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VICTORIAN WORTHIES
Sixteen Biographies
by
G. H. BLORE
Assistant Master at Winchester College
'We have undertaken to discourse here for a little on
Great Men, their manner of appearance in our world's
business, how they shaped themselves in the world's
history, what ideas men formed of them, what work they
did;--on Heroes, namely, and on their reception and
performance.'--CARLYLE.
Humphrey Milford
Oxford University Press
London Edinburgh Glasgow New York Toronto
Melbourne Cape Town Bombay Calcutta
1920
Printed in England
at the Oxford University Press
CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION: THE VICTORIAN ERA
1. THOMAS CARLYLE. Prophet
2. SIR ROBERT PEEL. Statesman
3. SIR CHARLES NAPIER. Soldier
4. THE EARL OF SHAFTESBURY. Philanthropist
5. LORD LAWRENCE. Administrator
6. JOHN BRIGHT. Tribune
7. CHARLES DICKENS. Novelist and Social Reformer
8. LORD TENNYSON. Poet
9. CHARLES KINGSLEY. Parish Priest
10. GEORGE FREDERICK WATTS. Artist
11. BISHOP PATTESON. Missionary
12. SIR ROBERT MORIER. Diplomatist
13. LORD LISTER. Surgeon
14. WILLIAM MORRIS. Craftsman
15. JOHN RICHARD GREEN. Historian
16. CECIL RHODES. Colonist
INDEX
PREFACE
Some excuse seems to be needed for venturing at this time to publish
biographical sketches of the men of the Victorian era. Several have been
written by men, like Lord Morley and Lord Bryce, having first-hand
knowledge of their subjects, others by the best critics of the next
generation, such as Mr. Chesterton and Mr. Clutton-Brock. With their
critical ability I am not able to compete; but they often postulate a
knowledge of facts which the average reader has forgotten or has never
known. Having written these sketches primarily for boys at school I am
not ashamed to state well-known facts, nor have I wished to avoid the
obvious.
Nor do these sketches aim at obtaining a sensation by the shattering of
idols. I have been content to accept the verdicts passed by their
contemporaries on these great servants of the public, verdicts which, in
general, seem likely to stand the test of time. Boys will come soon
enough on books where criticism has fuller play, and revise the
judgements of the past. Such a revision is salutary, when it is not
unfair or bitter in tone.
At a time when the subject called 'civics' is being more widely
introduced into schools, it seems useful to present the facts of
individual lives, instances chosen from different professions, as a
supplement to the study of principles and institutions. There is a
spirit of public service which is best interpreted through concrete
examples. If teachers will, from their own knowledge, fill in these
outlines and give life to these portraits, the younger generation may
find it not uninteresting to 'praise famous men and our fathers that
begat us'.
It seems hardly necessary in a book of this kind to give an imposing
list of authorities consulted. In some cases I should find it difficult
to trace the essay or memoir from which a statement is drawn; but in the
main I have depended on the standard Lives of the various men portrayed,
from Froude's _Carlyle_ and Forster's _Dickens_ to Mackail's _Morris_
and Michell's _Rhodes_. And, needless to say, I have found the
_Dictionary of National Biography_ most valuable. If boys were not
frightened from the shelves by its bulk, it would render my work
superfluous; but, though I often recommend it to them, I find few signs
that they consult it as often as they should. It may seem that no due
proportion has been observed in the length of the different sketches;
but it must be remembered that, while short Lives of Napier and Lawrence
have been written by well-known authors, it is more difficult for a boy
to satisfy his curiosity about Lister, Patteson, or Green; and of Morier
no complete life has yet been published.
I am indebted to Mr. Emery Walker for assistance in the selection of the
portraits.
Three of my friends have been kind enough to read parts of the book and
to give me advice: the Rev. A. T. P. Williams and Mr. C. E. Robinson, my
colleagues here, and Mr. Nowell Smith, Head Master of Sherborne. I owe
much also to the good judgement of Mr. Milford's reader. If I venture to
thank them for their help, they are in no way responsible for my
mistakes. Writing in the intervals of school-mastering I have no doubt
been guilty of many, and I shall be grateful if any reader will take the
trouble to inform me of those which he detects.
G.H.B.
WINCHESTER,
_April 1920._
LIST OF PORTRAITS
Thomas Carlyle
From the painting by G. F. WATTS in the National Portrait Gallery.
Sir Robert Peel
From the painting by J. LINNELL in the National Portrait Gallery.
Sir Charles Napier
From the drawing by EDWIN WILLIAMS in the National Portrait Gallery.
Lord Shaftesbury
From the painting by G. F. WATTS in the National Portrait Gallery.
Lord Lawrence
From the painting by G. F. WATTS in the National Portrait Gallery.
John Bright
From the painting by W. W. OULESS in the National Portrait Gallery.
Charles Dickens
From the painting by DANIEL MACLISE in the National Portrait Gallery.
Alfred, Lord Tennyson
From the painting by G. F. WATTS in the National Portrait Gallery.
Charles Kingsley
From a drawing by W. S. HUNT in the National Portrait Gallery.
George Frederick Watts
From a painting by himself in the National Portrait Gallery.
John Coleridge Patteson
From a drawing by WILLIAM RICHMOND.
(_By kind permission of Messrs. Macmillan & Co., Ltd._)
Sir Robert Morier
From a drawing by WILLIAM RICHMOND.
(_By kind permission of Mr. Edward Arnold._)
Lord Lister
From a photograph by MESSRS. BARRAUD.
William Morris
From the painting by G. F. WATTS in the National Portrait Gallery.
John Richard Green
From a drawing by FREDERICK SANDYS.
(_By kind permission of Messrs. Macmillan & Co., Ltd._)
Cecil Rhodes
From the painting by G. F. WATTS in the National Portrait Gallery.
INTRODUCTION
THE VICTORIAN ERA
We like to fancy, when critics are not at our elbow, that each Age in
our history has a character and a physiognomy of its own. The sixteenth
century speaks to us of change and adventure in every form, of ships and
statecraft, of discovery and desecration, of masterful sovereigns and
unscrupulous ministers. We evoke the memory of Henry VIII and Elizabeth,
of Wolsey and Thomas Cromwell, of Drake and Raleigh, while the gentler
virtues of Thomas More and Philip Sidney seem but rare flowers by the
wayside.
The glory of the seventeenth century shines out amid the clash of arms,
in battles fought for noble principles, in the lives and deaths of
Falkland and Hampden, of Blake, Montrose, and Cromwell. If its nobility
is dimmed as we pass from the world of Shakespeare and Milton to that of
Dryden and Defoe, yet there is sufficient unity in its central theme to
justify the enthusiasm of those who praise it as the heroic age of
English history.
Less justice, perhaps, is done when we characterize the eighteenth
century as that of elegance and wit; when, heedless of the great names
of Chatham, Wolfe, and Clive, we fill the forefront of our picture with
clubs and coffee-houses, with the graces of Chesterfield and Horace
Walpole, the beauties of Gainsborough and Romney, or the masterpieces of
Sheraton and Adam. But each generalization, as we make it, seems more
imperfect and unfair; and partly because Carlyle abused it so
unmercifully, this century has in the last fifty years received ample
justice from many of our ablest writers.
Difficult indeed then it must seem to give adequate expression to the
life of a century like the nineteenth, so swift, so restless, so
many-sided, so full of familiar personages, and of conflicts which have
hardly yet receded to a distance where the historian can judge them
aright. The rich luxuriance of movements and of individual characters
chokes our path; it is a labyrinth in which one may well lose one's way
and fail to see the wood for the trees.
The scientist would be protesting (all this time) that this is a very
superficial aspect of the matter. He would recast our framework for us
and teach us to follow out the course of our history through the
development of mathematics, physics, and biology, to pass from Newton to
Harvey, and from Watt to Darwin, and in the relation of these sciences
to one another to find the clue to man's steady progress.
The tale thus told is indeed wonderful to read and worthy of the
telling; but, to appreciate it fully, it needs a wider and deeper
knowledge than many possess. And it tends to leave out one side of our
human nature. There are many whose sympathies will always be drawn
rather to the influence of man upon man than to the extension of man's
power over nature, to the development of character rather than of
knowledge. To-day literature must approach science, her all-powerful
sister, with humility, and crave indulgence for those who still wish to
follow in the track where Plutarch led the way, to read of human
infirmity as well as of human power, not to scorn anecdotes or even
comparisons which illustrate the qualities by which service can be
rendered to the State.
To return to the nineteenth century, some would find a guiding thread in
the progress of the Utilitarian School, which based its teaching on the
idea of pursuing the greatest happiness of the greatest number, the
school which produced philosophers like Bentham and J. S. Mill, and
politicians like Cobden and Morley. It was congenial to the English
mind to follow a line which seemed to lead with certainty to practical
results; and the industrial revolutions caused men at this time to look,
perhaps too much, to the material conditions of well-being. Along with
the discoveries that revolutionized industry, the eighteenth century had
bequeathed something more precious than material wealth. John Wesley,
the strongest personal influence of its latter half, had stirred the
spirit of conscious philanthropy and the desire to apply Christian
principles to the service of all mankind. Howard, Wilberforce, and
others directed this spirit into definite channels, and many of their
followers tinged with a warm religious glow the principles which, even
in agnostics like Mill, lent consistent nobility to a life of service.
The efforts which these men made, alone or banded into societies, to
enlarge the liberties of Englishmen and to distribute more fairly the
good things of life among them, were productive of much benefit to the
age.
Under such leadership indeed as that of Bentham and Wilberforce, the
Victorian Age might have been expected to follow a steady course of
beneficence which would have drawn all the nobler spirits of the new
generation into its main current. Clear, logical, and persuasive, the
Utilitarians seemed likely to command success in Parliament, in the
pulpit, and in the press. But the criterion of happiness, however widely
diffused (and that it had not gone far in 1837 Disraeli's _Sybil_ will
attest), was not enough to satisfy the ardent idealism that blazed in
the breasts of men stirred by revolutions and the new birth of Christian
zeal. In contrast to the ordered pursuit of reform, the spirit of which
the Utilitarians hoped to embody in societies and Acts of Parliament,
were the rebellious impulses of men filled with a prophetic spirit,
walking in obedience to an inward voice, eager to cry aloud their
message to a generation wrapped in prosperity and self-contentment. They
formed no single school and followed no single line. In a few cases we
may observe the relation of master and pupil, as between Carlyle and
Ruskin; in more we can see a small band of friends like the
Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, the leaders of the Oxford Movement, or the
scientific circle of Darwin and Hooker, working in fellowship for a
common end. But individuality is their note. They sprang often from
surroundings most alien to their genius; they wandered far from the
courses which their birth seemed to prescribe; the spirit caught them
and they went forth to the fray.
The time in which they grew up was calculated to mould characters of
strength. Self-control and self-denial had been needed in the protracted
wars with France. Self-reliance had been learnt in the hard school of
adversity. Imagination was quickened by the heroism of the struggle
which had ended in the final victory of our arms. And to the generations
born in the early days of the nineteenth century lay open fields wider
than were offered to human activity in any other age of the world's
history. Now at last the full fruits of sixteenth-century discovery were
to be reaped. It was possible for Gordon, by the personal ascendancy
which he owed to his single-minded faith, to create legends and to work
miracles in Asia and in Africa; for Richard Burton to gain an intimate
knowledge of Islam in its holiest shrines; for Livingstone, Hannington,
and other martyrs to the Faith to breathe their last in the tropics; for
Franklin, dying, as Scott died nearly seventy years later, in the cause
of Science, to hallow the polar regions for the Anglo-Saxon race.
Darkest Africa was to remain impenetrable yet awhile. Only towards the
end of the century, when Stanley's work was finished, could Rhodes and
Kitchener conspire to clasp hands across its deserts and its swamps: but
on the other side of the globe a new island-empire had been already
created by the energy of Wakefield, and developed by the wisdom of
Parkes and Grey. In distant lands, on stricken fields less famous but no
less perilous, Wellington's men were applying the lessons which they had
learnt in the Peninsula. On distant seas Nelson's ships were carrying
explorers equipped for the more peaceful task of scientific observation.
In this century the highest mountains, the deepest seas, the widest
stretches of desert were to reveal their secrets to the adventurers who
held the whole world for their playground or field of conquest.
And not only in the great expansion of empire abroad but in the growth
of knowledge at home and the application of it to civil life, there was
a field to employ all the vigour of a race capable of rising to its
opportunities. There is no need to remind this generation of such names
as Stephenson and Herschel, Darwin and Huxley, Faraday and Kelvin; they
are in no danger of being forgotten to-day. The men of letters take
relatively a less conspicuous place in the evolution of the Age; but the
force which they put into their writings, the wealth of their material,
the variety of their lives, and the contrasts of their work, endow the
annals of the nineteenth century with an absorbing interest. While
Tennyson for the most part stayed in his English homes, singing the
beauties of his native land, Browning was a sojourner in Italian palaces
and villas, studying men of many races and many times, exploring the
subtleties of the human heart. The pen of Dickens portrayed all classes
of society except, perhaps, that which Thackeray made his peculiar
field. The historians, too, furnish singular contrasts: the vehement
pugnacity of Freeman is a foil to the serene studiousness of Acton; the
erratic career of Froude to the concentration of Stubbs. The influence
exercised on their contemporaries by recluses such as Newman or Darwin
may be compared with the more worldly activities of Huxley and Samuel
Wilberforce. Often we see equally diverse elements in following the
course of a single life. In Matthew Arnold we wonder at the poet of
'The Strayed Reveller' coexisting with the zealous inspector of schools;
in William Morris we find it hard to reconcile the creative craftsman
with the fervent apostle of social discontent. Perhaps the most notable
case of this diversity is the long pilgrimage of Gladstone which led him
from the camp of the 'stern, unbending Tories' to the leadership of
Radicals and Home Rulers. There is an interest in tracing through these
metamorphoses the essential unity of a man's character. On the other
hand, one cannot but admire the steadfastness with which Darwin and
Lister, Tennyson and Watts, pursued the even tenor of their way.
Again we may notice the strange irony of fortune which drew Carlyle from
his native moorlands to spend fifty years in a London suburb, while his
disciple Ruskin, born and bred in London, and finding fit audience in
the universities of the South, closed his long life in seclusion amid
the Cumbrian fells. So two statesmen, who were at one time very closely
allied, present a similarly striking contrast in the manner of their
lives. Till the age of forty Joseph Chamberlain limited himself to
municipal work in Birmingham, and yet he rose in later life to imperial
views wider than any statesman's of his day. Charles Dilke, on the other
hand, could be an expert on 'Greater Britain' at thirty and yet devote
his old age to elaborating the details of Local Government and framing
programmes of social reform for the working classes of our towns.
Accidents these may be, but they lend to Victorian biography the charm
of a fanciful arabesque or mosaic of varied pattern and hue.
Eccentrics, too, there were in fact among the literary men of the day,
even as there are in the fiction of Dickens, of Peacock, of George
Meredith. There was Borrow, who, as an old man, was tramping solitarily
in the fields of Norfolk, as earlier he wandered alone in wild Wales or
wilder Spain. There was FitzGerald, who remained all his life constant
to one corner of East Anglia, and who yet, by the precious thread of his
correspondence, maintained contact with the great world of Victorian
letters to which he belonged.
Some wandered as far afield as Asia or the South Seas; some buried
themselves in the secluded courts of Oxford and Cambridge and became
mythical figures in academic lore. Not many were to be found within hail
of London or Edinburgh in these forceful days. Brougham, the most
omniscient of reviewers, with the most ill-balanced of minds, belongs
more properly to the preceding age, though he lived to 1868; and it is
from this age that the novelists probably drew their eccentric types.
But between eccentricity and vigorous originality who shall draw the
dividing line?
Men like these it is hard to label and to classify. Their individuality
is so patent that any general statement is at once open to attack. The
most that we can do is to indicate one or two points in which the true
Victorians had a certain resemblance to one another, and were unlike
their successors of our own day. They were more evidently in earnest,
less conscious of themselves, more indifferent to ridicule, more
absorbed in their work. To many of them full work and the cares of
office seemed a necessity of life. It was a typical Victorian who, after
sixteen years of public service, writing a family letter, says, 'I feel
that the interest of business and the excitement of responsibility are
indispensable to me, and I believe that I am never happier than when I
have more to think of and to do than I can manage in a given period'.
Idleness and insouciance had few temptations for them, cynicism was
abhorrent to them. Even Thackeray was perpetually 'caught out' when he
assumed the cynic's pose. Charlotte Brontë, most loyal of his admirers
and critics, speaks of the 'deep feelings for his kind' which he
cherished in his large heart, and again of the 'sentiment, jealously
hidden but genuine, which extracts the venom from that formidable
Thackeray'. Large-hearted and generous to one another, they were ready
to face adventure, eager to fight for an ideal, however impracticable it
seemed. This was as true of Tennyson, Browning, Matthew Arnold, and all
the _genus irritabile vatum_, as of the politicians and the men of
action. They made many mistakes; they were combative, often difficult to
deal with. Some of them were deficient in judgement, others in the
saving gift of humour; but they were rarely petty or ungenerous, or
failed from faint-heartedness or indecision. Vehemence and impatience
can do harm to the best causes, and the lives of men like the Napiers
and the Lawrences, like Thomas Arnold and Charles Kingsley, like John
Bright and Robert Lowe, are marred by conflicts which might have been
avoided by more studied gentleness or more philosophic calm. But the
time seemed short in which they could redress the evils which offended
them. They saw around them a world which seemed to be lapped in comfort
or swathed in the dead wrappings of the past, and would not listen to
reasoned appeals; and it would be futile to deny that, by lifting their
voices to a pitch which offends fastidious critics, Carlyle and Ruskin
did sometimes obtain a hearing and kindle a passion which Matthew Arnold
could never stir by his scholarly exhortations to 'sweetness and light'.
But it would be a mistake to infer from such clamour and contention that
the Victorians did not enjoy their fair share of happiness in this
world. The opposite would be nearer the truth: happiness was given to
them in good, even in overflowing measure. Any one familiar with
Trevelyan's biography of Macaulay will remember with what fullness and
intensity he enjoyed his life; and the same fact is noted by Dr. Mozley
in his Essay on that most representative Victorian, Thomas Arnold. The
lives of Delane, the famous editor of _The Times_, of the statesman
Palmerston, of the painter Millais, and of many other men in many
professions, might be quoted to support this view. In some cases this
was due to their strong family affections, in others to their genius for
friendship. A good conscience, a good temper, a good digestion, are all
factors of importance. But perhaps the best insurance against moodiness
and melancholy was that strenuous activity which made them forget
themselves, that energetic will-power which was the driving force in so
many movements of the day.
How many of the changes of last century were due to general tendencies,
how far the single will of this man or that has seriously affected its
history, it is impossible to estimate. To many it seems that the rôle of
the individual is played out. The spirit of the coming era is that of
organized fellowship and associated effort. The State is to prescribe
for all, and the units are, somehow, to be marshalled into their places
by a higher collective will. Under the shadow of socialism the more
ambitious may be tempted to quit the field of public service at home and
to look to enterprises abroad--to resign poor England to a mechanical
bureaucracy, a soulless uniformity where one man is as good as another.
But it is difficult to believe that society can dispense with leaders,
or afford to forget the lessons which may be learnt from the study of
such noble lives. The Victorians had a robuster faith. Their faith and
their achievements may help to banish such doubts to-day. As one of the
few survivors of that Victorian era has lately said: 'Only those whose
minds are numbed by the suspicion that all times are tolerably alike,
and men and women much of a muchness, will deny that it was a generation
of intrepid efforts forward.' Some fell in mid-combat: some survived to
witness the eventual victory of their cause. For all might be claimed
the funeral honours which Browning claimed for his Grammarian. They
aimed high; they 'threw themselves on God': the mountain-tops are their
appropriate resting-place.
THOMAS CARLYLE
1795-1881
1795. Born at Ecclefechan, Dumfriesshire, December 4.
1809. Enters Edinburgh University.
1814-18. Schoolmaster at Annan and Kirkcaldy. Friendship with Edward
Irving.
1819-21. Reading law and literature at Edinburgh and Mainhill.
1821. First meeting with Jane Welsh at Haddington.
1822-3. Tutorship in Buller family.
1824-5. German literature, Goethe, _Life of Schiller_.
1826. October 17, marriage; residence at Comely Bank, Edinburgh.
1827. Jeffrey's friendship; articles for _Edinburgh Review_.
1828-34. Craigenputtock, with intervals in London and Edinburgh;
poverty; solitude; profound study; _Sartor Resartus_ written;
reading for _French Revolution_.
1834. Cheyne Row, Chelsea, permanent home.
1834. Begins to read for, 1841 to write, _Cromwell_.
1834-6. _French Revolution_ written; finished January 12, 1837.
1837-40. Four courses of lectures in London. (German literature, _Heroes_.)
1844. Changes plan of, 1845 finishes writing, _Cromwell_.
1846-51. Studies Ireland and modern questions; _Latter-Day Pamphlets_, 1849.
1851. Choice of Frederick the Great of Prussia for next subject.
1857. Two vols. printed; 1865, rest finished and published.
1865. Lord Rector of Edinburgh University.
1866. Death of Mrs. Carlyle, April 21.
1867-9. Prepares Memorials of his wife; friendship with Froude.
1870. Loses the use of his right hand.
1874. Refuses offer of Baronetcy or G.C.B.
1881. Death at Chelsea, February 5; burial at Ecclefechan.
THOMAS CARLYLE
PROPHET
North-west of Carlisle (from which town the Carlyle family in all
probability first took their name), a little way along the border, the
river Annan comes down its green valley from the lowland hills to lose
itself in the wide sands of the Solway Firth. At the foot of these hills
is the village of Ecclefechan, some eight miles inland. Here in the wide
irregular street, down the side of which flows a little beck, stands the
grey cottage, built by the stonemason James Carlyle, where he lived with
his second wife, Margaret Aitken; and here on December 4, 1795, the
eldest of nine children, their son Thomas was born. There is little to
redeem the place from insignificance; the houses are mostly mean, the
position of the village is tame and commonplace. But if a visitor will
mount the hills that lie to the north, turn southward and look over the
wide expanse of land and water to the Cumbrian mountains, then, should
he be fortunate enough to see the landscape in stormy and unsettled
weather, he may realize why the land was so dear to its most famous son
that he could return to it from year to year throughout his life and
could there at all times soothe his most unquiet moods. Through all his
years in London he remained a lowland Scot and was most at home in
Annandale. With this district his fame is still bound up, as that of
Walter Scott with the Tweed, or that of Wordsworth with the Lakes.
In this humble household Thomas Carlyle first learnt what is meant by
work, by truthfulness, and by reverence, lessons which he never forgot.
He learnt to revere authority, to revere worth, and to revere something
yet higher and more mysterious--the Unseen. In _Sartor Resartus_ he
describes how his hero was impressed by his parents' observance of
religious duties. 'The highest whom I knew on earth I here saw bowed
down with awe unspeakable before a Higher in Heaven; such things
especially in infancy, reach inwards to the very core of your being.'
His father was a man of unusual force of character and gifted with a
wonderful power of speech, flashing out in picturesque metaphor, in
biting satire, in humorous comment upon life. He had, too, the Scotch
genius for valuing education; and it was he who decided that Tom, whose
character he had observed, should have every chance that schooling could
give him. His mother was a most affectionate, single-hearted, and
religious woman; labouring for her family, content with her lot, her
trust for her son unfailing, her only fear for him lest in his new
learning he might fall away from the old Biblical faith which she held
so firmly herself.
Reading with his father or mother, lending a hand at housework when
needed, nourishing himself on the simple oatmeal and milk which
throughout life remained his favourite food, submitting himself
instinctively to the stern discipline of the home, he passed, happily on
the whole, through his childhood and soon outstripped his comrades in
the village school. His success there led to his going in his tenth year
to the grammar school at Annan; and before he reached his fourteenth
year he trudged off on foot to Edinburgh to begin his studies at the
university.
Instead of young men caught up by express trains and deposited, by the
aid of cabmen and porters, in a few hours in the sheltered courts of
Oxford and Cambridge, we must imagine a party of boys, of fourteen or
fifteen years old, trudging on foot twenty miles a day for five days
across bleak country, sleeping at rough inns, and on their arrival
searching for an attic in some bleak tenement in a noisy street. Here
they were to live almost entirely on the baskets of home produce sent
through the carriers at intervals by their thrifty parents. It was and
is a Spartan discipline, and it turns out men who have shown their grit
and independence in all lands where the British flag is flown.
The earliest successes which Carlyle won, both at Annan and at
Edinburgh, were in mathematics. His classical studies received little
help from his professors, and his literary gifts were developed mostly
by his own reading, and stimulated from time to time by talks with
fellow students. Perhaps it was for his ultimate good that he was not
brought under influences which might have guided him into more
methodical courses and tamed his rugged originality. The universities
cannot often be proved to have fostered kindly their poets and original
men of letters; at least we may say that Edinburgh was a more kindly
Alma Mater to Carlyle than Oxford and Cambridge proved to Shelley and
Byron. His native genius, and the qualities which he inherited from his
parents, were not starved in alien soil, but put out vigorous growth.
From such letters to his friends as have survived, we can see what a
power Carlyle had already developed of forcibly expressing his ideas and
establishing an influence over others.
He left the university at the age of nineteen, and the next twelve years
of his life were of a most unsettled character. He made nearly as many
false starts in life as Goldsmith or Coleridge, though he redeemed them
nobly by his persistence in after years. In 1814 his family still
regarded the ministry as his vocation, and Carlyle was himself quite
undecided about it. To promote this idea the profession of schoolmaster
was taken up for the time. He continued in it for more than six years,
first at Annan and then at Kirkcaldy; but he was soon finding it
uncongenial and rebelling against it. A few years later he tried reading
law with no greater contentment; and in order to support himself he was
reduced to teaching private pupils. The chief friend of this period was
Edward Irving, the gifted preacher who afterwards, in London, came to
tragic shipwreck. He was a native of Annan, five years older than
Carlyle, and he had spent some time in preaching and preparing for the
ministry. He was one of the few people who profoundly influenced
Carlyle's life. At Kirkcaldy he was his constant companion, shared his
tastes, lent him books, and kindled his powers of insight and judgement
in many a country walk. Carlyle has left us records of this time in his
_Reminiscences_, how he read the twelve volumes of Irving's _Gibbon_ in
twelve days, how he tramped through the Trossachs on foot, how in summer
twilights he paced the long stretches of sand at Irving's side.
It was Irving who in 1822 commended him to the Buller family, with whom
he continued as tutor for two years. Charles Buller, the eldest son, was
a boy of rare gifts and promise, worthy of such a teacher; and but for
his untimely death in 1848 he might have won a foremost place in
politics. The family proved valuable friends to Carlyle in after-life,
besides enabling him at this time to live in comfort, with leisure for
his own studies and some spare money to help his family. But for this
aid, his brother Alexander would have fared ill with the farming, and
John could never have afforded the training for the medical profession.
Again, it was Irving who first took him to Haddington in 1821 and
introduced him to Jane Baillie Welsh, his future wife. Irving's
sincerity and sympathy, his earnest enthusiasm joined with the power of
genuine laughter (always to Carlyle a mark of a true rich nature), made
him through all these years a thoroughly congenial companion. He really
understood Carlyle as few outside his family did, and he never grew
impatient at Carlyle's difficulty in settling to a profession. 'Your
mind,' he wrote, 'unfortunately for its present peace, has taken in so
wide a range of study as to be almost incapable of professional
trammels; and it has nourished so uncommon and so unyielding a
character, as first unfits you for, and then disgusts you with, any
accommodations which for so cultivated and so fertile a mind would
easily procure favour and patronage.' Well might Carlyle in later days
find a hero in tough old Samuel Johnson, whose sufferings were due to
similar causes. The other source which kept the fire in him aglow
through these difficult years was the confidence and affection of his
whole family, and the welcome which he always found at home.
Disappointed though they were at his failure, as yet, to settle to a
profession and to earn a steady income, for all that 'Tom' was to be a
great man; and when he could find time to spend some months at Mainhill,
or later at Scotsbrig,[1] a room could always be found for him, hours of
peace and solitude could be enjoyed, the most wholesome food, and the
most cordial affection, were there rendered as loyal ungrudging tribute.
But new ties were soon to be knit and a new chapter to be opened in his
life.
[Note 1: Farms near Ecclefechan to which his parents moved in 1814
and 1826.]
John Welsh of Haddington, who died before Carlyle met his future wife,
was a surgeon and a man of remarkable gifts; and his daughter could
trace her descent to such famous Scotsmen as Wallace and John Knox. Her
own mental powers were great, and her vivacity and charming manners
caused her to shine in society wherever she was. She had an unquestioned
supremacy among the ladies of Haddington and many had been the suitors
for her hand. When Irving had given her lessons there, love had sprung
up between tutor and pupil, but this budding romance ended tragically in
1822. Before meeting her he had been engaged to another lady; and when a
new appointment gave him a sure income, he was held to his bond and was
forced to crush down his passion and to take farewell of Miss Welsh. At
what date Carlyle conceived the hope of making her his wife it is
difficult to say. Her beauty and wit seem to have done their work
quickly in his case; but she was not one to give her affections readily,
for all the intellectual sympathy which united them. In 1823 she was
contemplating marriage, but had made no promise; in 1824 she had
accepted the idea of marrying him, but in 1825 she still scouted the
conditions in which he proposed to live. His position was precarious,
his projects visionary, and his immediate desire was to settle on a
lonely farm, where he could devote himself to study, if she would do the
household drudgery. Because his mother whom he loved and honoured was
content to lead this life, he seemed to think that his wife could do the
same; but her nature and her rearing were not those of the Carlyles and
their Annandale neighbours. It involved a complete renunciation of the
comforts of life and the social position which she enjoyed; and much
though she admired his talents and enjoyed his company, she was not in
that passion of love which could lift her to such heights of
self-sacrifice.
By this time we can begin to discern in his letters the outline of his
character--his passionate absorption in study, his moodiness, his fits
of despondency, his intense irritability; his incapacity to master his
own tongue and temper. In happy moments he shows great tenderness of
feeling for those whom he loves or pities; but this alternates with
inconsiderate clamour and loud complaints deafening the ears of all
about him, provoked often by slight and even imaginary grievances. It is
the artistic nature run riot, and that in one who preached silence and
stoicism as the chief virtues--an inconsistency which has amused and
disgusted generations of readers. It was impossible for him to do his
work with the regular method, the equable temper, of a Southey or a
Scott. In dealing with history he must image the past to himself most
vividly before he could expound his subject; and that effort and strain
cost him sleepless nights and days of concentrated thought. Nor was he
an easier companion when his work was finished and he could take his
ease. Then life seemed empty and profitless; and in its emptiness his
voice echoed all the louder. The ill was within him, and outward
circumstances were powerless to affect his nature.
At this time he was chiefly occupied in reading German literature and
spreading the knowledge of it among his countrymen. After Coleridge he
was the first of our literary men to appreciate the poets and mystics of
Germany, and he did more even than Coleridge to make Englishmen familiar
with them. He acquired at this time a knowledge of French and Italian
literature too; but the philosophy of Kant and the writings of Goethe
and Schiller roused him to greater enthusiasm. From Kant he learnt that
the guiding principle of conduct was not happiness, but the 'categorical
imperative' of duty; from Goethe he drew such hopefulness as gleams
occasionally through his despondent utterances on the progress of the
human race. He translated Goethe's novel, _Wilhelm Meister_, in 1823,
and followed it up with the _Life of Schiller_. There was no
considerable sale for either of these books till his lectures in London
and his established fame roused a demand for all he had written. In
these days he was practising for the profession of a man of letters, and
was largely influenced by personal ambition and the desire to earn an
income which would make him independent; he was not yet fired with a
mission, or kindled to white heat.
His long courtship was rewarded in October 1826. When the marriage took
place the bride was twenty-five years old and the bridegroom thirty. Men
of letters have not the reputation of making ideal husbands, and the
qualities to which this is due were possessed by Carlyle in exaggerated
measure. It was a perilous enterprise for any one to live with him, most
of all for such a woman, delicately bred, nervous, and highly strung.
She was aware of this, and was prepared for a large measure of
self-denial; but she could not have foreseen how severe she would find
the trial. The morbid sensitiveness of Carlyle to his own pains and
troubles, so often imaginary, joined with his inconsiderate blindness to
his wife's real sufferings, led to many heart-burnings. If she
contributed to them, in some degree, by her wilfulness, jealous temper,
and sharpness of tongue, ill-health and solitude may well excuse her.
His own confessions, made after her death, are coloured by sorrow and
deep affection: no doubt he paints his own conduct in hues darker than
the truth demands. Shallow critics have sneered at the picture of the
philosopher whose life was so much at variance with his creed, and too
much has, perhaps, been written about the subject. If reference must be
made to such a well-worn tale, it is best to let Carlyle's own account
stand as he wished it to stand. His moral worth has been vindicated in a
hundred ways, not least by his humility and honesty about himself, and
can bear the test of time.
For the first two years of married life Carlyle's scheme of living on a
farm was kept at bay by his wife, and their home was at Edinburgh.
Carlyle refers to this as the happiest period of his life, though he did
not refrain from loud laments upon occasions. The good genius of the
household was Jeffrey, the famous editor of the _Edinburgh Review_, who
was distantly related to Mrs. Carlyle. He made friends with the
newly-married pair, opened a path for them into the society of the
capital, and enabled Carlyle to spread the knowledge of German authors
in the _Review_ and to make his bow before a wider public. The prospects
of the little household seemed brighter, but, by generously making over
all her money to her mother, his wife had crippled its resources; and
Carlyle was of so difficult a humour that neither Jeffrey nor any one
else could guide his steps for long. Living was precarious; society made
demands even on a modest household, and in 1828 he at length had his way
and persuaded his wife to remove to Craigenputtock. It was in the
loneliness of the moors that Carlyle was to come to his full stature and
to develop his astonishing genius.
Craigenputtock was a farm belonging to his wife's family, lying seventy
feet above the sea, sixteen miles from Dumfries, among desolate moors
and bogs, and fully six miles from the nearest village. 'The house is
gaunt and hungry-looking. It stands with the scanty fields attached as
an island in a sea of morass. The landscape is unredeemed either by
grace or grandeur, mere undulating hills of grass and heather with peat
bogs in the hollows between them.' So Froude describes the home where
the Carlyles were to spend six years, the wife in domestic labours, in
solitude, in growing ill-health, the husband in omnivorous reading, in
digesting the knowledge that he gathered, in transmuting it and marking
it with the peculiar stamp of his genius. There was no true
companionship over the work. As the moorland gave the fresh air and
stillness required, so the wife might nourish the physical frame with
wholesome digestible food and save him from external cares; the rest
must be done by lonely communing with himself. He needed no Fleet Street
taverns or literary salons to encourage him. Goethe, with whom he
exchanged letters and compliments at times, said with rare insight that
he 'had in himself an originating principle of conviction, out of which
he could develop the force that lay in him unassisted by other men'.
Few were the interruptions from without. His fame was not yet
established. In any case pilgrims would have to undertake a very rough
journey, and the fashion of such pilgrimages had hardly begun. But in
1833 from distant America came one disciple, afterwards to be known as
the famous author Ralph Waldo Emerson; and he has left us in his
_English Traits_ a vivid record of his impression of two or three famous
men of letters whom he saw. He describes Carlyle as 'tall and gaunt,
with a cliff-like brow, self-possessed, and holding his extraordinary
powers of conversation in easy command; clinging to his northern accent
with evident relish; full of lively anecdote, and with a streaming
humour, which floated everything he looked upon'.[2]
[Note 2: Emerson, _English Traits_, 'World's Classics' edition, p.
8.]
Much of his time was given to reading about the French Revolution, which
was to be the subject of his greatest literary triumph. But the
characteristic work of this period is _Sartor Resartus_ ('The tailor
patched anew'), in which Carlyle, under a thin German disguise, reveals
himself to the world, with his views on the customs and ways of society
and his contempt for all the pretensions and absurdities which they
involved. In many places it is extravagant and fantastic, as when 'the
most remarkable incident in modern history' proves to be George Fox the
Quaker making a suit of leather to render himself independent of
tailors; in others it rises to the highest pitch of poetry, as in the
sympathetic lament over the hardships of manual labour. 'Venerable to me
is the hard Hand; crooked, coarse; wherein notwithstanding lies a
cunning virtue, indefeasibly royal, as of the Sceptre of this Planet.
Venerable, too, is the rugged face, all weather-tanned, besoiled, with
its rude intelligence; for it is the face of a Man living manlike. O,
but the more venerable for thy rudeness, and even because we must pity
as well as love thee! Hardly-entreated Brother! For us was thy back so
bent, for us were thy straight limbs and fingers so deformed; thou wert
our Conscript on whom the lot fell, and fighting our battles wert so
marred.' It is through such passages that Carlyle has won his way to the
hearts of many who care little for history, or for German literature.
The book evidently contains much that is autobiographical, and helps us
to understand Carlyle's childhood and youth; but it is so mixed up with
fantasy and humour that it is difficult to separate fiction from fact.
Its chief aim seems to be the overthrow of cant, the ridiculing of
empty conventions, and the preaching of sincerity and independence. But
not yet was Carlyle's generation prepared to listen to such sermons.
Jeffrey was bewildered by the tone and offended at the style; publisher
after publisher refused it; and when at length it was launched upon the
world piecemeal in _Fraser's Magazine_, the reading public either
ignored it or abused it in the roundest terms. During all this time
Carlyle was anxiously looking for some surer means of livelihood, and
had not yet decided that literature was to be his profession. He had
hopes at different times of professorships in Edinburgh and St. Andrews,
and of the editorship of various reviews; but these all came to nothing.
For some posts he was not suited; for others his application could find
no support. He even thought of going to America, where Emerson and other
admirers would have welcomed him. But the disappointments in Scotland
decided him to make one more effort in London before accepting defeat,
and in 1834 he found a house at Chelsea and prepared to quit his
hermitage among the moors.
Cheyne Row, Chelsea, was to be his new home, a quiet street running
northward from the riverside in a quarter of London not then invaded by
industrialism. The house, No. 24, with its little garden, has been made
into a Carlyle museum, and may still be seen on the east side of the
street facing a few survivors of the sturdy old pollarded lime-trees
standing there 'like giants in Tawtie wigs'. His bust, by Boehm, is in
the garden on the Embankment not a hundred yards away. With this
district are connected other names famous in literature and art, but its
presiding genius is the 'Sage of Chelsea', who spent the last
forty-seven years of his life in it; and there, in a double-walled room,
in spite of trivial disturbances from without, in spite of far more
serious fits of dejection and discontent within, he composed his three
greatest historical books. At the outset his prospects were not bright,
and at the end of 1834 he confessed 'it is now twenty-three months
since I earned a penny by the craft of literature'. There was need of
much faith; and it was fortunate for him that he had at his side one who
believed in his genius and who was well qualified to judge. He must have
been thinking of this when he wrote of Mahomet in _Heroes_ and of the
prophet's gratitude to his first wife Kadijah: 'She believed in me when
none else would believe. In the whole world I had but one friend and she
was that!' In the same place he quoted the German writer Novalis: 'It is
certain my conviction gains infinitely, the moment another soul will
believe in it.'