They were neighbors. Carlyle had every opportunity of seeing Whistler on the street and in his studio. Seemingly two beings could not be less sympathetic, and yet the philosopher who had so few good words for any one, who was the implacable foe of sham and falsehood, who was intolerant of the society of others, who cared little for art and less for artists, freely gave his time and society to the most unpopular painter in England.
In truth there was a good deal in common between the two,—in the attitude of the one towards literature and what his fellow-writers were saying, and in the attitude of the other towards art and what his fellow-painters were doing. Each stood in his own sphere for the highest ideals, and no doubt each recognized in the other the quality of sincerity in his profession.
Poor Carlyle! your name should never be mentioned without an anathema for the scavengers who dealt with your memory. If they are not suffering the torments of the damned, the mills of the gods have ceased to turn.
Froude prefaced the Life of Carlyle with a long protestation that it contained the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth; which, it seems, according to even his notions, was a lie; for in the secrecy of his closet he prepared a pamphlet containing the revelations of the Jewsbury creature,—the expert opinion of “an ill-natured old maid,” as Mrs. Carlyle called her,—to the effect that Carlyle should never have married; and this pamphlet, containing the salacious tittle-tattle between himself and
this old maid, is given the world as presumably his last instalment of revelations, though no one knows how much similar stuff the Jewsbury creature, a romancer by profession, may have left pigeon-holed for still further harm.
And the answer to it all is that Carlyle, in spite of the old maid’s opinion, was married; and what is more to the point, remained married forty years, with no more of differences and dissensions, even accepting all the Froude-Jewsbury tattle, than any good wife will have with any good Scotchman; and during their long married life she was a help and an inspiration to her husband, and after her death she was mourned as few wives in the history of mankind have been mourned.
A depth beyond the imagination of Dante must be found for the Froude-Jewsbury combination.
As the portrait neared completion, Carlyle took a good look at it one day, seemed pleased, and said: