SECOND COURSE OF LECTURES. 139 Ah me! Sterling particularly argumentative, babblative, and on the whole unpleasant and unprofitable to me. Memorandum not to dine where he is soon, without cause. He is much spoiled since last year by really no great quantity of praise and flattery; restless as a whirling tormentum ; superficial, ingenious, of endless semifrothy utterance and argument. Keep out of his way till he mend a little. A finer heart was seldom seen than dwells in Sterling, but, alas! under what conditions? Ego et Rex meus. That is the tune we all sing to. Down with ego! Enough written for one day. I am very sickly, but silent. The lecture course was perhaps too prolonged. Twelve orations such as Carlyle was delivering were beyond the strength of any man who meant every word that he uttered. It ended, however, with a blaze of fireworks-' people weeping' at the passionately earnest tone in which for once they heard themselves addressed. The money result was nearly 3001., after all expenses had been paid. A great blessing,' as Carlyle said, 'to a man that had been haunted by the squalid spectre of beggary.' There were prospects of improved finances from other quarters too. Notwithstanding all the talk about the 'French Revolution,' nothing yet had been realised for it in England, but Emerson held out hopes of remittances on the American edition. Sartor,' 'poor beast,' as Mrs. Carlyle called it, was at last coming out in a volume, and there was still a talk of reprinting the essays. But Carlyle was worn out. Fame brought its accompaniments of invitations to dinner which could not be all refused; the dinners brought indigestions; and the dog days brought heat, and heat and indigestion together made sleep impossible. His letters to his brother are full of lamentation, and 6 then of remorse for his want of patience. At the close of a miserable declamation against everything under the sun, he winds up : Last night I sat down to smoke in my night-shirt in the back yard. It was one of the beautifullest nights; the halfmoon clear as silver looked out as from eternity, and the great dawn was streaming up. I felt a remorse, a kind of shudder, at the fuss I was making about a sleepless night, about my sorrow at all, with a life so soon to be absorbed into the great mystery above and around me. Oh! let us be patient. Let us call to God with our silent hearts, if we cannot with our tongues. It had been but a in the air for a The fever abated, The Italian scheme dissolved. vapour which had taken shape moment. Cooler weather came. and he was able to send a pleasant account of the finish to his mother the day after all was over. From her he was careful to conceal his unquiet thoughts. To Margaret Carlyle. Chelsea: June 12, 1838. The lectures went on better and better, and grew at last, or threatened to grow, quite a flaming affair. I had people greeting yesterday. I was quite as well pleased that we ended then and did not make any further racket about it. I have too good evidence (in poor Edward Irving's case) what a racket comes to at last, and want for my share to have nothing at all to do with such things. . . . The success of the thing, taking all sides of it together, seems to have been very considerable, far greater than I at all expected. My audience was supposed to be the best, for rank, beauty, and intelligence, ever collected in London. I had bonnie braw dames, Ladies this, Ladies that, though I dared not look at them lest they should put me out. I had old men of four score; men middle-aged, with fine steel-grey beards; RESULTS OF LECTURES. 141 young men of the Universities, of the law profession, all sitting quite mum there, and the Annandale voice gollying at them. Very strange to consider. They proposed giving me a dinner, some of them, but I declined it. 'Literary Institutions' more than one express a desire that I would lecture for them, but this also (their wages being small and their lecturers generally despicable) I decline. . . . My health did not suffer so much as I had reason to dread. I was awaking at three in the morning when the thing began, but afterwards I got to sleep till seven, and even till eight, and did not suffer nearly so much. I am no doubt shaken and stirred up considerably into a 'raised' state which I like very ill, but in a few days I shall get still enough, and probably even too still. One must work either with long moderate pain or else with short great pain. The short way is best according to my notion. 6 As usual, the first thought with Carlyle when in possession of his riches' was to send a present to Scotsbrig. He enclosed 5l. to his mother, to be divided among his sisters and herself, a sovereign to each. They were to buy bonnets with it, or any other piece of finery, and call them 'The Lecture.' On July 27 he wrote at length to his brother John. Chelsea: July 27, 1838. The lectures terminated quite triumphantly. ..Thank Heaven! It seems pretty generally expected that I am to lecture next year again, and subsequent years, having, as they say, made a new profession for myself. If dire famine drive me, I must even lecture, but not otherwise. Whoever he may be that wants to get into the centre of a fuss, it is not I. Freedom under the blue skv-ah me!-with a bit of brown bread and peace and pepticity to eat it with, this for my money before all the glory of Portman Square, or the solar system itself. But we must take what we can get and be thankful. After the lectures came a series of dinner-work and racketings; came hot weather, coronation uprcars, and at length sleeplessness, collapse, inertia, and at times almost the feeling of nonentity. I like that existence very ill; my nerves are not made for it. I corrected a few proof sheets. I read a few books, dull as Lethe. I have done nothing else whatever that I could help, except live. Frequently a little desire for some travel, a notion that change of scene and objects would be wholesome, has come upon me; but in my condition of irresolute imbecility, especially in the uncertainty we stood in as to your movements, nothing could be done. The weather has now grown cool. I find it tolerable enough to lounge at Chelsea for the time. My digestion is very bad; I should say, however, that my heart and life is on the whole sounder than it was last year. Now, too, all is getting very quiet; streets quite vacant within these two weeks. I am not like to stir from this unless driven. As for Jane, she is much improved; indeed, almost well since summer came. She does not wish to stir from her quarters at all. . . . ... The Americans are getting out Carlyle's miscellanies.' I know not whether I shall not import two hundred copies or so of this edition and save myself the trouble of editing here. The matter is as good as obsolete to me. There is no bread or other profit in it. . . . The Swedenborgians have addressed a small book and letters to me here. The New Catholics are making advances. Jane says I am fated to be the nucleus for all the mad people of my generation. John Sterling wanted me to accept a dinner from some Cambridge men, then to go with him to Cambridge for three days, then to &c. &c.; lastly, to go this same week down to Julius Hare's and bathe in the sea. The sea was tempting. Hare too, whom I have seen, is a likeable kind of man. But vis inertia prevailed, and to this, as to all the rest, I answered: 'Impossible, dear Sterling.' Indeed, John is dreadfully locomotive since his return. Some verses printed in Blackwood, and a considerable bluster of Wilson's about them, have sorrowfully discomposed our poor John, and proved what touchy and almost flimsy stuff there must be in him. I love him as before, but keep rather out of his way at present. Mill is plodding along at his dull Review under dull RESULTS OF LECTURES. 143 auspices, restricts himself I fancy to the Fox Taylor circle of Socinian Radicalism-a lamed cause at this time--and very rarely shows face here. His editor, one Robertson, a burly Aberdeen Scotchman of seven-and-twenty, full of laughter, vanity, pepticity, and hope, amuses me sometimes considerably more. He desires exceedingly that I would do something for the October number.' My desire that way is faint indeed. How many things in this world do not smell sweet to me! To how many things is one tempted to say with slow emphasis, Du Galgenaas!' (Thou gallows-carrion). There is some relief to me in a word like that. But pauca verba, as Nym has it. I told all the people in those lectures of mine that no speech ever uttered or utterable was worth comparison with silence. John Sterling in particular could not understand that in the least, but has it still sticking in him indigestible. Your affectionate brother, T. CARLYLE. |