Thomas Carlyle and the making of Frederick the Great Linda C Stewart, B.A. (Hons.), M.Sc. A thesis submitted in fulfilment of requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy To English Literature School of Literatures, Languages and Cultures University of Edinburgh 30th September 2009 ii Abstract ____________________________________________________________________ Thomas Carlyle’s History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, called Frederick the Great was published in six volumes between 1858 and 1865 and was his last major work. Carlyle had a specific purpose in mind when he began writing Frederick. He believed that contemporary events had left Europe in disarray and the British nation fragmented. In his view, the nation needed to function as a family unit, with the older, more experienced members of the group instructing and educating the young. Carlyle’s attempt to address the situation with the publication of his Latter-Day Pamphlets in 1850 had failed, largely due to their aggressive tone. He adopted an entirely different approach when it came to writing Frederick. Chapter one explores Carlyle’s vacillation over his choice of Frederick as a suitable subject for his history and investigates his soul-searching over whether or not to proceed with the project. It examines the three-way relationship which Carlyle created between himself, Frederick and the reader and explores the various language techniques that Carlyle used to create and maintain this relationship. In chapter two, Carlyle’s style of writing in Frederick is investigated. It argues that Carlyle was engaged in the act of storytelling and explores the various literary techniques that he used to achieve this. Chapter three consists of an in-depth examination of Carlyle’s use of oral techniques in Frederick, investigating the variety of oral devices he employed in order to ‘speak’ to his readers and create a unified readership. Chapters four and five focus on Carlyle’s research methods. They examine the texts which Carlyle used for his research—original manuscripts, printed texts, letters, histories and biographies—investigating how these were incorporated into Frederick and evaluating whether or not Carlyle was true to his source material. Carlyle’s two trips to Germany in order to research material are also investigated. In Chapters six and seven, the contemporary reception of Frederick is explored. Chapter six focuses on the reaction to the first two volumes which were published together in 1858, whilst chapter seven investigates the response to the later volumes, exploring the ways in which the completed work influenced the public’s perception of Carlyle as a historian and ending by examining both Carlyle’s and Frederick’s places in posterity. Despite Carlyle’s labours on Frederick it never received the acclaim of his earlier productions but was regarded by many as a marker which signalled the end of Carlyle’s long and illustrious literary career. iii Contents _________________________________________________________________ Acknowledgements and Declaration i Abstract ii Introduction 1 Chapter 1 Mastering the Narrative: Carlyle’s “remarkable three-way relationship” 15 Chapter 2 Telling stories; spinning yarns: Carlyle’s narrative style 50 Chapter 3 The “speaking of man to men”: Creating a unified readership 83 Chapter 4 Populating the Past: Carlyle’s Research Methods 108 Chapter 5 Carlyle as an editor: Processing the “raw-material” of history 150 Chapter 6 Carlyle’s “intolerable heroes”: Initial reactions to Frederick the Great 179 Chapter 7 Carlyle’s “big Book” reviewed: The contemporary response to Frederick the Great 206 Conclusion 236 Appendix A A selection of letters from Oeuvres de Frédéric le Grand, volumes 19, 25 and 26 243 Appendix B Letters from Friedrich der Grosse, eine Lebensgeschichte volume 2 255 iv Appendix C Extracts from Tempelhof’s Geschichte des siebenjährigen Krieges in Deutschland zwischen dem Könige von Preussen und der Kaiserin Königin mit ihren Alliirten (sic). volume 3. 260 Works Cited 267 Bibliography 281 1 Introduction ____________________________________________________________________ “It was customary for those who honoured him to speak of him as a ‘prophet.’ And if we take the word in its largest sense he truly deserved the name. He was a prophet, and felt himself to be a prophet, in the midst of an untoward generation; his prophet’s mantle was his rough Scotch dialect, and his own peculiar diction, and his own secluded manner of life. He was a prophet most of all in the emphatic utterance of truths which no one else, or hardly any one else, ventured to deliver, and which he felt to be a message of good to a world sorely in need of them.” 1 In the eulogy that he delivered at Thomas Carlyle’s funeral in February 1881, Arthur Penrhyn Stanley made a key observation when he noted that Carlyle was not only regarded as a prophet by his contemporaries, but that he “felt himself to be a prophet, in the midst of an untoward generation”. Carlyle’s decision to write a history of Frederick the Great was driven by a strong sense of being engaged in a divine mission, tempered with the knowledge that this might be his final opportunity to deliver “a message of good” to his readers. Sentiments expressed by Carlyle in his 1854 journal appear to confirm his position: “I am getting old, yet would grudge to depart without trying to tell a little more of my mind” (Froude, Thomas Carlyle 172). Carlyle first came to the attention of the reading public in the early 1820s when a series of articles that he had written about the German poet and philosopher Friedrich Schiller appeared in the London Magazine. This moderate success was followed in 1827 by the publication of an essay on Jean-Paul Richter in the influential Edinburgh Review. His most famous work, Sartor Resartus, which was serialised by Fraser’s Magazine between 1833 and 1834, was characterised by an idiosyncratic style of writing which caught the imagination of contemporary readers. However, it was the publication of the French Revolution in 1837, the first work to 1 Arthur Penrhyn Stanley’s remarks in his sermon at Carlyle’s funeral in February 1881 (Seigel, Thomas Carlyle: the Critical Heritage 516). 2 bear his name that brought Carlyle fame and confirmed his reputation as a highly acclaimed writer, a position he was to enjoy for several decades. 2 1850 saw the publication of his Latter-Day Pamphlets, Carlyle’s response to the current political situation in Britain. In his view, the Government’s decision to abandon its traditional authoritarian role and adopt a new policy of laissez-faire had led to the nation becoming fragmented. 3 It was Carlyle’s intention to use the Latter-Day Pamphlets to educate his readers and encourage a new social order during a period of rampant democracy. However, their aggressive tone – in one passage he “assert[ed] with great confidence, supported by the whole Universe” that “the few Wise will have, by one method or another, to take command of the innumerable Foolish” – had antagonised a section of reviewers (34). 4 Carlyle came to realise that a different approach from that used in the Latter-Day Pamphlets was required in order to convey his philosophy and restore his reputation. Carlyle’s decision to write his last major work, History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, called Frederick the Great was not one that was taken lightly. 5 It was 1830 when the possibility of writing a history of Frederick was first mooted but not until 1851 2 In an article in Fraser’s Magazine in April 1881 shortly after Carlyle’s death, Andrew Lang opined that the French Revolution “first proved what Mr. Carlyle could really do” and described it as “by far the greatest of Mr. Carlyle’s books” (525, 526). Richard Holt Hutton, in his review of Carlyle in Good Words in December 1881, maintained that the French Revolution was “perhaps, the book of the century” (288). 3 Writing in his journal on November 11th 1849, a few months before the first of the Latter-Day Pamphlets was published, Carlyle claimed that his views in “these paper bundles” were “In dissent from all the world; in black contradiction, deep as the bases of my life, to all the philanthropic, emancipatory, constitutional, and other anarchic revolutionary jargon, with which the world, so far as I can conceive, is now full” (Froude, Thomas Carlyle 22). 4 In an article on the Latter-Day Pamphlets in October 1850, the reviewer from the Eclectic Review complained that Carlyle’s style was “peculiarly vicious” (“Art. I.—Latter-Day” 387). 5 When citing material, this thesis refers throughout to the eight volumes of History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, called Frederick the Great in the Centenary edition of The Works of Thomas Carlyle, edited by H.D. Traill, 1896-1899. This work will hereafter be referred to as Frederick and the Centenary edition will be cited throughout as Works. Frederick was published in volumes 12-19 of this edition between 1897 and 1898. 3 that he began seriously researching his subject. One of the primary reasons behind this lengthy delay was Carlyle’s vacillation over his choice of Frederick as a suitably heroic figure and it took a further five years before he eventually produced his first drafts of Frederick. 6 It was Frederick’s proven ability to create a stable and prosperous Prussian state out of a previously chaotic regime that appealed to Carlyle. Furthermore, the king was already known to British readers in his role as a courageous and successful commander of the Prussian army during the Silesian Wars. Yet there was another, less favourable side to the Prussian monarch. In a review of Frederick in 1865, General Sir Edward Bruce Hamley noted that although Frederick “had talents, conversational powers, and a fondness for discussion, whether light or philosophic, which would have made him one of the most agreeable men of his time”, these favourable traits were marred by “a marked malevolence which rendered the atmosphere around him insecure and capricious” (“Carlyle’s Frederick” 49).