Of the people I saw in London you will wish me to speak first of the
Carlyles. Mr. Carlyle came to see me at once, and appointed an evening
to be passed at their house. That first time I was delighted with him.
He was in a very sweet humor--full of wit and pathos, without being
overbearing or oppressive. I was quite carried away with the rich
flow of his discourse; and the hearty, noble earnestness of his
personal being brought back the charm which once was upon his writing,
before I wearied of it. I admired his Scotch, his way of singing his
great full sentences, so that each one was like the stanza of a
narrative ballad. He let me talk, now and then, enough to free my
lungs and change my position, so that I did not get tired. That
evening he talked of the present state of things in England, giving
light, witty sketches of the men of the day, fanatics and others, and
some sweet, homely stories he told of things he had known of the
Scotch peasantry. Of you he spoke with hearty kindness; and he told
with beautiful feeling a story of some poor farmer or artizan in the
country, who on Sunday lays aside the cark and care of that dirty
English world, and sits reading the "Essays" and looking upon the
sea....
[Footnote 16: From a letter to Emerson, written in 1846, and printed
in the "Memoirs."]
The second time Mr. Carlyle had a dinner party, at which was a witty,
French, flippant sort of a man, named Lewes,[17] author of a "History
of Philosophy," and now writing a life of Goethe, a task for which he
must be as unfit as irreligion and sparkling shallowness can make him.
But he told stories admirably, and was allowed sometimes to interrupt
Carlyle a little--of which one was glad, for that night he was in his
acrid mood; and tho much more brilliant than on the former evening,
grew wearisome to me, who disclaimed and rejected almost everything
he said....
[Footnote 17: George Henry Lewes, whose relations to George Eliot
began after Margaret Fuller's visit. Lewes was not a Frenchman, but of
Welsh descent, born in London, and a grandson of Charles Lee Lewes,
the actor.]
Accustomed to the infinite wit and exuberant richness of his writings,
his talk is still an amazement and a splendor scarcely to be faced
with steady eyes. He does not converse, only harangues. It is the
usual misfortune of such marked men--happily not one invariable or
inevitable--that they can not allow other minds room to breathe, and
show themselves in their atmosphere, and thus miss the refreshment and
instruction which the greatest never cease to need from the experience
of the humblest. Carlyle allows no one a chance, but bears down all
opposition, not only by his wit and onset of words, resistless in
their sharpness as so many bayonets, but by actual physical
superiority--raising his voice and rushing on his opponent with a
torrent of sound. This is not in the least from unwillingness to allow
freedom to others. On the contrary, no man would more enjoy a manly
resistance in his thoughts. But it is the impulse of a mind accustomed
to follow out its own impulse, as the hawk its prey, and which knows
not how to stop in the chase.
Carlyle indeed is arrogant and overbearing; but in his arrogance there
is no littleness, no self-love. It is the heroic arrogance of some old
Scandinavian conqueror; it is his nature, and the untamable impulse
that has given him power to crush the dragons. He sings rather than
talks. He pours upon you a kind of satirical, heroical, critical poem,
with regular cadences, and generally catching up, near the beginning,
some singular epithet which serves as a refrain when his song is
full, or with which, as with a knitting-needle, he catches up the
stitches, if he has chanced now and then to let fall a row. For the
higher kinds of poetry he has no sense, and his talk on that subject
is delightfully and gorgeously absurd. He sometimes stops a minute to
laugh at it himself, then begins anew with fresh vigor; for all the
spirits he is driving before him as Fata Morgana,[18] ugly masks, in
fact, if he can but make them turn about; but he laughs that they seem
to others such dainty Ariels. His talk, like his books, is full of
pictures; his critical strokes masterly. Allow for his point of view,
and his survey is admirable. He is a large subject. I can not speak
more or wiselier of him now, nor needs it; his works are true, to
blame and praise him--the Siegfried of England, great and powerful, if
not quite invulnerable, and of a might rather to destroy evil than
legislate for good.
[Footnote 18: Fata (a fairy) Morgana, sister of King Arthur, is a
leading figure in the "Morte d'Arthur" and other romances, including
Italian.]