In the summer the French Revolution appeared. The sale at first was slow, almost nothing, for it was not 'subscribed for' among the booksellers. Alluding to the criticisms which appeared, Carlyle said: 'Some condemn me, as is very natural, for affectation; others are hearty, even passionate, in their estimation; on the whole, it strikes me as not unlikely that the book may take some hold of the English people, and do them and itself a little good.' He was right. Other historians have described the Revolution: Carlyle reproduces the Revolution. He approaches history like a dramatist. Give him, as in the French Revolution, a weird, tragic, awe-inspiring theme, and he will utilise his characters, scenes, and circumstances in artistic subordination to the central idea. Carlyle might be called a subjective dramatist—that is to say, his own spirit, thoughts, and reflections get so mixed up with the history that it is difficult to imagine the one without the other. Every now and then the dramatist interrupts the tragedy to interject his own reflections; in the history the Carlylean philosophy plays the part of a Greek chorus. As an example of Carlyle's genius for a dramatic situation, take his opening of the great drama with the death scene of Louis XV. Who does not feel, in reading that scene, as if the Furies were not far off? who does not detect in the grotesque jostling of the comedy and tragedy of life premonitions of the coming storm?
'But figure his thought, when Death is now clutching at his own heart-strings; unlooked for, inexorable! Yes, poor Louis, Death has found thee. No palace walls or lifeguards, gorgeous tapestries or gilt buckram of stiffest ceremonial could keep him out; but he is here, here at thy very life-breath, and will extinguish it. Thou, whose whole existence hitherto was a chimera and scenic show, at length becomest a reality; sumptuous Versailles bursts asunder, like a dream, into void Immensity: Time is done, and all the scaffolding of Time falls wrecked with hideous clangour round thy soul: the pale Kingdoms yawn open; there must thou enter, naked, all unking'd, and await what is appointed thee!... There are nods and sagacious glances, go-betweens, silk dowagers mysteriously gliding, with smiles for this constellation, sighs for that: there is tremor, of hope or desperation, in several hearts. There is the pale, grinning Shadow of Death, ceremoniously ushered along by another grinning Shadow, of Etiquette; at intervals the growl of Chapel Organs, like prayer by machinery; proclaiming, as in a kind of horrid diabolic horse-laughter, Vanity of vanities, all is Vanity!'
At every stage in the narrative, the reader is impressed with the dramatic texture of Carlyle's mind. No dramatic writer surpasses him in the art of producing effects by contrasts. In the midst of a vigorous description of the storming of the Bastille, he rings down the curtain for a moment in order to introduce the following scene of idyllic beauty: 'O evening sun of July, how, at this hour, thy beams fall slant on reapers amid peaceful woody fields; on old women spinning in cottages; on ships far out in the silent main; on Balls at the Orangerie of Versailles, where high-rouged Dames of the Palace are even now dancing with double-jacketed Hussar officers;—and also on this roaring Hell-porch of a Hotel-de-Ville!'
Equally effective is Carlyle in rendering vivid the doings of the individual actors in the drama. For photographic minuteness and startling realism what can equal the following:—'But see Camille Desmoulins, from the Café de Foy, rushing out, sibylline in face; his hair streaming, in each hand a pistol! He springs to a table: the police satellites are eyeing him; alive they shall not take him, not they alive him alive. This time he speaks without stammering:—Friends! shall we die like hunted hares? Like sheep hounded into their pinfold; bleating for mercy, where is no mercy, but only a whetted knife? The hour is come, the supreme hour of Frenchman and Man; when Oppressors are to try conclusions with Oppressed; and the word is, swift Death, or Deliverance forever. Let such hour be well-come! Us, meseems, one cry only befits: To Arms! Let universal Paris, universal France, as with the throat of the whirlwind, sound only: To arms!—"To arms!" yell responsive the innumerable voices; like one great voice, as of a Demon yelling from the air: for all faces wax fire-eyed, all hearts burn up into madness. In such, or fitter words does Camille evoke the Elemental Powers, in this great moment—"Friends," continues Camille, "some rallying-sign! Cockades; green ones—the colour of Hope!"—As with the flight of locusts, these green tree-leaves; green ribands from the neighbouring shops: all green things are snatched, and made cockades of. Camille descends from his table; "stifled with embraces, wetted with tears;" has a bit of green riband handed him; sticks it in his hat. And now to Curtius' Image-shop there; to the Boulevards; to the four winds, and rest not till France be on fire!'
As a historical work, the French Revolution is unique. It is precisely the kind of book Isaiah would have written had there been a like Revolution in the Jewish kingdom; and just as we go to Isaiah, not for sociological guidance, but for ethical inspiration, so we turn to the French Revolution when the mind and heart are in a state of torpor in order to get a series of shocks from the Carlylean electric battery. From a historian a student expects light as well as heat, guidance as well as inspiration. It is not enough to have the great French explosion vividly photographed before his eyes; it is equally necessary to know the causes which led to the catastrophe. Here, as a historian, Carlyle is conspicuously weak. His habit of looking for dramatic situations, his passion for making commonplace incidents and commonplace men merely the satellites of commanding personalities, in a word, his theory that history should deal with the doings of great men, prevents Carlyle from dwelling upon the politico-economic side of national life. So absorbed is he in painting the Revolution, that he forgets to explain the Revolution. We have abundance of vague declamations against shams in high places, plenty of talk about God's judgments, in the style of the Hebrew prophets, but of patient diagnosis, there is none. As Mr Morley puts it in his luminous essay on Carlyle: 'To the question whether mankind gained or lost by the French Revolution, Carlyle nowhere gives a clear answer; indeed, on this subject more than any other, he clings closely to his favourite method of simple presentation, streaked with dramatic irony.... He draws its general moral lesson from the Revolution, and with clangorous note warns all whom it concerns from King to Church that imposture must come to an end. But for the precise amount and kind of dissolution which the West owes to it, for the political meaning of it, as distinguished from its moral or its dramatic significance, we seek in vain, finding no word on the subject, nor even evidence of consciousness that such word is needed.' Had Carlyle, in addition to his genius as a historical dramatist, possessed the patient diagnosing power of the writers and thinkers whom he derided, his French Revolution would have taken its place in historical literature as an epoch-making book. As it stands, the reader who desires to have an intelligible knowledge of the subject, is compelled to shake himself free of the Carlylean mesmerism, and have recourse to those writers whom Carlyle, under the opprobrious names of 'logic-choppers' and 'dry-as-dusts,' held up to public ridicule.
CHAPTER V
HOLIDAY JOURNEYINGS—LITERARY WORK
Carlyle was so broken down with his efforts upon the French Revolution that a trip to Annandale became necessary. He stayed at Scotsbrig two months, 'wholly idle, reading novels, smoking pipes in the garden with his mother, hearing notices of his book from a distance, but not looking for them or caring about them.' Autumn brought Carlyle back to Cheyne Row, when he found his wife in better health, delighted to have him again at her side. She knew, as Froude points out, though Carlyle, so little vain was he, had failed as yet to understand it, that he had returned to a changed position, that he was no longer lonely and neglected, but had taken his natural place among the great writers of his day. He sent bright accounts of himself to Scotsbrig. 'I find John Sterling here, and many friends, all kinder each than the other to me. With talk and locomotion the days pass cheerfully till I rest and gird myself together again. They make a great talk about the book, which seems to have succeeded in a far higher degree than I looked for. Everybody is astonished at every other body's being pleased with this wonderful performance.'[18]
Carlyle did nothing all the winter except to write his essay on Sir Walter Scott. His next task was to prepare for a second course of lectures in the spring on 'Heroes.' The course ended with 'a blaze of fire-works—people weeping at the passionately earnest tone in which for once they heard themselves addressed.' The effort brought Carlyle £300 after all expenses had been paid. 'A great blessing,' he remarked, 'to a man that had been haunted by the squalid spectre of beggary.'
Carlyle had no intention of visiting Scotland that autumn, but having received a pressing invitation from old friends at Kirkcaldy, he took steamer to Leith in August. While at Kirkcaldy he crossed to Edinburgh and called on Jeffrey. 'He sat,' says Carlyle, 'waiting for me at Moray Place. We talked long in the style of literary and philosophic clitter-clatter. Finally it was settled that I should go out to dinner with him at Craigcrook, and not return to Fife till the morrow.' They dined and abstained from contradicting each other, Carlyle admitting that Jeffrey was becoming an amiable old fribble, 'very cheerful, very heartless, very forgettable and tolerable.'