"I am free from men of pleasure's cares,
By dint of feelings far more deep than theirs."
This is "Lord Byron," and is one of the finest things he has said.
THE CARLYLES—THOMAS (1795-1881) and
JANE WELSH (1801-1866)
A paradoxer, even of a less virulent-frivolous type than that with which we have been recently afflicted, might sustain, for some little time at any rate, the argument against preservation of letters from the case of this eminent couple. If Mrs. Carlyle had not written hers, or if they had remained unknown, the whole sickening controversy about the character and married life of the pair might, as was said in the Introduction, never have existed. And if Carlyle himself had written none, persons of any intelligence would still have had a pretty adequate idea of him from his Works. On the other hand the addition to knowledge in his case is quite welcome: and in hers it practically gives us what we could hardly have known otherwise—one of the most remarkable of woman-natures, and one of the most striking confirmations of the merciless adage "Whom the gods curse, to them they grant the desires of their hearts." For she wanted above all things to be the wife of a man of genius—and she was. So the pro and the con in this matter may so far be set against each other. But there remains to credit a considerable amount of most welcome and (notably in the instance specified in the Introduction) almost consummate literature of the epistolary kind. This instance itself is perhaps too tragic for our little collection: indeed it might help to spread the exaggerated idea of the writer's unhappiness which has been too prevalent already. There is some "metal more attractive" in her letters, which perhaps, taken all round, put her with Madame de Sévigné and "Lady Mary" at the head of all published women letter-writers. And Carlyle's annotations to them, when not too bilious or too penitent, show him almost at his best. His own (given below) to FitzGerald (the way in which epistolary literature interconnects itself has been noted) appears to me one of his most characteristic though least volcanic utterances. It was written while he was in the depths of what his wife called "the Valley of the Shadow of Frederick," (i.e. his vast book on that amiable monarch) and had retired to extra-solitude in consequence. "Farlingay" refers to a recent stay in Suffolk with FitzGerald. As often with Carlyle, there may be more than one interpretation of his inverted commas at "gentleman" as regards Voltaire, to whom he certainly would not have allotted the word in its best sense. The phrase about Chaos and the Evil Genius is Carlyle shut up in narrow space like the other genius or genie in the Arabian Nights. The "awful jangle of bells" speaks his horror of any invading sound. The "Naseby matter" refers to a monument which he and FitzGerald had planned, and which (with the precedent investigation as to the battle which F. had conducted years before for his Cromwell), occupies a good deal of FitzGerald's own correspondence. Indeed, it is thanks to Naseby that we possess this very letter. FitzGerald says elsewhere that he kept only these Naseby letters of all Carlyle's correspondence with him, destroying the rest, as he did Thackeray's and Tennyson's, lest "private personal history should fall into some unscrupulous hands." One admires the conduct while one feels the loss. As for the monument, it never came off: though it was talked about for some thirty years. Mrs. Carlyle's—one of the early and, despite complaints, cheerful time, the other later and, despite its resignation, from "the Valley of the Shadow"—require no annotation, save in respect of Carlyle's own on Deerbrook. He might well call it "poor": it is indeed one of the few novels by a writer of any distinction, which one tolerably voracious novel-reader has found incapable of being read. And this is curious: for she had written good stories earlier.
38. To Edward Fitzgerald
Addiscombe Farm, Croydon.
15th Septr. 1855
Dear Fitzgerald,