LIFE IN LONDON
Mrs Carlyle entered heartily into her husband's proposal to remove to
London. 'Burn our ships!' she gaily said to him one day (_i.e._,
dismantle our house); 'carry all our furniture with us'; which they
accordingly did. 'At sight of London,' Carlyle wrote, 'I remember
humming to myself a ballad-stanza of "Johnnie o' Braidislea," which my
dear old mother used to sing,
"For there's seven foresters in yon forest;
And them I want to see, see,
And them I want to _see_ (and shoot down)!"
Carlyle lodged at Ampton Street again; but presently did 'immense
stretches of walking in search of houses.' He found his way to Chelsea
and there secured a small old-fashioned house at 5 (now numbered 24)
Cheyne Row, at a rent of L35 a year. Mrs Carlyle followed in a short
time and approved of his choice. They took possession on the 10th June
1834, and Carlyle recounts the 'cheerful gipsy life' they had there
'among the litter and carpenters for three incipient days.' Leigh Hunt
was in the next street 'sending kind, _un_practical messages,' dropping
in to see them in the evenings.
When in London on a former occasion, Carlyle became acquainted with John
Stuart Mill, and the intimacy was kept alive by correspondence to and
from Craigenputtock. It was through Mill's letters that Carlyle's
thoughts were turned towards the French Revolution. When he returned to
London, Mill was very useful to him, lending him a fine collection of
books on that subject. Mill's evenings in Cheyne Row were 'sensibly
agreeable for most part,' remarks Carlyle. 'Talk rather wintry
("sawdustish," as old Sterling once called it), but always well-informed
and sincere.' Carlyle was making rapid progress with the first volume of
his _French Revolution_. Stern necessity gave a spurt to his pen, for in
February 1835 he notes that 'some twenty-three months' had passed since
he earned a single penny by the 'craft of literature.' The volume was
completed and he lent the only copy to Mill. The MS. was unfortunately
burnt by a servant-maid. 'How well do I still remember,' writes Carlyle
in his _Reminiscences_, 'that night when he came to tell us, pale as
Hector's ghost.... It was like _half_ sentence of death to us both, and
we had to pretend to take it lightly, so dismal and ghastly was _his_
horror at it, and try to talk of other matters. He stayed three mortal
hours or so; his departure quite a relief to us. Oh, the burst of
sympathy my poor darling then gave me, flinging her arms round my neck,
and openly lamenting, condoling, and encouraging like a nobler second
self! Under heaven is nothing beautifuller. We sat talking till late;
'_shall_ be written again,' my fixed word and resolution to her. Which
proved to be such a task as I never tried before or since. I wrote out
"Feast of Pikes" (Vol. II.), and then went at it. Found it fairly
_impossible_ for about a fortnight; passed three weeks (reading
Marryat's novels), tried, cautious-cautiously, as on ice paper-thin,
once more; and in short had a job more like breaking my heart than any
other in my experience. Jeannie, alone of beings, burnt like a steady
lamp beside me. I forget how much of money we still had. I think there
was at first something like L300, perhaps L280, to front London with.
Nor can I in the least remember where we had gathered such a sum, except
that it was our own, no part of it borrowed or _given us_ by anybody.
"Fit to last till _French Revolution_ is ready!" and she had no
misgivings at all. Mill was penitently liberal; sent me L200 (in a day
or two), of which I kept L100 (actual cost of house while I had written
burnt volume); upon which he bought me "Biographie Universelle," which I
got bound, and still have. Wish I could find a way of getting the now
much macerated, changed, and fanaticised John Stuart Mill to take that
L100 back; but I fear there is no way.'[15]
Carlyle went diligently to work at the _French Revolution_. Some
conviction he had that the book was worth something. Once or twice among
the flood of equipages at Hyde Park Corner, when taking his afternoon
stroll, he thought to himself, 'Perhaps none of _you_ could do what I am
at!' But generally his feeling was, 'I will finish this book, throw it
at your feet, buy a rifle and spade, and withdraw to the Transatlantic
Wildernesses, far from human beggaries and basenesses!' 'This,' he says,
'had a kind of comfort to me; yet I always knew too, in the background,
that this would not practically do. In short, my nervous system had got
dreadfully irritated and inflamed before I quite ended, and my desire
was _intense_, beyond words, to have done with it.' Then he adds: 'The
_last_ paragraph I well remember writing upstairs in the drawing-room
that now is, which was then my writing-room; beside _her_ there in a
grey evening (summer, I suppose), soon after tea (perhaps); and
thereupon, with her dear blessing on me, going out to walk. I had said
before going out, "What they will do with this book, none knows, my
Jeannie, lass; but they have not had, for a two hundred years, any book
that came more truly from a man's very heart, and so let them trample it
under foot and hoof as _they_ see best!" "Pooh, pooh! they cannot
trample that!" she would cheerily answer; for her own approval (I think
she had read always regularly behind me) especially in Vol. III., was
strong and decided.' Mrs Carlyle was right. No critic or clique of
critics could trample the _French Revolution_.
A month before the completion of the first book of the _French
Revolution_, Carlyle wrote in his journal: 'My first friend Edward
Irving is dead. I am friendless here or as good as that.' In a week or
two thereafter he met Southey, whom he describes as a 'lean,
grey-white-headed man of dusky complexion, unexpectedly tall when he
rises and still leaner then--the shallowest chin, prominent snubbed
Roman nose, small carelined brow, huge brush of white-grey-hair on high
crown and projecting on all sides, the most vehement pair of faint hazel
eyes I have ever seen--a well-read, honest, limited (straitlaced even),
kindly-hearted, most irritable man. We parted kindly, with no great
purpose on either side, I imagine, to meet again.'[16] Later on Carlyle
admits to his brother John that his prospects in London were not
brightening; which fact left him gloomy and morose.
During his enforced leisure after the destruction of the first book of
the _French Revolution_, Carlyle saw more of his friends, among whom he
numbered John Sterling, fresh from Cambridge and newly ordained a
clergyman. Sterling was of a 'vehement but most noble nature,' and he
was one of the few who had studied _Sartor Resartus_ seriously. He had
been also caught by the Radical epidemic on the spiritual side.
Although dissenting from much of what Carlyle taught, Sterling
recognised in him 'a man not only brilliantly gifted, but differing from
the common run of people in this, that he would not lie, that he would
not equivocate, that he would say always what he actually thought,
careless whether he pleased or offended.' He introduced Carlyle to his
father, who was then the 'guiding genius' of the _Times_, and who
offered Carlyle work there on the usual conditions. 'Carlyle,' says
Froude, 'though with poverty at his door, and entire penury visible in
the near future, turned away from a proposal which might have tempted
men who had less excuse for yielding to it. He was already the sworn
soldier of another chief. His allegiance from first to last was to
_truth_, truth as it presented itself to his own intellect and his own
conscience.'
On the 16th of February 1835 Carlyle wrote to his brother John: 'I
positively do not care that periodical literature shuts her fist against
me in these months. Let her keep it shut for ever, and go to the devil,
which she mostly belongs to. The matter had better be brought to a
crisis. There is perhaps a finger of Providence in it.... My only new
scheme, since last letter, is a hypothesis--little more yet--about
National Education. The newspapers had an advertisement about a Glasgow
"Educational Association" which wants a man that would found a Normal
School, first going over England and into Germany to get light on that
matter. I wrote to that Glasgow Association afar off, enquiring who they
were, what manner of man they expected, testifying myself very friendly
to their project, and so forth--no answer as yet. It is likely they will
want, as Jane says, a "Chalmers and Welsh" kind of character, in which
case _Va ben, felice notte_. If otherwise, and they (almost by miracle)
had the heart, I am the man for them. Perhaps my name is so heterodox in
that circle, I shall not hear at all.'[17] Carlyle also remarks, in the
same letter, that John Stuart Mill is very friendly: 'He is the nearest
approach to a real man that I find here--nay, as far as negativeness
goes, he _is_ that man, but unhappily not very satisfactory much
farther.'
Not long thereafter Carlyle met Wordsworth. 'I did not expect much,' he
said in a letter, 'but got mostly what I expected. The old man has a
fine shrewdness and naturalness in his expression of face, a long
Cumberland figure; one finds also a kind of _sincerity_ in his speech.
But for prolixity, thinness, endless dilution, it excels all the other
speech I had heard from mortals. A genuine man, which is much, but also
essentially a small, genuine man.'
Early in October 1835 Carlyle started for his old home. His
mother-in-law had arrived on a visit at Cheyne Row, and remained there
with her daughter during Carlyle's absence in Scotland. He returned
improved in health and spirits. Nothing came of the National Education
scheme. Carlyle was not a person to push himself into notice, remarks
Froude; and his friends did not exert themselves for him, or they tried
and failed; 'governments, in fact, do not look out for servants among
men who are speculating about the nature of the Universe. Then, as
always, the doors leading into regular employment remained closed.'
Shortly after his return from the North, he was offered the editorship
of a newspaper at Lichfield. This was unaccepted for the same reason
that weighed with him when he refused a post on the _Times_. In the
following summer money matters had become so pressing that Carlyle wrote
the article on Mirabeau, now printed among the _Miscellanies_, for
Mill's review, which brought him L50. Mrs Carlyle's health began to
suffer, and a visit to Annandale became imperative. She returned 'mended
in spirits.' Writing of her arrival in London, she said: 'I had my
luggage put on the backs of two porters, and walked on to Cheapside,
when I presently found a Chelsea omnibus. By-and-bye 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, his eye had lighted on my trunk packed 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.'
On the 22nd of January 1837 Carlyle wrote to his mother: 'The book
[_French Revolution_] is actually done; all written to the last line;
and now, after much higgling and maffling, the printers have got fairly
afloat, and we are to go on with the wind and the sea.' But no money
could be expected from the book for a considerable time. Meanwhile, Miss
Harriet Martineau (who had introduced herself into Cheyne Row), and Miss
Wilson, another accomplished friend, thought that Carlyle should begin a
course of lectures in London, and thereby raise a little money. Carlyle,
it seems, gave 'a grumbling consent.' Nothing daunted, the ladies found
two hundred persons ready each to subscribe a guinea to hear a course of
lectures from him. The end of it was that he delivered six discourses on
German literature, which were 'excellent in themselves, and delivered
with strange impressiveness,' and L135 went into his purse.
In the summer the _French Revolution_ appeared. The sale at first was
slow, almost nothing, for it was not 'subscribed for' among the
booksellers. Alluding to the criticisms which appeared, Carlyle said:
'Some condemn me, as is very natural, for affectation; others are
hearty, even passionate, in their estimation; on the whole, it strikes
me as not unlikely that the book may take some hold of the English
people, and do them and itself a little good.' He was right. Other
historians have described the Revolution: Carlyle reproduces the
Revolution. He approaches history like a dramatist. Give him, as in the
French Revolution, a weird, tragic, awe-inspiring theme, and he will
utilise his characters, scenes, and circumstances in artistic
subordination to the central idea. Carlyle might be called a subjective
dramatist--that is to say, his own spirit, thoughts, and reflections get
so mixed up with the history that it is difficult to imagine the one
without the other. Every now and then the dramatist interrupts the
tragedy to interject his own reflections; in the history the Carlylean
philosophy plays the part of a Greek chorus. As an example of Carlyle's
genius for a dramatic situation, take his opening of the great drama
with the death scene of Louis XV. Who does not feel, in reading that
scene, as if the Furies were not far off? who does not detect in the
grotesque jostling of the comedy and tragedy of life premonitions of the
coming storm?
'But figure his thought, when Death is now clutching at his own
heart-strings; unlooked for, inexorable! Yes, poor Louis, Death has
found thee. No palace walls or lifeguards, gorgeous tapestries or gilt
buckram of stiffest ceremonial could keep him out; but he is here, here
at thy very life-breath, and will extinguish it. Thou, whose whole
existence hitherto was a chimera and scenic show, at length becomest a
reality; sumptuous Versailles bursts asunder, like a dream, into void
Immensity: Time is done, and all the scaffolding of Time falls wrecked
with hideous clangour round thy soul: the pale Kingdoms yawn open; there
must thou enter, naked, all unking'd, and await what is appointed
thee!... There are nods and sagacious glances, go-betweens, silk
dowagers mysteriously gliding, with smiles for this constellation, sighs
for that: there is tremor, of hope or desperation, in several hearts.
There is the pale, grinning Shadow of Death, ceremoniously ushered along
by another grinning Shadow, of Etiquette; at intervals the growl of
Chapel Organs, like prayer by machinery; proclaiming, as in a kind of
horrid diabolic horse-laughter, _Vanity of vanities, all is Vanity!_'
At every stage in the narrative, the reader is impressed with the
dramatic texture of Carlyle's mind. No dramatic writer surpasses him in
the art of producing effects by contrasts. In the midst of a vigorous
description of the storming of the Bastille, he rings down the curtain
for a moment in order to introduce the following scene of idyllic
beauty: 'O evening sun of July, how, at this hour, thy beams fall slant
on reapers amid peaceful woody fields; on old women spinning in
cottages; on ships far out in the silent main; on Balls at the Orangerie
of Versailles, where high-rouged Dames of the Palace are even now
dancing with double-jacketed Hussar officers;--and also on this roaring
Hell-porch of a Hotel-de-Ville!'
Equally effective is Carlyle in rendering vivid the doings of the
individual actors in the drama. For photographic minuteness and
startling realism what can equal the following:--'But see Camille
Desmoulins, from the Cafe de Foy, rushing out, sibylline in face; his
hair streaming, in each hand a pistol! He springs to a table: the police
satellites are eyeing him; alive they shall not take him, not they alive
him alive. This time he speaks without stammering:--Friends! shall we
die like hunted hares? Like sheep hounded into their pinfold; bleating
for mercy, where is no mercy, but only a whetted knife? The hour is
come, the supreme hour of Frenchman and Man; when Oppressors are to try
conclusions with Oppressed; and the word is, swift Death, or Deliverance
forever. Let such hour be _well_-come! Us, meseems, one cry only befits:
To Arms! Let universal Paris, universal France, as with the throat of
the whirlwind, sound only: To arms!--"To arms!" yell responsive the
innumerable voices; like one great voice, as of a Demon yelling from the
air: for all faces wax fire-eyed, all hearts burn up into madness. In
such, or fitter words does Camille evoke the Elemental Powers, in this
great moment--"Friends," continues Camille, "some rallying-sign!
Cockades; green ones--the colour of Hope!"--As with the flight of
locusts, these green tree-leaves; green ribands from the neighbouring
shops: all green things are snatched, and made cockades of. Camille
descends from his table; "stifled with embraces, wetted with tears;" has
a bit of green riband handed him; sticks it in his hat. And now to
Curtius' Image-shop there; to the Boulevards; to the four winds, and
rest not till France be on fire!'
As a historical work, the _French Revolution_ is unique. It is precisely
the kind of book Isaiah would have written had there been a like
Revolution in the Jewish kingdom; and just as we go to Isaiah, not for
sociological guidance, but for ethical inspiration, so we turn to the
_French Revolution_ when the mind and heart are in a state of torpor in
order to get a series of shocks from the Carlylean electric battery.
From a historian a student expects light as well as heat, guidance as
well as inspiration. It is not enough to have the great French explosion
vividly photographed before his eyes; it is equally necessary to know
the causes which led to the catastrophe. Here, as a historian, Carlyle
is conspicuously weak. His habit of looking for dramatic situations, his
passion for making commonplace incidents and commonplace men merely the
satellites of commanding personalities, in a word, his theory that
history should deal with the doings of great men, prevents Carlyle from
dwelling upon the politico-economic side of national life. So absorbed
is he in painting the Revolution, that he forgets to explain the
Revolution. We have abundance of vague declamations against shams in
high places, plenty of talk about God's judgments, in the style of the
Hebrew prophets, but of patient diagnosis, there is none. As Mr Morley
puts it in his luminous essay on Carlyle: 'To the question whether
mankind gained or lost by the French Revolution, Carlyle nowhere gives a
clear answer; indeed, on this subject more than any other, he clings
closely to his favourite method of simple presentation, streaked with
dramatic irony.... He draws its general moral lesson from the
Revolution, and with clangorous note warns all whom it concerns from
King to Church that imposture must come to an end. But for the precise
amount and kind of dissolution which the West owes to it, for the
political meaning of it, as distinguished from its moral or its dramatic
significance, we seek in vain, finding no word on the subject, nor even
evidence of consciousness that such word is needed.' Had Carlyle, in
addition to his genius as a historical dramatist, possessed the patient
diagnosing power of the writers and thinkers whom he derided, his
_French Revolution_ would have taken its place in historical literature
as an epoch-making book. As it stands, the reader who desires to have an
intelligible knowledge of the subject, is compelled to shake himself
free of the Carlylean mesmerism, and have recourse to those writers whom
Carlyle, under the opprobrious names of 'logic-choppers' and
'dry-as-dusts,' held up to public ridicule.
FOOTNOTES:
[15] _Reminiscences_, vol. ii. pp. 178-79.
[16] Froude's 'Life in London,' vol. i. p. 20.
[17] Froude's 'Life in London,' vol. i. p. 24.