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_, {302b} 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. To day, 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 say) 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.
_To E. B. Cowell_.
31 GREAT PORTLAND STREET, P. PLACE.
[1856.]