Templand, Thornhill, Dumfries, Scotland
28 March, 1842
My Dear Friend,--This is heavy news that you send me; the
heaviest outward bereavement that can befall a man has overtaken
you. Your calm tone of deep, quiet sorrow, coming in on the rear
of poor trivial worldly businesses, all punctually despatched and
recorded too, as if the Higher and Highest had not been busy with
you, tells me a sad tale. What can we say in these cases? There
is nothing to be said,--nothing but what the wild son of Ishmael,
and every thinking heart, from of old have learned to say: God
is great! He is terrible and stern; but we know also He is
good. "Though He slay me, yet will I trust in Him." Your bright
little Boy, chief of your possessions here below, is rapt away
from you; but of very truth he is with God, even as we that yet
live are,--and surely in the way that was best for him, and for
you, and for all of us.--Poor Lidian Emerson, poor Mother! To
her I have no word. Such poignant unspeakable grief, I believe,
visits no creature as that of a Mother bereft of her child. The
poor sparrow in the bush affects one with pity, mourning for its
young; how much more the human soul of one's Friend! I cannot
bid her be of comfort; for there is as yet no comfort. May good
Influences watch over her, bring her some assuagement. As the
Hebrew David said, "We shall go to him, he will not return
to us."
I also am here in a house rendered vacant and sacred by Death. A
sore calamity has fallen on us, or rather has fallen on my poor
Wife (for what am I but like a spectator in comparison?): she
has lost unexpectedly her good Mother, her sole surviving Parent,
and almost only relative of much value that was left to her. The
manner too was almost tragic. We had heard of illness here, but
only of commonplace illness, and had no alarm. The Doctor
himself, specially applied to, made answer as if there was no
danger: his poor Patient, in whose character the like of that
intimately lay, had rigorously charged him to do so: her poor
Daughter was far off, confined to her room by illness of her own;
why alarm her, make her wretched? The danger itself did seem
over; the Doctor accordingly obeyed. Our first intimation of
alarm was despatched on the very day which proved the final one.
My poor Wife, casting sickness behind her, got instantly ready,
set off by the first railway train: traveling all night, on the
morrow morning at her Uncle's door in Liverpool she is met by
tidings that all is already ended. She broke down there; she
is now home again at Chelsea, a cheery, amiable younger Jane
Welsh to nurse her: the tone of her Letters is still full of
disconsolateness. I had to proceed hither, and have to stay here
till this establishment can be abolished, and all the sad wrecks
of it in some seemly manner swept away. It is above three weeks
that I have been here; not till eight days ago could I so much
as manage to command solitude, to be left altogether alone. I
lead a strange life; full of sadness, of solemnity, not without
a kind of blessedness. I say it is right and fitting that one be
left entirely alone now and then, alone with one's own griefs and
sins, with the mysterious ancient Earth round one, the
everlasting Heaven over one, and what one can make of these.
Poor rustic businesses, subletting of Farms, disposal of houses,
household goods: these strangely intervene, like matter upon
spirit, every day;--wholesome this too perhaps. It is many years
since I have stood so in close contact face to face with the
reality of Earth, with its haggard ugliness, its divine beauty,
its depths of Death and of Life. Yesterday, one of, the stillest
Sundays, I sat long by the side of the swift river Nith; sauntered
among woods all vocal only with rooks and pairing birds.* The
hills are often white with snow-powder, black brief spring-tempests
rush fiercely down from them, and then again the sky looks forth
with a pale pure brightness,--like Eternity from behind Time.
The _Sky,_ when one thinks of it, is _always_ blue, pure changeless
azure; rains and tempests are only for the little dwellings where
men abide. Let us think of this too. Think of this, thou
sorrowing Mother! Thy Boy has escaped many showers.
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* "Templand has a very fine situation; old Walter's walk, at the
south end of the house, was one of the most picturesque and
pretty to be found in the world. Nith valley (river half a mile
off, winding through green holms, now in its border of clean
shingle, now lost in pleasant woods and rushes) lay patent to the
South. "Carlyle's Reminiscences," Vol. II. p. 137.
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In some three weeks I shall probably be back at Chelsea. Write
thitherward so soon as you have opportunity; I will write again
before long, even if I do not hear from you. The moneys, &c. are
all safe here as you describe: if Fraser's' Executors make any
demur, your Bookseller shall soon hear of it.
I had begun to write some Book on Cromwell: I have often begun,
but know not how to set about it; the most unutterable of all
subjects I ever felt much meaning to lie in. There is risk yet
that, with the loss of still farther labor, I may have to abandon
it;--and then the great dumb Oliver may lie unspoken forever;
gathered to the mighty _Silent_ of the Earth; for, I think,
there will hardly ever live another man that will believe in him
and his Puritanism as I do. To _him_ small matter.
Adieu, my good kind Friend, ever dear to me, dearer now in
sorrow. My Wife when she hears of your affliction will send a
true thought over to you also. The poor Lidian!--John Sterling
is driven off again, setting out I think this very day for
Gibraltar, Malta, and Naples. Farewell, and better days to us.
Your affectionate
T. Carlyle