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RETREAT IN ANNANDALE.

319

To Jane Welsh Carlyle.

Scotsbrig: August 16, 1843.

I have no appetite for writing, for speaking, or in short doing anything but sitting still as a stone, while that is conceded me -Confound it! Here are two beggarly people from Ecclefechan come driving in a gig in probable search for me. May the Devil give them luck of it! I hope Jenny will gulp a lie (door lie) for my sake. I will wait perdu and fling down the pen till I see. No; Jenny had not the sense to make a white lie for me, and I had to enter. A poor West Indies bilious youth home for his health 'extremely desirous to see me' (many thanks to him), 'just called with his father.' I have given them whisky and water and sent them on their way. There is no rest for the wicked.

Here it is as hot as Demerara, windless, with a burning sun. I am lazy in addition to all. Lazy as I almost never was. Work, past or future, not to speak of present, is a weariness to me. I sometimes think of Cromwell. Oh heavens! I shall need to be in another mood than now. I must take new measures. This will never do.

The tailor has turned me out two pairs of trousers;1 has two winter waistcoats and much else in progress. I find nothing wrong but the Dumfries buttons yet, which I have duly execrated and flung aside. Poor hunger-ridden, quackridden Dumfries! Wages yesterday at Lockerbie fair 'were lower than any man ever saw them.' A harvestman coming hither for five weeks is to have one sovereign. A weaker individual works through the same period for 158. or 12s. 6d., according as he proves. The latter is a shoemaker's apprentice, who has harvest granted to him, to earn his year's apparel. Ruin by sliding scales and other conveyances slides rapidly on all men.

Last afternoon I had a beautiful walk on the Dairland

Hills moor. A little walking shakes away my sluggishness.

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Carlyle had his clothes made at Ecclefechan, partly for economy, partly because he could not believe in the honesty of London work.

The bare expanse of silent green upland is round me, far off the world of mountains, and the sea all changed to silver. Out of the dusky sunset-for vapours had fallen-the windows of Carlisle city glanced visibly upon me; twenty thousand human bipeds whom I could cover with my hat. On these occasions, unfortunately, I think almost nothing. Vague dreams, delusions, idle reminiscences, and confusions are all that occupy me. I am an unprofitable servant.

I have taken up with a biography of Ralph Erskine, the first of the Seceders. It is absolutely very strange. A long, soft, poke-cheeked face, with busy, anxious black eyes, 'looking as if he could not help it;' and then such a character and form of human existence, conscience living to the fingersends of him in a strange, venerable, though highly questionable manner! There have been strange men in this world; and indeed every man is strange enough. This Ralph makes me reflect, Whitherward are we now bound? What has become of all that? Is man grown into a kind of brute that can merely spin and make railways?' Mir wäre lieber dass ich plötzlich stürbe.'

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The reading of Ralph Erskine has given me strange reflections as to the profoundly enveloped state in which all sons of Adam live. . . . This poor Ralph, and his formulas casing him all round like the shell of a beetle. What a thing it is! And yet what better have the rest of us made of it? Far worse most of us in our Benthamisms, Jacobinisms, George Sandisms. Man is a born owl. I consider it good, however, that one do not get into the state of a beetle, that one try to keep one's shell open, or at least openable. I mean to persist in endeavouring that.

The lives of all men in all ranks, places, and times have their tragedy, their comedy, their romance in them; and are at once poetical, if there is a man of genius at hand to observe, especially if he have radical

ANNANDALE ANECDOTES.

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fire in him. Human creatures love, hate, have their pride and their passions, do wrong and suffer wrong, wherever they are. Here are two small pictures from peasant life in Annandale, as Carlyle saw it in 1843:August 21.

A poor slut of a man, Jamie's next neighbour here, has a farm too dear, deficient stock, arrears of rent, with all manner of sorrowful et cæteras, and hangs of late years continually on the verge of ruin. He is turned of forty-a great, heavy, simple, toilsome lump of nut-brown innocency; has wife and children; an old mother, stone-blind, who'milks all the cows.' His soul's first care is to raise 100l. annually for his landlord to buy port wine or whisky with. According to the lex terræ as it at present stands, they can strip him to the skin any time for past arrears, but prefer to let him struggle along, 'doing his best.' At this last rent-day he was nearly out of his wits, Jamie says. The corn he meant to sell was not ripe enough for selling; the bare bent or the inside of a gaol his only other outlook. For ten days he rode and ran, 'sleeping none,' or hardly sleeping. By Jamie's help he did at length get the 501. ready. He paid it duly, got on his horse to come home again, had a stroke of apoplexy by the way, arrived home still sticking to his horse, but unable to speak or walk, and has walked or spoken none since. What a joyous existence his! And that old stone-blind mother! We are very despicable drivellers to make any moan. Oh heavens! can that be the task of an immortal soul, catching apoplexy to provide whisky for of? Je me suis dit un jour, cela n'est pas juste. No, it is not, and by God's help shall not be held so.

August 30.

I must tell you another thing I heard which struck me considerably. You remember a lump of an old woman, half haveral,' half genius, called Jenny Fraser. The 'Duke' had decided on high that not an inch of ground should be allowed for a non-intrusion' church in that region. No church shall there or thereabouts be. It is

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1 Haveral, a half-witted person.

paltry to stop the mouths of men that observe any measure in their complainings-very poor, even if a Duke had made all the land he refuses to concede a few yards of. Well; but old Jenny Fraser possesses about Boatford a patch of ground independent of all persons, just about equal to holding a church and its eavesdrops, and says she will give it. Hunter of Merton Mill and agents are at work. Go to Jenny,

offer her 10., 20l.; indicate possibilities of perhaps more. Jenny is deaf as whinstone, though poor nearly as Job. She answers always, 'I got it from the Lord, and I will give it to the Lord.' And there, it seems, the Free Kirk, in spite of Duke and Devil, is to be. I had a month's mind to go and give Jenny a sovereign myself; but I remembered two things: first, that she had for some reason or other become a stranger to her former benefactress [Mrs. Carlyle herself?], and then, secondly, it might have a factious look, better to avoid at that moment; we can do it better afterwards, and I can hear your opinion withal-'Duke versus Jenny Fraser!' it is as ridiculous a conjuncture as has happened lately. These poor people, living under their Duke in secret spleen and sham loyalty, are somewhat to be pitied. The earth's the Lord's and no the Duke's,' as Charlie Rae said.

This little story is worth preserving as part of the history of the Free Kirk, independently of Carlyle's comments. Jenny Fraser was a true daughter of the Covenanters.

Carlyle's time in the North was running out; he had still to see Dunbar battle-field, and he had arranged his movements that he should see it on Oliver's own 3rd of September, the day of the Dunbar fight, the day of the Worcester fight, and the day of his death. One or two small duties remained to be discharged first in Dumfriesshire. His wife had asked him to go once more to Thornhill and Templand to see after her mother's old servants, and to visit also the grave in Crawford Churchyard. To

CRAWFORD CHURCHYARD.

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Crawford he was willing to go; from Templand he shrank as too painful. In leaving it, he thought that he had bid adieu to the old scenes for ever. Still this and anything he was ready to undertake if it would give her any pleasure. Most tender, most affectionate, were the terms in which he gave his promise to go. He did go. He distributed presents among the old people, who in Mrs. Welsh had lost their best friend. Finally, he went also to the churchyard, seeing Thornhill a second time on the way.

To Jane Welsh Carlyle.

Edinburgh: September 2.

As the mail was to start from Dumfries at six o'clock without pause by the way, I preferred the heavy coach yesterday at nine. It took me by Thornhill, &c. I had not duly calculated on that; and yet who knows but a day of such sad solemnity spent in utter silence, though painful exceedingly, was worth enduring. Nobody knew me. I sate two minutes in Thornhill Street, unsuspected by all men, a kind of ghost among men. The day was windless: the earth all still grey mist rested on the tops of the green hills, the vacant brown moors: silence as of eternity rested over the world. It was like a journey through the kingdoms of the dead, one Hall of Spirits till I got past Crawford. . . . I was as a spirit in the land of spirits, called land of the living. . . . At Crawford I was on a sacred spot, one of the two sacredest in all the world-I was at the grave. I tried at first to gain as much time on the coach [as was needed]. This being impossible, the good-natured driver offered to wait. In my life I have had no more unearthly moment. Perhaps it was not right, though doubtless you will thank me. At any rate, I could not decide to pass. Oh heavens! and all so silent there, smoothed into the repose of God's eternity; and the hills look on it, and the skies, and I thought how blessed all that was, beyond the dreary sorrows and agitations

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