PROGRESS WITH 'CROMWELL?

351

CHAPTER XIII.

A.D. 1845. ET. 50.

Summer in London-Mrs. Carlyle in Liverpool-Completion of ' Cromwell '-Remarks upon it-Effect of Cromwell's history on Carlyle's mind-Rights of majorities-Right and might-Reception by the world-Visit to the Barings-Lady Harriet and Mrs. CarlyleLetter to Sir Robert Peel-Meditations.

STERLING'S death was the severest shock which Carlyle had yet experienced. Perhaps the presence of a real sorrow saved him from fretting over the smaller troubles of life. He threw himself the more determinately into his work. All the remainder of this year and all the next till the close of the summer he stayed at home, as far as possible alone, and seeing few friends in London except the Barings. His wife had been improved by her excursion. She had been moderately well since her return. Strong she never was; but for her the season had been a fair one. In July 1845, the end of Cromwell' was coming definitely in sight. She could be spared at home, and went off again to her relations at Liverpool. Carlyle had another horse- Black Duncan' this one was called. He rode daily, and sent regular bulletins to his Necessary Evil'-many, through haste, undated. The Barings were still his chief resource outside his serious occupations.

Chelsea: July 27, 1845.

Visit to Addiscombe-not the very best of joys; but one ought to be content with it. I had a great deal of talk with Everett, the American Ambassador, who surprises me much, as a thorough drawling Yankee in manner, yet with intelligence and real gentlemanhood looking through it. Senior, seeing me there, came up in the most cordial manner to shake hands, and we even had a quantity of smoking together and philosophical discoursing together-by motion of his-with unabated aversion of mine. Peace to him!

August 1, 1845.

Thy bright little missives are a real consolation to me in my solitude here-a solitary wrestle with the blockheadisms. That is what I have just now, and there is need of some consolation at times if it could be had.

The leech' is very well. I went and saw it this morning; it has an allowance of fresh water every day, and complains of nothing, lying all glued together at the top of the glass (the little villain), and leading a very quiet life of it, never even asking what is taxes? Wednesday proved wet-no riding possible. Walked up to Baringdom in the evening. The poor lady had cold; was sitting with a fire—even she: we are all as coid here as you are in Lancashire. Yesternight had a grand ride over in Surrey; took the conceit out of Duncan; made him gallop at discretion till quite tame. Did my own wearied self some good by the job. After that, while at tea, Thackeray.

Just now I have finished copying the last letter of Oliver's. I will try hard yet to be through the original stuff this week. There will then be a conclusion of some kind to do; an index to set going. After which I am off in's Freie. Ay de mi! The merits of your letters are

1 One of Mrs. Carlyle's singular pets, of which her husband had charge in her absence.

SOCIETY IN LIVERPOOL.

353

mirrored in a very fair glass when it is I that read them, and if I call them 'bits of letters' (she had laughingly resented that expression of his), it is perhaps all the better for them from a soul so sulky, so dispirited, dead and buried, as mine now is, in this horrid business of mine. Courage! courage! it will be done soon, and then perhaps better days will come. August.

This place is getting very empty. Last night I came accidentally on the Kensington Gardens band. Their retinue of park horses has dwindled to mere nothing, a thing you could ride without difficulty through the middle of It is astonishing what real pity I do feel for these poor squires and squires' daughters, all parading about in such places. Good heavens! and is this what you call the flower of life: and age, and darkness, and the grand Perhaps lying close in the rear of it-Damn ye, be wae for yoursel'.' So I am too; and will now run and put on my riding clothes-just three minutes for it. Adieu. Ever your affectionate, bad

T. C.

Mrs. Carlyle had fallen in at Liverpool with a Unitarian clergyman named J. M., with whom she had conversed on serious matters with considerable interest.2 M. had seemed to her to be inclined to leave his Unitarianism and to become a pupil of Carlyle.

To Jane Welsh Carlyle.

Chelsea: August 8, 1845.

What did M say to you? It was a great thing in him to quote me in his preaching; but, like the deacon of the weavers at Dumfries, one must exclaim, 'Oh, gentlemen, remember that I am but a man.' Thursday night, after a day of thunder, I had my longest ride since you heard last, far out towards Harrow. As I turned homewards there rose visible from the big beautiful Babylon a tree of smoke, which 1 Letters and Memorials, vol. i. p. 260.

2 See Letters and Memorials, vol. i. p. 322, &c. I may as well say initial letters are not to be relied upon, as I frequently change them.

that

III.

A A

said very plainly, Here is a house on fire.' It grew and grew, till it covered whole fields of air. I never in any ride. saw a more impressive object, seeming to say with a tragical tone of reproach, Wilt thou take me for picturesque? I am the blazing furniture of terrified, distracted men and women.' Phew!

August.

Harvest is a month too late; will hardly fail therefore to be bad; and if the railway bubble burst at the same time, as is likeliest, there will be a precious winter for the poor operatives again, and those that have charge of them. The naked, beggarly greed and mammon-worship of this generation is sorrowfully apparent at present; and I confess sometimes I do not care if their 'wealth' and all the greasy adjuncts of it were actually to take wings and fly away. I think we might have a less detestable existence without it; a chance for a less fated life-element than this.

Good be with thee, dear little Goody mine. We clamb the hill together' in a very thorny but not paltry way. Now let us sit and look around a little. We shall have to totter down' also; but 'hand in hand we'll go.'

Really, I begin almost to pity poor J. M. The lot of a poor man, of so many poor men, doomed to twaddle all their lives in Socinian jargon, and look at this Divine Universe through distracted, despicable Jew-Greek spectacles, and a whole Monmouth Street of 'Old Cloe,' seems to me very sad. . . . The last speech of Oliver's is fairly ready for printing. Not a line of his now remains, thank Heaven! I have now only to have him die, and then to wind up in the briefest endurable way. I say to myself, why should not, for instance, the first of September actually see me free of the job altogether, and ready for the road somewhither? We will try. As a preliminary I have started to-day by—a blue pill and castor. Oh heavens! But I suppose it was the most judicious step of all.

LITERATURE AND ACTION.

355

August 21.

I know not if you mean to take Egypt's advice [I do not know the person alluded to], and write some book. I have often said you might, with successful effect; but the impulse, the necessity, has mainly to come from within. It is a poor trade otherwise, so we will be content with Goody whether she ever comes to a book or not. One way or other, all the light, and order, and energy, and genuine Thatkraft or available virtue we had, does come out of us, and goes very infallibly into God's Treasury, living and working through eternities there-very infallibly, whether the morning papers say much about it or say nothing; whether the wages we get be more or less! We are not lost; not a solitary atom of us-of one of us. When I think of our Oliver Cromwell and of the father of a Burns and other such phenomena, I am very indifferent on the book side. Greater, I often think, is he that can hold his peace, that can do his bit of light, instead of speaking it. . . . Eheu! what a business is the society of Adam's posterity becoming for me-a considerable of a bore for most part. Helps walked home to the door with me last night. We saw Green, the aeronaut, just get aloft from Vauxhall, throwing out all manner of fireworks, red, green, and indigo-coloured stars, and transitory milky ways, the best he could, poor devil! He was hanging a goodish way up in the air, quite invisible except by a cluster of confused fireworks, which looked very small in the great waste deep of things, and did not last above half a minute in all. No paltrier phenomenon was ever contrived for the solacement of human souls. I figured the wretched mortal sailing through the chill, clear moonshiny night, destitute of any object now, and with peril of his life, for the sake of keeping his life in, and had a real pity for him. I am very dark as to the extreme closing up of 'Cromwell,' but it seems to me as if it lay quite close at hand-some one bright day, all that was needed for it-perhaps to-morrow. Really, I am quite near it.