CHAPTER I EARLY LIFE

'A great man,' says Hegel, 'condemns the world to the task of explaining him.' Emphatically does the remark apply to Thomas Carlyle. When he began to leave his impress in literature, he was treated as a confusing and inexplicable element. Opinion oscillated between the view of James Mill, that Carlyle was an insane rhapsodist, and that of Jeffrey, that he was afflicted with a chronic craze for singularity. Jeffrey's verdict sums up pretty effectively the attitude of the critics of the time to the new writer:—'I suppose that you will treat me as something worse than an ass, when I say that I am firmly persuaded the great source of your extravagance, and all that makes your writings intolerable to many and ridiculous to not a few, is not so much any real peculiarity of opinion, as an unlucky ambition to appear more original than you are.' The blunder made by Jeffrey in regard both to Carlyle and Wordsworth emphasises the truth which critics seem reluctant to bear in mind, that, before the great man can be explained, he must be appreciated. Emphatically true of Carlyle it is that he creates the standard by which he is judged. Carlyle resembles those products of the natural world which biologists call 'sports'—products which, springing up in a spontaneous and apparently erratic way, for a time defy classification. The time is appropriate for an attempt to classify the great thinker, whose birth took place one hundred years ago.

Towards the close of the last century a stone-mason, named James Carlyle, started business on his own account in the village of Ecclefechan, Dumfriesshire. He was an excellent tradesman, and frugal withal; and in the year 1791 he married a distant kinswoman of his own, Janet Carlyle, who died after giving birth to a son. In the beginning of 1795 he married one Margaret Aitken, a worthy, intelligent woman; and on the 4th of December following a son was born, whom they called Thomas, after his paternal grandfather. This child was destined to be the most original writer of his time.

Little Thomas was early taught to read by his mother, and at the age of five he learnt to 'count' from his father. He was then sent to the village school; and in his seventh year he was reported to be 'complete' in English. As the schoolmaster was weak in the classics, Tom was taught the rudiments of Latin by the burgher minister, of which strict sect James Carlyle was a zealous member. One summer morning, in 1806, his father took him to Annan Academy. 'It was a bright morning,' he wrote long years thereafter, 'and to me full of moment, of fluttering boundless Hopes, saddened by parting with Mother, with Home, and which afterwards were cruelly disappointed.' At that 'doleful and hateful Academy,' to use his own words, Thomas Carlyle spent three years, learning to read French and Latin, and the Greek alphabet, as well as acquiring a smattering of geometry and algebra.

It was in the Academy that he got his first glimpse of Edward Irving—probably in April or May 1808—who had called to pay his respects to his old teacher, Mr Hope. Thomas's impression of him was that of a 'flourishing slip of a youth, with coal-black hair, swarthy clear complexion, very straight on his feet, and except for the glaring squint alone, decidedly handsome.' Years passed before young Carlyle saw Irving's face again.

James Carlyle, although an austere man, and the reverse of demonstrative, was bound up in his son, sparing no expense upon the youth's education. On one occasion he exclaimed, with an unwonted outburst of glee, 'Tom, I do not grudge thy schooling, now when thy Uncle Frank owns thee to be a better Arithmetician than himself.' Early recognising the natural talent and aptitude of his son, he determined to send him to the nearest university, with a view to Thomas studying for the ministry. One crisp winter's morning, in 1809, found Thomas Carlyle on his way to Edinburgh, trudging the entire distance—one hundred miles or so.

He went through the usual university course, attended the divinity classes, and delivered the customary discourses in English and Latin. But Tom was not destined to 'wag his head in a pulpit,' for he had conscientious objections which parental control in no way interfered with. Referring to this vital period of his life, Carlyle wrote: 'His [father's] tolerance for me, his trust in me, was great. When I declined going forward into the Church (though his heart was set upon it), he respected my scruples, my volition, and patiently let me have my way.' Carlyle never looked back to his university life with satisfaction. In his interesting recollections Mr Moncure Conway represents Carlyle, describing his experiences as follows:—'Very little help did I get from anybody in those years, and, as I may say, no sympathy at all in all this old town. And if there was any difference, it was found least where I might most have hoped for it. There was Professor ——. For years I attended his lectures, in all weathers and all hours. Many and many a time, when the class was called together, it was found to consist of one individual—to wit, of him now speaking; and still oftener, when others were present, the only person who had at all looked into the lesson assigned was the same humble individual. I remember no instance in which these facts elicited any note or comment from that instructor. He once requested me to translate a mathematical paper, and I worked through it the whole of one Sunday, and it was laid before him, and it was received without remark or thanks. After such long years, I came to part with him, and to get my certificate. Without a word, he wrote on a bit of paper: "I certify that Mr Thomas Carlyle has been in my class during his college course, and has made good progress in his studies." Then he rang a bell, and ordered a servant to open the front door for me. Not the slightest sign that I was a person whom he could have distinguished in any crowd. And so I parted from old ——.'

Professor Masson, who in loving, painstaking style has ferreted all the facts about Carlyle's university life, sums up in these words: 'Without assuming that he meant the university described in Sartor Resartus to stand literally for Edinburgh University, of his own experience, we have seen enough to show that any specific training of much value he considered himself to owe to his four years in the Arts classes in Edinburgh University, was the culture of his mathematical faculty under Leslie, and that for the rest he acknowledged merely a certain benefit from being in so many class-rooms where matters intellectual were professedly in the atmosphere, and where he learned to take advantage of books.' As Carlyle put it in his Rectorial Address of 1866, 'What I have found the university did for me is that it taught me to read in various languages, in various sciences, so that I go into the books which treated of these things, and gradually penetrate into any department I wanted to make myself master of, as I found it suit me.'

In 1814, Carlyle obtained the mathematical tutorship at Annan. Out of his slender salary of £60 or £70 he was able to save something, so that he was practically independent. By and by James Carlyle gave up his trade, and settled on a small farm at Mainhill, about two miles from Ecclefechan. Thither Thomas hied with unfeigned delight at holiday time, for he led the life of a recluse at Annan, his books being his sole companions.

Edward Irving, to whom Carlyle was introduced in college days, was now settled as a dominie in Kirkcaldy. His teaching was not favourably viewed by some of the parents, who started a rival school, and resolved to import a second master, with the result that Carlyle was selected. Irving, with great magnanimity, gave him a cordial welcome to the 'Lang Toon,' and the two Annandale natives became fast friends. The elder placed his well-selected library at the disposal of the younger, and together they explored the whole countryside. Short visits to Edinburgh had a special attraction for both, where they met with a few kindred spirits. On one of those visits, Carlyle, who had not cut off his connection with the university, called at the Divinity Hall to put down his name formally on the annual register. In his own words: 'Old Dr Ritchie "not at home" when I called to enter myself. "Good!" answered I; "let the omen be fulfilled."' Carlyle's studies in Kirkcaldy made him eager to contribute to the fulfilment of the omen. Among the authors which he read out of the Edinburgh University library was Gibbon, who pushed Carlyle's sceptical questionings to a definite point. In a conversation with Professor Masson, Carlyle stated that to his reading of Gibbon he dated the extirpation from his mind of the last remnant that had been left in it of the orthodox belief in miracles.

In the space of two years, Carlyle and Irving 'got tired of schoolmastering and its mean contradictions and poor results.' They bade Kirkcaldy farewell and made for Edinburgh,—Irving to lodge in Bristo Street, 'more expensive rooms than mine,' naively remarks Carlyle, where he gave breakfasts to 'Intellectualities he fell in with, I often a guest with them. They were but stupid Intellectualities, etc.' As for their prospects, this is what Carlyle says: 'Irving's outlooks in Edinburgh were not of the best, considerably checkered with dubiety, opposition, or even flat disfavour in some quarters; but at least they were far superior to mine, and indeed, I was beginning my four or five most miserable, dark, sick, and heavy-laden years; Irving, after some staggerings aback, his seven or eight healthiest and brightest. He had, I should guess, as one item several good hundreds of money to wait upon. My peculium I don't recollect, but it could not have exceeded £100. I was without friends, experience, or connection in the sphere of human business, was of shy humour, proud enough and to spare, and had begun my long curriculum of dyspepsia which has never ended since!'[1] Carlyle's intention was to study for the Bar, if perchance he could eke out a livelihood by private teaching. He obtained one or two pupils, wrote a stray article or so for the 'Encyclopædias'; but as he barely managed to pay his way, he speedily gave up his law studies. He was at this time—the winter of 1819—'advancing,' as he phrases it, 'towards huge instalments of bodily and spiritual wretchedness in this my Edinburgh purgatory.' It was about a couple of years thereafter ere Carlyle went through what he has described as his 'spiritual new birth.'

When Carlyle was in diligent search for congenial employment, a certain Captain Basil Hall crossed his path, to whom Edward Irving had given lessons in mathematics. The 'small lion,' as he calls the captain, came to Carlyle, and wished the latter to go out with him 'to Dunglas,' and there do 'lunars' in his name, he looking on and learning of Carlyle 'what would come of its own will.' The said 'lunars' meanwhile were to go to the Admiralty, 'testifying there what a careful studious Captain he was, and help to get him promotion, so the little wretch smilingly told me.' Carlyle adds: 'I remember the figure of him in my dim lodging as a gay, crackling, sniggering spectre, one dusk, endeavouring to seduce me by affability in lieu of liberal wages into this adventure. Wages, I think, were to be smallish ("so poor are we"), but then the great Playfair is coming on visit. "You will see Professor Playfair." I had not the least notion of such an enterprise on these shining terms, and Captain Basil with his great Playfair in posse vanished for me into the shades of dusk for good.'[2] When private teaching would not come Carlyle's way, he timorously aimed towards 'literature.' He had taken to the study of German, and conscious of his own powers in that direction, he applied in vain to more than one London bookseller, proposing a complete translation of Schiller. Irving not only did his utmost to comfort Carlyle in his spiritual wrestlings, but he tried to find him employment. The two friends continued to make pleasant excursions, and in June 1821 Irving brought Carlyle to Haddington, an event which was destined to colour all his subsequent life; for it was then and there he first saw Jane Welsh, a sight, he acknowledged, for ever memorable to him.

'In the ancient County Town of Haddington, July 14, 1801, there was born,' wrote Thomas Carlyle in 1869, 'to a lately wedded pair, not natives of the place but already reckoned among the best class of people there, a little Daughter whom they named Jane Baillie Welsh, and whose subsequent and final name (her own common signature for many years) was Jane Welsh Carlyle, and now so stands, now that she is mine in death only, on her and her Father's Tombstone in the Abbey Kirk of that Town. July 14th, 1801; I was then in my sixth year, far away in every sense, now near and infinitely concerned, trying doubtfully after some three years' sad cunctation, if there is anything that I can profitably put on record of her altogether bright, beneficent and modest little Life, and Her, as my final task in this world.'[3] The picture was never completed by the master-hand; the 'effort was too distressing'; so all his notes and letters were handed over to a literary executor.

At the time of Carlyle's introduction to Miss Welsh, she was living with her widowed mother. Her father, Dr John Welsh, came of a good family, and was a popular country physician. Her mother was Grace Welsh of Capelgill, and was reckoned a beautiful, but haughty woman. Their marriage took place in 1800, and their only child, Jane, was born, as we have seen, the year following. Her most intimate friend, Miss Geraldine Jewsbury, tells us that Miss Welsh had 'a graceful and beautifully-formed figure, upright and supple, a delicate complexion of creamy white, with a pale rose tint in the cheeks, lovely eyes full of fire and softness, and with great depths of meaning.' She had a musical voice, was a good talker, extremely witty, and so fascinating in every way that a relative of hers told Miss Jewsbury that every man who spoke to her for five minutes felt impelled to make her an offer of marriage. Be that as it may, it is certain that Miss Jane Welsh had troops of suitors in and around the quiet country town. She always spoke of her mother with deep affection and great admiration. Her father she reverenced, and he was the only person during her girlhood who had any real influence over her. This, then, was the young lady of whom Thomas Carlyle carried back to Edinburgh a sweet and lasting impression. They corresponded at intervals, and Thomas was permitted to send her books occasionally.

Edward Irving used to live in Dr Welsh's house when he taught in the local school, and he led Jeannie—a winsome, wilful lass—to take an interest in the classics. She entertained a girlish passion for the handsome youth, and there can be little doubt that they would have ultimately been married, were it not that the eldest daughter of a Kirkcaldy parson, Miss Martin, had 'managed to charm Irving for the time being,' and an engagement followed.

Before Carlyle had drifted into Edinburgh he had, of course, heard of the fame of Francis Jeffrey. He heard him once speaking in the General Assembly 'on some poor cause.' Jeffrey's pleading seemed to Carlyle 'abundantly clear, full of liveliness, free flowing ingenuity.' 'My admiration,' he adds, 'went frankly with that of others, but I think it was hardly of very deep character.' When Carlyle was in the 'slough of despond,' he bethought him of Jeffrey, this time as editor of the Edinburgh Review. He resolved to try the 'great man' with an actual contribution. The subject was a condemnation of a new French book, in which a mechanical theory of gravitation was elaborately worked out by the author. He got 'a certain feeble but enquiring quasi-disciple' of his own to act as amanuensis, from whom he kept his ulterior purpose quite secret. Looking back through the dim vista of seven-and-forty years, this is what Carlyle says of that anxious time: 'Well do I remember those dreary evenings in Bristo Street; oh, what ghastly passages and dismal successive spasms of attempt at "literary enterprise"!... My "Review of Pictet" all fairly written out in George Dalgliesh's good clerk hand, I penned some brief polite Note to the great Editor, and walked off with the small Parcel one night to his address in George Street. I very well remember leaving it with his valet there, and disappearing in the night with various thoughts and doubts! My hopes had never risen high, or in fact risen at all; but for a fortnight or so they did not quite die out, and then it was in absolute zero; no answer, no return of MS., absolutely no notice taken, which was a form of catastrophe more complete than even I had anticipated! There rose in my head a pungent little Note which might be written to the great man, with neatly cutting considerations offered him from the small unknown ditto; but I wisely judged it was still more dignified to let the matter lie as it was, and take what I had got for my own benefit only. Nor did I ever mention it to almost anybody, least of all to Jeffrey in subsequent changed times, when at anyrate it was fallen extinct.'[4]

Carlyle's star was, however, in the ascendant, for in 1822 he became tutor to the two sons of a wealthy lady, Mrs Charles Buller, at a salary of £200 a year. It was through Irving that this appointment came. The young lads boarded with 'a good old Dr Fleming' in George Square, whither Carlyle went daily from his lodgings at [5]3 Moray Street, Pilrig Street. The Bullers finally returned to London, Carlyle staying at his father's little homestead of Mainhill to finish a translation of 'Wilhelm Meister.' He followed the Bullers to London, where he resigned the tutorship in the hope of getting some literary work.

Irving introduced him to the proprietor of the London Magazine, who offered Carlyle sixteen guineas a sheet for a series of 'Portraits of Men of Genius and Character.' The first was to be a life of Schiller, which appeared in that periodical in 1823-4. Mr Boyd, the Edinburgh publisher, accepted the translation of 'Wilhelm Meister.' 'Two years before,' wrote Carlyle in his Reminiscences, 'I had at length, after some repulsions, got into the heart of "Wilhelm Meister," and eagerly read it through; my sally out, after finishing, along the vacant streets of Edinburgh, (a windless, Scotch-misty Saturday night), is still vivid to me. "Grand, surely, harmoniously built together, far-seeing, wise, and true: when, for many years, or almost in my life before, have I read such a book?"' A short letter from Goethe in Weimar, in acknowledgment of a copy of his 'Wilhelm Meister,' was peculiarly gratifying to Carlyle.

Carlyle was not happy in London; dyspepsia and 'the noises' sorely troubled him. He was anxious to be gone. To the surprise of Irving—who was now settled in the metropolis—and everybody else, he resolutely decided to return to Annandale, where his father had leased for him a compact little farm at Hoddam Hill, three miles from Mainhill, and visible from the fields at the back of it. 'Perhaps it was the very day before my departure,' wrote Carlyle, 'at least it is the last I recollect of him [Irving], we were walking in the streets multifariously discoursing; a dim grey day, but dry and airy;—at the corner of Cockspur Street we paused for a moment, meeting Sir John Sinclair ("Statistical Account of Scotland" etc.), whom I had never seen before and never saw again. A lean old man, tall but stooping, in tartan cloak, face very wrinkly, nose blue, physiognomy vague and with distinction as one might have expected it to be. He spoke to Irving with benignant respect, whether to me at all I don't recollect.'

Carlyle shook the dust of London from off his feet, and by easy stages made his way northwards. Arrived at Ecclefechan, within two miles of his father's house, while the coach was changing horses, Carlyle noticed through the window his little sister Jean earnestly looking up for him. She, with Jenny, the youngest of the family, was at school in the village, and had come out daily to inspect the coach in hope of seeing him. 'Her bonny little blush and radiancy of look when I let down the window and suddenly disclosed myself,' wrote Carlyle in 1867, 'are still present to me.' On the 26th of May 1825, he established himself at Hoddam Hill, and set about 'German Romance.' His brother Alick managed the farm, and his mother, with one of the girls, was generally there to look after his comforts.

During the intervening years, Carlyle's intimacy with Miss Jane Welsh gradually increased, with occasional differences. She had promised to marry him if he could 'achieve independence.' Carlyle's idea was that after their marriage they should settle upon the farm of Craigenputtock, which had been in the possession of the Welsh family for generations, and devote himself to literary work. By and by Miss Welsh accepted his offer of marriage, but not until she had acquainted him of the Irving incident. The wedding took place on the 17th of October 1825, and the young couple took up housekeeping in a quiet cottage at Comely Bank, Edinburgh. Of his life at this period, the best description is given by Carlyle himself, in a letter to Mrs Basil Montague, dated Christmas Day 1826:—

'In spite of ill-health I reckon myself moderately happy here, much happier than men usually are, or than such a fool as I deserve to be. My good wife exceeds all my hopes, and is, in truth, I believe, among the best women that the world contains. The philosophy of the heart is far better than that of the understanding. She loves me with her whole soul, and this one sentiment has taught her much that I have long been vainly at the schools to learn.... On the whole, what I chiefly want is occupation; which, when the times grow better, or my own genius gets more alert and thorough-going, will not fail, I suppose, to present itself.... Some day—oh, that the day were here!—I shall surely speak out those things that are lying in me, and give me no sleep till they are spoken! Or else, if the Fates would be so kind as to shew me—that I had nothing to say! This, perhaps, is the real secret of it after all; a hard result, yet not intolerable, were it once clear and certain. Literature, it seems, is to be my trade, but the present aspects of it among us seem to me peculiarly perplexed and uninviting.' [6]Here, as in undertone, we discover what Professor Masson calls the constitutional sadness of Carlyle—a sadness which, along with indifferent health, led him to be impatient at trifles, morbid, proud, and at times needlessly aggressive in speech and demeanour. These traits, however, in the early years of married life were not specially visible; and on the whole the Comely Bank period may be described as one of calm happiness. Carlyle's forecast was correct. Literature was to be his trade.

In the following spring came a letter to Carlyle from Procter (Barry Cornwall), whom he had met in London, offering to introduce him formally to Jeffrey, whom he certified to be a 'very fine fellow.' One evening Carlyle sallied forth from Comely Bank for Jeffrey's house in George Street, armed with Procter's letter. He was shown into the study. 'Fire, pair of candles,' he relates, 'were cheerfully burning, in the light of which sate my famous little gentleman; laid aside his work, cheerfully invited me to sit, and began talking in a perfectly human manner.' The interview lasted for about twenty minutes, during which time Jeffrey had made kind enquiries what his visitor was doing and what he had published; adding, 'We must give you a lift,' an offer, Carlyle says, which in 'some complimentary way' he managed to Jeffrey's satisfaction to decline. Jeffrey returned Carlyle's call, when he was captivated by Mrs Carlyle. The intimacy rapidly increased, and a short paper by Carlyle on Jean Paul appeared in the very next issue of the Edinburgh Review. 'It made,' says the author, 'what they call a sensation among the Edinburgh buckrams; which was greatly heightened next Number by the more elaborate and grave article on "German Literature" generally, which set many tongues wagging, and some few brains considering, what this strange monster could be that was come to disturb their quiescence and the established order of Nature! Some Newspapers or Newspaper took to denouncing "the Mystic School," which my bright little Woman declared to consist of me alone, or of her and me, and for a long while after merrily used to designate us by that title.'

Mrs Carlyle proved an admirable hostess; Jeffrey became a frequent visitor at Comely Bank, and they discovered 'mutual old cousinships' by the maternal side. Jeffrey's friendship was an immense acquisition to Carlyle, and everybody regarded it as his highest good fortune. The literati of Edinburgh came to see her, and 'listen to her husband's astonishing monologues.' To Carlyle's regret, Jeffrey would not talk in their frequent rambles of his experiences in the world, 'nor of things concrete and current,' but was 'theoretic generally'; and seemed bent on converting Carlyle from his 'German mysticism,' back merely, as the latter could perceive, into 'dead Edinburgh Whiggism, scepticism, and materialism'; 'what I felt,' says Carlyle, 'to be a forever impossible enterprise.' They had long discussions, 'parryings, and thrustings,' which 'I have known continue night after night,' relates Carlyle, 'till two or three in the morning (when I was his guest at Craigcrook, as once or twice happened in coming years); there he went on in brisk logical exercise with all the rest of the house asleep, and parted usually in good humour, though after a game which was hardly worth the candle. I found him infinitely witty, ingenious, sharp of fence, but not in any sense deep; and used without difficulty to hold my own with him.' Jeffrey did everything in his power to further Carlyle's prospects and projects. He tried to obtain for him the professorship of Moral Philosophy at St Andrews University, vacated by Dr Chalmers. Testimonials were given by Irving, Brewster, Buller, Wilson, Jeffrey, and Goethe. They failed, however, in consequence of the opposition of the Principal, Dr Nicol.

To Carlyle, doubtless, the most memorable incidents of the Edinburgh period was his correspondence with Goethe. The magnetic spell thrown over Carlyle by Goethe will ever remain a mystery. Between the two men there was no intellectual affinity. One would have expected Goethe the Pagan to have repelled Carlyle the Puritan, unless we have recourse to the philosophy of opposites, and conclude that the tumultuous soul of Carlyle found congenial repose in the Greek-like restfulness of Goethe. The great German had been deeply impressed by the profound grasp which Carlyle was displaying of German literature. After reading a letter which he had received from Walter Scott, Goethe remarked to Eckermann: 'I almost wonder that Walter Scott does not say a word about Carlyle, who has so decided a German tendency that he must certainly be known to him. It is admirable in Carlyle, that, in his judgment of our German authors, he has especially in view the mental and moral core as that which is really influential. Carlyle is a moral force of great importance; there is in him much for the future and we cannot foresee what he will produce and effect.'