Brewster has printed my article. He is a pushing man and speaks encoura gingly to me. Tait, the bookseller, is loud in his kind anticipations of the grand things that are in store for me. But in fact I do not lend much ear to those gentlemen. I feel quite sick of this drivelling state of painful idleness. I am going to be patient no longer, but quitting study or leaving it in a secondary place I feel determined, as it were, to find something stationary, some local habitation and some name for myself, ere it be long. I shall turn and try all things, be diligent, be assiduous in season and out of season to effect this prudent purpose; and if health stay with me I still trust I shall succeed. At worst it is but narrowing my views to suit my means. I shall enter the writing life, the mercantile, the lecturing, any life in short but that of country schoolmaster, and even that sad refuge from the storms of fate, rather than stand here in frigid impotence, the powers of my mind all festering and corroding each other in the miserable strife of inward will against outward necessity. I lay out my heart before you, my boy, because it is solacing for me to do so; but I would not have you think me depressed. Bad health does indeed depress and undermine one more than all other calamities put together, but with care, which I have the best of all reasons for taking, I know this will in time get out of danger. Steady then, steady! as the drill-sergeants say. Let us be steady unto the end. In due time we shall reap if we faint not. Long may you continue to cherish the manly feelings which you express in conclusion. They lead to respectability at least from the world, and, what is far better, to sunshine within which nothing can destroy or eclipse. In the same packet Carlyle enclosed a letter to his mother. I know well and feel deeply that you entertain the most solicitous anxiety about my temporal, and still more about my eternal welfare; as to the former of which I have still hopes that all your tenderness will yet be repaid; and as to the latter, though it becomes not the human worm to boast, I would fain persuade you not to entertain so many doubts. Your character and mine are far more similar than you imagine; and our opinions too, though clothed in different garbs, are, I well know, still analogous at bottom. I respect your religious sentiments and honour you for feeling them more than if you were the highest woman in the world without them. Be easy, I entreat you, on my account; the world will use me better than before; and if it should not, let us hope to meet in that upper country, when the vain fever of life is gone by, in the country where all darkness shall be light, and where the exercise of our affections will not be thwarted by the infirmities of human nature any more. Brewster will give me articles enough. Meanwhile my living here is not to cost me anything, at least for a season more or less. I have two hours of teaching, which both gives me a call to walk and brings in four guineas a month. Again, a few weeks later: T Carlyle to Mrs. Carlyle. Jan. 30, 1821. My employment, you are aware, is still very fluctuating, but this I trust will improve. I am advancing, I think, though leisurely, and at last I feel no insuperable doubts of getting honest bread, which is all I want. For as to fame and all that, I see it already to be nothing better than a meteor, a will-o'-the-wisp which leads one on through quagmires and pitfalls to catch an object which, when we have caught it, turns out to be nothing. I am happy to think in the meantime that you do not feel uneasy about my future destiny. Providence, as you observe, will order it better or worse, and with His award, so nothing mean or wicked lie before me, I shall study to rest satisfied. It is a striking thing, and an alarming to those who are at ease in the world, to think how many living beings that had breath and hope within them when I left Ecclefechan are now numbered with the clods of the valley! Surely there is something obstinately stupid in the heart of man, or the flight of threescore years, and the poor joys or poorer cares of this our pilgrimage would never move us as they do. Why do we fret and murmur, and toil, and consume ourselves for objects so transient and frail? Is it that the soul living here as in her prison-house strives after something boundless like herself, and finding it nowhere still renews the search ? Surely we are fearfully and wonderfully made. But I must not pursue these speculations, though they force themselves upon us sometimes even without our asking. To his family Carlyle made the best of his situation; and indeed, so far as outward circumstances were concerned, there was no special cause for anxiety. His farmhouse training had made him indifferent to luxuries, and he was earning as much money as he required. It was not here that the pinch lay; it was in the still uncompleted 'temptations in the wilderness,' in the mental uncertainties which gave him neither peace nor respite. He had no friend in Edinburgh with whom he could exchange thoughts, and no society to amuse or distract him. And those who knew his condition best, the faithful Irving especially, became seriously alarmed for him. So keenly Irving felt the danger that in December he even invited Carlyle to abandon Edinburgh altogether and be his own guest for an indefinite time at Glasgow. You make me too proud of myself (he wrote) when you connect me so much with your happiness. Would that I could contribute to it as I most fondly wish, and one of the richest and most powerful minds I know should not now be struggling with obscurity and a thousand obstacles. And yet, if I had the power, I do not see by what means I should cause it to be known; your mind, 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 would procure favour and patronage. The race which you have run these last years pains me even to think upon it, and if it should be continued a little longer, I pray God to give you strength to endure it. We calculate upon seeing you at Christmas, and till then you can think of what I now propose-that instead of wearying yourself with endless vexations which are more than you can bear, you will consent to spend not a few weeks, but a few months, here under my roof, where enjoying at least wholesome conversation and the sight of real friends, you may undertake some literary employment which may present you in a fairer aspect to the public than any you have hitherto taken before them. Now I know it is quite Scottish for you to refuse this upon the score of troubling me: but trouble to me it is none; and if it were a thousand times more, would I not esteem it well bestowed upon you and most highly rewarded by your company and conversation ? I should esteem it an honour that your first sally in arms went forth from my habitation. Well might Carlyle cherish Irving's memory. Never had he or any man a truer-hearted, more generous friend. The offer could not be accepted. Carlyle was determined before all things to earn his own bread, and he would not abandon his pupil work. Christmas he did spend at Glasgow, but he was soon back again. He was cotresponding now with London booksellers, offering a complete translation of Schiller for one thing, to which the answer had been an abrupt No. Captain Basil Hall, on the other hand, having heard of Carlyle, tried to attach him to himself, a sort of scientific companion on easy terms -Carlyle to do observations which Captain Hall was to send to the Admiralty as his own, and to have in return the advantage of philosophical society, &c., to which his answer had in like manner been negative. His letters show him still suffering from mental fever, though with glimpses of purer light. Thomas Carlyle to John Carlyle. Edinburgh, March 9, 1821. It is a shame and misery to me at this age to be gliding about in strenuous idleness, with no hand in the game of life where I have yet so much to win, no outlet for the restless faculties which are up in mutiny and slaying one another for lack of fair enemies. I must do or die then, as the song goes. Edinburgh, with all its drawbacks, is the only scene for me. In the country I am like an alien, a stranger and pilgrim from a far-distant land. I must endeavour most sternly, for this state of things cannot last, and if health do but revisit me as I know she will, it shall ere long give place to a better. If I grow seriously ill, indeed, it will be different, but when once the weather is settled and dry, exercise and care will restore me completely. I am considerably clearer than I was, and I should have been still more so had not this afternoon been wet, and so prevented me from breathing the air of Arthur's seat, a mountain close beside us, where the atmosphere is pure as a diamond, and the prospect grander than any you ever saw. The blue majestic everlasting ocean, with the Fife hills swelling gradually into the Grampians behind; rough crags and rude precipices at our feet (where not a hillock rears its head unsung), with Edinburgh at their base clustering proudly over her rugged foundations, and covering with a vapoury mantle the jagged black venerable masses of stonework that stretch far and wide and show like a city of Fairyland. . . . I saw it all last evening when the sun was going down, and the moon's fine crescent, like a pretty silver creature as it is, was riding quietly above me. Such a sight does one good. But I am leading you astray after my fantasies when I should be inditing plain prose. The gloomy period of Carlyle's life- a period on which he said that he ever looked back with a kind of horror-was drawing to its close, this letter, among other symptoms, showing that the natural strength of his intellect was asserting itself. Better prospects were opening; more regular literary employment; an offer, if he chose to accept it, from his friend Mr. Swan, of a tutorship at least more satisfactory than the Yorkshire one. His mother's affection was more precious to him, however simply expressed, than any other form of earthly consolation. Mrs. Carlyle to Thomas Carlyle. Mainhill, March 21, 1821. Son Tom,-I received your kind and pleasant letter. Nothing is more satisfying to me than to hear of your welfare. Keep up your heart, my brave boy. You ask kindly after my health. I complain as little as possible. When the day is cheerier, it has a great effect on me. But upon the whole I am as well as I can expect, thank God. I have sent a little butter and a few cakes with a box to bring home your clothes. Send them all home that I may wash and sort them once more. Oh, man, could I but write! I'll tell ye a' when we meet, but I must in the meantime content myself. Do send me a long letter; it revives me greatly and tell me honestly if you read your chapter e'en and morn, lad. You mind I hod if not your hand, I hod your foot of it. Tell me if there is anything you want in particular. I must run to pack the box, so I am Your affectionate mother, Irving was still anxious. To him Carlyle laid himself bare in all his shifting moods, now complaining, now railing at himself for want of manliness. Irving soothed him as he could, always avoiding preachment. I see (he wrote 10) you have much to bear, and perhaps it may be a time before you clear yourself of that sickness of the heart which afflicts you; but strongly I feel assured it will not master you, that you will rise strongly above it and reach the place your genius destines you to. Most falsely do you judge yourself when you seek such degrading similitudes to represent what you call your' whining.' And I pray you may not again talk of your distresses in so desperate, and to me disagreeable, manner. My dear Sir, is it to be doubted that you are suffering grievously the want of spiritual communion, the bread and water of the soul? and why, then, do you, as it were, mock at your calamity or treat it jestingly? I declare this is a sore offence. You altogether mistake at least my feeling if you think I have anything but the kindest sympathy in your case, in which sympathy I am sure there is nothing degrading, either to you or to me. Else were I degraded every time I visit a sick bed in endeavouring to draw forth the case of a sufferer from his own lips that I may if possible administer some spiritual consolation. But oh! I would be angry, or rather I should have a shudder of unnatural feeling, if the sick man were to make a mockery to me of his case or to deride himself for making it known to any physician of body or mind. Excuse my freedom, Carlyle. I do this in justification of my own state of mind towards your distress. I feel for your condition as a brother would feel, and to see you silent about it were the greatest access of painful emotion which you could cause me. I hope soon to look back with you over this scene of trials as the soldier does over a hard campaign, or the restored captives do over their days of imprisonment. Again, on the receipt of some better account of his friend's condition, Irving wrote on the 26th of April: I am beginning to see the dawn of the day when you shall be plucked by the literary world from my solitary, and therefore more clear, admiration; and when from almost a monopoly I shall have nothing but a mere shred of your praise. They will unearth you, and for your sake I will rejoice, though for my own, I may regret. But I shall always have the pleasant superiority that I was your friend and admirer, through good and through bad report, to continue, so I hope, unto the end. Yet our honest Demosthenes, or shall I call him Chrysostom (Boanerges would fit him better),11 seems to have caught some glimpse of your inner man, though he had few opportunities; for he never ceases to be inquiring after you. You will soon shift your quarters, though for the present I think your motto should be, 'Better a wee bush than na bield.' If you are going to revert to teaching again, which I heartily deprecate, I know nothing better than Swan's conception, although success in it depends mainly upon offset and address, and the studying of humours, " Dr. Chalmers. 10 March 15, 1821. which, though it be a good enough way of its kind, is not the way to which I think you should yet condescend. 6 Friends and family might console and advise, but Carlyle himself could alone conquer the spiritual maladies which were the real cause of his distraction. In June of this year, 1821, was transacted what in Sartor Resartus he describes as his conversion,' or 'new birth,' when he' authentically took the Devil by the nose,' when he achieved finally the convictions, positive and negative, by which the whole of his later life was governed. Nothing in Sartor Resartus (he says) is fact; symbolical myth all, except that of the incident in the Rue St. Thomas de l'Enfer, which occurred quite literally to myself in Leith Walk, during three weeks of total sleeplessness, in which almost my one solace was that of a daily bathe on the sands between Leith and Portobello. Incident was as I went down; coming up I generally felt refreshed for the hour. I remember it well, and could go straight to about the place. As the incident is thus authenticated, I may borrow the words in which it is described, and so close what may be called the period of Carlyle's apprenticeship. But for me so strangely unprosperous had I been, the net result of my workings amounted as yet simply to-nothing. How, then, could I believe in my strength when there was as yet no mirror to see it in? Ever did this agitating, yet, as I now perceive, quite frivolous question remain to me insoluble: Hast thou a certain faculty, a certain worth, such as even the most have not; or art thou the completest dullard of these modern times? Alas, the fearful unbelief is unbelief in yourself; and how could I believe? Had not my first last faith in myself, when even to me the Heavens seemed laid open, and I dared to love, been all too cruelly belied? The speculative mystery of life grew ever more mysterious to me: neither in the practical mystery had I made the slightest progress, but been everywhere buffeted, foiled, and contemptuously cast out. A feeble unit in the middle of a threatening infinitude, I seemed to have nothing given me but eyes whereby to discern my own wretchedness. Invisible yet impenetrable walls, as of enchantment, divided me from all living. Now when I look back it was a strange isolation I then lived in. The men and women round me, even speaking with me, were but figures; I had practically forgotten that they were alive, that they were not merely automatic. In the midst of their crowded streets and assemblages, I walked solitary, and (except as it was my own heart, not another's, that I kept devouring) savage also as the tiger in his jungle. Some comfort it would have been could I, like Faust, have fancied myself tempted and tormented of the devil; for a hell as I imagine, without life, though only diabolic life, were more frightful: but in our age of downpulling and disbelief, the very devil has been pulled down, you cannot so much as believe in a devil. To me the universe was all void of life, of purpose, of volition, even of hostility: it was one huge, dead, immeasurable steam-engine, rolling on in its dead indifference, to grind me limb from limb. Oh, the vast gloomy, solitary Golgotha and mill of death! Why was the living banished thither companionless, conscious? Why, if there is no devil, nay, unless the devil is your god? From suicide a certain aftershine (Nachschein) of Christianity withheld me, perhaps also a certain indolence of character; for was not that a remedy I had at any time within reach? Often, however, there was a question present to me: should some one now at the turning of that corner blow thee |
