How do you like it [Deerbrook]? people ask. To which there are serious answers returnable, but few so good as none.
Thomas Carlyle: Letter to Emerson, 17th April, 1839.
On ‘The Hour and the Man.’
The good Harriet is not well; but keeps a very courageous heart. She lives by the shore of the beautiful blue Northumbrian Sea; “a many-sounding” solitude which I often envy her. She writes unweariedly.... You saw her Toussaint l’Ouvertour; how she has made such a beautiful “black Washington” ... of a rough-handed, hard-hearted, semi-articulate, gabbling Negro; and of the horriblest phasis that ‘Sansculottism’ can exhibit, of a Black Sansculottism, a musical Opera or Oratorio in pink stockings! It is very beautiful. Beautiful as a child’s heart,—and in so shrewd a head as that. She is now writing express Children’s Tales, which I calculate I shall find more perfect.
Thomas Carlyle: Letter to Emerson, 21st February, 1841. ‘Correspondence of T. Carlyle and R. W. Emerson.’
FOOTNOTES:
[1] Haworth Churchyard, by Matthew Arnold.
[2] The portrait alluded to is probably the caricature by D. Maclise, representing Miss Martineau seated, with a cat perched upon her shoulder, before a cooking-stove.
AURORE DUPIN (DUDEVANT).
(George Sand.)
1804-1876.