HOLIDAY JOURNEYINGS--LITERARY WORK
Carlyle was so broken down with his efforts upon the _French Revolution_
that a trip to Annandale became necessary. He stayed at Scotsbrig two
months, 'wholly idle, reading novels, smoking pipes in the garden with
his mother, hearing notices of his book from a distance, but not looking
for them or caring about them.' Autumn brought Carlyle back to Cheyne
Row, when he found his wife in better health, delighted to have him
again at her side. She knew, as Froude points out, though Carlyle, so
little vain was he, had failed as yet to understand it, that he had
returned to a changed position, that he was no longer lonely and
neglected, but had taken his natural place among the great writers of
his day. He sent bright accounts of himself to Scotsbrig. 'I find John
Sterling here, and many friends, all kinder each than the other to me.
With talk and locomotion the days pass cheerfully till I rest and gird
myself together again. They make a great talk about the book, which
seems to have succeeded in a far higher degree than I looked for.
Everybody is astonished at every other body's being pleased with this
wonderful performance.'[18]
Carlyle did nothing all the winter except to write his essay on Sir
Walter Scott. His next task was to prepare for a second course of
lectures in the spring on 'Heroes.' The course ended with 'a blaze of
fire-works--people weeping at the passionately earnest tone in which for
once they heard themselves addressed.' The effort brought Carlyle L300
after all expenses had been paid. 'A great blessing,' he remarked, 'to a
man that had been haunted by the squalid spectre of beggary.'
Carlyle had no intention of visiting Scotland that autumn, but having
received a pressing invitation from old friends at Kirkcaldy, he took
steamer to Leith in August. While at Kirkcaldy he crossed to Edinburgh
and called on Jeffrey. 'He sat,' says Carlyle, 'waiting for me at Moray
Place. We talked long in the style of literary and philosophic
clitter-clatter. Finally it was settled that I should go out to dinner
with him at Craigcrook, and not return to Fife till the morrow.' They
dined and abstained from contradicting each other, Carlyle admitting
that Jeffrey was becoming an amiable old fribble, 'very cheerful, very
heartless, very forgettable and tolerable.'
On his return to London, equal to work again, Carlyle found all well. He
was gratified to hear that the eighth edition of the _French
Revolution_ was almost sold, and that another would be called for, while
there were numerous applications from review editors for articles if he
would please to supply them. Mill about this time asked him to
contribute a paper on Cromwell to the _London and Westminster Review_.
Carlyle agreed, and was preparing to begin when the negotiations were
broken off. Mill had gone abroad, leaving a Mr Robertson to manage the
_Review_. Robertson coolly wrote to say that he need not go on with the
article, 'for he meant to do Cromwell himself.' Carlyle was wroth, and
that incident determined him to 'throw himself seriously into the
history of the Commonwealth, and to expose himself no more to cavalier
treatment from "able editors."' But for that task he required books.
Then it was that the idea of founding a London library occurred to him.
Men of position took up the matter warmly, and Carlyle's object was
accomplished. 'Let the tens of thousands,' says Mr Froude, 'who, it is
to be hoped, "are made better and wiser" by the books collected there,
remember that they owe the privilege entirely to Carlyle.'
One of Carlyle's new acquaintances was Monckton Milnes, who asked him to
breakfast. Carlyle used to say that if Christ were again on earth Milnes
would ask Him to breakfast, and the clubs would all be talking of the
'good things' that Christ had said. He also became familiar with Mr
Baring, afterwards Lord Ashburton, and his accomplished wife, who in
course of time exercised a disturbing influence over the Carlyle
household. It would not tend to edification to dwell upon the domestic
misunderstandings at Cheyne Row; besides, are not they to be found
detailed at great length in Froude's _Life_, the _Reminiscences_, and
_Letters and Memorials_? Although Carlyle was taking life somewhat easy,
he was making preparations for his third course of lectures, his subject
being the 'Revolutions of Modern Europe.' They did not please the
lecturer, but the audiences were as enthusiastic as ever, and he made a
clear gain of L200.
About this time Emerson was pressing him to go to Boston on a lecturing
tour. But Carlyle thought better of it. More important work awaited him
in London. 'All his life,' says Froude, 'he had been meditating on the
problem of the working-man's existence in this country at the present
epoch.... He had seen the Glasgow riots in 1819. He had heard his father
talk of the poor masons, dining silently upon water and water-cresses.
His letters are full of reflections on such things, sad or indignant, as
the humour might be. He was himself a working-man's son. He had been
bred in a peasant home, and all his sympathies were with his own class.
He was not a revolutionist; he knew well that violence would be no
remedy; that there lay only madness and deeper misery. But the fact
remained, portending frightful issues. The Reform Bill was to have
mended matters but the Reform Bill had gone by and the poor were none
the happier. The power of the State had been shifted from the
aristocracy to the mill-owners, and merchants, and shopkeepers. That was
all. The handicraftsman remained where he was, or was sinking, rather,
into an unowned Arab, to whom "freedom" meant freedom to work if the
employer had work to offer him conveniently to himself, or else freedom
to starve. The fruit of such a state of society as this was the
Sansculottism on which he had been lecturing, and he felt that he must
put his thoughts upon it in a permanent form. He had no faith in
political remedies, in extended suffrages, recognition of "the rights of
man," etc.--absolutely none. That was the road on which the French had
gone; and, if tried in England, it would end as it ended with them--in
anarchy, and hunger, and fury. The root of the mischief was the
forgetfulness on the part of the upper classes, increasing now to flat
denial, that they owed any duty to those under them beyond the payment
of contract wages at the market price. The Liberal theory, as formulated
in Political Economy, was that every one should attend exclusively to
his own interests, and that the best of all possible worlds would be the
certain result. His own conviction was that the result would be the
worst of all possible worlds, a world in which human life, such a life
as _human_ beings ought to live, would become impossible.'[19]
He wrote to his brother when his lectures were over: "Guess what
immediate project I am on; that of writing an article on the
working-classes for the "Quarterly." It is verily so. I offered to do
the thing for Mill about a year ago. He durst not. I felt a kind of call
and monition of duty to do it, wrote to Lockhart accordingly, was
altogether invitingly answered, had a long interview with the man
yesterday, found him a person of sense, good-breeding, even kindness,
and great consentaneity of opinion with myself on the matter. Am to get
books from him to-morrow, and so shall forthwith set about telling the
Conservatives a thing or two about the claims, condition, rights, and
mights of the working order of men."
When the annual exodus from London came, the Carlyles went north for a
holiday. They returned much refreshed at the end of two months. His
presence, moreover, was required in London, as _Wilhelm Meister_ was now
to be republished. He set about finishing his article for the
"Quarterly," but as he progressed he felt some misgiving as to its ever
appearing in that magazine. "I have finished," he wrote on November 8,
1839, "a long review article, thick pamphlet, or little volume, entitled
"Chartism." Lockhart has it, for it was partly promised to him; at
least the refusal of it was, and that, I conjecture, will be all he
will enjoy of it." Lockhart sent it back, 'seemingly not without
reluctance,' saying he dared not. Mill was shown the pamphlet and was
'unexpectedly delighted with it.' He was willing to publish it, but
Carlyle's wife and brother insisted that the thing was too good for a
magazine article. Fraser undertook to print it, and before the close of
the year _Chartism_ was in the hands of the public.
The sale was rapid, an edition of a thousand copies being sold
immediately. 'Chartism,' Froude narrates, was loudly noticed:
"considerable reviewing, but very daft reviewing." Men wondered; how
could they choose but wonder, when a writer of evident power stripped
bare the social disease, told them that their remedies were quack
remedies, and their progress was progress to dissolution? The Liberal
journals, finding their "formulas" disbelieved in, clamoured that
Carlyle was unorthodox; no Radical, but a wolf in sheep's clothing. Yet
what he said was true, and could not be denied to be true. "They approve
generally," he said, "but regret very much that I am a Tory. Stranger
Tory, in my opinion, has not been fallen in with in these later
generations." Again a few weeks later (February 11): "The people are
beginning to discover that I am not a Tory. Ah, no! but one of the
deepest, though perhaps the quietest, of all the Radicals now extant in
the world--a thing productive of small comfort to several persons. They
have said, and they will say, and let them say."
His final course of lectures now confronted him, and these he entitled
_Heroes and Hero Worship_. He tells his mother (May 26, 1840): 'The
lecturing business went off with sufficient _eclat_. The course was
generally judged, and I rather join therein myself, to be the bad _best_
I have yet given. On the last day--Friday last--I went to speak of
Cromwell with a head _full of air_; you know that wretched physical
feeling; I had been concerned with drugs, had awakened at five, etc. It
is absolute martyrdom. My tongue would hardly wag at all when I got
done. Yet the good people sate breathless, or broke out into all kinds
of testimonies of goodwill.... In a word, we got right handsomely
through.' That was Carlyle's last appearance as a public lecturer. He
was now the observed of all observers in London society; but he was
weary of lionising and junketings. 'What,' he notes in his journal on
June 15, 1840, 'are lords coming to call on one and fill one's head with
whims? They ask you to go among champagne, bright glitter,
semi-poisonous excitements which you do not like even for the moment,
and you are sick for a week after. As old Tom White said of whisky,
"Keep it--Deevil a ever I'se better than when there's no a drop on't i'
my weam." So say I of dinner popularity, lords and lionism--Keep it;
give it to those that like it.'
Carlyle was much refreshed at this period by visits from Tennyson. Here
is what he says of the poet: 'A fine, large-featured, dim-eyed,
bronze-coloured, shaggy-headed man is Alfred; dusty, smoky, free and
easy, who swims outwardly and inwardly with great composure in an
inarticulate element of tranquil chaos and tobacco smoke. Great now and
then when he does emerge--a most restful, brotherly, solid-hearted man.'
In a note to his brother John on September 11, 1840, he says: 'I have
again some notions towards writing a book--let us see what comes of
that. It is the one use of living, for me. Enough to-day.' The book he
had in view was _Cromwell_. Journalising on the day after Christmas he
laments--'Oliver Cromwell will not prosper with me at all. I began
reading about that subject some four months ago. I learn almost nothing
by reading, yet cannot as yet heartily begin to write. Nothing on paper
yet. I know not where to begin.'
At the end of the year Mrs Carlyle wrote: 'Carlyle is reading
voraciously, preparatory to writing a new book. For the rest, he growls
away much in the old style. But one gets to feel a certain indifference
to his growling; if one did not, it would be the worse for one.' A month
or two later, Carlyle writes: 'Think not hardly of me, dear Jeannie. In
the mutual misery we often are in, we do not know how dear we are to one
another. By the help of Heaven, I shall get a little better, and
somewhat of it shall abate. Last night, at dinner, Richard Milnes made
them all laugh with a saying of yours. "When the wife has influenza, it
is _a slight cold_--when the man has it, it is, &c., &c."' Writing to
Sterling he exclaims, 'I shall verily fly to Craigenputtock again before
long. Yet I know what solitude is, and imprisonment among black cattle
and peat bogs. The truth is, we are never right as we are. "Oh, the
devil burn it"! said the Irish drummer flogging his countryman; "there's
no pleasing of you, strike where one will."'
Milnes prevailed on Carlyle, instead of flying to the bleak expanse of
Craigenputtock, to accompany him to his father's house at Fryston, in
Yorkshire, whence he sent a series of affectionate and graphic letters
to Mrs Carlyle. Being so far north, he took a run to Dumfriesshire to
see his mother, who had been slightly ailing. He was back in London,
however, in May, but not improved in mind or body. It was a hot summer,
and the Carlyles went to Scotsbrig, and took a cottage at Newby, close
to Annan. By the end of September, Carlyle was back in Cheyne Row. His
latest hero still troubled him. 'Ought I,' he asks, 'to write now of
Oliver Cromwell?... I cannot yet see clearly.'
Carlyle at one time had a hankering after a Scottish professorship, but
the 'door had been shut in his face,' sometimes contemptuously. He was
now famous, and the young Edinburgh students, having looked into his
lectures on Heroes, began to think that, whatever might be the opinions
of the authorities and patrons, they for their part must consider
lectures such as these a good exchange for what was provided for them. A
'History Chair' was about to be established. A party of them,
represented by a Mr Dunipace, presented a requisition to the Faculty of
Advocates to appoint Carlyle. When asked his consent to be nominated,
Carlyle replied: 'Accept my kind thanks, you and all your associates,
for your zeal to serve me.... Ten years ago such an invitation might
perhaps have been decisive of much for me, but it is too late now; too
late for many reasons, which I need not trouble you with at present.'
A very severe blow now fell upon Mrs Carlyle, who received news from
Templand that her mother had been struck by apoplexy, and was
dangerously ill. Although unfit for travelling, she caught the first
train from Euston Square to Liverpool, but at her uncle's house there
she learnt that all was over. Mrs Carlyle lay ill in Liverpool, unable
to stir. After a while she was able to go back to London, where Carlyle
joined her in the month of May. It was on his return journey that he
paid a visit to Dr Arnold at Rugby, when he had an opportunity, under
his host's genial guidance, to explore the field of Naseby.
His sad occupations in Scotland, and the sad thoughts they suggested,
made Carlyle disinclined for society. He had a room arranged for him at
the top of his house, and there he sate and smoked, and read books on
Cromwell, 'the sight of Naseby having brought the subject back out of
"the abysses."' Meanwhile he had a pleasant trip to Ostend with Mr
Stephen Spring Rice, Commissioner of Customs, of which he wrote vivid
descriptions.
On October 25, 1842, Carlyle wrote in his journal: 'For many months
there has been no writing here. Alas! what was there to write? About
myself, nothing; or less, if that was possible. I have not got one word
to stand upon paper in regard to Oliver. The beginnings of work are even
more formidable than the executing of it.' But another subject was to
engross his attention for a little while. The distress of the poor
became intense; less in London, however, than in other large towns. 'I
declare,' he wrote to his mother early in January 1843, 'I declare I
begin to feel as if I should not hold my peace any longer, as if I
should perhaps open my mouth in a way that some of them are not
expecting--we shall see if this book were done.' On the 20th he wrote:
'I hope it will be a rather useful kind of book.' He could not go on
with Cromwell till he had unburdened his soul. 'The look of the world,'
he said, 'is really quite oppressive to me. Eleven thousand souls in
Paisley alone living on threehalfpence a day, and the governors of the
land all busy shooting partridges and passing corn-laws the while! It
is a thing no man with a speaking tongue in his head is entitled to be
silent about.' The outcome of all his soul-burnings and cogitations was
_Past and Present_, which appeared at the beginning of April. The
reviewers set to work, 'wondering, admiring, blaming, chiefly the last.'
Carlyle then undertook several journeys, chiefly in order to visit
Cromwellian battlefields, the sight of which made the Oliver enterprise
no longer impossible. He found a renovated house on his return, and Mrs
Carlyle writing on November 28th, describes him as 'over head and ears
in Cromwell,' and 'lost to humanity for the time being.' Six months
later, he makes this admission in his journal--'My progress in
"Cromwell" is frightful. I am no day absolutely idle, but the confusions
that lie in my way require far more fire of energy than I can muster on
most days, and I sit not so much working as painfully looking on work.'
Four months later, when _Cromwell_ was progressing slowly, Carlyle
suffered a severe personal loss by the death of John Sterling.
'Sterling,' says Froude, 'had been his spiritual pupil, his first, and
also his noblest and best. Consumption had set its fatal mark upon him.'
Carlyle drowned his sorrow in hard work, and in July 1845 the end of
_Cromwell_ was coming definitely in sight. In his journal under date
August 26th, is to be found this entry: 'I have this moment _ended_
Oliver; hang it! He is ended, thrums and all. I have nothing more to
write on the subject, only mountains of wreck to burn. Not (any more) up
to the chin in paper clippings and chaotic litter, hatefuller to me than
most. I _am_ to have a swept floor now again.' And thus the herculean
labours of five years were ended. His desire was to be in Scotland, and
he made his way northwards by the usual sea route to Annan and
Scotsbrig. He did not remain long away, and upon his return _Cromwell_
was just issuing from the press. It was received with great favour, the
sale was rapid, and additional materials came from unexpected quarters.
In February 1846 a new edition was needed in order to insert fresh
letters of Oliver according to date; a process, Carlyle said 'requiring
one's most excellent talent, as of shoe-cobbling, really that kind of
talent carried to a high pitch.' When completed, Carlyle presented a
copy of it to the Prime Minister, Sir Robert Peel, a step he never took
before or after with any of his writings,--a compliment which Peel
gracefully acknowledged.
Carlyle's plans for the summer of 1846 were, a visit to his mother and a
run across to Ireland. Charles Gavan Duffy of the _Nation_ newspaper saw
him in London in consequence of what he had written in _Chartism_ about
misgovernment in Ireland. He had promised to go over and see what the
'Young Ireland' movement was doing. On the 31st of August he left
Scotsbrig, and landed in due course at Belfast, where he was to have
been met by John Mitchel and Gavan Duffy and driven to Drogheda. He
missed his two friends through a mistake at the post-office, and hurried
on by railway to Dublin. He met them at Dundrum, and was there
entertained at a large dinner-party. Next day he dined at Mitchel's. His
stay was remarkably short. He took steamer at Kingstown, and in the
early morning of September 10th 'he was sitting smoking a cigar before
the door of his wife's uncle's house in Liverpool till the household
should awake and let him in.'
In June 1847 Carlyle relates that they had a flying visit from Jeffrey.
'A much more interesting visitor than Jeffrey was old Dr Chalmers, who
came down to us also last week, whom I had not seen before for, I think,
five-and-twenty years. It was a pathetic meeting. The good old man is
grown white-headed, but is otherwise wonderfully little altered--grave,
deliberate, very gentle in his deportment, but with plenty too of soft
energy; full of interest still for all serious things, full of real
kindliness, and sensible even to honest mirth in a fair measure. He sate
with us an hour and a half, went away with our blessings and affections.
It is long since I have spoken to so _good_ and really pious-hearted and
beautiful old man.' In a week or two Chalmers was suddenly called away.
'I believe,' wrote Carlyle to his mother, 'there is not in all Scotland,
or all Europe, any such Christian priest left. It will long be memorable
to us, the little visit we had from him.'
Early in 1848, the Jew Bill was before Parliament, and the fate of it
doubtful, narrates Mr Froude. Baron Rothschild wrote to ask Carlyle to
write a pamphlet in its favour, and intimated that he might name any sum
which he liked to ask as payment. Froude enquired how he answered.
'Well,' he said, 'I had to tell him it couldn't be; but I observed, too,
that I could not conceive why he and his friends, who were supposed to
be looking out for the coming of Shiloh, should be seeking seats in a
Gentile legislature.' Froude asked what the Baron said to that. 'Why,'
said Carlyle, 'he seemed to think the coming of Shiloh was a dubious
business, and that meanwhile, etc., etc.'
On February 9, 1848, Carlyle wrote in his journal: 'Chapman's money
[Chapman & Hall were his publishers] all paid, lodged now in the
Dumfries Bank. New edition of "Sartor" to be wanted soon. My poor books
of late have yielded me a certain fluctuating annual income; at all
events, I am quite at my ease as to money, and that on such low terms. I
often wonder at the luxurious ways of the age. Some L1500, I think, is
what has accumulated in the bank. Of fixed income (from Craigenputtock)
L150 a year. Perhaps as much from my books may lie fixed amid the huge
fluctuation (last year, for instance, it was L800: the year before,
L100; the year before that, about L700; this year, again, it is like to
be L100; the next perhaps nothing--very fluctuating indeed)--some L300
in all, and that amply suffices me. For my wife is the best of
housewives; noble, too, in reference to the property, which is _hers_,
which she has never once in the most distant way seemed to know to be
hers. Be this noted and remembered; my thrifty little lady--every inch a
lady--ah me! In short, I authentically feel indifferent to money; would
not go this way or that to gain more money.'[20]
The Revolution of February 24th at Paris surprised Carlyle less than
most of his contemporaries, as it confirmed what he had been saying for
years. He did not believe, we are told, in immediate convulsion in
England; but he did believe that, unless England took warning and mended
her ways, her turn would come. The excitement in London was intense, and
leading men expressed themselves freely, but Carlyle's general thoughts
were uttered in a lengthy letter to Thomas Erskine of Linlathen, for
whom he entertained a warm regard. On March 14 he met Macaulay at Lord
Mahon's at breakfast; 'Niagara of eloquent commonplace talk,' he says,
'from Macaulay. "Very good-natured man"; man cased in official mail of
proof; stood my impatient fire-explosions with much patience, merely
hissing a little steam up, and continued his Niagara--supply and demand;
power ruinous to powerful himself; _im_possibility of Government doing
more than keep the peace; suicidal distraction of new French Republic,
etc. Essentially irremediable, commonplace nature of the man; all that
was in him now gone to the tongue; a squat, thickset, low-browed, short,
grizzled little man of fifty.'
One of the few men Carlyle was anxious to see was Sir Robert Peel. He
was introduced by the Barings at a dinner at Bath House. Carlyle sat
next to Peel, whom he describes as 'a finely-made man of strong, not
heavy, rather of elegant, stature; stands straight, head slightly thrown
back, and eyelids modestly drooping; every way mild and gentle, yet with
less of that fixed smile than the portraits give him. He is towards
sixty, and, though not broken at all, carries, especially in his
complexion, when you are _near_ him, marks of that age; clear, strong
blue eyes which kindle on occasion, voice extremely good, low-toned,
something of _cooing_ in it, rustic, affectionate, honest, mildly
persuasive. Spoke about French Revolutions new and old; well read in all
that; had seen General Dumouriez; reserved seemingly by nature, obtrudes
nothing of _diplomatic_ reserve. On the contrary, a vein of mild _fun_
in him, real sensibility to the ludicrous, which feature I liked best of
all.... I consider him by far our first public man--which, indeed, is
saying little--and hope that England in these frightful times may still
get some good of him. N.B.--This night with Peel was the night in which
Berlin city executed its last terrible battle, (19th of March to Sunday
morning the 20th, five o'clock.) While we sate there the streets of
Berlin city were all blazing with grape-shot and the war of enraged men.
What is to become of all that? I have a book to write about it. Alas! We
hear of a great Chartist petition to be presented by 200,000 men. People
here keep up their foolish levity in speaking of these things; but
considerate persons find them to be very grave; and indeed all, even the
laughers, are in considerable secret alarm.'[21]
At such a time Carlyle knew that he, the author of _Chartism_, ought to
say something. Foolish people, too, came pressing for his opinions. Not
seeing his way to a book upon 'Democracy,' he wrote a good many
newspaper articles, chiefly in the _Examiner_ and the _Spectator_, to
deliver his soul. Even Fonblanque and Rintoul (the editors), remarks
Froude, friendly though they were to him, could not allow him his full
swing. 'There is no established journal,' complained Carlyle, 'that can
stand my articles, no single one they would not blow the bottom out of.'
On July 12 occurs this entry in his journal: 'Chartist concern, and
Irish Repeal concern, and French Republic concern have all gone a bad
way since the March entry--April 20 (immortal day already dead), day of
Chartist monster petition; 200,000 special constables swore themselves
in, etc., and Chartism came to nothing. Riots since, but the leaders
all lodged in gaol, tried, imprisoned for two years, etc., and so ends
Chartism for the present. Irish Mitchel, poor fellow! is now in Bermuda
as a felon; letter from him, letter to him, letter to and from Lord
Clarendon--was really sorry for poor Mitchel. But what help? French
Republic _cannonaded_ by General Cavaignac; a sad outlook there.'[22]
Carlyle's _Cromwell_ had created a set of enthusiastic admirers who were
bent on having a statue of the great Protector set up. Carlyle was asked
to give his sanction to the proposal. Writing to his mother, he said:
'The people having subscribed L25,000 for a memorial to an ugly bullock
of a Hudson, who did not even pretend to have any merit except that of
being suddenly rich, and who is now discovered to be little other than
at heart a horse-coper and dishonest fellow, I think they ought to leave
Cromwell alone of their memorials, and try to honour him in some more
profitable way--by learning to be honest men like him, for example. But
we shall see what comes of all this Cromwell work--a thing not without
value either.'[23]
'Ireland,' says Froude, 'of all the topics on which Carlyle had
meditated writing, remained painfully fascinating. He had looked at the
beggarly scene, he had seen the blighted fields, the ragged misery of
the wretched race who were suffering for other's sins as well as for
their own. Since that brief visit of his, the famine had been followed
by the famine-fever, and the flight of millions from a land which was
smitten with a curse. Those ardent young men with whom he had dined at
Dundrum were working as felons in the docks at Bermuda. Gavan Duffy,
after a near escape from the same fate, had been a guest in Cheyne Row;
and the story which he had to tell of cabins torn down by crowbars, and
shivering families, turned out of their miserable homes, dying in the
ditches by the roadside, had touched Carlyle to the very heart. He was
furious at the economical commonplaces with which England was consoling
itself. He regarded Ireland as "the breaking-point of the huge
suppuration which all British and all European society then was."'[24]
Carlyle paid a second visit to Ireland. He was anxious to write a book
on the subject. He noted down what he had seen, and 'then dismissed the
unhappy subject from his mind,' giving his manuscript to a friend, which
was published after his death.
The 7th of August found Carlyle among his 'ain folk' at Scotsbrig, and
this was his soliloquy: 'Thank Heaven for the sight of real human
industry, with human fruits from it, once more. The sight of fenced
fields, weeded crops, and human creatures with whole clothes on their
back--it was as if one had got into spring water out of dunghill
puddles.' Mrs Carlyle had also gone to Scotland, and 'wandered like a
returned spirit about the home of her childhood.' Of her numerous lively
letters, room must be found for a characteristic epistle to her
brother-in-law, John Carlyle. His translation of Dante's _Inferno_ was
just out, and her uncle's family at Auchtertool Manse, in Fife, where
she was staying, were busy reading and discussing it. 'We had been
talking about you,' she says, 'and had sunk silent. Suddenly my uncle
turned his head to me and said, shaking it gravely, "He has made an
awesome plooster o' that place." "Who? What place, uncle?" "Whew! the
place ye'll maybe gang to, if ye dinna tak' care." I really believe he
considers all those circles of your invention. Walter [a cousin, just
ordained] performed the marriage service over a couple of colliers the
day after I came. I happened to be in his study when they came in, and
asked leave to remain. The man was a good-looking man enough, dreadfully
agitated, partly with the business he was come on, partly with drink. He
had evidently taken a glass too much to keep his heart up. The girl had
one very large inflamed eye and one little one, which looked perfectly
composed, while the large eye stared wildly, and had a tear in it.
Walter married them very well indeed; and his affecting words, together
with the bridegroom's pale, excited face, and the bride's ugliness, and
the poverty, penury, and want imprinted on the whole business, and above
all fellow-feeling with the poor wretches then rushing on their
fate--all that so overcame me that I fell crying as desperately as if I
had been getting married to the collier myself, and, when the ceremony
was over, extended my hand to the unfortunates, and actually (in such an
enthusiasm of pity did I find myself) I presented the new husband with a
snuff-box which I happened to have in my hand, being just about
presenting it to Walter when the creatures came in. This unexpected
_Himmelsendung_ finished turning the man's head; he wrung my hand over
and over, leaving his mark for some hours after, and ended his grateful
speeches with, "Oh, Miss! Oh, Liddy! may ye hae mair comfort and
pleasure in your life than ever you have had yet!" which might easily
be.'
Carlyle was full of wrath at what he considered the cant about the
condition of the wage-earners in Manchester and elsewhere, and his
indignation found vent in the _Latter-day Pamphlets_. Froude once asked
him if he had ever thought of going into Parliament, for the former knew
that the opportunity must have been offered him. 'Well,' he said, 'I did
think of it at the time of the "Latter-day Pamphlets." I felt that
nothing could prevent me from getting up in the House and saying all
that.' 'He was powerful,' adds Froude, 'but he was not powerful _enough_
to have discharged with his single voice the vast volume of conventional
electricity with which the collective wisdom of the nation was, and
remains charged. It is better that his thoughts should have been
committed to enduring print, where they remain to be reviewed hereafter
by the light of fact.'[25]
The printing of the _Pamphlets_ commenced at the beginning of 1850, and
went on month after month, each separately published, no magazine daring
to become responsible for them. When the _Pamphlets_ appeared, they were
received with 'astonished indignation.' 'Carlyle taken to whisky,' was
the popular impression--or perhaps he had gone mad. '_Punch_,' says
Froude, 'the most friendly to him of all the London periodicals,
protested affectionately. The delinquent was brought up for trial before
him, I think for injuring his reputation. He was admonished, but stood
impenitent, and even "called the worthy magistrate a windbag and a
sham." I suppose it was Thackeray who wrote this; or some other kind
friend, who feared, like Emerson, "that the world would turn its back on
him." He was under no illusion himself as to the effect which he was
producing.'[26]
Amid the general storm, Carlyle was 'agreeably surprised' to receive an
invitation to dine with Peel at Whitehall Gardens, where he met a select
company. 'After all the servants but the butler were gone,' narrates
Carlyle, 'we began to hear a little of Peel's quiet talk across the
table, unimportant, distinguished by its sense of the ludicrous shining
through a strong official _rationality_ and even seriousness of temper.
Distracted _address_ of a letter from somebody to Queen Victoria; "The
most noble George Victoria, Queen of England, Knight and Baronet," or
something like that. A man had once written to Peel himself, while
secretary, "that he was weary of life, that if any gentleman wanted for
his park-woods a hermit, he, etc.", all of which was very pretty and
human as Peel gave it us.'[27] Carlyle was driven home by the Bishop of
Oxford, 'Soapy Sam' Wilberforce, whom he had probably met before at the
Ashburton's. The Bishop once told Froude that he considered Carlyle a
most eminently religious man. 'Ah, Sam,' said Carlyle to Froude one day,
'he is a very clever fellow; I do not hate him near as much as I fear I
ought to do.' Carlyle and Peel met once more, at Bath House, and there,
too, he was first introduced to the Duke of Wellington. Writing at the
time, Carlyle said: 'I had never seen till now how beautiful, and what
an expression of graceful simplicity, veracity, and nobleness there is
about the old hero when you see him close at hand.... Except for Dr
Chalmers, I have not for many years seen so beautiful an old man.'
Carlyle intended, some time or other, writing a 'Life of Sterling,' but
meanwhile he accepted an invitation to visit South Wales. Thence he
made his way to Scotsbrig. On the 27th September 1850, he 'parted
sorrowfully with his mother.' When he reached London, the autumn
quarterlies were reviewing the _Pamphlets_, and the 'shrieking tone was
considerably modified.' 'A review of them,' says Froude, 'by Masson in
the _North British_ distinctly pleased Carlyle. A review in the _Dublin_
he found "excellently serious," and conjectured that it came from some
Anglican pervert or convert. It was written, I believe, by Dr Ward.'
After a few more wanderings, Carlyle set about the _Life of Sterling_,
and on April 5, 1851, he informs his mother: 'I told the Doctor about
"John Sterling's Life," a small, insignificant book or pamphlet I have
been writing. The booksellers got it away from me the other morning, to
see how much there is of it, in the first place. I know not altogether
myself whether it is worth printing or not, but rather think it will be
the end of it whether or not. It has cost little trouble, and need not
do much ill, if it do no great amount of good.' Another visit had to be
paid to Scotsbrig, where he read the "Life of Chalmers." 'An excellent
Christian man,' he said. 'About as great a contrast to himself in all
ways as could be found in these epochs under the same sky.'
When he got back to Cheyne Row, he took to reading the "Seven Years'
War," with a view to another book. He determined to go to Germany, and
on August 30, 1852, Carlyle embarked 'on board the greasy little wretch
of a Leith steamer, laden to the water's edge with pig-iron and
herrings.' The journey over, he set to work on 'Frederick,' but was
driven almost to despair by the cock-crowing in his neighbourhood.
Writing to Mrs Carlyle, he says: 'I foresee in general these cocks will
require to be abolished, entirely silenced, whether we build the new
room or not. I would cheerfully shoot them, and pay the price if
discovered, but I have no gun, should be unsafe for hitting, and indeed
seldom see the wretched animals.'
He took refuge at the Ashburton's house, the Grange, but on the 20th of
December, news came that his mother was seriously ill, and could not
last long. He hurried off to Scotsbrig, and reached there in time to see
her once more alive. In his journal, this passage is to be found under
date January 8, 1854: 'The stroke has fallen. My dear old mother is gone
from me, and in the winter of the year, confusedly under darkness of
weather and of mind, the stern final epoch--_epoch of old age_--is
beginning to unfold itself for me.... It is matter of perennial
thankfulness to me, and beyond my desert in that matter very far, that I
found my dear old mother still alive; able to recognise me with a faint
joy; her former _self_ still strangely visible there in all its
lineaments, though worn to the uttermost thread. The brave old mother
and the good, whom to lose had been my fear ever since intelligence
awoke in me in this world, arrived now at the final bourn.... She was
about 84 years of age, and could not with advantage to any side remain
with us longer. Surely it was a good Power that gave us such a mother;
and good though stern that took her away from amid such grief and labour
by a death beautiful to one's thoughts. "All the days of my appointed
time will I wait till my change come." This they heard her muttering,
and many other less frequent pious texts and passages. Amen, Amen!
Sunday, December 25, 1853--a day henceforth for ever memorable to me....
To live for the shorter or longer remainder of my days with the simple
bravery, veracity, and piety of her that is gone: that would be a right
learning from her death, and a right honouring of her memory. But alas
all is yet _frozen_ within me; even as it is without me at present, and
I have made little or no way. God be helpful to me! I myself am very
weak, confused, fatigued, entangled in poor _worldlinesses_ too.
Newspaper paragraphs, even as this sacred and peculiar thing, are not
indifferent to me. Weak soul! and I am fifty-eight years old, and the
tasks I have on hand, Frederick, &c., are most ungainly, incongruous
with my mood--and the night cometh, for me too is not distant, which for
her is come. I must try, I must try. Poor brother Jack! Will he do his
Dante now? For him also I am sad; and surely he has deserved gratitude
in these last years from us all.'[28]
When he returned to London, Carlyle lived in strict seclusion, making
repeated efforts at work on what he called 'the unexecutable book,'
_Frederick_. In the spring of 1854, tidings reached Carlyle of the death
of Professor Wilson. Between them there had never been any cordial
relation, says Froude. 'They had met in Edinburgh in the old days; on
Carlyle's part there had been no backwardness, and Wilson was not
unconscious of Carlyle's extraordinary powers. But he had been shy of
Carlyle, and Carlyle had resented it, and now this April the news came
that Wilson was gone, and Carlyle had to write his epitaph. 'I knew his
figure well,' wrote Carlyle in his journal on April 29; 'remember well
first seeing him in Princes Street on a bright April afternoon--probably
1814--exactly forty years ago.... A tall ruddy figure, with plenteous
blonde hair, with bright blue eyes, fixed, as if in haste towards some
distant object, strode rapidly along, clearing the press to the left of
us, close by the railings, near where Blackwood's shop now is. Westward
he in haste; we slowly eastward. Campbell whispered me, "That is Wilson
of the _Isle of Palms_," which poem I had not read, being then quite
mathematical, scientific, &c., for extraneous reasons, as I now see them
to have been. The broad-shouldered stately bulk of the man struck me;
his flashing eye, copious, dishevelled head of hair, and rapid,
unconcerned progress, like that of a plough through stubble. I really
liked him, but only from the distance, and thought no more of him. It
must have been fourteen years later before I once saw his figure again,
and began to have some distant straggling acquaintance of a personal
kind with him. Glad could I have been to be better and more familiarly
acquainted; but though I liked much in him, and he somewhat in me, it
would not do. He was always very kind to me, but seemed to have a
feeling I should--could--not become wholly his, in which he was right,
and that on other terms he could not have me; so we let it so remain,
and for many years--indeed, even after quitting Edinburgh--I had no
acquaintance with him; occasionally got symptoms of his ill-humour with
me--ink-spurts in _Blackwood_, read or heard of, which I, in a surly,
silent manner, strove to consider _flattering_ rather.... So far as I
can recollect, he was once in my house (Comely Bank, with a testimonial,
poor fellow!), and I once in his, De Quincey, &c., a little while one
afternoon.'[29]
On September 16, 1854, Carlyle breaks out in his journal: '"The harvest
is past, the summer is ended, and we are not saved."' What a fearful
word! I cannot find how to take up that miserable "Frederick," or what
on earth to do with it.' He worked hard at it, nevertheless, for
eighteen months, and by the end of May 1858, the first instalment was
all in type. Froude remarks that a fine critic once said to him that
Carlyle's Friedrich Wilhelm was as peculiar and original as Sterne's
Tristram Shandy; certainly as distinct a personality as exists in
English fiction. Carlyle made a second journey to Germany. Shortly after
his return, the already finished volumes of _Frederick_ appeared, and
they met with an immediate welcome. The success was great; 2000 copies
were sold at the first issue, and a second 2000 were disposed of almost
as rapidly, and a third 2000 followed. Mrs Carlyle's health being
unsatisfactory, Carlyle took a house for the summer at Humbie, near
Aberdour in Fife. They returned to Cheyne Row in October, neither of
them benefited by their holiday in the north.
While many of Carlyle's intimate friends were passing away, he formed
Ruskin's acquaintance, which turned out mutually satisfactory. On the
23rd April 1861, Carlyle writes to his brother John: 'Friday last I was
persuaded--in fact had unwarily compelled myself, as it were--to a
lecture of Ruskin's at the Institution, Albemarle Street. Lecture on
Tree Leaves as physiological, pictorial, moral, symbolical objects. A
crammed house, but tolerable to me even in the gallery. The lecture was
thought to "break down," and indeed it quite did "_as a lecture_"; but
only did from _embarras des richesses_--a rare case. Ruskin did blow
asunder as by gunpowder explosions his leaf notions, which were
manifold, curious, genial; and, in fact, I do not recollect to have
heard in that place any neatest thing I liked so well as this chaotic
one.'[30]
_Frederick_ was progressing, though slowly, as he found the ore in the
German material at his disposal "nowhere smelted out of it." The third
volume was finished and published in the summer of 1862; the fourth
volume was getting into type; and the fifth and last was finished in
January 1865. 'It nearly killed me,' Carlyle writes in his journal, 'it,
and my poor Jane's dreadful illness, now happily over. No sympathy could
be found on earth for those horrid struggles of twelve years, nor
happily was any needed. On Sunday evening in the end of January (1865) I
walked out, with the multiplex feeling--joy not very prominent in it,
but a kind of solemn thankfulness traceable, that I had written the last
sentence of that unutterable book, and, contrary to many forebodings in
bad hours, had actually got done with it for ever.'
In England it was at once admitted, says Froude, that a splendid
addition had been made to the national literature. 'The book contained,
if nothing else, a gallery of historical figures executed with a skill
which placed Carlyle at the head of literary portrait painters.... No
critic, after the completion of _Frederick_, challenged Carlyle's right
to a place beside the greatest of English authors, past or present.' The
work was translated instantly into German, calling forth the warmest
appreciation.
FOOTNOTES:
[18] Froude's 'Life in London,' vol. i. p. 115.
[19] Froude's "Life in London," vol. i. pp. 161-62.
[20] Froude's 'Life in London,' vol. i. p. 420.
[21] Froude's 'Life in London,' vol. i. pp. 433-4.
[22] Froude's 'Life in London,' vol. i. p. 441.
[23] Ibid., vol. i. p. 451.
[24] Froude's 'Life in London,' vol. i. p. 456.
[25] Froude's 'Life in London,' vol. ii. p. 26.
[26] Ibid., vol. ii. p. 36.
[27] Froude's 'Life in London,' vol. ii. p. 43.
[28] Froude's 'Life in London,' vol. ii. pp. 142-45.
[29] Froude's 'Life in London,' vol. ii. pp. 156-7.
[30] Froude's 'Life in London,' vol. ii. p. 245.