much, and in this way: Now I am coming the Richardson! On my return, the
first day I called, they were in a sort of taking or bustle about a
Cousin of theirs, who, having fallen out with her Grandpapa in a serious
manner, was invited by Mrs. ---- to take asylum in her house. She is an
East-Indian, and ought to be her grandfather's heir. At the time I
called, Mrs. ---- was in conference with her upstairs, and the young
ladies were warm in her praises downstairs, calling her genteel,
interesting and a thousand other pretty things to which I gave no heed,
not being partial to nine-days' wonders--Now all is completely
changed--they hate her, and from what I hear she is not without faults
of a real kind: but she has others, which are more apt to make women of
inferior charms hate her. She is not a Cleopatra, but is, at least, a
Charmian. She has a rich Eastern look; she has fine eyes and fine
manners. When she comes into the room she makes an impression the same
as the Beauty of a Leopardess. She is too fine and too conscious of
herself to repulse any Man who may address her; from habit she thinks
that nothing _particular_. I always find myself more at ease with such
a woman: the picture before me always gives me a life and animation
which I cannot possibly feel with anything inferior. I am at such times
too much occupied in admiring to be awkward or in a tremble: I forget
myself entirely, because I live in her. You will, by this time, think
that I am in love with her, so, before I go any further, I will tell you
I am not. She kept me awake one night, as a tune of Mozart's might do. I
speak of the thing as a pastime and an amusement, than which I can feel
none deeper than a conversation with an imperial woman, the very "yes"
and "no" of whose life is to me a banquet. I don't cry to take the moon
home with me in my pocket, nor do I fret to leave her behind me. I like
her, and her like, because one has no _sensations_; what we both are is
taken for granted. You will suppose I have by this had much talk with
her--no such thing; there are the Misses ----on the look out. They think
I don't admire her because I don't stare at her; they call her a flirt
to me--what a want of knowledge! She walks across a room in such a
manner that a man is drawn towards her with a magnetic power; this they
call flirting! They do not know things; they do not know what a woman
is. I believe, though, she has faults; the same as Charmian and
Cleopatra might have had. Yet she is a fine thing, speaking in a worldly
way; for there are two distinct tempers of mind in which we judge of
things--the worldly, theatrical and pantomimical; and the unearthly,
spiritual and ethereal. In the former, Buonaparte, Lord Byron and this
Charmian hold the first place in our minds; in the latter, John Howard,
Bishop Hooker rocking his child's cradle, and you, my dear sister, are
the conquering feelings. As a man of the world I love the rich talk of
a Charmian; as an eternal being I love the thought of you. I should
like her to ruin me, and I should like you to save me.
"I am free from men of pleasure's cares,
By dint of feelings far more deep than theirs."
This is "Lord Byron," and is one of the finest things he has said.
THE CARLYLES--THOMAS (1795-1881) AND
JANE WELSH (1801-1866)
A paradoxer, even of a less virulent-frivolous type than
that with which we have been recently afflicted, might
sustain, for some little time at any rate, the argument
against preservation of letters from the case of this
eminent couple. If Mrs. Carlyle had not written hers, or if
they had remained unknown, the whole sickening controversy
about the character and married life of the pair might, as
was said in the Introduction, never have existed. And if
Carlyle himself had written none, persons of any
intelligence would still have had a pretty adequate idea of
him from his _Works_. On the other hand the addition to
knowledge in his case is quite welcome: and in hers it
practically gives us what we could hardly have known
otherwise--one of the most remarkable of woman-natures, and
one of the most striking confirmations of the merciless
adage "Whom the gods curse, to them they grant the desires
of their hearts." For she wanted above all things to be the
wife of a man of genius--and she was. So the _pro_ and the
_con_ in this matter may so far be set against each other.
But there remains to credit a considerable amount of most
welcome and (notably in the instance specified in the
Introduction) almost consummate literature of the epistolary
kind. This instance itself is perhaps too tragic for our
little collection: indeed it might help to spread the
exaggerated idea of the writer's unhappiness which has been
too prevalent already. There is some "metal more attractive"
in her letters, which perhaps, taken all round, put her with
Madame de Sevigne and "Lady Mary" at the head of all
_published_ women letter-writers. And Carlyle's annotations
to them, when not too bilious or too penitent, show him
almost at his best. His own (given below) to FitzGerald (the
way in which epistolary literature interconnects itself has
been noted) appears to me one of his most characteristic
though least volcanic utterances. It was written while he
was in the depths of what his wife called "the Valley of the
Shadow of Frederick," (_i.e._ his vast book on that amiable
monarch) and had retired to _extra_-solitude in consequence.
"Farlingay" refers to a recent stay in Suffolk with
FitzGerald. As often with Carlyle, there may be more than
one interpretation of his inverted commas at "gentleman" as
regards Voltaire, to whom he certainly would not have
allotted the word in its best sense. The phrase about Chaos
and the Evil Genius is Carlyle shut up in narrow space like
the other genius or genie in the Arabian Nights. The "_awful
jangle_ of bells" speaks his horror of any invading sound.
The "Naseby matter" refers to a monument which he and
FitzGerald had planned, and which (with the precedent
investigation as to the battle which F. had conducted years
before for his _Cromwell_), occupies a good deal of
FitzGerald's own correspondence. Indeed, it is thanks to
Naseby that we possess this very letter. FitzGerald says
elsewhere that he kept only these Naseby letters of all
Carlyle's correspondence with him, destroying the rest, as
he did Thackeray's and Tennyson's, lest "private personal
history should fall into some unscrupulous hands." One
admires the conduct while one feels the loss. As for the
monument, it never came off: though it was talked about for
some thirty years. Mrs. Carlyle's--one of the early and,
despite complaints, cheerful time, the other later and,
despite its resignation, from "the Valley of the
Shadow"--require no annotation, save in respect of Carlyle's
own on _Deerbrook_. He might well call it "poor": it is
indeed one of the few novels by a writer of any distinction,
which one tolerably voracious novel-reader has found
incapable of being read. And this is curious: for she had
written good stories earlier.
38. TO EDWARD FITZGERALD
ADDISCOMBE FARM, CROYDON.
15th Septr. 1855
Dear Fitzgerald,
I have been here ever since the day you last heard of me; leading the
strangest life of absolute _Latrappism_; and often enough remembering
Farlingay and you. I live perfectly alone, and without speech at
all,--there being in fact nobody to speak to, except one austerely
punctual housemaid, who does her functions, like an eight-day clock,
generally without bidding. My wife comes out now and then to give the
requisite directions; but commonly withdraws again on the morrow,
leaving the monster to himself and his own ways. I have Books; a
complete Edition of _Voltaire_, for one Book, in which I read for _use_,
or for idleness oftenest,--getting into endless reflexions over it,
mostly of a sad and not very utterable nature. I find V. a 'gentleman,'
living in a world partly furnished with such; and that there are now
almost no 'gentlemen' (not quite _none_): this is one great head of my
reflexions, to which there is no visible _tail_ or finish. I have also a
Horse (borrowed from my fat Yeoman friend, who is at sea-bathing in
Sussex); and I go riding, at great lengths daily, over hill and dale;
this I believe is really the main good I am doing,--if in this either
there be much good. But it is a strange way of life to me, for the time;
perhaps not unprofitable; To let _Chaos_ say out its say, then, and
one's Evil Genius give one the very worst language he has, for a while.
It is still to last for a week or more. Today, for the first time, I
ride back to Chelsea, but mean to return hither on Monday. There is a
great circle of yellow light all the way from Shooter's Hill to Primrose
Hill, spread round my horizon every night, I see it while smoking my
pipe before bed (so bright, last night, it cast a visible shadow of me
against the white window-shutters); and this is all I have to do with
London and its _gases_ for a fortnight or more. My wife writes to me,
there was an awful jangle of bells last day she went home from this; a
Quaker asked in the railway, of some porter, 'Can thou tell me what
these bells mean?'--'Well, I suppose something is up. They say
Sebastopol is took, and the Rushans run away.'--_A la bonne heure_; but
won't they come back again, think you?
On the whole I say, when you get your little Suffolk cottage, you must
have in it a 'chamber in the wall' for me, _plus_ a pony that can trot,
and a cow that gives good milk: with these outfits we shall make a
pretty rustication now and then, not wholly _Latrappish_, but only
_half_, on much easier terms than here; and I shall be right willing to
come and try it, I for one party.--Meanwhile, I hope the Naseby matter
is steadily going ahead; sale _completed_; and even the _monument_
concern making way. Tell me a little how that and other matters are. If
you are at home, a line is rapidly conveyed hither, steam all the way:
after the beginning of the next week, I am at Chelsea, and (I dare so)
there is a fire in the evenings now to welcome you there. Shew face in
some way or other.
And so adieu; for my hour of riding is at hand.
Yours ever truly,
T. CARLYLE.
39. TO MRS. WALSH,
CHELSEA: Sept. 5, 1836.
My dear Aunt,
Now that I am fairly settled at home again, and can look back over my
late travels with the coolness of a spectator, it seems to me that I
must have tired out all men, women and children that have had to do with
me by the road. The proverb says 'there is much ado when cadgers ride.'
I do not know precisely what 'cadger' means, but I imagine it to be a
character like me, liable to head-ache, to sea-sickness, to all the
infirmities 'that flesh is heir to,' and a few others besides; the
friends and relations of cadgers should therefore use all soft
persuasions to induce them to remain at home.[119]
I got into that Mail the other night with as much repugnance and
trepidation as if it had been a Phalaris' brazen bull, instead of a
Christian vehicle, invented for purposes of mercy--not of cruelty. There
were three besides myself when we started, but two dropped off at the
end of the first stage, and the rest of the way I had, as usual, half of
the coach to myself. My fellow-passenger had that highest of all
terrestrial qualities, which for me a fellow-passenger can possess--he
was silent. I think his name was Roscoe, and he read sundry long papers
to himself, with the pondering air of a lawyer.
We breakfasted at Lichfield, at five in the morning, on muddy coffee and
scorched toast, which made me once more lyrically recognise in my heart
(not without a sign of regret) the very different coffee and toast with
which you helped me out of my headache. At two there was another stop of
ten minutes, that might be employed in lunching or otherwise. Feeling
myself more fevered than hungry, I determined on spending the time in
combing my hair and washing my face and hands with vinegar. In the midst
of this solacing operation I heard what seemed to be the Mail running
its rapid course, and quick as lightning it flashed on me, 'There it
goes! and my luggage is on the top of it, and my purse is in the pocket
of it, and here am I stranded on an unknown beach, without so much as a
sixpence in my pocket to pay for the vinegar I have already consumed!'
Without my bonnet, my hair hanging down my back, my face half dried, and
the towel, with which I was drying it, firm grasped in my hand, I dashed
out--along, down, opening wrong doors, stumbling over steps, cursing the
day I was born, still more the day on which I took a notion to travel,
and arrived finally at the bar of the Inn, in a state of excitement
bordering on lunacy. The barmaids looked at me 'with wonder and
amazement.' 'Is the coach gone?' I gasped out. 'The coach? Yes!' 'Oh!
and you have let it away without me! Oh! stop it, cannot you stop it?'
and out I rushed into the street, with streaming hair and streaming
towel, and almost brained myself against--the Mail! which was standing
there in all stillness, without so much as a horse in it! What I had
heard was a heavy coach. And now, having descended like a maniac, I
ascended again like a fool, and dried the other half of my face, and put
on my bonnet, and came back 'a sadder and a wiser woman.'
I did not find my husband at the 'Swan with Two Necks'; for we were in a
quarter of an hour before the appointed time. So I had my luggage put
on the backs of two porters, and walked on to Cheapside, where I
presently found a Chelsea omnibus. By and by, however, the omnibus
stopped, and amid cries of 'No room, sir,' 'Can't get in,' Carlyle's
face, beautifully set off by a broad-brimmed white hat, gazed in at the
door, like the Peri, who, 'at the Gate of Heaven, stood disconsolate.'
In hurrying along the Strand, pretty sure of being too late, amidst all
the imaginable and unimaginable phenomena which the immense thoroughfare
of a street presents, his eye (Heaven bless the mark!) had lighted on my
trunk perched on the top of the omnibus, and had recognised it. This
seems to me one of the most indubitable proofs of genius which he ever
manifested. Happily, a passenger went out a little further on, and then
he got in.
My brother-in-law had gone two days before, so my arrival was most
well-timed. I found all at home right and tight; my maid seems to have
conducted herself quite handsomely in my absence; my best room looked
really inviting. A bust of Shelley (a present from Leigh Hunt), and a
fine print of Albert Durer, handsomely framed (also a present) had still
further ornamented it during my absence. I also found (for I wish to
tell you all my satisfaction) every grate in the house furnished with a
supply of coloured clippings, and the holes in the stair-carpet all
darned, so that it looks like new. They gave me tea and fried bacon, and
staved off my headache as well as might be. They were very kind to me,
but, on my life, everybody is kind to me, and to a degree that fills me
with admiration. I feel so strong a wish to make you all convinced how
very deeply I feel your kindness, and just the more I would say, the
less able I am to say anything.
God bless you all. Love to all, from the head of the house down to
Johnny.
Your affectionate,
JANE W. CARLYLE.
40. TO MRS. STIRLING, HILL STREET, EDINBURGH.
5 CHEYNE ROW, CHELSEA: October 21, 1859.
You dear nice woman! there you are! a bright cheering apparition to
surprise one on a foggy October morning, over one's breakfast--that most
trying institution for people who are 'nervous' and 'don't sleep!'
It (the photograph) made our breakfast this morning 'pass off,' like the
better sort of breakfasts in Deerbrook,[120] in which people seemed to
have come into the world chiefly to eat breakfast in every possible
variety of temper!
Blessed be the inventor of photography! I set him above even the
inventor of chloroform! It has given more positive pleasure to poor
suffering humanity than anything that has 'cast[121] up' in my time or
is like to--this art by which even the 'poor' can possess themselves of
tolerable likenesses of their absent dear ones. And mustn't it be acting
favourably on the morality of the country? I assure you I have often
gone into my own room, in the devil's own humour--ready to answer at
'things in general,' and some things in particular--and, my eyes resting
by chance on one of my photographs of long-ago places and people, a
crowd of sad, gentle thoughts has rushed into my heart, and driven the
devil out, as clean as ever so much holy water and priestly exorcism
could have done! I have a photograph of Haddington church tower, and my
father's tombstone in it--of every place I ever lived at as a
home--photographs of old lovers! old friends, old servants, old dogs! In
a day or two, you, dear, will be framed and hung up among the 'friends.'
And that bright, kind, indomitable face of yours will not be the least
efficacious face there for exorcising my devil, when I have him! Thank
you a thousand times for keeping your word! Of course you would--that is
just the beauty of you, that you never deceive nor disappoint.
Oh my dear! my dear! how awfully tired I was with the journey home, and
yet I had taken two days to it, sleeping--that is, attempting to
sleep--at York. What a pity it is that Scotland is so far off! all the
good one has gained there gets shaken off one in the terrific journey
home again, and then the different atmosphere is so trying to one fresh
from the pure air of Fife--so exhausting and depressing. If it hadn't
been that I had a deal of housemaiding to execute during the week I was
here before Mr. C. returned, I must have given occasion for newspaper
paragraphs under the head of 'Melancholy Suicide.' But dusting books,
making chair covers, and 'all that sort of thing,' leads one on
insensibly to live--till the crisis gets safely passed.
My dear! I haven't time nor inclination for much letter-writing--nor
have you, I should suppose, but do let us exchange letters now and then.
A friendship which has lived on air for so many years together is worth
the trouble of giving it a little human sustenance.
Give my kind regards to your husband--I like him--and believe me,
Your ever affectionate,
JANE WELSH CARLYLE.
FOOTNOTES:
[119] Clever as she was, she surely made a mistake here--unless she did
it on purpose, which is quite possible. "Cadger" is of course only
"beggar," and the proverb is the Scotch equivalent of ours about the
"beggar on horseback," pretty frequently illustrated now-a-days.
[120] The Deerbrook breakfasts refer to Miss Martineau's poor novel. (T.
C.)
[121] Turned. (T. C.)
THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAY (1800-1859)
There are very few examples in biography where the
publication of letters has had a happier effect on the
general idea of the writer than in Macaulay's case. It is
not here a question of historical trustworthiness, or even
of literary-style, in both which respects he has come in for
severe strictures and sometimes for rather half-hearted
defence. Nor do the letters display any purely literary
gifts in him (except perhaps a playfulness of humour or at
least wit) which do not appear in the _History_ and the
_Essays_. But, as the exception may perhaps partly indicate,
they extend and improve the notion of his personality in the
most remarkable fashion. Even those who did not quarrel with
his views sometimes, before Sir George Trevelyan's book,
disliked and regretted what have been called his "pistolling
ways"--the positive, hectoring "hold-your-tongue" sort of
tone which dominated his productions. With the very rarest
exceptions, themselves sometimes of a revealing and
excusable frankness, this tone is, if not quite absent[122]
from, much seldomer present in, his letters. He jokes
without difficulty; talks without in the least monopolising
the conversation; shows himself often willing to live and
let live; and is on the whole as different a person as
possible from the Macaulay who is sure that "every
schoolboy" knows better than the author he is reviewing, and
who finds Johnson guilty of superstition and Swift of
apostasy. "Happy thrice and more also" are those whose
letters thus vindicate them. I have purposely chosen the
following example (written to his sister) from the most
_mundane_ class. "Appointment" was to the _Indian_ Council,
which explains the "Cotton" and "Muslin" and other things.
"Ellis" (Thomas Flower), a friend of Macaulay's from
Cambridge days and his literary executor in part.
"Lushington" (Stephen), a civilian lawyer of great eminence
as a judge in Admiralty and ecclesiastical matters, but a
rather violent politician. "Town"--Leeds. "Miss Berry" is
annotated elsewhere. "Sir Stratford Canning," later Viscount
Stratford de Redcliffe, George Canning's cousin, and one of
the most famous diplomatists of the nineteenth century,
especially during his long tenure of the Embassy at
Constantinople. _Vivian Grey_--Disraeli's first novel. "Lady
Holland," the most famous hostess on the Whig side in the
first half of the nineteenth century, but, by all accounts,
a person now and then quite intolerable. "Allen" (John), an
_Edinburgh Reviewer_, was familiarly called her "tame
atheist" (All the company were of the Holland House "set").
"Bobus"--Robert Percy Smith, Sydney's elder brother, a great
wit and scholar. "Cosher," an Irish word, is not always used
in this sense of "chat."
41. TO HIS SISTER
LONDON: November 1833.
Dear Hannah,
Things stand as they stood; except that the report of my appointment is
every day spreading more widely; and that I am beset by advertising
dealers begging leave to make up a hundred cotton shirts for me, and
fifty muslin gowns for you, and by clerks out of place begging to be my
secretaries. I am not in very high spirits to-day, as I have just
received a letter from poor Ellis, to whom I had not communicated my
intentions till yesterday. He writes so affectionately and so
plaintively that he quite cuts me to the heart. There are few indeed
from whom I shall part with so much pain; and he, poor fellow, says
that, next to his wife, I am the person for whom he feels the most
thorough attachment, and in whom he places the most unlimited
confidence.
On the 11th of this month there is to be a dinner given to Lushington by
the electors of the Tower Hamlets. He has persecuted me with
importunities to attend and make a speech for him; and my father has
joined in the request. It is enough, in these times, Heaven knows, for a
man who represents, as I do, a town of a hundred and twenty thousand
people to keep his own constituents in good humour; and the Spitalfields
weavers and Whitechapel butchers are nothing to me. But, ever since I
succeeded in what everybody allows to have been the most hazardous
attempt of the kind ever made,--I mean in persuading an audience of
manufacturers, all Whigs or Radicals, that the immediate alteration of
the corn-laws was impossible,--I have been considered as a capital
physician for desperate cases in politics. However, to return from that
delightful theme, my own praises, Lushington, who is not very popular
with the rabble of the Tower Hamlets, thinks that an oration from me
would give him a lift. I could not refuse him directly, backed as he was
by my father. I only said that I would attend if I were in London on the
11th, but I added that, situated as I was, I thought it very probable
that I should be out of town.
I shall go to-night to Miss Berry's _soiree_. I do not know whether I
told you that she resented my article on Horace Walpole so much that Sir
Stratford Canning advised me not to go near her. She was Walpole's
greatest favourite. His Reminiscences are addressed to her in terms of
the most gallant eulogy. When he was dying at past eighty, he asked her
to marry him, merely that he might make her a Countess and leave her his
fortune. You know that in _Vivian Grey_ she is called Miss Otranto. I
always expected that my article would put her into a passion, and I was
not mistaken; but she has come round again, and sent me a most pressing
and kind invitation the other day.
I have been racketing lately, having dined twice with Rogers, and once
with Grant. Lady Holland is in a most extraordinary state. She came to
Rogers's, with Allen, in so bad a humour that we were all forced to
rally, and make common cause against her. There was not a person at
table to whom she was not rude; and none of us were inclined to submit.
Rogers sneered; Sydney made merciless sport of her; Tom Moore looked
excessively impertinent; Bobus put her down with simple straightforward
rudeness; and I treated her with what I meant to be the coldest
civility. Allen flew into a rage with us all, and especially with
Sydney, whose guffaws, as the Scotch say, were indeed tremendous. When
she and all the rest were gone, Rogers made Tom Moore and me sit down
with him for half an hour, and we coshered over the events of the
evening. Rogers said that he thought Allen's firing up in defence of his
patroness the best thing that he has seen in him. No sooner had Tom and
I got into the street than he broke forth: "That such an old stager as
Rogers should talk such nonsense, and give Allen credit for attachment
to anything but his dinner! Allen was bursting with envy to see us so
free, while he was conscious of his own slavery."