Sterling at Falmouth-My own acquaintance with him—' Strafford '— Carlyle's opinion-Death of Mrs. Welsh-Carlyle for two months at Templand-Plans for the future-Thoughts of returning to Craigenputtock-Sale of Mrs. Welsh's property-Letters from Lockhart-Life in Annandale-Visit to Dr. Arnold at Rugby-Naseby field. STERLING was spending the winter of 1841-2 at Falmouth. His chest was weak. He had tried the West Indies, he had tried Madeira, he had tried the south of France, with no permanent benefit. He was now trying whether the mild air of the south of Cornwall might not answer at least as well, and spare him another banishment abroad. It was here and at this time that I became myself acquainted with Sterling. I did not see him often, but in the occasional interviews which I had with him he said some things which I could never forget, and which affected all my subsequent life. Among the rest, he taught me to know what Carlyle was. I had read the French Revolution,' had wondered at it like my contemporaries, but had not known what to make of it. ling made me understand that it was written by the greatest of living thinkers, if by the side of Carlyle any other person deserved to be called a thinker at all. He showed me, I remember, some of Carlyle's Ster letters to him, which have curiously come back into my hands after more than forty years. Looking over these letters now, I find at the beginning of this year some interesting remarks about Emerson, with whom also Sterling had fallen into some kind of correspondence. Besides his own Essays, Emerson had sent over copies of the Dial,' the organ then of intellectual Liberal New England. Carlyle had not liked the 'Dial,' which he thought high-flown, often even absurd. Yet it had something about it, too, which struck him as uncommon. It is to me (he said) the most wearisome of readable reading; shrill, incorporeal, spiritlike; I do not say ghastly, for that is the character of your Puseyism, Shelleyism, &c., real ghosts of extinct Laudisms, Robespierreisms, to me extremely hideous at all times. This New England business I rather liken to an unborn soul that has yet got no body. Not a pleasant neighbour either. But the chief substance of these letters is about Sterling's own work. He had just written 'Strafford,' and had sent the manuscript to be read at Cheyne Row. Carlyle, when asked for his opinion, gave it faithfully. He never flattered. He said honestly and completely what he really thought. His verdict on Sterling's tragedy was not and could not be favourable. He could find no true image of Strafford there, or of Strafford's surroundings. He had been himself studying for two years the antecedents of the Civil War. He had first thought Montrose to have been the greatest man on Charles's side. He had found that it was not Montrose, it was Wentworth; but Wentworth, as he conceived him, was not in Sterling's play. Even the form did not please him, though i 7.1 your STERLING'S 'STRAFFORD. 231 on this he confessed himself an inadequate judge. His remarks on art are characteristic: Of Dramatic Art, though I have eagerly listened to a Goethe speaking of it, and to several hundreds of others mumbling and trying to speak of it, I find that I, practically speaking, know yet almost as good as nothing. Indeed, of Art generally (Kunst, so called) I can almost know nothing. My first and last secret of Kunst is to get a thorough intelligence of the fact to be painted, represented, or, in whatever way, set forth—the fact deep as Hades, high as heaven, and written so, as to the visual face of it on our poor earth. This once blazing within me, if it will ever get to blaze, and bursting to be out, one has to take the whole dexterity of adaptation one is master of, and with tremendous struggling, really frightful struggling, contrive to exhibit it, one way or the other. This is not Art, I know well. It is Robinson Crusoe, and not the Master of Woolwich, building a ship. Yet at bottom is there any Woolwich builder for such kinds of craft? What Kunst had Homer? What Kunst had Shakespeare? Patient, docile, valiant intelligence, conscious and unconscious, gathered from all winds, of these two things-their own faculty of utterance, and the audience they had to utter to, rude theatre, Ithacan Farm Hall, or whatever it was-add only to which as the soul of the whole, the above-said blazing, radiant insight into the fact, blazing, burning interest about it, and we have the whole Art of Shakespeare and Homer. To speak of Goethe, how the like of him is related to these two, would lead me a long way. But of Goethe, too, and of all speaking men, I will say the soul of all worth in them, without which none else is possible, and with which much is certain, is still that same radiant, all-irradiating insight, that same burning interest, and the glorious, melodious, perennial veracity that results from these two. This extract is interesting less for its bearing upon Sterling's play, which brilliant separate passages could not save from failure, than for the full light which it throws on Carlyle's own method of working. But from his own work and from Sterling's and all concerns of his own he was called away at this moment by a blow which fell upon his wife, a blow so severe that it had but one alleviation. It showed her the intensity of the affection with which she was regarded by her husband. Her mother, Mrs. Welsh, had now resided alone for several years at her old home at Templand in Nithsdale, where the Carlyles had been married. Her father, Walter Welsh, and the two aunts had gone one after the other. Except for the occasional visits to Cheyne Row, Mrs. Welsh had lived on there by herself in easy circumstances, for she had the rent of Craigenputtock as well as her own jointure, and, to all natural expectation, with many years of life still before her. The mother and daughter were passionately attached, yet on the daughter's part perhaps the passion lay in an intense sense of duty; for their habits did not suit, and their characters were strongly contrasted. Mrs. Welsh was enthusiastic, sentimental, Byronic. Mrs. Carlyle was fiery and generous, but with a keen sarcastic understanding; Mrs. Welsh was accustomed to rule; Mrs. Carlyle declined to be ruled when her judgment was unconvinced; and thus, as will have been seen, in spite of their mutual affection, they were seldom much together without a collision. Carlyle's caution-Hadere nicht mit deiner Mutter, Liebste. Trage, trage !'-tells its own story. Mrs. Carlyle, as well as her husband, was not an easy person to live with. She had a terrible habit of speaking out the exact truth, cut as clear as with a DEATH OF MRS. WELSH. 233 graving tool, on occasions, too, when without harm it might have been left unspoken. Mrs. Welsh had been as well as usual. There had been nothing in her condition to suggest alarm since the summer when the Carlyles had been in Annandale. On February 23 Mrs. Carlyle had written her a letter, little dreaming that it was to be the last which she was ever to write to her, describing in her usual keen style the state of things in Cheyne Row. To Mrs. Welsh, Templand. 5 Cheyne Row: Feb. 23, 1842. I am continuing to mend. If I could only get a good sleep, I should be quite recovered; but, alas! we are gone to the devil again in the sleeping department. That dreadful woman next door, instead of putting away the cock which we so pathetically appealed against, has produced another. The servant has ceased to take charge of them. They are stuffed with ever so many hens into a small hencoop every night, and left out of doors the night long. Of course they are not comfortable, and of course they crow and screech not only from daylight, but from midnight, and so near that it goes through one's head every time like a sword. The night before last they woke me every quarter of an hour, but I slept some in the intervals; for they had not succeeded in rousing him above. But last night they had him up at three. He went to bed again, and got some sleep after, the 'horrors' not recommencing their efforts till five; but I, listening every minute for a new screech that would send him down a second time and prepare such wretchedness for the day, could sleep no more. The last note What is to be done God knows! If this goes on, he will soon be in Bedlam; and I too, for anything I see to the contrary and how to hinder it from going on? we sent the cruel woman would not open. I send for the maid, and she will not come. I would give them guineas |