Studies in Scottish Literature Volume 29 | Issue 1 Article 22 1996 Book Reviews Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarcommons.sc.edu/ssl Part of the English Language and Literature Commons Recommended Citation (1996) "Book Reviews," Studies in Scottish Literature: Vol. 29: Iss. 1. Available at: https://scholarcommons.sc.edu/ssl/vol29/iss1/22 This Book Reviews is brought to you by the Scottish Literature Collections at Scholar Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in Studies in Scottish Literature by an authorized editor of Scholar Commons. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Book Reviews The Collected Letters oj Thomas and Jane Welsh Carlyle. Eds. Clyde de L. Ryals and Kenneth 1. Fielding. Vols. 19-21 (January 1845-June 1847). Dur­ ham, NC and London. 1993. The Duke-Edinburgh Edition. Three more volumes (1845-June 1847) of the Carlyles' correspondence have appeared, and one is impressed by both the correspondence itself (bulk and content) and the assiduousness of the editors, all of whom must be given high praise. Again, as before, one must marvel at the sheer statistics: 572 let­ ters, 47 percent of which have not been previously published. Of these, 448 are by Thomas and 124 by Jane, and one must confess that Jane's are still the more interesting, especially in their tone. While these statistics are not revealing in themselves, because of the fact that a greater proportion of the letters is new, they do present, as K 1. Fielding points out in his pithy Introduction, "an in­ creasingly fresh opportunity to understand and interpret the Car lyles, their circle, and their times." Other aspects of the careful editing also add to the usefulness of the vol­ umes, particularly the Chronology and the Indexes. The latter are especially noteworthy. There are, as before, an Index of Correspondents, very useful to one wanting to trace a particular person, and a General Index, as detailed as one could wish. Under "Bible," for instance, are 26 entries, from Acts to Zech., while under different facets of Cromwell and Cromwell, the editing of whose letters and tracing of whose activities take up so much of Thomas' time and effort during this period, one finds a fullness of specific detail to enable any reader to focus on anyone concern connected to this work and figure. One Book Reviews 263 cannot neglect mentioning the notes to the letters themselves, some of which, it is true, might seem gratuitous, but most of which are genuinely helpful. Par­ ticularly so, in this respect, are those that shed light on the controversy sur­ rounding the personal problems of the Carlyles in 1846 in connection with Thomas' relationship to Lady Harriet Baring and Jane's seeming jealousy. The annotations, especially those which show the differences between the interpre­ tations of Alexander Carlyle and Froude regarding this affair, including exam­ ples of A. Carlyle's charge of "Froudulency" (see esp. XXI, 19), are most en­ lightening and certainly demonstrate their value. As before, K 1. Fielding's Introduction, as pithy as it is, helps the reader of these volumes, whether already acquainted with much that is there or coming new to Carlyle studies. He is judicious in his approach to the materials, as an editor should be, but he is helpful as a guide in pointing out what should be the major concerns: the Carlyles themselves; Thomas' work on Cromwell and his great reputation as prophet at this time; Jane's personal problems, caused by the still unaccounted for attraction of Thomas for Lady Harriet, who was, at this period of their lives, almost constantly in Jane's thoughts, as revealed in many of her letters. Thomas during these years is at the height of his career, his reputation at its zenith. It is truly the Age of Carlyle, the Carlylean era. He himself has to ac­ knowledge this fact; "I have had," he writes to his brother James on 29 July 1845, "three Books printing all at once in these late months," and he proceeds to give details of each. One senses the combination of pride and sense of ac­ complishment in this remark, echoes of Thomas' constant exhortations to do one's duty. There are, too, the many invitations to dine, to speak, to participate in various ways; he is constantly lionized. The many persons he knows, who write to him, and to whom he writes are the Victorians we have come to know as eminent: Emerson, Browning, Darwin, FitzGerald, Hunt, Wedgewood, Spedding, Peel, Murray, Tennyson, Moxon, Milnes, Mill, Jewsbury, to list just a few. His influence was, in fact, to wane in a few years, but at this period there is no denying the high standing of the man, to some truly a prophet, one who challenged his readers. At the core of these three volumes, however, one can find the basis of both his rise and eventual fall from that height, for one can trace through these letters both his devotion to his writing, his work, and the attendant problems, both professional and personal, that plagued him most of his life. While Fielding in his Introduction talks of Thomas' "contradictions," which are obvious, he also states that his views and "fundamental convictions" were changing, a phenome­ non not really evident in these letters. These three volumes reveal a man with a sense of his own rightness and his concern with his own inability to convey that truth to his age. While his letters do, as Fielding asserts, "force us to realize that he was a man of inconsistency, variety, and unexpectedness," they also force us to realize that his fundamental position was based on his unshakable ideas of duty and truth, ideas that did, in fact, not change at all during his life- 264 Book Reviews time. In fact, they hardened into dogma as he grew older. This "obstinacy," combined with a sense that he was a prophet destined not to be listened to in his own lifetime, resulted in his constant use of irony and satire and was the cause of his later despair, evident in such works as Latter-Day Pamphlets. His obsession with Cromwell during these months is a case in point, and the effect of that obsession on himself and on Jane's life and thoughts and emo­ tions is instructive. He knew he was "right" about Cromwell, and his desire to convey that certainty to his countrymen drove him to the same kind of devoted concern that he gave to all his other projects. One can find throughout this period in the letters the toll the project took on him and on Jane. It was a "living hell" for both of them. Thomas writes to Emerson on 16 February 1845 in this vein: The reason why I tell you nothing about Cromwell is, alas, that there is nothing to be told. I am day and night these long months and years, very miser­ able about it,-nigh broken hearted often. Such a scandalous accumulation of Human Stupidity in any fonn never lay before on such a subject. No history of it can be written to this wretched fleering, sneering, canting, twaddling godforgetting generation: how can you explain Men to Apes by the Dead Sea? And I am very sickly too, and my Wife is ill all this cold weather;-and I am sunk in the bowels of Chaos, and only some once in the three months or so see so much as a possibil­ ity of ever getting out! (XIX, 33-4) Here is Jane writing to Jeannie Welsh on the same subject on 6 February 1845: "Carlyle is now got about as deep in the Hell of his Cromwell as he is likely to get. ... I wish the Spring would make haste and favour my getting out of doors-for the (moral) atmosphere within doors is far too sulphury and brim­ stonish" (XIX, 26). No wonder the editors speculate that Jane's depression, illness, and suffering from insomnia were due partly to "TC's preoccupation with work and the Barings" (XX, 220n). This preoccupation, including his belief that he was preaching to a genera­ tion of Apes, is evident in other letters. His certainty in his position is clear as he tells Emerson on 3 February 1846: Contral)' to all human expectation, this Book on Cromwell proves saleable to mankind here, and a Second Edition is now going forward with all speed. The publication of the First has brought out from their recesses a new heap of Cromwell Letters;-which have been a huge embarrassment to me; for they are highly unim­ portant for most part, and do not tend to alter or materially modify anything. (XX, 115) One can be certain that the "Fifty or Sixty new Letters" that escaped him would not alter his view of Cromwell and his attempt to demonstrate his true character to his godforgetting generation. Even when writing to Duffy, whom he liked very much, on 12 March 1846 he could not resist taking his sulphury and brim- Book Reviews 265 stonish stance, that moral stance that so infuriated Jane at times: In spite of all obstructions, my fixed hope is, that just men, Irish and English, wilI yet see It as God the Maker saw it.. It is not every day that the Supreme Powers send any Missionary, clad in light or clad in lightning, into a Country, to act and speak a True Thing there. (XX, 140-41) Then TC falls back on the rhetoric one finds in so much of his later writings: and the sooner all of us get to understand, to the bottom, what it was that he acted and spoke, it will most infallibly be the better every way! Nations, and men, that cannot understand Heaven's Message, because ..