I
Athenæum May and Oct. 1909
Are people still interested in the Carlyles? Some are, we suppose. The older generation is interested in Carlyle, at any rate; though the younger, we believe, is not. For men and women under thirty the redoubtable sage has apparently no message; but for many of their fathers and mothers his least word still has a certain importance.
Such reverent curiosity, though it may excuse some bad books and much futile research, will, we fear, hardly justify the volume before us—Mr. Archibald's we mean, which tells us little about Carlyle and that little by no means new. One chapter only can be manufactured out of his sufficiently indefinite relations with Miss Gordon; though ten more pages are filled out with a discussion of that wholly unimportant question "Who was Blumine?" The reasonable conjecture is, of course, that Carlyle's method resembled that of other writers; his heroine, no doubt, was the child of his own imagination, and when a model was needed he drew indiscriminately from the ladies with whom he was acquainted.
Should any one chance to be interested in Margaret Gordon, her ancestors, her kindred, or her husband, he may glean a certain amount of information from this book. Born at Charlottetown (Prince Edward Island) in 1798, she was left fatherless at the age of four, and brought up in Scotland by her aunt. Between 1818 and 1820 she may have had a love-affair or flirtation with Carlyle; and in 1824 she married Mr. Bannerman, a commonplace, good-humoured business-man from Aberdeen, who became a Member of Parliament. Mr. Bannerman speculated, lost his fortune, and was consoled with a colonial governorship and a knighthood. Lady Bannerman was drawn into the Evangelical movement, devoted the last years of her life to works of piety, and died (1878) in a little house at Greenwich and the odour of sanctity. As to what manner of woman she may have been we are left in ignorance; into her mode of thinking, feeling, and seeing—into her character, that is—Mr. Archibald has obtained no insight. The necessary changes in matters of history having been made, his volume might do duty as the biographical memoir of thousands of her contemporaries. But perhaps a couple of specimens of the style and substance of Mr. Archibald's prose will best give the measure of his understanding:
"Lady Bannerman dispensed the hospitality of Government House with the dignity and grace which might be expected of one who for over thirty years had moved in the best society of England. She had the power of putting all at their ease, of identifying herself with their individual interests, and of entering with animation into the affairs of the hour. But while she was kind and gracious and frank, and would freely enter into conversation with any one, there was always a certain dignity which prevented any attempt at undue familiarity."
Again:
"In St. John's she was exceedingly kind and charitable to the poor, and she and Lady Hoyles were active workers in the Dorcas Society. She worshipped at St. Thomas' (Episcopal) Church, and was especially interested in her Sunday-school class. As we have seen, her sympathies were more with the Presbyterian Church, but probably because of her husband's official position, she always chose in the Colonies to connect herself with the Church of England."
If this be a fair account of Lady Bannerman, we may be pardoned for wondering why any one thought her biography worth writing. What it all has to do with Carlyle is to us far from clear. The eyes of publishers, however, are in these matters notoriously sharper than those of reviewers.