It is taken for granted that Carlyle's thoughts have no organic unity. He is looked upon as a stimulating, but confused, writer, as a thinker of original, but incoherent, power. True, he has not a logical mind, and pays no deference to the canons of the schools or the market-place. But there is a method in Carlyle's apparent caprice. When analysed, his thoughts are discovered to have unity. His transcendentalism embracesthe ethic as well as the cosmic side of life. In the sphere of morals, as of science, his writings are one long tumultuous protest against the mechanical philosophy and the utilitarian theory of morals. From his essay on Voltaire we take the following:—'It is contended by many that our mere love of personal Pleasure or Happiness, as it is called, acting in every individual with such clearness as he may easily have, will of itself lead him to respect the rights of others, and wisely employ his own.... Without some belief in the necessary eternal, or, which is the same thing, in the supra mundane divine nature of Virtue existing in each individual, could the moral judgment of a thousand or a thousand thousand individuals avail us'? More picturesquely, Carlyle denounces the utilitarian system in these words: 'What then? Is the heroic inspiration we name Virtue but some passion, some bubble of the blood, bubbling in the direction others profit by? I know not; only this I know. If what thou namest Happiness be our true aim, then are we all astray. With Stupidity and sound Digestion, man may front much. But what in these dull, unimaginative days are the terrors of conscience to the diseases of the Liver? Not on Morality, but on Cookery, let us build our stronghold: there, brandishing our frying-pan as censer, let us offer sweet incense to the Devil, and live at ease on the fat thingshehas provided for his Elect'! The exponent of sucha theory of ethics will have a natural distaste for the rational or calculating side of conduct. He will depreciate the mechanical, and give undue emphasis to the inspirational. His heroes will be not men of placid temperament, methodical habits, and utilitarian aims, but men of mystical and passionate natures, spasmodic in action, and guided by ideas not easily justified at the bar of utility.
Just as in the sphere of speculative thought, he has profound contempt for the Diderots and Voltaires, with their mechanical views of the Universe, so in practical affairs Carlyle has contempt for the men who endeavour to further their aims by appealing to commonplace motives by means of commonplace methods. Specially opposed is he to the tendency of the age to rely for progress, not upon appeals to the great elemental forces of human nature, but upon organisations, committees, and all kinds of mechanism. In his remarkable essay, 'Signs of the Times,' we have ample verification of our exposition. After talking depreciatingly of the mechanical tendency of the prevailing philosophies, Carlyle comments upon the mechanical nature of the reforming agencies of civilisation. The intense Egoism of his nature rebels against any kind of Socialism or Collectivism. He says: 'Were we required to characterise this age of ours by any single epithet, we should be tempted to call it, not a Heroical, Devotional, Philosophical, or Heroic Age, but, aboveall, the Mechanical Age. It is the age of machinery in every outward and inward sense of that word.... Men are grown mechanical in head and heart, as well as in hand. They have lost faith in individual endeavour, and in natural force of any kind.... We may trace this tendency in all the great manifestations of our time: in its intellectual aspect, the studies it most favours, and its manner of conducting them; in its practical aspects, its politics, art, religious work; in the whole sources, and throughout the whole current of its spiritual, no less than its material, activity.' With Carlyle the secrets of Nature and Life were discoverable, not so much by the intellect as by the heart. The man with the large heart, rather than the clear head, saw furthest into the nature of things. The history of German thought is strewn with the wreck of systems based upon the Carlylian doctrine of intuition. Schelling and Hegel showed the puerility to which great men are driven when they started to construct science out of their own intuitions, instead of patiently and humbly sitting down to study Nature. Tyndall has left on record his gratitude to Carlyle. Tyndall had grip of the scientific method, and was able to allow Carlyle's inspiration to play upon his mind without fear of harm; but how many waverers has Carlyle driven from the path of reason into the bogs of mysticism?
Carlyle's impatience with reasoning and his determination to follow the promptings ofa prioriconceptionsgave his system of ethics a one-sided cast, and made him needlessly aggressive towards what in his day was called Utilitarianism, but what has now come to be known as Evolutionary Ethics. What is the chief end of man considered as a moral agent? The answer of the Christian religion is as intelligible as it is comprehensive. Man's duty consists in obeying the laws of God revealed in Nature and in the Bible. But apart from revelation, where is the basis of ethical authority? Debarred from accepting the Christian view, and instinctively repelled from Utilitarianism, Carlyle found refuge in the Fichtean and similar systems of ethics. By substituting Blessedness for Happiness as the aim of ethical endeavour, Carlyle endeavoured to preserve the heroic attitude which was associated with Supernaturalism. In his view, it was more consistent with human dignity to trust for inspiration to a light within than painfully to piece together fragments of human experience and ponder the inferences to be drawn therefrom.
In his 'Data of Ethics,' Herbert Spencer shows the hollowness of Carlyle's distinction between Blessedness and Happiness. As Spencer puts it: 'Obviously the implication is that Blessedness is not a kind of Happiness, and this implication at once suggests the question, What mode of feeling is this? If it is a state of consciousness at all, it is necessarily one of three states—painful, indifferent, or pleasurable.... If the pleasurablestates are in excess, then the blessed life can be distinguished from any other pleasurable life only by the relative amount or the quality of its pleasures. It is a life which makes happiness of a certain kind and degree its end, and the assumption that blessedness is not a form of happiness lapses.... In brief, blessedness has for its necessary condition of existence increased happiness, positive or negative in some consciousness or other; and disappears utterly if we assume that the actions called blessed are known to cause decrease of happiness in others as well as in the actor.'
To German philosophy and literature Carlyle owed his critical method, by which he all but revolutionised criticism as understood by his Edinburgh and London contemporaries. Carlyle began his apprenticeship with the Edinburgh Reviewers, in whose hand criticism never lost its political bias. Apart from that, criticism up till the time of Carlyle was mainly statical. The critic was a kind of literary book-keeper who went upon the double-entry system. On one page were noted excellences, on the other defects, and when the two columns weretotalledthe debtor and creditor side of the transaction was set forth. Where, as in the cases of Burns and Byron, genius was complicated with moral aberration, anything like a correct estimate was impossible. The result was that in Scotland criticism oscillated between the ethical severity of the pulpit and the daring laxity of free thought. As the EdinburghReviewers could not afford to set the clergy at defiance, they had to pay due respect to conventional tastes and standards. Carlyle faced the question from a different standpoint. He introduced into criticism the dynamic principle which he found in the Germans, particularly in Goethe. In contemplating a work of Art, the Germans talk much of the importance of seizing upon the creative spirit, what Hegel called the Idea. The thought of Goethe and Hegel, though differently expressed, resolves itself into the conception of a life principle which shapes materials into harmony with innate forms. In the sphere of life the determining factors are the inner vitalities, which, however, are susceptible to the environment. The critic who would realise his ideal does not go about with literary and ethical tape-lines: he seeks to understand the spirit which animated the author as shewn in his works and his life, and then studies the influence of his environment. That this is a correct description of Carlyle's critical method is evidenced by his own remarks in his essay on Burns. He says: 'If an individual is really of consequence enough to have his life and character recorded for public remembrance, we have always been of opinion that the public ought to be made acquainted with all the springs and relations of his character. How did the world and man's life from his particular position represent themselves to his mind? How did co-existing circumstancesmodify him from without: how did he modify these from within?'
This attention to the inner springs of character gives the key to Carlyle's critical work. How fruitful this was is seen in his essay on Burns. He steered an even course between the stern moralists, whose indignation at the sins of Burns the man blinded them to the genius of Burns the poet, and the flippant Bohemians, who thought that by bidding defiance to the conventionalities and moralities Burns proved his title to the name of genius, and whose voices are yet unduly with us in much spirituous devotion and rhymeless doggerel at the return of each 25th of January. While laying bare the springs of Burns' genius, Carlyle, with unerring precision, also puts his finger on the weak point in the poet's moral nature. So faithfully did Carlyle apply his critical method that he may be considered to have said the final word about Burns.
When Goethe spoke of Carlyle as a great moral force he must have had in his mind the ethical tone of Carlyle's critical writing—a tone which had its roots in the idea that judgment upon a man should be determined, not by isolated deviations from conventional or even ethical standards, but by consideration of the deep springs of character from which flow aspirations and ideals. In hisHeroes and Hero-WorshipCarlyle elaborates his critical theory thus: 'On the whole, wemake too much of faults; the details of the business hide the real centre of it. Faults? The greatest of faults, I should say, is to be conscious of none. Readers of the Bible above all, one would think, might know better. Who is called there "the man according to God's own heart?" David, the Hebrew King, had fallen into sins enough—blackest crimes—there was no want of sins. And thereupon the unbelievers sneer and ask: Is this your man according to God's heart? The sneer, I must say, seems to me but a shallow one. What are faults? What are the outward details of a life, if the inner secret of it, the remorse, temptations, true, often-baffled, never-ended struggle of it, be forgotten?... The deadliest sin, I say, were that same supercilious consciousness of no sin: that is death.... David's life and history, as written for us in those Psalms of his, I consider to be the truest emblem ever given of a man's moral progress and warfare here below.'
This canon faithfully applied enabled Carlyle to invest with a new and living interest large sections of literary criticism. Burns, Johnson, Cromwell and others of like calibre, were rescued by Carlyle from the hands of Pedants and Pharisees. To readers wearied with the facile criticism of conventional reviewers, it was a revelation to come into contact with a writer like Carlyle, who not only gave to the mindgreat inspirational impetus, but also a larger critical outlook; it was like stepping out of a museum, or a dissecting-room into the free, fresh, breezy air of Nature.
Moreover, Carlyle's interest in the soul is not of an antiquarian nature; he studies his heroes as if they were ancestors of the Carlyle family. He broods over their letters as if they were the letters of his own flesh and blood, and his comments resemble the soliloquisings of a pathos stricken kinsman rather than the conscious reflections of a literary man. It is noteworthy that Carlyle's critical powers are limited by his sympathies. His method, though suggestive of scientific criticism, is largely influenced by the personal equation. Face to face with writers like Scott and Voltaire, he flounders in helpless incompetency. He tries Scott, the writer of novels, by purely Puritan standards. Because there is in Scott no signs of soul-struggles, no conscious devotion to heroic ends, no introspective torturings, Carlyle sets himself to a process of belittling. So with Voltaire. Carlyle's failure in this sphere was due to the fact that he overdid the ethical side of criticism and became a pulpiteer; he was false to his own principle of endeavouring to seize the dominant idea. Because Scott and Voltaire were not dominated by the Covenanting idea, Carlyle dealt with them in a tone of disparagement. Carlyle admired Goethe, but he certainly made no attempt to cultivateGoethe's catholicity. Let us not fall into Carlyle's mistake, and condemn him for qualities which were incompatible with his temperament. After all has been said, English literature stands largely indebted to Carlyle the critic.
Mrs Carlyle entered heartily into her husband's proposal to remove to London. 'Burn our ships!' she gaily said to him one day (i.e., dismantle our house); 'carry all our furniture with us'; which they accordingly did. 'At sight of London,' Carlyle wrote, 'I remember humming to myself a ballad-stanza of "Johnnie o' Braidislea," which my dear old mother used to sing,
"For there's seven foresters in yon forest;And them I want to see, see,And them I want tosee(and shoot down)!"
"For there's seven foresters in yon forest;And them I want to see, see,And them I want tosee(and shoot down)!"
Carlyle lodged at Ampton Street again; but presently did 'immense stretches of walking in search of houses.' He found his way to Chelsea and there secured a small old-fashioned house at 5 (now numbered 24) Cheyne Row, at a rent of £35 a year. Mrs Carlyle followed in a short time and approved of his choice. They took possession on the 10th June 1834, and Carlyle recounts the 'cheerful gipsy life' they had there 'among the litter and carpenters for three incipient days.' Leigh Hunt was in the nextstreet 'sending kind,unpractical messages,' dropping in to see them in the evenings.
When in London on a former occasion, Carlyle became acquainted with John Stuart Mill, and the intimacy was kept alive by correspondence to and from Craigenputtock. It was through Mill's letters that Carlyle's thoughts were turned towards the French Revolution. When he returned to London, Mill was very useful to him, lending him a fine collection of books on that subject. Mill's evenings in Cheyne Row were 'sensibly agreeable for most part,' remarks Carlyle. 'Talk rather wintry ("sawdustish," as old Sterling once called it), but always well-informed and sincere.' Carlyle was making rapid progress with the first volume of hisFrench Revolution. Stern necessity gave a spurt to his pen, for in February 1835 he notes that 'some twenty-three months' had passed since he earned a single penny by the 'craft of literature.' The volume was completed and he lent the only copy to Mill. The MS. was unfortunately burnt by a servant-maid. 'How well do I still remember,' writes Carlyle in hisReminiscences, 'that night when he came to tell us, pale as Hector's ghost.... It was likehalfsentence of death to us both, and we had to pretend to take it lightly, so dismal and ghastly washishorror at it, and try to talk of other matters. He stayed three mortal hours or so; his departure quite a relief to us. Oh, the burst of sympathy my poor darling then gaveme, flinging her arms round my neck, and openly lamenting, condoling, and encouraging like a nobler second self! Under heaven is nothing beautifuller. We sat talking till late; 'shallbe written again,' my fixed word and resolution to her. Which proved to be such a task as I never tried before or since. I wrote out "Feast of Pikes" (Vol. II.), and then went at it. Found it fairlyimpossiblefor about a fortnight; passed three weeks (reading Marryat's novels), tried, cautious-cautiously, as on ice paper-thin, once more; and in short had a job more like breaking my heart than any other in my experience. Jeannie, alone of beings, burnt like a steady lamp beside me. I forget how much of money we still had. I think there was at first something like £300, perhaps £280, to front London with. Nor can I in the least remember where we had gathered such a sum, except that it was our own, no part of it borrowed orgiven usby anybody. "Fit to last tillFrench Revolutionis ready!" and she had no misgivings at all. Mill was penitently liberal; sent me £200 (in a day or two), of which I kept £100 (actual cost of house while I had written burnt volume); upon which he bought me "Biographie Universelle," which I got bound, and still have. Wish I could find a way of getting the now much macerated, changed, and fanaticised John Stuart Mill to take that £100 back; but I fear there is no way.'[15]
Carlyle went diligently to work at theFrench Revolution. Some conviction he had that the book was worth something. Once or twice among the flood of equipages at Hyde Park Corner, when taking his afternoon stroll, he thought to himself, 'Perhaps none ofyoucould do what I am at!' But generally his feeling was, 'I will finish this book, throw it at your feet, buy a rifle and spade, and withdraw to the Transatlantic Wildernesses, far from human beggaries and basenesses!' 'This,' he says, 'had a kind of comfort to me; yet I always knew too, in the background, that this would not practically do. In short, my nervous system had got dreadfully irritated and inflamed before I quite ended, and my desire wasintense, beyond words, to have done with it.' Then he adds: 'Thelastparagraph I well remember writing upstairs in the drawing-room that now is, which was then my writing-room; besideherthere in a grey evening (summer, I suppose), soon after tea (perhaps); and thereupon, with her dear blessing on me, going out to walk. I had said before going out, "What they will do with this book, none knows, my Jeannie, lass; but they have not had, for a two hundred years, any book that came more truly from a man's very heart, and so let them trample it under foot and hoof astheysee best!" "Pooh, pooh! they cannot trample that!" she would cheerily answer; for her own approval (I think she had read always regularly behind me) especially in Vol. III., was strong anddecided.' Mrs Carlyle was right. No critic or clique of critics could trample theFrench Revolution.
A month before the completion of the first book of theFrench Revolution, Carlyle wrote in his journal: 'My first friend Edward Irving is dead. I am friendless here or as good as that.' In a week or two thereafter he met Southey, whom he describes as a 'lean, grey-white-headed man of dusky complexion, unexpectedly tall when he rises and still leaner then—the shallowest chin, prominent snubbed Roman nose, small carelined brow, huge brush of white-grey-hair on high crown and projecting on all sides, the most vehement pair of faint hazel eyes I have ever seen—a well-read, honest, limited (straitlaced even), kindly-hearted, most irritable man. We parted kindly, with no great purpose on either side, I imagine, to meet again.'[16]Later on Carlyle admits to his brother John that his prospects in London were not brightening; which fact left him gloomy and morose.
During his enforced leisure after the destruction of the first book of theFrench Revolution, Carlyle saw more of his friends, among whom he numbered John Sterling, fresh from Cambridge and newly ordained a clergyman. Sterling was of a 'vehement but most noble nature,' and he was one of the few who had studiedSartor Resartusseriously. He had been also caught by the Radical epidemic on the spiritual side.Although dissenting from much of what Carlyle taught, Sterling recognised in him 'a man not only brilliantly gifted, but differing from the common run of people in this, that he would not lie, that he would not equivocate, that he would say always what he actually thought, careless whether he pleased or offended.' He introduced Carlyle to his father, who was then the 'guiding genius' of theTimes, and who offered Carlyle work there on the usual conditions. 'Carlyle,' says Froude, 'though with poverty at his door, and entire penury visible in the near future, turned away from a proposal which might have tempted men who had less excuse for yielding to it. He was already the sworn soldier of another chief. His allegiance from first to last was totruth, truth as it presented itself to his own intellect and his own conscience.'
On the 16th of February 1835 Carlyle wrote to his brother John: 'I positively do not care that periodical literature shuts her fist against me in these months. Let her keep it shut for ever, and go to the devil, which she mostly belongs to. The matter had better be brought to a crisis. There is perhaps a finger of Providence in it.... My only new scheme, since last letter, is a hypothesis—little more yet—about National Education. The newspapers had an advertisement about a Glasgow "Educational Association" which wants a man that would found a Normal School, first going over England and into Germany to get light onthat matter. I wrote to that Glasgow Association afar off, enquiring who they were, what manner of man they expected, testifying myself very friendly to their project, and so forth—no answer as yet. It is likely they will want, as Jane says, a "Chalmers and Welsh" kind of character, in which caseVa ben, felice notte. If otherwise, and they (almost by miracle) had the heart, I am the man for them. Perhaps my name is so heterodox in that circle, I shall not hear at all.'[17]Carlyle also remarks, in the same letter, that John Stuart Mill is very friendly: 'He is the nearest approach to a real man that I find here—nay, as far as negativeness goes, heisthat man, but unhappily not very satisfactory much farther.'
Not long thereafter Carlyle met Wordsworth. 'I did not expect much,' he said in a letter, 'but got mostly what I expected. The old man has a fine shrewdness and naturalness in his expression of face, a long Cumberland figure; one finds also a kind ofsincerityin his speech. But for prolixity, thinness, endless dilution, it excels all the other speech I had heard from mortals. A genuine man, which is much, but also essentially a small, genuine man.'
Early in October 1835 Carlyle started for his old home. His mother-in-law had arrived on a visit at Cheyne Row, and remained there with her daughter during Carlyle's absence in Scotland. He returnedimproved in health and spirits. Nothing came of the National Education scheme. Carlyle was not a person to push himself into notice, remarks Froude; and his friends did not exert themselves for him, or they tried and failed; 'governments, in fact, do not look out for servants among men who are speculating about the nature of the Universe. Then, as always, the doors leading into regular employment remained closed.' Shortly after his return from the North, he was offered the editorship of a newspaper at Lichfield. This was unaccepted for the same reason that weighed with him when he refused a post on theTimes. In the following summer money matters had become so pressing that Carlyle wrote the article on Mirabeau, now printed among theMiscellanies, for Mill's review, which brought him £50. Mrs Carlyle's health began to suffer, and a visit to Annandale became imperative. She returned 'mended in spirits.' Writing of her arrival in London, she said: 'I had my luggage put on the backs of two porters, and walked on to Cheapside, when I presently found a Chelsea omnibus. By-and-bye the omnibus stopped, and amid cries of "No room, sir; can't get in," Carlyle's face, beautifully set off by a broad-brimmed white hat, gazed in at the door like the peri "who, at the gate of heaven, stood disconsolate." In hurrying along the Strand, his eye had lighted on my trunk packed on the top of the omnibus, and had recognised it. This seems to me one of themost indubitable proofs of genius which he ever manifested.'
On the 22nd of January 1837 Carlyle wrote to his mother: 'The book [French Revolution] is actually done; all written to the last line; and now, after much higgling and maffling, the printers have got fairly afloat, and we are to go on with the wind and the sea.' But no money could be expected from the book for a considerable time. Meanwhile, Miss Harriet Martineau (who had introduced herself into Cheyne Row), and Miss Wilson, another accomplished friend, thought that Carlyle should begin a course of lectures in London, and thereby raise a little money. Carlyle, it seems, gave 'a grumbling consent.' Nothing daunted, the ladies found two hundred persons ready each to subscribe a guinea to hear a course of lectures from him. The end of it was that he delivered six discourses on German literature, which were 'excellent in themselves, and delivered with strange impressiveness,' and £135 went into his purse.
In the summer theFrench Revolutionappeared. The sale at first was slow, almost nothing, for it was not 'subscribed for' among the booksellers. Alluding to the criticisms which appeared, Carlyle said: 'Some condemn me, as is very natural, for affectation; others are hearty, even passionate, in their estimation; on the whole, it strikes me as not unlikely that the book may take some hold of the English people, and do themand itself a little good.' He was right. Other historians have described the Revolution: Carlyle reproduces the Revolution. He approaches history like a dramatist. Give him, as in the French Revolution, a weird, tragic, awe-inspiring theme, and he will utilise his characters, scenes, and circumstances in artistic subordination to the central idea. Carlyle might be called a subjective dramatist—that is to say, his own spirit, thoughts, and reflections get so mixed up with the history that it is difficult to imagine the one without the other. Every now and then the dramatist interrupts the tragedy to interject his own reflections; in the history the Carlylean philosophy plays the part of a Greek chorus. As an example of Carlyle's genius for a dramatic situation, take his opening of the great drama with the death scene of Louis XV. Who does not feel, in reading that scene, as if the Furies were not far off? who does not detect in the grotesque jostling of the comedy and tragedy of life premonitions of the coming storm?
'But figure his thought, when Death is now clutching at his own heart-strings; unlooked for, inexorable! Yes, poor Louis, Death has found thee. No palace walls or lifeguards, gorgeous tapestries or gilt buckram of stiffest ceremonial could keep him out; but he is here, here at thy very life-breath, and will extinguish it. Thou, whose whole existence hitherto was a chimera and scenic show, at length becomest a reality; sumptuousVersailles bursts asunder, like a dream, into void Immensity: Time is done, and all the scaffolding of Time falls wrecked with hideous clangour round thy soul: the pale Kingdoms yawn open; there must thou enter, naked, all unking'd, and await what is appointed thee!... There are nods and sagacious glances, go-betweens, silk dowagers mysteriously gliding, with smiles for this constellation, sighs for that: there is tremor, of hope or desperation, in several hearts. There is the pale, grinning Shadow of Death, ceremoniously ushered along by another grinning Shadow, of Etiquette; at intervals the growl of Chapel Organs, like prayer by machinery; proclaiming, as in a kind of horrid diabolic horse-laughter,Vanity of vanities, all is Vanity!'
At every stage in the narrative, the reader is impressed with the dramatic texture of Carlyle's mind. No dramatic writer surpasses him in the art of producing effects by contrasts. In the midst of a vigorous description of the storming of the Bastille, he rings down the curtain for a moment in order to introduce the following scene of idyllic beauty: 'O evening sun of July, how, at this hour, thy beams fall slant on reapers amid peaceful woody fields; on old women spinning in cottages; on ships far out in the silent main; on Balls at the Orangerie of Versailles, where high-rouged Dames of the Palace are even now dancing with double-jacketed Hussar officers;—andalso on this roaring Hell-porch of a Hotel-de-Ville!'
Equally effective is Carlyle in rendering vivid the doings of the individual actors in the drama. For photographic minuteness and startling realism what can equal the following:—'But see Camille Desmoulins, from the Café de Foy, rushing out, sibylline in face; his hair streaming, in each hand a pistol! He springs to a table: the police satellites are eyeing him; alive they shall not take him, not they alive him alive. This time he speaks without stammering:—Friends! shall we die like hunted hares? Like sheep hounded into their pinfold; bleating for mercy, where is no mercy, but only a whetted knife? The hour is come, the supreme hour of Frenchman and Man; when Oppressors are to try conclusions with Oppressed; and the word is, swift Death, or Deliverance forever. Let such hour bewell-come! Us, meseems, one cry only befits: To Arms! Let universal Paris, universal France, as with the throat of the whirlwind, sound only: To arms!—"To arms!" yell responsive the innumerable voices; like one great voice, as of a Demon yelling from the air: for all faces wax fire-eyed, all hearts burn up into madness. In such, or fitter words does Camille evoke the Elemental Powers, in this great moment—"Friends," continues Camille, "some rallying-sign! Cockades; green ones—the colour of Hope!"—As with the flight of locusts,these green tree-leaves; green ribands from the neighbouring shops: all green things are snatched, and made cockades of. Camille descends from his table; "stifled with embraces, wetted with tears;" has a bit of green riband handed him; sticks it in his hat. And now to Curtius' Image-shop there; to the Boulevards; to the four winds, and rest not till France be on fire!'
As a historical work, theFrench Revolutionis unique. It is precisely the kind of book Isaiah would have written had there been a like Revolution in the Jewish kingdom; and just as we go to Isaiah, not for sociological guidance, but for ethical inspiration, so we turn to theFrench Revolutionwhen the mind and heart are in a state of torpor in order to get a series of shocks from the Carlylean electric battery. From a historian a student expects light as well as heat, guidance as well as inspiration. It is not enough to have the great French explosion vividly photographed before his eyes; it is equally necessary to know the causes which led to the catastrophe. Here, as a historian, Carlyle is conspicuously weak. His habit of looking for dramatic situations, his passion for making commonplace incidents and commonplace men merely the satellites of commanding personalities, in a word, his theory that history should deal with the doings of great men, prevents Carlyle from dwelling upon the politico-economic side of national life. So absorbed is he in painting the Revolution, that he forgets to explainthe Revolution. We have abundance of vague declamations against shams in high places, plenty of talk about God's judgments, in the style of the Hebrew prophets, but of patient diagnosis, there is none. As Mr Morley puts it in his luminous essay on Carlyle: 'To the question whether mankind gained or lost by the French Revolution, Carlyle nowhere gives a clear answer; indeed, on this subject more than any other, he clings closely to his favourite method of simple presentation, streaked with dramatic irony.... He draws its general moral lesson from the Revolution, and with clangorous note warns all whom it concerns from King to Church that imposture must come to an end. But for the precise amount and kind of dissolution which the West owes to it, for the political meaning of it, as distinguished from its moral or its dramatic significance, we seek in vain, finding no word on the subject, nor even evidence of consciousness that such word is needed.' Had Carlyle, in addition to his genius as a historical dramatist, possessed the patient diagnosing power of the writers and thinkers whom he derided, hisFrench Revolutionwould have taken its place in historical literature as an epoch-making book. As it stands, the reader who desires to have an intelligible knowledge of the subject, is compelled to shake himself free of the Carlylean mesmerism, and have recourse to those writers whom Carlyle, under the opprobrious names of 'logic-choppers' and 'dry-as-dusts,' held up to public ridicule.
Carlyle was so broken down with his efforts upon theFrench Revolutionthat 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 lookedfor. 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 £300 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 thatthe eighth edition of theFrench Revolutionwas 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 theLondon 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 theReview. 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'sLife, theReminiscences, andLetters 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 £200.
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 frightfulissues. 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 whichhuman life, such a life ashumanbeings 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, asWilhelm Meisterwas 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 leastthe 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 yearChartismwas 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 productiveof 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 entitledHeroes and Hero Worship. He tells his mother (May 26, 1840): 'The lecturing business went off with sufficientéclat. The course was generally judged, and I rather join therein myself, to be the badbestI have yet given. On the last day—Friday last—I went to speak of Cromwell with a headfull 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 wasCromwell. 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 littlebetter, 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 isa 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, andthe 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 thoughtsthey 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 landall 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 wasPast 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, whenCromwellwas 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 ofCromwellwas coming definitely in sight. In his journal under date August 26th, is to be found this entry: 'I have this momentendedOliver; 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. Iamto 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 returnCromwellwas 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 theNationnewspaper saw him in London in consequence of what he had written inChartismabout 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, wherehe 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 sogoodand 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 £1500, I think, is what has accumulated in the bank. Of fixed income (from Craigenputtock) £150 a year. Perhaps as much from my books may lie fixed amid the huge fluctuation (last year, for instance, it was £800: the year before, £100; the year before that, about £700; this year, again, it is like to be £100; the next perhaps nothing—very fluctuating indeed)—some£300 in all, and that amply suffices me. For my wife is the best of housewives; noble, too, in reference to the property, which ishers, 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;impossibility of Government doing more than keep the peace; suicidal distraction of new FrenchRepublic, 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 arenearhim, marks of that age; clear, strong blue eyes which kindle on occasion, voice extremely good, low-toned, something ofcooingin 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 ofdiplomaticreserve. On the contrary, a vein of mildfunin 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 toSunday 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 ofChartism, 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 theExaminerand theSpectator, 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 alllodged 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 Republiccannonadedby General Cavaignac; a sad outlook there.'[22]
Carlyle'sCromwellhad 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 £25,000 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 aswell 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 Carlylehad 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'sInfernowas 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-feelingwith 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 unexpectedHimmelsendungfinished 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 theLatter-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 powerfulenoughto have discharged with his single voice the vast volume of conventional electricity with which thecollective 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 thePamphletscommenced at the beginning of 1850, and went on month after month, each separately published, no magazine daring to become responsible for them. When thePamphletsappeared, 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'squiet talk across the table, unimportant, distinguished by its sense of the ludicrous shining through a strong officialrationalityand even seriousness of temper. Distractedaddressof 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 invitationto 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 thePamphlets, and the 'shrieking tone was considerably modified.' 'A review of them,' says Froude, 'by Masson in theNorth Britishdistinctly pleased Carlyle. A review in theDublinhe 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 theLife 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 August30, 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 formerselfstill 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 yetfrozenwithin 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 poorworldlinessestoo. 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 amsad; and surely he has deserved gratitude in these last years from us all.'[28]