by Lyndon Orr
THE STORY OF THE CARLYLES
To most persons, Tennyson was a remote and romantic figure. His homes inthe Isle of Wight and at Aldworth had a dignified seclusion about themwhich was very appropriate to so great a poet, and invested him with acertain awe through which the multitude rarely penetrated. As a matterof fact, however, he was an excellent companion, a ready talker, andgifted with so much wit that it is a pity that more of his sayings havenot been preserved to us.
One of the best known is that which was drawn from him after he and anumber of friends had been spending an hour in company with Mr. and Mrs.Carlyle. The two Carlyles were unfortunately at their worst, and gave asuperb specimen of domestic "nagging." Each caught up whatever the othersaid, and either turned it into ridicule, or tried to make the author ofit an object of contempt.
This was, of course, exceedingly uncomfortable for such strangers aswere present, and it certainly gave no pleasure to their friends. Onleaving the house, some one said to Tennyson:
"Isn't it a pity that such a couple ever married?"
"No, no," said Tennyson, with a sort of smile under his rough beard."It's much better that two people should be made unhappy than four."
The world has pretty nearly come around to the verdict of the poetlaureate. It is not probable that Thomas Carlyle would have made anywoman happy as his wife, or that Jane Baillie Welsh would have made anyman happy as her husband.
This sort of speculation would never have occurred had not Mr. Froude,in the early eighties, given his story about the Carlyles to the world.Carlyle went to his grave, an old man, highly honored, and with notrail of gossip behind him. His wife had died some sixteen years before,leaving a brilliant memory. The books of Mr. Froude seemed for a momentto have desecrated the grave, and to have shed a sudden and sinisterlight upon those who could not make the least defense for themselves.
For a moment, Carlyle seemed to have been a monster of harshness,cruelty, and almost brutish feeling. On the other side, his wife tookon the color of an evil-speaking, evil-thinking shrew, who tormented thelife of her husband, and allowed herself to be possessed by some demonof unrest and discontent, such as few women of her station are everknown to suffer from.
Nor was it merely that the two were apparently ill-mated and unhappywith each other. There were hints and innuendos which looked toward somehidden cause for this unhappiness, and which aroused the curiosity ofevery one. That they might be clearer, Froude afterward wrote a book,bringing out more plainly--indeed, too plainly--his explanation of theCarlyle family skeleton. A multitude of documents then came from everyquarter, and from almost every one who had known either of the Carlyles.Perhaps the result to-day has been more injurious to Froude than to thetwo Carlyles.
Many persons unjustly speak of Froude as having violated the confidenceof his friends in publishing the letters of Mr. and Mrs. Carlyle. Theytake no heed of the fact that in doing this he was obeying Carlyle'sexpress wishes, left behind in writing, and often urged on Froude whileCarlyle was still alive. Whether or not Froude ought to have acceptedsuch a trust, one may perhaps hesitate to decide. That he did so isprobably because he felt that if he refused, Carlyle might commit thesame duty to another, who would discharge it with less delicacy and lessdiscretion.
As it is, the blame, if it rests upon any one, should rest upon Carlyle.He collected the letters. He wrote the lines which burn and scorch withself-reproach. It is he who pressed upon the reluctant Froude the dutyof printing and publishing a series of documents which, for the mostpart, should never have been published at all, and which have done equalharm to Carlyle, to his wife, and to Froude himself.
Now that everything has been written that is likely to be written bythose claiming to possess personal knowledge of the subject, let ustake up the volumes, and likewise the scattered fragments, and seek topenetrate the mystery of the most ill-assorted couple known to modernliterature.
It is not necessary to bring to light, and in regular order, theexternal history of Thomas Carlyle, or of Jane Baillie Welsh, whomarried him. There is an extraordinary amount of rather fanciful gossipabout this marriage, and about the three persons who had to do with it.
Take first the principal figure, Thomas Carlyle. His life until thattime had been a good deal more than the life of an ordinary country-man.Many persons represent him as a peasant; but he was descended from theancient lords of a Scottish manor. There was something in his eye, andin the dominance of his nature, that made his lordly nature felt. Mr.Froude notes that Carlyle's hand was very small and unusually wellshaped. Nor had his earliest appearance as a young man been commonplace,in spite of the fact that his parents were illiterate, so that hismother learned to read only after her sons had gone away to Edinburgh,in order that she might be able to enjoy their letters.
At that time in Scotland, as in Puritan New England, in each family theson who had the most notable "pairts" was sent to the university thathe might become a clergyman. If there were a second son, he became anadvocate or a doctor of medicine, while the sons of less distinctionseldom went beyond the parish school, but settled down as farmers,horse-dealers, or whatever might happen to come their way.
In the case of Thomas Carlyle, nature marked him out for somethingbrilliant, whatever that might be. His quick sensibility, the way inwhich he acquired every sort of learning, his command of logic, and,withal, his swift, unerring gift of language, made it certain from thevery first that he must be sent to the university as soon as he hadfinished school, and could afford to go.
At Edinburgh, where he matriculated in his fourteenth year, heastonished every one by the enormous extent of his reading, and bythe firm hold he kept upon it. One hesitates to credit these so-calledreminiscences which tell how he absorbed mountains of Greek and immensequantities of political economy and history and sociology and variousforms of metaphysics, as every Scotsman is bound to do. That he read allnight is a common story told of many a Scottish lad at college. We maybelieve, however, that Carlyle studied and read as most of his fellowstudents did, but far beyond them, in extent.
When he had completed about half of his divinity course, he assuredhimself that he was not intended for the life of a clergyman. One whoreads his mocking sayings, or what seemed to be a clever string of jeersdirected against religion, might well think that Carlyle was throughouthis life an atheist, or an agnostic. He confessed to Irving that he didnot believe in the Christian religion, and it was vain to hope that heever would so believe.
Moreover, Carlyle had done something which was unusual at that time.He had taught in several local schools; but presently he came back toEdinburgh and openly made literature his profession. It was a daringthing to do; but Carlyle had unbounded confidence in himself--theconfidence of a giant, striding forth into a forest, certain that he canmake his way by sheer strength through the tangled meshes and theknotty branches that he knows will meet him and try to beat him back.Furthermore, he knew how to live on very little; he was unmarried; andhe felt a certain ardor which beseemed his age and gifts.
Through the kindness of friends, he received some commissions to writein various books of reference; and in 1824, when he was twenty-nineyears of age, he published a translation of Legendre's Geometry. In thesame year he published, in the London Magazine, his Life of Schiller,and also his translation of Goethe's Wilhelm Meister. This successfulattack upon the London periodicals and reviews led to a certaincomplication with the other two characters in this story. It takes us toJane Welsh, and also to Edward Irving.
Irving was three years older than Carlyle. The two men were friends, andboth of them had been teaching in country schools, where both of themhad come to know Miss Welsh. Irving's seniority gave him a certainprestige with the younger men, and naturally with Miss Welsh. He hadwon honors at the university, and now, as assistant to the famous Dr.Chalmers, he carried his silk robes in the jaunty fashion of one who hasjust ceased to be an undergraduate. While studying, he met Miss Welsh atHaddington, and there became her private instructor.<
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This girl was regarded in her native town as something of a personage.To read what has been written of her, one might suppose that she wasalmost a miracle of birth and breeding, and of intellect as well. As amatter of fact, in the little town of Haddington she was simply primainter pares. Her father was the local doctor, and while she had acomfortable home, and doubtless a chaise at her disposal, she wasvery far from the "opulence" which Carlyle, looking up at her from hislowlier surroundings, was accustomed to ascribe to her. She was, nodoubt, a very clever girl; and, judging from the portraits taken of herat about this time, she was an exceedingly pretty one, with beautifuleyes and an abundance of dark glossy hair.
Even then, however, Miss Welsh had traits which might have made itcertain that she would be much more agreeable as a friend than as awife. She had become an intellectuelle quite prematurely--at an age, infact, when she might better have been thinking of other things than theinwardness of her soul, or the folly of religious belief.
Even as a young girl, she was beset by a desire to criticize and toridicule almost everything and every one that she encountered. It wasonly when she met with something that she could not understand, orsome one who could do what she could not, that she became comparativelyhumble. Unconsciously, her chief ambition was to be herselfdistinguished, and to marry some one who could be more distinguishedstill.
When she first met Edward Irving, she looked up to him as her superiorin many ways. He was a striking figure in her small world. He was knownin Edinburgh as likely to be a man of mark; and, of course, he had hada careful training in many subjects of which she, as yet, knew verylittle. Therefore, insensibly, she fell into a sort of admirationfor Irving--an admiration which might have been transmuted into love.Irving, on his side, was taken by the young girl's beauty, her vivacity,and the keenness of her intellect. That he did not at once become hersuitor is probably due to the fact that he had already engaged himselfto a Miss Martin, of whom not much is known.
It was about this time, however, that Carlyle became acquainted withMiss Welsh. His abundant knowledge, his original and striking manner ofcommenting on it, his almost gigantic intellectual power, came to heras a revelation. Her studies with Irving were now interwoven with heradmiration for Carlyle.
Since Irving was a clergyman, and Miss Welsh had not the slightestbelief in any form of theology, there was comparatively little thatthey had in common. On the other hand, when she saw the profundities ofCarlyle, she at once half feared, and was half fascinated. Let her speakto him on any subject, and he would at once thunder forth some strikingtruth, or it might be some puzzling paradox; but what he said couldnever fail to interest her and to make her think. He had, too, aninfinite sense of humor, often whimsical and shot through with sarcasm.
It is no wonder that Miss Welsh was more and more infatuated with thenature of Carlyle. If it was her conscious wish to marry a man whom shecould reverence as a master, where should she find him--in Irving or inCarlyle?
Irving was a dreamer, a man who, she came to see, was thoroughlyone-sided, and whose interests lay in a different sphere from hers.Carlyle, on the other hand, had already reached out beyond the littleScottish capital, and had made his mark in the great world of London,where men like De Quincey and Jeffrey thought it worth their while torun a tilt with him. Then, too, there was the fascination of his talk,in which Jane Welsh found a perpetual source of interest:
The English have never had an artist, except in poetry; no musician; nopainter. Purcell and Hogarth are not exceptions, or only such as confirmthe rule.
Is the true Scotchman the peasant and yeoman--chiefly the former?
Every living man is a visible mystery; he walks between two eternitiesand two infinitudes. Were we not blind as molea we should valueour humanity at infinity, and our rank, influence and so forth--thetrappings of our humanity--at nothing. Say I am a man, and you say all.Whether king or tinker is a mere appendix.
Understanding is to reason as the talent of a beaver--which can buildhouses, and uses its tail for a trowel--to the genius of a prophet andpoet. Reason is all but extinct in this age; it can never be altogetherextinguished.
The devil has his elect.
Is anything more wonderful than another, if you consider it maturely?I have seen no men rise from the dead; I have seen some thousands risefrom nothing. I have not force to fly into the sun, but I have force tolift my hand, which is equally strange.
Is not every thought properly an inspiration? Or how is one thing moreinspired than another?
Examine by logic the import of thy life, and of all lives. What is it?A making of meal into manure, and of manure into meal. To the cui bonothere is no answer from logic.
In many ways Jane Welsh found the difference of range between Carlyleand Irving. At one time, she asked Irving about some German works, andhe was obliged to send her to Carlyle to solve her difficulties. Carlyleknew German almost as well as if he had been born in Dresden; andthe full and almost overflowing way in which he answered her gave heranother impression of his potency. Thus she weighed the two men whomight become her lovers, and little by little she came to think ofIrving as partly shallow and partly narrow-minded, while Carlyle loomedup more of a giant than before.
It is not probable that she was a woman who could love profoundly.She thought too much about herself. She was too critical. She had toointense an ambition for "showing off." I can imagine that in the endshe made her choice quite coolly. She was flattered by Carlyle's strongpreference for her. She was perhaps repelled by Irving's engagement toanother woman; yet at the time few persons thought that she had chosenwell.
Irving had now gone to London, and had become the pastor of theCaledonian chapel in Hatton Garden. Within a year, by the extraordinarypower of his eloquence, which, was in a style peculiar to himself, hehad transformed an obscure little chapel into one which was crowdedby the rich and fashionable. His congregation built for him a handsomeedifice on Regent Square, and he became the leader of a new cult, whichlooked to a second personal advent of Christ. He cared nothing forthe charges of heresy which were brought against him; and when he wasdeposed his congregation followed him, and developed a new Christianorder, known as Irvingism.
Jane Welsh, in her musings, might rightfully have compared the two menand the future which each could give her. Did she marry Irving, she wascertain of a life of ease in London, and an association with men andwomen of fashion and celebrity, among whom she could show herself to bethe gifted woman that she was. Did she marry Carlyle, she must go withhim to a desolate, wind-beaten cottage, far away from any of the thingsshe cared for, working almost as a housemaid, having no company savethat of her husband, who was already a dyspeptic, and who was wont tospeak of feeling as if a rat were tearing out his stomach.
Who would have said that in going with Carlyle she had made the betterchoice? Any one would have said it who knew the three--Irving, Carlyle,and Jane Welsh.
She had the penetration to be certain that whatever Irving might possessat present, it would be nothing in comparison to what Carlyle would havein the coming future. She understood the limitations of Irving, but toher keen mind the genius of Carlyle was unlimited; and she foresaw that,after he had toiled and striven, he would come into his great reward,which she would share. Irving might be the leader of a petty sect,but Carlyle would be a man whose name must become known throughout theworld.
And so, in 1826, she had made her choice, and had become the bride ofthe rough-spoken, domineering Scotsman who had to face the world withnothing but his creative brain and his stubborn independence. She hadput aside all immediate thought of London and its lures; she was goingto cast in her lot with Carlyle's, largely as a matter of calculation,and believing that she had made the better choice.
She was twenty-six and Carlyle was thirty-two when, after a briefresidence in Edinburgh, they went down to Craigenputtock. Froude hasdescribed this place as the dreariest spot in the British dominions:
The nearest cottage is more than a mile fr
om it; the elevation, sevenhundred feet above the sea, stunts the trees and limits the gardenproduce; the house is gaunt and hungry-looking. It stands, with thescanty fields attached, as an island in a sea of morass. The landscapeis unredeemed by grace or grandeur--mere undulating hills of grass andheather, with peat bogs in the hollows between them.
Froude's grim description has been questioned by some; yet the actualpictures that have been drawn of the place in later years make itlook bare, desolate, and uninviting. Mrs. Carlyle, who owned it as aninheritance from her father, saw the place for the first time in March,1828. She settled there in May; but May, in the Scottish hills, isalmost as repellent as winter. She herself shrank from the adventurewhich she had proposed. It was her husband's notion, and her own, thatthey should live there in practical solitude. He was to think and write,and make for himself a beginning of real fame; while she was to hoverover him and watch his minor comforts.
It seemed to many of their friends that the project was quixotic to adegree. Mrs. Carlyle delicate health, her weak chest, and the beginningof a nervous disorder, made them think that she was unfit to dwell inso wild and bleak a solitude. They felt, too, that Carlyle was toomuch absorbed with his own thought to be trusted with the charge of ahigh-spirited woman.
However, the decision had been made, and the newly married couple wentto Craigenputtock, with wagons that carried their household goods andthose of Carlyle's brother, Alexander, who lived in a cottage near by.These were the two redeeming features of their lonely home--the presenceof Alexander Carlyle, and the fact that, although they had no servantsin the ordinary sense, there were several farmhands and a dairy-maid.
Before long there came a period of trouble, which is easily explainedby what has been already said. Carlyle, thinking and writing some ofthe most beautiful things that he ever thought or wrote, could not makeallowance for his wife's high spirit and physical weakness. She, on herside--nervous, fitful, and hard to please--thought herself a slave,the servant of a harsh and brutal master. She screamed at him when hernerves were too unstrung; and then, with a natural reaction, she calledherself "a devil who could never be good enough for him." But most ofher letters were harsh and filled with bitterness, and, no doubt, hisconduct to her was at times no better than her own.
But it was at Craigenputtock that he really did lay fast and firm theroad to fame. His wife's sharp tongue, and the gnawings of his owndyspepsia, were lived down with true Scottish grimness. It was here thathe wrote some of his most penetrating and sympathetic essays, which werepublished by the leading reviews of England and Scotland. Here, too, hebegan to teach his countrymen the value of German literature.
The most remarkable of his productions was that strange work entitledSartor Resartus (1834), an extraordinary mixture of the sublime and thegrotesque. The book quivers and shakes with tragic pathos, with inwardagonies, with solemn aspirations, and with riotous humor.
In 1834, after six years at Craigenputtock, the Carlyles moved toLondon, and took up their home in Cheyne Row, Chelsea, a far fromfashionable retreat, but one in which the comforts of life could be morereadily secured. It was there that Thomas Carlyle wrote what mustseem to us the most vivid of all his books, the History of the FrenchRevolution. For this he had read and thought for many years; parts ofit he had written in essays, and parts of it he had jotted down injournals. But now it came forth, as some one has said, "a truth clad inhell-fire," swirling amid clouds and flames and mist, a most wonderfulpicture of the accumulated social and political falsehoods whichpreceded the revolution, and which were swept away by a nemesis that wasthe righteous judgment of God.
Carlyle never wrote so great a book as this. He had reached his middlestyle, having passed the clarity of his early writings, and not havingyet reached the thunderous, strange-mouthed German expletives whichmarred his later work. In the French Revolution he bursts forth, hereand there, into furious Gallic oaths and Gargantuan epithets; yet thisapocalypse of France seems more true than his hero-worshiping of oldFrederick of Prussia, or even of English Cromwell.
All these days Thomas Carlyle lived a life which was partly oneof seclusion and partly one of pleasure. At all times he and hisdark-haired wife had their own sets, and mingled with their own friends.Jane had no means of discovering just whether she would have beenhappier with Irving; for Irving died while she was still diggingpotatoes and complaining of her lot at Craigenputtock.
However this may be, the Carlyles, man and wife, lived an existence thatwas full of unhappiness and rancor. Jane Carlyle became an invalid, andsought to allay her nervous sufferings with strong tea and tobacco andmorphin. When a nervous woman takes to morphin, it almost always meansthat she becomes intensely jealous; and so it was with Jane Carlyle.
A shivering, palpitating, fiercely loyal bit of humanity, she took itinto her head that her husband was infatuated with Lady Ashburton, orthat Lady Ashburton was infatuated with him. She took to spying on them,and at times, when her nerves were all a jangle, she would lie backin her armchair and yell with paroxysms of anger. On the other hand,Carlyle, eager to enjoy the world, sought relief from his householdcares, and sometimes stole away after a fashion that was hardlyguileless. He would leave false addresses at his house, and would dineat other places than he had announced.
In 1866 Jane Carlyle suddenly died; and somehow, then, the conscienceof Thomas Carlyle became convinced that he had wronged the woman whom hehad really loved. His last fifteen years were spent in wretchedness anddespair. He felt that he had committed the unpardonable sin. He recalledwith anguish every moment of their early life at Craigenputtock--how shehad toiled for him, and waited upon him, and made herself a slave;and how, later, she had given herself up entirely to him, while he hadthoughtlessly received the sacrifice, and trampled on it as on a bed offlowers.
Of course, in all this he was intensely morbid, and the diary which hewrote was no more sane and wholesome than the screamings with which hiswife had horrified her friends. But when he had grown to be a very oldman, he came to feel that this was all a sort of penance, and that theselfishness of his past must be expiated in the future. Therefore, hegave his diary to his friend, the historian, Froude, and urged him topublish the letters and memorials of Jane Welsh Carlyle. Mr. Froude,with an eye to the reading world, readily did so, furnishing them withabundant footnotes, which made Carlyle appear to the world as more orless of a monster.
First, there was set forth the almost continual unhappiness of the pair.In the second place, by hint, by innuendo, and sometimes by explicitstatement, there were given reasons to show why Carlyle made his wifeunhappy. Of course, his gnawing dyspepsia, which she strove with all hermight to drive away, was one of the first and greatest causes. But againanother cause of discontent was stated in the implication that Carlyle,in his bursts of temper, actually abused his wife. In one passage thereis a hint that certain blue marks upon her arm were bruises, the resultof blows.
Most remarkable of all these accusations is that which has to do withthe relations of Carlyle and Lady Ashburton. There is no doubt that JaneCarlyle disliked this brilliant woman, and came to have dark suspicionsconcerning her. At first, it was only a sort of social jealousy. LadyAshburton was quite as clever a talker as Mrs. Carlyle, and she had aprestige which brought her more admiration.
Then, by degrees, as Jane Carlyle's mind began to wane, she transferredher jealousy to her husband himself. She hated to be out-shone, andnow, in some misguided fashion, it came into her head that Carlyle hadsurrendered to Lady Ashburton his own attention to his wife, and hadfallen in love with her brilliant rival.
On one occasion, she declared that Lady Ashburton had thrown herself atCarlyle's feet, but that Carlyle had acted like a man of honor, whileLord Ashburton, knowing all the facts, had passed them over, and hadretained his friendship with Carlyle.
Now, when Froude came to write My Relations with Carlyle, there werethose who were very eager to furnish him with every sort of gossip.The greatest source of scandal upon which he drew was a
woman namedGeraldine Jewsbury, a curious neurotic creature, who had seen much ofthe late Mrs. Carlyle, but who had an almost morbid love of offensivetattle. Froude describes himself as a witness for six years, at CheyneRow, "of the enactment of a tragedy as stern and real as the story ofOedipus." According to his own account:
I stood by, consenting to the slow martyrdom of a woman whom I havedescribed as bright and sparkling and tender, and I uttered no wordof remonstrance. I saw her involved in a perpetual blizzard, and didnothing to shelter her.
But it is not upon his own observations that Froude relies for his mostsinister evidence against his friend. To him comes Miss Jewsbury witha lengthy tale to tell. It is well to know what Mrs. Carlyle thought ofthis lady. She wrote:
It is her besetting sin, and her trade of novelist has aggravatedit--the desire of feeling and producing violent emotions.... Geraldinehas one besetting weakness; she is never happy unless she has a grandepassion on hand.
There were strange manifestations on the part of Miss Jewsbury towardMrs. Carlyle. At one time, when Mrs. Carlyle had shown some preferencefor another woman, it led to a wild outburst of what Miss Jewsburyherself called "tiger jealousy." There are many other instances ofviolent emotions in her letters to Mrs. Carlyle. They are often highlycharged and erotic. It is unusual for a woman of thirty-two to write toa woman friend, who is forty-three years of age, in these words, whichMiss Jewsbury used in writing to Mrs. Carlyle:
You are never out of my thoughts one hour together. I think of you muchmore than if you were my lover. I cannot express my feelings, even toyou--vague, undefined yearnings to be yours in some way.
Mrs. Carlyle was accustomed, in private, to speak of Miss Jewsbury as"Miss Gooseberry," while Carlyle himself said that she was simply "aflimsy tatter of a creature." But it is on the testimony of thisone woman, who was so morbid and excitable, that the most seriousaccusations against Carlyle rest. She knew that Froude was writing avolume about Mrs. Carlyle, and she rushed to him, eager to furnish anynarratives, however strange, improbable, or salacious they might be.
Thus she is the sponsor of the Ashburton story, in which there isnothing whatsoever. Some of the letters which Lady Ashburton wroteCarlyle have been destroyed, but not before her husband had perusedthem. Another set of letters had never been read by Lord Ashburton atall, and they are still preserved--friendly, harmless, usual letters.Lord Ashburton always invited Carlyle to his house, and there is noreason to think that the Scottish philosopher wronged him.
There is much more to be said about the charge that Mrs. Carlylesuffered from personal abuse; yet when we examine the facts, theevidence resolves itself into practically nothing. That, in hisself-absorption, he allowed her to Sending Completed Page, PleaseWait... overflowed toward a man who must have been a manly, lovinglover. She calls him by the name by which he called her--a homelyScottish name.
GOODY, GOODY, DEAR GOODY:
You said you would weary, and I do hope in my heart you are wearying. Itwill be so sweet to make it all up to you in kisses when I return. Youwill take me and hear all my bits of experiences, and your heart willbeat when you find how I have longed to return to you. Darling, dearest,loveliest, the Lord bless you! I think of you every hour, every moment.I love you and admire you, like--like anything. Oh, if I was there,I could put my arms so close about your neck, and hush you into thesoftest sleep you have had since I went away. Good night. Dream of me. Iam ever YOUR OWN GOODY.
It seems most fitting to remember Thomas Carlyle as a man of strength,of honor, and of intellect; and his wife as one who was sorely tried,but who came out of her suffering into the arms of death, purified andcalm and worthy to be remembered by her husband's side.