Viewing Ford Madox Brown's Work, 1865

MIscELLANIES 183 of making shoes whh are easy to the wearer. My thanks to you are emphatic and sincere. T. Carlyle 5. Cheyne Row, Chelsea 10 july 1868 Viewing Ford Madox Brown’s Work, 1865 Over a span of thirteen years, Ford Madox Brown labored on Work, his Hogarthian panorama of navvies digging in a London street, possibly near Chelsea Old Church and the Thames waterfront during the construction of Joseph Bazalgette’s great sewer system that TC called the “Cloaca Maxima.” The half dozen workers that serve as focal point are surrounded by onlookers from all strata of Victorian society, from the top-hatted to the bare-footed. Two of the figures depicted, discussing the scene in earnest, are TC and the theo- logian Frederick Denison Maurice. TC did not actually pose for Brown but allowed a photograph to be made for that purpose by Charles Thompson at the South Kensington Museum (now Victoria and Albert Museum) on 12 May 1859. For more of the story, see the footnotes attending TC’s letter to Brown, 5 May 1859, in which he wrote: “I think it a pity you had not put (or should not still put) some other man than me into your Great Picture: it is certain you could hardly have found among the Sons of Adam, at present, any individual who is less in a condi- tion to help you forward with it, or take interest in it active or passive. I was never in my days so overwhelmed. Any after- noon I will attend, here, at your studio, or where you appoint me, and give yr man one hour, to get what photograph he will or can of me” (CLO). In the Thompson photograph, TC is supported by a wooden sawhorse to assist him in keeping himself perfectly motionless during the long exposure time. His right hand is gripping his cane; his left hand is gripping his right hand. And still, his right hand shakes and blurs the image, giving early evidence of the palsy that would afflict him for the rest of his life. This image is 184 CARLYLE STUDIES ANNUAL featured on the jacket of the Strouse edition of Past and Present (2006), but the cropping has removed both the brace and the evidence of the shaking hand. The photograph without cropping is included in the CLO: TC to FMB, 10 May 1859 (CL 35: 90). TC to Ford Madox Brown, 15 April 1865. MS: unknown. Pbd: William Michael Rossetti, The Rossetti Papers: 1862–1870 (New York: Scribners, 1903) 97. The headnote explains: “A characteristic little note, referring to Brown’s Exhibition. Many readers will recollect that Carlyle sat to Brown for a leading figure in the large picture named Work.” In the text, “No. 191” refers to Piccadilly Galleries, 191 Piccadilly. Chelsea. 15 April, 1865. Dear Sir— Might I ask you to put my Wife’s name, instead of mine, on the inclosed which you have been so kind as to send me. I have already been twice (and she as well) to No. 191; and feel very likely to return: but the female mind seems to be still more adventurous in this affair, and wishes to be independent of me.— Yours very sincerely, T. Carlyle Two Letters from Thomas Carlyle to Beverley Tucker The following pair of letters from Thomas Carlyle to Beverley Tucker were transcribed for the Collected Letters from the texts in the “Editor’s Easy Chair,” Harper’s New Monthly Magazine (71 [1885]: 799–800). The letters were also printed in the New York Times: “Carlyle on American Slavery. Unpublished Letters Written to a Virginian Before the War. From Harper’s Magazine for October” (20 September 1885). The transcrip- tions below, which correct a number of minor typographical .

Load more