Victorian Worthies

G >> George Henry Blore >> Victorian Worthies

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 | 26 | 27 | 28

THOMAS CARLYLE

PROPHET

North-west of Carlisle (from which town the Carlyle family in all
probability first took their name), a little way along the border, the
river Annan comes down its green valley from the lowland hills to lose
itself in the wide sands of the Solway Firth. At the foot of these hills
is the village of Ecclefechan, some eight miles inland. Here in the wide
irregular street, down the side of which flows a little beck, stands the
grey cottage, built by the stonemason James Carlyle, where he lived with
his second wife, Margaret Aitken; and here on December 4, 1795, the
eldest of nine children, their son Thomas was born. There is little to
redeem the place from insignificance; the houses are mostly mean, the
position of the village is tame and commonplace. But if a visitor will
mount the hills that lie to the north, turn southward and look over the
wide expanse of land and water to the Cumbrian mountains, then, should
he be fortunate enough to see the landscape in stormy and unsettled
weather, he may realize why the land was so dear to its most famous son
that he could return to it from year to year throughout his life and
could there at all times soothe his most unquiet moods. Through all his
years in London he remained a lowland Scot and was most at home in
Annandale. With this district his fame is still bound up, as that of
Walter Scott with the Tweed, or that of Wordsworth with the Lakes.

In this humble household Thomas Carlyle first learnt what is meant by
work, by truthfulness, and by reverence, lessons which he never forgot.
He learnt to revere authority, to revere worth, and to revere something
yet higher and more mysterious--the Unseen. In _Sartor Resartus_ he
describes how his hero was impressed by his parents' observance of
religious duties. 'The highest whom I knew on earth I here saw bowed
down with awe unspeakable before a Higher in Heaven; such things
especially in infancy, reach inwards to the very core of your being.'
His father was a man of unusual force of character and gifted with a
wonderful power of speech, flashing out in picturesque metaphor, in
biting satire, in humorous comment upon life. He had, too, the Scotch
genius for valuing education; and it was he who decided that Tom, whose
character he had observed, should have every chance that schooling could
give him. His mother was a most affectionate, single-hearted, and
religious woman; labouring for her family, content with her lot, her
trust for her son unfailing, her only fear for him lest in his new
learning he might fall away from the old Biblical faith which she held
so firmly herself.

Reading with his father or mother, lending a hand at housework when
needed, nourishing himself on the simple oatmeal and milk which
throughout life remained his favourite food, submitting himself
instinctively to the stern discipline of the home, he passed, happily on
the whole, through his childhood and soon outstripped his comrades in
the village school. His success there led to his going in his tenth year
to the grammar school at Annan; and before he reached his fourteenth
year he trudged off on foot to Edinburgh to begin his studies at the
university.

Instead of young men caught up by express trains and deposited, by the
aid of cabmen and porters, in a few hours in the sheltered courts of
Oxford and Cambridge, we must imagine a party of boys, of fourteen or
fifteen years old, trudging on foot twenty miles a day for five days
across bleak country, sleeping at rough inns, and on their arrival
searching for an attic in some bleak tenement in a noisy street. Here
they were to live almost entirely on the baskets of home produce sent
through the carriers at intervals by their thrifty parents. It was and
is a Spartan discipline, and it turns out men who have shown their grit
and independence in all lands where the British flag is flown.

The earliest successes which Carlyle won, both at Annan and at
Edinburgh, were in mathematics. His classical studies received little
help from his professors, and his literary gifts were developed mostly
by his own reading, and stimulated from time to time by talks with
fellow students. Perhaps it was for his ultimate good that he was not
brought under influences which might have guided him into more
methodical courses and tamed his rugged originality. The universities
cannot often be proved to have fostered kindly their poets and original
men of letters; at least we may say that Edinburgh was a more kindly
Alma Mater to Carlyle than Oxford and Cambridge proved to Shelley and
Byron. His native genius, and the qualities which he inherited from his
parents, were not starved in alien soil, but put out vigorous growth.
From such letters to his friends as have survived, we can see what a
power Carlyle had already developed of forcibly expressing his ideas and
establishing an influence over others.

He left the university at the age of nineteen, and the next twelve years
of his life were of a most unsettled character. He made nearly as many
false starts in life as Goldsmith or Coleridge, though he redeemed them
nobly by his persistence in after years. In 1814 his family still
regarded the ministry as his vocation, and Carlyle was himself quite
undecided about it. To promote this idea the profession of schoolmaster
was taken up for the time. He continued in it for more than six years,
first at Annan and then at Kirkcaldy; but he was soon finding it
uncongenial and rebelling against it. A few years later he tried reading
law with no greater contentment; and in order to support himself he was
reduced to teaching private pupils. The chief friend of this period was
Edward Irving, the gifted preacher who afterwards, in London, came to
tragic shipwreck. He was a native of Annan, five years older than
Carlyle, and he had spent some time in preaching and preparing for the
ministry. He was one of the few people who profoundly influenced
Carlyle's life. At Kirkcaldy he was his constant companion, shared his
tastes, lent him books, and kindled his powers of insight and judgement
in many a country walk. Carlyle has left us records of this time in his
_Reminiscences_, how he read the twelve volumes of Irving's _Gibbon_ in
twelve days, how he tramped through the Trossachs on foot, how in summer
twilights he paced the long stretches of sand at Irving's side.

It was Irving who in 1822 commended him to the Buller family, with whom
he continued as tutor for two years. Charles Buller, the eldest son, was
a boy of rare gifts and promise, worthy of such a teacher; and but for
his untimely death in 1848 he might have won a foremost place in
politics. The family proved valuable friends to Carlyle in after-life,
besides enabling him at this time to live in comfort, with leisure for
his own studies and some spare money to help his family. But for this
aid, his brother Alexander would have fared ill with the farming, and
John could never have afforded the training for the medical profession.

Again, it was Irving who first took him to Haddington in 1821 and
introduced him to Jane Baillie Welsh, his future wife. Irving's
sincerity and sympathy, his earnest enthusiasm joined with the power of
genuine laughter (always to Carlyle a mark of a true rich nature), made
him through all these years a thoroughly congenial companion. He really
understood Carlyle as few outside his family did, and he never grew
impatient at Carlyle's difficulty in settling to a profession. 'Your
mind,' he wrote, 'unfortunately for its present peace, has taken in so
wide a range of study as to be almost incapable of professional
trammels; and it has nourished so uncommon and so unyielding a
character, as first unfits you for, and then disgusts you with, any
accommodations which for so cultivated and so fertile a mind would
easily procure favour and patronage.' Well might Carlyle in later days
find a hero in tough old Samuel Johnson, whose sufferings were due to
similar causes. The other source which kept the fire in him aglow
through these difficult years was the confidence and affection of his
whole family, and the welcome which he always found at home.
Disappointed though they were at his failure, as yet, to settle to a
profession and to earn a steady income, for all that 'Tom' was to be a
great man; and when he could find time to spend some months at Mainhill,
or later at Scotsbrig,[1] a room could always be found for him, hours of
peace and solitude could be enjoyed, the most wholesome food, and the
most cordial affection, were there rendered as loyal ungrudging tribute.
But new ties were soon to be knit and a new chapter to be opened in his
life.

[Note 1: Farms near Ecclefechan to which his parents moved in 1814
and 1826.]

John Welsh of Haddington, who died before Carlyle met his future wife,
was a surgeon and a man of remarkable gifts; and his daughter could
trace her descent to such famous Scotsmen as Wallace and John Knox. Her
own mental powers were great, and her vivacity and charming manners
caused her to shine in society wherever she was. She had an unquestioned
supremacy among the ladies of Haddington and many had been the suitors
for her hand. When Irving had given her lessons there, love had sprung
up between tutor and pupil, but this budding romance ended tragically in
1822. Before meeting her he had been engaged to another lady; and when a
new appointment gave him a sure income, he was held to his bond and was
forced to crush down his passion and to take farewell of Miss Welsh. At
what date Carlyle conceived the hope of making her his wife it is
difficult to say. Her beauty and wit seem to have done their work
quickly in his case; but she was not one to give her affections readily,
for all the intellectual sympathy which united them. In 1823 she was
contemplating marriage, but had made no promise; in 1824 she had
accepted the idea of marrying him, but in 1825 she still scouted the
conditions in which he proposed to live. His position was precarious,
his projects visionary, and his immediate desire was to settle on a
lonely farm, where he could devote himself to study, if she would do the
household drudgery. Because his mother whom he loved and honoured was
content to lead this life, he seemed to think that his wife could do the
same; but her nature and her rearing were not those of the Carlyles and
their Annandale neighbours. It involved a complete renunciation of the
comforts of life and the social position which she enjoyed; and much
though she admired his talents and enjoyed his company, she was not in
that passion of love which could lift her to such heights of
self-sacrifice.

By this time we can begin to discern in his letters the outline of his
character--his passionate absorption in study, his moodiness, his fits
of despondency, his intense irritability; his incapacity to master his
own tongue and temper. In happy moments he shows great tenderness of
feeling for those whom he loves or pities; but this alternates with
inconsiderate clamour and loud complaints deafening the ears of all
about him, provoked often by slight and even imaginary grievances. It is
the artistic nature run riot, and that in one who preached silence and
stoicism as the chief virtues--an inconsistency which has amused and
disgusted generations of readers. It was impossible for him to do his
work with the regular method, the equable temper, of a Southey or a
Scott. In dealing with history he must image the past to himself most
vividly before he could expound his subject; and that effort and strain
cost him sleepless nights and days of concentrated thought. Nor was he
an easier companion when his work was finished and he could take his
ease. Then life seemed empty and profitless; and in its emptiness his
voice echoed all the louder. The ill was within him, and outward
circumstances were powerless to affect his nature.

At this time he was chiefly occupied in reading German literature and
spreading the knowledge of it among his countrymen. After Coleridge he
was the first of our literary men to appreciate the poets and mystics of
Germany, and he did more even than Coleridge to make Englishmen familiar
with them. He acquired at this time a knowledge of French and Italian
literature too; but the philosophy of Kant and the writings of Goethe
and Schiller roused him to greater enthusiasm. From Kant he learnt that
the guiding principle of conduct was not happiness, but the 'categorical
imperative' of duty; from Goethe he drew such hopefulness as gleams
occasionally through his despondent utterances on the progress of the
human race. He translated Goethe's novel, _Wilhelm Meister_, in 1823,
and followed it up with the _Life of Schiller_. There was no
considerable sale for either of these books till his lectures in London
and his established fame roused a demand for all he had written. In
these days he was practising for the profession of a man of letters, and
was largely influenced by personal ambition and the desire to earn an
income which would make him independent; he was not yet fired with a
mission, or kindled to white heat.

His long courtship was rewarded in October 1826. When the marriage took
place the bride was twenty-five years old and the bridegroom thirty. Men
of letters have not the reputation of making ideal husbands, and the
qualities to which this is due were possessed by Carlyle in exaggerated
measure. It was a perilous enterprise for any one to live with him, most
of all for such a woman, delicately bred, nervous, and highly strung.
She was aware of this, and was prepared for a large measure of
self-denial; but she could not have foreseen how severe she would find
the trial. The morbid sensitiveness of Carlyle to his own pains and
troubles, so often imaginary, joined with his inconsiderate blindness to
his wife's real sufferings, led to many heart-burnings. If she
contributed to them, in some degree, by her wilfulness, jealous temper,
and sharpness of tongue, ill-health and solitude may well excuse her.

His own confessions, made after her death, are coloured by sorrow and
deep affection: no doubt he paints his own conduct in hues darker than
the truth demands. Shallow critics have sneered at the picture of the
philosopher whose life was so much at variance with his creed, and too
much has, perhaps, been written about the subject. If reference must be
made to such a well-worn tale, it is best to let Carlyle's own account
stand as he wished it to stand. His moral worth has been vindicated in a
hundred ways, not least by his humility and honesty about himself, and
can bear the test of time.

For the first two years of married life Carlyle's scheme of living on a
farm was kept at bay by his wife, and their home was at Edinburgh.
Carlyle refers to this as the happiest period of his life, though he did
not refrain from loud laments upon occasions. The good genius of the
household was Jeffrey, the famous editor of the _Edinburgh Review_, who
was distantly related to Mrs. Carlyle. He made friends with the
newly-married pair, opened a path for them into the society of the
capital, and enabled Carlyle to spread the knowledge of German authors
in the _Review_ and to make his bow before a wider public. The prospects
of the little household seemed brighter, but, by generously making over
all her money to her mother, his wife had crippled its resources; and
Carlyle was of so difficult a humour that neither Jeffrey nor any one
else could guide his steps for long. Living was precarious; society made
demands even on a modest household, and in 1828 he at length had his way
and persuaded his wife to remove to Craigenputtock. It was in the
loneliness of the moors that Carlyle was to come to his full stature and
to develop his astonishing genius.

Craigenputtock was a farm belonging to his wife's family, lying seventy
feet above the sea, sixteen miles from Dumfries, among desolate moors
and bogs, and fully six miles from the nearest village. 'The house is
gaunt and hungry-looking. It stands with the scanty fields attached as
an island in a sea of morass. The landscape is unredeemed either by
grace or grandeur, mere undulating hills of grass and heather with peat
bogs in the hollows between them.' So Froude describes the home where
the Carlyles were to spend six years, the wife in domestic labours, in
solitude, in growing ill-health, the husband in omnivorous reading, in
digesting the knowledge that he gathered, in transmuting it and marking
it with the peculiar stamp of his genius. There was no true
companionship over the work. As the moorland gave the fresh air and
stillness required, so the wife might nourish the physical frame with
wholesome digestible food and save him from external cares; the rest
must be done by lonely communing with himself. He needed no Fleet Street
taverns or literary salons to encourage him. Goethe, with whom he
exchanged letters and compliments at times, said with rare insight that
he 'had in himself an originating principle of conviction, out of which
he could develop the force that lay in him unassisted by other men'.

Few were the interruptions from without. His fame was not yet
established. In any case pilgrims would have to undertake a very rough
journey, and the fashion of such pilgrimages had hardly begun. But in
1833 from distant America came one disciple, afterwards to be known as
the famous author Ralph Waldo Emerson; and he has left us in his
_English Traits_ a vivid record of his impression of two or three famous
men of letters whom he saw. He describes Carlyle as 'tall and gaunt,
with a cliff-like brow, self-possessed, and holding his extraordinary
powers of conversation in easy command; clinging to his northern accent
with evident relish; full of lively anecdote, and with a streaming
humour, which floated everything he looked upon'.[2]

[Note 2: Emerson, _English Traits_, 'World's Classics' edition, p.
8.]

Much of his time was given to reading about the French Revolution, which
was to be the subject of his greatest literary triumph. But the
characteristic work of this period is _Sartor Resartus_ ('The tailor
patched anew'), in which Carlyle, under a thin German disguise, reveals
himself to the world, with his views on the customs and ways of society
and his contempt for all the pretensions and absurdities which they
involved. In many places it is extravagant and fantastic, as when 'the
most remarkable incident in modern history' proves to be George Fox the
Quaker making a suit of leather to render himself independent of
tailors; in others it rises to the highest pitch of poetry, as in the
sympathetic lament over the hardships of manual labour. 'Venerable to me
is the hard Hand; crooked, coarse; wherein notwithstanding lies a
cunning virtue, indefeasibly royal, as of the Sceptre of this Planet.
Venerable, too, is the rugged face, all weather-tanned, besoiled, with
its rude intelligence; for it is the face of a Man living manlike. O,
but the more venerable for thy rudeness, and even because we must pity
as well as love thee! Hardly-entreated Brother! For us was thy back so
bent, for us were thy straight limbs and fingers so deformed; thou wert
our Conscript on whom the lot fell, and fighting our battles wert so
marred.' It is through such passages that Carlyle has won his way to the
hearts of many who care little for history, or for German literature.

The book evidently contains much that is autobiographical, and helps us
to understand Carlyle's childhood and youth; but it is so mixed up with
fantasy and humour that it is difficult to separate fiction from fact.
Its chief aim seems to be the overthrow of cant, the ridiculing of
empty conventions, and the preaching of sincerity and independence. But
not yet was Carlyle's generation prepared to listen to such sermons.
Jeffrey was bewildered by the tone and offended at the style; publisher
after publisher refused it; and when at length it was launched upon the
world piecemeal in _Fraser's Magazine_, the reading public either
ignored it or abused it in the roundest terms. During all this time
Carlyle was anxiously looking for some surer means of livelihood, and
had not yet decided that literature was to be his profession. He had
hopes at different times of professorships in Edinburgh and St. Andrews,
and of the editorship of various reviews; but these all came to nothing.
For some posts he was not suited; for others his application could find
no support. He even thought of going to America, where Emerson and other
admirers would have welcomed him. But the disappointments in Scotland
decided him to make one more effort in London before accepting defeat,
and in 1834 he found a house at Chelsea and prepared to quit his
hermitage among the moors.

Cheyne Row, Chelsea, was to be his new home, a quiet street running
northward from the riverside in a quarter of London not then invaded by
industrialism. The house, No. 24, with its little garden, has been made
into a Carlyle museum, and may still be seen on the east side of the
street facing a few survivors of the sturdy old pollarded lime-trees
standing there 'like giants in Tawtie wigs'. His bust, by Boehm, is in
the garden on the Embankment not a hundred yards away. With this
district are connected other names famous in literature and art, but its
presiding genius is the 'Sage of Chelsea', who spent the last
forty-seven years of his life in it; and there, in a double-walled room,
in spite of trivial disturbances from without, in spite of far more
serious fits of dejection and discontent within, he composed his three
greatest historical books. At the outset his prospects were not bright,
and at the end of 1834 he confessed 'it is now twenty-three months
since I earned a penny by the craft of literature'. There was need of
much faith; and it was fortunate for him that he had at his side one who
believed in his genius and who was well qualified to judge. He must have
been thinking of this when he wrote of Mahomet in _Heroes_ and of the
prophet's gratitude to his first wife Kadijah: 'She believed in me when
none else would believe. In the whole world I had but one friend and she
was that!' In the same place he quoted the German writer Novalis: 'It is
certain my conviction gains infinitely, the moment another soul will
believe in it.'

So fortified, he worked through the days of poverty and gloom, with
groans and outbursts of fury, kindling to white heat as he imaged to
himself the men and events of the French Revolution, and throwing them
on to paper in lurid pictures of flame. One terrible misadventure
chilled his spirit in 1835, when the manuscript of the first volume was
lent to J. S. Mill, and was accidentally burnt; but, after a short fit
of despair, he set manfully to work to repair the loss, and the new
version was finished in January, 1837. This book marked an epoch in the
writing of history. Hitherto few had realized what potent force there
was in the original documents lying stored in libraries and record
offices. They were 'live shells' buried in the dust of a neglected
magazine; and in the hands of Carlyle they came to life again and worked
havoc among the traditional judgements of history. This book was also
the turning point in his career. Dickens, Thackeray, and others hailed
it with enthusiasm; gradually it made its way with the public at large;
and as in the following years Carlyle, prompted by some friends, gave
successful courses of lectures,[3] his position among men of letters
became assured, and he had no more need to worry over money. Living in
London he became known to a wider circle, and his marvellous powers of
conversation brought visitors and invitations in larger measure than he
desired. The new friends whom he valued most were Mr. and Lady Harriet
Baring,[4] and he was often their guest in London, in Surrey, in
Scotland, and later at The Grange in Hampshire. But he remained faithful
to his older and more humble friends, while he also made himself
accessible to young men of letters who seemed anxious to learn, and who
did not offend one or other of his many prejudices. Such were Sterling,
Ruskin, Tennyson, and James Anthony Froude.

[Note 3: The most famous course, on Hero-Worship, was delivered in
May, 1840.]

[Note 4: Afterwards Lord and Lady Ashburton.]

Despite these successes Carlyle's letters at this time are full of the
usual discontents. London life and society stimulated him for the time,
but he paid dearly for it. Late dinners and prolonged bouts of talk, in
which he put forth all his powers, were followed by dyspepsia and
lassitude next day; and the neighbours, who kept dogs or cocks which
were accused of disturbing his slumbers, were the mark for many plaints
and lamentations. He could not in any circumstances be entirely happy.
Work was so exciting with the imagination on fire, that it kept him
awake at night; idleness was still more fatal in its effects. And so,
after a few years of relative calm, in 1839 we find his active brain
struggling to create a true picture of Oliver Cromwell and to expound
the meaning of the Great Civil War.

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 | 26 | 27 | 28