Recollections of a Long Life: An Autobiography

by Theodore L. Cuyler

Carlyle—Mrs. Baillie—The Young Queen—Napoleon

One of the lions of whom I was in pursuit was Thomas Carlyle. Very few Americans at that time had ever seen him, for he lived a very secluded and laborious life in a little brick house at Chelsea, in the southwest of London; and he rarely kept open doors. His life was the opposite to that of Dickens and Macaulay, and he was never lionized, except when he went to Edinburgh to deliver his address before the University, years afterwards. I sent him a note in which I informed him of the enthusiastic admiration which we college students felt for him, and that I desired to call and pay him my respects. To my note he responded promptly: "You will be welcome to-morrow at three o'clock, the hour when I become accessible in my garret here." I found his "garret" to be a comfortable front room on the second floor of his modest home. It was well lined with books, and a portrait of Oliver Cromwell hung behind his study chair. He was seated at his table with a huge German volume open before him. His greeting was very hearty, but, with a comical look of surprise, he said in broad Scotch: "You are a verra young mon." I told him of the appetite we college boys had for his books, and he assured me at once that while he had met some of our eminent literary men he had never happened to meet a college boy before. "Your Mr. Longfellow," said he, "called to see me yesterday. He is a man skilled in the tongues. Your own name I see is Dootch. The word 'Cuyler' means a delver, or one who digs underground. You must be a Dutchman." I told him that my ancestors had come over from Holland a couple of centuries ago, and I was proud of my lineage; for my grandfather, Glen Cuyler, was a descendant of Hendrick Cuyler, one of the early Dutch settlers of Albany, who came there in 1667. "Ah," said he, "the Dootch are the brawvest people of modern times. The world has been rinnin' after a red rag of a Frenchman; but he was nothing to William the Silent. When Pheelip of Spain sent his Duke of Alva to squelch those Dutchmen they joost squelched him like a rotten egg—aye, they did."

I asked him why he didn't visit America, and told him that I had observed his name registered at Ambleside, on Lake Windermere. "Nae, nae," said he, "I never scrabble my name in public places." I explained that it was on the hotel register that I had seen "Thomas Carlyle." "It was not mine," he replied, "I never travel only when I ride on a horse in the teeth of the wind to get out of this smoky London. I would like to see America. You may boast of your Dimocracy, or any other 'cracy, or any other kind of political roobish, but the reason why your laboring folk are so happy is that you have a vast deal of land for a very few people." In this racy, picturesque vein he ran on for an hour in the most cordial, good humor. He was then in his prime, hale and athletic, with a remarkably keen blue eye, a strong lower jaw and stiff iron gray hair, brushed up from a capacious forehead; and he had a look of a sturdy country deacon dressed up on a Sunday morning for church. He was very carefully attired in a new suit that day for visiting, and, as I rose to leave, he said to me: "I am going up into London and I will walk wi' ye." We sallied out and he strode the pavement with long strides like a plowman. I told him I had just come from the land of Burns, and that the old man at the native cottage of the poet had drunk himself to death by drinking to the memory of Burns.

At this Carlyle laughed loudly, and remarked: "Was that the end of him? Ah, a wee bit drap will send a mon a lang way." He then told me that when he was a lad he used to go into the Kirkyard at Dumfries and, hunting out the poet's tomb, he loved to stand and just read over the name—"Rabbert Burns"—"Rabbert Burns." He pronounced the name with deep reverence. That picture of the country lad in his earliest act of hero-worship at the grave of Burns would have been a good subject for the pencil of Millais or of Holman Hunt. At the corner of Hyde Park I parted from Mr. Carlyle, and watched him striding away, as if, like the De'il in "Tam O'Shanter," he had "business on his hand."

Thirty years afterwards, in June, 1872, I felt an irrepressible desire to see the grand old man once more, and I accordingly addressed him a note requesting the favor of a few minutes' interview. His reply was, perhaps, the briefest letter ever written. It was simply:

"Three P.M.
T.C."

He told me afterwards that his hand had become so tremulous that he seldom touched a pen. My beloved friend, the Rev. Newman Hall, asked the privilege of accompanying me, as, like most Londoners, he had never put his eye on the recluse philosopher. We found the same old brick house, No. 5 Cheyne Row, Chelsea, without the slightest change outside or in. But, during those thirty years the gifted wife had departed, and a sad change had come over the once hale, stalwart man. After we had waited some time, a feeble, stooping figure, attired in a long blue flannel gown, moved slowly into the room. His gray hair was unkempt, his blue eyes were still keen and piercing, and a bright hectic spot of red appeared on each of his hollow cheeks. His hands were tremulous, and his voice deep and husky. After a few personal inquiries the old man launched out into a most extraordinary and characteristic harangue on the wretched degeneracy of these evil days. The prophet, Jeremiah, was cheerfulness itself in comparison with him. Many of the raciest things he regaled us with were entirely too personal for publication. He amused us with a description of half a night's debate with John Bright on political economy, while he said, "Bright theed and thoud with me for hours, while his Quaker wife sat up hearin' us baith. I tell ye, John Bright got as gude as he gie that night"; and I have no doubt that he did.

Most of his extraordinary harangue was like an eruption of Vesuvius, but the laugh he occasionally gave showed that he was talking about as much for his own amusement as for ours. He was terribly severe on Parliament, which he described as "endless babblement and windy talk—the same hurdy-gurdies grinding out lies and inanities." The only man he had ever heard in Parliament that at all satisfied him was the Old Iron Duke. "He gat up and stammered away for fifteen minutes; but I tell ye, he was the only mon in Parliament who gie us any credible portraiture of the facts." He looked up at the portrait of Oliver Cromwell behind him, and exclaimed with great vehemence: "I ha' gone doon to the verra bottom of Oliver's speeches, and naething in Demosthenes or in any other mon will compare wi' Cromwell in penetrating into the veritable core of the fact. Noo, Parliament, as they ca' it, is joost everlasting babblement and lies." We led him to discuss the labor question and the condition of the working classes. He said that the turmoil about labor is only "a lazy trick of master and man to do just as little honest work and to get just as much for it as they possibly can—that is the labor question." It did my soul good, as a teetotaler, to hear his scathing denunciation of the liquor traffic. He was fierce in his wrath against "the horrible and detestable damnation of whuskie and every kind of strong drink." In this strain the thin and weird looking old Iconoclast went on for an hour until he wound up with declaring, "England has joost gane clear doon into an abominable cesspool of lies, shoddies and shams—down to a bottomless damnation. Ye may gie whatever meaning to that word that ye like." He could not refrain from laughing heartily himself at the conclusion of this eulogy on his countrymen. If we had not known that Mr. Carlyle had a habit of exercising himself in this kind of talk, we should have felt a sort of consternation. As it was we enjoyed it as a postscript to "Sartor Resartus" or the "Latter Day" pamphlets, and listened and laughed accordingly. As we were about parting from him with a cordial and tender farewell, my friend, Newman Hall, handed him a copy of his celebrated little book, "Come to Jesus," Mr. Carlyle, leaning over his table, fixed his eye upon the inscription on the outside of the booklet, and as we left the room, we heard him repeating to himself the title "Coom to Jesus—Coom to Jesus."

About Carlyle's voluminous works, his glorious eulogies of Luther, Knox and Cromwell, his vivid histories, his pessimistic utterances, his hatred of falsehood and his true, pure and laborious life, I have no time or space to write. He was the last of the giants in one department of British literature. He will outlive many an author who slumbers in the great Abbey. I owe him grateful thanks for many quickening, stimulating thoughts, and shall always be thankful that I grasped the strong hand of Thomas Carlyle.

One of the literary celebrities to whom I had credentials was the venerable Mrs. Joanna Baillie, not now much read, but then well known from her writings and her intimacy with Sir Walter Scott, and to whom Lockhart devotes a considerable space in the biography. Her residence was in Hampstead, and I was obliged, after leaving the omnibus, to walk nearly a mile across open fields which are now completely built over by mighty London. The walk proved a highly profitable one from the society of an intelligent stranger who, like every true English gentleman, when properly approached, was led to give all the information in his power. When I reached the suburban village of Hampstead, after passing over stiles and through fields, I at last succeeded in finding her residence, a quiet little cottage, with a little parlor which had been honored by some of the first characters of our age. "The female Shakespeare," as she was sometimes called in those days, was at home and tripped into the room with the elastic step of a girl, although she was considerably over three score years and ten. She was very petite and fair, with a sweet benignant countenance that inspired at once admiration and affection. Almost her first words to me were: "What a pity you did not come ten minutes sooner; for if you had you would have seen Mr. Thomas Campbell, who has just gone away." I was exceedingly sorry to have missed a sight of the author of "Hohenlinden" and the incomparable "Battle of the Baltic," but was quite surprised that he was still seeking much society; for in those days he was lamentably addicted to intoxicants. On more than one public occasion he was the worse for his cups; and when, after his death, a subscription was started to place his statue in Westminster Abbey, Samuel Rogers, the poet, cynically said, "Yes, I will gladly give twenty pounds any day to see dear old Tom Campbell stand steady on his legs." It is a matter of congratulation that the most eminent men of the Victorian era have not fallen into some of the unhappy habits of their predecessors at the beginning of the last century. Mrs. Baillie entertained me with lively descriptions of Sir Walter Scott, and of her old friend, Mr. Wordsworth, who was her guest whenever he came up to London. She expressed the warmest admiration for the moral and political, though not all of the religious, writings of our Dr. Channing, whom she pronounced the finest essayist of the time. She also felt a curious interest (which I discovered in many other notable people in England) to learn what she could in regard to our American Indians, and expressed much admiration when I gave her some quotations from the picturesque eloquence of our sons of the forest.