LAST YEARS AND DEATH OF CARLYLE
In presence of the pathetically tragic spectacle of Carlyle in his old
age, who can have the heart to enter into his domestic life and weigh
with pedantic scales the old man's blameworthiness? Carlyle survived his
wife fifteen years. His brother John, himself a widower, was anxious
that they should live together, but it was otherwise arranged. John
returned to Scotland, and Carlyle remained alone in Cheyne Row. He was
prevailed on to visit Ripple Court, near Walmer, and on his return to
London he wrote, 'My home is very gaunt and lonesome; but such is my
allotment henceforth in this world. I have taken loyally to my vacant
circumstances, and will try to do my best with them.'
Carlyle's first public appearance after his sore bereavement was as
chairman of the Eyre Committee as a protest against Governor Eyre's
recall. 'Poor Eyre!' he wrote to a correspondent, 'I am heartily sorry
for him, and for the English nation, which makes such a dismal fool of
itself. Eyre, it seems, has fallen suddenly from L6000 a year into
almost zero, and has a large family and needy kindred dependent on him.
Such his reward for saving the West Indies, and hanging one incendiary
mulatto, well worth the gallows, if I can judge.'
Carlyle accepted a pressing invitation to stay with the Ashburtons at
Mentone, and on the 22nd of December he started thither with Professor
Tyndall. He was greatly benefited in health, and at intervals made some
progress with his _Reminiscences_. He returned to London in March, and
on the 4th of April 1867 he writes in his journal: 'Idle! Idle! My
employments mere trifles of business, and that of dwelling on the days
that culminated on the 21st of last year.' About this time his thoughts
were directed to the estate of Craigenputtock, of which he became
absolute owner at his wife's death. All her relations on the father's
side were dead, and as Carlyle thought that it ought not to lapse to his
own family, he determined to leave it to the University of Edinburgh,
'the rents of it to be laid out in supporting poor and meritorious
students there, under the title of "the John Welsh Bursaries." Her name
he could not give, because she had taken his own. Therefore he gave her
father's.'
On June 22nd, he writes in his journal: 'Finished off on Thursday last,
at three p.m. 20th of June, my poor _bequest_ of Craigenputtock to
Edinburgh University for bursaries. All quite ready there, Forster and
Froude as witnesses; the good Professor Masson, who had taken endless
pains, alike friendly and wise, being at the very last objected to in
the character of "witness," as "a party interested," said the Edinburgh
lawyer. I a little regretted this circumstance; so I think did Masson
secretly. He read us the deed with sonorous emphasis, bringing every
word and note of it home to us. Then I signed; then they two--Masson
witnessing only with his eyes and mind. I was deeply moved, as I well
might be, but held my peace and shed no tears. _Tears_ I think I have
done with; never, except for moments together, have I wept for that
catastrophe of April 21, to which whole days of weeping would have been
in other times a blessed relief.... This is my poor "Sweetheart Abbey,"
"Cor Dulce," or New Abbey, a sacred casket and _tomb_ for the sweetest
"heart" which, in this bad, bitter world, was all my own. Darling,
darling! and in a little while we shall _both_ be at rest, and the Great
God will have done with us what was His will.'[39]
When the Tories were preparing to 'dish the Whigs' over the Reform Bill,
Carlyle felt impelled to write a pamphlet, which he called _Shooting
Niagara, and After_. It was his final utterance on British politics.
Proof sheets and revisions for new editions of his works engrossed his
attention for some time. He went annually to Scotland, and devoted a
great deal of time on his return to Chelsea to the sorting and
annotating of his wife's letters.
Early in 1869 the Queen expressed a wish, through Dean Stanley, to
become personally acquainted with Carlyle. The meeting took place at
Westminster Deanery: 'The Queen,' Carlyle said, 'was really very
gracious and pretty in her demeanour throughout; rose greatly in my
esteem by everything that happened; did not fall in any point. The
interview was quietly very mournful to me; the one point of real
interest, a sombre thought: "Alas! how would it have cheered her, bright
soul, for my sake, had she been there!"'
When Carlyle was in constant expectation of his end, he--in June
1871--brought to Mr Froude's house a large parcel of papers. 'He put it
in my hands,' says Froude. 'He told me to take it simply and absolutely
as my own, without reference to any other person or persons, and to do
with it as I pleased after he was gone. He explained, when he saw me
surprised, that it was an account of his wife's history, that it was
incomplete, that he could himself form no opinion whether it ought to be
published or not, that he could do no more to it, and must pass it over
to me. He wished never to hear of it again. I must judge. I must publish
it, the whole, or part--or else destroy it all, if I thought that this
would be the wiser thing to do.'[40]
Three years later Carlyle sent to Froude his own and his wife's private
papers, journals, correspondence, reminiscences, and other documents.
'Take them,' he said to Froude, 'and do what you can with them. All I
can say to you is, Burn freely. If you have any affection for me, the
more you burn the better.' Mr Froude burnt nothing, and it was well, he
says, that he did not, for a year before his death he desired him, when
he had done with the MSS., to give them to his niece. 'The new task
which had been laid upon me,' writes Froude in his biography of Carlyle,
'complicated the problem of the "Letters and Memorials." My first hope
was, that, in the absence of further definite instructions from himself,
I might interweave parts of Mrs Carlyle's letters with his own
correspondence in an ordinary narrative, passing lightly over the rest,
and touching the dangerous places only so far as was unavoidable. In
this view I wrote at leisure the greatest part of "the first forty
years" of his life. The evasion of the difficulty was perhaps cowardly,
but it was not unnatural. I was forced back, however, into the
straighter and better course.' The outcome of it all is too well-known
to call for recapitulation here.
In February 1874, the Emperor of Germany conferred upon Carlyle the
Order of Merit which the great Frederick had himself founded. He could
not refuse it, but he remarked, 'Were it ever so well meant, it can be
of no value to me whatever. Do thee neither ill na gude.' Ten months
later, Mr Disraeli, then Premier, offered him the Grand Cross of the
Bath along with a pension. Carlyle gracefully declined both.
Upon his 80th birthday, Carlyle was presented with a gold medal from
Scottish friends and admirers, and with a letter from Prince Bismarck,
both of which he valued highly. His last public act was to write a
letter of three or four lines to the _Times_, which he explains to his
brother in this fashion: 'After much urgency and with a dead-lift
effort, I have this day [5th May 1877] got issued through the _Times_ a
small indispensable deliverance on the Turk and Dizzy question. Dizzy,
it appears, to the horror of those who have any interest in him and his
proceedings, has decided to have a new war for the Turk against all
mankind; and this letter hopes to drive a nail through his mad and
maddest speculations on that side.'
Froude tells us that Carlyle continued to read the Bible, 'the
significance of which' he found 'deep and wonderful almost as much as it
ever used to be.' The Bible and Shakespeare remained 'the best books' to
him that were ever written.
The death of his brother John was a severe shock to Carlyle, for they
were deeply attached to each other. When he bequeathed Craigenputtock to
the University of Edinburgh, John Carlyle settled a handsome sum for
medical bursaries there, to encourage poor students. 'These two
brothers,' Froude remarks, 'born in a peasant's home in Annandale,
owing little themselves to an Alma Mater which had missed discovering
their merits, were doing for Scotland's chief University what Scotland's
peers and merchants, with their palaces and deer forests and social
splendour, had, for some cause, too imperfectly supplied.'
In the autumn of 1880, Carlyle became very infirm; in January he was
visibly sinking; and on the 5th of February 1881, he passed away in his
eighty-fifth year. In accordance with his expressed wishes, they buried
him in the old kirkyard of Ecclefechan with his own people.
At his death Carlyle's fame was at its zenith. A revulsion of feeling
was caused by the publication of Froude's _Life of Carlyle_ and the
_Reminiscences_. In regard to the former, great dissatisfaction was
created by the somewhat unflattering portrait painted by Froude. Was
Froude justified in presenting to the public Carlyle in all grim
realism? The answer to this depends upon one's notions of literary
ethics. The view of the average biographer is that he must suppress
faults and give prominence to virtues. The result is that the majority
of biographies are simply expanded funeral sermons; instead of a
life-like portrait we have a glorified mummy. Boswell's _Johnson_ stands
at the head of biographies; but, if Boswell had followed the
conventional method, his book would long since have passed into
obscurity. It is open to dispute whether Froude has not overdone the
sombre elements in Carlyle's life. Readers of Professor Masson's little
book, which shows Carlyle in a more genially human mood, have good
reason to suspect that Froude has given too much emphasis to the
Rembrandtesque element in Carlyle's life. In the main, however, Froude's
conception of biography was more correct than that of his critics. In
dealing with the reputation of a great man it is not enough to consider
the feelings of contemporaries; regard should be had to the rights of
posterity. In his usual forcible manner Johnson goes to the heart of
this question when he says in the _Rambler_:--'If the biographer writes
from personal knowledge, and makes haste to gratify the public
curiosity, there is danger lest his interest, his fear, his gratitude,
or his tenderness overpower his fidelity, and tempt him to conceal, if
not to invent. There are many who think it an act of piety to hide the
faults or failings of their friends, even when they can no longer suffer
by their detection; we therefore see whole ranks of characters adorned
with uniform panegyric and not to be known from one another, but by
extrinsic and casual circumstances. If we have regard to the memory of
the dead, there is yet more respect to be paid to knowledge, to virtue,
and to truth.' When Johnson's own biography came to be written, Boswell,
in spite of the expostulation of friends, resolved to be guided closely
by the literary ethics of his great hero. In reply to Hannah More who
begged that he would mitigate some of the asperities of Johnson, Boswell
said, 'he would not cut off his claws, nor make a tiger a cat, to please
anybody.'
Some critics have insinuated that Froude took a curious kind of pleasure
in smirching the idol. The insinuation is as unworthy as it is false.
Froude had resolved to paint Carlyle as he was, warts and all, and all
that can be said is that in his anxiety to avoid the charge of idealism
he has given the warts undue prominence.
FOOTNOTES:
[39] Froude's 'Life in London,' vol. ii. p. 346.
[40] Froude's 'Life in London,' vol. ii. pp. 408-9.