The New Age and the Apocalypse - Carlyle's developing vision on history and society. Nash, Geoffrey Philip The copyright of this thesis rests with the author and no quotation from it or information derived from it may be published without the prior written consent of the author For additional information about this publication click this link. http://qmro.qmul.ac.uk/jspui/handle/123456789/1610 Information about this research object was correct at the time of download; we occasionally make corrections to records, please therefore check the published record when citing. For more information contact [email protected] THE NEW AGE AND THE APOCALYPSE = CARLYLE'S DEVELOPING VISION OF HISTORY AND SOCIETY Submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the University of London by Geoffrey Philip Nash The Department of English, Queen Mary College, University of London ii Geoffrey Philip Nash The New Age and The Apocalypse - Carlyle's Developing Vision of History and Society. Abstract This thesis is an investigation into the concern for History displayed in the Works of Thomas Carlyle. This is seen to be related to his criticism of contemporary society. Carlyle studied History for an insight into the problems of the nineteenth century, and History enriched his roles as artist, prophet and social critic. However, his view remained concentrated on his own age. This concern is seen to be founded on his conception of the nineteenth century as an age of transition, during which society was undergoing profound apocalyptic upheaval. The overarching theme of the new age and the apocalypse embraces both Carlyle's historical works and his social criticism. Carlyle's emergent vision of the modern age as one of change, disruption and disintegration is viewed in the light of his antipathy toward the secularizing, materialist trends of the age, as well as his portrayal of the successive periods of belief and apocalyptic change in History. The important scholarship already in existence on Carlyle's early intellectual and religious background is endorsed in this study. Setting out from the view that greater attention needs to be paid to Carlyle's intellectual and religious development after 183k, the study discusses the salient ingredients in Carlyle's important historical works, and the important bearing these had upon his social criticism. The research is based on Carlyle's Works; as well as on manuscripts and letters of Carlyle, published and unpublished. Contents Sources and Abbreviations iv Acknowledgements V Chapter One: Characteristics 1 Chapter Two: Society and The French Revolution 60 Chapter Three: History, Heroes and A New Social Order 113 Chapter Four: Authority or Chaos? Stoicism and Fact 193 Chapter Five: Conclusion 266 `Appendix:,., 275 Bibliography: 309 1V SOURCES AND ABBREVIATIONS Published Material. The references in this thesis are taken throughout from The Centenary Edition of Carlyle's Works, edited by H. D. Trail, London, 1896-99, with the exception of Sartor Resartus, where the edition used is C. F. Harrold's, New York, 1937. The Duke-Edinburgh edition of Carlyle's letters is cited as Letters. Abbreviations are noted in the footnotes otherwise. References to the Centenary Edition enumerate volumes in Roman numerals, e. g., Essays, II..., The French Revolution, III... J. A. Froude's four volume biography of Carlyle is cited in Roman numerals. Other enumeration of volumes follows the published editions. A full index of publications consulted is included in the Bibliography. Unpublished Material. The following abbreviations are used: NLS - National Library of Scotland, e. g., MS. NLS: 523 (Letters of Thomas Carlyle to John Aitken Carlyle). V&A- Victoria and Albert Museum, London, e. g., 48. MS, V&A: F -E3 (Letters of Thomas Carlyle to John Forster). Details of unpublished material consulted appear in the Bibliography. V ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS thanks due foremost to Dr. M. Cornelia Cook, -My are of the Department of English, Queen Mary College, London University, for her painstaking, constructive criticism of my manuscripts. I wish to thank Dr. I. M. Campbell, of Edinburgh University, for his generous disposal of time, knowledge and advice, and also Professor Mark Roberts, of Keele University, for first setting me on the path of research. To Professor Suheil Bushrui, of The American University of Beirut, I owe thanks for his priceless moral support. I am grateful to the Curator of the National Lib- rary of Scotland and the Keeper of the Victoria and Albert Museum for allowing me to consult manuscripts under their care. I wish to thank the Librarian of Birkbeck College, London University, for kindly affording me library facilities. The responsibility for the presentation and views of this thesis is entirely my own. CHAPTER 1 CHARACTERISTICS The immediate Post-Napoleonic years were an age of prophets, pseudo-messiahs and savants, all reacting in one way or another to the acute sense of crisis and change which had been brought about by the revolutionary upheavals and fall of ancient institutions. While the absolutist monarchs of Europe endeavoured to re-establish the ancien regime on its old foundations, at the Congress of Vienna, and through such attempts at absolutist solidarity as the 'congress system' and the 'concert of Europe', there were within their respective domains movements of political and religious ferment which reflected the pervading sense 1 of instability of the time. On the Right, we may figure the response of religion, which in such diverse figures as Chateaubriand, Joseph de Maistre, Bonald; Adam Müller and Ludwig von Haller; Edward Irving and Spencer Perceval, all represented a\holding fast to traditional doctrines, buttressed by a new spirit of irrationalism. Each within their own traditional communions manifested a rigid opposition to liberalism and a return to orthodoxy, so vehement that in the eyes of the orthodox their orthodoxy seemed heterodoxy. 1. See J. L. Talmon, Political Messianism. The Romantic Phase; and Romanticism and Revolt, Europe -. 2 The Romantic Age released a new intensity of adherence to doctrines long held ouu of mere habit. Irving's call was both backward-looking and archaic in his use of seventeenth century puritan divinity and his appeal to apostolic gifts, and apocalyptic in its expect- ation of the imminent return of Christ. He was the most oui, standing product of an impulse which threw up a number of ' fringe fanatics like Joanna Southcote and Richard Brothers. Revivalism was to produce a stream of preachers and prophets throughout the first half of the century. On the Left, political ideology had been fermented and tested by the Revolutionary explosion following upon 1789. Proclaiming either atheism or a refurbished social religion intended to meet the needs of the new age, the millenarian prophets of socialism, such as Comte Henri de Saint-Simon, Charles Fourrier, Robert Owen and others, preached the dawn of a new day in human history. Whilst the relig- ious millenarians were invoking the Judgement of the Last Day, in the traditional Christian terms of violent physical signs on earth and in the heavens, the socialist prophets were envisaging a speedy establishment-of the kingdom of heaven on earth. The radical bourgeoisie also had its prophet in Jeremy Bentham, whose philosophy propounded a totally re-organized, rational, egalitarian society freed from the bondage of tyranny and superstition. 1. See G. Kitson Clark, 'The Romantic Element 1830-1850', Studies in Social History, ed. J. H. Plumb. 3 Carlyle, who reached his twentieth year in 1815, would become beater acquainted with these influxes of revolutionary and apocalyptic interpretations of the new age. In a few-years time, he would imbibe fron the disciples of Saint-Simon and Bentham their masters' doctrines, whilst as the close friend of Edward Irving, he was in a special posi,., ion to observe and react to the phenomenon of religious millenarianism. Meanwhile, though born in lowland Scotland among the classes of peasantry and yeomans, his early life had not been lived in so remote a corner than the great change of the time had passed him by. In his own home, in the person of his father, Carlyle was reminded of the effects of this bewildering time of change. "Ihe. great world- revoluL1ions send in their disturbing billows to the remotesu creek; and the overthrow of thrones more slowly overturns also the households of the lowly", he wrote in 1832. "IVY Father had seen the American War, the French Revolution, the rise and fall. of Napoleon. The last arrested him strongly: in the Russian Campaign we bought a London Newspaper, which I read'aloud to a little circle thrice weekly. He was struck with Napoleon, and would say and look pregnant things about him: empires won, and empires lost... it like and now was all vanished a tavern brawl'. ... I have heard him say in late years, with an 4.mpressiveness which all his perceptions carried with them: 'that the lot of a poor man was growing worse and worse; that the world could L. not-and would not last as it was; bui mighty changes, of which none saw zhe end, were on the way. ' To him, as one about to take his departure, the whole was but of secondary moment: he was looking towards 'a city that had 1 foundations' ". Yet this quietist religion of his f atiher, an offshot of a dissenting sect removed from the established Kirk of Scotland, was in itself to be a casualty of the had age of change. "The Church to which he belonged independent educated him in his world-philosophy, a proud and one, and so he was in Carlyle's sight a fine and admirable the-last product of the old system -a product perhaps of 2 his kind". The father thus left his son a strong example of individual striving, self-sufficiency, and religious belief.