew himself up with an air of high disdain.
"Who are you?" asked he.
"I am an Englishman," was the answer, "and naturally I know what names
are possible in English."
Hugo drew himself up still higher, and on his face there was a smile of
utter contempt.
"Yes," said he. "You are an Englishman; but I--I am Victor Hugo."
In another book Hugo had spoken of the Scottish bagpipes as "bugpipes."
This gave some offense to his Scottish admirers. A great many persons
told him that the word was "bagpipes," and not "bugpipes." But he
replied with irritable obstinacy:
"I am Victor Hugo; and if I choose to write it 'bugpipes,' it IS
'bugpipes.' It is anything that I prefer to make it. It is so, because I
call it so!"
So, Victor Hugo became a violent republican, because he did not wish
France to be an empire or a kingdom, in which an emperor or a king
would be his superior in rank. He always spoke of Napoleon III as "M.
Bonaparte." He refused to call upon the gentle-mannered Emperor of
Brazil, because he was an emperor; although Dom Pedro expressed an
earnest desire to meet the poet.
When the German army was besieging Paris, Hugo proposed to fight a duel
with the King of Prussia, and to have the result of it settle the war;
"for," said he, "the King of Prussia is a great king, but I am Victor
Hugo, the great poet. We are, therefore, equal."
In spite, however, of his ardent republicanism, he was very fond of
speaking of his own noble descent. Again and again he styled himself "a
peer of France;" and he and his family made frequent allusions to the
knights and bishops and counselors of state with whom he claimed an
ancestral relation. This was more than inconsistent. It was somewhat
ludicrous; because Victor Hugo's ancestry was by no means noble. The
Hugos of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries were not in any
way related to the poet's family, which was eminently honest and
respectable, but by no means one of distinction. His grandfather was
a carpenter. One of his aunts was the wife of a baker, another of a
barber, while the third earned her living as a provincial dressmaker.
If the poet had been less vain and more sincerely democratic, he would
have been proud to think that he sprang from good, sound, sturdy
stock, and would have laughed at titles. As it was, he jeered at
all pretensions of rank in other men, while he claimed for himself
distinctions that were not really his. His father was a soldier who rose
from the ranks until, under Napoleon, he reached the grade of general.
His mother was the daughter of a ship owner in Nantes.
Victor Hugo was born in February, 1802, during the Napoleonic wars, and
his early years were spent among the camps and within the sound of the
cannon-thunder. It was fitting that he should have been born and reared
in an age of upheaval, revolt, and battle. He was essentially the
laureate of revolt; and in some of his novels--as in Ninety-Three--the
drum and the trumpet roll and ring through every chapter.
The present paper has, of course, nothing to do with Hugo's public life;
yet it is necessary to remember the complicated nature of the man--all
his power, all his sweetness of disposition, and likewise all his vanity
and his eccentricities. We must remember, also, that he was French, so
that his story may be interpreted in the light of the French character.
At the age of fifteen he was domiciled in Paris, and though still a
schoolboy and destined for the study of law, he dreamed only of poetry
and of literature. He received honorable mention from the French
Academy in 1817, and in the following year took prizes in a poetical
competition. At seventeen he began the publication of a literary
journal, which survived until 1821. His astonishing energy became
evident in the many publications which he put forth in these boyish
days. He began to become known. Although poetry, then as now, was not
very profitable even when it was admired, one of his slender volumes
brought him the sum of seven hundred francs, which seemed to him
not only a fortune in itself, but the forerunner of still greater
prosperity.
It was at this time, while still only twenty years of age, that he met
a young girl of eighteen with whom he fell rather tempestuously in love.
Her name was Adele Foucher, and she was the daughter of a clerk in the
War Office. When one is very young and also a poet, it takes very little
to feed the flame of passion. Victor Hugo was often a guest at the
apartments of M. Foucher, where he was received by that gentleman
and his family. French etiquette, of course, forbade any direct
communication between the visitor and Adele. She was still a very young
girl, and was supposed to take no share in the conversation. Therefore,
while the others talked, she sat demurely by the fireside and sewed.
Her dark eyes and abundant hair, her grace of manner, and the picture
which she made as the firelight played about her, kindled a flame in the
susceptible heart of Victor Hugo. Though he could not speak to her,
he at least could look at her; and, before long, his share in the
conversation was very slight. This was set down, at first, to his
absent-mindedness; but looks can be as eloquent as spoken words. Mme.
Foucher, with a woman's keen intelligence, noted the adoring gaze of
Victor Hugo as he silently watched her daughter. The young Adele herself
was no less intuitive than her mother. It was very well understood,
in the course of a few months, that Victor Hugo was in love with Adele
Foucher.
Her father and mother took counsel about the matter, and Hugo himself,
in a burst of lyrical eloquence, confessed that he adored Adele and
wished to marry her. Her parents naturally objected. The girl was but
a child. She had no dowry, nor had Victor Hugo any settled income. They
were not to think of marriage. But when did a common-sense decision,
such as this, ever separate a man and a woman who have felt the
thrill of first love! Victor Hugo was insistent. With his supreme
self-confidence, he declared that he was bound to be successful, and
that in a very short time he would be illustrious. Adele, on her side,
created "an atmosphere" at home by weeping frequently, and by going
about with hollow eyes and wistful looks.
The Foucher family removed from Paris to a country town. Victor Hugo
immediately followed them. Fortunately for him, his poems had attracted
the attention of Louis XVIII, who was flattered by some of the verses.
He sent Hugo five hundred francs for an ode, and soon afterward settled
upon him a pension of a thousand francs. Here at least was an income--a
very small one, to be sure, but still an income. Perhaps Adele's father
was impressed not so much by the actual money as by the evidence of the
royal favor. At any rate, he withdrew his opposition, and the two young
people were married in October, 1822--both of them being under age,
unformed, and immature.
Their story is another warning against too early marriage. It is true
that they lived together until Mme. Hugo's death--a married life of
forty-six years--yet their story presents phases which would have made
this impossible had they not been French.
For a time, Hugo devoted all his energies to work. The record of his
steady upward progress is a part of the history of literature, and need
not be repeated here. The poet and his wife were soon able to leave the
latter's family abode, and to set up their own household god in a home
which was their own. Around them there were gathered, in a sort of
salon, all the best-known writers of the day--dramatists, critics,
poets, and romancers. The Hugos knew everybody.
Unfortunately, one of their visitors cast into their new life a drop of
corroding bitterness. This intruder was Charles Augustin Sainte-Beuve,
a man two years younger than Victor Hugo, and one who blended learning,
imagination, and a gift of critical analysis. Sainte-Beuve is to-day
best remembered as a critic, and he was perhaps the greatest critic ever
known in France. But in 1830 he was a slender, insinuating youth who
cultivated a gift for sensuous and somewhat morbid poetry.
He had won Victor Hugo's friendship by writing an enthusiastic notice of
Hugo's dramatic works. Hugo, in turn, styled Sainte-Beuve "an eagle,"
"a blazing star," and paid him other compliments no less gorgeous and
Hugoesque. But in truth, if Sainte-Beuve frequented the Hugo salon, it
was less because of his admiration for the poet than from his desire to
win the love of the poet's wife.
It is quite impossible to say how far he attracted the serious attention
of Adele Hugo. Sainte-Beuve represents a curious type, which is far more
common in France and Italy than in the countries of the north. Human
nature is not very different in cultivated circles anywhere. Man loves,
and seeks to win the object of his love; or, as the old English proverb
has it:
It's a man's part to try,
And a woman's to deny.
But only in the Latin countries do men who have tried make their
attempts public, and seek to produce an impression that they have been
successful, and that the woman has not denied. This sort of man, in
English-speaking lands, is set down simply as a cad, and is excluded
from people's houses; but in some other countries the thing is regarded
with a certain amount of toleration. We see it in the two books written
respectively by Alfred de Musset and George Sand. We have seen it still
later in our own times, in that strange and half-repulsive story in
which the Italian novelist and poet, Gabriele d'Annunzio, under a very
thin disguise, revealed his relations with the famous actress, Eleanora
Duse. Anglo-Saxons thrust such books aside with a feeling of disgust for
the man who could so betray a sacred confidence and perhaps exaggerate
a simple indiscretion into actual guilt. But it is not so in France and
Italy. And this is precisely what Sainte-Beuve attempted.
Dr. George McLean Harper, in his lately published study of Sainte-Beuve,
has summed the matter up admirably, in speaking of The Book of Love:
He had the vein of emotional self-disclosure, the vein of romantic or
sentimental confession. This last was not a rich lode, and so he was at
pains to charge it secretly with ore which he exhumed gloatingly, but
which was really base metal. The impulse that led him along this false
route was partly ambition, partly sensuality. Many a worse man would
have been restrained by self-respect and good taste. And no man with a
sense of honor would have permitted The Book of Love to see the light--a
small collection of verses recording his passion for Mme. Hugo, and
designed to implicate her.
He left two hundred and five printed copies of this book to be
distributed after his death. A virulent enemy of Sainte-Beuve was not
too expressive when he declared that its purpose was "to leave on the
life of this woman the gleaming and slimy trace which the passage of a
snail leaves on a rose." Abominable in either case, whether or not the
implication was unfounded, Sainte-Beuve's numerous innuendoes in regard
to Mme. Hugo are an indelible stain on his memory, and his infamy not
only cost him his most precious friendships, but crippled him in every
high endeavor.
How monstrous was this violation of both friendship and love may be seen
in the following quotation from his writings:
In that inevitable hour, when the gloomy tempest and the jealous gulf
shall roll over our heads, a sealed bottle, belched forth from the
abyss, will render immortal our two names, their close alliance, and our
double memory aspiring after union.
Whether or not Mme. Hugo's relations with Sainte-Beuve justified the
latter even in thinking such thoughts as these, one need not inquire too
minutely. Evidently, though, Victor Hugo could no longer be the friend
of the man who almost openly boasted that he had dishonored him. There
exist some sharp letters which passed between Hugo and Sainte-Beuve.
Their intimacy was ended.
But there was something more serious than this. Sainte-Beuve had in fact
succeeded in leaving a taint upon the name of Victor Hugo's wife. That
Hugo did not repudiate her makes it fairly plain that she was innocent;
yet a high-spirited, sensitive soul like Hugo's could never forget that
in the world's eye she was compromised. The two still lived together
as before; but now the poet felt himself released from the strict
obligations of the marriage-bond.
It may perhaps be doubted whether he would in any case have remained
faithful all his life. He was, as Mr. H.W. Wack well says, "a man of
powerful sensations, physically as well as mentally. Hugo pursued every
opportunity for new work, new sensations, fresh emotion. He desired to
absorb as much on life's eager forward way as his great nature craved.
His range in all things--mental, physical, and spiritual--was so far
beyond the ordinary that the gage of average cannot be applied to him.
The cavil of the moralist did not disturb him."