The Revolution of February 24th at Paris surprised Carlyle less than most of his contemporaries, as it confirmed what he had been saying for years. He did not believe, we are told, in immediate convulsion in England; but he did believe that, unless England took warning and mended her ways, her turn would come. The excitement in London was intense, and leading men expressed themselves freely, but Carlyle's general thoughts were uttered in a lengthy letter to Thomas Erskine of Linlathen, for whom he entertained a warm regard. On March 14 he met Macaulay at Lord Mahon's at breakfast; 'Niagara of eloquent commonplace talk,' he says, 'from Macaulay. "Very good-natured man"; man cased in official mail of proof; stood my impatient fire-explosions with much patience, merely hissing a little steam up, and continued his Niagara—supply and demand; power ruinous to powerful himself; impossibility of Government doing more than keep the peace; suicidal distraction of new French Republic, etc. Essentially irremediable, commonplace nature of the man; all that was in him now gone to the tongue; a squat, thickset, low-browed, short, grizzled little man of fifty.'
One of the few men Carlyle was anxious to see was Sir Robert Peel. He was introduced by the Barings at a dinner at Bath House. Carlyle sat next to Peel, whom he describes as 'a finely-made man of strong, not heavy, rather of elegant, stature; stands straight, head slightly thrown back, and eyelids modestly drooping; every way mild and gentle, yet with less of that fixed smile than the portraits give him. He is towards sixty, and, though not broken at all, carries, especially in his complexion, when you are near him, marks of that age; clear, strong blue eyes which kindle on occasion, voice extremely good, low-toned, something of cooing in it, rustic, affectionate, honest, mildly persuasive. Spoke about French Revolutions new and old; well read in all that; had seen General Dumouriez; reserved seemingly by nature, obtrudes nothing of diplomatic reserve. On the contrary, a vein of mild fun in him, real sensibility to the ludicrous, which feature I liked best of all.... I consider him by far our first public man—which, indeed, is saying little—and hope that England in these frightful times may still get some good of him. N.B.—This night with Peel was the night in which Berlin city executed its last terrible battle, (19th of March to Sunday morning the 20th, five o'clock.) While we sate there the streets of Berlin city were all blazing with grape-shot and the war of enraged men. What is to become of all that? I have a book to write about it. Alas! We hear of a great Chartist petition to be presented by 200,000 men. People here keep up their foolish levity in speaking of these things; but considerate persons find them to be very grave; and indeed all, even the laughers, are in considerable secret alarm.'[21]
At such a time Carlyle knew that he, the author of Chartism, ought to say something. Foolish people, too, came pressing for his opinions. Not seeing his way to a book upon 'Democracy,' he wrote a good many newspaper articles, chiefly in the Examiner and the Spectator, to deliver his soul. Even Fonblanque and Rintoul (the editors), remarks Froude, friendly though they were to him, could not allow him his full swing. 'There is no established journal,' complained Carlyle, 'that can stand my articles, no single one they would not blow the bottom out of.'
On July 12 occurs this entry in his journal: 'Chartist concern, and Irish Repeal concern, and French Republic concern have all gone a bad way since the March entry—April 20 (immortal day already dead), day of Chartist monster petition; 200,000 special constables swore themselves in, etc., and Chartism came to nothing. Riots since, but the leaders all lodged in gaol, tried, imprisoned for two years, etc., and so ends Chartism for the present. Irish Mitchel, poor fellow! is now in Bermuda as a felon; letter from him, letter to him, letter to and from Lord Clarendon—was really sorry for poor Mitchel. But what help? French Republic cannonaded by General Cavaignac; a sad outlook there.'[22]
Carlyle's Cromwell had created a set of enthusiastic admirers who were bent on having a statue of the great Protector set up. Carlyle was asked to give his sanction to the proposal. Writing to his mother, he said: 'The people having subscribed £25,000 for a memorial to an ugly bullock of a Hudson, who did not even pretend to have any merit except that of being suddenly rich, and who is now discovered to be little other than at heart a horse-coper and dishonest fellow, I think they ought to leave Cromwell alone of their memorials, and try to honour him in some more profitable way—by learning to be honest men like him, for example. But we shall see what comes of all this Cromwell work—a thing not without value either.'[23]
'Ireland,' says Froude, 'of all the topics on which Carlyle had meditated writing, remained painfully fascinating. He had looked at the beggarly scene, he had seen the blighted fields, the ragged misery of the wretched race who were suffering for other's sins as well as for their own. Since that brief visit of his, the famine had been followed by the famine-fever, and the flight of millions from a land which was smitten with a curse. Those ardent young men with whom he had dined at Dundrum were working as felons in the docks at Bermuda. Gavan Duffy, after a near escape from the same fate, had been a guest in Cheyne Row; and the story which he had to tell of cabins torn down by crowbars, and shivering families, turned out of their miserable homes, dying in the ditches by the roadside, had touched Carlyle to the very heart. He was furious at the economical commonplaces with which England was consoling itself. He regarded Ireland as "the breaking-point of the huge suppuration which all British and all European society then was."'[24] Carlyle paid a second visit to Ireland. He was anxious to write a book on the subject. He noted down what he had seen, and 'then dismissed the unhappy subject from his mind,' giving his manuscript to a friend, which was published after his death.
The 7th of August found Carlyle among his 'ain folk' at Scotsbrig, and this was his soliloquy: 'Thank Heaven for the sight of real human industry, with human fruits from it, once more. The sight of fenced fields, weeded crops, and human creatures with whole clothes on their back—it was as if one had got into spring water out of dunghill puddles.' Mrs Carlyle had also gone to Scotland, and 'wandered like a returned spirit about the home of her childhood.' Of her numerous lively letters, room must be found for a characteristic epistle to her brother-in-law, John Carlyle. His translation of Dante's Inferno was just out, and her uncle's family at Auchtertool Manse, in Fife, where she was staying, were busy reading and discussing it. 'We had been talking about you,' she says, 'and had sunk silent. Suddenly my uncle turned his head to me and said, shaking it gravely, "He has made an awesome plooster o' that place." "Who? What place, uncle?" "Whew! the place ye'll maybe gang to, if ye dinna tak' care." I really believe he considers all those circles of your invention. Walter with the poor wretches then rushing on their fate—all that so overcame me that I fell crying as desperately as if I had been getting married to the collier myself, and, when the ceremony was over, extended my hand to the unfortunates, and actually (in such an enthusiasm of pity did I find myself) I presented the new husband with a snuff-box which I happened to have in my hand, being just about presenting it to Walter when the creatures came in. This unexpected Himmelsendung finished turning the man's head; he wrung my hand over and over, leaving his mark for some hours after, and ended his grateful speeches with, "Oh, Miss! Oh, Liddy! may ye hae mair comfort and pleasure in your life than ever you have had yet!" which might easily be.'
Carlyle was full of wrath at what he considered the cant about the condition of the wage-earners in Manchester and elsewhere, and his indignation found vent in the Latter-day Pamphlets. Froude once asked him if he had ever thought of going into Parliament, for the former knew that the opportunity must have been offered him. 'Well,' he said, 'I did think of it at the time of the "Latter-day Pamphlets." I felt that nothing could prevent me from getting up in the House and saying all that.' 'He was powerful,' adds Froude, 'but he was not powerful enough to have discharged with his single voice the vast volume of conventional electricity with which the collective wisdom of the nation was, and remains charged. It is better that his thoughts should have been committed to enduring print, where they remain to be reviewed hereafter by the light of fact.'[25]
The printing of the Pamphlets commenced at the beginning of 1850, and went on month after month, each separately published, no magazine daring to become responsible for them. When the Pamphlets appeared, they were received with 'astonished indignation.' 'Carlyle taken to whisky,' was the popular impression—or perhaps he had gone mad. 'Punch,' says Froude, 'the most friendly to him of all the London periodicals, protested affectionately. The delinquent was brought up for trial before him, I think for injuring his reputation. He was admonished, but stood impenitent, and even "called the worthy magistrate a windbag and a sham." I suppose it was Thackeray who wrote this; or some other kind friend, who feared, like Emerson, "that the world would turn its back on him." He was under no illusion himself as to the effect which he was producing.'[26]
Amid the general storm, Carlyle was 'agreeably surprised' to receive an invitation to dine with Peel at Whitehall Gardens, where he met a select company. 'After all the servants but the butler were gone,' narrates Carlyle, 'we began to hear a little of Peel's quiet talk across the table, unimportant, distinguished by its sense of the ludicrous shining through a strong official rationality and even seriousness of temper. Distracted address of a letter from somebody to Queen Victoria; "The most noble George Victoria, Queen of England, Knight and Baronet," or something like that. A man had once written to Peel himself, while secretary, "that he was weary of life, that if any gentleman wanted for his park-woods a hermit, he, etc.", all of which was very pretty and human as Peel gave it us.'[27] Carlyle was driven home by the Bishop of Oxford, 'Soapy Sam' Wilberforce, whom he had probably met before at the Ashburton's. The Bishop once told Froude that he considered Carlyle a most eminently religious man. 'Ah, Sam,' said Carlyle to Froude one day, 'he is a very clever fellow; I do not hate him near as much as I fear I ought to do.' Carlyle and Peel met once more, at Bath House, and there, too, he was first introduced to the Duke of Wellington. Writing at the time, Carlyle said: 'I had never seen till now how beautiful, and what an expression of graceful simplicity, veracity, and nobleness there is about the old hero when you see him close at hand.... Except for Dr Chalmers, I have not for many years seen so beautiful an old man.'